Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition

by Ahmed Rashid

  The problem for Pakistan was that Washington had demonized Bin Laden to such an extent that he had become a hero for many Muslims, particularly in Pakistan. US policy was again a one-track agenda, solely focused on getting Bin Laden, rather than tackling the wider problems of Afghanistan-based terrorism and peace-making. Washington appeared to have a Bin Laden policy but not an Afghanistan policy. From supporting the Taliban the USA had now moved to the other extreme of rejecting them completely.

  The US rejection of the Taliban was largely because of the pressure exerted by the feminist movement at home. Afghan women activists such as Zieba Shorish-Shamley had persuaded the Feminist Majority to spearhead a signature campaign to mobilize support for Afghan women and force Clinton to take a tougher stance against the Taliban. Three hundred women's groups, trade unions and human rights groups signed up. The campaign got a major propaganda boost when Mavis Leno, the wife of comedian Jay Leno pledged US$100,000 to it. ‘The US bears some responsibility for the conditions of women in Afghanistan. For years our country provided weapons to the Mujaheddin groups to fight the Soviets,’ Ms Leno told a Congressional hearing in March 1998.27

  With Leno's help, the Feminist Majority organized a massive star-studded party after the 1999 Oscars to honour Afghan women. ‘The Taliban's war on women has become the latest cause celebre in Hollywood. Tibet is out. Afghanistan is in,’ wrote the Washington Post.28 As a celebrity in a celebrity-dominated culture Leno and her opinions went far. Hillary Clinton, anxious to secure feminist support for her future political career weighed in with statement after statement condemning the Taliban. ‘When women are savagely beaten by so-called religious police for not being fully covered or for making noises while they walk, we know that is not just the physical beating that is the objective. It is the destruction of the spirit of these women,’ said Mrs Clinton in a speech in 1999.29 US policy appeared to have come full circle, from unconditionally accepting the Taliban to unconditionally rejecting them.

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  MASTER OR VICTIM:

  PAKISTAN'S AFGHAN WAR

  In the last days of June 1998, there was pandemonium in Pakistan's Finance and Foreign Ministries. Senior bureaucrats scuttled between the two ministries and the Prime Minister's Secretariat with bulging briefcases full of files that needed signatures from various ministers. In a few days on 30 June the 1997/8 financial year expired and the new financial year began. Every ministry was trying to use up its funds for the present year and procure higher allocations for the coming year from the Finance Ministry. A few weeks earlier (28 May) Pakistan had tested six nuclear devices following India's tests and the West had slapped punitive sanctions on both countries, creating a major foreign currency crisis for Pakistan and worsening the deep recession that had gripped the economy since 1996.

  Nevertheless, on 28 June the cash-strapped Finance Ministry authorized 300 million rupees (US$6 million) in salaries – for the Taliban administration in Kabul. The allocation would allow the Foreign Ministry to dispense 50 million rupees every month for the next six months to pay the salaries of Afghanistan's rulers. The Foreign Ministry needed to hide this money in its own budget and that of other ministries, so that it would not appear on the 1998/9 budget record and be kept away from the prying eyes of international donors, who were demanding massive cuts in government spending to salvage the crisis-hit economy.

  In 1997/8 Pakistan provided the Taliban with an estimated US$30 million in aid.1 This included 600,000 tons of wheat, diesel, petroleum and kerosene fuel which was partly paid for by Saudi Arabia, arms and ammunition, ariel bombs, maintenance and spare parts for its Soviet-era military equipment such as tanks and heavy artillery, repairs and maintenance of the Taliban's airforce and airport operations, road building, electricity supply in Kandahar and salaries. Pakistan also facilitated the Taliban's own purchases of arms and ammunition from Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The money given for salaries was seldom used for that purpose and went directly into the war effort. Taliban officials in Kabul were not paid for months at a time. Officially Pakistan denied it was supporting the Taliban.

