The Afghan Connection

It had been an open secret that the State Department took care neither to confirm nor deny. As long as it was widely believed but not officially acknowledged that the U.S. was helping Afghan guerrillas resist the Soviet occupation of their country, the Reagan Administration enjoyed the best of all worlds. It could bask in the credit for aiding a just cause without interference from Congress or propaganda attacks from the East bloc.

But in a surprise move last week, a segment of the Administration made the American role public by leaking details to the New York Times. Unnamed Administration officials disclosed that President Reagan, hoping to turn the screws on Moscow for its three-year-old effort to control Afghanistan, had ordered an increase in the quantity and quality of arms for the insurgents fighting the 105,000-man Soviet force. In December, the officials said, the Central Intelligence Agency began providing the rebels with bazookas, mortars, mines and recoilless rifles. Since then the Soviets have stepped up their military activity. The result has been a standoff, with more casualties for both sides.

The bill for the arms sent to Afghanistan is between $30 million and $50 million a year, borne equally by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which are concerned about the Soviet military threat to the Persian Gulf area. Drawn from old Egyptian stockpiles (and, ironically, manufactured by the Soviets), the weapons are shipped to Pakistan by air and sea, then trucked to the Afghanistan border. U.S. officials said that the Pakistanis have been under pressure from Moscow to stanch the arms flow, but continue to look the other way in return for a six-year, $3.2 billion aid package from Washington.

Publicly, State Department officials stayed mum on the leak and tried to shift attention back to American support for the Pakistani-led efforts to negotiate a political settlement for Afghanistan. Privately, however, they were furious. They were worried that the revelation would embarrass the Pakistanis into cracking down on the arms shipments. "Successful covert actions must be kept quiet," snapped one official. "That's why they're covert." Some State Department hands speculated that the leak was designed to highlight the Administration's involvement in a popular cause like Afghanistan, where the Soviet threat is unambiguous, as a way of justifying intervention in the murkier internal affairs of Nicaragua. Equally dismayed, U.S. intelligence officials suggested that the Administration wanted to be seen, as one put it, as "tackling the Communist threat."

Oblivious to the diplomatic flap, the Afghan rebels were jubilant. Said a spokesman: "With such weapons we can hurt the Soviets, and we give them warning in language they understand that we are not about to quit." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.