کابل پرس

Pakistan: In search of a strategic death

Farooq Sulehria — 2010-04-11T06:03:32Z

An Afghan journalist explores the new great game in Central Asia between the U.S., NATO Iran, Iraq, the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Pakistan and India.

The Inuit of the Arctic had a clever technique for hunting wolves. They would plant a bloody knife in the snow. Lured by the smell of blood, the wolves would approach the knife and lick the blade, cutting their tongues. Without realizing that they were drinking their own blood, wolves would continue licking until they had bled to death.

Back in 1980s, the Pakistani military adopted a doctrine of strategic depth. This doctrine is proving to be a hunter's knife for Pakistan. The doctrine implies that Pakistan needs Afghanistan as backyard beyond India's reach. The Afghan-India nexus dominating the military's mind is evident from a recent interaction General Kayani had with media recently. On February 1, he told foreign correspondents: ''“We want Afghanistan to be our strategic depth''. In two days time, he was telling Pakistani journalists: ''I am India-centric.''

It is in search of strategic depth that the Pakistan military, post-September 11, has been hunting with the American hound and running with Taliban hare. Definitely not an easy position. That Pakistan's military establishment has not given up Jihadi assets is evident from media reports.

Woe unto the missing Saudi billionaire! He disturbed the order the Pakistani military had established in the region. No matter with what horrible consequesnces for the masses.

When the 'communist' era came to an end in Afghanistan, warring Mujahideen pillaged Kabul in their bid to outdo each other for the control of government. Gulbadin Hikmatyar was Pakistan's favourite horse in this race. When he proved futile, Pakistan saddled the Taliban as its second horse.

Back in 1997, objective conditions favored the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban's seizure of Kabul. It remains the Pakistani military's sole victory on an external front. A disinterested USA welcomed the Taliban's arrival in Kabul. The New York Times wrote that, the ''State Department was touting the Taliban as the group that might finally bring stability''. A US diplomat, Jon Holtzman, was advised to visit Kabul. That trip, however was cancelled after the media kerfuffle about women rights.

Still $125 million were granted in aid to the Taliban. The State Department maintained a secret correspondence with Taliban regime. At the time, the media were replete with rumors regarding US-backing for the Taliban. Unlike the anti-US image the Taliban have cultivated in recent years, they were also pretty cozy with infidel Uncle Sam. The US rationale for Taliban support was not merely an over-publicized gas pipeline project that Unocal wanted to pursue. The Clinton Administration, it was rumored, had Iran in mind when welcoming Taliban.

Whether these rumors were true or not, the Taliban's second major sponsor, Riyadh, definitely wanted to contain Iran through staunchly anti-Shia Taliban. Thus, all three infamous partners, the Pakistani Army, America, and Allah (represented here by Riyadh) were united in seeking, by default, cherished strategic depth. Equally important was the turmoil in Russia and Central Asian Republics (CARs).

Following the Soviet dissolution, new regimes in Russia and CARs were struggling to consolidate. Most importantly, Afghans were desperate for peace after years of brutal infighting among Mujahideen gangs. Hoping against hope, many Afghans pinned their hopes on the Taliban, even if it meant sacrificing civil liberties.

Fifteen years on, the odds are stubbornly going against Taliban. The USA is not merely on the other side of the fence, it in fact is guarding (no matter how unsuccessfully) the fence. Saudi royals, one of them personally humiliated by Mullah Omar on the question of Osama's expulsion, would find it imprudent to annoy Washington by patronizing Taliban.

Regimes in CARs and Russia, dealing with their own Islamic militancy, would not sit idle in the face of a Taliban take-over of Kabul. Pakistan's all-weather friend China, facing the Uighur uprising, has publicly expressed her disapproval of the Taliban. Most importantly, a big majority of Afghans, particularly non-Pashtuns, who constitute almost 55 percent of the population, and lived through the Taliban nightmare are not ready to experience it again.

Though Pakistan's pro-Taliban media have pretty successfully painted the Taliban as popular peace-harbingers (in the 1990s) and as a popular liberation force (2001 onwards) the Afghan perception of Taliban is different. Opinion polls find the Taliban's popularity below ten percent. Hence, a Taliban march on Kabul, by proxy providing strategic depth to Pakistan, may not be resisted so much by the USA, Iran, India, China, CARs, and Russia but very stridently by most Afghans.

However, despite lacking a mass social base, the Taliban have the advantage of an unceasing supply of fanatics ready to explode themselves on Afghan streets en route paradise. This factor has shattered early US hopes of a steady occupation in a strategically important country neighboring Iran, gas-rich Central Asia while China is just a stone's throw away.

Meantime, the Obama administration is not the only one to stake its political future on Afghanistan. The Afghan war is a good war (essential to nip terror in its Afghan bud) hence it is a good tool to keep NATO united. NATO fell apart in the case of Iraq. Afghanistan provided Washington with the opportunity to discipline European satraps (world leaders or governors who are heavily influenced by larger world superpowers and act as their surrogates—ed.).

Hence, to tranquillize the Taliban uproar, Washington has resorted to a multi-pronged policy. An Iraq-style surge (over thirty thousand more troops to Kabul). An aggressive drone-bombing policy to force Islamabad (read Pakistani military) into giving up its dual policy on the Taliban. Also, by droning Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan,----particularly targeting leadership----the US wishes to weaken the Taliban. The Fallujah-style military offensive in Marja, is an attempt to demoralize the Taliban. All this is aimed at bringing a weak Taliban (and Pakistani patrons) to the negotiating table. Caught between the hammer of the ''war on terror'' and anvil of ''strategic depth,'' Pakistan, instead of reaching strategic depth, will embrace a strategic death.

Every time the Pakistani military hunts the Taliban, there is a boomerang suicidal attack. According to a think tank, in 2009:“If the casualties in terrorist attacks, operational attacks by the security forces and their clashes with the militants, inter-tribal clashes and the cross-border attacks of the US and Nato forces in Fata are counted, the overall casualties amount to 12,632 people dead and 12,815 injured.”

Taliban losing influence in Pakistan

Farooq Sulehria — 2009-10-25T09:53:00Z

'Whither Pakistan?' This is a question now a days repeatedly raised in media globally in the wake of high-profile suicidal attacks in last two weeks. It was not the deadly suicidal attacks in the Frontier province that triggered a global panic. Such attacks have become a business-as-usual headline. According to Pakistan's leading daily Dawn, 280 Taliban attacks in last two years have claimed 2200 lives. It was rather less bloody but highly symbolic fidayee assault on jealously guarded army headquarters, GHQ, on October 10 that has traumatized all and sundry.

A coordinated attack on October 15 in Lahore, the country's second largest town, on three police facilities only reinforced the sense of insecurity. The government decision on October 20, following a suicidal attack on International Islamic University in capital Islamabad, to close down schools and colleges across Pakistan have served to spread further panic. Scared citizens, particularly in big cities, are not daring to step out of their homes unless necessary. Traders are complaining of a sharp decline in the number of customers.

Commentators in Pakistan's media have interpreted the recent spate of attacks as last-ditch, desperate attempts by the Taliban to forestall a military operation in South Waziristan, the Taliban's last stronghold. If that indeed was the Taliban's intention, these attacks have proved counter-productive.

On 17 October, the long-awaited military offensive in South Waziristan was launched. Aided by fighter jets and gunship helicopters, 30,000 Pakistani troops have been pitched against 10,000 Taliban. Military spokesperson, Major General Atthar Abbas says army will flush the Taliban out of South Waziristan in six to eight weeks.

Will the military succeed? Before answering this question, we first need to define success. If the aim is to secure South Waziristan, the army will succeed. If the purpose is to eliminate the Taliban, the answer is NO. While the army is busy bombing militants in South Waziristan, and earlier in Swat, it patronises them in Punjab and other parts of the country. The Waziristan offensive is a selective operation against Taliban who have gone out of army's control. They are in the army's view: ''Bad Taliban''.

Talibs fighting US forces in Afghanistan need not worry. They are ''Good Taliban''. Similarly, outfits like Jaish-e-Muhammad and Laskar-e-Tayyaba, built by Pakistan army to bleed India in Kashmir, keep enjoying impunity. The Jihadi infrastructure, comprised of Maskars (militants' training camps) and Madrassas (Quran schools), is not being dismantled. A section of Pakistani press has repeatedly exposed a military-Taliban connection.

The Pakistani media dominated by religious right, however, have in general been sympathetic to the Taliban and until recently would glorify Taliban as a Pashtoon resistance force fighting US imperialism.

The Taliban are, on the contrary, seen by most of Pashtoons in Pakistan as a threat to Pashtoon culture, economy, progress and peace. Unlike some leftists and Islamists portraying Taliban as resistance force, Pashtoons in Pakistan ask why Taliban are slaughtering locals or bombing their schools if they want to liberate Afghanistan? The Pashtoons don't want to grow beards, give up dance or music and stop sending their girls to schools for the ''liberation of Afghanistan'' that the Taliban want to bring. As a matter of fact, the destruction of the economy, bombing of schools depriving 100,000 girls of an education or other absurd actions in the name of Sharia have rendered Taliban extremely unpopular.

That Taliban have lost sympathy is evident from the fact that country's Islamist or right-wing parties as well as columnists and popular talk-show hosts, who once used to extol Taliban, now find it impossible to defend the Taliban's mindless violence. A few have even have turned against them. Others hide behind conspiracy theories (blaming India and the USA, even Israel).

But mass support or a positive public image are not the Taliban's problem. They are not running an election campaign. They are a band of charged up zealots engaged in what they believe is Jihad. Thus, rising or sinking Taliban popularity does not explain the strength of Taliban phenomenon.

It is poverty, state patronage, aggressive US intervention in the region and petro-dollars that stoke Taliban militancy. Every year tens of thousands graduate from Quran schools. A sizable number of these graduates-in-fanaticism are ready to blow themselves up for the cause. The Quran schools keep breeding Taliban (that literally means students of Quran schools). These schools constitute the real threat.

Are they a threat to Pakistan's nuclear plants too? In the presence of a half-million-strong standing army, it seems highly unlikely. The only, and least likely, possibility is that General Kayani (military chief) is overthrown in a coup by radical Islamist officers who seize control of the country's nuclear weapons. These Islamists within the military, however, stand hardly any chance owing to their growing isolation inside junior ranks. Also, the military leadership, busy mending its image badly tarnished under Musharraf dictatorship, will not go for a coup any time soon. The state will manage to stem present tide of suicidal attacks. The ruling class won't hand the state over to a band of fanatics on a plate. But Pakistan will remain in a civil war-like situation.

Two Minutes-Of-Shame That Shook Pakistan

Farooq Sulehria — 2009-04-07T15:10:21Z

A two-minute video episode captured on a cell phone shook Pakistan when it penetrated the blogosphere and began making rounds as everybody with a mobile phone passed the footage to all the contacts in his/her phone book. The rough-and-ready footage emerged from Swat. Once a honeymoon destination, this scenic valley has, of late, become a Saudi-style puritan "Emirate of Taliban".

Having earned itself the neologism of "Swat video", this widely watched footage shows a burka-clad girl pinned to ground. Two men holding her hand and feet while the third - with a black turban and beard - canning the girl. Crying for mercy ("stop it please") and begging forgiveness, the girl struggles - instinctively but unsuccessfully - to free herself.

Silent onlookers watch on helplessly, apparently unmoved by the shameful spectacle on display. "Either kill me or stop", screams helpless girl yet again in her mother tongue, Pashto. Her pleas for mercy are instead countered by an off-camera instruction to the man holding her feet: "Hold her legs tightly". The flogging does not stop until the count is 34.

The footage was passed on to local journalists. Afraid of puritan wrath, the local journalists kept mum. Their fears were justified. Only weeks ago, a journalist was cold-bloodedly murdered in Swat. Elsewhere, Pakistan is no "safe haven" for journalists either. Almost 40 journalists have been killed in the last eight years, most of them in Taliban-controlled districts.

However, self censorship in the face of Taliban terror was not the only reason that mainstream media in Pakistan hushed this video up. Making a "breaking news" out of every trifle, a dozen or so Pakistani channels jealously vie with each other to be the first to report a particular incident. But this footage for days and days did not manage to gatecrash the newsrooms also because a big chunk of media men and women too sympathise with Taliban. A brave woman and documentary maker, Samar Minallah, passed the footage to local media.

"They were not ready to show it", she told this scribe on phone. Finally, she sent the video on to Islamabad-based foreign journalists. It made cautious headlines on April 2 in, for instance, the Guardian while BBC Urdu also hosted the news on its website.

Meantime, women rights groups began staging demonstrations in Lahore and Karachi. Thus, the silence was broken. Then the vultures from mainstream media-houses swooped on Swat. On April 3, electronic media swung to action while the morning papers on April 4 had wall-to-wall coverage of the incident with chilling details.

