Musharraf and his Taliban 'pals'

Asia Times ^ | 19 July | Kaushik Kapisthalam

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It is an open secret in Pakistan that virtually the entire leadership of the Taliban military hierarchy lives and operates out of the city of Quetta, which is the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province. Since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul in late 2001, Western and Pakistani reporters have been able to interview Taliban commanders and other leading figures well inside Pakistan, especially around Quetta. Despite the documented facts, the Pakistan government has always flatly denied the presence of Taliban commanders in Quetta, or elsewhere inside Pakistan for that matter.

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I checked the list of excerpt-only sites, and I didn't see Asia Times listed, so here is the whole article:

Musharraf and his Taliban 'pals'
By Kaushik Kapisthalam

The signs are unmistakable: America's "war on terror" is in jeopardy in Afghanistan, although the locus of the renewed Taliban-led efforts seems to be across the border in Pakistan.

Playing favorites
US and other Western government officials have always been lavish in their praise of Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf. Indeed, Musharraf's supposed about-turn on supporting the Taliban after the September 11 attacks is now accepted without question. Most Taliban emerged from madrassas (seminaries) in Pakistan. However, it has always been a reality that Musharraf has treated the Taliban differently than he did al-Qaeda. For instance, even though Pakistan has arrested and handed over to the US many senior al-Qaeda leaders, not a single senior Taliban commander has been handed over by Pakistan to either the US or the Afghan government.

It is an open secret in Pakistan that virtually the entire leadership of the Taliban military hierarchy lives and operates out of the city of Quetta, which is the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province. Since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul in late 2001, Western and Pakistani reporters have been able to interview Taliban commanders and other leading figures well inside Pakistan, especially around Quetta. Despite the documented facts, the Pakistan government has always flatly denied the presence of Taliban commanders in Quetta, or elsewhere inside Pakistan for that matter.

Afghan anger
The Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai has for some time been angry at the role of Pakistan in the recent resurgence of the Taliban. In the run-up to the Afghan presidential elections last year, Karzai complained about Taliban bases inside Pakistan to US President George W Bush. In the days that followed, Bush reportedly had a quiet conversation with Musharraf, asking him to look into Taliban activity emanating from Quetta. The Taliban attacks ended almost immediately.

The outgoing US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, was a staunch critic of Pakistan's support for the Taliban. However, his anger was especially evident when he excoriated Pakistan a few weeks ago after a Pakistani television network was able to interview a Taliban commander named Mullah Usmani. Khalilzad questioned Pakistan's sincerity and wondered how a television network was able to talk to a Taliban commander even as Pakistani officials denied a Taliban presence in the country. What was left unsaid was that the US government soon came to know that Mullah Usmani gave the interview not from the tribal areas of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan, but from the port city of Karachi.

To add substance to the allegations, Anis, the Afghan government daily, noted in its June 23 issue that Taliban were openly living in the Kachlogh and Pashtunabad regions of Quetta, and based their military presence in those regions. The report quoted people who recently visited Quetta and adjoining areas. The government-sponsored daily then went on to claim that senior Taliban leaders lived in residential blocks belonging to the Pakistani army in a place called Choni, which "is a military base and training center for the Pakistani army". Taliban commanders were being ferried inside Pakistan by the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), the report added.

Pakistan's fears
Ahmed Rashid, a noted expert on the Taliban, recently commented that behind Pakistan's continuing sponsorship of the Taliban and their destabilization efforts in Afghanistan lies a fear of India. During the Taliban years after they came into power in 1996, Pakistan essentially shut out other countries from Afghanistan. However, since the Taliban were deposed, India has moved into Afghanistan in a big way, with sponsorship of massive reconstruction projects, such as building key roads, hydroelectric facilities, schools and hospitals. While this may not seem dangerous to most observers, Pakistan's ruling elite have always taught themselves to see a sinister plot behind every Indian effort and the idea of an Indian presence on their Western borders accentuates Pakistani fears.

Pakistan's Urdu newspapers, whose content is tightly controlled by the government and intelligence agencies, routinely publish stories of "Indian agents" being involved in the separatist violence in Balochistan, and even the sectarian attacks deep inside Pakistan. Pakistan's military commanders and other leaders have also continued to point the finger at Indian "consulates" in the Afghan towns of Kandahar and Jalalabad as the source of troubles between Afghanistan and Pakistan. These fears, which many believe are unfounded, are used as a basis by the Pakistani establishment to justify continued support to the Taliban.

However, not many in Pakistan acknowledge what some see as extraordinary efforts by the US to accommodate Pakistani concerns in Afghanistan. To begin with, the US had pressed the Karzai government to restrict its security ties with India. The US also allowed Pakistan to veto a possible Indian military presence in Afghanistan, even though Indian troops there could have relieved the US of a tremendous burden, given the global American military deployment. American diplomats also pressured Karzai to curtail the power of former Northern Alliance elements, many of whom have been sidelined since 2004. This was done solely to assuage Pakistani concerns.

After the Afghan presidential election last year, the US negotiated a deal between the Karzai government and Pakistan under which former Taliban leaders would receive amnesty and be given roles in the government if they surrendered and renounced violence. For its part, Pakistan was supposed to hand over senior hardcore Taliban commanders to the Afghan government. However, when the time came for Pakistan to live up to its end of the bargain, the Musharraf government reneged. One former Western diplomat commented to Asia Times Online, "The Paks got greedy. They have figured that they need not settle for partial influence in Kabul when they can use the Talibs to control most of Afghanistan." The Pakistanis simply did not want to see a strong central government in Kabul, the diplomat added.

Musharraf's promise
Western leaders tout Musharraf's speech to Pakistanis a couple of days after September 11, in which he justified his decision to join the US side against jihadis. But few seem to recall that Musharraf made another less publicized speech on September 19, 2001 in Urdu, Pakistan's national language, in which he made it clear that he would do everything within his power to make sure that the Taliban emerged unharmed in the "war on terror". While the English-language speech was for Western consumption, the Urdu speech was meant to assuage his countrymen regarding the Taliban. Whether the US wants to admit it or not, it is patent now that Musharraf has kept that particular promise to protect the Taliban.

In a speech to the Australian Press Club in June this year, Musharraf justified Pakistan's support for the Taliban and insinuated that the US was to blame for September 11 because of its refusal to engage the Taliban regime before that event. To some, this was proof that the Pakistani establishment still felt that supporting the Taliban was in Pakistan's interests.

The former Western diplomat added that many in US military circles were deeply unhappy about Pakistan's role. The recent killing of US Navy special forces operatives and the downing of a US helicopter in northern Kunar province of Afghanistan were the handiwork not of the Taliban but of militiamen loyal to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, according to the diplomat. Hekmatyar, who was based in Iran during the Taliban rule over Kabul, had now teamed up with Taliban commander Jalauddin Haqqani, both of whom were currently under the protection of the ISI, he said.

Musharraf and the Pakistani military establishment are unlikely to end their sponsorship of the Taliban, regardless of what the Afghan government or the coalition field commanders in Afghanistan may say or do. Some experts feel that it may be time for Bush to remind Musharraf that Pakistan can either be with the Taliban, or with the US - a choice that Musharraf supposedly made in favor of the latter soon after September 11. Without such pressure, however, it seems certain that America's Afghan project is inexorably heading towards disaster.