Wall Street Journal: I Is For Infidel
I Is For Infidel
By Kathy Gannon
PublicAffairs, 186 pages, $25
With Friends Like Pakistan…
By MASOOD FARIVAR
September 14, 2005; Page D14
It was a scene straight out of a John le Carré novel, the kind of cloak-and-dagger rendezvous that CIA spooks can only fantasize about. The time: November 2004. The place: a compound deep inside the Old City of Peshawar on Pakistan's rugged northwest frontier. The participants: Karim, a 30-something former Afghan mujahideen fighter; Mohammed Hakim, a slightly younger, bearded representative of a Taliban splinter group holding three United Nations workers hostage in Afghanistan; and Kathy Gannon, a correspondent for Associated Press.
Hakim explained to Ms. Gannon the purpose of the abduction: to "put an end to the boasting of the Afghan government, the United Nations and the U.S. administration about the uneventful presidential election" in Afghanistan that had taken place only a month before, the one that had elected Hamid Karzai president.
The group, even more militant in its opposition to Mr. Karzai and his pro-Western government than erstwhile Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was divided over whether to kill the hostages. Karim claimed to sympathize with their plight and to understand that the abduction wasn't winning the Taliban any friends. Still, he said that he had little choice. It was a surreal meeting in many ways, but what made it especially remarkable to Ms. Gannon was how relaxed Hakim seemed. A well-known Taliban terrorist, he was supposedly a wanted man in Pakistan. Why did he seem so nonchalant? Soon enough the reason became clear.
Karim abruptly ended the conversation and headed out to his waiting car. Ms. Gannon caught a glimpse of the license plate -- it started with the number 83. From her years of experience she had learned that, in Pakistan, such a number belongs only to plates that have been issued by the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service. This numeric talisman confirmed what she had long suspected: that three years after Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, had made an about-face and ditched the Taliban under U.S. pressure, his military intelligence service was still offering support to Islamist groups, including a resurgent Taliban.
Well before we come across this anecdote in "I Is for Infidel" (PublicAffairs, 186 pages, $25), we have grown accustomed to Ms. Gannon's enterprising instincts and, not least, her eye for the telling detail. Her closely observed chronicle of Afghanistan's descent into chaos, and its attempts to rebound, is full of vivid incident and astute analysis. She conveys with particular skill the Afghans' sense of despair as the world abandoned them and their country slid into anarchy, only to be taken over by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
For causing this tragedy Ms. Gannon takes everyone to task: the former anti-Soviet mujahideen for turning their country into a killing field and for committing unspeakable crimes; the U.N. for ignoring the Taliban's gruesome rule in the forlorn hope that to do so would promote peace; and the U.S. for failing to court moderate Taliban members and later for sacrificing Afghanistan's security for the sake of prosecuting the war in Iraq. But she saves her sharpest indictment for Pakistan's military and intelligence service. She argues that it has been in cahoots with terrorist groups for decades, groups driven by a "jihad ideology" according to which Islam justifies all kinds of violence.
The military's omnipresence in Pakistani life, Ms. Gannon notes, is in part a legacy of British rule, under which Hindus dominated the civilian bureaucracy and Muslims the military. When the British left, a feudal ruling class arose. Its members included, alongside major landowners, military men with a strong religious sense of mission and no interest in establishing democratic institutions. As one Pakistani general tells Ms. Gannon: "Jihad has always been a motivating concept for our troops from day one." The concept motivated Pakistan's military all the more forcefully, in the decades after independence, with each of Pakistan's humiliating defeats at the hands of India.
Of course, religion is only part of the story. For as long as it has existed, Pakistan has seen Afghanistan as a source of "strategic depth" in its conflict with India. To that end it has backed pro-Pakistan groups in Afghanistan, groups that often have Islamic roots. Whether Pakistan has been led by the secular Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s or by the fundamentalist Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s or by the pro-Western Gen. Musharraf in recent years, the policy has remained the same.
But it took a toxic turn with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which allowed the Pakistani military to turn what started off as a national war of liberation into a holy war that it would serve in whatever way it could. The Taliban, founded as a populist movement to end Afghanistan's anarchy following the Soviets' withdrawal, became a pawn in this game. The ISI, with generous U.S. funding, played a crucial role throughout: It decided which of its favorite Afghan Islamist groups was to receive weapons, and it created a curriculum to teach a generation of Afghan refugee boys that "I is for infidel" and "J is for jihad."
"In hindsight," writes Ms. Gannon, "it was a mistake [for the West] to support Zia and his Islamic fervor, which gave rise to extremist militants." It was also a mistake to support Gen. Musharraf, whose military "is strangling Pakistan's civil society and protecting the religious right." So compelling is Ms. Gannon's case that by the end of the book, when she asserts almost in passing that Osama bin Laden may well be under the protection of the Pakistani military, it is easy to believe her.
It is all a cautionary tale about alliances of convenience. But will anyone listen? "Afghanistan's tragedy," Ms. Gannon observes in her epilogue, "is that to the world's powers, it has never really mattered -- or mattered for long."
Mr. Farivar is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires.