Universal outrage

The media coverage, however, was also triggered by the universal outrage. The anger is so widespread that even right-wing and Islamist parties, for the first time, have condemned the Taliban. Also, a host of columnists and anchorpersons sympathising with Taliban - touted as Media Mujahideen - are, for the first time, finding it hard to defend Taliban. Until now, every brutality Taliban has inflicted on their helpless victims, was justified in the name of resistance to US occupation of Afghanistan. When, for instance, the five-star Marriot was attacked by a suicide bomber in capital Islamabad, a leading Media Mujahid spun a cock-and-bull theory that hotel was housing US military facilities.

It turned out that a beautifully named 14-year-old girl, Chaand (moon in many South Asian languages) was accused of having an "affair" with Adalat Khan, a youth living in the same street. An electrician by profession, Adalat Khan was one day spotted coming out of Chaand's home by Taliban. Adalat had been summoned by Chaand's family to help fix some electric appliances. A Taliban militant had proposed Chaand. Her family turned down the suit. Now was a chance to take revenge. Hence, both Adalat and Chaand were dragged out of their respective homes and flogged. First, Adalat was administered 50 lashes. Later, Chaand was spanked with a leather belt.

Muslim Khan, a spokesperson for Taliban in Swat, while replying journalists' queries not merely defended this disgracful butchery but claimed that the girl should have been stoned instead! Since the punishment was awarded, according to Muslim Khan, before the implementation of Sharia when Taliban were at war with the government hence a fatwa for stoning could not be obtained from a Sharia court.

Deal delivers Sharia law

Following a "peace deal" struck on February 21, between Taliban and the government, Sharia courts have been established. These courts pass a verdict in three days while local lawyers are not allowed to appear as counsels since they are not qualified in Sharia.

Meantime, as this scribe is busy writing these lines, more information is pouring in and the latest news is: The Taliban also forced Adalat to marry Chaand. As more information reaches people, they are getting more agitated and outraged. This outrage is translating into protest demonstrations across Pakistan. Every demo is proving more fatal for Taliban than any US drone attack.

Pakistan's media mujahideen, hawks blame RAW for Lahore attacks

Farooq Sulehria — 2009-03-08T14:06:04Z

A more discreet euphemism 'foreign hand', otherwise employed to identify RAW India's Foreign Intelligence Agency, was avoided lest the cognition loses its impact. No sooner the terrorists had struck the Lankan team on its way to Lahore's Qaddafi stadium than all the TV anchors were busy crying in unison: its RAW!

Without any proof on hand, they weaved every possible conspiracy theory. Talk show host, Kamran Khan, conducting a late-evening current affairs programme on Geo, did not deem it necessary to even spin any theory. He was direct, frank and determined in declaring: ''No need to guess. The identity of the terrorists is evident. Also, it is crystal clear where they have come from. Pakistan now should not sit idle. Instead she should highlight the issue at international forums the way India highlighted Mumbai''.

He did not find it necessary to explain that one of the attackers, according to eye witnesses, was speaking Pashto. That there is no precedence for RAW having the ability to infiltrate an important Pakistan city and carrying out such a high-profile terrorist attack, did not matter in any talk show either. Also, the ease with which attackers disappeared did not raise any eyebrows in these talk shows.
Every anchorperson was keen to outdo the other in his bid to establish RAW as the real culprit. They were greatly helped in this attempt by a select group of hawks. This freemasonry of hawks consists of either retired military generals, former ISI boss Gul Hameed being most familiar/notorious, or beards like Jamaat Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Imran Khan. Well apparently clean-shaven Imran Khan has, as a Punjabi saying goes, beard in his stomach.

After Lahore attacks, Gul Hameed, besides his TV appearances, also penned down an article daily khabrain, a right-wing rag. He categorically blamed India in his article as well as TV interviews. He said: "India wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state". The attack on the Sri Lankan team, he declared, "is related to that conspiracy." The real target, according to Gul Hameed ,is Pakistan's nuclear assets.
His idealogical disciple, Imran Khan is a self-appointed defence counsel for Taliban. Every butchery inflicted upon Pakistan by Taliban is justified by Imran Khan as a just reaction to 'war on terror'. Imran Khan shortly after the Mumbai attacks had told an Indian newspaper: "There is no problem about the security of cricketers in Pakistan. The terrorists will never target cricketers knowing that they will then lose the battle of hearts and minds of the people (as if they have been otherwise winning this battle or care about hearts and minds of people)."

When his comments were sought by Hamid Mir, hosting 'Capital Talk' on Geo on March 3, Imran Khan as usual resorted to his famous parrot-talk blaming 'war on terror', Lal Mosque operation and US occupation of Afghanistan. Mir also sought comments from Lt Gen.(retd) Hamid Nawaz. The general informed the audience that India was dissuading Sri Lankans from touring Pakistan.

Hamid Mir single-handedly achieved what the Empire failed to achieve with all its might. That is to say: he is the only person outside al-Qaida network who managed to reach Osama ben Laden after 9/11. He interviewed OBL soon after 9/11 that made headlines all over the world. He is often floating all sorts of conspiracy theories but in his March 3 Capital Talk' ,he was outdone by Talat Hussain of Aaj TV.

In his 'Live with Talat' on March 3, anchorperson Talat Hussain was hosting interior minister Tasneem Qureshi among others. Talat Hussain began by declaring ''a plan is being hatched against Pakistan'' and announced the handlers of Lahore episode were sitting abroad. But when the interior minister refused to name India ''until an evidence emerge'', Talat began bullying him. ''Why are you taking a soft position'', he mocked the minister. ''Hundostan say barra dushman koi ho sakta hey'' (Can there be an enemy as big as India), he remarked. Talat also aired the statement by Purnab Mukerjee on Lahore attacks. Thus interpreted Talat the comments by Purnab: ''India blamed us for Mumbai. Now when we are attacked, again India blames us. India does not want cooperation. She wants coercion.''

Ironically, same anchorpersons---ridiculed as Media Mujahideen for their pro-Taliban rhetoric--- declared a virtual war on Indian media in the wake of Mumbai attacks for its ''knee-jerk'' finger pointing at Pakistan.
A question media mujahideen repeatedly posed was: “Do you think the India media should have pointed a finger at Pakistan within such a short time, and without any evidence? Why do we see this knee-jerk response every time some terrorist incident takes place in India?”
On Dawn News – anchors Hamid Mir, Talat Hussain and Nasim Zehra – dissected the coverage in an hour-long programme soon after Mumbai attacks.

“[The] Indian media is overcommitted to projecting India as a success story. They are not used to reporting state failures. They are used to reporting India as a country where nothing bad happens, its Army as the best thing in the world. It projects its heroes as supermen, taller than the Himlayas…So the gap between what the Indian media are committed to reporting, and the crass state failure they had to do report [in Mumbai], they ended up filling it with lies,” Talat Hussain had told Dawn News.

On the same programme, Hamid Mir asked why the Indian media were not asking hard questions of the Indian government.“When Pakistani forces say they have killed five Al-Qaeda, when they say Rashid Rauf has been killed in a drone attack, Pakistani media are asking them questions — show us the bodies. But Indian media are not asking important questions''.

He went on: “There are 500 nautical miles between Karachi and Gujarat, and the Indian media are saying the terrorists came in boats from Karachi. Why are they not questioning the failure of their intelligence agencies?”

Later on, when section of Pakistan itself confirmed the Indian version, the media mujahideen had their credibility badly hurt. But credibility has never been a consideration since most,if not all, work for state agencies besides the media houses they represent. (Some 14 years ago, when Benazir Bhutto was in power, an official list of almost two dozen journalists working for Intelligence Bureau was leaked to press. The leak was Benazir's revenge as she would always get bad press ).

And media mujahideen do not merely rule the TV screens. The print media is also increasingly becoming a pen-jihadis domain. Daily The News, country's largest English-language chain paper, flashed a report by Ansar Abbasi on March 4. Known for his sympathies for Jamaat Islami, Ansar Abbasi filed the following report (excerpts):

'' The Crime Investigation Department (CID), Punjab, had accurately warned the Punjab government on Jan 22, 2009 about an Indian plan to target the Sri Lankan cricket team during its visit to Pakistan.
The CID, while referring to a source report, said this terrorist attack would be carried out by the infamous RAW, especially while the Sri Lankan team would be travelling "between the hotel and stadium or at hotel during their stay".

The report tagged "SECRET/IMMEDIATE" with subject "SOURCE REPORT" reads: "It has reliably been learnt that RAW (Indian intelligence agency) has assigned its agents the task to target Sri Lankan cricket team during its current visit to Lahore, especially while travelling between the hotel and stadium or at hotel during their stay.

