Why the US needs the Taliban

Why the US needs the Taliban

By Ramtanu Maitra

Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EG30Ag01.html

July 29, 2003

Since Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf made
his much-acclaimed visit to Camp David and met US
President George W Bush on June 24, new elements have
begun to emerge in the Afghan theater. US troops in
Afghanistan are now encountering more enemy attacks than
ever before, and clashes between Pakistani and Afghan
troops along the tribal borders have been reported
regularly.

On July 16, speaking to Electronic Telegraph of the
United Kingdom, US troop commander General Frank
"Buster" Hagenbeck, based at Bagram Air Base in
Afghanistan, reported increased attacks over recent
weeks on US and Afghan forces by the Taliban, al-Qaeda
and other anti-US groups that have joined hands. He also
revealed some other very interesting information: the
Taliban and its allies have regrouped in Pakistan and
are recruiting fighters from religious schools in Quetta
in a campaign funded by drug trafficking. Hagenbeck also
said that these enemies of US and Afghan forces have
been joined by Al-Qaeda commanders who are establishing
new cells and sponsoring the attempted capture of
American troops. One other piece of news of import from
Hagenbeck is that the Taliban have seized whole swathes
of the country.

Reliable intelligence Hagenbeck’s statements were
virtually ignored in Washington. Also ignored were a
number of similar statements issued from Kabul by Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and his cabinet colleagues. On
July 17, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin spoke to the
Pakistani newspaper The News of the Afghan government’s
concern over the volatile situation on its border with
Pakistan. Ludin urged Pakistan to "take steps" to
prevent the Taliban fighters from crossing over to
launch terrorist attacks against Kabul. "We will take it
seriously to confront it," he warned. "So our
expectation is for all those involved in the war against
terror to take serious steps," Ludin added, clearly
addressing the Bush administration.

A week later, on July 24, in an article for The Nation,
a Pakistani news daily, Ahmed Rashid, the well known
expert on the Taliban and Afghanistan, quoted President
Hamid Karzai, during an interview at Kabul, as saying:
"As much as we want good relations with Pakistan and
other neighbors, we also oppose extremism, terrorism and
fundamentalism coming into Afghanistan from outside. We
have one page where there is a tremendous desire for
friendship and the need for each other. But there is the
other page, of the consequences if intervention
continues, cross-border terrorism continues, violence
and extremism continue. Afghans will have no choice but
to stand up and stop it."

Among Americans, only the special envoy of the US
president to Afghanistan and a good friend of President
Karzai, Zalmay Khalilzad, has shown any concern about
the recent developments. Khalilzad has little choice but
to keep up a bold front to the Afghans, telling them how
his bosses in Washington are doing their best to rebuild
Afghanistan, and attributes the present crisis to the
security situation. Like everyone else, Khalilzad has
little in reality to offer and, given the opportunity,
falls back on what "must be done" and "should be done".
At a July 15 press conference at Kabul, Khalilzad said
every effort has to be made by Pakistan not to allow its
territory to be used by the Taliban elements. This
"should not be allowed", he said. "We need 100 percent
assurances [from Pakistan] on this, not 50 percent
assurances, and we know the Taliban are planning in
Quetta."

What is happening? Both Hagenbeck, who boasts to the
media about the high quality of his intelligence, and
Khalilzad, who is unquestionably in a position to know,
have stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are being
nurtured, not in some inaccessible terrain along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border but in Quetta, the capital
of Pakistan’s Balochistan province where the Pakistan
Army and the ISI have a major presence. Yet, President
Bush and his neo-conservative henchmen have remained
strangely quiet, allowing Pakistan to strengthen the
Taliban in Quetta, and, as a consequence, re-energize
al-Qaeda - the killers of thousands of Americans in the
fall of 2001.

Recall for a moment: Following the September 11
terrorist attacks in the United States, no other
terrorist was portrayed by the United States as more
dangerous than al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and no
other Islamic fundamentalist group was presented to the
American people as more despicable than the Taliban.
Within a month the United States invaded Afghanistan to
"take out" the Taliban, al-Qaeda and bin Laden, while
the world lined up behind the new anti-terrorist
messiahs from Washington, providing it the necessary
moral and vocal support. Why, then, is Washington now
weakening President Karzai and allowing the
strengthening and re-emergence of the Taliban?

