Analysis: Blast from the past —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Here you have it. A convenient white wash job.
You have an erudite, articulate scholar at his best, spinning a "angle" favored by the Pakistanis..In the fog of war, there are several versions of truth. The charitable will call the article by Rasul Bakhsh Rais, the Pakistani version of truth..

Here is an alternate version of the Truth.
The message is given from the word go.. USA considered Communism to be the bigger evil than Islamization. USA backed by Pakistan armed and supported an Islamist insurgency with no serious consideration to the long-term consequences of the militarisation and empowerment of the multi-national Muslim groups that came to dominate the Afghan jihad.Islamist insurgency

The question one needs to ask Pakistan is who made the choice to support the Islamists. Although the US wanted to have some say in the distribution of aid to the Afghan rebels, Zia's Pakistan was adamant that they would be the decision maker as to which rebel army needed support, based on "being closer to the action". The Afghan rebels were a motley crew. You had the Monarchists supporting Daud, the Jamiat-e Islami (led by Ahmed Shah Massoud), which had a communitarian ideology based on Islamic law but was also considered moderately progressive. Supporting the nationalist parties in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan's interest as it did not want Afghanistan to stabilize and ask uncomfortable questions about the validity of the Durand Line ( the current border between Afghanistan and Pakistan which is disputed by Afghanistan.) From Pakistan's perspective, it made sense to back Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hezb-e-Islami a hardcore Islamic party who would back Pakistan's aims.

Only when Gulbuddin turnout to be utterly incompetent, was when Pakistan supported the Taliban in Kandahar and sent them arms and support which allowed them to conquer Afghanistan.

For a period of seven years since their origin, Pakistan's government had been the Taliban's main sponsor. It provided military equipment, recruiting assistance, training and tactical advice that enabled the band of village mullahs and their adherents to take control of Afghanistan. Officially Pakistan denied it was supporting the Taliban, but its support was substantial -- one year's aid (1997/1998) was an estimated US$30 million in wheat, diesel, petroleum and kerosene fuel, and other supplies. The Taliban's influence in its neighbour Pakistan was deep. Its "unprecedented access" among Pakistan's lobbies and interest groups enabled it "to play off one lobby against another and extend their influence in Pakistan even further. At times they would defy" even the powerful ISI.

Closely tied with JUI party in Pakistan, the Taliban received manpower from Madrasahs in Pakistan’s border region. After a request for help from Mullah Omar in 1997, Maulana Samiul Haq shut down his 2500+ student madrassa and "sent his entire student" body hundreds of miles away to fight alongside the Taliban. The next year, the same religious leader helped persuade 12 madrassas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to shut down for one month and send 8000 students to provide reinforcements for the Taliban army in Afghanistan. The Taliban returned the favor, helping spread its ideology to parts of Pakistan. By 1998 some groups "along the Pashtun belt" were banning TV and videos, imposing Sharia punishments "such as stoning and amputation in defiance of the legal system, killing Pakistani Shia and forcing people, particularly women to adapt to the Taliban dress code and way of life." In December 1998 the Tehrik-i-Tuleba or Movement of Taliban in the Orakzai Agency ignored Pakistan’s legal process and publicly executed a murderer in front of 2000 spectators Taliban-style. They also promised to implement Taliban-style justice and ban TV, music and videos.In Quetta, Pashtun pro-Taliban groups "burned down cinema houses, shot video shop owners, smashed satellite dishes and drove women off the streets". In Kashmir Afghan Arabs from Afghanistan attempted to impose a "Wahhabi style dress code" banning jeans and jackets. "On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts." As of early 2007, Taliban influence in Pakistan continues in conjunction with the Taliban insurgency. Citing a suicide bombing of a restaurant in Peshwar in retaliation for the arrest of a relative of Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, the Associated Press states "... in Pakistan's frontier regions, ... scores of people have been executed over the past two or three years apparently for being too aligned with the Pakistani government or America — allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism."

Pakistan sowed the strategy of Islamization of the Afghan Freedom Struggle. Small wonder Pakistan is now reaping the whirlwind of its support strategy, as the Taliban virus spreads thru its veins.


Now read on for the " Pakistani Truth"

analysis: Blast from the past —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\05\12\story_12-5-2009_pg3_2

What is happening in the borderlands of Pakistan is blowback from the policies that we pursued in the second wave of the Cold War as an American ally and a front-line state against the former Soviet Union. According to American strategic thinking at that time, communists were the greatest enemies of humanity and a primary threat to the stability of the global system.

