Kamran Shafi

The writer is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

So then, the "armies of the Northern Alliance have conquered most of Afghanistan" - report on CNN, Tuesday, November 27th. You only have to look at the television pictures to see the "army" for what it is. Just take off the fatigue caps and trousers and put them into turbans and loose shalwars and you will see as wild-eyed a bunch as the erstwhile Taliban. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, the men of the Northern Alliance are every bit as unfeeling, cruel, and maniacal as our friends. No wonder Afghan kings and warlords (and the Taliban, indeed) have always used the most horrific, most tyrannical methods to keep their enemies in line. Little wonder, then, that we see daily reports of the worst kind of atrocities being committed by Muslim upon brother Muslim, who in his turn did it to his brother Muslim when the chappal was on the other foot.

Little wonder all of this had to come to pass, but please look at our role in the Taliban disaster; look at the extents to which we went to mollycoddle the Mullahs for they were going to provide us "strategic depth". Strategic depth, did I say? Well, that is what the brilliant Holy Warriors told us was the reason of our blind support of the Taliban. They could do anything, from the most foolish to the utterly bizarre. They could "execute" television sets and videocassettes by hanging them from electric poles; they could destroy ancient artifacts and symbols of another religion; they could mistreat, indeed massacre women and minorities, going so far as ordaining that Hindus and Christians wear yellow patches on their sleeves! They could do anything. Unmoved, our great Napoleons just went on smiling indulgently and repeating the mantra, "strategic depth, strategic depth" little realising that a hated dispensation which held its own country by the jugular; which did not have the first idea of governance, and which could not even feed its own people could never provide another country any kind of depth at all, let alone "strategic". Not even the disgraceful way in which the Taliban insulted our Interior Minister moved their backers within the Pakistani Establishment. I mean the man was actually fired at, as he was about to board his aircraft at Kabul airport when he was on his way back after failing to get the Taliban to extradite Pakistani criminals who had taken refuge in Afghanistan. Yet, the Pakistani state, "rolled on, impotently" to borrow from Omar Khayyam. It is another matter that General Moinuddin Haider did not have the nerve to strenuously counsel a change in the disastrous course we were on. Or, if he failed, to simply resign his post.

Please see how badly we have done out of all this. Despite the fact that every so-called Afghan "leader" has partaken of our hospitality, including the present "President"; despite the fact that upwards of five million Afghan refugees have made Pakistan their home: Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras among them, Pakistan is the most reviled country in Afghanistan today. Indeed, there are some Afghans who are urging the bombing of Pakistan too.

Many moons ago, at the time that a few of us were arguing against the carte blanche we had given the Taliban, I had equated Pakistan to a snotty-nosed brat perched high in a tree slinging pebbles on passersby with his catapult via the Taliban. All it would take, I had said, would be for some grown-up to climb the tree, haul the whippersnapper to the ground by his ear, put him on his knee and apply three hard slaps on his little botty. We should thank our lucky stars that the one-time office babu, His Holiness Khalifa (forgive me O' Lord, for I blaspheme) Mullah Omar was foolish enough to take Shiekh Osama bin Laden seriously when the Little Prince Who Wanted To Be King (Khadim ul Harmain Sharifain instead of the present lot, didn't you know?) anointed him "Khalifa". We should thank our lucky stars that the joint suicide of this lovely pair, has spared us (thus far) from complete ruination, and hope that we have learnt our lessons from the devastation visited upon our pals - those who were going to provide us "strategic depth".

As the Pakistani Establishment gets on its hands and knees once again, and scrabbles about in the pulverised dust of yet another of its failures looking for the arms and legs and torsos of more of its blown apart toy-soldiers, the Taliban "army" (ha, ha) this time around, one can only rage and rage and rage. God, how angry I get, when once again it is brought home to me that you and I, the lay citizens of our country count for nothing at all; that what we say or counsel or write doesn't turn a hair of those who sit in their fake ivory towers, who think they know all. Who even now, I'll bet, are putting out that none of what has happened is their fault, that the ruins they now sit amidst are not of their making.

Surely the blame game is on, everyone pointing fingers at someone else, haloes alight atop their own worthless heads. But is it not a complete failure of our foreign policy: the debacle in Afghanistan, as some cautioned was bound to happen, many years ago, when the worthless Nawaz Sharif and his worthless government were ruling the roost? Didn't we see this day coming, when we effectively lost all of our traditional and good friends: Turkey, Iran, even China, just because we were letting Mullahs of a typical hue have complete rein? How often did China let it be known that it was unhappy at the insertion of "holy warriors" into Xinjiang? How often did Iran complain about our policies? We have only ourselves to blame, the lot of us.

Look at bin Laden too. It defies the senses when one is now told that he actually did bait to Mullah Omar as the Khalifa of Islam. What great qualities did the Saudi millionaire see in His Holiness? Was it courage; was it a deep understanding of our religion; was it compassion and a love of the poor and the weak, of humanity? Why did he raise the ignorant Mullah to the stature of a Khalifa? For the Anointed One seems to have failed in every aspect: look at the barbaric way in which he ruled Afghanistan; look at the way his "armies" folded up inside of a months bombing; look at the shameless way his "commanders" have switched sides, so cruelly abandoning the so-called "jihadis" who came to Afghanistan to fight the "infidel" to a fate worse than death: certain mutilation and (mercifully), death at the hands of the brutes that make up the Northern Alliance.

It wrenches the heart when one reads stories of the plight of those sent to wage "jihad" by ill-meaning Mullahs as far afield as Karachi. The New York Times of November 28th gives one such concerning 30-year old Muhammad Tadamia (probably a misspelling because the man was frightened) a man who cannot read nor write and who was sent to Afghanistan by his religious leader, someone called Mullah Bhai. When asked why he had surrendered, the man said he was not sure why, only that the American bombing was "terrifying", and that he had been ordered to surrender by the "senior Taliban leaders in Kunduz, Mullah Fazel and Mullah Dadullah". As he was walking back to the truck on which the prisoners were to be carted off to Mazar-i-Sharif, a Northern Alliance guard picked up a big stone and "hurled it into Mr Tadamia's back". One can only hope that Tadamia or whatever the wretch's name, comes to a quick end.

Whilst I am completely exhausted by the intensity of my grief for the thousands whose various body parts will soon be at the receiving edge of blunt knives, I do hope that those who have a direct hand in this tragedy will beg the Almighty's forgiveness and atone in some way for their sins. Perhaps by resigning their high offices and setting up charities to help the families of the poor unfortunates?

One happy note in the end: Zamir Akram, the number two in our Washington Embassy did us proud the other night on Larry King Live, where he fought Pakistan's corner extremely well. The Indian and Turkish ambassadors; the Israeli charge de affaires; and the Northern Alliance spokesman Haron Amin, a man given to stating blatant falsehoods in impeccable American English and with a straight face, were also on the panel. Akram was sure of his facts, spoke intelligently and in measured tones, and did not let even an innuendo go unchallenged. His was one of the finest interview performances by a Pakistani official that I have ever seen. The Turk, I must add, was singularly unhelpful. It would do our "core-professionals" good to see the recording of the interview repeatedly.