2. It is evident that RAW intends to show Pakistan a security risk state for sports events, particularly when the European and the Indian teams have already postponed their proposed visits considering it a high security risk to visit Pakistan.

3. RAW has also collected photographs of leaders of Jamaatud Daawa (proscribed) and its establishments to target them''.

Writing for The News op-ed in the same issue (March 4), Shirin Mazari in her regular column ---regularly oozing with hate-India vitriolic--- philosophises:
''Like the attacks on the Chinese working here, who has the most to gain by targeting the Sri Lankans? Certainly no Pakistani. But India and our other enemies certainly will make political gains. Interestingly, the incident has come soon after the Naval Chief's statement casting doubts on the Rehman Malik investigation dossier on Mumbai, which upset the Indians. So is this attack a mere coincidence in terms of timing?''

A Gul Hameed of op-ed world, Shirin Mazari wonders: ''The question that must be examined honestly is whether this is a natural follow-on from the terrorism linked to FATA and Swat, or is it a continuation of Mumbai or is it something new that is conveniently being linked to the former two? It is too early to give a definitive answer but it does not seem to have any linkage or bearing to FATA or Swat – otherwise why was the first match not targeted? In connection with Mumbai, the only connection is the role of RAW given the timing of the attack and the setback to Pakistan's image recovery after Mumbai''.

Liberals, trade unionists, peace-activists, leftists hardly make it to either talk shows or op-ed sections. Vernacular press---all the mainstream Urdu newspapers blamed RAW in their March 4 editions. --- is particularly stifling. Luckily, the cyber world has offered a relief.

Ever-growing email lists are connecting an increasing number of activists. Blogosphere is particularly attracting new audience otherwise fed up with media mujahideen. Here, on email lists and blogs, the media mujahideen are grilled. Their lies are exposed, their reasoning challenged, their credibility questioned, their professionalism mocked and their real faces exposed.

Farooq Sulehria,

Sweden.

50 US attacks on Pakistan have claimed 450 lives

Farooq Sulehria — 2009-01-23T16:24:29Z

By: Farooq Sulehria

On January 1, US drones pounded Waziristan in Pakistan's Tribal Areas. Death toll was 5. It was an obnoxious new year message (reiterated on Jan. 2: 3 more deaths) to Pakistan: 2009 would not be different from the previous year.

''In 2008, US attacked Tribal Areas and Frontier province for at least 35 times '', a defense official told this scribe. ''Since 2004, the USA has attacked Pakistan at least 50 times, claiming over 450 lives'', he added.
These strikes---by Predator drones as well as commando raids from helicopter— increased in frequency during Bush's waning months and have been seen in Pakistan as America's third war. Unlike the other two, Iraq and Afghanistan, the war against Pakistan is though undeclared yet it was, according to New York Times, approved by George Bush in July 2008.

Commentators fear an increased US onslaught as Barack Obama assumes office since he has been publicly advocating that the United States must be willing to strike al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," he told a union-activists meeting back in August 2007. His comments have caused great anxiety in Pakistan.

Apparently, Pakistan government has strongly condemned the US strikes inside Pakistan but has not reacted militarily. However, recurring Taliban attacks on Nato supplies moving through Peshawar have been seen as a Pakistani shot across the bow to Washington. Reportedly, 70 percent Nato supplies, destined for Afghanistan, move through Pakistan. In last six months, 230 trucks have been destroyed in six such attacks. In December, Nato supplies thrice came under attack in 24 hours. Talking to this scribe, Ahmed Rashid attributed the war-like situation at Pak-Afghan border to ''Taliban's winter offensive aimed at pre-empting arrival of 30,000 US troops reaching Kabul any time this year.'' Writer of Taliban, journalist Ahmed Rashid has been supportive of post-9/11US intervention in Afghanistan. Asked why Pakistan became a target for suicide bombers only after US occupation of Afghanistan, he blamed ''Musharraf regime's dual policy: chasing al-Qaida under US pressure while supporting local extremist groups.'' He sees an ''assertive military policy'' coupled with ''political strategy and socio-economic uplift'' of the region as a solution to present chaos in Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan.

Asfandyar Wali, president of Peoples National Party (ANP), however, advocates ''Peace Deals'' with Taliban. The ANP, a party tracing its roots in Gandhi's Indian National Congress, won the elections in February 2008 and formed a coalition government in Frontier province. In a telephonic interview with this scribe, Wali attributed the turmoil on Afghan border--- displacing 30,0000 citizens only in Bajour district only--- to US-sponsored proxy war against Soviet presence in Afghanistan during 1980s.

Activist and writer Tariq Ali, however, believes: ''The strikes against Pakistan represent - like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, to bomb and then invade Cambodia - a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong''.
The Nato body count in Afghanistan has surpassed 1000. Ali thinks ''when in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto''.

Besides precipitating hitherto undeclared Pak-US war, occupation of Afghanistan has further inflamed Indo-Pak tensions. Recent terrorist attack on Bombay was yet another effect of this occupation. Many observers believe, the Bombay attack November last year was an attempt to provoke Indo-Pak tension thus forcing Pakistan to move 130,000 troops from Afghan border to Indian border. However, Pakistan is also nervous over growing Indian influence in Kabul.

A deadly suicide attack on Indian embassy in Kabul, July last year, was blamed on Pakistan. Iran is understandably nervous over US presence in Afghanistan but Russia and China, concerned over US presence, have also conducted joint military operations on each other's territory. Both these countries understand that US wanted to site military facilities on their borders in the guise of ''war on terror'' while all the talk about ''liberation of Afghan women'' was mere a fig leaf.

If anything, US occupation of Afghanistan has not merely triggered further terrorism but most dangerously: district after district in Frontier province is being lost to Taliban while the writ of Pakistani state has simply evaporated in Tribal Areas. Since 2003, 13648 people have been killed in clashes between Taliban and Pakistan's security forces, 5282 of them civilians, 1833 security forces' personnel and 6305 insurgents. In districts now under Taliban control, a strict 'Sharia code' has been implemented. Beheading, stoning to death, lashing and amputations are the punishments publicly meted out to 'adulterers', 'thieves' and 'US spies'.

Besides dress code and compulsory beards for men, women have been told to stay home. Girls' education has not merely been forbidden; Taliban simply set girls' schools on fire. Only in Swat district, over 130 schools have been gutted leaving 72,000 students without any chance of learning (The News Dec 25). The ''war on terror'' instead of delivering Afghan woman is instead fast depriving Pakistani woman of whatever little rights she had won.

The Bookseller of Kabul Replies to Åsne Seierstad

Farooq Sulehria — 2008-09-05T06:41:48Z

by Farooq Sulehria

(editorial assistance by Shane Tasker)

Of late, I have developed a hatred for "bestsellers." These books often prove to be a waste of time. A bestseller becomes a particularly irritating imposition on one's time when it achieves "controversial" status. The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad was no exception when it began making headlines three years ago.

I read it when it had become both controversial and a bestseller. I simply hated the book. Seierstad, invoking all the Western prejudices about Afghan society and blending them with sensationalism, had tried to delineate the dirty US occupation of Afghanistan as the "white man's burden," which the West should not shed.

This is not to say that the propaganda commissars at Langley commissioned Seierstad to deliver a sensational book about Afghanistan that an audience in the West would find easy to lap up. However, it was a fantastic coincidence that while President George W. Bush and his wife Laura were telling the West that Afghan women deserved pity, Seierstad was penning these lines: "I have never been as angry as I was with the Khan family, and I have rarely quarreled as much as I did there. Nor have I had the urge to hit anyone as much as I did there. The same thing was continually provoking me: the manner in which men treated women."

Honestly, I have never been as angry as I was after reading Seierstad's book. Nor have I had the urge to hit anyone as much as I did. What provoked me was the manner in which this quasi-fascist journalist distorted facts and showed disrespect to a culture and country such as Afghanistan.

While lamenting the treatment of Afghan women, Seierstad hero-worshipped a brutal warlord, Ahmed Shah Masood, who was responsible for countless killings and rapes: "He was charismatic, deeply religious, but also pro-western. He spoke French and wanted to modernize the country." The communists, however, were made out to be villains even though the "communist dictators" proved the best rulers for women's rights.

Similarly, the Taliban were demonized: "Before the Taliban withdrew they poisoned wells and blew up water pipes and dams." (Seierstad could have added that the Taliban were merely following the manuals the US provided to the Afghans who were battling the Soviets in the 1980s.)

