Word: pakistanis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...same spirit has also kept the rebels from working well together. Liberation fronts and organizations for Afghan unity dissolve as quickly as they are formed. Intertribal conflicts are equally intense. One rebel leader is notorious for eliminating rivals by sending them on deadly undercover missions to Kabul. Complains the Pakistani director of the Commission for Afghan Refugees: "Everyone claims to be in control but there is no authority-only personal enmities." Obviously the formlessness of the rebel organization also makes it difficult for potential backers to know where to channel their assistance...
...good would Pakistan's forces be against a Soviet incursion? Zia's answer was bold and unqualified. "As far as the Pakistan army is concerned," he told reporters last week, "it is capable of defending our borders against any aggression." That bravado is not necessarily shared by Pakistani military commanders stationed along the country's 800-mile frontier with Afghanistan. An entirely different assessment was given visiting British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington last week by Lieut. General Fazal e-Haq, commander of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier. Pointing across the legendary Khyber Pass toward Kabul, Fazal said...
...additional $1 billion, however, might be needed for new weapons and equipment to upgrade the Pakistani armed forces. U.S. military experts believe that Pakistan's 430,000 troops are highly professional, tough, disciplined fighters. Says one top Washington analyst: "On an individual basis, the Pakistani soldiers are as good as any in the world. In terms of resisting small units of Soviets coming across a rough border with which the Pakistanis are entirely familiar, I think they'd give an extremely good account of themselves...
Relations between the two nations could hardly have been worse. A mob of fanatical Muslims had attacked the U.S. embassy in Islamabad last November; by the time the siege was lifted, seven hours later, two Americans were dead. The U.S., meanwhile, had consistently obstructed Pakistani efforts to build a uranium-enrichment plant-which would give the country a nuclear weapons capability -had cut off economic and military aid, and had criticized the execution last April of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Such actions, complained the government-owned Pakistan Times, "amounted almost to interference in our internal affairs." Said...
...Pakistani government of President Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq is tempted to encourage the Afghan tribesmen to fight the Kabul government, with which Pakistan has always had uneasy relations. But the Pushtun (or Pathan) tribesmen, whose homeland is on both sides of the border, also have their differences with Pakistan. So Zia is reluctant to grant the insurgents too much aid lest they use it to fight his government, which has serious problems...