MAKING SENSE OUT OF MUSHARRAF'S VOLTE FACE
by B.Raman
(Please also see the earlier paper titled
"Afghanistan: Pakistan's Black Hole" of April 17,2001, at http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper228.html
)
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Though many US analysts project Gen.Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled
Chief Executive and self-promoted President, as a liberal-minded Muslim,
throughout his career he was known for his proximity to the Islamic
religious parties, a proximity which was strengthened during the Afghan
war of the 1980s.
After seizing power in October, 1999, he
showed himself to be amenable to pressure from the Islamic parties and
conceded, one after the other, their demands. Even independent
Pakistani analysts admitted that the religious parties won more
concessions from the General during his first 18 months in office than
they could during the first 18 months of Zia-ul-Haq.
The Pakistan Army in general and Gen.Musharraf, in
particular, looked upon the role of the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment in contributing to the defeat of the Soviet troops before
1988, to the overthrow of Najibullah in 1992 and to the capture of the
control of large areas of Afghanistan through the Taliban post-1994 as a
major success story, which, in their perception, had restored the morale
of the establishment shattered by the defeat in the then East Pakistan in
1971. They hailed the perceived success in Afghanistan as the
triumph of their long pursued quest for a strategic depth in that country
which could be exploited to their advantage in the event of another
military conflict with India.
They also projected the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
as providing Pakistan with what they described as an Islamic depth, by
making Pakistan ( a hope which was belied), through Afghanistan, a gateway
to the external trade of the Central Asian Republics (CARs) and an
ideologicaL pole of attraction for the Islamic organisations of the
CARs.
On May 25, 2000, Musharraf, for the first time,
explicitly articulated Pakistan's reasons for its continued backing of the
Taliban. He stated that in view of the demographic and geographic
pattern of the ethnic Pashtuns, who constituted the largest ethnic group
in Afghanistan (40 per cent of the total population of 20 million) and the
second largest after the Punjabis in Pakistan, it was in Pakistan’s
national interest to support the predominantly Pashtun Taliban regime.
Subsequently, speaking at the Pakistan Institute
of International Affairs in Karachi in the third week of
June,2000,Musharraf maintained that Pakistan could not afford a two-front
threat to its security - from India and Afghanistan. He said that it
was wrong to believe that the Mujahideen groups which had sprung up in
Afghanistan since the war against the Soviet troops (in the eighties) were
'terrorists' even though some of their factions might be involved in
terrorist activities.
He added that Pakistan would not do anything to
jeopardize the future of the Pashtuns and claimed that he already
discerned signs of moderation on the part of the Taliban, as against its
extremism of the past. He asserted that the Taliban had
brought peace to the country and had also managed to disarm the
people. He also emphasized Pakistan's Muslim identity as one of the
determinants of his Government's foreign policy.
Strongly criticising the statements of Musharraf, the
Rome-based ex-King Zahir Shah stated that Musharraf was delineating
an ethnic Pashtun policy in Afghanistan and was violating the fundamental
notion that the "Afghan nation is composed of different ethnic groups
united and indivisible with a recognized Afghan national
identity". He termed Musharraf’s comments as ''interference
and aggravation of the national unity of Afghanistan.'' The Northern
Alliance accused Pakistan of imposing on Afghanistan, through
an ethnic tribal group, a political system, which suited its
national interests, and described it as a violation of
Afghanistan’s sovereignty and independence and of recognized
international norms.
Large sections of the Pakistani civil society were not
in agreement with Musharraf's perceptions of the so-called success story
of the military-intelligence establishment in Afghanistan. They
started worrying that the so-called strategic depth was inexorably turning
into a strategic black hole from which Pakistan might have difficulty in
extricating itself, if it dd not do so immediately.
But, the military-intelligence establishment did not
heed their warnings and continued to live in a make-believe world of
its own, as it did in East Pakistan in 1971, thinking that its policy had
started paying dividends. It was blind to the creeping deleterious
effects of its involvement in Afghanistan on Pakistan's own future as a
nation. Among such effects before September 11, 2001, were:
* Pakistan's diplomatic isolation.
