MUSHARRAF ORDERS SCRAM
by B.Raman
Reports from Pakistan indicate that on September
12,2001, within 24 hours of the jehadi terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington DC, Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief of
the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled Chief Executive and self-promoted
President, after consulting his Corps Commanders, ordered an emergency
scram to evacuate from the Taliban-controlled Afghan territory, all
Pakistani Govt. personnel, serving as well as retired, serving in the
Taliban's militia, civil administration and intelligence agency, and all
jehadis belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Al Badr undergoing training in
the training camps in Afghan territory.
Airports, including the one in Islamabad, were
temporarily closed for traffic to enable the evacuation by air from Kabul
and Kandahar of all senior Army officers, serving and retired, serving in
the Taliban. Under the UN sanctions, there is a ban on all flights
to and from the Taliban-controlled territory. Despite this,
Musharraf and his officers decided to take a risk by evacuating the senior
officers by air.
All junior officers and civilian personnel have been
ordered to return to Pakistan by road as best as they can. Similar
instructions have been issued to the jehadis undergoing training in Afghan
territory, preparatory to their induction into Jammu & Kashmir.
It is said that nearly 70 per cent of the planned
evacuation has been completed and the current visit of a high-level
Pakistani delegation to Kabul/Kandahar ostensibly to pressurise Mulla
Mohammad Omer, the Amir of the Taliban, to hand over Osama bin Laden to
the US or to an European country within three days, is at least partly
meant to gain some more time to complete the evacuation of Pakistani
Government personnel and the jehadis.
It seems that there has been no evacuation, either
actual or ordered, of the Pakistani students of the various madrasas in
Pakistan, most of them belonging to Maulana Fazlur Rahman's
Jamaat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI), who have been fighting along with the Taliban
Militia against the Northern Alliance troops.
They seem to have been asked to stay on and continue to
assist the Taliban Militia. Islamabad's military junta is worried that the
evacuation of the Pakistani Army personnel and any disruption of the
Taliban's Militia set-up by US air strikes, if they take place, might
enable the Northern Alliance to re-capture Kabul and other territory lost
to the Taliban since September,1996.
This was one of the subjects discussed by the Corps
Commanders' conference. The junta is worried that if the Taliban's
resistance against the Northern Alliance collapses and the Burhanuddin
Rabbani Government returns to power in Kabul, it would be strongly
anti-Pakistan and pro-India, pro-Russia and pro-Iran. It wants to
prevent this from happening. One possibility is of the JUI and other
organisations being asked to rush more of their members to the front to
join in resisting the Northern Alliance.
Another desperate possibility is Musharraf offering to
President Bush to send his own troops to occupy Kabul and other areas now
under the control of the Taliban.
The junta's present mission to Kabul/Kandahar to
pressurise the Taliban leadership to rid itself of bin Laden does not
appear to be sincere. The junta is nervous that if bin Laden lands
in the custody of the US he might confess to the US authorities, during
interrogation, the details of his terrorist links with the Pakistani
military/ISI leadership. The junta's likely preference would, therefore,
be to have him killed instead of letting him fall into the hands of the
US.
In the meanwhile, bin Laden, his body guards, and his
family members are believed to have scattered away from Kandahar.
Their present whereabouts are not known. There are three possibilities:
* Either they may cross over into the
Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and take shelter
there; or
* They may join the current exodus of refugees from
Afghanistan into Pakistan and take shelter in the refugee camps; or
* They may take refuge in the network of tunnels,
which bin Laden, a reputed civil engineer of Saudi Arabia before he
joined the Afghan jehad, had constructed in the Afghan territory to help
the Mujahideen. During the Afghan war of the 1980s, the Mujahideen
used these tunnels, with deadly effect, to launch hit and hide attacks
on Soviet ground troops.
The following points are not yet clear:
* The likely fate of the eight foreign humanitarian
workers of the Shelter Now International---two Americans, two
Australians and four Germans---who were under custody and trial in
Kabul. Would the US launch an air strike on Kabul despite their
being detained there?
* To what extent would any US ground operations be
hampered by the presence of a large number of mines planted during the
Afghan war, many of which have not yet been deactivated. As of
now, any ground operations by the US seem unlikely in view of Pakistan's
reluctance to permit them.
In case, the US decides to launch a reprisal attack, a
possibly workable plan for the US would be:
* Softening of the Taliban's ground positions by focussed
air strikes followed by;
* Assistance to the Northern Alliance, through air
support, to advance and occupy Kabul and Jalalabad and from there hunt
for Osama bin Laden, without the US troops directly getting involved in
the hunt. The Northern Alliance hates bin Laden for having got
Ahmed Shah Masood assassinated and would be only too happy to hunt for
him and his advisers and hand them over to the US.
The US might be committing a serious error of judgement
if it puts its eggs, even some of them, in the Musharraf basket.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of india, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
