How American Experts are Analysing the Pak-Afghan Issues?

POSTCARD USA: Afghanistan! O not again! — Khalid Hasan
Daily Times, December 16, 2006

I am up to here with Afghanistan, the tribal belt, the comings and goings of stray camels, stray Taliban, stray smugglers, Coalition troops who took the wrong turn, drones be they on the ground or in the air, but more than all of them put together, I am tired of the think tanks of Washington and the experts who tell the rest of the world how to run its affairs while failing to persuade their own government to do so.

There were not many in this town of Washington who were not marching lustily to the beat of war drums as Bush got ready to invade Iraq. The few voices of sanity counselling peace were either denounced or ignored. And now the very people who either backed or condoned what this reckless and deluded administration unleashed in the Middle East are firing off warnings in every direction, in particular Pakistan’s. The problem is that there are just too many pandits in this place, more than are immersing themselves in the Ganges during a full moon.

One such pandit has just published a long essay in a quarterly journal on what ails Pakistan and Afghanistan, but basically the former. At one point he writes, “Supporting the Taliban was so important to Pakistan that Musharraf even considered going to war with the United States rather than abandon his allies in Afghanistan.” I am not making this up. Anyone who does not believe that need only look up the current issue of Foreign Affairs and read this and the rest of Barnett R Rubin’s thoughts. The bottom line of his long-winded analysis is that the United States should deal with Pakistan sternly and make it stop harbouring the Taliban and launching them into Afghanistan. But supposing Rubin is right and Gen. Musharraf did decide to declare war against America, did anyone in GHQ think of working out what would happen if Pakistan won the war. I shudder to think of the consequences of victory.

Rubin writes, “Contrary to the claims of the Bush administration, whose attention after the September 11 attacks quickly wandered off to Iraq and grand visions of transforming the Middle East, the main centre of terrorism ‘of global reach’ is in Pakistan. Al Qaeda has succeeded in re-establishing its base by skilfully exploiting the weakness of the state in the Pashtun tribal belt, along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.”

As all foreign correspondents quote their taxi driver, Rubin quotes a Western military commander in Afghanistan who has no name. The commander is reported to have told the writer, “Until we transform the tribal belt, the US is at risk.” Why did he not have the decency to use the word that he really had in mind, the word not being “transform” but “invade”. Rubin next informs us that “intelligence collected during Western military offensives in mid-2006 confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was continuing to actively support the Taliban leadership, which is now working out of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province, in western Pakistan. As a result, a cross-border insurgency has effectively exploited Afghanistan’s impoverished society and feeble government.”

The new bugbear out here is the city of Quetta. I suggest that Gen. Pervez Musharraf invite all the American pundits such as Rubin, fly them in a C-130 to Quetta and then let them loose in the city so that they can ferret out all the Taliban chieftains who are supposedly living there and making war. If Rubin is right then the world will be rid of those guys and if he is wrong, at least Quetta will be able to clear its name as the world’s dodgiest city.

I was at a Pakistan-Afghan do — there is at least one in Washington every week, if not two — this past week where Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times and United Press International, stated that Musharraf has given the ISI orders to “re-conquer” Afghanistan so that the Taliban can be reinstalled in power. I may add that a year or two ago, de Borchgrave wrote that Osama bin Laden was alive and well and living in the city of Peshawar. I wish he had told me where, in case he wasn’t interested in the cash himself, so that I could have collected the $25 million that Uncle Sam had on offer for the find.

One of the two speakers at the Pak-Afghan do was Hassan Abbas, once an up and coming police officer and now in the doghouse as far as the “permanent establishment” in Islamabad is concerned. I am glad he laid to rest at least one myth about Pashtun hospitality. He said Pashtun hospitality is “selective”. Not everyone who walks into a Pashtun compound is welcome or has a goat slaughtered in his honour. In other words, the widespread belief that anyone who seeks hospitality from a Pashtun gets it, is a myth. So, there goes another of my cherished beliefs. Abbas said after the meeting that the other day he had received a life-threatening message — guess where? — on his cell phone. It was a text message. Who said the ISI is not high tech! I suppose all its carrier pigeons have been shot down and roasted for dinner.

The other speaker was Michael Scheur, who was once head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit. Scheur said it was mistakenly thought by some that Pakistan is a “US proxy”. There was no such thing, he said, adding that the truth is that what Musharraf has done for the US is not in Pakistan’s interest. He brought his country to the brink of civil war. No other leader has gone out on a limb for America as Musharraf has. What Scheur implied was that Pakistan had done more than could be expected of any country and it could go so far and no farther.

Scheur is right. But in this town, he may be in a minority of one.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net