With a Friend Like Pakistan
by Christopher Deliso
October 27, 2001

EXPLAINING DISASTER

After three weeks of bombing, there is little to show (militarily-speaking, at least) for the "war against terror." Anti-American fervor has spread throughout the Muslim world, as clumsy American bombers keep killing innocent Afghan civilians. Meanwhile, the much-vaunted Northern Alliance, which was supposed by now to to have taken Mazar-I-Sharif, if not Kabul, is now shelving its optimism and downgrading its capabilities. How can we explain these two major setbacks, which now threaten to become trends? While the answers are many, a logical place to start is with our new number one ally: Pakistan. Simply put, what would Musharraf have to gain from sabotaging the US strikes and stalling the Northern Alliance? The answers are not long in coming.

THE ARMCHAIR GENERALS OF LITTLE KABUL

Some of the most interesting thoughts on the matter come from the Afghans themselves. At over 20,000 people, Fremont, California, is one of the largest Afghan communities in America, and one that vocally protested the 1998 US strikes on bin Laden's camps. I've been there three times in the last two weeks, getting the word on the street about the war, Pakistan, and the future of Afghanistan.

The first time I visited Pamir Food Mart, and introduced myself to the owner, Homayoun Khamesh, he just laughed. "OK, sure, I'll talk to you – what's one more? I just had the Sun from England here, and Channel 5 before that, and the BBC." And verily, only a few minutes later, a camera crew from Chile walked in.

Like most of the other Afghanis I spoke to, Mr. Khamesh emigrated to the US in the early 1980's, as a direct result of the Soviet invasion. He was proud to say that he had been a freedom fighter in those days, but distanced that war from the Taliban's. "It was a completely different fight (against the Soviets)," he said: "The sides were clear, you could recognize your enemy. But now that Pakistanis go in, you can't recognize (the enemy)… I promise you, if America and England were to cut off Pakistan, in one week, we would have no problems at all!"

PAKISTAN – THE ROOT OF ALL EVILS?

Recent developments would seem to support Kamesh's charges against Pakistan. As the bombing campaign heats up, thousands of Pakistanis, armed with guns, swords and axes, are heading across the border to join the Taliban. Although US intelligence has been rather hit or miss, earlier in the week 35 Pakistanis from the extremist group Harakat ul-Mujahedin were killed in a direct hit on their safe house in Kabul. Thousands of Pakistanis attended the funeral of the group's leader, vowing revenge on the United States. Indeed, even in the remotest of villages, anti-American fervor is growing.

Even though the anti-US attitude is supposedly not a reflection of the Pakistani government's stance, it is clear that powerful factions in the government share the hatred of the populace. There is little trust between the two "allies"; in Peshawar, American spies are embarrassingly conspicuous, and watched over by their counterparts from the Pakistani ISI – the group that created the Taliban in the first place.

This lack of trust goes both ways. A mass pullout of US embassy staff, and cancellation of business orders, have made a farce of Washington's promise to reward Pakistan with a cash infusion. European and other investors have also gotten cold feet, leaving Pakistan's already shaky economy in dire straits. And, although it has been kept quiet, US companies in Pakistan have been hit with anthrax letters, and it has also been claimed that Pakistani hackers attacked a US government website, threatening to divulge highly-sensitive information to Al Qaeda if their demands were not met. Tensions continue to rise dangerously: on Friday (26 October) over 50,000 Pakistani protesters demonstrated in the streets of Karachi.

CLEARLY, NO LOVE LOST

Reviled as the sponsors of the Taliban, blamed for excessive meddling in Afghan affairs, Pakistan was viewed as chief among enemies by most people I spoke with. The US, it was alleged, is being duped into allying itself with Musharraf. This, according to my correspondents, will only compound the suffering of the Afghan people.

I spoke with Ibrahim, an Afghan who had emigrated to the US in 1983. He complained bitterly of Pakistani oppression: "30,000 Afghanis are in Pakistani jails, because Pakistani police say 'give me money,' and they can't (pay it). And they rape women in Afghanistan, and sell them to the people in Saudi Arabia." Despite the rhetoric about being united by Islam, Afghan refugees have found they are unwanted in Pakistan.

For the Afghans of Fremont, the Taliban remain the prime reason to detest Pakistan. Not only the bastard offspring of Pakistan's ISI (secret services), the Taliban were especially reviled for its foreign element. Pakistanis and Arabs were singled out by Ibrahim as the funders, supporters and constituent parties of the group – which was and is unwanted by the Afghan people. The foreign character of the Taliban, Mr. Khamesh alleged, will be proven in the days to come: "the Northern Alliance has lots of Taliban people in their jails. They are all foreigners: Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens. But the Taliban, in their jails they don't have one (non-Afghani) person!"

"No one invited the Taliban to our country" reminded Zabi Ansari of Fremont's Pamir Travel Agency. Forced to leave Afghanistan in the mid-1980's, Ansari hasn't been back since. He hasn't sold a trip to Afghanistan in fifteen years. Business, which had already been sluggish before September 11^th, has slowed to a crawl. Ansari expressed comic revulsion at the idea of living in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan: "you have to wear a beard? I'm not going to do that. A turban? I don't even know how to put one on! I've never worn that!"

US officials have expressed surprise at how tenaciously the Taliban have clung to power. They have resorted to hiding in stolen UN vehicles and are now building bases in Baluchistan, inside Pakistan's borders – right under the noses of American planes powerless to bomb them.

