A rchive Date
[ 17-02-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Pakistan ]
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[http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/targetterrorism/backgrounders/pakistan.html
Pakistan-Taliban Nexus
Atirath Aich, CBC News Online | December 2001
Pakistan is a classic case of being caught between the devil and the deep sea. Caught in the stormy politics of expansionism in south and central Asia, Pakistan has had to plot a lonely - often defiant - course toward defining its role in the region. Its support of the fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan must be seen in that context.
Pakistan, contrary to what many believe, never had ambitions of being a regional power. It spent most of its time since partition from India in 1947 trying to survive the ruthless maelstrom of global politics in which it was, for the better part, a mere pawn. Hemmed in by the Soviet Union, China and India, it became a pliant American ally during the Cold War.
The United States, through Pakistan, kept a close eye not only on the Soviet Union's communist designs in central and south Asia, but also on India, an avowed supporter of the Soviet Union. But despite being a loyal American friend, Pakistan found itself in the cold every time it needed American help. In its three wars against India, Pakistan did receive equipment, but very little diplomatic or logistical backing.
Wars with India
Pakistan fought in 1947 and 1965 against India in a bid to wrest Kashmir from its southern neighbour. The people of Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, were fighting India either to break away to form an independent state or to align with Islamic Pakistan.
The United States also failed to address the issue of Kashmir despite Pakistan's pressure. India, firmly in the Soviet camp, rejected every American attempt at mediation. In 1971, the United States watched helplessly as India involved itself in a separatist revolt in East Pakistan. India's secret service - The Research and Analysis Wing - trained East Pakistan's Mukti Bahini soldiers to fight a guerrilla battle against the Pakistani army. And when the opportunity was ripe, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared war.
Pakistan, fighting on two fronts and trying to suppress an internal uprising, had no chance. India won, and Bangladesh was born out of East Pakistan. Many in the Pakistani establishment remained bitter that the U.S., traditionally Pakistan's friend, refused to send in the Seventh Fleet to help an ally. The Pakistanis were also disenchanted with what they considered American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's tepid efforts to defuse the crisis.
It was then that Pakistan decided to take a more proactive stance in building its alliances. China, which fought a war with India in 1962, responded to Pakistan's overtures with great alacrity and has been a firm friend ever since.
Backing the U.S. in Afghanistan
But Pakistan remained a loyal U.S. ally. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and installed Babrak Karmal as the head of a communist puppet regime, Pakistan readily volunteered to assist the Americans in a covert war against the Soviet-backed Afghan administration.
The Americans shipped in arms and money through Pakistan to the opposition Afghan mujahedeen (holy warriors) who were fighting the Soviet occupation. Pakistan's secretive and shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) became a key component of the anti-Soviet coalition. They trained, armed, and literally controlled mujahedeen guerrilla operations in Afghanistan. The ISI would also, years later, create the Taliban.
In 1989, defeated and discredited, the Soviets limped back home after a disastrous 10-year campaign. The U.S. celebrated a great victory against their Cold War foes, but also washed their hands of Afghanistan, leaving the impoverished mountain nation in complete disarray. Civil war broke out as every warlord claimed a piece of the country. In the internecine strife, thousands of Afghan civilians were killed and many more maimed.
The Soviet collapse
Pakistan remained a mere spectator, but that changed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The new central Asian republics, suddenly free from years of stifling communist austerity, were hungry to embrace the free-market economy. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and others in the region were oil-rich and eager to export resources and build a post-communist economy. Pakistan realized the importance of not only their markets, but also their oil reserves, and was keen to do business.
But there was a problem: Afghanistan's deadly civil war. Pakistan's easiest trade route to the new republics was from the northwestern border city of Peshawar through the Afghan capital Kabul to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. Unless the Afghan civil war ended quickly, the Pakistani economy would lose millions in trade.
Backing the Pashtuns
In an effort to end the conflict in Afghanistan, Pakistan decided to support the Pashtun faction led by veteran leader Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. The reasons were obvious. Pakistan's North Western Frontier Province (adjoining Afghanistan) had a huge population of ethnic Pashtuns, or Pathans as they are called in Pakistan. Pashtun recruits made up nearly 20 per cent of the Pakistani army.
