The National Interest
Thanksgiving 2001

Lifting the Veil on Afghanistan

by Julie Sirrs

 

. . . The aspect of contemporary Afghanistan that is perhaps the most dangerously misunderstood concerns Pakistan’s role as a perceived American ally in the region. In fact, Islamabad’s involvement has been so contrary to Washington’s interests in Afghanistan that Iran has become America’s most practical ally against bin Laden, because it aids the only active resistance to his forces. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been the chief supporter of bin Laden’s Taliban backers. Without Pakistani support in the form of money, military supplies, advisors, fighters and even some regular troops, the Taliban could not have achieved power, nor would bin Laden have had the sanctuary from which to plot against Americans.

Islamabad has consistently tried to install governments in Afghanistan that not only protect its interests, but would also be the most malleable to them. It has taken pains to ensure, for instance, cheap transit routes for Pakistani trade links—for both legal and smuggled goods—to Central Asia, and to create the stability that the laying of lucrative pipelines for Central Asian energy resources requires. Most of all, however, Pakistani fundamentalist groups and their sympathizers within Pakistan’s government, particularly its military and intelligence services, share bin Laden’s and the Taliban’s ideology, including its anti-Americanism. Typical of this was a conference held in northwest Pakistan in January 2001, in which members of these parties and former Pakistani high government officials openly chanted "long live Osama."

Additional proof of Pakistani government sympathies are revealed by those whom Islamabad has consistently supported for over two decades in Afghanistan: the extremists. Notably, Afghan Pashtun moderates have historically received little support from the Pakistanis. Yet Pakistan’s military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, has repeatedly claimed that his government was supporting the Taliban because of their shared Pashtun ethnicity. The foreigners fighting within Taliban ranks paint a much different picture, however. A survey of Pakistanis captured by the United Front shows that nearly 70 percent of such fighters are non-Pashtun, and therefore must be motivated by a cause other than ethnic solidarity. When I interviewed them, these POWs (who also include Arabs and Chinese) claimed that they came to help the Taliban in order to acquire skills that would be helpful in a jihad outside of Afghanistan, both against their home countries and against the United States. . . .