Avoiding Armageddon 4

When Brezinski offered $ 400 million in aid over two years , Zia turned down the offer as a ” peanuts ” a gratuitous insult to Carter , a peanut farmer from Georgia .

On Jan 10 , 1980 , the first CIA provided arms for the mujahedin arrived in Pakistan via the ISI .

Author

Bruce Riedel

The pro – Soviet coup in Kabul forced Carter to change his view of Pakistan . The country that he had literally flown over in 1978 was now critical to stopping the Soviets . To Carter , shaken by the fall of the Shah of Iran and by the Marxist coup in Kabul , it looked as if Southwest Asia were crumbling into enemy hands . In July 1979 , Carter ordered the CIA to provide modest assistance to the rebelion against the communist government in Kabul , but this aid was low level , involving mostly propaganda support and very modest amounts of money but no weapons .

The Soviet invasion cemented the change in Washington , and it would lead to a renewal of  America’s cold war love affair with the Pakistani army and inter – services Intelligence . Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski travelled to Pakistan after the invasion and offered more assistance for the mojahedin and for Pakistan . When Brezinski offered $ 400 million in aid over two years , Zia turned down the offer as a ” peanuts ” a gratuitous insult to Carter , a peanut farmer from Georgia . But Zia allowed the bilateral relationship between the ISI and the Saudis General Intelligence Directorate to become a trilateral CIA-ISI-GID relationship in which washington and Riyadh provided matching grants of money and purchased arms and Islamabad handled distribution and training . On Jan 10 , 1980 , the first CIA provided arms for the mujahedin arrived in Pakistan via the ISI .

Avoiding Armageddon

The Carter and Reagan years

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