Beyond clones of Osama

By Pran Chopra

IT IS an irony of our times that the greatest military alliance put together against the kind of terrorism that has swept across the world from Afghanistan has America at its head and Pakistan as its forward base. It is ironic because between them these two countries are the father and mother of exactly this type of terrorism.

America planted the deadly seed when, after single-mindedly flooding Afghanistan with weapons of destruction in order to drive the Soviet army out, it simply walked away. It took not the slightest precaution to see that this arsenal would not be turned upon the neighbours of Afghanistan and upon the Afghan people. The seed then produced what became the largest and most deadly army ever to serve a Government which was recognised by hardly any country except the one, Pakistan, which concocted it. This is the army that was then adopted by General Zia, the most successful military dictator of Pakistan, who nurtured it into a weapon of his dream of Nizam-e-Mustafa, a republic of Islamic fundamentalism stretching from the Indian border deep into the Volga country of Russia via Chechnya and Tartarstan. It is a further twist of irony that it is the progeny of this very dream which invented the worst destruction ever rained upon an America which - another twist - had claimed Pakistan to be its most allied ally.

To say this is not to underplay the vast tragedy enacted on September 11, or cast doubts on the assurance given by a senior U.S. official, Mr. Richard Armitage, in his recent interview toThe Hindu that America had learnt from past mistakes. But one says it to remind America that no single objective should be pursued so single-mindedly as to ignore its diverse consequences. Therefore, one should not concentrate so much on reducing Afghanistan to an even more tragic rubble of history than it has been reduced already by its own rulers, the Taliban, ably assisted by Pakistan.

America should consult quickly with Russia and China to see what other options might be available, because they are the two most important members of the anti-Osama alliance built by the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush. They have expressed serious doubts about the present American course. Obviously Mr. Bush was not able to convince them fully at the APEC conclave in Shanghai, and he cannot club them with Muslim majority members of the alliance whom he might suspect of being sympathetic to the Taliban.`

America has rightly decided to take up the job in hand in phases. It wishes to concentrate first on those who perpetrated the tragedy. As it does so, America merits the support of all countries, including India, without unnecessary quibbles over differences between giving only the right of transit to American planes and soldiers and giving them operational assistance also. But as America deals with the first phase it must not forfeit the future, as Ronald Reagan did. Reagan fought the Soviet army to the last Afghan. But in the process he only armed those who have now reduced the heart of New York to a wasteland. Whether the Soviet Union fell more because its army was defeated in Afghanistan or because of Russian undercurrents in the domestic politics of the Soviet Union need not be debated here. But there is no doubt that the weapons of hatred which America allowed to be forged in Afghanistan have done immense harm to America, to Pakistan, to India, and of course to Afghanistan itself.

The perpetrators of the tragedy in New York are the products of a process. All the pain of dealing with the products will go in vain if the process continues. A new generation of fanatics will take over from where the old generation left off, and to the new generation America will be all the more Satanic because it eliminated the old. The process will produce the new generation in the same way it produced the old, beginning with what Pakistan did about Kashmir. Defeated in war, Pakistan chose fanatical Islamists as new soldiers against Kashmir, and it turned to a willing Afghanistan as the recruiting ground. It gave all help, covert, overt, military, financial, to organise and arm those who were proud to describe themselves as the soldiers of Islam though in the eyes of many Muslims they are betrayers of the best traditions of the faith. A cascade of Talibanisation then began which flooded Afghanistan first, then large parts of Pakistan, and then other parts of the Islamic world.

Three kinds of signs that the process may continue have surfaced already. In the first place, influential people in the anti- terrorism alliance, such as Britain's Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, have been saying for weeks, and more brazenly than Mr. Bush, that the Taliban could be allowed to remain in power in Afghanistan if it handed over Osama and banned his organisation, Al-Qaeda. People like Mr. Blair overlook the near-certainty that if the Taliban remains in power it will not lose much time in cloning new Osamas to replace the old. In the second place, America might go along with Mr. Blair if Pakistan demands this as the price for allowing use of its territory.

In the third place, in the name of resisting interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, the Pakistan Foreign Minister has publicly announced his opposition to any assistance by anyone to the Northern Alliance, which is the only credible internal opposition to the Taliban regime. Pakistan - and Mr. Bush - cannot have forgotten of course that, quite contrary to Pakistan's present opposition to ``interference'', it was only with massive assistance by and through Pakistan that the Taliban drove out the Rabbani regime from Kabul, which was the widely- recognised Government of Afghanistan at that time and which was, and remains, a member of the United Nations.

The alternative to these dire scenarios is that America should accept what many countries are urging, that the fight against terrorism should be conducted under the authority and flag of the United Nations. It will then get more willing support from more countries. Second, America should give serious thought to the position now taken by the two most important members of the anti- terrorism alliance built by Mr. Bush, China and Russia.

In addition to joining others in demanding a leading role for the U.N., Russia's leader, Mr. Vladimir Putin, and China's President, Mr. Jiang Zemin, jointly stated, immediately after their talks with Mr. Bush in Shanghai, that there must be no place for the Taliban in any new Government for Afghanistan.

Russia, Tajikistan, and the presently-recognised Government of Afghanistan have now jointly decided to work in coordination with Iran, another major player in this region, in shaping any future regime for Afghanistan. No future dispensation in Afghanistan can be stable without the support of these countries even though Uzbekistan has not, yet, added its voice to theirs. With their support it will be easier for America and others to replace the Taliban regime more quickly and to spare Afghanistan the agony of a prolonged war.

There can also then be a more far-reaching and more constructive consequence - a closer and wider convergence between American and Russian concerns, actions and aims, bringing the curtain down on the Cold War. At present, this convergence is vulnerable to the many differences between Russia and America which kept cropping up at the APEC summit and have continued to do so since, particularly over the ABM treaty and the future of oil in this very inflammable region. The added strain of differences over Afghanistan is best avoided or ended at the soonest.

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