Asia Times: Pakistan and the Taliban revisited


	December 22, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Pakistan and the Taliban revisited
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - With Afghanistan's six-month interim government due to take over on Saturday, and with the Northern Alliance expected to play a pivotal role in the administration, the country once again appears destined to become a playing field for regional powers, especially India and Pakistan, given the current high level of tension between these two.

This theory was reinforced recently when Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's spokesperson, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, revealed in a statement that over 100 Pakistani prisoners captured in Afghanistan had been taken to India. He suggested that the prisoners might be presented by New Delhi before the world media as Pakistani infiltrators in Indian Kashmir, thereby creating an excuse for India to attack Pakistani Kashmir.

Wrong or right, this statement shows that the Pakistani leadership has come to realize that their hopes of a sympathetic Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai's interim government have been dashed.

Pashtun Karzai had been considered pro-Pakistan, but thoughts that he would help Islamabad's cause were dashed when Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and Minister of the Interior Yunus Qanooni visited India and attacked Pakistan. They are both from the pro-India Northern Alliance.

And recently, General Niamullah Jalili, the head of the Afghanistan Secret Intelligence Service, issued a statement saying that Afghanistan was in danger from one thing - sabotage from foreign countries, countries that were Afghanistan's enemies, such as Pakistan. Jalili added, "We have to be very careful to protect Afghanistan against them." He believes that Pakistan is making fake noises about being a partner in the war on terrorism, and that it is still hand-in-glove with the Taliban, whom he said are already established in Quetta, Pakistan.

He observed that Pakistan and Taliban leader Mullah Omar had the same aim and the the same strategy, which was to retain some influence in Afghanistan. He said that when the Northern Alliance moved into the former Taliban interior ministry in Kabul, they found eight direct phone links to Islamabad's military and intelligence services, proving that the close ties that had seen Pakistan bring the Taliban to power in 1996 still existed.

This statement clearly indicates that Afghanistan's new state apparatus is being prepared to go against Pakistan, no matter who heads the government.

To gain a perspective on politics in Afghanistan, it is pertinent to look back in history. Since the mid-18th century, only three non-Pashtun administrations have been able to rule Kabul for more than a few months at a time. These include the rule of Bacha Saka, that of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani after the fall of communist regime in the early 1990s, and now the rule of the Northern Alliance after the fall of the Taliban.

In these 250 years, Pashtuns have always banded together to maintain their stranglehold on Kabul, and non-Pashtun rule has only ever emerged after social unrest or civil war, only to be broken as soon as the Pashtuns regrouped.

And among the Pashtuns, the Taliban have been the only ones to have been able to group the many Pashtun tribes under one banner. Former monarch Zahir Shah still has a reasonable following among Pashtuns and even in non-Pashtun areas, including Herat, Kabul, Kunduz, Kandahar and Nangarhar, but due to his age, 87, he personally cannot play an active role in gathering them onto one platform.

Former mujahideen Abdul Haq, executed in Afghanistan by the Taliban for trying to rally support against them, had the ability to gather all of the pro-Shah warlords, but there is no-one of his stature around. Now, the many commanders have divided the country into fiefdoms, just as they had before the Taliban arrived on the scene.

On the other hand, the Taliban's strong networks still exist in the Pashtun belt, and they are still the only organized force capable of leading the Pashtuns. It is believed by some analysts that once the real political topsy-turvy begins in Kabul, as inevitably it will, the Taliban will reactivate their network and emerge as the only force capable of creating a serious problem for the peace-keeping troops in the country and the interim set-up.

More than 50 Royal Marines have begun work in Afghanistan as the vanguard of a United Kingdom-led multinational security force. British troops will shoulder much of the burden of peace-keeping activities with up to 1,500 expected to be deployed in the country.

The assassination of the Northern Alliance's highly accomplished defense minister, Ahmed Shah Masoud, shortly before September 11, was a wonderful strategic move authored by Osama bin Laden as he was the only commander capable of holding the diverse factions of the alliance together.

To illustrate this point, damaging cracks have already emerged within the alliance. Uzbek General Abdurrashid Dostum, Tajik Ismail Khan and Haji Qadeer all are angered that they have not been given representation in the interim government. As, too, are Abdul Rasool Sayyaf and the leader of the Northern Alliance, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The current situation, then, suggests that from the outset Pakistan was not happy at the removal of the Taliban, but was under strong US pressure to change its policy of support of the pariah regime. Now, sandwiched between a certainly hostile India and a likely unfriendly Afghanistan, Pakistan will have little choice that when the Taliban activates their network for a guerrilla war, based in the Pakistani tribal belt, Islamabad will turn a blind eye, if not support them.

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