The Strategic Triangle } 417
three significant roles in the Afghan resistance war: helping to bring Pakistan
and the United States together, giving a guarantee to Pakistan’s security par-
alleling and reinforcing a US guarantee, and providing Soviet-style arms to
meet huge American needs as the Afghan resistance war escalated in the
mid-1980s.
On December 30, 1979, five days after the Soviet invasion, Beijing issued a
statement strongly condemning the Soviet move and demanding the with-
drawal of Soviet forces. From Beijing’s perspective, the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan was another link in the Soviet encirclement of China. China
and Afghanistan share a forty-seven-mile border abutting China’s ethni-
cally sensitive Xinjiang province. According to Huang Hua, a Soviet move
against Pakistan or Iran (where the shah had just been overthrown and the
pro-Soviet communist Tudeh Party was still a strong element of the revolu-
tionary coalition) might allow Moscow to seize warm-water military ports,
occupy a strategic international artery (the Strait of Hormuz), and cut con-
nections between the Pacific countries and the oil-producing countries of the
Middle East.^36 The Soviet move also put Pakistan in a vice between Soviet
forces in Afghanistan and Soviet-allied India, as President Zia-ul-Haq of
Pakistan explained to Huang Hua during a January 1980 visit to Pakistan.
China’s initial role was in bringing Pakistan and the United States together
to deal with the Soviet invasion. Pakistan-US relations were then very poor,
while the risks that Pakistan would run if it undertook to provide sanctuary
for Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation were very high. Washington had
suspended aid to Pakistan because of Pakistan’s nuclear activities and be-
cause of a military coup led by Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in July 1977 ousting
Z. A. Bhutto, a civilian and democratically elected leader who was hanged by
the Pakistan military in April 1979. Then, in November 1979, a Pakistani mob
stormed, sacked, and burned the US embassy in Islamabad in response to a
false report by an Iranian radio station that the United States had bombed
the holy Grand Mosque in Mecca. Four US and Pakistani staff personnel
were killed during the embassy invasion. Pakistani leaders did not trust the
United States, which, although an ally of Pakistan, had suspended military
assistance in the middle of Pakistan’s 1965 war with India. China, unlike the
United States, had vast political capital in Islamabad. As shown in an earlier
chapter, China had shown itself prepared to enter the 1965 war on Pakistan’s
behalf, and then had helped Pakistan rebuild its military strength (including
development of nuclear weapons) after Pakistan’s catastrophic 1971 partition.
Huang Hua during his January 1980 visit to Islamabad responded to Zia’s
complaint that the American’s were “soft on the Soviets” by urging Pakistan
to unite with all countries opposed to the Soviet Union (i.e., the United States;
emphasis added).^37 Coming from Pakistan’s long-time and trusted partner,
this Chinese advice carried some weight. Huang and Zia discussed stepped-up
Chinese economic and military aid to Pakistan. The same month that Huang