* Its serious economic difficulties to which its
involvement in Afghanistan too contributed considerably. In
an article in the "Nation" of December 29, 2000, Mr.Ahmed
Rashid, the well-known Afghan expert of Pakistan, described the economic
price being paid by Pakistan for its involvement in Afghanistan as
follows: " The present Taliban war budget is estimated to be around
US 100 million dollars. Of that, 60-70% is derived from the
revenues of the smuggling trade, some 30-40% from the drugs trade and
about 5-10 % from direct financial aid. Pakistan has been paying
some US 10 million dollars a year for the salaries of Taliban
administrators in Kabul and other aid, while until 1998 Saudi Arabia was
also a major financial contributor. Terrorist groups also help
fund the Taliban. Bin Laden funds an Arab brigade and helps fund
Taliban offensives against the Northern Alliance. Pakistan and
recently Turkmenistan provide other indirect aid such as fuel, technical
help in maintaining airports and aircraft, restoring electricity in
major cities, road construction and military supplies to keep the
Taliban war machine functional." This estimate did not
include the pay and allowances of the serving and retired Pakistani
military and civilian officers serving in the Taliban-controlled
territory which were directly being paid to them by the Islamabad
Government and incorporated in the budget of the General Administration
Department of the Pakistan Government.
* Aggravation of sectarian clashes in Pakistani
territory, with the Sunni terrorist groups operating from sanctuaries in
Afghanistan, with the complicity of the anti-Shia elements in the
Taliban.
* Dangers of a possible Talibanisation of the
Pakistani society.
* The setback to Pakistani hopes of emerging as the
gateway to the external trade of the Central Asian Republics and of
benefiting from energy supplies from there.
* Setback in relations with Iran.
Despite the active involvement of serving and retired Pakistani military
personnel in its militia, the Taliban was not able to overwhelm the
militias of the Northern Alliance and dislodge them from the 10 per cent
of the territory of the country controlled by them. Though much
inferior in numbers and poor in equipment, the militias led by Ahmed Shah
Masood (since assassinated by two cadres of bin Laden's Al Qaeda)
fought an intrepid war of attrition and made the Taliban militia bleed.
What stood in the way of the Northern Alliance reversing
the Pakistani colonisation of the rest of Afghanistan was the lack
of support from the Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan. It would be
incorrect to view the entire Pashtun population of southern Afghanistan as
supporting the Taliban. There were undercurrents of anger against
the Taliban amongst the Pashtuns which manifested themselves in at least
one abortive attempt to overthrow the Taliban after the US bombing of the
terrorist training camps in October, 1998, and a failed attempt to
assassinate Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, in
Kandahar in August 1999, by exploding a car laden with explosives outside
his house. Some of his relatives were killed, but the Amir himself
escaped.
The angry anti-Taliban sections of the Pashtuns were
reluctant to co-operate with the Northern Alliance, which consists largely
of Tadjiks and other non-Pashtun ethnic groups. They did not want to
be projected by the Taliban and its Pakistani masters as traitors to their
community.
Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment
controlled effectively not only the Taliban militia, but also the
newly-established intelligence agency of the Taliban, as the successor to
the Khad, whose headquarters were established in Kandahar. Qari
Ahmadullah, who was heading the newly-established Taliban intelligence
agency and was designated as the Minister for Security, was actually an
officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan who worked in
the Taliban under the cover of a Mullah. He used to work in the
Afghan Division of the ISI under Lt.Gen. Mohammed Aziz, former Deputy
Director-General of the ISI before March, 1999, who subsequently became
the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), then Corps Commander, 4 Corps,
Lahore and is now Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.
Through its control of the intelligence agency of the
Taliban, the ISI was able to detect in advance and frustrate the efforts
of the anti-Taliban sections of the Pashtuns to organise themselves and
rise against the Amir.
In the absence of support from the Pashtuns, the
Northern Alliance was thus not in a position to reverse the Pakistani
colonisation and restore the lost independence of Afghanistan, but it was
able to make the Pakistani involvement a costly adventure for Pakistan as
a nation.
It was said that growing sections of Pakistan's civilian
bureaucracy, particularly those in the Foreign Office and in the economic
Ministries, were convinced that the Afghan involvement was proving to be
counter-productive and that Pakistan's economy would never be able to come
out of its present comatose state and the Pakistan State would never be
able to come out of its diplomatic isolation unless and until the
military-intelligence establishment's involvement in Afghanistan and its
use of the Taliban was ended.
During a conference of Pakistan's regional Ambassadors
held in Islamabad earlier this year, most of the Ambassadors, including,
surprisingly, Mr.Riaz Khokkar, its Ambassador in Beijing, known as a hawk,
were reported to have strongly called for a re-consideration of the Afghan
policy, but their advice was rejected by Gen.Musharraf and his Corps
Commanders. Lt.Gen. Mahmood Ahmad, the then DG of the ISI, was
reported to have told the Ambassadors: " I have no doubt in my mind
that Pakistan's policy will prevail because Allah is on our side."
This was typical of the wishful-thinking mindset,
which prevailed even amongst those senior officers of the military, not
generally identified with the religious fanatics. This mindset made
them believe that Allah was on the side of Pakistan, whether it be in
Jammu & Kashmir or in Afghanistan or in dealing with their economy and
that what they lacked in intelligence, perspicacity and vision, they could
make up by invoking the name of Allah to convert failures into successes.
By March, 2001, there were indications that even some
Corps Commanders had started feeling that the time had come for Pakistan
to break with the Taliban and bin Laden and that Pakistan should
co-operate with the US in its efforts to have bin Laden arrested and
deported to the US for trial.
Amongst the Corps Commanders, who gave strong expression
to this view in the Corps Commanders' conferences was Lt.Gen.Imtiaz
Shaheen (a Punjabi ?), who was the then Corps Commander, 11 Corps, at
Peshawar. He strongly criticised in the Corps Commanders'
conferences the terrorist activities of the Taliban and bin Laden.
He also criticised the ISI's links with bin Laden and its action in
providing medical facilities to him and his family in the military
hospital in Peshawar.
He had earlier incurred the displeasure of Musharraf and
Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) by vigorously taking
action against the arms smugglers market in Darra Adam Khel in the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), many of whom contributed funds to the
Taliban and the JEI.
Before his posting to Peshawar, Lt.Gen.Shaheen, who was
Director-General of the Pakistan Rangers,had headed a Task Force
on the unauthorised arms-manufacturing industry in Darra Adam Khel, which
was the main supplier of arms and ammunition to Islamic terrorist groups
in India and other countries. He strongly expressed the view that if
Pakistan continued to tolerate these smugglers, who enjoyed the protection
of the Islamic organisations, there could ultimately be a serious threat
to Pakistan's own national security.
Annoyed over the repeated criticism by Shaheen of his
pro-Taliban and pro-bin Laden policies and faced with pressure from the
Qazi to transfer him out, Musharraf transferred Shaheen to the GHQ,
Rawalpindi, as Chief of Logistics Staff in April, 2001, within 14 months
of his taking over as Corps Commander, Peshawar.
The "Far Eastern Economic Review" of Hong Kong
(April 26,2001) commented as follows on his abrupt transfer: "Musharraf
has replaced Lt.Gen. Imtiaz Shaheen, the Corps Commander in Peshawar,
after he had served less than a year in the post. The Peshawar Corps
Headquarters is considered the primary support and logistics base for
economic and other aid to Afghanistan's Taliban. Shaheen was considered an
outspoken officer who, in internal meetings of the Corps Commanders, was
critical of the Army's continued support to the Taliban, and sought
greater curbs on the activities of extremist Islamic parties in
Pakistan. Retired military officials say he was also urging
Musharraf that the Army should make a quick exit from running the
country. Pakistan denies it is giving military aid to the Taliban
and says it is fully implementing January's UN sanctions, which forbid the
supply of arms by any country to the Taliban. A five-man UN
monitoring team arrived in Islamabad on April 14 to evaluate the effect of
the sanctions and whether Pakistan is still supplying military aid.
