“The Devil is the absence of doubt. He’s what pushes people into suicide bombings, into setting up extermination camps.”
— John Updike, 1985

EVER since King Zahir Shah was sent on a Roman exile by his cousin, Daoud, in the mid-1970s, one calamity after another has visited Afghanistan.

Briefly, it started with civil war, followed by the assassination of two presidents, Soviet occupation, Mujahideen, the narco menace, Talibanism, misogynism, terrorism and currently warlordism and western occupation. At the apogee of this cycle of events about six million Afghans — a quarter of the population — sought refuge in Pakistan.

The spillover of Afghan upheavals inevitably casts a shadow over Pakistan’s body politic. In protecting its self-interest, Pakistan got unnecessarily involved. It has 80,000 troops posted in its tribal areas. About 700 troops have been killed in clashes with tribals and local and foreign militants. It is blamed by the West for giving refuge to the Taliban in Quetta and Al Qaeda militants in the tribal area. The brittleness of its relations with Afghanistan has its resonance in western capitals.

Pakistan needs clarity in thinking. For reasons that will follow it is its view that the Taliban, now fighting Nato forces, are Afghan nationalists whose aim is to expel foreign occupation forces in general and American troops in particular from Afghanistan. They are operating under an overall command and control system. On the other hand, the Al Qaeda is made up of terrorists with a global mission. They have visions of an Islamic ummah in which the Shias are to be expelled from the Garden of Eden. The Al Qaeda’s ummah can be best described as updated Wahabism, which would probably reject Deobandism i.e. as a halfway house variant hence rejected.

The Al Qaeda is a globalising idea, not a global army. It probably came about as a Sunni reaction to the prominence of Khomeinism in the Shia world. The magnet of the Al Qaeda idea picks up autonomous sleeper cells globally. These cells are basically autonomous with some connection to a like-minded cell for some explosives, guidance and funds. A cell may consist of three to five persons.

It is only while appreciating the inherent difference between Talibanism and the Al Qaeda that we can penetrate the fog of our current misapprehensions. If there is now a tactical union between the two, it is because the US and Nato regard it as a common enemy. They are partners in adversity. It must have dawned on the Taliban that they lost the rulership of Afghanistan because they had virtually mortgaged their government to Osama bin Laden, who, as the paymaster of the Taliban militia and government and a section of the mullahs, controlled events.

Though Osama bin Laden ran terrorist training camps in Khost and other places, it is highly doubtful that he ever shared his terrorist plans in East Africa, and in particular 9/11, with his hosts. He took full advantage of the ignorance and backwardness of the host government under the rubric of Islam. Little is known of the extreme pressure Osama brought to bear on Mullah Omar, especially after the latter banned the cultivation of poppy and the West failed to compensate the Taliban government for the income loss. The deficit was met by Osama bin Laden, but, on his terms.

I give below an example of the manipulation in the name of Islam by the devious Osama bin Laden of Mullah Omar and some of his paid cohorts that led to the destruction of the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan. There were Afghan mullahs who were eager to break the priceless statues in the Kabul museum and also the Bamiyan Buddhas, and, to this end, some wanton destruction of the museum did take place.

One is reminded of similar insanity at the height of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China when the revolutionary goons smashed priceless specimens of Ching pottery as examples of the feudal exploitation of labour and as a rebellion against world cultural values.

There were cries from the reactionary mullahs demanding the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas soon after the Taliban took power in Kabul. A full 16 months prior to their destruction, Omar issued the following little known edict to protect them:

“The famous Buddhist statues at Bamiyan were made before the advent of Islam in Afghanistan, and are amongst the largest of their kind in Afghanistan and in the world. In Afghanistan there are no Buddhists to worship the statues. Since Islam came to Afghanistan until the present period the statues have not been damaged. The government regards the statues with respect and considers the position of their protection today to be the same as always... The Taliban government states that Bamiyan will not be destroyed but protected.” (Kathy Gammon, I for Infidel, Public Affairs).

Osama bin Laden was firing his terrorist agenda from the shoulders of the Omar government. This from his point of view was an ideal arrangement — power without responsibility. The dependence of Omar was in inverse proportion to his isolation. Afghanistan’s isolation was total after the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and by the same token, his dependence on Bin Laden near complete. The situation now is different. Bin Laden, if he exists, is in a cave somewhere. His monetary resources have either dried up or are difficult to access. Having let loose the Frankenstein of terrorism, he can only clap his hands in celebration whenever a particularly nasty act of terrorism occurs.

In my view, the Taliban are no longer the camp followers of Osama bin Laden because no spectacular act of terrorism in recent years had involved its members. There may be the odd Afghan in the Al Qaeda as there may be nationals from many other countries worldwide. The actors in the major terrorist events of the past five years were all non-Afghans living in the grimy margins of western cities. Take Mohammad Atta, leader of the 9/11 terrorism, living in Harburg, virtually a slum, across the river from Hamburg. Most of his colleagues in 9/11 were Arabs, seething with discontent with the West.

Beeston in Leeds is another rundown impoverished area from where Siddique Khan assembled his gang of London bombers. Lavapies is said to be even more rundown and rat-infested than either Beeston or Harburg, and is located on the outskirts of Madrid, home to Jamal Zougam, the mastermind of the Madrid train bombings that killed hundreds of people.

Life for a coloured immigrant in the West can be as hard as for one in penal servitude. The immigrant may be a legal or illegal economic refugee. He and his family are doubly discriminated against on grounds of poverty and skin colour. The children of these immigrants are seething with anger, alienation and frustration, educated, but, living on the margins of western society. The mosque becomes a place for mental and physical refuge from the day-to-day insults and problems of discrimination and humiliation.

Pakistan should support the aims of the Taliban, or of such elements within the Taliban who are determined to separate themselves from Al Qaeda. Reconciliation talks between the Karzai government and the representatives of Mullah Omar should be brokered by Pakistan. It should recognise the aims of the Taliban which is the removal of western occupation forces with its cooperation. At same stage, Nato should be given a seat or observer status at such reconciliation talks. In politics there are no permanent friends or enemies. Pakistan’s interest is to ensure an Afghanistan that is at peace with itself and its neighbours.

In the alternative Afghanistan is likely to become as deadly a place as Iraq today. This country has a long history of expelling colonial or neo-colonial forces from its territory. Suicide bombing has never been an Afghan trait, but recently there have been disturbing incidents of this kind. Any reconciliation process with the Taliban must also necessarily address the north-south divide and the sectarian schism. Afghanistan as a pluralist society thrived under King Zahir Shah; the same balance needs to be resurrected.

The writer is an MNA. murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk