Author: G Parthasarathy
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: March 22, 2001
When the passengers of the hijacked
IC 814 were released on December 31, 1999, their only desire was to return
from their medieval and austere surroundings in Kandahar, to their near
and dear ones in Delhi. The hijackers were Pakistanis -- members of the
Harkat ul Mujahideen -- a terrorist group supported and provided training
and other facilities by the Taleban in Khost and elsewhere in Afghanistan.
It was quite obvious that the Taleban
had been duplicitous in supporting the aims of the hijackers on the one
hand, while pretending to be neutral go betweens on the other, throughout
the hijacking. But, any student of sub-continental history could not fail
to understand the symbolism of what transpired in Kandahar, the seat of
Pashtun power, from where the plains of "Hindustan" had been invaded over
the centuries.
While Mullah Omar has been projected
as a puritanical Islamic leader and even assumed the title of Amir ul Momineen
(Leader of the Faithful), the establishment of Kandahar rather than Kabul
as the seat of Afghan power and governance is not without its own significance.
It indicates that Omar is also a staunch Pashtun nationalist not averse
to resorting to the use of traditional symbols of power and authority of
past Afghan rulers. The Taleban leadership is drawn predominantly from
Pashtuns of the Durrani clan who hail from Kandahar. Omar himself is, however,
believed to be from the rival Ghilzai Pashtun clan.
The Kandaharis still offer prayers
at the mausoleum of the founding father of Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Abdali.
They proudly recall how Abdali pillaged and looted Delhi, Lahore and Multan
and established Afghan power in Kashmir in the eighteenth century. Barely
a stone's throw away from Abdali's mausoleum is the shrine where the "Cloak"
of the Prophet Mohammed is housed. Mullah Omar emerged before the people
of Kandahar with the Cloak in 1994, to be ordained as the Amir ul Momineen,
in order to establish his legitimacy as having been divinely ordained to
lead the Durranis and, therefore, the whole of Afghanistan.
The ISI, that was prominently present,
as the Taleban moved into Kandahar, had obviously tutored the good Mullah
well. He had been told that traditional symbolism had to accompany his
religious fanaticism, if he was to win acceptance and legitimacy as the
leader of the Pashtuns.
Pakistan's involvement with the
fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan is of long standing. It goes back
to 1975 when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto played host to Gulbuddin Hikmetayar in
a bid to destabilize the progressive, secular and nationalist government
of President Daud. The United States joined the fray in supporting the
likes of Hikmetayar, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
The Pashtun youth comprising the
Taleban were drawn from Afghan refugees who had joined the Deobandi Madrassas
in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan. These Madrassas
were largely controlled and run by the Jamiat Ulema e Islam, an NWFP based
fundamentalist Party, headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman.
The entire strategy of nurturing
the Taleban was the brainchild of Benazir's Interior (Home) Minister Major
General Nasrullah Babbar. While the ISI had used people like Hikmetayar
primarily to see that Pakistan installed a compliant regime in Kabul in
a quest for "strategic depth" against India, Babbar had more grandiose
plans. He advocated the opening of a land route from Central Asia to the
Baluchistan coast which would make Pakistan the strategic hub for the exploitation
of the immense oil and gas resources of the region.
Apart from being religious zealots,
the Taleban are also hardcore Pashtun Durrani nationalists who believe
that there can be no question of genuinely sharing powers with other nationalities
in Afghanistan like the Tadjiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. This was after all
the way successive Durrani rulers from Ahmed Shah Abdali behaved. The ISI
evidently believes that for Pakistan to gain abiding "strategic depth"
against India the Taleban has to be helped by all means to establish hegemony
over the whole of Afghanistan.
This ignores the fact that the Pashtuns
themselves constitute only around 40 per cent of the population of Afghanistan.
Interestingly, Musharraf himself has publicly articulated the cause of
Pashtun hegemony in Afghanistan. It is in the pursuit of this policy that
Pakistan now finds itself totally isolated from the international community
on its Afghanistan policy. It is abhorrence and concern about the policies
of the Taleban that has brought together an interesting coalition of forces
ranging from Iran, India, China and the Central Asian countries on the
one hand, to the United States and Russia on the other.
Pakistan has strategically overextended
itself both directly in India, with its efforts to destabilize and undermine
our secular, democratic and pluralistic structure and in its ambitions
in Afghanistan. Any strategy to deal with Pakistan has necessarily dealt
with the follies of its Afghan policies. The Taleban are a menace internationally
not only because of their resort to medieval, extremist, Jihadi religious
zeal, as exhibited by their wanton destruction of their country's priceless
historical heritage, but also because of their inability to respect democratic
norms either domestically or internationally. Like their Pakistani ISI
mentors, they seem to care little for the welfare of their own people,
while pursuing ambitious and unattainable external goals.
Lord Curzon had once described Afghanistan
as the "Cockpit of Asia". He realized that the borders of India had to
be defended at the Khyber Pass, even as he played the "Great Game" of containing
Russian influence, through adroit political and diplomatic manoeuvring,
within Afghanistan and beyond. New Delhi does not, however, have to worry
about Russian influence today, as it sees Moscow as a partner and not as
a rival, in dealing with the menace of religious extremism sponsored and
supported by the ISI-Taleban nexus.
It is now for us to strengthen the
broad-based international coalition that has emerged to deal with this
menace. It is imperative that every possible means should be used to prevent
the Taleban from exercising its hegemony up to the Amu Darya River on Afghanistan's
borders with Central Asia.
The Pashtuns will eventually realize
that all the help from ISI generals conducting their military operations
will not enable them to fulfill their territorial ambitions in Northern
Afghanistan. It would be only natural that they will then turn their eyes
southwards towards their borders on the Durand Line-borders that were thrust
down their throats by the British. Only then will Pakistan's strategic
Pundits and Islamists like Generals Hamid Gul and Mirza Aslam Beg and Jihadis
like Hafiz Mohammad Syed remember that the roads that Ahmed Shah Abdali
took to Delhi from Kandahar also pass through Multan and Lahore.
The Taleban today has many friends
and allies in Pakistan, ranging from Maulana Fazlur Rahman's JUI Party,
to the virulently anti-Shia Sipah e Sahiba -- far more friends and kinsmen
than Ahmad Shah Abdali had in these places, during his marauding expeditions
in the eighteenth century. Pashtun nationalism cannot be constantly exploited
by Pakistan under the garb of Islamic solidarity.
It is obvious that the Punjabi military
elite is going to dominate the national life of Pakistan and especially
the conduct of relations with India in the foreseeable future. Given the
compulsive hostility of this elite, it would be naïve to assume that
Islamabad is going to change course in the conduct of relations with us,
merely by our uttering sweet words, or by reciting a few couplets of Faiz
in Urdu, or by holding candle-light vigils at Wagah.
The hard- headed khakis of Rawalpindi
will change their policies only when they find that they are paying too
heavy a price in pursuing them. Nations that go with a begging bowl to
world capitals for assistance to repay their debts and that cannot govern
themselves in a civilized, democratic manner are ill placed to entertain
exaggerated notions about their influence and power. Dealing effectively
with developments in Afghanistan will certainly help us in making this
reality clear to the Generals across the border.
