Pakistan And Taliban

In its keenness to assert the primacy of its national interestsand strategic objectives through any means, the US has over the years madeheroes out of surrogates, whose only qualification was that they were preparedto do its bidding. Ultimately, it ended up with the mortification ofseeing these heroes of yesterday becoming the Frankenstein's monsters of today,endangering the very US national interests to protect which they were initiallycreated.

Afghanistan provides a good case study of this. Thedramatis personae in the more than two-decade-old Afghan tragedy -- whether Osamabin Laden and his terrorists' mafia, Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund and his TalibanShoora or the innumerable "Mujahideen" commanders and Pakistanijehadis playing havoc in different parts of the country in the name ofIslam -- were all the original creations of the CIA, ably assisted by Pakistan'sInter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Through their depredations, they have made Afghanistan perhapsthe only country in the world to register a decline in population with that ofKabul reduced by half and with the largest proportion, anywhere in the world, ofwidows with no male relatives.

They have turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground ofmedieval obscurantist forces which have been spreading their tentacles toDagestan and Chechnya in Russia, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Xinjiang inChina, Pakistan itself, Jammu & Kashmir in India, Bangladesh, Myanmarand Southern Philippines.

And the Americans have created for themselves a situationwhere the choice is not among various policy options, but policy nightmares.

The way the Taliban, which was backed by the US from itscreation in July,1994, to its capture of Kabul in September,1996, has heapedindignities on the women of Afghanistan and reduced them to less than humanbeings in the name of Islam, is without parallel anywhere else in the world.

While justifying the attitude of the Taliban towards women'srole in society, the then Taliban Ambassador in Islamabad, Maulvi Saeedur RahmanHaqqani, said at a seminar at Islamabad on May 2, 1999: "In Muslimsocieties, we respect and cherish our women. We treat them like precious jewelsand keep them in an ornamental box."

What is the ground reality?

Under the pre-1992 Najibullah Government, 70 per cent of theacademics--members of the teaching faculties of schools and colleges -- 60 percent of the medical personnel and 30 per cent of the Government servants inAfghanistan were women. They played an active role in politics anddiplomacy too.

This high percentage was due to the spread of higher educationamongst women and also due to the shortage of men to occupy civilian jobsbecause of the enlistment of a large number of men in the army to fight the"mujahideen".

After its capture of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban removed allgirls from educational institutions, banned any fresh induction and sacked allwomen from jobs where they might have to interact with men. They are nowallowed only in those jobs in which their interaction would be only with otherwomen. Wearing of burqa was made obligatory.

The Taliban promised to at least partially restore theeducational rights of women after the war against the Northern Alliance endedand after the economic situation improved. One doesn't know when that would be,now that it is facing two wars---one against the Northern Alliance and the otheragainst the US-led international coalition.

The results since 1996:

• An Increase in the instances of suicide by war widows unable to support their children.
  
  
• Before 1992, Kabul did not have a single woman beggar. In 1999, the figures for which are available, it had an estimated 35,000, most of them widows with children--former academics, doctors, nurses and government servants--with no other means of feeding their children. Visitors to Kabul had remarked on their shock and indignation at the Taliban when they discovered that behind many a burqa of beggars approaching them for alms stood an English or French or Russian-speaking woman, highly educated with a sophisticated and cultured mind. They were heartlessly sacked for no other reason than that they were women. The Mullahs' anger was particularly directed at women who had their higher education in Hindu India, Communist USSR or the "decadent" West, where, according to the Mullahs, women were allowed to "run around like wild animals."
  
  
• Some Western non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) started a vocational training centre where the children of these widows could be trained in some craft so that they could support themselves and their mothers. The Taliban banned the enrollment of girls in this centre. As a Pakistani columnist remarked: " It would seem that for the Taliban, training boys and girls together would be unislamic, but letting them beg together in the streets is not so." It is many of these begging women and children who have now been killed by the US air strikes. They had no place where they could take cover from the air strikes.
  
  
• Women were banned from witnessing any sports meet. The only public gathering at which their presence was allowed and even encouraged was to witness the stoning to death of convicts for adultery.
  

The anti-woman attitude of the Taliban was evident even fromOctober,1994, onwards when it started curtailing the rights of women in townafter town captured by it, but the outside world, particularly the US and WestEurope, reacted against it only after the Mullahs started enforcing their ordersnot only against Afghan women in the entire territory under their control, butalso against foreign women working in the offices of international organisationsand NGOs after the capture of Kabul.

Next to women, the Shias were a major target of thebrutalities and indignities of the Wahabi-Sunni-dominated Taliban Shoora and itsmilitia called Lashkar Mohammadi. Public observance of Moharrum was banned. So too the Shia tradition of their women joining the men in prayers duringMoharrum and visits to graves of their relatives.

The News of Pakistan (April 26,1999) quotedMr.Ghulam Mohiuddin, a Shia leader of Afghanistan, as stating as follows: "Even the Hindus in India allow the Shias to practise their religion, but theTaliban are denying us this basic right."

After the Taliban captured Herat on the Iran border and,subsequently, the Bamiyan province, there were reportedly large-scalemassacres of the Shias and forcible re-settlement of the Shias in theSunni-majority villages in the rest of Afghanistan and their replacement bySunnis brought to Herat and Bamiyan from other provinces. This was done toreduce the Shias to a minority in their traditional homelands.

Before October 7, 2001,the Taliban had only three achievementsto its credit -- improvement of law and order, restoration of electricity supplyin towns and resumption of farming in 70 per cent of the cultivable land in thecountry.

Better law and order was through rigorous enforcement ofIslamic punishments such as amputation of arms and stoning and crushing todeath. Some Pakistani analysts pointed out that such punishments were morefrequent against non-Pashtoons and Shias than against Pashtoons and Sunnis.

The Taliban's agricultural policy benefitted poppycultivation more, through priority in fertiliser distribution to poppy farmersthan to cultivators of other agricultural products.

While offences such as theft, housebreaking, murder, rape,adultery, sodomy etc were immediately punished after a sham of a trial, therewas no Islamic punishment for heroin production and smuggling.

There was a strongly suspected nexus involving the poppyfarmers, all of them Afghan citizens, the heroin producers, all of themPakistani drug barons resident in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and inthe Federally-Administered Tribal areas (FATA) of Pakistan and 30 Mullahsconstituting the Kandahar-based Taliban Shoora with Mullah Mohammad Omar, theAmir, at the top.

The only effective arm of the Taliban administration was themilitia, which brought 90 per cent of the country under its control withinfive years, and the Ministry for the Promotion of Islamic Virtue and thePrevention of Vice. A new intelligence agency, largely officered andheaded by serving and retired ISI officers, was created and placed underthe direct control of the Amir.

The militia was a hotchpotch of students from the madrasas inthe NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh, former Pashtoon officers and soldiers of thelate Najibullah's Soviet-trained armed forces and Pakistani ex-servicemen andserving military personnel, given leave of absence by the Pakistani military, toenable them assist the Taliban. The Pakistanis constituted about 70 percent plus of the strength of the Taliban militia.

During important battles, the militia was also assisted byPakistani militant organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, thevirulently anti-Shia Sipah-e- Sahaba Pakistan, the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami andthe Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Arab volunteers of bin Laden's Al Quaeda (055Brigade).

Despite its hotchpotch character, the discipline and religiousmotivation of the militia have remained surprisingly strong. It fought extremely well against the forces of the Northern Alliance led by thelate Gen. Ahmed Shah Masood and is now withstanding the US onslaught with noapparent signs of demoralisation as yet.

The large casualties suffered by the militia during thebattles for Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 and 1998 and the battles in Bamiyan in 1998and 1999 did not affect its morale. However, there were reports ofdifficulties being faced by the Taliban in making fresh recruitment to make upfor the losses--particularly from the Durrani sub-tribe of the Pashtoons, whichwas the main recruiting ground in Afghanistan. These shortages were,however, made up by a fresh influx of madrasa jehadis and ex-servicemenfrom Pakistan.

The rest of the administration was in a chaotic state. There was no functioning central bank; nor were there any gold reserves andofficially accounted for foreign exchange reserves. The tax collectionmachinery was ineffective.

There was no public scrutiny of Government policies, decisionsand actions, no open discussion of the state budget, no policy and decisionmaking infrastructure. Policy and decision options were not examined fortheir likely impact on Afghanistan's future and on its relations with the restof the world before being adopted.

The Amir and his associates in the Shoora look upon themselvesas on a divine mission and there is a touching, but disturbing faith in divineintervention to help them out of problems. Since they have convincedthemselves that they have been the beneficiaries of divine guidance, they do notfeel the need for human guidance and advice from the non-clerical, civilianbureaucracy, which has consequently been reduced to merely an instrumentfor carrying out the decisions of the clerics, without any voice in policy anddecision-making.

This delusion of a divine mission also made the Amirinsensitive to public opinion not only inside the country, but also in the restof the world. The Amir is strongly motivated by the Pashtoon concept of"izzat" (self-respect) and tends to look upon any suggestion ofconcessions to international opinion as an affront to his "izzat".

This should explain his obstinate refusal to respond tooutside pressures for controlling the spread of terrorism, to expel bin Ladenand to control heroin production and smuggling.

Afghanistan, under the Taliban, has two capitals --theadministrative capital at Kabul, which is the seat of the Government whichinteracts with foreign interlocutors, and the spiritual capital at Kandahar,where the Amir, his Shoora and the intelligence agency headquarters were locatedbefore October 7,2001. The Amir was hoping that Kandahar would one daybecome the spiritual capital of triumphant Wahabi-Sunni forces in Dagestan,Chechnya, Xinjiang, Pakistan, Kashmir in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and SouthernPhilippines.

The Amir hails from village Nodeh and grew up in villageSingesar in the Mewand District near Kandahar. Mewand is as holy andhistoric a place for the Pashtoons of Afghanistan as Kosovo is for the Serbs. According to Afghan historians, it was at Mewand that the Pashtoons trounced theadvancing British troops.

Malalai, a Pashtoon woman of Mewand, earned a heroicreputation by fighting shoulder to shoulder with her male brethren and rallyingthem against the British troops. What an irony of fate that thedescendants of this heroic woman should find themselves chained inside a burqaby the descendants of her male brethren!

It was as a protector of women's honour that the Amir won theadmiration of the Pashtoons of Kandahar in July, 1994, when he gathered a groupof boys from the local madrasas, raided the house of a local "Mujahideen"commander, who had become notorious as a rapist, and killed him. From aprotector, he degenerated into an oppressor of women's rights.

The fact that the about 40-year-old Amir hailed from thelegendary Mewand District gave him a halo in the eyes of the simple,God-fearing, proud Pashtoons and they followed his commands implicitly.

Instead of leading them into the new millennium to makeAfghanistan once again a tolerant, progressive Islamic state with equal rightsfor women and men, for Muslims and non-Muslims, for Pashtoons and non-Pashtoons,for Sunnis and Shias, he chose to lead them back to the middle ages in the nameof God.

The Amir is a man with little exposure to the world outsideKandahar and its environs. It is said that he has never travelled to thenon-Pashtoon areas. Many say he had never been to Kabul since it wascaptured by the Taliban in September,1996, but some others assert that he hadvisited it once. He hardly knows Pakistan outside Peshawar and Quetta.

He lets the Mullahs of the Government in Kabul interact withdomestic as well as foreign interlocutors. Since they do not know theAmir's mind while negotiating, one had the strange spectacle of theinterlocutors from Kabul reaching agreements in principle to subsequently findthese agreements rejected by the Amir. This was happeningrepeatedly.