Islamists from all over the world were encouraged, trained, financed and supported in the war against the Soviets. The United States and Pakistan gave no serious consideration to the long-term consequences of supporting an Islamist insurgency and effects of the militarisation and empowerment of the multi-national Muslim groups that came to dominate the Afghan jihad.

The history of this conflict cannot be forgotten. We continue to deal with its repercussions in FATA and other areas of Pakistan and around the world. And it is for this reason that quite a few leaders and commentators in Pakistan questioned our support to the US-led war on terror. These questions were not about the morality or legality of the required actions, but how dangerous and difficult it would be to comply with an unending list of unreasonable American demands.

Even after close cooperation with the US, American leaders have continued to doubt our commitment and sincerity as an ally, and continually point fingers at us for the resurrection of the Taliban insurgency. Given this attitude, would the Americans have accepted and respected our neutrality? Not really.

In national fury and frustration, the Americans lost sight of some bitter realities of asymmetric conflict. The lessons learnt from Vietnam and the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan did not figure prominently in their assessments. They had a new enemy now — political, militant Islam; more immediately visible in the form of Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. They conveniently forgot about the long patch of Afghan history during which they had aligned themselves with these very Islamist forces. Hence this new adversary had its genesis in America’s own anti-communist strategy, and also in the many wrongs that it had committed against the Arabs and Palestinians in support of Israel.

Pakistan and the world understood the American reasons for going after the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There was hardly any international outcry against the American invasion to oust them from power; rather there was great support for the military operation against the Taliban within and outside the region. There was, and still is, vast support for rebuilding Afghanistan as a secure, stable and peaceful nation.

But the degree of that support and goodwill for the US-led coalition is dwindling fast. Plenty of time, money and policy focus have been wasted on the wrong priorities, with greater focus on war than on the reconstruction of Afghan economy and state institutions.

The initial policy — winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans — has ended up in a mess that has generated widespread anti-American sentiment not only in Afghanistan but also across the Durand Line. This is clearly a loss for the US as it has failed to create a favourable impression and lost support among the local population.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the American approach to Afghanistan. US policymakers are not examining the failures and weaknesses of their framework. The ethnic lopsidedness of the power structure they have created in Afghanistan has alienated majority of the Pashtuns; their focus has remained keeping the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border out of the conflict.

It has not been an easy for Pakistan to prevent Taliban movement into Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban also frequently enter our troubled zones along the border. These groups are bound by ethnic, religious and historical linkages, especially against foreign forces.

Pakistan’s border areas have been greatly influenced by the three cycles of war in the region: the war against the Soviets, the Afghan civil war and then the post-9/11 American-led occupation.

In this latest war, the US, in its efforts to sanitise Afghanistan of terrorists, tasked Pakistan to effectively control the border, and flush out Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan primarily employed the same strategy in the border regions that the US applied across the border, including a larger military presence (in some areas for the first time ever), capture of foreign and Pakistani terrorists, and military operations against militant hideouts.

Perhaps the successful stabilisation of Afghanistan would have positively contributed to Pakistani efforts in effectively controlling and governing the border. But contrary to their expectations, the US and its coalition partners faced tough resistance, which has been growing in ferocity every year.

One major flaw in the American strategy has been heavy reliance on guns and bombs, which is the same mistake that the Soviets had committed. By relying on the military component and not employing reconciliation tactics, the Americans have shown that they have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s history.

For Pakistan, this was not a controversial policy because its forces have often taken action against their own people and territory, something that runs against popular sentiment. The political and security costs of these operations have been horrendous. Not only has Pakistan lost over two thousand security personnel, but the entire Pashtun region, as deep as Swat, has been destabilised. Many Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border have become alienated and drifted back towards supporting the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan attempted to reverse this trend by singing a peace accord with the tribes in Waziristan in September 2006, and then again with the Taliban in Swat in 2008 after elected governments took over. The deal promised peace and stability in return for cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Pakistani forces. The Taliban, though, had other designs; they used peace agreements more as pauses to regroup and reorganise than to reintegrate into society peacefully.

There were many critics of the peace deals with the Taliban inside and outside Pakistan, but the elected provincial and federal governments wanted to give the strategy a chance. This was interpreted as surrender and a weakening of Pakistan’s resolve to stay the course in the war on terror. Subsequent events have proved the critics right.

This time around, public opinion has turned against the Taliban both in the insurgency-hit areas and in rest of the country. Another positive sign is that the major political parties are on the same page; there is growing realisation in the country that we cannot surrender anything to the armed groups or allow the Taliban to threaten the local population.

Winning this war remains a major challenge for the entire nation. With the evolving political consensus, we need to mobilise the society in support of national efforts to stabilise the country.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk