Word: islamabad
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Each year Pakistan commemorates the fateful moment in 1940 when Indian Muslims demanded a homeland all their own. "Pakistan Day" fell last Monday, and, as is traditional, the celebrations included a splashy military parade outside the capital city of Islamabad that tied up most of the Pakistan air force. This year, however, the festivities carried a steep price. With 72 Pakistani bomber and fighter planes diverted for a ceremonial flyover, the Soviet-backed Afghan air force took advantage of the security breach and struck three villages just inside Pakistan's northwestern border, where more than 1 million Afghan refugees live...
...raids were a direct response to an earlier mujahedin attack on targets inside the Soviet Union. That too was news last week. Since Western correspondents are rarely allowed inside Afghanistan, battle accounts are slow to emerge and cannot be verified. According to rebel leaders and Western diplomats in Islamabad, guerrillas based in northern Afghanistan fired rockets across the Soviet border three weeks ago, killing twelve. It was the first report in several years of a mujahedin attack on Soviet territory...
...Pakistan to stop aiding the rebels and agree to a political settlement in Afghanistan that would leave a Communist-backed regime in Kabul. When the latest session of the U.N.-sponsored peace talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan recessed on March 10, there was cause for optimism. The gap between Islamabad and Kabul over a timetable for withdrawal of the 115,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan had narrowed from 45 months to a difference of just eleven months. Last week, however, State Department Spokesman Charles Redman denounced the "sharp contrast" between the raids and Moscow's stated goal "to achieve...
Pakistan's new capability also puts the U.S. on the spot. For years Washington has warned Islamabad against developing nuclear arms. In 1979 the U.S. cut off military and economic aid to Pakistan. When Jimmy Carter offered to restore some assistance following the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, Zia contemptuously told the ex-peanut farmer that the funds would not be missed because they amounted to "only peanuts." In recent weeks there have been renewed cries in Congress to punish Pakistan for continuing to defy U.S. nonproliferation policy. John Glenn, leader of the movement in the Senate, warned last week...
...rioting appears to have changed Pakistan's political course. Junejo and Zia will have difficulty defending the crackdown, a necessity for winning support in the U.S. Congress, which is considering the Reagan Administration's $4.02 billion aid package for Islamabad. Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto's efforts to force the government's hand may spark more bloodshed, possibly creating the same type of social unrest that led to Zia's military coup...