Western diplomatic sources say that Russia and France have provided
evidence to the UN in New York that Pakistani aid is still getting
through. Shaheen's replacement is Lt.Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the former
Director-General of Military Intelligence. The Government described
the change as a standard personnel reshuffle."
Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq was previously the DGMI and was sent
by Musharraf, on his promotion as Lt.Gen., to Peshawar to continue with
the policy of backing the Taliban and bin Laden. His posting was
also meant to placate the Qazi to whom Ehsanul Haq was close.
After Lt Gen Fazle Haq (January 1978 to March 1980) and Lt Gen Mumtaz Gul
(May 1994 to October 1996), Lt Gen Ehsanul Haq was the third Pashtun
Army officer from the NWFP to head the 11 Corps since it was established
in Peshawar in April 1975. He is from Mardan, which along with
Kohat and Karak districts, constitutes the so-called martial belt in the
NWFP and provides the bulk of the Pashtun soldiers to the Pakistan Army
from this province.
Lt Gen Ehsanul Haq, like the NWFP Governor Lt Gen (retd)
Syed Iftikhar
Hussain Shah, belongs to the Air Defense Command of the Pakistan
Army. In fact, he had served as the second-in-command to Lt Gen (Retd)
Iftikhar earlier.
Lt.Gen. Ehsanul Haq, who has now been moved out of
Peshawar within five months of his taking over as Corps Commander, to take
over as the DG,ISI, from Lt.Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, has been projected by
Pakistani and foreign analysts as a liberal-minded officer like Musharraf.
But, like Musharraf, he was known in the past for his proximity to the
Islamic parties and particularly to Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the JEI.
When the Qazi initially opposed Musharraf's going to
India in July,2001, for the summit with Mr.A.B.Vajpayee, the Indian Prime
Minister, and rejected Musharraf's invitation for pre-summit
consultations, it was Ehsanul Haq, who met the Qazi and persuaded him to
meet Musharraf and support his visit to India.
It was Ehsanul Haq who was used by Musharraf to create a
split in Mr.Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML) through Mian Azhar
and to pressurise Mr.Mohammad Rafique Tarar to quit as the President of
Pakistan and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to administer the oath
of office as President to Musharraf on June 20,2001. He was also
being used by Musharraf to create a split in Mrs.Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan
People's Party.
On the advice of Ehsanul Haq, Musharraf set up a
task force headed by Lt.Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul, former DG, ISI, to
recommend the revamping of the Taliban's State and administrative
machinery and to transform the Taliban's religious militia into a
professional standing Army with a suitable rank structure. Ehsanul
Haq and Hamid Gul attended the first ceremonial parade as a professional
army held by the religious militia at Kabul in August,2001. Amongst
others, who attended this parade, were bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, his No.2
in the Al Qaeda and Ayman-al-Zawahiri of the Al Jihad of Egypt.
In the last week of August,2001, following the death of
Lt-Gen Ghulam Ahmed, Chief of Staff to Musharraf, in a road accident,
Musharraf appointed Lt-Gen Hamid Javed, who was serving as the Managing
Director of Heavy Industries,Taxila, as his Chief of Staff, and Lt.Gen.
Mohammad Akram, DDG, ISI, as his Military Secretary. Maj-Gen
Ihtasham Zameer was posted as DDG, ISI. Zameer was closely involved in the
past in networking with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. Around the
same time, in the face of continuing pressure from the US on the bin Laden
issue, Musharraf sent Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the then DG,ISI, toWashington
DC for talks with Mr.George Tenet, Director, CIA, and State Department
officials.
Thus, till the terrorists struck New York and Washington
DC on September 11,2001,Musharraf stuck to his policy of supporting the
Taliban and bin Laden and making use of them for training the jehadi
groups meant for use against India in Jammu & Kashmir and elsewhere
and resisted US pressure to help in the arrest and deportation of bin
Laden.
