In June 1940, 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 earn 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 forces of Northern Alliance on November 25. Pakistan evacuated not only its personnel but also a member of Al-Qaida 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-Qaida prisoners taken at Kunduz and transported to Guantanamo. According to Seymour Hersh's story, the Americans never got access to the Al-Qaida 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-Qaida,Taliban and the Musharraf regime.
One should expect the, Leadership of Al-Qaida and Taliban, taken out of Kunduz, will lie low for some time before they start to regroup in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are also believed to have slipped into Pakistan. Musharraf’s crackdown on the terrorist units has only been perfunctory.
When more than 200,000 Lashkar-e-Taiba cadres assemble 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 Musharraf could con the Americans to airlift out of Kunduz the hardcore Taliban and Al-Qaida cadres and the Pakistani armymen and ISI officials, most committed to the Taliban and Al-Qaida cause.
It was fortunate for the world that
Hitler on 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?