General
Zia's Secret Affair, Revealed by Charlie Wilson
Pakistan
Has Been Getting Sophisticated Weapons from Israel in Secret Deals
By
Shaheen Sehbai
WASHINGTON:
Most of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union was fought by
Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers using Israeli arms supplied
after General Zia ul Haq entered into secret deals with the Israelis,
a book published here has revealed.
The
revelation, coming at a time when the Pakistani Army Chief is
campaigning for recognition of Israel, throws hitherto concealed
light on secret Army-Israeli deals and their cooperation through
the CIA. It reveals that the Army was not averse to secret defence
cooperation, although publicly it did not acknowledge any contact
with the Israelis.
Congressman
Charles Wilson from Texas, a great pro-Pakistan activist who hated
the Indians, was the central figure to get these CIA-funded weapons
for Pakistan and is credited in the book as the man who broke
up the Soviet Union with the help of a 48-year old Houston woman
with whom General Zia ul Haq also had an affair.
The
book, “Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story
of the Largest Covert Operation in History” is written
by journalist George Crile, who was an editor at Harper's in the
Seventies and who is now a producer at 60 Minutes II.
The
550-page book has been a best seller in US but so far it has not
attracted any attention in Pakistan or South Asia. “I don’t
know why it is so but I have not yet received any reaction from
Pakistan,” Charlie Wilson, now a senior lobbyist for Pakistan
in Washington, told South Asia Tribune on July 17, 2003.
Analysts
think the present military regime would not like the book to become
popular in Pakistan as it reveals a lot of their secrets, including
Army's deals with Israel.
Asked
what he thought now that a major debate had been initiated by
President Musharraf on whether Pakistan should recognize Israel,
keeping in view his disclosures that Pakistan and Israel were
defence partners years ago, Charlie Wislon refrained from offering
any comment.
"I
will not comment on the present situation," he told me on
July 17, saying: "It is for the governments of the two countries
to decide what they want to do."
Wilson,
who admits in the book that his power in the House of Representatives
had come primarily “as a result of his work with the Israeli
lobby” told me in an interview basically there could never
be a 100 per cent agreement between the subject and an author,
but “I have not protested on anything that has been written
in Crile’s book.” He was asked whether there was anything
inaccurate in the book about the Pak-Israeli and other deals.
The
book reveals that Wilson made the proposal to General Zia to deal
with the Israelis during Zia’s first visit to US after the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The proposal was made grand dinner
hosted by the Houston lady, Joanne Herring, who was named later
as Honorary Consul of Pakistan and became a critical player in
the war.
“American
liberals and human-rights advocates would never change their view
of Zia as a Third 
World
thug, but his American visit was something of a triumph, and Joanne’s
dinner was part of the reason it succeeded,” the book says.
Joanne
Herring later became Zia’s sweetheart and Charlie Wilson
is quoted in the book saying: “ He (Zia) was so spell bound
by Herring, and took her so seriously, that to the utter dismay
of his entire foreign office, he made her Pakistan roving ambassador
to the world and even awarded her his country’s highest
honor, the title of Quaid-e-Azam.
Says
Wilson: “Zia would leave cabinet meetings just to take Joanne’s
calls. There was no affair with Zia but it’s impossible
to deal with Joanne and not deal with her on a sexual basis. No
matter who you are, you take those phone calls.” These words
of Charlie say a lot more about Zia-Joanne relationship as Charlie
himself had a long and deep one.
When
asked by SA Tribune on July 17 whether Joanne was alive
and was he still in contact with her, Charlie said he had not
talked to her for the last 10 years but he knew she was alive
and in Houston.
It
was thus Joanne’s dinner in Houston which launched Zia in
US and started the Pak-Israeli cooperation in arms. The book says
of that event: “Zia had dangerous decisions to make in the
coming months about the CIA’s involvement in his inflamed
North-West Frontier, and all of them centered on whether he could
trust the United States. Joanne’s startling toast was strangely
therapeutic for the much-maligned leader, who remembered how quickly
Jimmy Carter had turned on him. In Houston that night, Joanne
Herring saw to it that a host of powerful Americans actually honored
him. And that same night, Charlie Wilson provided yet another
dimension to Zia’s growing partnership with the United States
when he took the general into a side room for a private talk.
The congressman had a novel proposition for – the Muslim
dictator. Would Zia be willing to deal with the Israelis?”
(P-131).