After the British created the Pakistan-Afghanistan border - the infamous Durand Line - through an agreement with a representative of King Abdul Rahman Khan in 1893, successive Afghan legislatures refused to ratify the agreement. The border cut through the heart of Pashtun territory dividing a closely-knit, fiercely independent tribe that had been together for generations.
Naturally, Pakistan was keen to quietly snuff out rumblings of Pashtun nationalism in the North Western Frontier Province and Balochistan. Pashtuns living in the semi-autonomous border zones enforced tribal edicts with no regard for Pakistani civil or criminal laws. They crossed the border with impunity to visit families on the other side. Occasionally, Pakistani governments would hear distant demands for an independent "Pakhtoonistan."
If a Pashtun took over Afghanistan, those demands would disappear. But Hikmetyar's army failed to make much headway against other groups, much to the dismay of his Pakistani patrons. His religious fundamentalism and military recklessness alienated most Pashtuns, and forced Pakistan to look for other Pashtun groups to support.
After the Pakistan People's Party swept to power in 1993, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government began to explore other roads to Central Asia through Afghanistan. There was alternative route from the northern Pakistani town of Quetta looping through Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and veering up through the ancient city of Herat in the northwest to Turkmenistan's capital, Ashkabad.
Talks with the Taliban
To use this supply route, Pakistan began secret talks with an obscure group called the Taliban (religious students) that controlled Kandahar. Its reticent leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had pledged to bring order to Afghanistan through a strict, medieval version of Islam.
The ISI, almost as quickly as it had adopted Hikmetyar, abandoned him. The Taliban became their new favorites. In October 1994, 200 Taliban soldiers defeated Hikmetyar's troops in the battle of Spin Boldak, a crucial transit point on the truck route between Pakistan and central Asia.
Pakistani operatives helped the Taliban capture a huge ordnance facility. The booty was enormous - 18,000 Kalashnikovs, tonnes of artillery equipment and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The Taliban had arrived. They were unstoppable after the victory in Spin Boldak.
Taliban take control
As the Taliban juggernaut rolled towards Kabul, hundreds of young men joined the group. Other warlords surrendered or were bought by huge sums of money provided by Pakistan. On September 26, 1996, Mullah Omar's army rolled into Kabul driving out other factions. Among those who withdrew from Kabul was Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood who retreated up north and continued fighting the Taliban until he was assassinated on September 10, 2001.
But Pakistan was the biggest winner in the Afghan civil war. It successfully established a Pashtun regime in Afghanistan, mollified ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan, and calmed their northern border.
If the bitterly anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance had come to power in 1996 instead of the Taliban, Pakistan would have had to deal with belligerent neighbours both on their northern and southern borders. Since the Taliban was created and funded by ISI, Pakistan could marshal its men and resources on the all-important southern border against archrival India.
But that wasn't all. The Pakistani government kept two important elements in Pakistan happy by patronizing the ultra-conservative regime in Afghanistan. The influential Pakistani Islamic clergy led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman were delighted by Mullah Omar's rigid enforcement of Islam. And the all-powerful ISI nodded approvingly at the Taliban's unstinting support for Pakistan and the Kashmir cause.
Musharraf's dilemma
In October 1999, after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in Pakistan from elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup, experts say he threw the full force of the country's military administration behind the Taliban.
But Musharraf had not bargained for the Taliban's al-Qaeda connection and the terrorist strikes on the United States on September 11. Musharraf's subsequent turnaround from the Taliban toward the Americans once again took Pakistan full circle in its association with the U.S.
Now that the Taliban is defeated, Pakistan's concerns are understandable. The pro-India rhetoric of the new government in Afghanistan is worrying them. Afghanistan has always considered its border with Pakistan disputed, and wants Pashtun-dominated areas back. According to past reports in the Pakistani media, even Taliban emissaries visited Pakistan with requests to settle border disputes. So, acrimonious exchanges between Islamabad and Kabul are almost inevitable.
For Pakistan, there are also military concerns. With the Taliban gone, Pakistani troops will have to be re-deployed on the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan's much-cherished trade route to central Asia and the import of oil and gas from those countries now look uncertain.
And there is bound to be more unrest at home, especially from clerics and Islamic hardliners who believe Pakistan's support of the United States in its battle against the Taliban is a betrayal of Islam.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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