By Kathy Gannon
PublicAffairs, 186 pages, $25
With Friends Like Pakistan…
By MASOOD FARIVAR
September 14, 2005; Page D14
It was a scene straight out of a John le Carré novel, the kind of cloak-and-dagger rendezvous that CIA spooks can only fantasize about. The time: November 2004. The place: a compound deep inside the Old City of Peshawar on Pakistan's rugged northwest frontier. The participants: Karim, a 30-something former Afghan mujahideen fighter; Mohammed Hakim, a slightly younger, bearded representative of a Taliban splinter group holding three United Nations workers hostage in Afghanistan; and Kathy Gannon, a correspondent for Associated Press.
Hakim explained to Ms. Gannon the purpose of the abduction: to "put an end to the boasting of the Afghan government, the United Nations and the U.S. administration about the uneventful presidential election" in Afghanistan that had taken place only a month before, the one that had elected Hamid Karzai president.
The group, even more militant in its opposition to Mr. Karzai and his pro-Western government than erstwhile Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was divided over whether to kill the hostages. Karim claimed to sympathize with their plight and to understand that the abduction wasn't winning the Taliban any friends. Still, he said that he had little choice. It was a surreal meeting in many ways, but what made it especially remarkable to Ms. Gannon was how relaxed Hakim seemed. A well-known Taliban terrorist, he was supposedly a wanted man in Pakistan. Why did he seem so nonchalant? Soon enough the reason became clear.
Karim abruptly ended the conversation and headed out to his waiting car. Ms. Gannon caught a glimpse of the license plate -- it started with the number 83. From her years of experience she had learned that, in Pakistan, such a number belongs only to plates that have been issued by the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service. This numeric talisman confirmed what she had long suspected: that three years after Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, had made an about-face and ditched the Taliban under U.S. pressure, his military intelligence service was still offering support to Islamist groups, including a resurgent Taliban.
Well before we come across this anecdote in "I Is for Infidel" (PublicAffairs, 186 pages, $25), we have grown accustomed to Ms. Gannon's enterprising instincts and, not least, her eye for the telling detail. Her closely observed chronicle of Afghanistan's descent into chaos, and its attempts to rebound, is full of vivid incident and astute analysis. She conveys with particular skill the Afghans' sense of despair as the world abandoned them and their country slid into anarchy, only to be taken over by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
For causing this tragedy Ms. Gannon takes everyone to task: the former anti-Soviet mujahideen for turning their country into a killing field and for committing unspeakable crimes; the U.N. for ignoring the Taliban's gruesome rule in the forlorn hope that to do so would promote peace; and the U.S. for failing to court moderate Taliban members and later for sacrificing Afghanistan's security for the sake of prosecuting the war in Iraq. But she saves her sharpest indictment for Pakistan's military and intelligence service. She argues that it has been in cahoots with terrorist groups for decades, groups driven by a "jihad ideology" according to which Islam justifies all kinds of violence.
The military's omnipresence in Pakistani life, Ms. Gannon notes, is in part a legacy of British rule, under which Hindus dominated the civilian bureaucracy and Muslims the military. When the British left, a feudal ruling class arose. Its members included, alongside major landowners, military men with a strong religious sense of mission and no interest in establishing democratic institutions. As one Pakistani general tells Ms. Gannon: "Jihad has always been a motivating concept for our troops from day one." The concept motivated Pakistan's military all the more forcefully, in the decades after independence, with each of Pakistan's humiliating defeats at the hands of India.
Of course, religion is only part of the story. For as long as it has existed, Pakistan has seen Afghanistan as a source of "strategic depth" in its conflict with India. To that end it has backed pro-Pakistan groups in Afghanistan, groups that often have Islamic roots. Whether Pakistan has been led by the secular Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s or by the fundamentalist Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s or by the pro-Western Gen. Musharraf in recent years, the policy has remained the same.
But it took a toxic turn with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which allowed the Pakistani military to turn what started off as a national war of liberation into a holy war that it would serve in whatever way it could. The Taliban, founded as a populist movement to end Afghanistan's anarchy following the Soviets' withdrawal, became a pawn in this game. The ISI, with generous U.S. funding, played a crucial role throughout: It decided which of its favorite Afghan Islamist groups was to receive weapons, and it created a curriculum to teach a generation of Afghan refugee boys that "I is for infidel" and "J is for jihad."
"In hindsight," writes Ms. Gannon, "it was a mistake [for the West] to support Zia and his Islamic fervor, which gave rise to extremist militants." It was also a mistake to support Gen. Musharraf, whose military "is strangling Pakistan's civil society and protecting the religious right." So compelling is Ms. Gannon's case that by the end of the book, when she asserts almost in passing that Osama bin Laden may well be under the protection of the Pakistani military, it is easy to believe her.
It is all a cautionary tale about alliances of convenience. But will anyone listen? "Afghanistan's tragedy," Ms. Gannon observes in her epilogue, "is that to the world's powers, it has never really mattered -- or mattered for long."
Mr. Farivar is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires.
posted by India News Watch at 7:18 AM
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