So, what will America do?

The fact remains that the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity...

Pakistan’s military and political establishment, one often indistinguishable from the other, have for long been disingenuous if not outright deceitful while claiming to dismantle the sprawling jihad complex which is the mainstay of that country’s established policy of using terrorism to further its ‘strategic objectives’.

Those ‘strategic objectives’ range from “inflicting a thousand cuts” on India to gaining control over Afghanistan; from blackmailing Western donor countries, especially the USA, to simply terrorising the world.

That in the process thousands of Pakistani citizens have fallen victim to the insatiable appetite for flesh and blood of the monster the Pakistani state has bred is of no consequence to the Generals in Rawalpindi and their handmaidens in Islamabad.

Strangely, or perhaps not so, Pakistanis continue to live in denial of this reality. The Pakistani military and the Government, or what passes for it, deny any links with terrorist organisations. If confronted with evidence, they either brazen it out or slyly ask for more dole to do what is expected of them.

The world is aware of how Pakistan has emerged as the epicentre of global terrorism. The US, which is the principal benefactor of Pakistan, knows that the hand which reaches out for civilian and military aid is also the hand which loving rocks the cradle of jihad’s nursery.

But that has not stopped the US from writing out billion-dollar cheques to Pakistan. Nor has it made Washington, DC demand answers to some tough questions.

On the contrary, the US continues to describe Pakistan as its ‘staunch ally’, its ‘frontline ally’ in the war on terror. Pakistan remains the US’s ‘most-favoured non-Nato ally’. Pakistan has America wrapped around its little finger.

In a sense, if Pakistanis are living in denial, so are the Americans.

That Osama bin Laden was found living in a ‘safe house’ at Abbottabad, obviously protected by the Pakistani military and its terror-sponsoring agency, the ISI, has not shaken America’s faith in Pakistan.

That other Al Qaeda leaders have been traced – and killed through targeted drone attacks – in Pakistan has not deterred Washington from standing by Islamabad.

That Pakistan continues to flout UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions aimed at defanging terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba is of no seeming relevance to the US Administration.

Occasionally we are told that the US has read out the riot act to Pakistan, that senior Pakistani politicians and Generals have been admonished, that Islamabad has been sternly told thus far and no further. That’s so much finger-wagging amounting to nothing.

For instance, we are told that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was less than pleasant with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar (of Birkin bag fame) who did look discomfited in the customary photo of the recent meeting in Washington that was released to media. Hillary is supposed to have told Hina that the Pakistani military-political establishment was working hand-in-glove with the Haqqani network to unleash terror in Afghanistan.

In response, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik (who is partial towards flashy ties) has, in his characteristically belligerent style, demanded, “Where is the evidence?” That’s not the first time Pakistan has sought ‘evidence’ of its misdeeds.

Interestingly, in separate testimonies before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee on September 22, 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta have spoken in great detail of the nexus between jihadi terror and the Pakistani state.

Mike Mullen says in his testimony:

“The fact remains that the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity. Extremist organizations serving as proxies of the government of Pakistan are attacking Afghan troops and civilians as well as US soldiers. For example, we believe the Haqqani Network — which has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency — is responsible for the September 13th attacks against the US Embassy in Kabul. There is ample evidence confirming that the Haqqanis were behind the June 28th attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and the September 10th truck bomb attack that killed five Afghans and injured another 96 individuals, 77 of whom were US soldiers. History teaches us that it is difficult to defeat an insurgency when fighters enjoy a sanctuary outside national boundaries, and we are seeing this again today. The Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network are hampering efforts to improve security in Afghanistan, spoiling possibilities for broader reconciliation, and frustrating US-Pakistan relations. The actions by the Pakistani government to support them — actively and passively — represent a growing problem that is undermining US interests and may violate international norms, potentially warranting sanction…”

The full text of Mullen’s testimony can be read here.

Leon Panetta was understandably more tactful:

"We have a difficult campaign ahead of us in the east, where the topography, cultural geography, and continuing presence of safe havens in Pakistan give the insurgents advantages they have lost elsewhere in the country. Additionally, as relations with Pakistan have become strained over the past year, and as we have met Pakistan’s requests to reduce our training and liaison presence in their country, our diminished ability to coordinate respective military operations in the border regions has given insurgents greater freedom of movement along the border. Our forces are working in the east to cut off insurgent lines of communication and deny their ability to threaten Kabul and other population centres. Nonetheless, progress in the east will likely continue to lag what we see elsewhere in the country..."

The full text of Panetta’s testimony can be read here.

So what does the US plan to do? Pretend that its ‘staunch ally’, its ‘frontline ally’, its ‘most-favoured non-Nato ally’ remains committed to waging war on terror?

