Pakistan "Dirty, Deadly Game"

By William E. Smith

The Soviet armored personnel carrier, loaded with infantrymen and flying a white flag, rolled up to the Pakistani frontier post of Tor Kham from the Afghanistan side of the border. It was the climactic moment of a battle that had begun after Afghanistan's mujahedin resistance fighters attacked and briefly held three Afghan border posts on the Khyber Pass. The Soviets had reacted with lightning speed, sending in a full brigade by air to retake the outposts. In the confusion of battle, three soldiers of the Soviet-backed Afghan army fled to Pakistan, but their defection had been detected.

A Soviet captain emerged from the personnel carrier. "We want the three men back," he said, addressing Pakistani frontier policemen in English. Beside | him, an Afghan officer repeated the request in Urdu, adding, "If we don't have them back, you will be in for a lot of trouble." The Soviet vehicle then turned around and rumbled back into Afghanistan. "Not a shot was fired," a Pakistani officer recalled. "But just in case we didn't believe they meant business, they dropped 80 artillery shells on our positions that night." For the next two days, sporadic tank and artillery fire fell on the Pakistani outpost--and on the morning of the third day, the Pakistanis sent the three deserters back. Says a Pakistani intelligence officer: "There are a lot of changes on the border. The Soviets are now much closer than they have ever been before."

Indeed, the sounds of bombing by Soviet MiGs and the crash of artillery have been growing louder and more frequent in recent weeks. Last year there were 81 incidents in which the Pakistanis claimed their territory was bombed or strafed by Soviet aircraft. So far this year 56 such violations have been registered, and in the past month there have been at least 60 artillery attacks as well. Soviet and Afghan government forces have also mounted several ground raids along the frontier, including one last month that involved several hundred Soviet tanks as well as fighter-bombers and helicopters. A few days later, Soviet infantry and helicopter gunships in pursuit of guerrillas attacked several Afghan border villages, killing more than 100 civilians.

The heightened activity has led Western intelligence sources to conclude that the Soviets are making a greater effort than ever before to destroy mujahedin units operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan and stem the flow of weapons and supplies provided to the resistance by the U.S., China and several Muslim states. The U.S. pipeline alone is delivering an estimated $250 million in covert aid this year. Additional humanitarian assistance is going to the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, whose number has increased by 500,000 over the past year.

Pakistani officials suggest that the situation along the frontier has worsened since President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq met last month in Moscow with Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader, and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Zia was told by the Soviets that Pakistan's policy toward Afghanistan --collaboration with the resistance and cooperation with the U.S.--could cause the relationship between Moscow and Islamabad to deteriorate. Though that line was not new, Zia was said to have been shaken by the conversation.

Unlike some alarmists in Islamabad, the Reagan Administration does not believe that the Soviet Union is about to take full-scale war into Pakistan. But the U.S. acknowledges Moscow's continuing attempt to bully Zia into backing off from his demands for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the return of the refugees to that country and free elections in Kabul. U.S. military aid to Pakistan's 478,600-member armed forces is substantial--about $1.6 billion promised for the 1981-86 period--and includes F-16 jet fighters, tanks, artillery, antiaircraft missiles and a radar surveillance system.

Nonetheless, the growing Soviet pressures are viewed with concern in Pakistan. Says a Western intelligence officer in Islamabad: "The Soviets have been telling the Pakistanis that the Soviet Union no longer wants to keep Soviet-Pakistani relations separate from the issue of Afghanistan. That, in effect, has torn up the tacit understanding that has existed between them." The understanding has been beneficial to Pakistan: since 1972 it has received an estimated $700 million in Soviet aid.

To some degree, the Soviets have been giving mixed signals on the subject. Even as the border situation grew more threatening last week, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoli Dobrynin offered to work with the U.S. to resolve regional conflicts, including Afghanistan. Said he: "We don't believe there is no solution to Afghanistan." The trouble is that Moscow would define the problem as "continued intervention from Pakistan." But once that matter is solved, "the problem is solved," Dobrynin contended, and the Soviets could then "take our troops home."

As Zia sees the situation, however, the Soviet military leadership is frustrated by the stalemate in Afghanistan, where 115,000 Soviet troops are engaged, and is preparing for an all-out campaign against the mujahedin, including their bases in Pakistan. Pakistani officials point out, for example, that Moscow seems to have lost interest in the resumption of the U.N.-mediated talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Geneva. If the Soviets are in fact determined to destroy the mujahedin once and for all, it stands to reason that they would exert increased pressure on the neighboring country that provides the guerrillas with sanctuaries and their main supply line.

Aside from the potential for Soviet agents to stir separatist sentiments in the Pakistan provinces of Baluchistan and Sind, the area of greatest danger is the North-West Frontier province, where 30,000 troops of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps form a thin defense line. For the moment, the prospect seems to be intensified bombing and occasional hot pursuit, though probably no major Soviet incursion into Pakistan. Says a Western diplomat based in Pakistan: "The Soviets will take every opportunity they can find --and there are many--for subversive operations. It has become a very dirty and deadly game."

With reporting by Dean Brelis/Peshawar