Jamal Hussain
A report “Why Should Pakistan be added to list of terrorist states (sic)” by Rahmatullah Nabil, former chief of National Directorate of Security (NDS) Afghanistan has recently been published by TOLOnews, a 24/7 Afghanistan news channel on July 14, 2016. A long-winded around 3000 words document comprising half-baked cliché ridden arguments based on unverifiable data with no citations, it is an obvious crude attempt to deflect the failings of the Afghan government by blaming Pakistan for all its ills. Normally such diatribes are best ignored to avoid giving them unnecessary publicity but in this case an exception is being made because, according to Wikipedia, “TOLO news, Afghanistan’s first 24-hour news and current affairs channel serves Afghans’ growing appetite for the most up to date news, both domestic and international, across broadcast, online and social media platforms.”
Nabil holds Pakistan solely responsible for “maximum use of its 3As (Allah, Army and America) strategy” during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The gentleman conveniently forgets to mention that the Afghan government of Nur Mohammad Taraki, which had little popular support among the people had forged close ties with the Soviet Union. It had launched ruthless purges of all domestic opposition and began extensive land and social reforms that were bitterly resented by the vast majority of devoutly Muslim and largely anti-communist population. The end result was the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets forces on December, 1979, that led to the rise of the insurgency led by the Afghan tribal and urban groups collectively known as the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen had the support of a vast majority of Afghan nationals of all ilk (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras etc.). The three As, which Nabil derogatorily mentions, were embraced by the people of Afghanistan wholeheartedly and eventually the strategy led to the expulsion of the Soviet troops from their country. But for the help and extreme sacrifice by the Pakistani nation Afghanistan would still be under the Soviet occupation. The principal factor for Afghanistan becoming unstable and practically ungovernable immediately following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops was the infighting among the liberated Afghans.
True, the use of the Islamic card and the concept of Jihad which was aggressively promoted by the USA has had severe unintended consequences for all the three nations (Pakistan, Afghanistan and the USA). Afghanistan must be held solely for the complete instability in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the Soviet forces. Pakistan’s reactions during the near civil war situation from 1990 to 1995 was governed principally with the desire to help establish a stable Afghan government there. When the Taliban appeared as the strongest faction in the internecine warfare and appeared to display necessary power and will to establish peace and bring the law and order in the war ravaged country under control, Pakistan supported the movement.
The Madrassa factor is an issue that Pakistan has been confronted with because of its policies in support of the Mujahideen uprising. Given the conservative nature of the Pakistani society, the Madrassa reforms has to be handled with extreme care. The fate of Afghan king Amanullah (1919-1921) and king Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran (1941-79) were sealed and they were forced to abdicate because they had tried to modernise their societies at a rate un acceptable to them – this lesson of history must not be disregarded by Pakistan. Work is in hand to reform the Madrassas; true, more needs to be done and more would be done as a section of the Pakistani society is gradually liberated further from the myopic version of Islam as propagated by the Taliban, al Qaeda and Daesh.
Nabil castigates Pakistan for its role post 9/11. May he be reminded that to begin with Pakistan was an unwilling US ally of the Operation Enduring Freedom where it was given little option but to provide air access to the US invading forces. It had to be coerced under the threat of “being bombed to the stone age” if it did not cooperate. Pakistan’s reluctance to join the US was primarily because it wanted to avoid being a party to any military action in Afghanistan. That said, without the Pakistan support, the Taliban government would not have been routed so quickly, without a major bloodbath. Nabil and his peers should be grateful to Pakistan for its role in the destruction of the Taliban setup rather than castigate it and it should be sufficient to erase the bad blood between Pakistan and the non-Pashtun citizens of Afghanistan for any alleged support the former might have provided in the rise and rule of the Taliban from 1995 to 2001.
Nabil accuses Pakistan and its intelligence agency of directly supporting al Qaeda and the Haqqani network thus “fuelling the flames of war in Afghanistan,” without quoting any credible reference or citation. Pakistan has never tolerated al Qaeda on its soil and the number of top al Qaeda operatives including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11 it has captured is a testimony to that effect. The Haqqani network did manage to survive in the inhospitable terrain of North Waziristan up until 2014 mainly because the Pakistan Armed Forces were already deeply committed in major counterinsurgency role by conducting Operations Mizan (2004), Sherdil (2008), Rah e Rast (2009) and Rah e Nijat (2010) – it was spread too thin and just did not have the resources to open a new front. By 2014, however, after successfully tackling the TTP menace, Operation Zarb e Azb was launched where the Haqqani network was the principal target.
For the ex-Afghan NDS chief to accuse Pakistan of informing the Haqqanis in advance about the major military campaign that was to be launched against them just does not add up. That the Haqqani network had learned in advance about the impending attack is very likely but the Pakistani intelligence agencies cannot be held responsible for the alleged leak – the launching of Operation Zarb e Azb was no secret as Pakistan had in advance conveyed to the Afghan government and ISAF about it. The Haqqani network could have found out about the campaign from a multiple of other sources.
For Pakistan the primary military objective of Zarb e Azb was to expel the Haqqanis from it soil and if the reports of their exodus from North Waziristan even before the operation was launched is true, it partially proved Sun Tzu’s maxim that the greatest military victory is when the war objective is achieved merely by threatening to use force, without the need to do so. Haqqanis, however, were still fully entrenched when the operation was launched and many were killed while the rest fled across to the unguarded eastern province of Paktia in Afghanistan that had been left practically unmanned by the Afghans and ISAF.
The charge Nabil has made about launching of Zarb e Azb without coordination with the Afghan government is absurd. There are tangible evidence confirming that Pakistan had not only coordinated the offensive with ISAF and Afghanistan, it went to the extent of requesting them to establish an anvil on their side of the border adjacent to North Waziristan to crush the retreating Haqqanis – what in military jargon is referred to as the hammer and anvil strategy. The hammer in this case was the Pakistani offensive while the anvil was to be established by Afghanistan on their side of the border. Perhaps Nabil may care to explain why this was not done and the Haqqani remnant successfully retreated from North Waziristan into Paktia where they have since established themselves and conduct terror raids in Afghanistan and across the Durand Line in Pakistan. Was it a case of being complicit or sheer incompetence?
A litany of other charges that Nabil has recorded in his paper are basically political in nature, none of them supported by credible evidence. Pakistan’s foreign Office is in a better position to counter them.
