274. Telegram From the Embassy in Pakistan to the Department of State1
4900. For Secretary Muskie from Amb Hummel. Subject: (S) The Pakistan Dimension in the U.S. Response to Soviet Aggression in Afghanistan.
1. (S) Entire text.
2. I address you directly, Mr. Secretary, to suggest that we need to have a whole new look at our policies and actions in Pakistan, especially as they relate to the Afghan situation. As things now stand, we state publicly, and privately to our friends, that strengthening Pakistan is a central element in our response to the Soviet invasion next door. But we are doing almost nothing to carry out that declared policy.
3. Unless we narrow this gap between our public stance and the concrete actions we intend to take, it will shortly become so conspicuous that I fear sharply adverse consequences for our national objectives and prestige.
4. The Pakistanis have asked us explicitly for economic assistance.2 However, we will shortly have to tell the Paks and others (at an aid consortium meeting June 12) (A) that we have no economic help to offer in the current fiscal year, (B) that we plan for none at all in fiscal ’81 and (C) that even in fiscal ’82 it is doubtful that we will give substantial economic help. The Agency for International Development (AID) has strongly resisted putting any funds at all into its budget request for fiscal ’82.
5. The Paks have asked us to give top priority in our economic assistance to re-scheduling their debt repayments to us, which amount to over $130 million per year. Given present USG attitudes in Washington, it is very doubtful that we will make any meaningful move toward debt rescheduling. Thus our friends, and the Pakistanis, will draw their own adverse conclusions about our real intentions despite what we say our policies are.
6. I am very much aware that we have genuine problems in getting resources with which to carry out our foreign, and indeed our domestic, policies, and that Pakistan is by no means the only country where our objectives are not supported by adequate resources. There are no easy [Page 734] solutions, but I hope you and others in Washington will consider whether, and how, a special effort should be made to avoid the predictably adverse results for USG interests if we persist in our present courses with Pakistan. I see these results here and world-wide to be (in priority order):
A. A USG failure to give meaningful support to Pakistan could very well cause the Soviets to conclude that the USG does not have the serious intention to counter further Sov expansionist moves in this region or elsewhere. And a weak Pakistan, without substantial support, would likewise tempt the Sovs to increase their pressures on Pakistan—such as raids on Pak territory—that would pose new challenges for the region and for the USG that would be difficult or impossible for us to counter.
B. A number of our important friends will find it impossible to understand why we withhold support for Pakistan. We placed heavy pressure on the Europeans, Saudis, and Japan to increase their aid to Pakistan, which many have already done. Others, including the PRC, are watching us closely to see whether we will respond effectively to the many global challenges that beset us. No matter how carefully we explain our very real budgetary problems and our domestic economic difficulties, many will conclude that the USG lacks the capability, and perhaps also lacks the will, to play the role in the world that they want us to play and that we say we want to play.
C. More parochially, and of lesser importance, is the severe effect on U.S.-Pak bilateral relations if we withhold support. President Zia and many others will conclude that we are so unhappy with him that we are deliberately trying to topple his government so we can deal with another, perhaps elected, govt more to our liking, and perhaps more responsive to our anti-nuclear views. Many Pakistani leaders will also suspect, bizarre though it may seem, that the USG, the Sovs, and India have some secret understanding that involves keeping Pakistan weak. Whatever the exact content of these unjustified Pak suspicions, we can be sure that there will be a sharp rise in anti-Americanism and an even greater Pak disposition to espouse leftist “nonaligned” positions. These public manifestations of a Pakistani turn away from the USG will in turn have deleterious effects on the attitudes of other countries who will see them as evidence of USG mishandling of relations with Pakistan.
7. Actions that it is possible for us to take to remedy these consequences are few, and at best palliative. I do not recommend that we re-structure our existing security agreement of 1959, because I do not see it in our interest to tie ourselves too closely to this Pak Government, which is hardly a strong and reliable partner, and which has nuclear and other policies [with] which we profoundly disagree. No foreseeable [Page 735] alternative to Zia would pursue policies any more successful or favorable to our interests than his government at this time. But I believe, and USG policy papers state, that we have important interests here, in promoting regional stability, avoiding conflict, countering Soviet expansionism, and not least in seeing that the USG is perceived as actually carrying out its professed policies. I therefore hope that we can examine anew the possibilities for economic assistance to Pakistan, and come to some better decisions before the aid consortium meeting June 12.
8. I would give top priority to debt rescheduling, which all the other members of the consortium are ready to do, and where we are the only hold-out. Given our very real budget constraints, congressional attitudes, and Treasury and OMB policies, only a directive from the President has any chance of changing the present USG hard-line stance.
9. I have been told that there is no possibility of finding funds, and authorizations, for economic assistance to Pakistan in the upcoming FY 81 budget. I hope that this can be tested out again, to see whether priorities can be rearranged.
10. P.L.–480 sales of agricultural commodities are being projected at low, or very indefinite levels. These should be examined, and raised substantially.
11. A substantial grant of funds for relief of nearly a million Afghan refugees would be useful and logical, and would help to avoid a totally negative USG stance at the consortium meeting. Substantively, too, our interests will be served by helping the Paks avoid the disruptive and destabilizing effects of this large number of Afghans in its border provinces.
12. The FY 82 budget request, now being constructed in Washington, should be carefully considered, to see that economic assistance to Pakistan is adequate to match our policies, particularly in aid inputs, in [garble] and in P.L.–480.
13. None of these suggestions will be new to Washington policy-makers, and none of them will be easy. You will hear strong and cogent reasons why they are impossible or at best difficult. Still, I hope that you will use your influence to see that our important policy goals are not made unattainable by essentially procedural difficulties, real though they are, within our own government.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P870097–0461. Secret; Immediate; Nodis.↩
- Documentation on Pakistani requests for economic assistance is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XIX, South Asia.↩