By Dr Suresh Khairnar
Today marks 24 years since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in America. And to take revenge for these attacks, America has forced war on eight countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq, and in return for the deaths of its own 37,000 people, it has attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, killing more than 2.5 million people. And more than half of them are from Iraq alone. Of these, 1.5 million lives have been lost. And more than three-fourths of them are children under the age of 15. And due to economic sanctions, most of the lives of children have been lost due to lack of food and medicines. This is more than the number of children who died due to the atom bombs dropped by America on two Japanese cities, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, on 6-9 August 1945, during the last phase of the Second World War.
After the 9/11 attacks, in the name of eliminating Al-Qaeda, America attacked Afghanistan as well as Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt in the name of terrorism! And 9-29 lakh people were killed by spending Rs 585 lakh crore! Among them were a total of 84 terrorists!
After the US action, instead of Al-Qaeda ending, more than ten terrorist organizations with different names were born! ISIS, Boko-Haram spread to 17 countries from Iraq to Nigeria! 35 groups including Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Haqqani are associated with it!
In 24 years, these groups have carried out 34 thousand attacks! In which more than one lakh people have lost their lives! And it has been less than a month since the US attacked the Afghan terrorist organization Taliban for handing over Osama bin Laden and kept Afghanistan under its control for twenty years! The same Afghanistan has been captured by the Taliban immediately after the US withdrew its troops! Doesn’t this look like WWF wrestling? The world’s most powerful army was busy having fun in the Bagaram area of Afghanistan for twenty years? And under the nose of three and a half lakh Afghan soldiers and the US army itself, only seventy thousand Talibanis, who were claimed to have been removed twenty years ago! Then they come to power again? After looking at the historical background of this, you will know what is the reason behind it? That is why I have titled my article as ‘If you sow the seeds of acacia, where will you get mangoes?’
In 1985, on the White House lawn, President Ronald Reagan presented a group of Afghans, all Mujahideen leaders, to the media and praised them, saying, “These gentlemen are on a moral level with the founding fathers of our country!” It was a moment when America tried to present a new form of political Islam to continue its struggle against the Soviet Union.
Half a decade after the Vietnam debacle, American foreign policy was on a second losing streak. This trend was most dramatically illustrated in 1979, when popular revolutions toppled two US-backed dictatorships: one in Nicaragua and the other in Iran. Later that year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Who would have guessed that the Soviet Union would collapse just a decade later?
If the 9/11 incident dampened America’s happiness for a while, then this incident also raised the question, “At what cost was the Cold War won?” To answer this question, you have to look at the reign of President Reagan. Ronald Reagan claimed that “the defeat of pro-American dictators in the Third World was clearly due to the Soviet Union!” After this, Reagan called for, “We should put all our strength to push back the Soviet Union, whatever measures we have to take for this!” Afghanistan was the high point of the Cold War compared to other countries.
The Afghan war relatively weakened the counter-revolutionary campaign in Nicaragua. The methods used to win both wars were seriously considered for their subsequent effects. The Soviet Union had about one lakh ground troops fighting in the war. The Afghanistan war gave America the opportunity to hand over Vietnam to the Soviet Union. Reagan turned it into a strategic objective, because his view towards the Afghan war was more global than regional. The Reagan administration dragged this war for ten years. Thus the Afghan war turned into the most dangerous regional war in the world. This was also the largest paramilitary operation of the CIA since the Vietnam war. Which turned into the longest war in Soviet history.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had a major impact on the policy of the Afghan war. The Iranian Revolution brought about a new form of relations between America and political Islam. Prior to this, America had understood the world very simply – on one side was the Soviet Union and the militant third world nationalism, which America called Soviet tools, and on the other side was political Islam, which America supported through Sarikat-e-Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia.
Similarly, in Pakistan, it supported Jamaat-e-Islami against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and in Egypt, it supported Society of Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser. The hope was that political Islam would create a local resistance against secular nationalism. This idea appealed to other American friends in the region, from Israel to conservative Arab governments. But this plan failed completely.
Israel hoped to foster an Islamic political movement in the occupied territory and use it against the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Israeli intelligence gave Hamas full freedom of movement during the first intifada, allowing it to open a university and a bank account, and even supported it financially, so that it could counter a strengthened Hamas as a component of the second intifada.