“This
was not the sort of proposal just anyone could have made. But
by now, the Pakistanis believed that Charlie Wilson had been decisive
in getting them the disputed F-16 radar systems. As he saw it,
Wilson had pulled off the impossible. Now the congressman, in
his tuxedo, began to take Zia into the forbidden world where the
Israelis were prepared to make deals no one need hear about.”
“He
told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis
had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured
from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the mujahideen,
he told Zia. If Wilson could convince the CIA to buy them, would
Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans? Zia, ever
the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, “Just don’t
put any Stars of David on the boxes.”
“With
that encouragement, Wilson pushed on. Just the previous month,
he had learned that the Israelis were secretly upgrading the Chinese
army’s Russian-designed T-55 tanks. In Islamabad, he had
been startled to see that the Chinese were supplying Pakistan
with T-55s. The congressman now proposed that Zia enter into a
similar secret arrangement with the Israelis. “I was trying
to rig it for Israel to do the upgrade without the Chinese operating
as the middlemen,” Wilson explained in the book.
“It
was no simple proposition. Three years earlier, a mere rumor that
Israel had been involved in an attack on the Great Mosque in Mecca
had so radicalized the Pakistani Muslim population that thousands
had stormed the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and burned it to the
ground. Zia was mindful of his people’s hatred for both
Israel and the United States, and he might have been expected
to nip this in the bud. Instead, he encouraged Wilson to continue.
“The
congressman was acutely aware of the minefield he was walking
through. Publicly, Pakistan and Israel would have to remain foes,
he conceded. But as Zia well understood, Pakistan and Israel shared
the same deadly foe in the Soviet Union. And the fact was that
each could profit mightily by secretly cooperating with the other.
If Zia would follow the lead of the Chinese, Wilson said, he could
increase the striking power of his tanks, and there might be other
areas of military and technological cooperation where both countries
could mutually profit.
“Pakistan
did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Wilson certainly
had no authority to serve as a quasi secretary of state. In fact,
with this kind of talk, the congressman was walking dangerously
close to violating the Logan Act, which prohibits anyone other
than the president or his representatives from conducting foreign
policy. But as the two rejoined Joanne’s party, Zia left
the congressman with an understanding that he was authorized to
begin secret negotiations to open back channels between Islamabad
and Jerusalem. Wilson would leave for Israel in March and travel
on to Pakistan to brief Zia immediately afterward.”
Wilson
then began a series of visits to Israel, taking along beautiful
women, one of them a belle dancer, who actually performed in front
of the Egyptian Defense Minister during one of the visits. She
was also with Wilson on a trip to Pakistan and at many places
she was described as Mrs. Wilson to satisfy the Muslim sensitivities.
The
book describes one such visit in which a lady, Carol, was with
Wilson. “When they landed in Israel...Carol was thrilled
to be in the land of the Bible. Wilson would disappear with Zvi
(an official) every morning, sending her off in the embassy’s
chauffeur-driven Mercedes to see the holy sights. One afternoon,
he came back “acting like a kid in a candy store,”
she said. She didn’t completely understand what he was talking
about, but she remembers that it had to do with T-55 tanks and
secret deals with Pakistan.
“I’ve
never breathed a word about this before,” she recalled.
“And Charlie only gave me bits and pieces, but he was so
excited because he thought he was going to be able to do something
that no one else could. Charlie is a giver, and here he was saving
the world.” What Wilson was doing during the day in Israel
was scheming with Zvi’s associates at IMI, the weapons conglomerate
that produces the country’s artillery, tank shells, and
machine guns. It has the second biggest payroll in Israel and
is inextricably entwined with the military and security apparatus
of the Jewish state.
“Wilson’s
scheming was conducted not merely out of Carol’s sight but
outside that of the U.S. embassy, which ordinarily monitors congressional
activities abroad. One of the reasons for shadowing visiting members
of Congress is to discourage them from engaging in negotiations
that could place U.S. interests at risk. Wilson, however, never
shied away from negotiating, in effect, on behalf of his government,
and on this occasion he and his Israeli friends had a wide range
of business to transact…
“They
turned next to the T-55 upgrade proposal and to what their congressional
friend could offer President Zia, on behalf of Israel, when he
met with him in Pakistan at the end of the week. The Israelis
were hoping this deal would serve as the beginning of a range
of under-the-table understandings with Pakistan that the congressman
would continue to quietly negotiate for them.”