  This flow of aid was a legacy from the past. During the 1980s the ISI had handled the billions of US dollars which had poured in from the West and Arab states to help the Mujaheddin. With encouragement and technical support from the CIA, that money had also been used to carry out an enormous expansion of the ISI. The ISI inducted hundreds of army officers to monitor not just Afghanistan, but India and all of Pakistan's foreign intelligence as well as domestic politics, the economy, the media and every aspect of social and cultural life in the country.

  The CIA provided the latest technology, including equipment that enabled the ISI to monitor every telephone call in the country. The ISI became the eyes and ears of President Zia's military regime and by 1989 it was the most powerful political and foreign policy force in Pakistan, repeatedly overriding later civilian governments and parliament in policy areas it concluded were critical to the country's national security interests. Primarily those areas were India and Afghanistan.

  Through the 1990s the ISI tried to maintain its exclusive grip on Pakistan's Afghan policy. However, the end of the Cold War deprived the ISI of its funds and due to Pakistan's severe economic crisis, its secret budget was drastically cut. More significantly the ISI's dwindling resources were now directed towards another war of attrition – this one for the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri people who had risen up in revolt against India in 1989.

  During Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's second term of office (1993-96), the retired Interior Minister General Naseerullah Babar promoted the Taliban. He wanted to free Afghan policy from the ISI. Both Bhutto and Babar were deeply suspicious of the ISI's power and resources, which it had used to fuel discontent against Bhutto in her first term in office, leading to her removal in 1990. Moreover, the ISI was initially doubtful about the Taliban's potential as it was still wedded to backing Gulbuddin Hikmetyar and had few funds to back a movement of Afghan students. Babar ‘civilianized’ support to the Taliban. He created an Afghan Trade Development Cell in the Interior Ministry, which ostensibly had the task of co-ordinating efforts to facilitate a trade route to Central Asia-although its principal task was to provide logistical backing for the Taliban, not from secret funds but from the budgets of government ministries.

  Babar ordered Pakistan Telecommunications to set up a telephone network for the Taliban, which became part of the Pakistan telephone grid. Kandahar could be dialled from anywhere in Pakistan as a domestic call using the prefix 081 – the same as Quetta's prefix. Engineers from the Public Works Department and the Water and Power Development Authority carried out road repairs and provided an electricity supply to Kandahar city. The paramilitary Frontier Corps, directly under the control of Babar, helped the Taliban set up an internal wireless network for their commanders. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and the Civil Aviation Authority sent in technicans to repair Kandahar airport and the fighter jets and helicopters the Taliban had captured. Radio Pakistan provided technical support to Radio Afghanistan, now renamed Radio Shariat.

  After the Taliban capture of Herat in 1995, Pakistani efforts intensified. In January 1996 the Director General of the Afghan Trade Development Cell travelled by road from Quetta to Turkmenistan accompanied by officials from Civil Aviation, Pakistan Telecom, PIA, Pakistan Railways, Radio Pakistan and the National Bank of Pakistan. Ministries and government corporations took on further projects to help the Taliban with budgets that were supposedly for developing Pakistan's economy.2

  Despite these efforts to help and control the Taliban, they were nobody's puppets and they resisted every attempt by Islamabad to pull their strings. Throughout Afghan history no outsider has been able to manipulate the Afghans, something the British and the Soviets learnt to their cost. Pakistan, it appeared, had learnt no lessons from history while it still lived in the past, when CIA and Saudi funding had given Pakistan the power to dominate the course of the jihad. Moreover, the
Taliban's social, economic and political links to Pakistan's Pashtun borderlands were immense, forged through two decades of war and life as refugees in Pakistan. The Taliban were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated in Pakistani madrassasand learnt their fighting skills from Mujaheddin parties based in Pakistan. Their families carried Pakistani identity cards.

  The Taliban's deep connections to Pakistani state institutions, political parties, Islamic groups, the madrassanetwork, the drugs mafia and business and transport groups came at a time when Pakistan's power structure was unravelling and fragmented. This suited the Taliban who were not beholden to any single Pakistani lobby such as the ISI. Whereas in the 1980s Mujaheddin leaders had exclusive relationships with the ISI and the Jamaat-e-Islami, they had no links with other political and economic lobbies. In contrast the Taliban had access to more influential lobbies and groups in Pakistan than most Pakistanis.

