VIEW: Taliban resurgence —Shaukat Qadir
Daily Times, October 14, 2006
The good will towards the Americans was not to last too long. The Afghans had mistakenly thought that the Americans, having freed them from the Taliban, would immediately put in place a government of their own and leave
There should have been no military operation in Waziristan or for that matter in Balochistan. The kind of peace accord that has been signed, however uneasy it might be, should have been the starting point of all negotiations. This is my perspective. But to understand it some background may be necessary.
When the Taliban initially went on a conquering drive in Afghanistan, they virtually faced no resistance until Jalalabad. The reason was simple: the Afghans were fed up with the internecine civil war waged by warlords. The Taliban promised a more just rule and the people deserted the warlords to join the Taliban. One of the forgotten facts is that as they progressed, the Taliban burnt all poppy fields they came across. Of course, a year later they were paying farmers to grow poppy again because they could not generate any income otherwise.
In their first couple of years the Taliban delivered what they promised; Afghanistan witnessed perhaps the most representative rule of its history through village and tribal councils; women were not oppressed, they worked and moved freely in market places buying and selling their wares; schools reopened; hospitals began to function and, life began to return towards normalcy — even though Afghanistan was not receiving the international assistance it should have been given.
From 1996, after Osama bin Laden was forced to move out of Sudan and sought refuge in Afghanistan, things began to change. Osama assured Mulla Omer of higher earnings from his poppy produce and, in return, demanded a more stringent application of the Wahhabi version of Islam. The religious police was further empowered and women were ordered not to work, not even as teachers or doctors.
Slowly the situation worsened: any male Afghan’s beard could be measured and, if not of the right size, he could be forced to bend over in the street and be caned on his buttocks for this violation. Women, accompanied by their men, whether husband, father, brother, or son, could be publicly subjected to the same humiliation for as small a crime as having a veil smaller than deemed appropriate by the religious police. The proud Afghan was proud no more. He was humiliated and became as fed up with the Taliban as he had been with the chaos that had preceded them.
In this period I have heard the Taliban being cursed roundly by the Pashtun on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line and I have heard them thank God when the Americans decided to invade Afghanistan. I have heard them pray for the Americans, vowing to assist them in toppling the Taliban, and this includes Pashtun from Waziristan. Thus when US forces invaded and again conquered virtually without battle, except at Jalalabad and Kandahar, their phenomenal success was not solely theirs or that of the National Alliance, the only group that the Taliban had failed to conquer, but was assisted by a series of mini-revolts throughout Afghanistan.
However, the good will towards the Americans was not to last too long. The Afghans had mistakenly thought that the Americans, having freed them from the Taliban, would immediately put in place a government of their own and leave. Not only did the formulation of a government take considerable time, it also became apparent to the Afghans and their Pashtun brethren in Pakistan that the Americans were interested in putting together a pro-US government. Even that the Afghans might have lived with, but it also became apparent that the Americans and their allies had no intention of leaving.
While individually most Americans are friendly and easy to get along with, collectively, they acquire an arrogance that is unbelievable. And they make no effort to mask their contempt for non-Americans. Since there were still pockets of resistance in Afghanistan, US troops clamped down hard and indiscriminately and their contempt for the local population became increasingly visible. Once again I witnessed an about-face by the Pashtun in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Some of them the very same people who had prayed for American success and even helped and assisted them. When I reminded them of it, they admitted to having been fools and, surprisingly, began to extol the Taliban. Once again I reminded them of what they had said about the Taliban and the invariable. They replied: “At least they were from among us.”
Incidents like those at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay or other such facilities in Afghanistan, which do actually exist, become known to most of us after the media exposes them. But on the tribal grapevine these facts become known even as the facilities are under construction. It was thus inevitable that the anti-American feeling in Afghanistan and their Pashtun brethren in Pakistan would solidify into hatred, which it did, and result in a nationalist resistance against the occupation forces.
And that is how it really began: a nationalist movement of Afghan Pashtuns assisted by their fellow Pashtuns from across the Durand line to oust the invaders who humiliated them. For these people it is a continuation of the US-legitimised jihad they had fought at the behest and with the support of the Pakistani establishment against the previous (white Russian) invaders.
The author is a retired brigadier. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI).
No comments:
Post a Comment