“But
such was the stature of this old congressional patron of Israel
that the IMI chief immediately set his weapons experts to work.
By the time Wilson was ready to leave, they’d presented
him with an impressive-looking design, complete with detailed
specifications. It was a mule-portable, multi-rocketed device
named, to the congressman’s delight, the Charlie Horse.”
Wilson
cut the Pak-Israel deal even without CIA knowledge. The book reveals
that the CIA man in Islamabad, Howard Hart, when asked years later,
if he knew about Wilson’s efforts to bring the Israelis
into the Afghan war, he dismissed this story out of hand, insisting
that the Pakistanis would never have permitted it.
“I
would have burst into hysterical laughter and locked myself in
the bathroom before proposing such a thing,” he said. “It
was bad enough for Zia to be dealing with the Americans, even
secretly. But the Israelis were so beyond the pale that it would
have been impossible. You have to understand that the Pakistanis
were counting on maintaining the image of holding the high moral
ground—of a religious brother helping a religious brother.
. . . It’s beyond comprehension to have tried to bring the
Israelis into it.”
“Yet
right under Hart’s nose,” the book says, “Wilson
had proposed just such an arrangement, and Zia and his high command
had signed on to implement it. Seven years later, Hart still knew
nothing about it.” (P-149).
The
congressman began showed Zia the design for the Charlie Horse
and describing the Israelis’ T-55 proposal at a dinner in
Rawalpindi. After establishing what Zia wanted him to convey back
to the Israelis, Wilson came right to point they both wanted the
same thing—to expand the Afghan war— and Charlie had
a plan to make it possible.
Charlie
Wilson himself ended up overseeing much of this eccentric weapons
program for Pakistan out of his own congressional office, and
it turned out to be a wild and remarkable success story. “There
were all these little scientists in the Pentagon—bureaucratic
misfits who just needed to be freed,” Wilson recalled years
later. “We gave them a little money and made them immune
to procurement laws. They’re mad-scientist types. They love
to tinker with things that blow up but hate to fill out forms.
Hate to follow the chain of command. Hate to wait.”
“Within
weeks, they began developing an astonishing collection of weapons.
The Spanish mortar, for example, was designed to make it possible
for the mujahideen to communicate directly with American navigation
satellites to deliver repeated rounds within inches of their designated
targets. Global-positioning technology is well known today, but
back in 1985 it struck Wilson as the most astonishing capability.
Just the thought of Afghan tribesmen who had never seen a flush
toilet signaling an American satellite to fire precision rounds
at a Red Army stronghold was almost too much to believe.
“The
weapon’s name was purposefully misleading, chosen to conceal
the fact that major portions of this “Spanish mortar”
were being built by the Israelis. Milt Bearden, the station chief
who would dominate the war’s later years, actually came
to rely on the steady stream of crazy new weapons that kept coming
on-line from this offbeat program. His strategy called for introducing
a new weapon into the battle every three months or so, in order
to bluff the Red Army into thinking their enemy was better armed
and supported than it was.
“The
Spanish mortar, for example, with its satellite-guided charge,
was rarely deployed and may only have succeeded because the Pakistani
ISI advisers were along to direct the fire. But the Soviets didn’t
know that. When the weapon was first used it wiped out an entire
Spetsnaz outpost with a volley of perfect strikes. And as soon
as Bearden learned from the CIA’s intercepts that the commander
of the 40th Army had helicoptered to the scene, he knew that from
that day on, the Soviets would have to factor in the possibility
that the mujahideen had acquired some deadly targeting capability.
“For
that reason alone, the weapon was a success even if never fired
again. Bearden became so intoxicated with this kind of psychological
warfare that he later developed plans to have a group of mujahideen
shoot dead Russian soldiers with crossbows. To him, the vision
of men who might kill you with a bow and arrow one day or with
a satellite-guided mortar the next would be unnerving to any army.”
(P-393).
When
the first Soviet helicopter was downed by the Mujahideen with
Israeli weapons, Charlie Wilson was sent a special souvenir. “Charlie
was the first to be taken to see this temple of Soviet doom. There
Bearden (CIA Chief in Islamabad) had assembled a delegation of
1SI officers and mujahideen. With great solemnity, the station
chief on behalf of the CIA, the ISI, and the Afghan freedom fighters,
presented Charlie with the spent gripstock from the Stinger that
Engineer Ghaffar had used to bring down the first Hind.”
(P-475).