From my interviews it became clear that there was no love lost between the two sides. Yet more interesting insinuations were on the way. "Someday," intoned Mr. Khamesh, nodding cryptically, "Pakistan will make America crazy."

SLY MR. MUSHARRAF

I asked him what he meant by that. What emerged was a fascinating "blowback" scenario that might come back to haunt us for years to come. The gist of the argument is that the wily Musharraf is already using the huge anti-American sentiment in Pakistan to his advantage. According to Mr. Khamesh, the Pakistani government provided surreptitious aid to whomever fired on the US helicopter over Pakistan this week. When I argued that isolated militants had been blamed, Mr. Khamesh laughed. "Where do you think they get the weapons? From the government!" And the motive? "They want to say to America, 'look, you need to give us more money to protect you from these people!'"

Indeed, thousands of Pakistani troops are already guarding a few hundred American soldiers hunkered down near Peshawar. For Musharraf to attack the Americans with whom he is allegedly allied, through indirectly sponsoring rural extremists, would be a masterstroke of diplomacy – and the only possible way of harnessing two opposing forces to his advantage.

IS PAKISTAN BEHIND AMERICA'S BOMBING BLUNDERS?

There's more, however. Khamesh also believes that Pakistani intelligence was responsible for several major bombing errors, which led to the destruction of a Red Cross warehouse, hospital, and old-age home. These gaffes, which have led to censure of the US by humanitarian agencies and the UN, have played right into the hands of the Taliban propaganda machine.

The theory behind this is that powerful forces in the Pakistani government, still supporting the Taliban, are trying to undermine the US military campaign by deliberately supplying them with bad intelligence. While this is one of those details that "will probably never be known," as the president said, there is reason to give it serious consideration – namely, Pakistan's true motives, and its hand-in-glove relationship with the Taliban.

Red flags should have gone up back in the beginning of the campaign, when the US announced it was "cooperating" with Pakistani intelligence on targeting the Taliban. No doubt, the Pakistani secret services would know better than anyone else how to target the Talibs: but, all things considered, why would they be so inclined?

The implication of Khamesh's argument (which was supported by others I spoke to) is that Pakistan, looking to get out of its current tight position, is secretly trying to derail the US bombing campaign by sacrificing the lives of Afghan civilians. Whether or not this turns out to be true, it is clear that a wide gulf of suspicious separates the two. Whether Pakistan's failure is deliberate or not, the US is becoming increasingly frustrated by it. Indeed, even if Pakistan is not deliberately trying to hinder the American campaign, there is little it can do to shut down the Taliban supply routes, which traverse harsh and inaccessible terrain.

Although Pakistan has closed the border, this was derided as an empty gesture by those Afghans familiar with the border area of "Pashtunistan," which the BBC has called a "semiautonomous" haven for pro-Taliban Pakistani fighters. Scoffed Najib, a white-bearded Afghan, "Pashtunistan is basically a free country. No passports, no controls, no anything… all the fighters come in there, and drugs, weapons, whatever."

THE STATE OF THE OPPOSITION

"The Northern Alliance are the only ones you can count on," said Mr. Khamesh. "They are the only ones who haven't sold out to some other country." Speaking in near-reverential tones of their late leader, General Massood, Khamesh said, "Wow. He was just like, something else, man – a genius."

The opposition was popular among everyone I spoke with in Fremont. Yet for obvious reasons, Pakistani diplomacy has been thwarting a Northern Alliance assault on Kabul. The "great game" of political influence necessitates it. The Northern Alliance, after all, supports India in Kashmir, and their ascendancy would mean the increase of not only Indian but Russian influence – to the detriment of Pakistan. And so the US-Pakistani friendship will probably result in the installation of Taliban "moderates" in the new government.

Since the Taliban will eventually fall, and Afghanistan might even be divided up into tribal statelets, Pakistan is looking to preserve its influence – at least over the Pashtun areas to the south. Can this be linked to the latest "alliance" to arise – the anti-Taliban Southern Alliance, which wants an Islamic state? Replacing one Taliban with another may just be part of the plan.

There is also the case of rival warlords. There is one in particular the Afghans are fearful of: Gulbutten Hekmatyar. "Hekmatyar is a Pakistani," said Khamesh. "He was popular once, but now people know him as a killer. Pakistan put him in there, maybe for reserve – to make sure the next regime should be Pashtun."

On the other hand, we have the example of warlords not in Pakistan's good graces. What happens to them? One has to wonder about the opposition's latest disaster – the kidnapping and execution of Afghan rebel Abdul Haq. All we know for sure is that he came in from Pakistan, with a US military escort, and was then captured and killed. I wonder who could have tipped the Taliban off? Hmm…

IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH

The coming weeks will reveal a lot about Pakistan's true allegiances. Whether the US takes Kabul by winter, whether the Northern Alliance is allowed to advance – all these depend largely on Pakistan's cooperation (or lack thereof). Given the obvious difficulty of selling the war to its people, Pakistan's reticence and call for caution is understandable to most informed Americans. What wouldn't go over so well, however, would be to find out that Musharraf has been playing a dangerous game with the lives of American soldiers. Yet, with his back to the wall, facing increasing dissension in the ranks, Pakistani deception is not an unlikely possibility.

Christopher Deliso is a journalist and travel writer with special interest in current events in the areas of the former Byzantine Empire – the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and Caucasus. Mr. Deliso holds a master's degree with honors in Byzantine Studies (from Oxford University), and has traveled widely in the region. His current long-term research projects include the Macedonia issue, the Cyprus problem, and the ethnography of Byzantine Georgia.