The fear of 'terrorist international'

Frontier Post
Juma Khan Sufi

The US State Department has again issued a warming to its citizens in foreign countries about a possible terrorist attack on them during the month of Ramazan leading to Christmas. It has advised the Americans to keep low profile and avoid large gatherings supposed to be soft targets for any likely terrorist attacks. The CIA chief also joined the chorus and based the warning on a reliable tip-off. The CNN and, for that matter, the whole American administration alluded to the widespread network of "notorious" Osama bin Laden, who may be directly or indirectly connected to such attempted acts of terrorism.

These types of warnings in the lexicon of American diplomacy augment the anti-Islamic cliches in the minds of the West. Ordinarily, the westerners take it for granted that Islam is basically fundamentalist religion prone to terrorism and poses the main challenge to the dominant world civilisation. On the other hand, the Muslim world manipulated by the religious vested interests, propagate that the West is basically anti-Islam and is responsible for all the failings of the Muslims.

However, thanks to the emerging new realities both sides acknowledge the need for a growing multifarious interaction in the fast shrinking world of "global village" amid fears and apprehensions requiring a transparent and broad dialogue between the two. Just recently, the former hawkish advisor on National Security to the Cater Administration, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, once again acknowledged in his interview with the AFP and widely reported in the Pakistani press that six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan they "... actually did provide some support to the mujahideen before the invasion." He conceded that CIA carried out this operation. "The difference between arms and money is theoretical, isn't it? ...it certainly was not run by the Red Cross."

Then sceptical CIA director Stanfield Turner also endorsed that the help did take place. Though he was more cautious in his approach than his hard-liner colleague. Thus the love affair started between political Islam and the West in the aftermath of Second World War in the '50s and the '60s culminated in the marriage at the hands of national security advisor and immediately turned into honeymoon after the USSR actually invaded Afghanistan. Osama is the product of that long-lasting love affair and the fruit of that honeymoon.

At the bidding of CIA and American administration, the whole Arab world was combed to find out Islamic crusaders ready to die for their faith and for the cause more dear to Americans and its western allies. As usual, Pakistan offered its services to provide all logistic support to the jihad even at the expense of its own national security, the results of which it daily encounters in social life in the shape of drug addiction, gun culture, religious and ethnic terrorism. China also did not lag behind in joining the anti-Soviet coalition for its own strategic reasons. It also paid a heavy price during the blowback period after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

That price was a renewed and spreading revolt of the Uighurs, the Turkic Muslim people of far west in Xinjiang, many of whom yearned for independence in their own Muslim state after the fashion of six ex-Soviet Muslim republics. The Chinese support was enlisted by the secretary of defence, Harold Brown during his trip to Beijing in January 1980 and it also joined in this religious crusade. China not only provided Soviet-made weapons and training, but also encouraged its Muslims to participate in the jihad. The Saudis matched dollar for dollar in this crusade, while Egypt provided the obsolete Soviet weapons and released thousands of Ikhwan followers to fight in Afghanistan.

Of all the powers, the participation of Israel in the Afghan jihad is most intriguing, which readily provided all the Russian-made weaponry it seized from Arabs in 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel wars. Some quarters even testify that it also provided training and money to the Islamic crusaders fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Added to this western euphoria was the weak and oppressive Khalqi leadership of Taraki-Amin in Afghanistan who were bent upon cutting their own legs by daily narrowing the base of their unpopular rule as against the advice of their friends in Kremlin. They grossly underestimated the national and international potentials of resistance, overestimated the strength of their fast-shrinking immature party and failed to appreciate the inherent weakness in their basic perception.

Thus when the society reacted to their gross violation of Afghan and Islamic norms and the city of Herat rose against them in March 1979, they were unable to put down the resistance and bombarded Moscow with requests to send "limited contingent" of Soviet troops to augment their faltering military base. The extremist and hard-line policies of Amin within the party and society were viewed by Moscow as a sort of precursor to the hidden CIA agenda paving the way for his anti-Soviet personal dictatorship. They therefore prevailed upon the weak leadership of Taraki to ditch Amin, reunify the party and broaden the base of their revolution, which he tried to do after a lot of water had flown under the bridge.

