Taliban a child of CIA & ISI, says Zardari

American dollars, CIA assistance helped spawn Taliban. Why blame Pakistan's ISI alone?

Kanchan Gupta / Comment / May 11, 2009.

That America's CIA collaborated with Pakistan's ISI to set up the Taliban is no secret. Veteran journalist Steve Coll, in his fascinating book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin)had laid bare details about how American 'interests' of the time were best met by handing over Afghanistan to a bunch of Isalmist goons who had studied theology (and hence the name 'Taliban') at Deobandi madarsas in Pakistan. This allowed Pakistan virtual overlordship of Afghanistan. What followed was a nightmare, leading to the spectacular 9/11 attacks in the US and sending Americans scurrying for cover: The chickens of Washington's chicanery had come home to roost.
Every time the CIA's role -- with the US Administration's approval -- in creating the monster called Taliban came up for mention in the past, it would be strenuously denied. In his testimony before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher named the Clinton Administration, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for creating the Taliban: “Let me repeat that: The Clinton Administration, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, created the Taliban." There was studied silence.
Addressing a conference on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia', in London in March, 2001, leading US expert on South Asia said Selig Harrison who was then with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, said the CIA worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's Taliban. "I warned them that we were creating a monster," Harrison said, adding, "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
John Pilger wrote an interesting piece for The Guardian (September 20, 2003):
"For 17 years, Washington poured $4 billion into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war...
CIA director William Casey backed a plan by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and Britain's MI6, with the British SAS trained future al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989..."
Cut to last week. In an interview to NBC's David Gregory (video here), Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was blunt in telling the truth that the US has till now sought to keep out of public discourse -- that America, having helped procreate the Taliban, must share the responsibility for the threat that the monster now poses to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here's a relevant extract from the interview:
Gregory: And is it America's war or Pakistan's war?
Zardari: It's a war of our existence. We've been fighting this war much before they attacked 9/11. They (Taliban) are kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world. We got together, we created this cancer to fight the superpower and then we went away -- rather, you went away without finding a cure for it. And now we've both come together to find a cure for it, and we're looking for one..."
US President Barack Hussein Obama should elaborate on the point made by Mr Zardari. Not that silence will amount to denial -- the Americans (and their CIA) have known to indulge in such activities around the world -- from Korea to Vietnam to Latin America. Given a chance they would do it in India, too. If Manmohan Singh gets to remain Prime Minister after May 16, this could happen sooner than later.
PS: On a lighter note, here's a delightful news story I found on the Russia Today Website:
CIA’s weapon against Taliban - Viagra!
The KGB was once notoriously known for using attractive women as ‘honey traps’ to achieve their goals. Now, as time and technology move forwards, US intelligence has found a new way of exploiting the sexual angle…Viagra.
Cash and weapons are well-tried options but in some cases they don’t tick all the boxes, particularly when trying to garner support among Afghanistan’s tribal leaders, reports The Washington Post.
The newspaper quotes Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company, as saying: “If you give an asset $US 1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone. Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it.”
Amidst the growing Taliban insurgency, CIA operatives are using a wide range of other products and services to win supporters among the locals. Pocketknives, tools, medicine and surgery, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions and travel visas are all among the gifts offered.
“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people – whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra,” as one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours commented.
The Viagra method proves to be especially effective with ageing Afghan chieftains who often have four wives, the maximum number allowed by Koran, and are eager to be at their best.

* * *

I will revert to this issue soon. Meanwhile, here are two links to articles worth reading on the Taliban:

Story of US, CIA and Taliban

The Taliban

PS:
I am thankful to Srikanth Nalla for pointing out that the story of the CIA luring Afghan informants with Viagra appeared on alternet.org three months ago. Actually someone had sent me the snippet from Russia Today and I was keeping it for appropriate use. Zardari's assertion offered the opportunity.
The alternet.org story was published under the headline "The CIA's Bizarre Plan to Win Hearts and Hard-ons in Afghanistan" and appeared on February 11, 2009.

Who killed Gen Zia?

