The wretched Great Game
Humayun Gauhar
Cut to the chase.
The core issue: To establish hegemony over Afghanistan without endangering US troops.
America's problem: "How does it get its troops safely out of Afghanistan?"
America's intent: Not to quit Afghanistan altogether, only to withdraw its soldiers from the firing line. Do you really think that they went to all the trouble of occupying Afghanistan only to "Bring Osama Bin Laden to justice" or topple Mullah Omar? They occupied it for its geostrategic importance as the land of future gas pipeline routes, its significant mineral deposits and as a listening and rapid deployment post in the region from China and Russia to the Central Asian Republics, the Middle East and South Asia. And that is where they intend to remain until they are thrown out. Yes, it is the wretched, never-ending Great Game. Everyone has lost playing it – now its America's turn.
The reason: The Taliban have defeated America.
The irony: America morphed from freedom fighter to occupier.
The moral: An occupier can occupy for a time but is eventually defeated because the human spirit can never be permanently occupied.
What America needs: Withdrawal from a drug more potent than Afghan heroin. It's called 'Hegemony'.
Who are the Taliban: For one thing they are plural – 'Taliban' is the plural of 'Talib', which means 'student' or, literally, 'seeker of knowledge'. They are the old Mujahideen and their sons that defeated the Soviets with American and Pakistani help.
How did the Mujahideen morph into the Taliban: America abandoned them (and Pakistan) after victory and fell into deep hubris with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire.
The mockery: Once America fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Mujahideen-Taliban whom it then likened to its great founding fathers – Osama Bin Laden, Jalaluddin Haqqani et al – to evict the Soviet occupier from Afghanistan. Now it has replaced the Soviet occupier and become occupier itself, fighting against its founding father clones who want to evict America from Afghanistan. Again, the Taliban have won, as they did against the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union.
The question: Do morality and principle change with occupier? Are there good occupiers and bad occupiers? Stupid question.
America wishes to take its secret talks with the Afghan Taliban to a higher plane to ensure the safe withdrawal of its troops. Good, even if sense descends later rather than never. Not dignified, escaping from the roof of one's embassy hanging from helicopters. America would do well to appoint the former bosses of the Soviet Union as 'Consultants in Withdrawal'.
A TV anchor asked me about the "significance" of the recent meeting between Karzai and Prime Minister Gillani. "Gillani even took the army and ISI chiefs along."
"Actually," said I, "it is the army and ISI chiefs who have to find a formula for America's safe withdrawal. It is they who took Gillani and his assorted ministers along for protocol."
What could the significance of a meeting with an American satrap be? What between two proxies? Our prime minister is a proxy of a proxy; Manmohan Singh is a proxy of Sonia Gandhi. Both Zardari and Sonia are proxies of their sons.
Problem is to get Mullah Omar's blessings. He must be brought on board. We might be in contact with him, or know where he might be, but if America thinks that we can order him around they've learned nothing. They're also convinced that the 'Haqqani Network' is in our pocket and want us to shed it. The 'Network' regards Mullah Omar as not just its overarching leader, but akin to a father. It one of the 'Made in USA' products, as are the Mujahideen and Al Qaeda, all now dumped on us. Interesting how roles change and how conveniently history is forgotten.
Since Karzai is barren and cannot deliver, the Taliban are more suspicious of him than of us. So it has befallen Pakistan to rope them in. As victors – the very fact that the US wishes to talk to them means defeat – they will want their pound of flesh. They were in power before America overthrew them and will settle for nothing less than being in power again. The Taliban are a fact of life made larger-than-life by defeating America. Like it or not, without them any 'deal' will have a shelf life of not more than one second.
Yet while wanting us to help it, America wants to put the blame for its usual defeat on Pakistan – as usual too – which is why it has leaked selected cables of 'guidelines' given to its interrogators and torturers in its Gulag in Guantanamo that classify our ISI as a 'terrorist organization', equating it with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. If they hate the ISI so it must be a very good organization. (We don't hate their CIA; we find it comical – look at that blundering moron 'Raymond Davis'). America forgets that all non-state terrorism is a product of state terrorism and it is the leading state terrorist. Look at the pot (without a Muslim shower alongside) trying to make us out to be the kettle. The best thing I heard – though our Foreign Office denies it – is that we advised Karzai not to throw all his lot in with America and get the Chinese in his corner too.
As to the two-tier Reconciliation Commission between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while there is much to reconcile, the question arises: reconciliation with whom? An American satrap who doesn't really represent the will of his people? Hamid Karzai was one of the many millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan for more than two decades. The occupying Americans made him president of Afghanistan and there he remains under the cloak of shambolic elections tailored to make him win. He will not be recognized as the true representative of his country unless he wins elections against Mullah Omar. That is not to say that the Taliban in power were not a total disgrace to humanity and to the religion that they claim to be the authentic voice of. Theirs is a self-serving interpretation of Islam. In power, they meted out cruelty and peddled stupidity on a mind-numbing scale. By their actions they pushed their country to rubble. American bombing turned the rubble to powder.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have to be on good terms because they need each other because of their geographic proximity, tribal overlap and our transit routes for landlocked Afghanistan. America needs Pakistan for exactly the same reason, and many others – without transit through Pakistan NATO troops would be starved and defenseless.
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