The US misread Taliban once. Has it walked into Pakistan’s trap again?
US President Joe Biden now vows to “fight the battles of the next 20 years, not the last 20”. Going strictly by this statement, this could well mean that the current US Afghan game may be about China – to use the assortment of Islamic forces as potent instruments vis a vis Xinjiang
Pakistan’s ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, and his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief, Hamid Gul first conceived the idea of “Afghan Jihad” in the 1980s, and sold it to the United States (US) and Saudi Arabia as a means to bring down the Soviet Union.
Zia told Selig Harrison in an interview, “We won’t permit Afghanistan to be like it was before, with Indian and Soviet influence there and claim on our territory. It will be a real Islamic state, part of a Pan-Islam revival, that will one day win over the Moslems in the Soviet Union, you will see.”
America spent over $8 billion on the Afghan war, but Zia used the Afghan triumph to create an illusionary “strategic depth” for achieving the twin goals of a) undermining the growing Pashtunistan demand, and b) drawing the specter of Cold War closer to South Asia to engulf Kashmir. The project was carried out under the patronage of conservative Jamaat-i-Islami (JU). ISI spent 50% of the US and Saudi aid on Gubuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb-i-Islami and the remaining on other moderate “Peshawar Seven”.
It helped Pakistan radicalise Afghanistan, and to divert the Mujahideen’s attention to Kashmir when it sent hordes of “Afghanis” to the Valley in the post-Soviet withdrawal.
The roots of the Taliban
But the Afghan project soon boomeranged on the US. ISI turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorists. By 1992-93, over 120 camps had sprung up in the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier that trained 30,000 jihadis drawn from international Sunni terrorist network. Shockingly, US-supplied weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, turned up in the hands of terrorists aiming to hit Western targets starting from 1991.
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Ted Galen Carpenter aptly wrote, “If that outcome is a US policy triumph, one shudders to contemplate what a policy failure would look like.....the United States was not merely a relatively passive accomplice in the destructive agendas pursued by Islamabad and Riyadh – it was an active collaborator in foisting an oppressive political system on the people of Afghanistan, the result of that policy is a damning enough indictment of American action.”
The G7 Paris summit in 1996 finally called for hunting down the al Qaeda hideouts. But while rectifying its past follies, Washington once again walked into a Pakistani-laid trap. It blindly weighed on the ISI’s prepared Afghan blueprint for placing yet another monster, the Taliban militia which was to work towards disarming the Afghan jihadists, curb opium growth, reunite the country and drive out all foreign terrorists sheltered in Afghanistan.
The Taliban had been created in 1992 by ISI after its old protégés Mujahideens, whom the ISI scrupulously nurtured, turned their back, and refused to kowtow before Islamabad, and instead turned to Delhi for support once they formed their government in Kabul in 1992.
It was Benazir Bhutto and her Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar (Gul’s arch-rival) who sought to revamp the Afghan project by abandoning the entire Mujahideen networks in favour of creating a fresh militia — the Taliban. This time, the project was launched under the patronage of Jamaat-ul-Ulema-Islam (JUI) led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman.
The US-Taliban dynamic
The Western world was open to supporting the Taliban, so long as it helps stall Iran’s strategic advantage; oil and geopolitics after the Soviet collapse.
The US quickly dispatched Senator Hank Brown and Assistant Secretary Robin Raphel rushing to meet with the Taliban leaders in 1995. Naseerullah Khan Babar took the US Ambassador in Islamabad on a tour to the Taliban bases. A clear-cut American incentive therefore enabled the Taliban’s surge of taking over one-third of Afghan territory within a few months.
The Taliban push came against the Indian and Iranian financing of a strategic railway project to connect Central Asia for the first time with the Persian Gulf through Sarakh (Turkmenistan) with Tajan (Iran) - completed in 1994. The move quickly prompted the US to support a Pakistani sign a deal with the UNOCAL and Saudi Delta to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan as against Kabul’s decision to sign a deal with the Argentinean Company, Bridas. Zalmay Khalilzad, now the US special envoy for Afghanistan, then negotiated with the Taliban for UNOCAL.
The US and Pakistan were also perturbed by India’s response to a power-sharing deal between the Rabbani regime and Hekmatyar in 1996. Not only did the Indian Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda send a congratulatory message to Hekmatyar on his assuming the post of Prime Minister but also invited him to Independence Day reception at the Embassy of India in Kabul on August 15, 1996 by India’s Charge d’ Affairs. Taliban captured Kabul on September 27, 1996.
The US welcomed the first flush of the Taliban’s victory. The US spokesman Nicholas Burns admitted to Washington having contacts with the Taliban. The New York Times described the Taliban as a moderate force. Khalilzad advocated for rendering US assistance to the Taliban and argued that it was fundamentalist force but doesn’t practice Iranian-style anti-US policy. The Americans believed that the Afghan militia pursued “anti-modernism” rather than “anti-Western” policies. They were reviving “traditional Afghan society” rather than “exporting Islam”.
But within a month of the Taliban victory, Washington had to withhold its decision to recognise the Taliban regime amid mounting international criticism against the militia’s appalling medieval-style savagery rule that put off the world community, including the orthodox Iranian clergy. In a U-turn, Assistant Secretary Robin Raphel declared, “US supports none of the warring factions.”
But the damage was already done. Taliban’s brutality against the women had already caused huge embarrassment to the US. Despite the Taliban’s initial pledged, Mullah Omar rebuffed every US attempt to get Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan for a trial even at the risk of being bombed out of power.
Obviously, the Americans were made to look naïve as they were deluded into by Pakistan that the Taliban would be a good ally of the US. In fact, the ISI Commanders scrupulously worked on their own agenda of pocketing $2.5 billion sponsored for the Taliban operation.
One has to read The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powerswritten by Peter Tomsen, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan (1989-1992) that details how the Pakistanis played a duplicitous role in duping the Western world into believing that Pakistan was inclined towards a negotiated settlement, but in practice, they wanted to install their clients in Kabul.
The motives in 2021
So, what is the American latest deal with the Taliban and the urgency to withdraw troops from Afghanistan all about?
It started with Donald Trump’s “America First” fixation, combined with the US strategic shift of focus from counterterrorism to containing China.
President Joe Biden now vows to “fight the battles of the next 20 years, not the last 20”. Going strictly by this statement, this could well mean that the current US Afghan game may be about China – to use the assortment of Islamic forces as potent instruments vis a vis Xinjiang. Even the deeply worried Central Asians sense that the Taliban’s surge will not be confined to Afghanistan.
Pakistan this time is running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. It is simultaneously trying to play the American, Chinese and Russian game with the sole aim of seizing a fresh opportunity to foment trouble in Kashmir. India must be careful.
P Stobdan is currently a Senior Fellow at Delhi Policy Group. He authored The Afghan Conflict & India in 1998
The views expressed are personal