As for the mujahideen, there was not a word about how they reduced Kabul to ashes after Dr. Naguib [Najibullah] quit the government.
Seierstad might have punished her poor readers with more bestsellers (she has authored two more books but none have sold as well as the one under discussion here) and become the leading Norwegian Orientalist had "Sultan Khan" (as the bookseller Shah Muhammad Rais was called in Seierstad's book) and Afghan society been as savage as she portrayed them. Instead of seeking revenge and the issuing of a fatwa against Seierstad, Rais decided to reply to her book with his own book, Once Upon a Time There Was a Bookseller in Kabul. He did so mainly because Seierstad's book had made his once happy family "deeply unhappy."

"My wife's brother was the first person to become a victim of Åsne Seierstad's book," Rais recounts. "The father of one of his classmates read the book and retold parts of it to his son. His son immediately realized that one of his classmates — that is, my brother-in-law — was a relative of the book's protagonist. This is where the problem started. Soon all my brother-in-law's classmates were told that his father sold his sister to the bookseller to buy two affordable women for him and his brother, and that the bookseller bribed him and his father so that he could spend the night with his sister before they were married. He was hurt by all this and it led to fights and brawls between him and his classmates."

Rais' book, though perhaps ghost written, is strikingly impressive in its style. Rais narrates his story to a couple of old trolls sent by the king and queen of trolls who lord over a troll kingdom in northern Norway. At 100 pages it's a quick read but contains all the elements of a saga: trolls, tragedy, love, hate, revenge and a happy ending.
One by one, Rais not only exposes what he calls Seierstad's lies but also attempts to enlighten his reader as to the history and culture of Afghanistan. But the book is at heart an attempt to contradict Seierstad's story.

"There were eight women in the house when Åsne Seierstad came to live with us: my mother, my sisters, my two wives, my two widowed cousins and Najiba, a Hazara woman who worked as a house maid," Rais writes. "Several times during her stay, Åsne Seierstad visited Najiba's house, and that is where she learned about the difficult situation Afghani women are in."

Rais suspects that any mention of Najiba was carefully avoided in Seierstad's book so the concocted story about "Leila" would not look meaningless. The story about Leila's misery is pure invention, he says. Yes, Leila's education suffered under the Taliban but so did the education of all his children. As soon as the situation improved, however, Leila and his children were back in school.

Rais tells us how Seierstad manipulates the facts in order to concoct a juicy story. One example is in the anecdote about the school curriculum. At one point, Seierstad lists the questions "Fazal" had to answer in his classroom: Can God die? Can God talk? And so on. But what she does not say is that these were from a Taliban-era textbook that was taken out of the curriculum before Seierstad even came to Kabul. "A liar suffers bad memory," Rais says.

"Seierstad makes fun of the union between people and puts price tags on women as if they were cattle," Rais believes. "She even sets their value low."

Contradicting yet another cock-and-bull story of Seierstad's, Rais tells us: "When my sister got married she was twenty years of age, I was eighteen. Åsne Seierstad claims in her book that my parents sold my sister for 300 pounds to be able to pay for 'Sultan Khan's' education. But there has always been free education in Afghanistan!"

Although Rais's book is worth reading, even better, retrospectively, is an e-mail Rais received from Seierstad on Aug. 20, 2003:

Dear Shah,

As you know, everything in the book is true. But if you prefer to call some things inventions, it's up to you. That is why I changed your name. So that you are able to say: This is not me, this is maybe based on me, but there are lots of inventions.

I will be very sorry and upset if you mean any of the writing is dangerous for you. What in particular do you mean?
In the time being, in order not to be in trouble, you might say what you just wrote, that these are inventions, that the journalist was here for a few months, she didn't understand the Afghan way of life, she believed all the stories she heard. This is entirely up to you.

I really don't know what you are upset about, so please tell me. I am sorry if I put you in any kind of inconvenience. But remember, true stories, true biographies, have both good and bad in them. No person is either good or bad, we are all a mixture, so am I, so are you. The stories from Afghanistan are harsh. The violent past and present do inflict upon people's lives. This also colors your family's life.

But again, if the book is a problem for you, please just tell everybody that everything is invented and untrue. I would rather that, then seeing you in trouble. I am sorry if I have disappointed you.

Sincerely,

Åsne

Well, dear Åsne Seierstad, the bookseller has done exactly what you bade him to do. He is now telling "everybody that everything is invented and untrue."