Pakistan & Taliban: An Unholy Nexus?

The Taliban claimed yet another Indian on Sunday (April 30, 2006) killing and beheading Indian telecom engineer K Suryanarayana, less than 48 hours after abducting him from Zabul province on the main highway linking Kabul and Kandahar.

Suryanarayana’s killing, as also M Raman Kutty’s murder last November, is an unambiguous message from the Taliban which India can ill-afford to ignore: The Taliban, as also Pakistan, want India out of Afghanistan, says Shobori Ganguly in The Pioneer. “Should India heed this message and withdraw? The answer is negative. It is clear why the Taliban and the Pakistani regime do not want India’s influence to grow in the interiors of Afghanistan.

“Recent reports suggest the Taliban is regrouping in southern and eastern Afghanistan where Karzai has no hold. With active aid from Pakistan, it has been on the rise since last March, operating from Quetta in Pakistan from camps sponsored by the ISI.”

It is interesting to note that in recent times growing suspicions are being expressed by the USA, Afghanistan and India about the nature of Pakistan’s continued relationship with the Taliban.

Pakistan is not doing enough to help root out Taliban and al Qaeda leaders who have found safe haven in its lawless tribal lands along the Afghan border, a senior U.S. security official said.

Henry Crumpton, the U.S. State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, added that most al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are in Pakistan, and “while the United States did not know where Osama bin Laden was hiding, he was probably on the Pakistan side of the border.”

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan deteriorated sharply this year when Afghanistan again said Taliban leaders were operating from Pakistan. Pakistan rejects accusations it helps the Taliban.

Pakistan’s The Dawn reports that India described the killing of an Indian engineer, K. Suryanarayan, in Afghanistan as an act of terror and said it wanted to work with Pakistan to neutralise the Taliban militants. “The government of India is appalled by this dastardly and inhuman act of terror on the part of the Taliban and it’s sponsors,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told a news conference.

When asked if by “sponsors of Taliban” he meant Pakistan, Mr Saran skirted the question and said: “As you are aware, there have been reports that Taliban elements have been operating in the areas which straddle the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. We have also witnessed their involvement in acts of terrorism within Pakistan itself.”

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the “monster” that is today Afghanistan’s Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia once said.

“I warned them that we were creating a monster,” Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars was speaking at a conference on “Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia.”

Harrison said: “The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan.” The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan’s demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.

The continuing uncontrolled/unmonitored flow of money from the U.S. treasury to Pakistan has raised the hackles of all those who wish to put a firm lid on terrorism. Some believe that this sort of funding develops a vested interest in the continuation of “war on terror”.

In another write-up The Taliban’s bloody foothold in Pakistan Syed Saleem Shahzad states that the Taliban emerged as a reformist movement against criminals and warlords in Zabul and Kandahar in Afghanistan about 16 years ago. Although brutal, it appeals to the masses because of its reformist image.

“The Taliban have shown their muscles so powerfully in North Waziristan that Pakistani forces have just stepped away. It has now become a popular movement with the complete support of local tribes.

“The Taliban have attracted thousands of foot soldiers from all over, including Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis, Afghans, Uzbeks and local tribals. North Waziristan is now their ‘Islamic state’ and base from which to launch a summer offensive in Afghanistan.”

The only modern nation founded on Islam, Pakistan is a homeland that has failed to work, says the New Statesman. Now it is teetering on the brink of chaos. Pakistan’s intelligence service ISI used to sponsor the Islamists. Now it is trying to prevent them taking over the country.

“The difficulty for Musharraf is that a country run by a military dictatorship with tacit links to terrorism does not seem the best advertisement for ‘enlightened moderation’. Now many of the general’s backers in the White House also see it that way. The government in Islamabad is becoming an embarrassment to its sponsors in the west.”