Pak One blew up with him, US Ambassador Raphel and eight Pakistani Generals

Who killed Gen Zia?
General Zia-ul-Haq, military dictator of Pakistan, patron of Khalistani terrorists and a 'staunch ally' of the US who collaborated with the CIA in the American funded and armed jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, had hoped to win the Nobel peace prize in 1988 for halting the spread of Communism. At least that was what he had been led to believe by the Americans.
Instead, Gen Zia died in an air crash on August 17, 1988. The US-supplied Hercules C-130 aircraft, a sturdy turboprop transport plane with multiple, fail-proof back-up systems, in which he was travelling, did loops in the sky and then nose-dived to the ground, its tail doing a 'whiplash' before it turned into a huge, roaring ball of fire. Along with Gen Zia, US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel, head of the American military aid mission Gen Herbert M Wassom, chairman of Pakistan's chiefs of staff committee Gen Akhtar Abdur Rehman, and eight other Pakistani generals and the crew, were incinerated in that blaze.
Pak One could not have gone down in so dramatic a manner within four minutes of taking off from Bahawalpur, a dusty outpost in Punjab province where Gen Zia and the Army top brass had gathered for the field trial of Abrams M-1 battle tanks which the US was trying to sell to Pakistan.
The plane had been double security checked and had done a dummy mission the previous day to ensure all systems were working fine. 'Code Red', the highest security alert, had been in force for some time in Islamabad and nobody could have had access to the aircraft, barring those whom Gen Zia trusted. And there weren't many in this rarest of rare category of military officers in Pakistan.
Foul play was suspected and Gen Zia's grieving widow openly declared that "his own" had killed him. With Gen Zia no longer scowling at them menacingly, Pakistani journalists had a field day speculating on what could have happened. The Reagan Administration was remarkably calm in its response; the Pakistani establishment, now headed by a new Army chief, reacted with astonishing haste.
No autopsy or forensic tests were performed on the bits and pieces of human bodies, charred bones, disfigured heads, scorched torsos and boots with severed feet recovered from the crash site. Families of the victims were "strictly instructed" not to open the coffins containing their remains and to bury them immediately. Arnold Raphel and Gen Herbert M Wassom were buried with military honours at Arlington Cemetery.
For all the speculation that followed the crash and the exit of a particularly vicious dictator who ordered men and women to be flogged in public and adulterers to be stoned to death as part of his 'Islamisation' programme, nothing definitive ever came out of the joint US-Pakistan inquiry. The Pakistanis insisted the plane had been "sabotaged"; the Americans vaguely suggested "mechanical failure".
The real story remains an abiding mystery 20 years after the event. If it was, indeed, an assassination then Gen Zia is the only assassinated South Asian Head of State whose assassins remain unidentified. His fiery exit cannot but haunt others, especially Gen Pervez Musharraf, who is believed to have been sufficiently alarmed on reading recent media reports that a military aircraft was on standby for him to leave the country if push came to shove, to issue a formal denial and get the US State Department to issue one, too. The objective situation that prevails in Pakistan -- a President under siege, a dysfunctional Government, widespread disquiet and Americans desperate to retain control -- is similar to that which prevailed during the last months of Gen Zia's 11-year-reign.
Seen in the context of the political turmoil, the uncertain future that stares Gen Musharraf in the face, the Army buying peace with Al Qaeda elements and the US waging a reverse jihad against the very jihadis it had once nourished to fight the Soviet troops, Mohammed Hanif's spectacular book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, published by Random House this week, acquires a certain importance. Hanif describes his book as an "alleged novel", but its characters, barring the person telling the story and a few others, are far from fictitious.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes is a painstaking recreation of the weeks leading to Gen Zia's plane crash. Laced with dark humour, it tells the story of a man doomed to die the way he did, his death foretold by a sura of the Quran which he chances upon. The book also reopens chapters that had been presumably closed, reviving all the conspiracy theories that had gradually disappeared from Army mess gossip and Pakistani newspapers over the past two decades.
Hanif has effectively revived the big question: Who killed Gen Zia? He dismisses the crafty assertion of the Americans that the plane went down because of "mechanical fault" by not even touching on it. Instead, his book unfolds the various possible plots and unmasks the potential assassins and conspirators, pitilessly exposing the underbelly of the Pakistani establishment, dominated by the Army and the ISI, and the nexus between Pakistan and the US, which is frighteningly destructive for the former and cynically self-serving for the latter.
What A Case of Exploding Mangoes does is to present the various conspiracy theories in their specific context and then integrates them into a big picture where the central purpose of each conspirator is to get rid of Gen Zia for reasons that range from self-aggrandisement to liberating Pakistan from a man who made a mockery of Islam while pretending to be a fanatical believer, from national security to international geo-politics. Hanif forays into uncharted territory armed with slivers of the truth behind the crash of 1988, and paints a fascinating picture of low intrigue in high places, including those in Islamabad and Washington. So who did it?
Theory One: The CIA did it. Arnold Raphel was the American ambassador co-ordinating the US-funded jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But was he really in the loop? Hanif's account has it that William (Bill) Casey, then CIA director, had a direct hotline with Gen Zia and, along with his friend Prince Naif of Saudi Arabia, would drop in for a hearty Punjabi meal at Army House without bothering to inform Raphel of his arrival in and departure from Pakistan.
On a day-to-day basis, Chuck Coogan was running the show for the CIA in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There were many others representing various US agencies.
Raphel would often wonder whether he was in command, a point highlighted during the Kabul-Texas barbeque he hosted for his 'friends' where 'OBL' -- Osama bin Laden -- strolled in and was warmly welcomed by Coogan. Later that evening, Gen Akhtar, yet to be stripped of his job as ISI chief, got the feeling that the CIA was done with Gen Zia and had little use for the man with shining white teeth and a dancing moustache now that Moscow was pulling out its troops from Afghanistan.
But why would the CIA also kill Raphel and Gen Wassom? Here the theory splits into two possibilities. First, the CIA carries out its missions on the basis that there could be collateral damage. Second, Raphel and Gen Wasson were supposed to travel by their own aircraft, parked at Bahawalpur, after attending the field trial of the Abrams tanks. Gen Zia insisted they travel with him on the C-130 at the last minute, virtually forcing them to join him on the journey.
The CIA had enough contacts in the Army to have ensured a "mechanical fault" in Pak One while it was parked at Bahawalpur. The US State Department and the Pentagon were prompt in denying permission to the FBI to investigate the crash although American officials had died in the disaster. Congressional hearings were short-circuited and a 250-page file, stamped "Top Secret", remains classified in the vaults of the US National Archives. What has fuelled this theory is the stunningly meek response of the US Administration, then headed by President Ronald Reagan, to the crash and the calm manner in which a National Security Council member, Robert Oakley, was despatched to take over the American mission.
Theory Two: The ISI did it. This is where Hanif's book comes alive. Gen Akhtar was unceremoniously removed by Gen Zia from his job as ISI chief after it was discovered that he had bugged Army House and was not only recording the dictator's telephone conversations but also filming him with a spy camera embedded in the monocled eye of Mohammed Ali Jinnah in a portrait of the Quaid-e-Azam. The job went to Gen Aslam Beg, an ambitious soldier who was then vice-chief of Army staff.
