AS THE US forces are expected to thin out from Afghanistan, revelations in the book Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, written by recently-assassinated journalist Syed Salim Shahzad, and the Pakistan Army’s recent actions to subjugate Afghanistan are raising anxiety in India.
Syed Saleem Shahzad became the 37th journalist to be killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His body, retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, bore 17 lacerated wounds delivered by a blunt weapon, a ruptured liver and two broken ribs. An investigative journalist who contributed to Asia Times Online, and used to write articles exposing the relationship between the militants and the military, Shahzad had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants into Pakistan’s military establishment. A New York daily quoted White House officials, who now believe that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) ordered the killing of Shahzad, confirming the allegation made in the media a few weeks ago.
Classified intelligence obtained both before Shahzad’s disappearance on May 29 and after the discovery of his body showed that senior ISI officials orchestrated the attack in order to conceal the military-militant nexus. Yet another senior US official was reported to have said that there was enough other intelligence and indicators available immediately after Shahzad’s death to conclude that the ISI had ordered the killing. “Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official.
The anger over his death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the Pakistan Army and the ISI in the aftermath of the US raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Dr Lal Khan, in his book Pakistan’s Other Story, released in October 2009, wrote that to look at the Pakistan Army solely as the instrument of the ruling class would mean ignoring the real contradictions that had developed within it.
Top military brass was involved directly in the economy, both legal and “black economy”, including drug trade. The heroin pipeline in the 1980s could not have operated without the knowledge, if not connivance, of officials at the highest level of the Army, the government and the CIA. Everyone chose to ignore it for the larger task that was to defeat the erstwhile Soviet Union. Drug control was on no one’s agenda.
In the orgy of destruction and loot, while General Zia ul-Haq and his coterie of generals amassed huge amounts of black money, they were not content with the money coming from the drug trade because they had to share it with many warlords, constantly changing loyalties, and the leaders of different Islamic fundamentalist parties and Islamic mercenary outfits involved in this reactionary insurgency.
Hence, Dr Khan claims, they also started smuggling the most advanced US weaponry for jihad through the Pakistani supply lines under the auspices of sections of the Pakistan Army involved in this CIA-planned operation.
According to Ashley Tellis, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden marked a turning point not only in US-Pakistan ties but also in power equations within Pakistan. Most observers have focused on the first, but have failed to understand how worsening civil-military relations in Pakistan have contributed to the recent meltdown between Washington and Islamabad. “The shock that the United States could discover Bin Laden from thousands of miles away in a cantonment town, when he was overlooked by the military and its powerful intelligence services, confronted the Pakistani public with one of two possibilities: either their Army was malicious, harbouring an enemy whose allies were ravaging Pakistan everyday, or it was incompetent; incapable of discharging its principal task to protect the nation. In either case, the Laden affair raised the fundamental question as to why such a military was offered preferential access to the public trough given its debilitating failures.
The ease with which homegrown insurgents were able to attack a major Pakistani naval base, even as the intelligence services, for all their fecklessness, were widely suspected of torturing and killing a prominent Pakistani journalist who had uncovered deep connections between the state and extremists, filled the Pakistani populace with dismay and revulsion. Not since the disastrous Kargil war in 1999 has the Pakistan Army’s reputation fallen so low. In a praetorian state, loss of credibility is a threat to survival — and, hence, the Pakistani Army struck back resolutely and early,” stated Ms Tellis. In June 2011, the Pakistan Army launched a series of missile and artillery attacks on Kunar and Nangarhar provinces in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians. The missile attacks were accompanied with raids by the Pakistani-Taliban, which is backed by the Pakistan Army.
On July 2, 2011, defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in Afghan Parliament that two Pakistani helicopters entered the Afghan territory. On July 5, 2011, Afghan border police commander Aminullah Amarkhel reported that hundreds of fighters from the Pakistani Taliban crossed the border into Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, where they attacked police outposts and torched homes.
The Afghan foreign ministry expressed concern over the incident and warned Pakistan that “the continuation of such incidents could adversely affect the spirit of improving the trust and cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.
Afghan legislators strongly condemned the Pakistani missile attacks, describing them as an “invasion” and a reflection of Pakistan’s “dishonesty” in its bilateral talks with the Afghan government. The talks are meant to strengthen the Afghanistan peace process. Criticising the Karzai government for its silence over the missile attacks, Afghan legislator Farhad Azimi is reported to have said: “I want to ask government officials as to why they call Pakistan a friend when it fires missiles on Afghanistan.” Afgha-nistan’s intelligence service National Directorate of Security (NDS) said the Pakistan military is behind the missile attacks. NDS spokesman Lotfullah Mashal told reporters that Pakistan has long been operating in secret to destabilise Afghanistan by backing the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal regions “but this time the Pakistani Army is taking its (military) intervention further through heavily shelling in (broad) daylight.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai referred to the attacks for the first time only on June 26, criticising Pakistan for firing 470 missiles into Afghanistan’s eastern provinces. A July 4, 2011 resolution of Afghan Parliament, which urged the UN Security Council and the Organisation of Islamic Conference to mount diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to dissuade from such actions, described the Pakistani attacks in Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktia provinces as an “act of invasion” by Pakistan.
Responding to the accusations, the Pakistani Army denied targeting Afghanistan. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said: “Rounds were fired for engaging the fleeing militants and there is a possibility that some may have accidentally gone across the border.”
The June attacks were not Pakistan’s first use of force against Afghanistan in 2011. In early February, Pakistani planes bombarded Afghan Border Police posts and civilian homes in Nangarhar and Khost provinces.
Pakistan’s military campaign to control Afghanistan has been accompanied by the expulsion of US and British military and intelligence officials from Pakistan.
According to an April 21 report in the Pakistani media, some 500 CIA personnel were told to leave Pakistan in the beginning of 2011. In late June, Pakistani defence minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar revealed that Pakistan has asked the CIA to leave the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan province from where drones are dispatched to monitor and attack the Taliban havens in the Pakistani tribal region. In addition, 18 British military trainers have also been told to leave. On April 16, 2011, the entire top Pakistani leadership (except for President Asif Ali Zardari) reached Kabul for bilateral talks with the Afghan leaders. According to reports in the Afghan media, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani presented Mr Karzai with a set of written demands: Afghanistan must sever its relationship with the US and forge ties with China; keep Pakistan informed on the training and number of Afghan security forces; appoint Pakistani officials in Afghan government institutions; clarify Pakistan’s share in Afghan mining and development projects; in addition, future Afghan governments must implement Pakistani strategies and Pakistan must be made aware of any agreement between Afghanistan and its Western allies, including the US and Nato. The Pakistan Army’s reduction of forces on the India-Pakistan borders notwithstanding, New Delhi must plan for some contingencies and be prepared to go it alone.
Anil Bhat is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi