Ali Hasan Cemendtaur March 11, 2004

Tags: afghanistan , osama

rel="tag" href="/tag/Afghanistan">Afghanistan. It is an attempt to snare Osama Bin Laden who is said to be now communicating via hand-written notes from his hideout. Seymour Hersh wrote a detailed article about ‘The Deal’ in the March 8, 2004 issue of the New Yorker. In Hersh’s opinion the deal between the US and Pakistan seems to be that the Pakistani establishment will not be embarrassed any further on the nuclear proliferation issue, and in return Pakistan will let the US military carry independent operations on the Pakistani soil.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, has been assuring us that the American forces will never be given permission to carry military operations within Pakistani. Doesn’t Sheikh Rashid Ahmed remind you of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the erstwhile Iraqi Minister of Information of “Where are the Americans? Do you see them, uh?” fame? We will be better off not taking Rashid Ahmed’s assertion seriously and instead revisit history on American military adventures in our neck of the woods.

Twenty years ago the first American military involvement in our region, via our own ISI, gave us the Kalashnikov culture and the epidemic of drugs. The first operation was covert—the world was made to believe that it was ‘Islam’ challenging and successfully humbling the Soviet might. On the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a big party. People in the CIA, the Pentagon, and the US Department of State raised their wine glasses high and congratulated themselves on a job well done. In Pakistan, Akhtar Abdur Rahman, Hamid Gul and associates prayed nawafil-e-shukrana that the Almighty Allah chose them to be the agents of change.

Subsequently, the US abandoned the Afghanistan Jihad factory. Then ‘Islam’ got out of control; it bit the hand that once fed it—9/11 happened. The second American military operation of three years ago put the Pakistani society under a lot of strain--it divided us on the basis of our religious fervor. The second operation was overt, but it was in the neighboring country. Still, it had a palpable impact in Pakistan--we got MMA.

And now the third military mission is due to take place in our own country, against some of our own people. No one should doubt that this operation will have long lasting results. Will the effects of this operation be cataclysmic? I don’t know. But I do know that anytime you take risks of that magnitude, you open a sea of possibilities. The main question is: How would the Taliban sympathizers in our country react to a US military operation that may get long and dirty, an operation in which wanton force is used?

The biggest mistake the shortsighted Bush administration has made is that it has bundled the Taliban with Al Qaida. When the Taliban were ruling Afghanistan a vast number of Pakistanis believed the Taliban to be enacting the true Islamic society. In the Taliban Afghanistan there was hardly any crime, and poppy cultivation was eradicated. People look at these important albeit superficial achievements of Taliban and feel indignation on the US’s categorization of Taliban as evil. These sympathizers of veneer-Islam were infuriated seeing Taliban forcefully removed from power. And now that Al Qaida is equated with the Taliban, this association procures sympathy for Al Qaida. The syllogism being: Taliban were good people, but the US considers them evil; the US is calling Al Qaida as evil as the Taliban, so Al Qaida must also be good.

I am sure I am not the only one who strongly believes that Osama Bin Laden could be extracted from Afghanistan WITH the help of the Taliban, and with time the Taliban because of their anachronistic policies would have vanished by themselves. But a haughty White House went for the shortcut and decided to root out the whole thing--Al Qaida and its protectors, the Taliban, lock, stock, and barrel.

The campaign capital that Bush seeks in the form of a captured Osama Bin Laden may prove too expensive for Pakistan. We, who laughed at Mr. Bush’s ridiculous proposition of being either with his neocon team or against it, don’t see an end to our agony.