In Egypt, after the death of Nasser, Anwar Sadat emerged as a liberator of political Islam. Between 1971 and 1975, Anwar Sadat released supporters of Islam from jail, who had been in jail for years. Not only this, for the first time they got the freedom to express their views openly in front of the people, and organize themselves. It is a different matter that they were supported by Israeli and American intelligence agencies. And what kind of trouble can the unexpected result of such crazy and selfish actions be?
Secret American assistance to opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul began before Soviet forces had even invaded Afghanistan. CIA and State Department documents seized during the hostage-taking of the American embassy in Tehran revealed that “the US had begun secret meetings with Afghan rebel leaders in Pakistan in April 1979.” This incident took place eight months before Soviet forces entered Afghanistan. This was confirmed by Zbigniew Brzenczyk, who was President Carter’s national security adviser. He revealed this in an interview given to a Paris newspaper ‘Le Nouvel Observateur’ (January 15-20, 1998). The question and answer of the interview was something like this.
Question-Former CIA Director Robert Gates has written in his memoirs (From the Shadows) that “American intelligence agencies had started providing assistance to the Mujahideen six months before the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan.” During this time you were President Carter’s National Security Advisor. Thus you played an important role in this matter. Is this correct?
Brenzenskey- According to the official statement recorded in history, the assistance given by the CIA to the Mujahideen started in 1980! That is, much after the Soviet forces attacked Afghanistan on 24 December 1979! But the reality is just the opposite! In fact, on 3 July 1979, President Carter signed the first order! Under which there was a provision to provide assistance to the opponents of the communist government in Kabul! And on the same day I wrote to President Carter and made it clear “that our assistance will make the path of military intervention difficult!”
From Carter to Reagan, American foreign policy had changed a lot. Now it was turning from cantonment to roll-back. In Afghanistan, as in Nicaragua, the Carter administration thought it appropriate to adopt two paths. Liberal level covert support should be given to anti-communists. Be it a government or a group. Along with this, efforts should continue to find a solution through dialogue.
Cantonment, in this sense, was meant to be a search for coexistence. The Reagan administration, by contrast, had no interest in finding a way out through compromise. Instead of coexistence, the central focus of Reagan policy was pay-bank: everything that would make the Afghan war a Vietnam for the Soviet Union. The goal was one: “to defeat the Soviet Union at all costs.” The CIA was determined to do so. “Nothing would stand in the way of the real objective in Afghanistan.” That is, to kill the Russians was their main goal. Richard Pearl, Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense, was one of Washington’s most high-profile assassins. He was given greater responsibility under George W. Bush, especially after the 9/11 incident.
If the Reagan administration was initially allied with groups with strong anti-Soviet ideology and had no interest in a negotiated solution, Afghan nationalism was a matter of mistrust for successive Pakistani governments. This became more evident when the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, was forced to leave the country in July 1973 by his nephew and former prime minister, Mohammed Daud. Daud had allied the military’s Republican Alliance with a wing of the Communist Party, which he had named after his newspaper, Parcham. The new nationalist government took up the popular cause of Pashtunistan, half of Afghanistan’s population, and millions of Pashtuns living in Pakistan’s North East Frontier region, and hence gave a free hand to the Pakistani government. “That it should help the non-nationalist forces of Afghanistan! And in this matter Zia-ul-Haq also got a great opportunity. Due to the growing public opposition against Dawood’s rule, another military coup took place. Which is known as Saur Revolution. Which brought both the wings of the Communist Party, Parcham and Khalq, to power together. With this revolution of April 17, 1978, the internationalization of the communists became officially respectable. And the internationalization of Islamists was declared subversive. Liberal and radical Islamic reactionaries left Kabul University and went to Pakistan. Where they were given a warm welcome.
The communist collapse of 1978 marked a decisive change in US policy towards Pakistan. The Carter administration reduced economic aid to Pakistan in 1977. The reason given was that Pakistan had a “poor human rights record!” On one hand, the military had plotted the unconstitutional assassination of an elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and on the other hand, its growing nuclear program had become increasingly influential globally.
But the coup and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan changed everything. In fact, just a few days after the Soviet invasion, Carter had made this offer to Zian over the phone that “if he helps the rebels against the communists, America will give him economic and military aid worth ten million dollars.” But Zian’s demands were higher. Therefore, the Zian-Carter friendship could not flourish. The relations between the two countries became warmer during the Reagan administration, when Pakistan was offered a huge economic and military aid. And thus, Pakistan became the third country to receive American aid, after Israel and Egypt.
It was during Reagan’s presidency that a close relationship developed between the American intelligence agency CIA and the Pakistani intelligence agency. And both the agencies jointly worked to deal with the Soviet powers. To supply as many weapons as possible to the Mujahideen and to recruit Islamic terrorists against the communist opponents. And from here, in an organized manner, to create fertile ground for the terrorist organization. Not only from Muslim countries, but also from countries like America, France, Britain, Islamic terrorists came to various madrassas of Pakistan and took training. A very famous example of this is Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. Whom a journalist named Lawrence Wright had given the title of the watchman of Jihad in The New Yorker in the eighties. He was a Palestinian theologian. And he had done his PhD in Islamic law from Al-Azhar University. After that, he was appointed to teach at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. And Osama bin Laden was also among his disciples. Azzam has toured the whole world under the protection of the CIA. He has appeared as a speaker on Saudi television and in rallies held in America. And as a crusader, he was the asset of the CIA. And he kept travelling to every part of America in the eighties to recruit crusaders. And he kept recruiting fighters for the war in Afghanistan. Azzam was one of the founders of Hamas.
Azzam’s message was clear: “Participating in Jihad is not only a global responsibility today, but it is also a religious duty! This Jihad does not only mean killing the enemies i.e. the Russians, but also a journey to heaven after attaining martyrdom! Where 72 extremely beautiful virgin girls are standing ready to welcome you!” Azzam’s formula for Jihad was very simple: “No talks, no conferences, no discussions, only the gun was the answer!” And this formula effectively reflected the common objective of the IAS and the CIA.
It was against this backdrop that the US organized the Afghan Jihad and outlined its primary objective as: “To unite a billion Muslims through a crusade.” Crusade highlights the intellectual framework within which these actions were conducted, more than the Christian crusades on Afghan soil against the Soviet Union. Another objective was to further divide the two Islamic sects (Shia and Sunni). The Afghan Jihad was essentially an American Jihad, but it reached its climax when Reagan returned to power in March 1985. Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, which authorized “to increase covert aid to the Mujahideen.”
The entire responsibility of the newly defined war was handed over to CIA chief William Casey, who took three important steps in 1986. First, to get Congress to agree that American high-speed anti-aircraft missiles would be made available, and to expand guerrilla warfare beyond Afghanistan to Muslim-populated Soviet republics like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and third, to recruit reactionary Islamists from all over the world and bring them to Pakistan, and after giving them military training, intensify them as a crusade against the Kafirs of the second and third world. And this formula took a more serious form in Afghanistan than in Nicaragua. The entire world’s Islamic people were in the dock of the war. So ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Boko Haram are his creations.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that the Taliban will return to power in Afghanistan. That those who liberated them from slavery are calling them freedom fighters!” This is the same Pakistan! Whose all eastern rulers have, to a greater or lesser extent, given the opportunity to flourish to all kinds of terrorist organizations! And Imran Khan is also no exception! From Zia to Musharraf, and from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Imran Khan! They may claim to have been elected! But because no election in the seventy-five year history of Pakistan has been free and fair! All the Prime Ministers cannot have the confidence to do anything in front of ISI and Pakistan’s army! And that is why none of their decisions are independent! And to give birth to Taliban, ISI has played all the roles under the protection of CIA! Musharraf himself has published this in his autobiography ‘In the Line of Fire: A Memoir’ from Free Press America! And in 350 pages, in the fifth chapter, from 199 to 275 stanzas i.e. approx. 76 pages, written only in the name of “The War on Terror”! What has been Pakistan’s role in terrorist activities? This is clearly written! And he himself has narrowly escaped terrorist attacks three times! Terrorist attacks in his own country!
To organize the Afghan Jihad, they tried to meet the shortage of money through the drug trade. And this was organized and centralized under the CIA. As the Mujahideen began to take over the land of Afghanistan, they called on the peasants to grow opium as a revolutionary tax. As a result, “the price of opium rose five times that of wheat.” In addition, there was no shortage of factories to produce drugs. Across the border in Pakistan, hundreds of laboratories were being run by Afghan leaders and local businessmen under the protection of the ISI. In 1988, Lawrence Lifshuls pointed out in The Nation that “the heroin factories located in the North-West Frontier Province were being run under the protection of General Fazal Haq, a close associate of General Zia-ul-Haq.”
And most importantly, the transport of these drugs was being done by the National Logistics Cell of the Pakistani Army! Weapons supplied by the CIA were transported to Karachi in these trucks! And heroin too! Due to the ISI documents, the police did not check these trucks!
Pakistan’s newspaper ‘The Herald’ published a report in September 1985 that “the drugs are transported by the National Logistics Cell (NLC) in sealed trucks and they are not searched by the police. And this work has been going on unhindered for the last three-three and a half years. Finally the CIA gave it legal protection. Otherwise such a growth in this illegal trade could not have been imagined.”
During this decade, during the height of the open drug trade in Islamabad, the US Drug Enforcement Administration failed to seize any major shipments or arrest any traffickers. US officials dismissed allegations of drug trafficking by Afghans so that they could “be of use in the war against the Soviet Union.”
Before the Afghan Jihad, heroin was not produced in Afghanistan. Opium was cultivated there. Which was sold in small and regional markets of the villages there. By the time the Afghan Jihad ended, the picture had changed dramatically. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border area became a major center for the production of opium and heroin. 75% of the world’s opium began to be produced there. The value of which reached several billion dollars. A report released in early 2001 stated that “the United Nations International Drug Control Program recorded the highest increase in Afghan opium production around 1979.” This was the year the American-sponsored jihad began. The illegal drug trade that began in 1979 continues even today. And in the area where only 5% opium was produced in 1980, it reached 71% within ten years. Afghanistan’s future bears similarities to Burma. This was another mountainous region which was the victim of CIA intervention at the start of the Cold War. The CIA promoted opium production in Burma in the 1950s to aid the Nationalist Chinese troops in the Shan State.
Alfred MacKoy concludes that such CIA activities expanded opium production in Afghanistan in the 1980s to arm mujahideen guerrillas and linked heroin laboratories inside Pakistan to the world market.
The heroin-based economy that has corrupted Afghanistan and Pakistan has given it even more prestige, said President Reagan, adding that the mujahideen are morally equal to the founding fathers of America.
The worst example was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received half of the secret sources provided by the CIA, worth a total of two billion dollars over ten years, and quickly began to dominate the Afghan mujahideen.
Although after 9/11, America took a turn and threatened Pakistan (the then Pakistan chief General Musharraf himself has written this in his autobiography ‘In the Line of Fire – A Memoir’, “How the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell had said on the phone in a threatening tone, ‘Are you with us or not?’, immediately after the 9/11 incident!)
Whatever statement Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has given today regarding the Taliban of Afghanistan, let’s see how long he will stick to it. Because it has been 75 years since Pakistan separated from India. And because of the sole agenda of Pakistan’s ISI and Pakistan’s army to hate India, Pakistan’s progress is negligible. And Pakistan’s economy runs on American puppets. This kind of rhetoric, or this too is likely to be a part of a well thought out strategy, at the behest of ISI. Because American soldiers had to leave Afghanistan one day or the other. And in my entire article on Taliban, I have explained what role America has played in preparing Al Qaeda to Taliban due to its anti-communism. And for this, this monster has been created by spending 83 thousand billion dollars with the help of Pakistan. So will America just hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban and sit quietly? And I don’t think there is any possibility of leaving Afghanistan at the mercy of China and Russia! Maybe they are using Pakistan for this purpose! Because there is never any such thing as an enemy or friendship established at the international level!
This article is mainly based on my personal experiences and I have used some books in it. First of all (1) Mahmood Mamdani, A Good Muslim Bad Muslim . Permanent Black, (2) Ahmed Rashid, Descent in to Chaos, published by Penguin books, (3), Inside Global Network of Terror Al Qaeda, Rohan Gunaratna published by Roli Books, (4), Parvez Musharraf’s, In the Line of Fire A Memoir published by, Free Press, (5) Mohammed Hanif, A case of Exploding Mangoes published by Random house India
Dr. Suresh Khairnar, 11 September 2023, Nagpur. If you sow acacia seeds, where will you get mangoes?
Dr Suresh Khairnar is Ex. President of Rashtra Sewa Dal
11 September 2024
Source: countercurrents.org