Within 48 hours of the US incidents, he did a total
volte face, withdrew hastily from Afghanistan almost all serving and
retired military and intelligence personnel serving with the Taliban,
ordered the ISI to close down its heroin refineries and remove the
accumulated stocks to Pakistan and offered his "unstinted
co-operation" to the US in its war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
As part of this co-operation, he has agreed to share all
available intelligence with the US and provide logistics and emergency
facilities to the US Air Force in the Pakistani Air Force bases at
Jacobabad in Sindh and Pasni in Balochistan. Not only that; he has
emerged as the chief adviser to the US on how to wipe out the Taliban and
the Al Qaeda, even in the face of the strong opposition from the religious
extremist elements in Pakistan.
The extent to which he is now prepared to go in
co-operating with the US has amazed even those sections in Pakistan's
Foreign Office and the military establishment, whose advice for a re-think
of Pakistan's Afghan policy was being contemptuously rejected by the
General till August-end. It is said that these sections are
embararassed and even worried over the extent to which he is prepared to
help the US in wiping out the Taliban and the Al Qaeda,
There was total consternation in these circles in
Islamabad on October 14,2001, after the "USA Today" carried a
report based on an interview with Musharraf, in which he had described the
religious extremist elements in Pakistan as "idiots" and advised
the US to get rid of the Amir of the Taliban first before turning its
attention to bin Laden, thereby indicating that he considered the Amir a
greater danger than bin Laden. Subsequently, his office, on the
advice of the Foreign Office, totally denied his having given any such
interview. The BBC has quoted the "USA Today"
correspondent as maintaining that Musharraf did give the interview and did
make these remarks, though the interview was not recorded. During
the interview, Musharraf was also reported to have bragged about his
popularity.
Earlier, the members of his Cabinet were reported to
have been dumbfounded when, at a Cabinet meeting, he compared his
self-proclaimed popularity to that of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
What contributed to his sudden volte face with regard to
the Taliban and bin Laden after September 11? There are two lines of
speculation in Islamabad:
* Some sections say that since June 2001, Musharraf had
been coming round to the view that the time had come to act firmly
against the Taliban, the International Islamic Front of bin Laden and
the various extremist and sectarian parties inside Pakistan, but he did
not have the courage to articulate his views openly and act against
them. The horrendous nature of the September 11
incidents strengthened his conviction that the Taliban and other
international terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan had to
go. Since he was not sure as to what extent his own
military-intelligence establishment would carry out his orders, he
decided to let the US do the job and provide it all the assistance it
needed.
* There are others, who claim that Musharraf's
co-operation was extracted by the US at the point of the gun.
According to them, the US made it clear to him that whether he
co-operated or not, it was determined to wipe out the Taliban and bin
Laden's set-up and that the US was determined to take whatever measures
it considered necessary to prevent Pakistan's nuclear and missile assets
from falling into the hands of Islamic terrorist elements, whether
Afghanistan or Pakistan based. This, it is said, was interpreted
by him as a threat to neutralise Pakistan's strategic assets in order to
prevent their falling into the hands of the terrorist elements. In
this connection,those, who hold this view, cite the repeated references
by him in his telecast to the nation to the 1971-like situation facing
Pakistan and to the importance of preserving Pakistan's strategic
assets.
Whatever be the real reason for his volte face, he has
tried to draw advantage out of it in the form of lifting of all sanctions,
economic and possibly military assistance, a more active US interest
in the Kashmir issue and safeguarding of Pakistan's national interests in
Afghanistan and a US commitment to the exclusion of India from any role
there.
The September 11 incidents were a traumatic experience
for the US. Possibly less than 100 terrorists managed to cause a
serious dent in the credibility of the US as the sole super power of the
world and expose the vulnerability of fortress America and its citizens to
catastrophic terrorist acts remote-controlled from far-away lands.
All other political and strategic concerns of the Bush
Administration, whether relating to China or Russia or missile defence,
have given way to the compelling need to remove the terrorist threat to
fortress America and to re-establish the credibility of US power.
Protection of American lives, interests and infrastructure from terrorist
threats has assumed priority over all other national security objectives
for the moment.
