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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (130156)	4/26/2004 9:46:10 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Sarmad, You stated that the US sponsored the Taliban and Bin Laden.. That was false. Because both entities gained power only AFTER the US had ceased its involvement with the Mujahedin and drastically curtailed/ceased its involvement with Pakistan.. Benazir Bhutto can be credited with being the primary patron of the Taliban, as she sought to find some form of stabilizing entity within Afghanistan that would facilitate secure access for Pakistani goods to Iran and the rest of the region.. And in order to assist them in capturing Kabul and defeating Massoud's forces (northern alliance), ISI approved the transfer of tonnes of armaments that had been stashed in Afghanistan.. I really suggest that you read Stephen Coll's book.. It seems very well researched, balanced, historical, and doesn't exhibit any particular political bias. It exposes the fact that various people, with vastly different agendas, came together to defeat the Soviets.. And when the US departed the scene, those interests then commenced to fight amongst one another for pre-dominance. Doing the supply and funding through secrecy or third parties does not invalidate the claim. Sarmad.. the CIA was trying to fund various groups.. It secretly was funding Massoud during the final stages of the Soviet withdrawal. They had him on a monthly retainer that averaged $250,000, all without ISI approval, and strictly in violation of our accord with them.. And later we withdrew that support, and recommenced it.. The CIA was obviously ham-strung by the fact that it was prohibited by ISI from actually operating within Afghanistan. Thus, without independent spy networks, we were forced to rely upon the ISI for reports on the how operations were progressing.. We left our aid and support to the ISI to dole out.. What choice did we have? We wanted to beat the Soviets, and the ISI dictated the terms as to how that battle would be waged. Your comments seem to display a tremendous naivete with regard to how influence is gained and lost in many of these undeveloped countries. We pay, the Soviets paid, and so did almost every other country that perceived an interest in the outcome of the war in Afghanistan. Our money buys us influence, just as it did in defeating the Taliban several years ago. But now we're in Afghanistan and taking a stake in the final outcome, having learned that the ISI cannot be trusted to prevent terrorist organizations from developing there (or using it as a training base).. One more thing from Coll's book I found rather interesting. It was a comment about how the ISI had an interest in using militant Arab mercenaries to wage their war in Kashmir. They had found that were just not sufficient quantities of available recruits to maintain the temple of the insurgency. So they resolved to use some of the Arabs and mujadhedin they had trained and outfitted to operate there. Bottom line.. the US has certainly made its mistakes in policy in Afghanistan, but for you to focus on that, while deliberately excluding the responsibility of the ISI and Arab intelligence agencies which sought to expand their Madrassas and Wahhabist religious beliefs, is just incredibly naive, if not historical revisionism at its worst. Hawk