Slighted, humiliated and stripped of all power, Gen Akhtar plotted Gen Zia's assassination with the help of his factotum, Major Kiyani, and other loyalists. They placed a can of lavender air freshener, laced with VX gas -- which knocks people out in two minutes and kills them during the third minute -- in the air-conditioning duct of Pak One. The can would be activated during Gen Zia's return journey.
Gen Akhtar was not supposed to accompany Gen Zia to Bahawalpur, but was summoned to join the delegation on the morning of the visit. He tried to break off after the Abrams field trial, but was buttonholed by Gen Zia into accompanying him. Before the flight took off, Hanif tells us, a panic-struck Gen Akhtar told the crew not to switch on the air-conditioning system as Gen Zia was 'unwell'. As luck would have it, the pilot tried to duck a crow and the sudden loss of altitude switched on the system, releasing the deadly VX gas.
Hanif's account mentions radio transmission being picked up by Gen Beg's aircraft, following Pak One, according to which the pilot and the crew in the cockpit were dead within three minutes of the air-conditioning system being switched on. With nobody in control, the C-130 crashed to the ground, nose first, and then blew up, four minutes after taking off. So, if the ISI did it, its plan was botched by Gen Zia's insistence that the plotters fly with him.
Theory Three: The Army did it. Despite Gen Zia's zealotry, the majority of the officers in the Pakistani Army was appalled by the dictator's insistence on injecting Islam into every sphere of Pakistani life and converting soldiers into mullahs. Gen Beg is depicted as a cold, calm and calculating officer of the old school, who is not easily charmed by Gen Zia or forced into doing anything against his better judgement. He could have decided to deliver the Army from Gen Zia's vicious grip.
Gen Zia tried to convince him also into accompanying him on the return journey from Bahawalpur, but the wily General managed to steer clear of the doomed delegation and insisted on travelling in his own Cessna. He saw Pak One going down but did not return to Bahawalpur. Instead, he proceeded to Islamabad to take charge as Army chief and preside over Pakistan's return to democracy.
As ISI chief, he may have come to know of the plot hatched by Gen Akhtar and decided to ignore it. This would also indicate why he steadfastly refused to board Pak One even at the risk of offending Gen Zia. After the crash, the Army showed little interest in getting to the truth.
A sub-plot of the Army being behind the crash has it that a disgruntled cadet -- Ali Shigri in Hanif's book -- decided to avenge his father's murder by those running the American jihad. The cadet dips the tip of his sword in a phial of krait's venom and nicks Gen Zia while he is inspecting a drill at Bahawalpur. But the theory is flawed because Gen Zia's death by itself would not have caused Pak One to go down, unless it coincided with the CIA and ISI theories.
Theory Four: A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Gen Zia was gifted crates of Bahawalpuri mangoes which prompted him to have a 'mango party' on board Pak One. He dragged Gen Akhtar, Raphel and Gen Wassom along with him on the return journey for the 'mango party'. One of two things could have happened subsequently. Bombs hidden in the crates of mangoes may have exploded, bringing the aircraft down. Or, they may have been laced with poison, killing those who consumed them. But since the flight had not yet stabilised, it is unlikely the mango party had begun. And according to eyewitness accounts, there was no mid-air explosion; the plane blew up only after hitting the ground.
Members of the Pakistani-American investigation team who rummaged through the crashed aircraft are believed to have found traces of phosphorous, potassium and other chemicals on burnt mangoes that can be used for making an explosive device. What if the plane did explode midair and then crashed?
After all, the eyewitness accounts may not be as truthful as they have been made out to be. Frankly, nobody saw Pak One going down, except Gen Beg, and he would have good reasons to steer clear of giving an honest version of what he saw.
So who was behind the exploding mangoes? It could have been the Mago Growers Association, a Communist organisation miffed with Gen Zia for being a "staunch ally" of the Americans. It could have been the Afghan secret service getting back at the man who helped destabilise that country in so awful a manner. It could have been the CIA. It could have been the Army. Or, it could have been 'OBL' testing his skills at blowing up planes in preparation of 9/11.