  This unprecedented access enabled the Taliban to play off one lobby against another and extend their influence in Pakistan even furthur. At times they would defy the ISI by enlisting the help of government ministers or the transport mafia. At other times they would defy the federal government by gaining support from the provincial governments in Baluchistan and the NWFP. As the Taliban movement expanded it became increasingly unclear as to who was driving whom. Pakistan, rather than being the master of the Taliban, was instead becoming its victim.

  Pakistan's security perceptions were initially shaped by Afghanistan's territorial claims on parts of the NWFP and Baluchistan and there were border clashes between the two states in the 1950s and 1960s. Afghanistan insisted that Pakistan's Pashtun tribal belt should be allowed to opt either for independence or join Pakistan or Afghanistan. Diplomatic relations were severed twice, in 1955 and 1962, as Kabul advocated a ‘Greater Pashtunistan’, which was supported by left-wing Pakistani Pashtuns. The Zia regime saw the Aghan jihad as a means to end these claims for ever, by ensuring that a pliable pro-Pakistan Pashtun Mujaheddin government came to power in Kabul.

  Military strategists argued that this would give Pakistan ‘strategic depth’ against its primary enemy India. Pakistan's elongated geography, the lack of space, depth and a hinterland denied its armed forces the ability to fight a prolonged war with India. In the 1990s an addition to this was that a friendly Afghanistan would give Kashmiri militants a base from where they could be trained, funded and armed.

  In 1992-93, under Indian pressure, the USA had come close to declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, as Kashmiri militants based in Pakistan carried out guerrilla attacks in Indian Kashmir. Pakistan tried to resolve this problem in 1993 by moving many of the Kashmiri groups’ bases to eastern Afghanistan and paying the Jalalabad Shura and later the Taliban to take them under their protection. The government also privatized its support to the Kashmir Mujaheddin, by making Islamic parties responsible for their training and funding. Bin Laden was encouraged to join the Taliban in 1996, as he too was sponsoring bases for Kashmiri militants in Khost.

  Increasingly, the Kashmir issue became the prime mover behind Pakistan's Afghan policy and its support to the Taliban. The Taliban exploited this adroitly, refusing to accept other Pakistani demands knowing that Islamabad could deny them nothing, as long as they provided bases for Kashmiri and Pakistani militants. ‘We support the jihad in Kashmir,’ said Mullah Omar in 1998. ‘It is also true that some Afghans are fighting against the Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. But these Afghans have gone on their own,’ he added.3

  To many, the concept of ‘strategic depth’ was riddled with fallacies and misconceptions as it ignored obvious ground realities that political stability at home, economic development, wider literacy and friendly relations with neighbours ensured greater national security than imaginary mirages of strategic depth in the Afghan mountains. ‘The attainment of strategic depth has been a prime objective of Pakistan's Afghanistan policy since General Zia ul Haq. In military thought it is a non-concept, unless one is referring to a hard-to-reach place where a defeated army might safely cocoon,’ wrote Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad. ‘The outcome is a country caught in an iron web of wrong assumptions, maginotic [sic] concepts, failed policies, fixed postures and sectarian violence. Far from improving it, a Taliban victory is likely to augment Pakistan's political and strategic predicament,’ he added.4

  The military assumed that the Taliban would recognize the Durand Line – the disputed boundary line between the two countries created by the British and which no Afghan regime has recognized. The military also assumed that the Taliban would curb Pashtun nationalism in the NWFP and provide an outlet for Pakistan's Islamic radicals, thus forestalling an Islamic movement at home. In fact just the opposite occurred. The Taliban refused to recognize the Durand Line or drop Afghanistan's claims to parts of the NWFP. The Taliban fostered Pashtun nationalism, albeit of an Islamic character and it began to affect Pakistani Pashtuns.

