Pakistan’ history since its inception in 1947 has not been a pleasant one. The turning point was in the mid 1970s when the civilian government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto decided to recruit dissident Afghans as assets to deploy against a new government in Kabul that was leaning alarmingly towards the godless Soviet Union. It was then that Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas bordering Afghanistan became the springboard and the training ground for Afghan dissidents.
Later in 2001, the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States were followed by Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The subsequent vicious and bloody military campaign in Pakistan’s tribal border regions known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) brought the region, particularly the Waziristan, Mohmand and Bajaur agencies to international attention. With the launch in the early 1980s of the anti-Soviet Russian jehad sponsored by CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s ISI, the region had been largely ignored, under-funded and devoid of basic infrastructure; therefore the writ of the government in Islamabad was both minimal and rather compromised. This combination of factors has offered a fertile environment for many illegal activities – drugs, gun-running, smuggling goods imported under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement via Karachi port on the Arabian Sea as well as space for criminal gangs to shelter fugitives from Pakistani law.
Soon after the Soviet army invaded and occupied Afghanistan on Christmas eve of 1979, the United States adopted the idea that the Russian presence could be thwarted with the help of Afghan opposition forces which the Pakistani establishment had groomed as proxies since the mid 1970s. By October 1973, Afghans started visiting Pakistan regularly for briefings. Young Afghans were induced for commando training at Cherat, a mountainous area some 80 kms from Peshawar. These Afghans later formed their own Mujahideen group trained in guerrilla warfare. What is more, miseries of jehadis increased more under General Zia ul-Haq who funded religious seminaries which led to the decline of the educational system that continues till this day.
Thus Pakistan’s border has become the starting point for the jehad because of the proximity to eastern and south-eastern Afghan pressures. These regions serve as transit posts for both weapons and for Islamic zealots from all over the world who are pouring in to join the anti-Russia jehad in Afghanistan.
In the 1980s Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted terrorist allegedly responsible for the current international wave of anti-America Islamist extremism, had to conduct activities on the fringes of Miranshah in Waziristan, the tribal agency that borders the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktia. In February 1989, the extremists pulled out of Afghanistan; the Americans also turned their back on the region. The tribal lands fell off their radar, but religious groups, business cartels and the drug mafia continued their business as usual. “This meant little government attention in the legacy of jehad and this indifference has come to haunt Pakistan as Al Qaeda-inspired insurgency seeps through the rugged tribal territories and areas adjacent to them,” says the author.
Al Qaeda ranks soared in the given Wana valley in south Waziristan, where it transcended the Durand Line. The FATA or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is today overrun by militants of all hues-Pakistani and Afghani Talibans, Arabs, Uzbeks and others. From simply being an organization, al Qaeda has become An ‘ideology’ that transcends border and is “able to network extremist outfits to pursue their narrowly defined but globally consequential objectives,” says the author.
This is a good book to read, especially by the Armed Forces and the intelligence agency.
(Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.)