Taraki failed in the process and Amin overpowered him and usurped all powers in September 1979, thus paving the way for a real anti-Moscow regime in the long history of Afghan-Soviet friendly relationship and laying the foundation for the Soviet invasion. Famous American expert on the area and former senior research associate of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Selig S. Harrison, graphically describes this setting for "Moscow's monumental blunder" in invading Afghanistan. He depicts a "Byzantine sequence of murderous Afghan intrigue complicated by turf wars between rival Soviet intelligence agencies and the undercover manipulations of agents for seven contending foreign powers." He means the USA, USSR, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and Saudi Arabia.

The fatal blunder of Moscow taken by small coterie of Brezhnev, which included KGB chief Yuri Andropov, Premier Kosygen, top Kremlin theoretician Mikhail Suslov, Defence Minister Marshal Ustinov, Foreign Minister Andrie Gromyko, without calling a full Politburo meeting and even disregarding the opposition of key generals in Soviet Army General Staff, was imposed by the ailing and alcoholic Brezhnev. The decision to send the "limited contingents" was justified as according to 51 article of UN Charter and in accordance with the provisions of December 1978 Soviet-Afghan treaty. Thus began the honeymoon period of political Islam or to be more correct Islamism and the West, in which Pakistan, the Arabs, Iran and China also played their due role.

As a matter of fact, the role of Pakistan proved decisive for its active and willing participation in this final act of Cold War. The strategy to bleed the Soviet Union not only succeeded with the withdrawal of Soviet troops, but it went further ahead in the shape of dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and socialist system. The Communist International, sponsored and supported by the Soviet Union, collapsed. The marriage between the two former allies broke down into complete separation leading to mutual acrimony and hatred. This situation gave birth to another international created and once supported by the West, the "terrorist international." Now the whole world, from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Philippine, Kashmir, Chechnya and Pakistan to the heart of western world, the USA itself, seems disturbed at its hands.

In order to put things in their right perspective, it is necessary that the West reappraised its role vis-a-vis its former strange bedfellows and come out in the open in admitting its blunders. It is dangerous and outrageous to inculcate negative cliche about Islam in the minds of the gullible public. And if it wants to fight against terrorism, which is a worthy cause supported by well-meaning Muslims the world over, it is high time to undo the past mischief.

The befitting response to such type of terrorism is an open and sympathetic approach to Islam, which is basically tolerant and broadminded as opposed to the bigotry of West's former ally and today's enemy in the Muslim world. Such unqualified warnings do more harms than any good to the relationship between the West and Islamic world. Though the Cold War has ended long ago, Russia has replaced the Soviet Union and the international relations are conducted on pragmatic basis, yet Afghanistan still suffers in the blowback period on a much wider scale than it was at the peak of Cold War.

The misrule of Islamic crusaders (mujahideen) who fought on the side of the West against the Soviet Union, proved the contention of their erstwhile 'enemies' in Afghanistan who portrayed them subversionists, terrorists and highwaymen fighting other people's war at the expense of their own country. The Taliban, though an improvement on their predecessors, still suffers from the hangovers of the jihad, by disregarding the urgent need for reconstruction and rehabilitation of their country in the changed international scenario.

Harbouring Osama bin Laden harms the national interest of Afghanistan and further lowers the Taliban's image in the eyes of the world. The troubled world at the threshold of another millennium needs to erase the last vestiges of the Cold War by paying more attention to Pakistan and Afghanistan in helping to bring these two countries to the mainstream of world affairs in step with all developments. For this purpose, a real peace in Afghanistan is a prerequisite. This would rid the whole region of the menace of terrorism, drugs and gun culture. Otherwise, a big regional flare-up cannot be ruled out of the present messy conditions.