It was in October 2001 that the US had launched its famous ‘war on terror’ after sending its forces to rid Afghanistan of the savage Taliban regime. As was to be expected, evicting the bearded and black-robed Taliban from the seat of power was a swift operation. Lots of things have gone wrong since.
Afghanistan remains miserable with its elected government unable to control the country outside the capital, Kabul; the extreme slow pace of development is increasing people’s dissatisfaction. In some ways, Afghanistan seems to be moving in the opposite direction with both the Taliban and the ‘warlords’ directly challenging Kabul’s authority and the country establishing itself as a magnet for drug lords by virtue of becoming the biggest centre of opium production. Above all, the all-important task of eliminating terrorism now looks more remote than it did five years ago.
In fact, terrorism has spread to more parts of the world today than was the case five years ago and with a ‘rogue’ state like North Korea boasting of a nuclear bomb the danger of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists has become real. Clearly the US has to take a hard look at why its clarion call for a united global effort to end terror has failed to eliminate or even tame that evil.
One thing is absolutely clear, though. The ‘war on terror’ has become messy in large part because of the double standards that the US applied in fighting it from day one. Indeed, the first mistake the US made was to ‘ask’ Pakistan, till then the almost exclusive breeding ground of terrorism, to join the ‘war on terror’.
The logistic support that the US needed to pound the Afghan caves to flush out the terrorists owing allegiance to Mullah Omar’s Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda could have come from the US bases in the neighbourhood. The only resistance to US air attacks from the gulf region or US war ships in the region could have come, ironically, from Pakistan if it was determined to stay out of the ‘war on terror’. And despite all the bravado that comes to Pakistanis with natural ease, the US-armed Pakistani air force would not have committed the blunder of challenging American air superiority unless the rulers in Islamabad, led by Gen Pervez Musharraf, were bent upon committing hara-kiri for the sake of zooming into heaven for a date with scores of virgins---a pleasure assured to all jihadi ‘martyrs’ who die fighting the infidels.
Second most important mistake the US made was issuing a blank cheque to the rulers of Islamabad who were and are liberally plied with cash, arms and all the goodies they want from the West. By way of a huge bonus and further inducement, the Pakistanis have been permitted to lie about continuing their patronage to terrorists and their organisation. Pakistan’s perilous nuclear proliferation activities have been condoned though the US now frets and fumes at North Korea and Iran, both beneficiaries of the Khan Gate.
What is perhaps astonishing is that the US refuses to publicly acknowledge the mountain of evidence against Pakistan’s dubious role in the ‘war on terror’. The evidence is regularly supplied by US intelligence, US and other army officers fighting the ‘war on terror’, US based think-tanks, charities and aid agencies, diplomats and so on. The US reserves for Pakistan only ‘shabash’ (well done), a pat on the back, of the type that a master extends to his vassal.
Add to this the US myth—shared by some others too, though-- that Musharraf is indispensable to the fight against terror. There will surely come a time when Musharraf, not being blessed with immortality, would go away. O.K., he will stay on this planet for another 10 years, 20 years or some such time. But who is ready to say that the ‘war on terror’ will end in victory soon—with Musharraf’s help. Will his successor be in a position to immediately abandon the policy of friendship with Washington and incur the wrath of the world’s most powerful nation and the attendant prospect of pushing the nation of the ‘pure’ towards its doom?
The US double standards in the ‘war on terror’ have also been exposed in the manner in which the world’s leading light of human rights and all that has subverted civil liberties in its own country. It is often heard these days that the US has multiplied its enemies because in its fight against terror it has trampled upon the rights of people, illegally jailed a large number of foreigners, denied them a fair trail and resorted to such baser methods of dealing with human beings as profiling them on the basis of their race, religion and colour.
Reports from Afghanistan often suggest that both the US and the Karzai regime are becoming increasingly unpopular. A major reason is the total lack of respect that the US forces (and now NATO forces also) show for the Afghans, their lives and their culture. Whenever a major air attack takes place on allegedly terrorist targets there are a large number of civilian casualties. The US (or the NATO) says ‘sorry’ and carries on.
Take the words of the NATO spokesman after a late October attack in the Kandahar province in which, according to some locals, between 60 and 85 civilians were killed. Mark Laity was duly sorry for the deaths but added ‘when you have active insurgency, things can happen…….sometimes things go wrong.’ His ultimate defence was that sometimes the Taliban use civilians as human shields and, therefore, saving civilian lives becomes almost impossible.
Yes, that is a tragic truth about the war on insurgency. But the only problem here is that the US and the NATO countries lose no time in raising a big hue and cry when reports of loss of civilian lives in the fight against insurgent and terrorists come from some other country like India. The human rights agencies start flashing their adverse comments in no time. The US state department is ready with its reprimand.
These champions of freedom and human rights denounce as ‘oppressive’ the very presence of armed forces in insurgency bound areas in India as though the merchants of death and destruction are only out on an evening stroll with live weapons. Wherever the ‘war on terror’ is being fought there is a heavy army presence. In Afghanistan the clamour from the field commanders is to seek more troops and until that happens bombs are being dropped on rebel hideouts, which somehow seem to end in the death of civilians, not the terrorists.
Of course, this is not to justify civilian casualties even as a collateral damage in the ‘war on terror’. But if the US has to fight this ‘war’ with some determination it has to first give up its double standards before it sits down to work out a fresh strategy to overcome the evil forces, which want to take the world back to the barbaric days. Last five years have been something of a waste in the fight against terror; repeating mistakes of the past will compound the problem in the coming years.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
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