Ayoon Wa Azan: We all Want Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to be Defeated

Over the past few months, the US has resumed its war in Afghanistan, after having been distracted by the war on Iraq. The Americans are complaining of conditions for which, in my opinion, they hold more responsibility than any other party, whether in the region or elsewhere.

The Bush administration has waged half a war in Afghanistan, although its attack on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, following the September 11 terrorist attack, had been perfectly justified and had met international support. Instead of defeating terrorism in Afghanistan, it turned to Iraq, which neither had terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nor relations with Al-Qaeda. The result of this was that it neither won the war in Afghanistan nor in Iraq. One could even say that US presence brought terrorism to Iraq. Occupation forces and terrorists from Al-Qaeda and the like have joined forces in killing Iraqis, as if the people of Iraq had not suffered enough at the hands of Saddam Hussein for decades.

I want to return to the US's responsibility in the 1980s when, along with the Arabs, Muslims, and NATO, it supported the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation ended and then the USSR collapsed as a whole. Instead of the world's only remaining superpower cooperating with the Afghan people, and helping to put them on the path to democracy and to restore their economy, it abandoned them, and left them at the mercy of warlords and narcotics smugglers.

What is worse than the above is that the United States, in the mid-1990s, agreed to the suggestion of Pakistani intelligence and decided to support the Taliban in their attempts to control the country, thinking that this would save Afghanistan from the other danger. What I write today was written in this very column at the time, when Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Head of Saudi Intelligence, notified me that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had decided to support the Taliban and suggested the idea to the US, who had approved it, and then to Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps this idea made sense in the mid-1990s. I am not criticizing the attempt to save the people of Afghanistan from the warlords. However, I cannot accept for the United States today to deny its role in the rise of the Taliban, and then to look surprised, shocked even, when members of the Pakistani military and Pakistani tribes support the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in confronting foreign troops in Afghanistan.

What has happened is that the United States has increased the number of its troops in Iraq. As a result, Al-Qaeda shifted the confrontation to Afghanistan. Now we hear that the United States intends to increase the number of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, so perhaps Al-Qaeda will decide to return to Iraq, especially if the US withdraws troops from there to reinforce its presence in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon's plan consists of spending $20 billion to increase the number of Afghan troops to around 120 thousand, i.e. to double the current number. There are today 45 thousand NATO troops in Afghanistan, including 15 thousand Americans, in addition to an independent US force of 19 thousand fighting terrorism and hunting down terrorists.

We all want Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to be defeated in Afghanistan, and on Pakistan's border. I at least support American and international efforts to destroy the strongholds of terrorism. However, that is no simple task. It may even be impossible, as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda enjoy great support in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as American intervention has led to the collapse of relations between countries of the region. There is a severe crisis between India and Pakistan which can be blamed on the Clinton administration, and on the US's inclination to support India against Pakistan regarding the nuclear issue. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are also strained. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has recently complained that American air raids are killing civilians in his country, and urged the US to target areas in Pakistan that are secure for the Taliban. Then there is the domestic situation in Pakistan. Last February's elections resulted in a ruling parliamentary coalition that opposes President Pervez Musharraf and seeks to depose him. Musharraf rejected this at first, but it was later leaked that he intends to resign. The main two political parties in the government accuse the president of corruption, although both the mandate of Nawaz Sharif and that of Benazir Bhutto, succeeded by her husband Asif Ali Zardari after her assassination, were characterized by much greater corruption than that of Musharraf.

I claim that recent American resolutions will not end the real problem in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Yet I am not so arrogant as to tell military leaderships and governments what they are supposed to do. However, I say that Pakistan possesses nuclear military capabilities, and that a change of regime there, which is not very unlikely, means a takeover by members of the military who support, implicitly if not openly, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Thus the American lie, about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, will come true in Pakistan. Such a situation would be too dangerous for the Bush administration to handle with lies, the way it did in Iraq.