BOOK REVIEW Chronicle of errors Descent Into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
As security in Afghanistan enters a freefall, the world's worst fears are
coming true. With the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the ascendant, hopes of a
terrorism-free region have gone. The horizon in Afghanistan's neighborhood is
shrouded in violence and instability that threatens distant countries in an age
of global jihad.
Reputed Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's new book chronicles the colossal
errors of omission and commission that brought about this tragedy. His thesis
is that the United States ignored opportunities to consolidate South and
Central Asia and embarked on a grand folly in Iraq from 2003.
The diversion convinced Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
that Washington was not serious about his region and that it was safe for him
to continue clandestinely succoring the Taliban. The George W Bush
administration, by failing to neutralize Pakistan, before, during and after the
invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, invited trouble.
The neo-conservatives in Washington wanted no responsibilities after
overthrowing the Taliban and abandoned the region to warlords and drug barons.
Obsessed with superficial regime change and instant gratification, the Bush
White House gave up the chase of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in March 2002 and
redirected to Iraq, allowing the two deadly terrorist movements to bounce back.
The opening chapter of Rashid's book profiles unknown facets of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, whose father had been murdered by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In the mid-1990s, Karzai believed in the
Taliban's vow of ending warlordism and aided them with funds and weapons. Once
the Taliban were "taken over by the ISI and became a proxy" and gravitated into
al-Qaeda's orbit, he began organizing against them.
Karzai and other nationalistic Afghans were openly critical of president Bill
Clinton administration's policy of applying no pressure on the Taliban's main
sponsors, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. US officials at that time had a
simple-minded interest in capturing Osama bin Laden and were deaf to Karzai's
plea to overthrow the Taliban. For being a thorn in the flesh of the Pakistani
establishment's designs in Afghanistan, Karzai received death threats and
expulsion orders from the ISI.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ISI "created sufficient
room to maneuver and circumvent US demands". (p 33) It did not rein in jihadis
fighting against India, a fact that Rashid attributes to "the Pakistan army's
deeply rooted Islamic orientation". (p 35) Musharraf himself strongly defended
the Taliban worldview and had no compunction about using terrorists as
extensions of Pakistan's foreign policy towards India and Afghanistan. On
several occasions, he pretended to the Americans to produce "moderate Taliban
who may be waiting to change sides", a feint for Pakistan to retain its
influence in Afghan affairs.
Rashid characterizes ISI officers as "more Taliban than the Taliban". (p 79).
Right from the commencement of hostilities in October 2001, the ISI's expertise
and materiel helped the Taliban to prepare their defenses. In November 2001,
hundreds of ISI officers, Pakistani soldiers and al-Qaeda leaders who were
trapped in Kunduz province were airlifted to safety by Pakistan in a getaway
that eventually serviced the Taliban's revival. Rashid quotes a senior US
diplomat lamenting ex post that "Musharraf fooled us". (p 92)
Denying India any advantage in Kabul was the main motive prompting the ISI to
harbor the escaping Taliban, whose close cousins waged jihad in Kashmir.
Musharraf's claim that he had "saved the Kashmir issue" by siding with the US
was a signal that nothing would change in the jihad against India. Throughout
2002, he peddled a pseudo distinction between "good jihadis", who fought in
Kashmir, and "bad terrorists", who were largely Arabs. Washington played along
due to its narrow focus on apprehending al-Qaeda suspects. Even as Islamist
extremism ran rampant in Pakistan, Bush lauded Musharraf as a "visionary and
courageous leader" and rewarded him with unrivalled military and economic aid.
The single-most important cause for the recrudescence of the Taliban was
"systematic and pervasive ISI collusion". (p 222) Up to 2006, the ISI ensured
that American attention on Pakistan's Balochistan province would be minimal so
that the Taliban could develop a full-blooded offensive out of Quetta. Al-Qaeda
and the Taliban flourished in Pakistan thanks to the army's incessant patronage
of extremist Islamists who were proscribed on paper. Lack of international
pressure on Pakistan permitted all-round Talibanization of Pakistan behind the
charade of "reforms".