In this preoccupation with terrorism posing a threat to
the US, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and the other Islamic countries of the world
have naturally come to occupy a greater importance in the eyes of the US
than India for the following reasons:
* Only Pakistan and Uzbekistan would be in a position to
provide the kind of logistics and emergency facilities that the US
forces would require.
* As between Pakistan and Uzbekistan, Pakistan's
co-operation would be more important because the kind of hard
intelligence, which its military-intelligence establishment would
already have and would have access to in the future, would not be
available with any other country. Moreover, the ground operations would
be largely in Pashtun territory and the US would require Pashtun
surrogates for their successful execution. Only Pakistan would be in a
position to organise them.
* The tactical silence, if not the strategic
co-operation, of other Islamic countries would be essential to keep
under control anti-US outbursts and prevent them from assuming the
overtones of an US vs Islam conflict.
Under such circumstances, there is hardly any point in
India feeling left out by the US. Presently, till the unwise
"war" started by the US and the UK reaches its logical
conclusion---either in the elimination of the terrorists based in
Afghanistan, which, in this writer's assessment, constitute only 10 per
cent of the terrorists of the International Islamic Front, 90 per cent of
whom have already infiltrated into the US, the UK, India and other
countries or in another Somalia, if not worse, for the US--- India
has no other option but to bide its time and lucidly analyse its future
options.
As this writer has been repeatedly pointing out since
September 11, the US objective is not to make the world safe from
terrorism, as it proclaims, but to make the US safe from terrorism.
Once that objective is achieved, it will let others take care of
themselves. It would be a dangerous illusion for us to think that
the US would take more interest in acting against the Pakistan-sponsored
terrorists, who have killed more civilians in India since 1980 than the
number of civilians killed by various terrorist groups in the rest of the
world.
For Washington DC, American lives are more precious than
non-American lives and American interests have to prevail over those of
others. This is a crude reality, which should not be lost sight
of. India has to protect the lives of its citizens and its national
interests. Neither the US nor any other country can do it for us.
In formulating our options and counter-strategy, we have
to keep in view the following points:
* Any action taken by us in future should not come in the
way of the effective execution of the US "war" against the
terrorists in Afghanistan.
* Presently, as a result of perceptions in Pakistan
that Musharraf has turned an anti-Islam Quisling of the US, the various
contradictions in its society are getting aggravated. Even those
sections of its society, which had been critical of Musharraf's Afghan
policy in the past, are feeling uncomfortable over the way he is helping
the US to bomb Afghanistan and its poor people out of existence.
Any action of ours should not have the effect of ending these
contradictions.
It is in India's national interest that the independence of
Afghanistan be restored as early as possible, that the country be again
united under an enlightened leadership and that the medieval Taliban is
consigned to the dustbin of history. Before 1992, India had a long
history of warm friendship with the people and leadership of Afghanistan.
The leaders of all the ethnic groups felt more comfortable with India than
with Pakistan or even with the erstwhile USSR. They used to come to
India for rest and recreation and for their medical treatment. Most
middle class families used to send their children to India for
education. During the Afghan war of the 1980s, despite their
unhappiness with India's perceived support to the Kabul Government, many
Pashtun Mujahideen leaders maintained contact with India.
Large sections of the non-establishment Pashtuns of the
NWFP and Balochistan, who opposed the partition of India in 1947, always
looked up to India for inspiration and many of their leaders nursed warm
ties of personal friendship with the leaders of the Congress (I), whom
they or their parents had known from the days of the independence
struggle. The present new generation of Congress (I) leaders has not
taken interest in nursing these ties and the other political parties,
including the present ruling coalition, have not been able to cultivate
and sustain such ties of friendship with the Pashtuns.
If India has to play its due role in restoring the
independence of Afghanistan, it has to interact closely not only with the
leaders of the Northern Alliance and provide them with the required
political, moral and diplomatic support, but also with those Pashtun
leaders, who were unhappy with the Pakistani colonisation through the
Taliban and are likely to be worried over the post-September 11 Pakistani
efforts, with US blessing,to re-establish its presence in Afghanistan
under the cover of the UN. There has to be a comprehensive,
well-thought-out, consistent Afghan policy worked out and implemented by
the Government.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
