Israel helped Pakistan arm Afghan jihad in the 1980s

"Though the recent meeting of Israel and Pakistan’s foreign ministers was the first publicly-acknowledged meeting between leaders from the two countries, they have dealt secretly before, notably in weapons deals in the Afghan war, according to a recent book.

Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, by journalist George Crile, details the secret deals made by Pakistan’s Army, then headed by General Ziaul Haq, and Israel through the CIA for weapons to supply Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union. The deals were brokered by US Congressman Charlie Wilson from Texas, the central figure in the book.

The book states that Wilson made the proposal to General Zia to deal with the Israelis during Zia’s first visit to the US after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The proposal was made at a dinner hosted by a Houston woman, Joanne Herring, who Zia took a fancy to and later named honorary consul of Pakistan.

Crile writes. “He (Wilson) 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.’”

Wilson, after learning that the Israelis were secretly upgrading the Chinese army’s Russian-designed T-55 tanks, and that the Chinese were supplying Pakistan with T-55s, 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.

The proposition was sensitive, as just three years earlier, a rumour that Israel had been involved in an attack on the Great Mosque in Mecca had prompted thousands of Pakistanis to storm the US embassy in Pakistan and burn it to the ground.

“Publicly, Pakistan and Israel would have to remain foes, he (Wilson) 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,” writes Crile.

“Zia left the congressman with an understanding that he was authorised 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.”

On one of his visits to Israel, Wilson convinced IMI, the weapons conglomerate that produces Israel’s artillery, tank shells, and machine guns, to design a rocket launcher for the mujahideen. “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 ended up overseeing much of this weapons programme for Pakistan out of his own congressional office. “There were all these little scientists in the Pentagon-bureaucratic misfits who just needed to be freed,” Wilson recalled years later.

“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,” Crile writes.

When the first Soviet helicopter was downed by the Mujahideen with Israeli weapons, Wilson was sent a special souvenir. “Charlie was the first to be taken to see this temple of Soviet doom. There Bearden had assembled a delegation of ISI 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.”

Asked on July 17, 2003, after President Pervez Musharraf had initiated a major debate, on whether Pakistan should recognise Israel, keeping in view his disclosures that Pakistan and Israel were defence partners years ago, Charlie Wislon told the South Asia Tribune on July 17: “I will not comment on the present situation. It is for the governments of the two countries to decide what they want to do.”"
RantBurg

I wonder just how much of this story is "true", how much is hype? And I mean the whole story, including this episode.