That’s more than likely. Which prompts the question, after such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Update

On Friday, September 23, Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations issued the following statement:

While taking note of the recent statements made by Admiral Mullen, Chairman Joint Chief of Staff United States, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, termed these as very unfortunate and not based on facts. This is especially disturbing in view of a rather constructive meeting with Admiral Mullen in Spain.

On the specific question of contacts with Haqqanis, the COAS said that Admiral Mullen knows fully well which all countries are in contact with the Haqqanis. Singling out Pakistan is neither fair nor productive.

Categorically denying the accusations of proxy war and ISI support to Haqqanis, the COAS wished that, the blame game in public statements should give way to a constructive and meaningful engagement for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, an objective to which Pakistan is fully committed.

It would be interesting to know what "Admiral Mullen knows fully well" as to which all countries are "in contact with the Haqqanis".

Why doesn't Gen Kayani spill the beans? Or, get an ISPR affiliated journalist, of whom there is no dearth, to tell all?


[Time has an interesting story on the massacre of Shias of Balochistan by Pakistan's Sunni militia, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.]

Taliban's barbarism in name of Islam

What awaits Afghanistan

The August 9 issue of Time featured a cover story on the plight of women in those parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban enforce their barbaric interpretation of sharia’h. The magazine had a shocking picture on the cover: That of 18-year-old Aisha whose nose and ears were sliced off on the instructions of the local Taliban commander. Aisha was punished for running away from an abusive husband and parents-in-law.

UPDATE
The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant Afghan widow by emptying three shots into her head for alleged adultery. Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis. The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an "illicit affair" that left her pregnant.

Aisha’s story is symbolic of persecution of girls and women by the Taliban in the name of Islam. There are innumerable examples of young girls, some just past their puberty, being forced into marriage with members of the Taliban militia to serve as no more than sex slaves for the adherents of Deobandi Islam. Woe betide those girls who try to escape from their life of forced misery.

Jihad Watch provides a glimpse of what it calls “Unspeakable barbarism among the Taliban, the students of Islam.”
Time has raised a fundamental question: What happens if we leave Afghanistan?
That question has been posed from the American perspective, reflecting American concerns over US President Barack Hussein Obama’s plan to pull out troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. But it’s a question that should really bother democracies across the world. The issue raised by Time has several aspects involving the liberty, rights and dignity of Afghans, especially women.

If the Taliban were to regain power in Aghanistan, as it seems likely with the US preparing to hand over control over Kabul to the Generals of Pakistan, then all those who claim to stand for freedom, liberty and dignity would stand indicted of complicity in this crime.

The years when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan will be remembered for the contempt with which Mullah Omar and his men trampled upon women’s rights. Not only were young and old women made to disappear under burqas, they were virtually banished to the darkest corners of their homes. Girls were prohibited from attending school. In the joyless world of ‘pure Islam’, along with music and art, women’s rights disappeared to as they were deemed to be ‘un-Islamic’.

That period of terror came to be symbolised by the public execution of two women in Kabul’s football stadium.

That was in the past. As for the future, a glimpse of what awaits Afghanistan has been provided by AP in this news despatch from Kabul on August 16:

Taliban stone couple for adultery in Afghanistan

By AMIR SHAH

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants stoned a young couple to death for adultery after they ran away from their families in northern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. It was the first confirmed stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in the 2001 US-led invasion.

When the Islamist extremists ruled Afghanistan, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian, and public killings for violations of their harsh interpretation of the Quran were common.

This weekend's stoning appeared to arise from an affair between a married man and a single woman in Kunduz province's Dasht-e-Archi district. The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said the Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend's house five days ago, said district Government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.

They were discovered by Taliban operatives on Sunday and stoned to death in front a crowd of about 150 men, Aqyar said. First the woman was brought out and stoned, then the man a half an hour later, Aqyar said. He decried the punishment, which he said was ordered by two local Taliban commanders.

The ancient practice of death by stoning has been abandoned in all but a handful of countries. It is still a legal punishment in some countries, like Iran, which justify it under Sharia’h, or Islamic law.

Last month, Iran's religious authorities called off the planned stoning of a woman convicted of cheating on her husband. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence -- which would have been Iran's first stoning since 2008 -- was lifted following a campaign around the world.

Two witnesses to the horrific double murder in the name of Islam told the BBC that the Taliban asked the villagers to attend the stoning through an announcement on loudspeakers in the mosque. "There was a big crowd of people... We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive... Some Taliban then came and shot him three times. The Taliban warned villagers if anyone does anything un-Islamic, this will be their fate.''

Anybody for ‘good’ Taliban?

Israel takes on bogus crusade

What's Turkey's Islamist AKP regime playing at?

It is laughable to hear the Prime Minister of Turkey describe Monday’s raid by Israeli commandoes on the so-called ‘Freedom Flotilla’ in which nine ‘peace activists’ -- eight Turks and an American of Turkish origin -- were killed as a “bloody massacre”. If the death of eight Turks who set upon the Israeli commandoes with knives and clubs, and shot at them after seizing their pistols, is a “bloody massacre”, then the chilling atrocities committed on Armenians by Turks surely amount to the genocide which they are described as but persistently denied by Turkey.

Let us not forget that the Armenian Genocide witnessed little girls being snatched from their mothers’ arms, dragged to the streets, raped and left to bleed to death; that young and old, men and women, were despatched to horrific deaths; that Armenian property was looted and what could not be stolen was set on fire; and, that tens of thousands were disinherited of their nationality and forced to seek shelter in alien lands. And all this happened without Turkish authorities lifting so much as a finger in admonishment.
Neither should we forget that till date Turkey has not owned up to that crime against its own people and against humanity, nor has it allowed others to recognise the massacre and worse for what it was. So much so, US President Barack Hussein Obama, who has sought a full report on the raid on the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “ASAP”, chose not to use the word ‘genocide’ in his message on the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide after promising to do so, presumably because he was mindful of Turkish sentiments.

Therefore, we really need not be distracted by the official reaction of Turkey which, apart from indulging in fiery rhetoric denouncing Israel and allowing thousands of Islamists to march on the Israeli Embassy in Ankara, has recalled its Ambassador to Tel Aviv. This could be Turkey’s first step towards snapping diplomatic ties with Israel, a country with which it has had cordial relations for six decades. It is Turkey’s sovereign right to decide how it conducts its foreign policy, as much as it is Israel’s right to decide how it responds to what is clearly a blatant Turkish provocation inspired by the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which is increasingly veering towards assertive Islamism for reasons which I shall dwell upon later. First, a brief account of what happened on Monday and who is responsible for what Turkey has so colourfully described as a “bloody massacre”.

The ‘Freedom Flotilla’, a convoy of six ships of varying sizes, led by the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, had set sail for the coast of Gaza, ostensibly carrying “urgently required relief material for impoverished Palestinians” living in the blockaded territory. The three-year-old blockade of Gaza Strip is being enforced by two countries, Israel and Egypt, for different though inter-linked reasons. Israel has imposed its blockade, including maritime blockade off the coast of Gaza, because it is currently in a “state of armed conflict” with the Hamas regime which has repeatedly attacked civilian targets in Israel with weapons that have been smuggled in via the sea route and through tunnels connecting the Palestinian territory with Sinai in Egypt. Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt has also been consistently misused by the Hamas militia for smuggling in arms, ammunition and explosive material. Egypt, which has a peace agreement with Israel and whose President Hosni Mubarak is not enamoured of either the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the progenitor of Hamas, or the Islamists who dream of Hamastan instead of Palestine, has not only closed the Rafah crossing but is also building a steel-and-concrete underground wall to prevent tunnels from being dug. The blockade of Gaza Strip, really, is in effect a joint Jewish-Arab enterprise. We could endlessly quibble over the details, but that would not change the reality on the ground.

The ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was ostensibly organised by the ‘Free Gaza Movement’, which claims the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza Strip are living in abject poverty on account of the blockade. Israel says food, medicines, fuel and all civilian goods are allowed to pass through the blockade and tales of suffering, impoverished Palestinians are either sheer propaganda meant to generate support for Hamas or exaggerated to paint Jews as the persecutors of helpless Arabs, put countries otherwise favourably disposed towards Israel on a guilt trip, and keep the mills of anti-Zionism grinding in Arabia and beyond. What is true is that Israel has prohibited the supply of material which can be used for building tunnels and fashioning improvised rockets that are regularly fired by the Hamas militia.

The tenuous ceasefire that followed ‘Operation Cast Lead’ has held, but there’s nothing permanent about it as Hamas considers it no more than a hudna, to be used for regrouping and rearming its forces before launching fresh attacks. Israeli authorities had repeatedly requested the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ organisers to hand over its ‘relief supplies’ for inspection before being despatched to Gaza Strip and not to attempt reaching the Gaza coast. The organisers refused to either allow an inspection of the cargo or to hand it over to the relevant Israeli authorities.

That’s understandable, because the purpose behind the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was not to help the poor and the famished of Gaza Strip, but make a political statement that would find a resonance around the world, forcing Governments and people to lend their voice to a ‘moral crusade’ while ignoring Israel’s national security imperatives. The media chose to romanticise the ‘Freedom Flotilla’, sensing a soft story that would tug at the heartstrings of newspaper readers and television viewers, instead of raising relevant questions about the entire dubious exercise and exposing the real organiser of the flotilla, the Turkish Insani Yardim Vakfi, or IHH, an Islamic charity with a radical anti-Western orientation. There is sufficient documentation to prove that beyond its legitimate philanthropic activities, the IHH provides extensive support to radical Islamist organisations, including Hamas, and that in the past it has maintained contacts with and provided support to global jihad organisations.

Given these facts about those behind the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ and its dubious cargo of material to help Hamas build tunnels and produce improvised rockets, Israel was within its rights under international law to stop the ships in international waters as the purpose behind the ‘moral crusade’ was to undermine Israel’s sovereignty. Israel had two options: Either score cheap brownie points by retreating before bogus ‘moral crusaders’, or court equally bogus international opprobrium by protecting its national interest. It chose the latter, which, we in India with an effete Government must concede, requires a lot of gumption.

This brings us back to the enraged reaction of Turkey, more specifically of the AKP regime in Ankara, to Monday’s unfortunate incident provoked by the belligerence of the so-called peace activists, among them a crew of Al Jazeera and a Pakistani television anchor, on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. A recent poll suggests a dramatic shift in Turkish public opinion with the Left-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP, surging ahead of the Islamist AKP. The CHP is now seen to be commanding 33 per cent of the vote, compared to 31 per cent for the AKP. The Right-wing Turkish nationalist MHP stands third with 19 per cent of the vote. The next election is scheduled for 2011, but the AKP, according to reports, has been toying with the idea of calling an early poll rather than risk a worsening economic situation. In such a scenario, what better way for the AKP to shore up its electoral fortunes than by painting Jews as villains guilty of “bloody massacre” of Turks and by extension Muslims? Other Islamist regimes have played this game successfully, so why not the AKP regime?

[This appeared as the main Edit Page article in The Pioneer on June 2, 2010.]

America legitimising Taliban!

It matters little to the 70 countries whose representatives met in London last Thursday to discuss the modalities of striking a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan what Afghans think of the cowardly decision. “The London conference was not about Afghanistan, but about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s re-election campaign,” Mr Aziz Hakimi, who heads an NGO in Kabul, has been quoted as bitterly commenting after the adoption of a $ 500 million ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’. Those who take a less than charitable view of US President Barack Hussein Obama’s much-hyped but utterly hollow AfPak policy and America’s trans-Atlantic ally’s sudden urge to end the Afghan war have promptly dubbed the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ as the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’.

The outrage is understandable. The absurd theory of there being a ‘good’ Taliban with whom the world can co-exist in peace and a ‘bad’ Taliban who should be shunned has finally been put to practice. Worse, the London conference has succeeded in erasing the mythical line separating the ‘good’ Taliban from the ‘bad’ Taliban. Never mind the display of faux displeasure and bogus dismay by the Americans in London; we can be sure that the decision to bribe the Taliban, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with “jobs and homes” — euphemism for sacks of greenbacks — so that they give up their murderous ways, had the Obama Administration’s prior approval. In fact, the proposal, for all we know, may have emanated from Washington, DC. It was unveiled in London.

Mr Mark Sedwill, Nato’s newly-appointed civilian chief in Afghanistan, has been candid enough to admit that the proposed deal will involve reaching out to “some pretty unsavoury characters”. In effect, this means seeking peace with those who have sheltered Al Qaeda’s top leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They will be asked to “cut ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and pursue their political goals peacefully” for a certain price to be settled in cash. The US, at least officially, was opposed to a blanket offer, insisting that it should be limited to Taliban ‘fighters’. But it does not appear to have pushed this point too far, which only suggests that the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ is the outcome of a pre-rehearsed, carefully scripted, exercise.

Ironically, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which worked in tandem with the US in the early-1990s to facilitate the birth and rise to power of Mullah Omar and his evil gang that the world came to know as the Taliban, will now “play a key role in the reintegration process”. Pakistan, cock-a-hoop over the outcome of the London conference, has offered its services to train the Afghan police and security forces. We could soon see the ISI expanding its reach into, and control over, Afghanistan. In a sense, the US has conceded Pakistan’s claim over Afghanistan; Islamabad can now look forward to regaining its ‘strategic depth’ through a puppet regime in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is welcome to believe that he has secured his job, but so did Mohammad Najibullah suffer from delusions of invincibility till he was strung up from a lamp-post with his family jewels stuffed into his mouth. Yet, there’s little that Mr Karzai can do, apart from hope that the American and Nato troops won’t just up and leave but hang around “for at least a decade”. The contours of the ‘reintegration process’ will emerge at a peace jirga which Mr Karzai says he will convene in the coming weeks. But it’s unlikely that he is in command of the unfolding situation: It’s more than likely that Pakistan, backed by the US, will now call the shots, to begin with covertly and increasingly overtly as it gets into the act of reclaiming what it had lost in the aftermath of 9/11. Unless, of course, things go horribly wrong and the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’ turns out to be a non-starter.

For the moment, there is no reason to believe that the proposed deal with the Taliban will unravel, or be an exclusive affair restricted to the ‘good’ and not the ‘bad’ among the wretched lot. It now transpires that regional commanders of the Taliban’s infamous Quetta Shura held secret talks with the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Mr Kai Eide, in Dubai on January 8. The Guardian, which broke the story, quoted officials as saying, “They (the Taliban) requested the meeting to explore avenues for talks. They want protection to come out in public.” A UN official, confirming the Dubai talks, said, “The Taliban made overtures to the Special Representative to talk about peace talks… That information was shared with the Afghan Government and the UN hopes that the Afghan Government will capitalise on this opportunity.” Capitulate, and not capitalise, would be a more appropriate word.

Having decided to sup with the devil, it makes little or no sense to set a standard for those invited to the supper. Ms Hillary Clinton, rather than take recourse to subterfuge, was being honest when, commenting on the London deal, she said, “The starting premise is you don’t make peace with your friends.” Having accepted this fact, the Obama Administration should stop pretending that it is opposed to the idea of a “future Afghan Government that includes allies of Mullah Omar”. Nor should US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke make a show of insisting that the “peace plan should focus on low-ranking Taliban fighters motivated by money, not ideology”. Mr Holbrooke is welcome to insist “That is not on the agenda here. There is nothing happening on it involving the United States” and that “the Taliban’s renunciation of Al Qaeda is a red line” for the US. Such assertions on drawing a ‘red line’ amount to what is referred to as a ‘red herring’. If Pakistan and the Taliban suffer from serious trust deficit, so does the US.

India should be worried — very, very worried — about the US-sponsored attempt to legitimise the Taliban and thereby instal Pakistan’s proxy regime in Kabul. But with a limp-wristed Government taking instructions from the US, there is little that we can do other than fret and fume. There is something extremely sinister about the orchestrated clamour in the New Delhi Establishment, of which certain sections of the media are an integral part, for the resumption of India-Pakistan talks. That the dubious initiative to revive the stalled bilateral dialogue should coincide with the London conference and the appointment of Mr Shiv Shankar Menon as National Security Adviser is not entirely surprising. India’s humiliation at Sharm el-Sheikh will now be taken to its logical conclusion by Mr Manmohan Singh, ably assisted by Mr Menon. If you have any doubts, look at the craven alacrity with which Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna has signalled that the UPA Government is willing to “do business” with a Taliban legitimised by the US.

[This appears as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on January 31, 2010.]

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.

Asif Ali Zardari is Barack Hussein Obama's blue-eyed boy as Hamid Karzai falls from grace

It pays to let Taliban and Al Qaeda flourish. Or else Hamid Karzai would not have fallen from grace with the Americans!



Comment by Kanchan Gupta / May 6, 2009.

In a story headlined "OBAMA'S WAR: A New Approach to Karzai -- Administration Is Keeping Ally at Arm's Length; Skepticism of Afghan Leader Shapes Policy", filed by Rajeev Chandrasekaran, Tuesday's Washington Post makes a couple of interesting points:

Today, as the two leaders meet in the White House, that skepticism drives the administration's evolving policy toward Afghanistan and the battle against Taliban insurgents, a conflict whose outcome will in part define Obama's presidency.
In assessing the nearly eight-year struggle from Washington, senior members of Obama's national security team say Karzai has not done enough to address the grave challenges facing his nation. They deem him to be a mercurial and vacillating chieftain who has tolerated corruption and failed to project his authority beyond the gates of Kabul.
"On all fronts," said a senior U.S. official, "Hamid Karzai has plateaued as a leader."

These need to be taken note of along with the great faith that US President Barack Hussein Obama has placed in Pakistan's dissolute President Azif Ali Zardari and rewarded him for allowing Pakistan to descend into chaos and the Taliban to occupy vast tracts of land where they have let loose a reign of terror in the name of enforcing shari'ah. Zardari's prize: $ 7.5 billion in American aid. The money could also be candyfloss to keep Zardari happy as the Americans plot with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif whose PML (N) could join the Pakistani Federal Government with him as the Prime Minister.
It is interesting to note that while Obama is 'reaching out' to Pakistan and appeasing those who are responsible for the rapid march of the Taliban, he has been slyly introducing measures that can only be described as anti-India.

No blank cheque for Pakistan; US Congress adds strings to trebled American aid

Comment / Analysis / May 5, 2009

So, for all the bluff and bluster of his Administration, US President Barack Hussein Obama, who wants to treble American military and civilian aid to Pakistan as a ‘reward’ for Washington’s ‘frontline ally’ in the war on terror, has not been able to have his way. He wanted to write out a $ 1.5 billion cheque without any strings attached; lawmakers on the Hill said nothing doing. His Administration argued that tying down American aid to Pakistan delivering on its many (all unkept) promises of taking on the Taliban and Al Qaeda would rob the President of “flexibility”! What they meant was Mr Obama would not be able to hand out money for nothing. Well, he can’t. And there’s no dole waiting for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has he reaches Washington, DC, for what is bound to be no more than yet another photo-op.

A PTI report provides interesting details of the conditionalities being attached to the new aid package:

Lalit K Jha
Washington

The Kerry-Lugar Bill, which triples the United States' civilian aid to Pakistan to $ 1.5 billion per annum for next five years, does not offer a blank check to Islamabad, as was being sought by the establishment in the nuclear-armed country.
The Bill, introduced in the US Senate on Monday, May 4, subjects US security assistance to a "certification" that the Pakistani government is using the money to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. An identical Bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives.
"While our Bill envisions sustained economic and political cooperation with Pakistan, it is not a blank check. It expects that the military institutions in Pakistan will turn their attention to the extremist dangers within Pakistan's borders," Republican Senator Richard Lugar said on the Senate Floor while introducing the Bill.
A Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar said the Bill calls for tangible progress in governance, including an independent judiciary, greater accountability by the Federal Government, respect for human rights, and civilian control of the levers of power, including the military and the intelligence agencies.
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator John Kerry is other co-sponsor of the bill, which has the backing of the Obama Administration.
"Once money begins to flow, the Administration must report every six months on how the money is spent and what impact it is having," Lugar said. "In addition, the Bill provides that before the Administration spends more than half of the $ 1.5 billion authorised in any fiscal year, it must certify that the assistance provided to that date is making substantial progress toward the principal objectives contained in the Administration's strategy report," he said.
"We also have asked the Government Accountability Office to review annually the Administration's progress on stated goals. To ensure that sufficient resources will be available to oversee our programmes in Pakistan, we authorise $ 20 million each year for audits and programe reviews by the Inspectors-General of the State Department, USAID, and other relevant agencies," the Senator said.
Under Kerry-Lugar, economic assistance is no longer the poor cousin to military aid. Rather than locking in a level of such aid which might not be in line with rapidly- changing Pakistani capabilities and commitment, the bill leaves the level of security aid to be determined on a year-by-year basis.
It conditions military assistance on certification that the Pakistani security forces are making concerted efforts to prevent Al Qaeda and associated terrorist groups from operating in the territory of Pakistan, making concerted efforts to prevent the Taliban from using the territory of Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks within Afghanistan; and are not materially interfering in the political or judicial processes of Pakistan.

Left with no option, on Tuesday the White House said US President Barack Hussein Obama supports the lawmakers' calls for accountability measures for the American aid to Pakistan. "The President supports the building in of accountability measures to ensure that we're making progress, and that if progress isn't made, then we'll readjust our strategy," the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said at his daily Press briefing yesterday.
"He said that in ordering and conducting the review of our strategy in this region, and in the delivery of that review just a little while ago," he said, referring to the statements made by Obama that "there shouldn't and there wouldn't be blank cheques".
Obama would be meeting Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, at the White House on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, according to the US Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, the US has invested about $ 100 million in helping Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons!

The US Administration is either frightfully naïve or utterly stupid!

US glosses over Pakistani terror

Obama's blue-eyed Zardari can do no wrong!

Kanchan Gupta

The US State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2008, which was released last Thursday, serves as both a compendium of terrorist activities around the world as well as an indicator of the prevalent thinking in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. While those in India who constantly look up to the US for succour, support and sympathy as a substitute to fighting terrorism on our terms and in a meaningful manner will no doubt seize upon this year’s Country Reports to proclaim how America has accepted that “in 2008, India ranked among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries” — as if we needed the Americans to tell us this simple fact, a truth that would have been controverted had the State Department not made a passing mention of it — a full reading of the document will reveal that we need not be distracted by such hoopla to which the English-speaking middle classes are given.

President Barack Hussein Obama’s Administration may have found it pertinent to record India’s “pivotal moment that is now called ‘26/11’ (our very own scaled down version of ‘9/11’)”, but it has shown no inclination towards placing on record how last November’s multiple fidayeen attacks on high profile targets in Mumbai conclusively exposed Pakistan’s role in promoting cross-border terrorism. This is what the Country Reports has to say on India’s ‘pivotal moment’: “Terrorists struck at a variety of locations in Mumbai on November 26, killing at least 183 people, including 22 foreigners, six of whom were Americans and 14 members of the police and security forces. Over 300 more were injured. The attacks in Mumbai targeted places frequented by foreigners and wealthy Indians. The attackers entered Mumbai from the sea and attacked people in two hotels, a Jewish centre, the main train station, and additional locations ... The terrorists appeared to have been well-trained and took advantage of technology, such as Global Positioning System trackers.”

There’s no mention of where the attackers came from, no assertion of Pakistani complicity, not even the most casual reference to the manner in which the Pakistani Government mocked at overwhelming evidence about the nationality of the fidayeen, their ‘handlers’ and those who trained them in guerrilla warfare. Ten men held an entire city to ransom for 62 hours, killed 183 people and fiercely fought back crack commando units. Yet, the Obama Administration is of the view that Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amir Kasab and his fellow marauders “appeared to have been well-trained”. The implicit doubt is not without purpose.

Way down in the chapter titled ‘South and Central Asia Overview’, the Country Reports says, “Despite an increased number of infiltrations across the Line of Control, Pakistan-India relations were improving, with trade opened for the first time in over 60 years, until they were significantly set back by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November. These attacks were attributed to the (Pakistan-based) Kashmir terrorist group Laskhar-e-Tayyeba, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation, and to its fundraising subsidiary, the Jamaat ud-Dawah, which the Government of Pakistan banned after the UN Security Council listed the group and certain named individuals in the 1267 Sanctions Committee.” So, Pakistan gets a pat for taking prompt action against Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, a “Kashmir terrorist group” to which the Mumbai attack has been merely “attributed”.

The report then points out how despite “allegations of involvement by the LeT and JuD in the Mumbai attacks”, Pakistani “officials (have) pledged to prosecute all individuals in Pakistan found to be involved in the Mumbai attacks and offered to share intelligence regarding the attacks with the Government of India”. No less a person than President Asif Ali Zardari has said “non-state actors (terrorists) were operating on Pakistani soil and noted his own wife (Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated on December 27, 2007) had been a victim of terrorism”. What, then, is India complaining about? In a suggestive apportioning of blame, the Country Reports adds: “The composite dialogue between Pakistan and India was frozen by the Indian Government in December ... contributing to heightened tension between the two Governments.” Never mind the terrible waste of innocent lives, New Delhi should have continued with devising ‘confidence-building measures’ to bolster the dissolute Zardari regime in Islamabad.

Pakistan after all, as the Country Reports makes out, is a ‘victim’ and not the perpetrator of terrorism, or, as Mr Gordon Brown, the trans-Atlantic ally of Mr Obama, has recently described it, the “crucible for global terrorism” and the “breeding ground for international terrorists”. To drive home this point, the chapter titled ‘South and Central Asia Overview’ begins with a quote of, hold your breath, Mr Zardari: “We are fighting the menace and we will continue to fight... This is the fight for the peace of the world...” Hopefully next year’s Country Reports will record the fact that among the means adopted by Mr Zardari to “fight for the peace of the world” was to meekly capitulate to the Taliban. For the moment, the Obama Administration is gratified that “Pakistani security services (have) cooperated with the United States and other nations to fight terrorism within Pakistan and abroad. Hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda operatives have been killed or captured by Pakistani authorities since September 2001. Pakistan (has) continued to pursue Al Qaeda and its allies through nationwide police action and military operations in the FATA and elsewhere.” The most expensive lobbying firm in Washington, DC, could not have done a better job of whitewashing Pakistan’s sins of omission and commission.

Ironically, the publication of this year’s Country Reports with its cockamamie tale of Pakistani valour in the face of jihadi aggression coincided with a revealing Fox News report. America’s top military commander David Petraeus, according to this report, has told lawmakers on Capitol Hill, currently debating billions of dollars in fresh American aid to Pakistan, that he is “looking for concrete action by the Pakistani Government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before Washington determines the next course of action ... The Pakistanis have run out of excuses”. In what appears to be a reference to the alleged ‘crackdown’ on the Taliban in Buner, Gen Petraeus, who heads the US’s Central Command, is believed to have commented wearily that “we’ve heard it all before from the Pakistanis”.

Given the tone and tenor, not to mention the contents of this year’s Country Reports, it could well be said, “We’ve heard it all before from the Americans.”


[You can read the full Country Reports on Terrorism 2008 here.]


[My friend Prof Barry Rubin, who is director of the Gloria Center in Jerusalem, among the foremost commentators on West Asian affairs and author of several books, including a biography of Yasser Arafat, has analysed the Country Reports section on Israel related issues. His analysis provides a unique perspective.]

UPDATE

Obviously embarrassed by the Fox News story, the US State Department put out a statement through its acting spokesperson who said, "[There has been] a positive last couple of days in terms of Pakistan taking action against these militants. [B]ut we’re under no illusions. It’s going to take more than two days' worth of actions. It’s going to take consistent, determined, and forceful action. And Pakistan seems committed to that, and we’re willing to be as helpful as we can in terms of dealing with the militants."

Taliban in India: They are already here!

