Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

when news came to Vienna that there had been a violent coup d’état in Pakistan. General Zia had been deposed by his fellow military officers.

Through the rest of the night, into the next day and across the following days too the situation in Islamabad would be understood better. Pakistan’s military dictator – who’d taken power in ’77 then seen his civilian predecessor hung as a common criminal – was blown up when a bomb detonated in his private residence. Troops led by generals acting under instructions from the ISI military intelligence organisation had taken control over Pakistan’s capital and fought with those loyal to the dead Zia. Civilians had been caught up in the fighting that had gone on for nearly two days before the last resistance (mainly stubborn hold-outs in isolated spots) was overcome. A military council, one of national salvation no less, was in-charge. The generals were only in power for a temporary period, that was what they told their people anyway. As it would turn out, that was a lie. They had power and wouldn’t be giving it up for anytime soon. This military government would afterwards see the United States cut off aid and the last of friendly relations severed as the Kennedy Administration stuck to its stated policy on that matter once there came credible intelligence of gross human abuses following an internal crackdown. Islamabad didn’t suddenly switch camps in the Cold War and go over to the Soviets as some might have feared they could do: that was never a possibility despite a Soviet hand in igniting the coup but that hand had been pulled back afterwards. Instead, Pakistan was no longer interested in Afghanistan but rather facing down India and strengthening its relationship with China (Moscow hadn’t anticipated that later bit). The generals were no longer prepared to antagonise the Soviet Union over its actions in countries on Pakistan’s western borders – Iran neighboured Pakistan like Afghanistan did – as they focused on their eastern border with Pakistan’s most-implacable enemy there. It would be a cold conflict though, not one about to get hot.