The Pashtuns by Tilak Devasher

Author:Tilak Devasher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

Pakistan and the Taliban 1.0

Afghanistan’s majority ethnic Pashtuns have to be on our side. This is our national interest … The Taliban cannot be alienated by Pakistan. We have a national security interest there.’

—Gen Pervez Musharraf1

FOR PAKISTAN, THE RISE OF the Taliban checked many boxes. It perceived Pashtun nationalism, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a major threat to its existence. The Taliban, though Pashtuns, emphasized their Islamic solidarity before ethnicity and so, for Pakistan, were a crucial safeguard against any potential Pashtun ethnonationalism. Then, the Taliban were seen as a better alternative to President Rabbani’s government in Kabul, which was perceived to being anti-Pakistan and pro-India. The Taliban government fulfilled Pakistan’s long-held desire to have a secure and friendly western border. Pacification of Afghanistan could lead to trade with Central Asia and raised hopes for beginning a gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, known as the TAPI gas project.2

Founding Taliban member and later Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Zaeef makes it clear in his book that the Taliban movement arose indigenously in Kandahar. It was only after their initial successes against warlords in southern Afghanistan that they came to Pakistan’s attention.3 Thus, although Pakistan did not create the Taliban, it acted swiftly to co-opt the movement.

Before the summer of 1994 was over, Carlotta Gall notes, Mullah Omar had acquired Pakistani advisers. ‘People in Kandahar remember a Major Gul, along with Colonel Imam, the Pakistani special forces trainer. Imam was a distinctive figure. He sported a 1942 British paratrooper’s jacket, a long beard and a flat white turban shaped like a car tire, as one Pakistani journalist joked.’ ‘Imam’ was the nom de guerre of former Brigadier Amir Sultan Tarar, typical of Pakistani officers who adopted the mujahideen cause as their own. He was known to a large number of mujahideen who he had trained. Omar always addressed the colonel by the honorific title of ‘ustad’ or ‘teacher’. He was subsequently appointed as Pakistani consul in Herat and served as a mentor to Mullah Omar and was deeply involved in the Taliban military campaign. According to Carlotta Gall, ‘The American reporter Steve LeVine visited the consulate there in June 1996 and found Imam directing the Taliban assault on the Shomali Plain north of Kabul from his desk, barking orders down the telephone.’4

Soon the Taliban were equipped with armour, artillery, even a small air force, as also an impressive communications network and an intelligence system. As Anthony Davis notes: ‘The organisational skills and logistical wherewithal required to assemble from scratch, expand, and maintain such an integrated fighting machine during a period of continuous hostilities were simply not to be found in Pakistani madrassas or Afghan villages.’5

Clearly, covert Pakistani support for the Taliban was a key facet of the massive and rapid expansion of the Taliban. The JUI madrassas were not equipped to provide more than ideologically trained cannon fodder for the Taliban movement. According to Carlotta Gall, ‘Pakistani military and intelligence support for the Taliban remained extensive and committed right up to 2001.

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