http://www.thesundaily.com/article.cfm?id=50137
SPEAK UP! :: Comment & Analysis
The truth hurts
By Eric S. Margolis
WASHINGTON: The storm created by WikiLeaks’ release of 92,000 US military field reports from Afghanistan continues to rage in the nation’s capital. The massive leaks revealed the Afghan War’s ugly underbelly and deeply embarrassed Washington and its Nato allies.
The Obama administration is firing back, claiming release of these old reports from 2004-2009 endanger US military forces. That is the standard response to any ugly revelations about the Afghan war. The only thing the truth endangers are the politicians who have hung their hats on this war, and possibly, some paid Afghan informers.
The facts are shocking: wide-scale killing of civilians by US and Nato forces; torture of prisoners handed over to the communist-dominated Afghan secret police; death squads; endemic corruption and theft; double-dealing and demoralisation of Western occupation forces facing ever fiercer Taliban resistance.
Nearly all of this had been reported to varying degrees by the media and by this writer. The most interesting part of Wikigate is Pakistan’s supposed double-dealing in aiding the US-led war while maintaining secret links with Taliban and its allies.
The US government and media have been blasting Pakistan while downplaying the atrocities – and what WikiLeaks charges are "war crimes" – committed by Western forces.
Here’s the bottom line on Pakistan’s alleged double-dealing. After 9/11, the US threatened to "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age" unless it turned against Taliban, the religious, anti-communist movement, and opened Pakistan to US military forces and intelligence operations. This was told to me by a former head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service whose directors I have known since 1985.
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says his nation was forced to reluctantly give in to intense US pressure and abandon Taliban, which served as Pakistan’s proxy army in Afghanistan battling the still active Afghan Communist Party-Tajik Northern Alliance, also backed by Russia and Iran. Intensifying efforts by India to extend its influence into Afghanistan deeply worries Pakistan. Southern Afghanistan has long been Pakistan’s sphere of influence.
Pakistan was forced by the US to act against its own vital strategic interests. This column revealed that in 2007, Pakistan and India concluded the US and its reluctant allies would be defeated and driven from Afghanistan. Both old foes began implementing a proxy war to control strategic Afghanistan – Pakistan by backing its creation, Taliban, and India by supporting the Northern Alliance.
Accordingly, Pakistan was compelled to follow a dual-track policy: accepting semi-occupation by the US, US$1 billion (RM3.2 billion) annually from Washington, and paying lip service to the US-led war, while keeping open links to Taliban and other tribal militants. This was basic common sense. No one should have been surprised – particularly not Washington which has a long record of abandoning faithful allies.
Islamabad also had to worry about the dangers of a revival of Pashtun nationalism caused by the Afghan War that could threaten to tear Pakistan apart.
Washington and US media are heaping blame for the growing fiasco in Afghanistan on Gen. Hamid Gul, former director-general of the ISI. Gul led the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan in the 1980s and was one of America’s most important allies. He has since become a fierce critic of the US-led war in Afghanistan. Gul warns that the US intends to break up Pakistan.
I knew Gul well. He is a Pakistani patriot at a time when so many Pakistani politicians and generals have been bought like bags of Basmati rice. Many of the false charges against Gul came from the communist-led Afghan secret police.
What Washington really wants is a totally obedient, obsequious Pakistan, not a real ally. But two nations’ interests must at times diverge. Trying to make Pakistan a satellite state will result in that vastly important, nuclear-armed nation one day exploding with anti-American hatred, as was the case in Iran in 1979.
The US-led war in Afghanistan is putting the two nations on a collision course.
In Washington, the US Congress just ignored the WikiLeaks scandal and voted an additional US$37 billion (RM118.4 billion) to fuel the Afghanistan War. Politicians are petrified to oppose this nine-year war lest they be accused of being anti-patriotic, the kiss of death in hyper-patriotic America where flag-wavers root for foreign wars so long as their kids don’t have to serve and they don’t have to pay taxes to finance them.
Eric S. Margolis is a contributing editor to the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
Updated: 12:21PM Mon, 02 Aug 2010
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