Karzai shared with Ahmed Rashid his belief, like that of
the average Afghan today, that the answer to that
question lies in an understanding reached between the
United States and Pakistan during Musharraf’s visit to
Camp David, that Afghanistan could be, in effect, "sub-
contracted" to Pakistan. Karzai also told Rashid that
Musharraf’s critical remarks about the Karzai regime
during his visit to the United States reminded him of
the pre-September 11 days when Pakistan was fully
backing the Taliban and exercising ever-more-strident
control over Afghanistan. Musharraf had said, among
other things, that the Afghan president does not have
much control over Afghanistan beyond Kabul. But, Karzai
added in the interview with Rashid, no matter what the
outsiders are planning or plotting, as of now, "I want
nobody to be under any illusion that Afghanistan will
allow any other country to control it." Is Karzai
overreacting? Most likely, he is not. He has seen the
writing on the wall. It is arguable whether the
Taliban’s return to power is inevitable, but there is
little doubt that under the circumstances it is very
convenient for the US.

Bowing to realities To begin with, it was clear from the
outset that the United States never really wanted to be
in Afghanistan. It was basically a jumping-off point for
the "big enchilada", the re-shaping of the Middle East’s
politics and regimes. The Afghan reconstruction talk was
mostly wishful thinking. For anyone familiar with
present-day Afghanistan - its security situation, the
drug production and trafficking, its destroyed
infrastructure, its rampant illiteracy and poverty - its
reconstruction by foreigners is either a dream or a
string of motivated lies.

Now, after a half-hearted effort that lasted for almost
18 months, the Bush administration has come to realize
that it is impossible to keep Pakistan as a friend and
simultaneously keep the Northern Alliance-backed
government in power in Kabul. The "puppet" Pashtun
leader in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, does not have the
approval of Pakistan and the majority of the rest of the
Pashtun community straddling both sides of the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border. So, either one has Pakistan as a
friend with an Islamabad-backed Pashtun group in power
in Kabul, or one gets Pakistan as an enemy. There should
be no doubt in anyone’s mind how the Bush administration
would act when confronted with such a choice.

Secondly, look at the Northern Alliance (NA) allies. The
best ally of the NA is Russia, the Bush administration’s
key contestant for supremacy in Central Asia. In the
1980s, the United States spent billions of dollars to
get Afghanistan out of the Russian orbit. It is
ridiculous to believe that the Bush administration would
act differently now to protect the NA and Karzai. Much
better is to have Afghanistan sub-contracted to Pakistan
and keep the Russians at bay, than to yield ground to
Moscow, who is hardly friendly to Pakistan.

Thirdly, the NA, and particularly the Shi’ites of the
Hazara region of Afghanistan, are close to Iran. Iran is
building a road which will connect the Iranian port of
Chahbahar to the city of Herat in central Afghanistan
and link up with Kandahar in the southeast. While this
is going on, some neo-conservatives in Washington are
screaming for Iranian blood. Even if the Bush
administration is not quite willing right now to spill
that blood, it is nonetheless a certainty that
Washington will be more than eager to see the Iranian
influence in Afghanistan curbed. If the NA-backed Karzai
government stays in power for long, Iran would most
definitely enhance its influence. The Taliban do not
want that and they have sent a message recently by
slaughtering the Shi’ites in Quetta with the full
knowledge of the Pakistani authorities. Besides being
anti-Russia, the Taliban are also anti-Shi’ite, or anti-
Iran. This added "virtue" of the Taliban has not gone
unnoticed in the corridors of intrigue-makers in
Washington.

Finally, there is the India factor. A minor factor, it
does, however, come into play in calculating the pluses
and minuses of the resurgent Taliban option. The Bush
administration wants closer relations with India - not
on New Delhi’s terms, but on Washington’s terms. Indian
activity in Afghanistan has increased multifold since
the Karzai government came to power in the winter of
2001. These developments are being eyed suspiciously by
Islamabad. While Washington would not make a federal
case out of it, it surely does not like to see India
forming a strategic alliance with Russia and Iran in
Afghanistan. Washington would rather like to break such
an alliance quickly, particularly if its ally, in this
case Pakistan, wants such an alliance broken.
Significantly, a well-connected relative of Musharraf,
Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan, formerly at the Wilson
Center and now a fellow at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies, addressed these issues directly
in a recent publication.

Not just whistling in the dark In the January issue of
Strategic Insight, a publication for the Center for
Contemporary Conflict, Khan observed: "In Iran,
President Khatami is moving in tandem and cooperation
with Pakistan in supporting the Karzai government as
manifest in the recent visit to Pakistan. However there
are hardliners in Iran who would want to continue with
the old game of supporting warlords and factions and
consider Pakistan as rival vis-a-vis Afghanistan, and
who are still suspicious of the Saudi role. Iran is
pitching its bid, by constructing a road from Chahbahar
Port in the Persian Gulf through Iran’s Balochistan area
to link up eventually with Kandahar in the hope of
’breaking the monopoly of Pakistan’. Afghanistan is
currently sustained primarily through the Karachi-
Quetta/Peshawar routes - Bolan and Khyber passes
respectively - which has provided Afghanistan with trade
and transit with the outside world for centuries."

Furthermore, Khan pointed out, "Russia remains involved
with the major warlords [of Afghanistan]. One such
warlord, Rashid Dostum, was recently on a shopping spree
for arms and equipment from Moscow. Russia believes it
has its own experience and expertise in Afghanistan and
must reestablish its interests. Given the history,
Pakistan is very uncomfortable with this development."

Of course, the Khan’s treatise would not have been
complete without pointing to the devious role of the
Indians in Afghanistan. He said: "India is a major
proactive player now. It is providing well-coordinated
military supplies to the Northern Alliance thorough the
air base in Tajikistan. This includes weapons, equipment
and spare parts aimed at strengthening those elements
that had become the sworn enemies of Pakistan during the
Taliban’s rule. Fear in Pakistan is that despite
Afghanistan’s changed policies, some elements still hold
a grudge against Pakistan and would be willing to do
India’s bidding. This would bring the India-Pakistan
rivalry into the Afghan imbroglio."

It is safe to assume that Khan, who has an extensive
background in arms control, disarmament and
international treaties, and who formulated Pakistan’s
security policy on nuclear war, arms control and
strategic stability in South Asia, is not merely
whistling in the dark.

The terms of convenience Now the question remains, what
might Pakistan be expected to deliver in return for the
Bush administration granting it control over Afghanistan
once more? In the real world, Pakistan can help the
United States significantly. It has already agreed not
to provide nuclear technology to Islamic nations.
Musharraf may have to give the United States control of
its nuclear research facility, among other things. More
important will be to hand over Osama bin Laden to the
United States and send two brigades of Pakistani troops
to Iraq to help out the beleaguered US troops there. The
arrest of Osama would surely justify the US mission to
Afghanistan, and could set the stage for America’s
eventual withdrawal from that country. Another likely
item on the agenda is Pakistani recognition of Israel.

Would this new arrangement of "sub-contracting" (to use
Karzai’s apt term) Afghanistan to the Pakistan-Taliban
combination complicate the already complex situation any
further? Probably not. It was evident in October 2001,
when the United States went pell-mell into Afghanistan
with the help of the Northern Alliance, that America’s
hastily-organized arrangement there was unsustainable.
It was clear that no matter what Islamabad says, or how
much pressure is brought to bear on it, Pakistan has
absolutely no reason whatsoever to agree to such an
arrangement.

Washington came to appreciate the non-sustainability of
this arrangement when Musharraf, in a sleight of hand,
brought the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal - the MMA, also
known as "Musharraf, Mullahs and the Army" - to power in
the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. At that point,
Karzai’s tenure as president of Afghanistan shrank
abruptly, and Washington deemed it time to give up the
"Marshall Plan for Afghanistan" and settle for next best
– Taliban rule in Afghanistan under Pakistani control,
once again.