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Cover story, Foray / Sunday Pioneer / June 9, 2008

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Mush should fear exploding mangoes!

Recall how Zia made his exit!
Mush should fear exploding mangoes
News from Pakistan provides the much-needed levity in these otherwise dreary times when we live in fear of rampaging Gujjars demanding their community be excluded from the Hindu caste system, declared a tribe and thus be pushed down the social hierarchy that is sustained by the cynical politics of caste identity practised by every political party, the BJP included. Over the past week, two major stories have emanated from Islamabad.
The first was based on comments by AQ Khan, the man who stole nuclear know-how from European countries to build an 'Islamic Bomb' and then sold technology and hardware to rogue states, among them Iran, Libya and North Korea, made to mediapersons during a funeral. Khan, who has been under house arrest ever since the Americans went public with his illicit trade, has now claimed that he peddled blueprints, centrifuges and the glowing stuff at the behest of Gen Pervez Musharraf. The Americans, who are still shoring up their favourite Pakistani, have responded with a banal statement that neither confirms nor refutes Khan's assertion. "We have not changed our assessment that AQ Khan was a very major and dangerous proliferator. He sold sensitive nuclear equipment and know-how to some genuinely bad actors," an unnamed US official has told ABC News.
Here are two facts about the 'dangerous proliferator'. Khan travelled to Pyongyang, Tehran and other such destinations, hawking technology to build nuclear bombs, after Gen Musharraf had been appointed Army chief by a gullible Nawaz Sharif, whom he was to later depose in a coup, and during his early years as Pakistan's military dictator. Second, Khan would use military aircraft, which cannot take off without clearance from what we refer to in this part of the world as 'highest level', for his foreign travel from Pakistani bases under the Army's control. For Gen Musharraf to pretend astonishment over Khan's nasty business is as laughable as the Americans feigning outrage over the father of the 'Islamic Bomb' wanting to spawn its siblings with other mates. Khan has merely said what everybody has known for long, including Gen Musharraf's minders in Washington, DC.
The other story which has had the Pakistani media in a tizzy for the past few days, and has been strangely ignored east of Wagah, is about Gen Musharraf preparing to flee Pakistan to seek shelter in another country. Colourful details, all of them strenuously denied by Gen Musharraf but not the Government of Pakistan, of which he is the notional head of state, have appeared in Pakistani newspapers -- about how he has had a raging row with Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, his hand-picked successor as Army chief; how the military he once headed has now turned against him; and, how a plane has been kept parked and ready to fly off with him into the sunset. Americans have swiftly come to the aid of their beleaguered 'staunch ally', letting it be known that he continues to enjoy their support.
But wait. Let's not rush to conclusions. Pakistan has a long history of Army chiefs viciously biting the hand that once lovingly fed them; of Americans dumping favourite dictators like cads dump women after bedding them; of politicians selling their souls to the devil for loaves and fishes of office; and, of people swinging from one extreme to another. Gen Ayub Khan came to power in October 1958 because the Americans didn't want the Pakistanis to elect a Government. He went on to famously declare, "We must understand that democracy cannot work in a hot climate. To have democracy we must have a cold climate like Britain." His job done, Gen Ayub Khan was given the boot by Gen Yahya Khan, who, after seizing power, remained closeted with 'General Rani' (a name that should ring a bell here) as Gen Tikka Khan let loose his rapacious soldiers on the Bengalis of East Pakistan.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, still smarting under Pakistan's humiliation in 1972, sacked the military's top brass and appointed Gen Zia-ul-Haq as Army chief. To stop Bhutto from going ahead with his 'Islamic Bomb' project, the Americans facilitated an Army coup on July 5, 1977, which led to the installation of Gen Zia as 'Martial Law Administrator'; less than two years later, on April 4, 1979, Bhutto was executed by his favourite General. The Americans went on to use Gen Zia to wage the Washington-sponsored jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. With the law of diminishing returns setting in, his utility became questionable. On August 17, 1988, a US-supplied C-130 Hercules, carrying Gen Zia and the American Ambassador, Arnold Lewis Raphel, exploded soon after take-off from Bahawalpur. Raphel's death was what Americans describe as 'collateral damage'. Gen Zia's grieving widow claimed he had been killed "by his own"; whiskey-induced cantonment gossip placed the blame on "exploding mangoes".
It's mango season this time of the year and Gen Musharraf, who has darkly hinted in his memoir, In the Line of Fire, at what may have caused Gen Zia's plane to explode, would be stupid not to worry about his future now that the Bush presidency is nearing its end. If a crate of mangoes, gifted to another military ruler, could have exploded in mid-air, what's there to stop something from blowing up in his face? Given the ignominious exit made by Pakistani Generals who seized power to 'set things right' in Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Neverland, he may put up a brave face but deep within would be an extremely troubled man.
To rid himself of stress in his trying time, he could order a copy of Mohammed Hanif's hugely entertaining novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, published by Random House and due for release later this week, and look for insights between the lines into the way the Pakistani military, the ISI and the Americans work in tandem to get rid of Generals -- and lesser individuals -- who have outlived their utility. He may think he knows it all, but he would be surprised to find out what all he doesn't know. For starters, he could begin by checking whether Jinnah's portrait in his living room blinks at him. The rest he can read in Mohammed Hanif's account of the days leading to Gen Zia blowing up with exploding mangoes aboard a C-130 Hercules 20 years ago.

Coffee Break, Sunday Pioneer, June 1, 2008.
(c) CMYK Printech Ltd.