Author: K Subrahmaniam
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 26, 2002
In 1940 June, Adolf Hitler allowed
the British expeditionary force in France, trapped at Dunkirk, to escape
as the German Wehrmacht swept through. Hitler's expectation was that the
British would not be able to continue the war after the fall of France,
and allowing the British troops to be evacuated, would cam him the goodwill
of Britain. Hitler was thoroughly mistaken. Britain fought on, and four
years later, the British troops stormed the beaches of Normandy as part
of Operation Overlord which liberated Western Europe.
According to a story published by
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, the Americans allowed Pakistan to evacuate
thousands of its army officers and personnel trapped in Kunduz, Afghanistan,
before it fell to the force-, of Northern Alliance on November 25. Pakistan
evacuated not only its personnel but also a member of Al Qaeda and Taliban
cadres. It was somewhat analogous to the British taking General De Gaulle
and the Free French cadres along with their troops during the Dunkirk evacuation.
In November General Musharraf was
pressing hard that moderate Taliban leaders should have a role in the new
administration to be formed in Kabul. Though a number of Taliban were evacuated
from Kunduz, they were never subsequently brought out as moderate Taliban.
A logical inference is that those evacuated from Kunduz were not moderate
but hard-core Taliban and, therefore, could not be projected in public.
The Americans are prepared to brave
the criticism of the world while they try to break down the Taliban and
Al Qaeda prisoners taken at Kunduz and transported to Guantanamo. According
to Seymoeir Hersh's story, the Americans never got access to the Al Qaeda
and Taliban cadres airlifted out of Kunduz. It is obvious they would have
been more reliable sources of information for the Americans. But it was
not in Pakistan's interest to permit the Americans to question them as
that would have revealed the full extent of collusion between Al Qaeda,
Taliban and the Musharraf regime.
One should expect the leadership
of Al Qaeda and Taliban, taken out of Kunduz, will he low for same time
before they start to regroup in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar
are also believed to have slipped into Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf's crackdown
on the terrorist units has only been perfunctory. When more than 2 lakh
of Lashkar-e-Taiba cadres assembled at Muridke for their annual function,
arresting just a few hundred will not make much of a dent. These terrorists
would be encouraged by the ease with which Gen. Musharraf could con the
Americans to airlift out of Kunduz the hardcore Taliban and Al Qaeda cadres
and the Pakistani armymen and ISI officials, most committed to the Taliban
and Al Qaeda cause.
It was fortunate for the world that
Hitler's mistaken assumptions allowed the British expeditionary force to
escape from Dunkirk. Will history record that the American decision to
permit Pakistani airlift out of Kunduz was equally helpful to the war on
terrorism?
