Critical Triangle continues.....

The creation of the Baghdad Pact in late 1955 coincided with a steep deterioration in Afghan-Pakistan ties earlier that year. Following Pakistan’s decision to integrate the North-West Frontier Province into the conglomerated West Pakistan, as a result of domestic troubles with the eastern wing of the country, an Afghan mob sacked the Pakistani embassy in Kabul and attacked the Kandahar and Jalalabad consulates.

Pakistan retaliated with an attack on the Afghan consulate in Peshawar and by July embargoed the transit of Afghan goods. In effect Afghanistan was being economically strangled and had very little room for manoeuvre.

The Americans accurately predicted that this would be seen as an opportunity by the Soviet Union to enter South Asia with a bang.

The State Department cabled that the situation would force “the Afghans to turn inevitably to the Soviets,” fearing that the USSR “may be eager to end Afghanistan’s historical buffer status.” Though Afghanistan–Pakistan tensions eased, the damage had been done. In November the same year Khrushchev and Bulganin toured India and Afghanistan, where they first supported India’s stand on Kashmir, Afghanistan’s stand on Pashtunistan, and pledged US$100 million worth of economic aid to Afghanistan on top of other military assistance.

To
contextualise this, the US had not committed itself to the Pakistani stand on Kashmir and never did, and the dollar value of the massive aid package promised to Pakistan was US$171 million this at a time when Afghanistan’s economy and population was significantly smaller than Pakistan’s. The US embassy in Kabul cabled back that “for all intents and purposes Afghanistan has become a complete economic satellite of the USSR.

To be continued.......