Soviet forces enter Afghanistan, and Pakistan becomes a front-line state

Background

Afghanistan had been in turmoil since a communist coup in April 1978. The new government’s programme provoked armed revolt across the country, and Afghanistan’s communist leaders signed a friendship treaty with Moscow that allowed for direct Soviet military assistance¹. Washington was already worried. On 3 July 1979, months before any Soviet invasion, President Jimmy Carter signed a covert-action finding allowing the CIA to give the Afghan insurgents limited non-lethal help, a modest beginning that would grow into one of the largest covert programmes of the Cold War^2,3.

US relations with Pakistan were then at a low ebb. In April 1979 the Carter administration had cut off most aid because of Pakistan’s secret uranium-enrichment programme, and in November 1979 a mob had stormed and burned the US embassy in Islamabad. Pakistan’s military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, also faced international criticism over the execution of the former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in April 1979.

What happened

At the end of December 1979 the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan, took control of Kabul and large parts of the country, and installed a new leadership. The State Department’s Office of the Historian calls it a watershed of the Cold War and the only time the Soviet Union invaded a country outside the Eastern Bloc; it drew condemnation from much of the world¹.

The Carter administration responded on three fronts: diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions (including a grain embargo and, later, a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics) and covert aid to the Afghan resistance, delivered with the help of Pakistan¹. In his State of the Union address in January 1980 Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine, warning that the United States would use force if necessary to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf¹.

Inside the administration, Pakistan was seen as both vital and fragile. In a memorandum to Carter written just after the invasion, Brzezinski described Pakistan as unstable at home and deeply apprehensive about its external security, and argued that if Washington could stiffen Pakistan’s resolve it could help keep the Soviets bogged down in Afghanistan⁴. In February 1980 Brzezinski flew to Islamabad, visited Afghan refugees near the frontier and said publicly that the 1959 US–Pakistan bilateral agreement covered aggression by the Soviet Union or by any country under its control⁵.

Pakistan’s position

For Pakistan the invasion brought Soviet power to its border at a moment when its relations with India were tense and its government was diplomatically isolated. Zia’s government chose to back the Afghan resistance rather than seek accommodation with Moscow. The mujahideen parties set up headquarters in Peshawar, and arms shipped by the United States and other countries reached the fighters through Pakistan⁶. Pakistan also absorbed one of the largest refugee movements of the period: by the end of 1979 some 400,000 Afghans had crossed the border, and the number of registered refugees rose into the millions during the 1980s⁷.

Why it mattered

The invasion reversed the direction of US policy towards Pakistan within weeks. Concerns about democracy and the nuclear programme did not disappear, but they were subordinated to the goal of opposing the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Dennis Kux, the State Department historian of the relationship, places the invasion at the start of one of the periods of intimate partnership that alternated with estrangement throughout the alliance’s history⁸.

Legacy

The decisions taken in the weeks after December 1979, especially the choice to route covert aid through Pakistan’s intelligence service, shaped the following decade. They gave Pakistan considerable influence over which Afghan factions grew strong, a legacy that outlasted the Soviet withdrawal of 1989 and returned to the centre of US–Pakistan relations after 2001.