  Worse still, the Taliban gave sanctuary and armed the most violent Sunni extremist groups in Pakistan, who killed Pakistani Shias, wanted Pakistan declared a Sunni state and advocated the overthrow of the ruling elite through an Islamic revolution. ‘The apparent victor, Pakistan, could pay dearly for its success. The triumph of the Taliban has virtually eliminated the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. On both sides, Pashtun tribes are slipping towards fundamentalism and becoming increasingly implicated in drug trafficking. They are gaining autonomy, already small fundamentalist tribal emirates are appearing on Pakistani soil. The de facto absorption of Afghanistan will accentuate centrifugal tendencies within Pakistan,’ predicted Olivier Roy in 1997.5 In fact the backwash from Afghanistan was leading to the ‘Talibanization’ of Pakistan. The Taliban were not providing strategic depth to Pakistan, but Pakistan was providing strategic depth to the Taliban.

  Pakistan became a victim not only of its strategic vision, but of its own intelligence agencies. The ISI's micro-management of the Afghan jihad was only possible because under a military regime and with lavish funding from abroad, the ISI was able to subdue political opposition at home. Zia and the ISI had the power to formulate Afghan policy and implement it, something which no other intelligence agency, not even the CIA, had the power to do. This gave the ISI enormous unity of purpose and scope for operations. The ISI then faced no independent powerful lobbies or political rivals, as in the Taliban era, when they had to compete with an array of Pakistani lobbies which independently supported the Taliban and had their own agendas.

  By running both Afghan policy and operations, the ISI had no room for critical reappraisals, accommodating dissent from the status quo, nor the imagination or flexibility to adapt to changing situations and the ever-evolving geo-political environment. The ISI became a victim of its own rigidity and inflexibility, even as its power to actually control the Taliban dwindled. The agency's operatives in Afghanistan were all Pashtun officers, while many were also motivated by strong Islamic fundamentalist leanings. Working closely with Hikmetyar and later the Taliban, this Pashtun cadre developed its own agenda, aimed at furthering Pashtun power and radical Islam in Afghanistan at the expense of the ethnic minorities and moderate Islam.

  In the words of one retired ISI officer, ‘these officers became more Taliban than the Taliban.’ Consequently their analysis of the anti-Taliban alliance and pipeline politics became deeply flawed, riddled with rigidity, cliches and false assumptions which were driven more by their strong Islamic ideological assumptions than by objective facts. But by now the ISI was too powerful for the government of the day to question and too intrusive for any army chief of staff to clean up.

  When the Taliban emerged the ISI was initially sceptical about their chances. It was a period when the ISI was in retreat, with the failure of Hikmetyar to capture Kabul and a shortage of funds. The ISI retreat gave the Bhutto government the opportunity to devise their own support for the Taliban.6 During 1995 the ISI continued to debate the issue of support for the Taliban. The debate centred around the Pashtun-Islamic
field officers inside Afghanistan, who advocated greater support for the Taliban and those officers involved in long-term strategic planning, who wished to keep Pakistan's support to a minimum so as not to worsen relations with Central Asia and Iran. By the summer of 1995, the Pashtun network in the army and the ISI determined to back the Taliban, especially as President Burhanuddin Rabbani sought support from Pakistan's rivals -Russia, Iran and India.7

  But by now the ISI faced all the other Pakistani lobbies which the Taliban were plugged into, from radical mullahs to drug barons. The fierce competition between the ISI, the government and these lobbies only further fragmented Islamabad's decision-making process on Afghanistan. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry was so weakened by this confusion that it became virtually irrelevant to Afghan policy and unable to counter the worsening diplomatic environment as every neighbour – Russia, Iran, the Central Asian states – accused Islamabad of destabilizing the region. Efforts to defuse the criticism such as secret trips to Moscow, Tehran, Tashkent and Ashkhabad by successive ISI chiefs proved a failure.

  As international criticism increased, the newly elected Nawaz Sharif government and the ISI became more adamant in backing the Taliban. In May 1997 when the Taliban tried to capture Mazar, the ISI calculated that by recognizing the Taliban government, it would force hostile neighbours to deal with the Taliban and need Islamabad to improve their own relationships with the Taliban. It was a high stakes gamble that badly misfired when Pakistan prematurely recognized the Taliban, who were then driven out of Mazar.8