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"This fear helps explain Iran's push for modern weapons, its intense
interest in the new regime in Afghanistan, and its pressure on
Pakistan to get its house in order to help block expansion of
Communist influence."
The shah's staunchly anti-Communist government was shocked by last
month's leftist coup in· Afghanistan which brought to power a military
backed Marxist group that shuns the label Conununist, but appears to
be receptive to Soviet influence and all the strings to which it is
attached.
Shah Mohanuned Reza Phlavi reportedly has told Pakistan's strongman
General Zia ul-Haq to drop the threatened execution of former Prime
Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto is appealing a death sentence
imposed after he was convicted of ordering the murder of a political
opponent. The execution of the popular Bhutto, Iranian officials
believe, could revive smoldering ethnic disputes that have been
constant sources of trouble in this part of the world.
These latent troubles revolve around two Pakistan ethnic groups -
the Pushtuns (also called Pathans) and the Baluchis. Pushtuns are
found in northwest Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. In
Afghanistan, they are the major ethnic group. For years, relations
between the two countries were strained by Afghanistan's insistence
on autonomy for the Pushtuns in Pakistan, or creation of an indepen
dent Pushtunistan. The new rulers of Afghanistan might try to push
this autonomy issue to the fore.
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The Baluchis occupy Pakistan's sparsely settled southwestern region
bordering Iran, and they. believe that development in their province
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lags behind Pakistan's more prosperous provinces.
"These seeds of regional discontent," said the Times report, "could
sprout if Pakistan's milit·ary regime allows Bhutto to be executed.
And the shah fears, close informants say, that the Russians could
capitalize on such instability to promote movements for autonomy
among the Pushtuns and Baluchis, which might lead to puppet states in
what is now Pakistan, and to the achievement of a Russian dream
going back to czarist days -- access to a warm-water port on the
Arabian Sea.
"That would bring Soviet influence close to the Straight of Hormuz,
the bottleneck through which passes practically all the oil of the
rich Gulf states, including that of Iran."
The Afghan coup has only added to the Iranian obsession that the
country is being encircled by Communist enemies. It has a 2,000-
kilometer border with the Soviet Union, pro-Moscow Iraq to the south,
and now Afghanistan on the east.
"We must stop them. all of us," said a senior official in Teheran.
"If we don't, they will destabilize the whole area."
But Iranian leaders are skeptical that the United States is capable
of appreciating their danger and reacting sensibly to it.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau
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