FROM HOLY WAR TO TERRORISM

 It was 17 August 1988. Moments before Hafiz Taj Mohammad, who was walking towards his field near the village of Dhok Kamal, near the Sutlej River eight miles north of Bahawalpur, heard the roar of engines and looked up. He watched incredulously as the lumbering plane, which was still rising steadily through 5000 feet, suddenly dropped its nose to fly almost straight at the ground, before, with some superhuman effort, it climbed again. Then, as though its strength had finally gone, it plunged down to extinction. To the man below there was no outward reason, no missile, no mid-air explosion, no fire, no engine trailing smoke, nothing to forewarn of such a disaster.

Dead were the President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq, and the man who might have succeeded him had he survived, General Akhtar Abdul Rahman Khan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Gone were the two most powerful men in Pakistan, the head of state and the man who for eight years until 1987, and headed the ISI. At a stroke the Afghan resistance fighters, the Mujahideen, had lost their two most influential champions.

 When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979, the Pentagon and CIA believed that the Soviet Army would be in full control in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks. They adopted a wait and see attitude. However, General Zia and Akhtar had recognized the potential of the situation, and from the beginning they had the courage to advocate taking on the world’s second most powerful superpower on the battlefield. They mostly relied on their warrior background, their historical tradition of prickly independence, their fortitude and stamina, coupled with the compelling moral force of jehad. The terrain also favoured the guerilla war.

 Afghan war threatened to spill over the border. Pakistan felt insecure. India was on our eastern flank, an enormous nation of 800 million hostile Hindus, with whom Pakistan had fought three times. To the west lay Afghanistan and the Soviets, a communist superpower whose army was now deployed within easy reach of the mountain passes into Pakistan. Potentially, it was a highly dangerous strategic situation. India and the Soviet Union were allies; should they combine, Pakistan faced the prospect of being squeezed out of existence. Our nervousness was heightened by the fact that the USSR was a nuclear giant, and India had developed a nuclear capability, which we were seeking to emulate for obvious reasons of self-defence.

 Thus, in the overall interest of Pakistan they jointly decided to support the Afghan Mujahideen covertly. It was a decision of far reaching effect, which eventually played a predominant role in the break up of the Soviet Union.

 The Afghan Jehad united the Muslim world for the first time in the twentieth century. Jehad in the western eyes had been a rallying force when it was mobilized against the Soviet Union but as it began to have its spill over effect on Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere it became speedily demonised. The polarization quickened after the 1991 Gulf War, which split the Muslim world into the rival camps: which appeased western foreign policy and those, which defied them. Those who defied the US policies were promptly labeled as ‘Fundamentalists’.

 Pakistan’s power structure was radically changed soon after a mysterious crash in August 1988, which cost the lives of General Zia, Akhtar along with cream of the officer’s class of the Pakistan Army. General Zia and Akhtar had planned and implemented Pakistan’s Afghan Policy for years during the Soviet occupation. With their death, new power and policies had emerged to challenge the ISI’s authority and the Afghan policy.

 Soon after the death of General Zia, there had been frequent changes in the governments of Pakistan. And so was the case with heads of the ISI. Afghan policy after the Soviet withdrawal was run at random and on ad-hoc basis with frequent interferences in their internal matters.  Pakistan lost its neutrality stance with Afghan leaders; which was once the scarlet thread of Pak- Afghan relations.

 With the Soviet break up, the geo-political and strategic environments were spinning so fast that countries were unable to escape its devastating effects. A new World Order had emerged led by the US with no worthwhile opposition in the world. Former enemies were embraced as long-lost friends, while tried and trusted friends were discarded overnight. With the Soviets out of the ‘big game’, the US turned its sensors elsewhere in the world: the Gulf, Somalia, China and the Central Asian States.

 The suicidal attack on World Trade Center and Pentagon on 11th September, Perhaps of it's kind the most horrific act of terrorism and being on US soil shocked and panicked NOT only the American Nation but the entire world. It was widely condemned than any other case of terrorism in the world history. All the states in the world got united to fight jointly against terrorism but surprisingly not against the ‘state terrorism’. Some states joined voluntarily and others because of the economic compulsion or a direct threat from a Super power. Thus a free hand was given to USA to wage war against the Taliban in the garb of hot pursuit to capture Usama, dead or alive despite the willingness of Taliban to hand him over to a neutral country, if ‘prima facie’ evidence is handed over to them.

 The US attack on Afghanistan was primarily aimed to remove the government of Taliban in the garb of war against ‘terrorism’ to have an access to the “oil” of Central Asian States. Allegedly, the ‘Oil Tycoons’ of US and Saudi Arabia (Unicol and Delta oil companies) bribed Bush with million of dollars to pave the way for the oil pipeline in which they had sunk millions of dollars. The war was certainly not against Usama or Mulla Umar as No serious efforts were ever made to capture them alive. There are no two opinions about Mulla Umar being alive and living in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance would like to see Mulla Umar alive so that they can accrue maximum and continuous support from United States. So is the case with Hamid Karzai. He needs the maximum support of Pukhtoon tribes against Northern Alliance. The tribes who are covertly protecting Mulla Umar are overtly supporting him. The US also strongly feels that he is no more a threat to her interest as he was neither a member of Al Qaida nor ever involved in any act of terrorism.

 So is the case of Usama. The US would like to keep Usama alive even if he has been killed so that they have an excuse for their presence in Afghanistan. In case he is already dead, and even ‘prima facie’ evidence has been found, his death would not be publicly acknowledged by the US. Alive Usama is worth a billion dollar to US interests in the region.

 The overall military strategy designed to drive the Soviets out was the classic guerrila one of death by a thousand cuts. General Akhtar never once sought to confront the enemy in a large-scale conventional battle. He appreciated that ambushes, assassinations, attack on supply convoys, bridges, pipelines, and airfields, with the avoidance of setpiece battles were the way to win the war. But Taliban failed to follow his strategy when attacked by US. They opted to fight a conventional war against a super power for which they were neither trained  nor equipped.

 The recent rocket attacks and ambushes conducted by the remnants of Taliban/ Al Qaida or the rival tribes of Hamid Karzai indicates the re-emergence of the strategy of ‘Death By Thousands Cuts’. And if it is continued, probably it will divide Afghanistan into two halves. But one thing is certain; peace in Afghanistan is a distant possibility.