On rare occasions when Washington issued blunt ultimatums to Musharraf about
his support of the Taliban, Pakistan would take action against terrorists, but
only temporarily. Rashid describes Pakistan's strategy as "minimally satisfying
American demands while not forsaking pro-Taliban policies". (p 269) He
excoriates then American defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for "forcing the US
military to become captive to Islamabad's whims and fancies". (p 274)
Washington bound itself into such dependence on Musharraf that it naively
supported his peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban between 2004 and 2006 that
aggravated Afghanistan's security.
On the subject of post-Taliban Afghanistan, Rashid blames the US government's
pro-warlord policy for hindering institution building and financially crippling
the Karzai government. With a number of warlords on its payroll, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)refused to cooperate with the United Nations'
objective of disarming them. Even as the Taliban were staging a comeback from
mid-2003, Iraq-blinded Washington was unwilling to consider sending more troops
to Afghanistan. Germany was "pathetic, next to useless" in training a new
Afghan police force, and Italy was apathetic to rebuilding the justice system.
One major reason for the dismal nation-building in Afghanistan was the
international failure to curb cultivation of opium. Riding on Washington's
theory that the "war on terror" "had nothing to do with counter-narcotics", the
CIA befriended mafia dons. The drug epidemic fueled government criminality and
inter-clan feuds that opened the door to the Taliban as adjudicators. This
tectonic shift happened while Rumsfeld was smugly arguing that eradicating
opium was "an unimportant social issue unconnected to fighting terrorism". (p
324)
Rumsfeld's other critical mistake was to pull out US troops from southern
Afghanistan in 2005-2006, just as the largest Taliban assault was about to be
unleashed. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's)slow deployments,
riddled with caveats, boosted the Taliban's morale and vindicated the ISI's
assessment that the West would not last long in Afghanistan.
With advice from the Pakistani military, the Taliban exploited the time gap and
power vacuum generated by NATO's indecisiveness. When NATO's criticism of the
ISI's hand in elevating the insurgency became too strident, Islamabad coolly
retorted that it was being made the scapegoat for a war that the US was losing.
Rashid devotes a couple of chapters to the rising might of Islamist terrorists
in Central Asia. His analysis highlights how the open house for jihad in
Pakistan and American coddling of tyrannical regimes combined to turn the
region into a hotbed of fanaticism and state repression. With Pakistan
descending to become the world's "terrorism central", neither Afghanistan nor
Central Asian countries could buffer themselves from the Islamist blowback.
Rashid concludes with the thought that only a new military culture and reformed
intelligence agencies can save Pakistan from its destructive spiral that is
inflaming the entire region.
While Descent Into Chaos is a work of original facts and high-quality
analysis, Rashid could have done better by resorting to the power of
cross-regional comparisons. For instance, Pakistan's intrusion in Afghanistan
is similar to the Syrian interference in Lebanon. A policy-oriented scholar
should ask why something on the lines of a mass-based "Cedar Revolution" in
Lebanon against Syrian dictation could not be replicated in Afghanistan to
defeat Pakistan's unwarranted meddling.
Rashid's wish to recast Pakistan's notorious coercive institutions is well
intentioned but unrealistic, as the recent flip-flops on bringing the ISI under
civilian control demonstrate. He is correct that reshaping Pakistan holds the
key to peace, but it is also imperative to forge popular nationalist
consciousness in societies that have suffered greatly from the expansionist
agenda of the Pakistan army and the ISI.
Descent Into Chaos. How the War Against Islamic Extremism is Being Lost in
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid. Allen Lane,
London, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-846-1175-1. Price: US$27.95, 484 pages.
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The neo-conservatives in Washington wanted no responsibilities after
overthrowing the Taliban and abandoned the region to warlords and drug barons.
Obsessed with superficial regime change and instant gratification, the Bush
White House gave up the chase of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in March 2002 and
redirected to Iraq, allowing the two deadly terrorist movements to bounce back.
