Daily Times

Turn on the TV and you will, again and again, hear media pundits, former ambassadors, expostulating politicos, retired generals, and other sundry analysts insisting, “This is not our war.” That over 35,000 Pakistani citizens have been blown up, shot and killed in a variety of dramatic ways, that Pakistan’s forces have been fighting pitched battles against armed and organised insurgents, that we have suffered more than a bombing a day for the last 10 years, that the sovereignty of Pakistan over much of our national territory is under armed contestation, all this does not seem to matter.

Now, in most countries, even the most enlightened, those who generate public doubt at a time of actual hostilities are thought to have somewhat dubious patriotic credentials. In less enlightened lands, they may even be tried as traitors. But let that be. Let us ask ourselves these basic questions: which war are we talking about? Who are the combatants? And what has been Pakistan’s role in it at various key points? Whose war it is, will follow logically.

Give it what label you like, we are talking about the armed conflict over the territory of the former Durrani kingdom of Afghanistan that has raged now for over 33 years. This is the longest war in six centuries of human history and it has sucked state and non-state entities from numerous countries into the destructive entropy of its event horizon. Durrani Afghanistan, despite its appalling backwardness, had contrived to sustain a kind of stability for over two centuries. Its collapse began in July 1973 when King Zahir Shah was overthrown by his cousin Sardar Dawood Khan, who declared himself president.

One of the beneficiaries of the amnesty declared by President Dawood was Gulbadin Hekmatyar. After his release, he moved to Pakistan. No less a person than the then prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, saw the opportunity to pay Dawood Khan back for the latter’s ‘Pakhtoonistan’ sloganeering. Hekmatyar was recruited as an asset by the Pakistan intelligence services. Following the defeat of the Panjsher rebellion against Dawood, other Afghan Islamist figures, including Ahmad Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Yunus Khalis, found their way to Pakistan and were taken up as intelligence assets. Periodic Mujahideen raids into Afghanistan commenced. Pakistan had taken its first step towards involvement in Afghanistan.

Dawood’s government was overthrown in April 1978 by a cabal of army officers and leftist politicians. The social radicalism of the new regime brought it into conflict with the Afghan ulema, tribal chieftains and feudal lords. By October, this became an open revolt. A major insurgency in Herat was mounted by Ismail Khan. This was assisted by the Panjsheris, operating out of Pakistan. This was Pakistan’s next — and major — entry into the Afghan theatre.

Here, the unconstitutional Zia regime had outlived its self-assumed 90-day mandate and was exploiting a self-proclaimed ‘Islamisation’ project as a pretext for clinging to power and for hanging, flogging, lashing and imprisoning citizens who resisted tyranny. Zia’s regime was regarded as an international pariah. By enabling and facilitating the Panjsheri Mujahideen insurgency in Afghanistan, Zia saw an opportunity to gain acceptance from the US and other governments, as well as for securing large inflows of military and other aid.

The US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski saw the chance of preparing what he called his ‘bear trap’. Brzezinski would later recall, “That secret operation…had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap…The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.” We know today, from the published memoirs of the former CIA director and later the US former defence secretary Robert Gates that the CIA officially armed and trained the Mujahideen under President Carter’s executive order of July 3, 1979, issued a full six months before the Soviet army entered Afghanistan on December 24, 1979.

In February 1989, after nine years of intense fighting, the USSR was forced to pull out of the conflict. It took another three years before the Najibullah government was overthrown. The Mujahideen factions now began to battle each other. At this time, yet again, Pakistan’s authorities intervened in Afghanistan by injecting a new force, who had played no part in the anti-Soviet ‘Jihad’, into the fray. These were the made-in-Pakistan Taliban, nurtured in our madrassas. The government of the day was that of Benazir Bhutto, herself eventually assassinated by the Taliban. The driving force behind the Taliban was her defence minister, General Naseerullah Babar. In a relatively short period of time, the Taliban, with the full backing of our government and armed forces (who sought a bizarre ‘strategic depth’ beyond the sovereign territory of Pakistan) took over Afghanistan.

The horror story of five years of government under the Taliban is beyond the scope of this piece. Suffice it to say that the deadly plant of al Qaeda flourished in the soil they tended. There followed the 9/11 attacks on the US and that country’s direct re-entry into the war, along with 24 other nations. Pakistan was obliged to support and assist this campaign against the al Qaeda-Taliban combine.

By December 2001, the Taliban government had totally crumbled. But now there came still another intervention by Pakistan, or by someone in Pakistan. I refer, of course, to the fact — yes, the incontrovertible fact — that some persons or entities in Pakistan rescued the top leadership of al Qaeda and the Taliban from the caves of Tora Bora and gave them refuge and assistance within Pakistan. This can be logically established, first, by the Taliban’s successful prolongation of the war, despite their total rout in December 2001. Second, by the vigorous spread of the Taliban campaign of terror within Pakistan and the aggressive TTP insurgency against this country, and third, by the many al Qaeda-Taliban leaders captured or killed in Pakistan, not the least of whom was Osama bin Laden himself. Where should one point the finger? At General Musharraf? At some other general or generals? At the ISI? The MI? At some secret cabal? Or some other entity altogether? It does not matter. Clearly, the hospitality, the refuge, the safe havens, and the means of continuing their campaigns were provided to the Taliban within Pakistan.

Thus we see that, through this war, other countries have entered, withdrawn and perhaps re-entered. Only Pakistan has been continuously engaged for the past 33 years. Is there any need to speculate whose war it is?

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet