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Afghanistan: The immoral Alliance
- Dr Jassim Taqui
The United States is facing a dilemma in
its war against terrorism. Washington feels compelled to avoid
massive deployment of forces in Afghanistan to avoid casualties
that might agitate the American public opinion. Instead, the
American decision makers are cooperating with the Northern
Alliance as a fait accompli.
Washington's decision to renew friendships
with the Northern Alliance for its war against al-Qa'ida and
the Taliban is creating a paradox for both George W Bush and
Tony Blair. On the one hand, the Americans and the British
have waged a war against terrorism. On the other, they are
cooperating with the Northern Alliance(NA), which is described
as a "confederacy of warlords, patriots, rapists and
torturers," by the very Western media. Here is the irony
and the controversy. Here is the paradox. The NA is essentially
the same people who ravaged Afghanistan in the 1990s after
the Soviet-backed regime collapsed, paving the way for the
seizure of the capital by the Taliban in 1996. That the arrival
of the Taliban was widely welcomed by the people of Afghanistan
as a relief from the depredations imposed by the Northern
Alliance-or Mujahideen, as they were then known- provides
some indication of the modus operandi of the West's new friends.
The citizens of Kabul, especially women, have
good reason to regard the prospect of their return with horror.
Switch to 1989. In Afghanistan the anti-Soviet Mujahideen
fighters are on the verge of driving the Red Army from their
country. The strategy of the CIA to recruit, arm and finance
the most cruel and fanatical Afghani warriors they could find
was paying dividends. Cheered on by the Mujahideen's supporters
in the West, Afghanistan's "freedom fighters" began
to visit Western capitals to shore up their support.
A favourite and the largest recipient of US
aid-was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hizb-i-Islami, who
was described as a "nut, an extremist and a very violent
man". Hekmatyar gained notoriety in the '70s for throwing
acid on the faces of Afghan women who refused to wear the
veil and later as one of the region's leading narco-traffickers.
He is allegedly a close friend of Osama bin Laden. The former
American President Ronald Reagan lobbied for Hekmatyar and
wanted the Western nations to receive him and extend full
support to him. But, later it were the Americans who dumped
Hekmatyar due to a new discovery about his involvement in
criminal activities and due to a record of atrocities and
drug running. And when Hekmatyar fell from the grace, one
discovered all of a
sudden his atrocities. The Western media which shielded him
started to unveil his crimes against his own people as well
as the people of Pakistan. For, he played a major role in
smuggling drugs to Pakistan to sustain his war machine and
the civil war in Afghanistan. Today, there are 4.5 million
drug addicts in Pakistan, mainly due to the drug traffickers
like Hekmatyar and his ilk. Only a month after liberating
Kabul from the Soviet-backed regime in April 1992, Hekmatyar
turned on his fellow Mujahideen because he felt they were
not offering him enough power in the new government. For the
next two years Hekmatyar's forces shelled the capital with
their US supplied weaponry, killing more than 25,000 civilians
and wounding 100,000 others, while more than half of the population
fled the city in misery and desperation. The city's water
and electricity supplies were cut off by Hekmatyar, who took
the lead in bombing and terrorising civilians. More than 70
per cent of Kabul was reduced to rubbles in a conflict between
warlords.
Amid these bloody conflicts the Taliban, emerged
in 1995 and soon drove the splintered Mujahideen into exile
in Iran and into a small slither of territory in northern
Afghanistan, where they have remained until now. Today, Hekmatyar
remains in exile in Iran, worried that he is being frozen
out of efforts to establish a post-Taliban political order
in Afghanistan. As a consequence, he has declared war on just
about everyone-the US, the Northern Alliance, former president
Burhanuddin Rabbani, and the Taliban-which suggests he is
as unstable as he is ungrateful. But one should not be surprised
if the US, Russia and Iran agree to bring him back into play
in a "loose federation", which should also include
some Taliban elements. Here, there are many questions, which
remain
unanswered: How can these immoral personalities, warlords
and the bunch of criminals dictate their terms on the Afghan
people? For how long the United Nations would permit big powers
to impose their form of government on the people of Afghanistan?
What are the guarantees that these warlords would not repeat
their past history?
How can these warlords and smugglers put
an end to terrorism and drug smuggling? Why does the democratic
West stop believing in holding a free , fair and impartial
elections in Afghanistan under the UN supervision?
Comment Dr Jassim Taqui, Pakistan Observer,
Fri Nov 16 '01
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