February 10, 1992
WORLD REPORT; WORLDGRAM; NEWSLETTER; Vol. 112, No. 5; p. 48

Pakistan giving peace a chance in Afghanistan
By Emily MacFarquhar
Islamabad

ARMS CUTOFF. Afghanistan was the bloodiest proxy battlefield of the final decade of the cold war. Now, three years after Soviet invaders beat an ignominious retreat and a month after Washington and Moscow finally cut off arms supplies, this 13-year conflict at last may be coming to an untidy end. A key piece fell into place last week when next-door Pakistan, the main conduit for aid to the anticommunist mujeheddin, agreed to close the arms pipeline and join a United Nations peace process. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the other two big arms suppliers, also have endorsed the U.N. plan. Now the way is almost clear for a U.N.-sponsored conference of Afghans of all political stripes to replace Soviet-installed President Najibullah and agree on a cease-fire.

Pakistan was persuaded to give up its long quest for a mujeheddin military victory partly by disillusionment with the rebels, who recently have spent more time fighting each other than the enemy. Their last big ''offensive," at Gardez in October, was a fiasco. Islamabad's new Army chief pushed for a settlement, unlike his predecessor, who systematically sabotaged peace efforts. But Pakistan has also been spurred on by visions of economic and political opportunities in the newly independent republics of Central Asia. In an ironic twist, Pakistanis are eager to provide their long-lost Islamic brothers with the very prize the Soviets were suspected of seeking when they invaded Afghanistan -- a land route from Central Asia through Afghanistan to a warm-water port on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast.

Peace in Afghanistan will not come easily. Three of the seven Peshawar-based rebel groups -- including the best-armed and best-disciplined force, led by Islamic fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- are denouncing the U.N. plan. So is Pakistan's ultra-Islamic Jamaat party, which is a member of the ruling coalition. These groups have the capacity to make trouble and also to deter the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan from trekking home. But deprived of American artillery, they will not be able to mount a full-scale war. Fractious Afghans will have to be convinced that unless they reach a political compromise, world attention will wander, Najibullah will remain in power and the struggle that already has cost more than a million lives will continue.

AFGHANISTAN

Peace in Afghanistan is a prerequisite if Pakistani and Central Asian leaders are ever to realize their dream of building a railroad through Afghanistan and a new container port in Pakistan - at a combined cost of $ 5 billion - to give these landlocked new countries an outlet to the sea.