The following quotes are from Abdul Salam Zaeef’s recent memoir, My Life with the Taliban (Hachette India, 244 pages, Rs 495). As mentioned yesterday, Zaeef was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan (one of three countries that recognised the 1996-2001 regime) when the USA invaded post-9/11. Zaeef also spent about four years as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. Here is what he has to say:
“Pakistan was known among the prisoners as Majbooristan, the land that is obliged to fulfill each of America’s demands.
“Pakistan, which plays a key role in Asia, is so famous for treachery that it is said they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head so they can speak everybody’s language; they use everybody, deceive everybody. They deceive the Arabs under the guise of Islamic nuclear power, saying that they are defending Islam and Islamic countries. They milk America and Europe in the alliance against terrorism, and they have been deceiving Pakistani and other Muslims around the world in the name of the Kashmiri jihad. But behind the curtain, they have been betraying everyone.
“Their Islam and their jihad were to destroy their neighbouring Islamic country together with the infidels. They handed over their airports to the Americans so they could kill Muslims and destroy an Islamic country. Their loyalty to the Arabs is so great that they sold diplomats, journalists and mujahideen for dollars. Like animals. God knows whether they will ever use the nuclear bomb to defend Muslims and Islam. They might use their weapons — as they have used everything else — against Muslims.”
This is not all. These quotes are sourced from Zaeef’s experience at Guantanamo and after. Zaeef’s posting in Islamabad in the year and a half prior to 9/11 is filled with anecdotes illustrating the barbaric and dysfunctional nature of the Pakistani state. Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider gives Zaeef a list of criminals reportedly hiding in Afghanistan, unaware that his own ISI keeps them protected in Islamabad (one of the wanted has visited Zaeef in his Islamabad office just the day before). Pakistani cops rob each and every Afghan refugee travelling to Islamabad to meet their ambassador; when Moinuddin is confronted with this, he confesses there’s nothing he can do about it. Zaeef complains to the Governor in Peshawar, a former general who curtly tells him that the refugees are the real problem. The ISI repeatedly tries to recruit Zaeef; he does not budge. And when he talks to the foreign ministry mandarins, they repeatedly refer to the US Secretary of State as “Colin Powell saheb”.
General Pervez Musharraf was in charge at that time, and Zaeef describes the “devilish” ruler thus: “He is a secular man who does not believe in religion with his heart. For him, Islam is a political tool through which he thought he could control and use the Taliban to extend his power. He never saw the Taliban as a religious movement that actually wanted to establish an Islamic state. Rather, he thought that it was a group of individuals who had a political goal, who use their religion as a vehicle to mobilise the people.”
Zaeef does have good things to say about the ordinary Pakistanis he meets. Random families stop him on the road to donate lakhs to the Taliban cause post-9/11. A doctor on a Peshawar-Quetta flight, a regular donor of a third of her income to the Taliban, speaks of her anguish. Others simply call up and weep wordlessly. In short, an influential and intelligent high Taliban official (whose administrative skills ensured that Taliban supremo Mullah Mohd Omar Akhund gave him three difficult ministries to handle before posting him as envoy) found a dichotomy in Pakistan: between a sympathetic co-religious (and in most cases co-Pushtu) population, and a brutal, militarist, opportunistic State. (Zaeef uses the word “Punjabi” as if it were dirty.)
All of this ought to factor into India’s calculations in the coming months about a post-US Afghanistan. Zaeef’s honest and nuanced memoir is particularly refreshing after a string of American books on Afghanistan which, like the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker about America’s war on Iraq, boils down to the idea that war is a drug (tell that to the innocent civilians who are victims of this drug addict’s psychotic behaviour). Zaeef’s anti-Pakistan feelings mean that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s March statement, that the two neighbours were “conjoined twins”, was probably purely rhetorical.
Zaeef’s book matters at this juncture because the US is losing the war in Afghanistan. The dismissed General Stanley McChrystal (who in his report last August seeking 40,000 more troops claimed that India’s developmental work in Afghanistan was “exacerbating regional tensions” with Pakistan) has been replaced by General David Petraeus, who some Republicans wanted as their candidate against Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential elections. Changing the commander only confirms to the Taliban and Pakistan that the US has no stomach to fight beyond Obama’s July 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal.
Naturally, a lot of Indians are worried that if the US allows Pakistan to mid-wife a Karzai-Taliban government (Zaeef speaks encouragingly of Karzai while listing his many weaknesses, faults and blunders), then Islamabad will once again get its “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. However, going by Zaeef’s memoirs, it will not be so straightforward. Pakistan is a national security state run by the army; it is not going to become an Islamic state favoured by Zaeef or other Taliban in the near (or even middle) future. Indeed, Pakistan is likely to one day return to military rule.
Furthermore, if the US withdraws, they will have to rely more heavily on Pakistan, which they can only do through GHQ in Rawalpindi. Such a government, no matter how pious it appears, will not have smooth ties with a Taliban- or Taliban-supported government; not after the experience of pre-9/11 Punjabi bullying and post-9/11 US drones, cluster-bombs or counterinsurgency operations (not to mention Bagram airbase’s detention centre or Guantanamo Bay which, despite Obama’s promises, shows no sign of being shut down).
Simply put, there is great Pushtun resentment against the Punjabis who rule Pakistan. India’s future Afghan policy has to look beyond the ultra-religious orientation of the Taliban, and focus on our commonalities (after all, till recently India was a very good friend of Iran’s revolutionary regime). India should not fear a post-US Taliban resurgence, but use the Afghan’s natural anti-Pakistan sentiment to our advantage.
editorchief@expressbuzz.com
About The Author;
Aditya Sinha is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘The New Indian Express’ and is based in Chennai