Before October 7,2001, the Pakistan Government's predominantinfluence in Taliban-controlled territory was mainly in the civilianadministration, which had and continues to have many Pakistani advisers,the intelligence agency and the militia. Its influence in mattersreligious was limited. However, Pakistani religious leaders such asMaulana Fazlur Rahman and Maulana Samiul Haq had and continue to have verystrong influence over the Amir and the other members of the Taliban leadership.

The former Prime Minister, Mr.Nawaz Sharif, was intelligentand rational enough to realise that the obstinacy of the Amir and his Kandahar-basedShoora in dealing with issues such as the deportation of bin Laden, women'srights etc was creating serious difficulties for Pakistan in its relations withthe US, that the anti-Shia and anti-Iran policies had caused a set-back toPakistan's relations with Iran and that the Taliban's obscurantism hadfrustrated Pakistani aspirations of emerging as the gateway of Central Asia.

However, he was unable to assert himself because therewere---just as there are still--- too many Pakistani cooks spoiling the Afghanbroth. These included the religious fundamentalist parties with MaulanaFazlur Rahman of the Jamaat-ul- Ulema Islam (JUI) in the forefront egging on theAmir and his Shoora to stick to their hard line, the Intelligence Bureau (IB),the ISI, the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), Gen. PervezMusharraf, and his then Chief of the General Staff (CGS), Lt.Gen. Mohammad Aziz,who is now a full General and is the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

During her second tenure as Prime Minister (1993-96), Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, who distrusted the ISI, let the IB working under the supervisionof her Interior Minister, Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babar, handle the Amir andhis Taliban. Maj.Gen. Babar, a trusted officer of her father, the late ZulfiquarAli Bhutto, was the head of the Afghan desk of the ISI under her father and usedto claim that he could make the Afghan Pashtoons dance to Pakistan's tune. He used Musharraf, then Director-General of Military Operations (DGMI) andMohammad Aziz in his Taliban operations despite Aziz's association with the ISI,which was distrusted by Benazir.

On coming back to power in February, 1997,Sharif transferredthe responsibility back to the ISI. The then Maj.Gen. Mohammad Aziz, whowas the No.2 in the ISI, also directly supervised the Afghan desk.

When Sharif appointed Lt.Gen. Khwaja Ziauddin, who comes froma family of Pakistan Muslim League loyalists, as the DG of the ISI inOctober,1998, Musharraf, who distrusted Ziauddin, had Maj.Gen.Aziz, then DeputyDG,ISI, promoted as Lt.Gen. and posted as the CGS instead of posting an alreadyserving Lt.Gen. to this important post as was the tradition. Simultaneously, he had the responsibility for handling the Taliban transferredto the DMI and reportedly ordered that Lt.Gen. Aziz would continue to supervisethis work.

Addressing the English-speaking Union of Pakistan at Karachion April 13,1999, Musharraf said that the collapse of the Taliban would lead toa disintegration of Afghanistan, which would not be in Pakistan's interest. He was of the view that Pakistan should continue to back the Taliban unmindfulof US pressures and let time moderate the policies of the Mullahs.

Since the middle of 1998, there were indications ofunhappiness amongst the Mullahs of the administration in Kabul, who had to bearthe brunt of the international criticism regarding the Taliban's policies on binLaden and women's rights, over the unbending obstinacy of the Amir and hisMullahs of Kandahar. The Shoora was even reported to have foiled a coupattempt and made a number of arrests.

The late Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, the then head of the interimruling council in Kabul, who occupied the No 2 position in the Shoora and whowas projected as the most trusted man of the Amir, was reported to havedeveloped differences with the Amir when the latter rebuked him for not taking astrong line during the visit of Mr.Bill Richardson, the then US PermanentRepresentative to the UN, to Kabul in April, 1998 to discuss the terrorismissue.

Thereafter, Mullah Rabbani did not enjoy the trust ofthe Amir and spent more time in Dubai for medical treatment than for doinghis job in Kabul.