Word: pakistans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Turkey is preoccupied by its enmity with Greece. Pakistan is distracted by its fear and hatred of India. At the same time, Turkey and Pakistan both face their own versions of the resurgent Islamic anti-Westernism and conservatism that now threaten the Shah. Pakistani mullahs last year played a key role in bringing down the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and precipitating martial law. In Turkey, politically active Muslims could hold the balance in the next government crisis...
These factors have all served to erode any feeling of collective security in CENTO. In Islamabad, officials fear that the Shah's troubles might spill over into Pakistan, and in Tehran it is the other way around. Says one Pakistani official: "If the Shah, with all his might and wealth, can't keep the lid on, that will only encourage elements here who would like to see us come apart at the seams." Warns a high-ranking Iranian: "If the Pakistanis start to have really serious trouble with Baluchistan [a province in the west of the country whose tribal population...
CENTO was conceived as a mutual security pact, but at least two of its members, Iran and Pakistan, are undergoing paroxysms of mutual insecurity. Hence the decision of Pakistan's chief martial law administrator, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, to visit Tehran for consultations with the Shah last weekend. "It promises to be a most melancholy conversation," commented an official of the Iranian imperial court...
Contributing to the anxiety of Iran and Pakistan is the recent shift leftward of their common neighbor Afghanistan. In April a leftist junta overthrew and killed President Mohammad Daoud. American policymakers are reserving judgment on the nature and course of the new regime, but in Tehran and Islamabad the judgment is in, and it is thoroughly pessimistic, if somewhat alarmist. Iranian and Pakistani officials are certain that the coup was instigated by Moscow. After more than a century as a neutral buffer state in the great game, Afghanistan, they say, is now a Soviet satellite. "We, Pakistan...
Tehran authorities are further convinced that the Soviet KGB has for years been patiently pursuing a plot to use Afghanistan as a base for stirring up trouble in the Baluch areas of Iran and Pakistan. These observers claim that they have seen a map, drawn in Moscow and secured by the Iranian intelligence service, showing a Greater Baluchistan that would connect the U.S.S.R. with the Arabian Sea. Similarly, an Islamabad diplomat refers darkly to the "Moscow-Kabul-Delhi axis." The Russians, he insists, "are now at the Khyber Pass." Certainly this is an exaggeration if not a delusion...