War Against the Taliban by Sandy Gall

Author:Sandy Gall [Gall, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2012-01-18T18:30:00+00:00

13

The Protection-Money Racket

We don’t trust what they say any more.

Pushtun elder, Kandahar, quoted in the New York Times,

26 March 2010

Kandahar is Afghanistan’s second city, the historic capital of the Pushtuns and also the birthplace of the Taliban. When they were driven from power after 9/11, the Taliban leadership fled across the border, only sixty-five miles away, to Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, which became their headquarters in exile – as it had been for many Pushtun mujahideen and émigré groups during the Russian invasion and occupation of 1979–89. In 2001, Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and the rest of the Quetta Shura, were given sanctuary by the Pakistan authorities and have been there ever since; free to plan, fund and prosecute the war against America, Britain and the rest of NATO with impunity. More recently, however, because of the threat of assassination by drones, Mullah Omar and his colleagues are reported to have been moved by the ISI to the comparative safety of Karachi.

Just as the North Vietnamese Communists used the sanctuaries of Laos and Cambodia to escape American bombing and to move men and supplies to the front during the Vietnam War, so the Taliban have used the safe havens of Pakistan and its long, porous border for the same purpose. But whereas Laos and Cambodia were more often than not reluctant hosts, the Pakistanis have been enthusiastic allies, using the Taliban insurgency for their own ends. Some observers think that they may be changing their policy, but what is undeniable is that without Pakistan to retreat to for R&R, to rely on for recruiting, training, funding and resupply, medical treatment and accommodation for their families, the Taliban insurgency would not have lasted anything like as long.

If Pakistan were to turn off the tap tomorrow, the Taliban would soon subside to a low-level insurgency as happened for a short period in late 2001 when President Musharraf was given an ultimatum by Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s deputy, on behalf of the White House. One version was that Armitage warned Musharraf the Americans would bomb Pakistan ‘back into the Stone Age’, if they continued to support the Taliban and/or al Qaeda – a threat, needless to say, that Armitage strongly denied making. But Musharraf was a wily operator whose glib protestations of friendship and support certainly took in President Bush and to a lesser extent the British – nervous about the potential terrorist threat from their million-strong Pakistani minority – although probably not Armitage.

In fact, Musharraf was pretending to turn off the tap with one hand and was actually turning it on with the other. Francesc Vendrell, the highly experienced UN and EU representative for Afghanistan in Kabul for many years, classified the Pakistanis as ‘the most stupendous liars’, although he admitted that others in the area were just as bad;1 while Amrullah Saleh, the former head of intelligence in Kabul, and an expert observer of Pakistan’s reputation for duplicity said, tongue in cheek: ‘I admire the Pakistanis. They are masters of deception.

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