Forget Swat, fear Taliban amid us
Kanchan Gupta

There is, we are told, disquiet among Muslims over Justice Markandey Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, while rejecting the petition filed by Mohammad Salim, a student of Nirmala Convent Higher Secondary School in Madhya Pradesh, for quashing the school’s regulation requiring students to be clean shaven. The student’s counsel, Mr BA Khan, a retired judge, argued that Article 25 of the Constitution guaranteed protection to Salim to pursue his religious practice of keeping a beard and the school regulation was violative of the right to freedom of religion. He said forcing the student to shave his beard was against “his religious conscience, belief and custom of his family”. Mr Khan, who made an elaborate case linking the student’s faith and his beard, does not sport one himself. This prompted Justice Katju to point out, “But you don’t sport a beard!”

While rejecting Mohammad Salim’s petition, and rightly so, the Supreme Court bench made two points. First, if Salim found the school’s rules abhorrent and unacceptable, he could join some other institution. “But you can’t ask the school to change the rules for you.” Second, “If there are rules, you have to obey. You can’t say that I will not wear a uniform I will (wear) only a burqa.” Justice Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, was presumably directed against those who wish to imitate the Taliban and their subversion of the secular state and destruction of civil society in the name of practising Islam and enforcing Islamic injunctions.

This week we had a glimpse of what that means, thanks to a two-minute video shot with a cellphone in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and smuggled out by those who are alarmed by the prospect of the Taliban’s ruthless enforcement of “religious conscience, belief and custom”. The video showed a 17-year-old girl, a resident of Kabal, being held face down on the ground by men while a Taliban commander flogged her with a leather strap. The girl kept on pitifully begging for mercy and screaming in pain — “Leave me for the moment... you can beat me again later...” But this did not have the slightest impact on her tormentors: The flogging continued as a large group of men stood around, watching intently at this public display of Islamic fervour.

The girl was punished, the Taliban claimed, in accordance with shari’ah for stepping out of her house without being escorted by a male family member. But this may not be the real reason: Another account said she was falsely accused of violating shari’ah after she refused to marry a local Taliban commander.

The public flogging of the teenaged girl has revived memories of the Taliban executing Zarmeena, a mother of seven children, in Kabul’s sports stadium on November 17, 1999. In more recent times, two women were executed by the Taliban outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan in July last year. In Swat, too, women have been punished in a similar manner. On November 26, 2008, Bakht Zeba, a former member of the Swat district council, was dragged out of her home by the Taliban and brutally assaulted before being shot dead. Her crime, according to shari’ah as laid down by the Taliban: She criticised the ban on girls attending school.

The global outrage over the public flogging of the teenaged girl is believed to have ‘shaken’ the so-called civilian Government of Pakistan into ordering an inquiry. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to whom many jihadis owes a huge debt of gratitude for interceding on their behalf and ordering their release from prison when Gen Pervez Musharraf was in power, has tauntingly dared Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to arrest the barbarians of Swat and put them behind bars.

That, of course, is a tall order for an effete regime which shamelessly capitulated to the Taliban’s jihadi terror in Swat Valley and signed a ‘peace agreement’ with Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, one of the many organisations that are collectively referred to as the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, on February 16. As part of that deal, mullahs have been allowed to impose shari’ah and set up Darul Qaza or qazi courts, replacing the Pakistani justice system, such as it is.

Ironically, the ‘peace agreement’ has been endorsed by the US in preparation of President Barack Hussein Obama opening negotiations with the ‘good Taliban’. Just how good the ‘good Taliban’ is has been shockingly exposed, though not for the first time, by the smuggled video of a teenaged girl being flogged. For those who may still nurse doubts, here’s some more visual evidence: The photograph published along with this article shows a young Taliban fighter with the hands of a man that were chopped off for an unstated crime. In the land of shari’ah, these would be considered no less than trophies to be proud of.

It is this Taliban and Talibani mindset that we should be scared of; both are already there in our midst. Mohammad Salim is not alone in wanting to emulate those who flaunt their “religious conscience, belief and custom” to the exclusion of a secular state’s enlightenment. What the Taliban are practising in Swat Valley and in the wastelands of Afghanistan is being preached by mullahs in India. And they are doing so openly. A casual reading of the fatwas listed on Darul Uloom Deoband’s Website, http://www.darulifta-deoband.org, will prove this point. Here are some randomly selected examples:

Fatwa 1587/1330=L/1429: “The best purdah for woman is that the palms and no part of her body and adornments is exposed, ie, the whole body is covered from head to toe. If it is possible to see through the purdah, then the eyes also should be covered...”

Fatwa 1141/1141=M/1429: Family planning is haram and unlawful in Islam. You should apprise your wife of the commandment of shari’ah...”

Fatwa 691/636=D/1429: It is not a good thing for women to do jobs in offices. They will have to face strange men (non-mahram) though in veil. She will have to talk and deal with each other which are the things of fitna (evils).”

Fatwa 1386/227=TL/1429: “It is unlawful for women to go out after applying perfume.”

From here to chopping off the thumbs of women who use nail varnish is a very small step.

The Pioneer | Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | Editorial Page Main Article