Pakistan: the New Afghanistan
Arnaud de Borchgrave
NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Aug. 29, 2002
newsmax.com
WASHINGTON – Trying to refocus America's war on terror, Gen. Tommy Franks couldn't mention the country by name without provoking a collective case of gastric distress in the Bush administration.
This war "won't be finished," he said during a visit to the Bagram air base near Kabul, until terrorist cells are hunted down throughout the region. Pakistan, not Iraq, was in the general's crosshairs.
The unspeakable is that Pakistan is the new Afghanistan, a privileged sanctuary for hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban operatives. Some estimates go as high as 5,000.
The Iraqi/al-Qaeda connection is yet to be established beyond the fact that so-called Afghan Arabs hailed from 22 Arab countries, including Iraq, and most other Muslim nations. The Pakistani/al-Qaeda connection is visible to all but the geopolitically challenged.
Can't Concede the Obvious
To concede the obvious would not only undermine President (for life?) Pervez Musharraf, now busy tailoring democratic sheep's clothing for a military dictatorship, but would be an admission of military failure in Afghanistan.
Most al-Qaeda fighters slipped out of the Tora Bora trap last December and into the mountainous Pakistani tribal areas where the Pakistani army claimed to have deployed a "watertight" blocking force. Those of us in the area at the time saw no such thing and even Pakistani army officers told us this was "mission impossible."
By mid-December, there were only 4,500 Pakistani troops along several hundred miles of possible escape routes. They were unfamiliar with the terrain as tribal areas had been off-limits to the army since independence. It was hardly surprising that the Pakistani military intercepted only a handful of al-Qaeda fighters. Further inland, security forces caught some 300 out of several thousand who got away.
Some 15,000 Pakistani jihadis ("holy" warriors), not including the 10,000 who were pressed into "volunteering" by their mullahs to assist collapsing Taliban forces last October, were trained in al-Qaeda camps since 1997. Most of them are now part of a formidable clandestine network that is made up of mosques and madrassas (Koranic schools) that cover the entire country.
Indian intelligence has verified the claim of a prominent Pakistani tribal leader that Osama bin Laden and some 50 escorts escaped in the second week of December and moved into Peshawar, the teeming capital of the Northwest Frontier Province. Most of its 3.5 million inhabitants are opposed to the Pakistani military government and are pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda.
In the past two weeks, according to the same sources, bin Laden and several members of his family moved to Karachi, the sprawling port city of 12 million located 900 miles to the south on the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden's second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, is still with him.
U.S. Special Forces have been working covertly with the Pakistani military throughout the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for most of the year. It's been slim pickings.
Al-Qaeda terrorists have long since scattered deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where they enjoy the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. ISI supervises infiltrations of "freedom fighters" into Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian-controlled Muslim state.
'Sacred Cause'
Musharraf recently pledged to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to "permanently" halt these infiltrations across the line of control as Pakistan's contribution to lowering tensions with India. But Musharraf reneged, or ISI did for him, as accusations flew about the land that he had betrayed the "sacred cause" of Kashmir. At a closed meeting with Pakistan's top media editors, three newspaper editors called him "coward" to his face.
Despite last April's rigged plebiscite that gave him five more years as president and chief of the armed forces, hostile forces besiege Musharraf. He has survived six assassination plots. Like Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Greek mythology guarding the entrance of Hades, he is keeping at bay:
the unreconstructed and largely irresponsible political parties that have pushed the country into military dictatorships for half its lifetime since independence;
the medieval clergy whose idea of progress is Taliban;
and the military spooks of ISI whose idea of global power is al-Qaeda with nukes.
'America Should Concede Defeat'
The man orchestrating hostile extremist forces is the ubiquitous former ISI chief Hamid Gul, an admirer of bin Laden and a friend of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the former Taliban leader.
In his latest media statement, Gul said this week: "America should concede defeat in Afghanistan. All it controls is Kabul and even there it's shaky. The country is slowly but surely coming back to [Taliban] control."
Musharraf's numerous political opponents point to his appointment of Raja Irshad as deputy attorney general as proof he is keeping his options open on the extremist side of the political ledger. One of Irshad's sons was a member of al-Qaeda and died in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. A memorial service was conducted for him by Hafiz Saeed, chief of the extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned by Musharraf. Irshad is a known defender of the jihadi ("holy" warrior) cause.
Wilderness of Distorting Mirrors
Some of the FBI agents working in Pakistan with their Pakistani counterparts say privately they sometimes get the feeling they are operating in a wilderness of distorting mirrors. The ISI chief and his top lieutenants are with Musharraf, but part of the 12,000-strong organization is ignoring directives and supporting the religious opposition financially and politically.
West, Not Pakistan, Likes Musharraf
Musharraf remains Pakistan's most popular man in the West. At home, he is now arguably the most unpopular.
He has antagonized every key segment of Pakistani society, even his own beloved army. Ambitious corps commanders in the queue for a fourth star are now looking at retirement while Musharraf still holds the top military job, a situation Gul keeps exploiting to agitate Islamist generals further down the promotion ladder.
Musharraf is between two dangers, either of which is difficult to avoid without encountering the other, a classic Hobson's choice.
If Musharraf rigs the national elections, now scheduled for Oct. 10, as is widely suspected he will have to do, he will face a formidable array of opponents, political and military.
If the elections are free and fair, his opposition will write the music and Musharraf will have to learn some new political dance steps – or dissolve Parliament, which he has decreed one of the 29 amendments to the constitution permits him to do.
The president can now appoint the prime minister, Supreme Court justices, armed services chiefs, 10 corps commanders and the heads of intelligence and security services. A dictatorial democracy is a chimerical political construct.
More worrisome is the bitterness of Islamist generals who backed Taliban and al-Qaeda. It is most likely from their ranks that the seventh assassination attempt will come from. |
