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BOOK
REVIEW
Chronicle of errors
Descent Into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
As security in Afghanistan enters a freefall, the world's
worst fears are coming true. With the Taliban and al-Qaeda
on the ascendant, hopes of a terrorism-free region have
gone. The horizon in Afghanistan's neighborhood is shrouded
in violence and instability that threatens distant countries
in an age of global jihad.
Reputed Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's new book
chronicles the colossal errors of omission and commission
that brought about this tragedy. His thesis is that the
United States ignored opportunities to consolidate South and
Central Asia and embarked on a grand folly in Iraq from
2003.
The diversion convinced Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
that Washington was not serious about his region and that it
was safe for him to continue clandestinely succoring the
Taliban. The George W Bush administration, by failing to
neutralize Pakistan, before, during and after the invasion
of Afghanistan in October 2001, invited trouble.
 The
neo-conservatives in Washington wanted no responsibilities
after overthrowing the Taliban and abandoned the region to
warlords and drug barons. Obsessed with superficial regime
change and instant gratification, the Bush White House gave
up the chase of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in March 2002 and
redirected to Iraq, allowing the two deadly terrorist
movements to bounce back.
The opening chapter of Rashid's book profiles unknown facets
of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose father had been
murdered by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In
the mid-1990s, Karzai believed in the Taliban's vow of
ending warlordism and aided them with funds and weapons.
Once the Taliban were "taken over by the ISI and became a
proxy" and gravitated into al-Qaeda's orbit, he began
organizing against them.
Karzai and other nationalistic Afghans were openly critical
of president Bill Clinton administration's policy of
applying no pressure on the Taliban's main sponsors,
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. US officials at that time had a
simple-minded interest in capturing Osama bin Laden and were
deaf to Karzai's plea to overthrow the Taliban. For being a
thorn in the flesh of the Pakistani establishment's designs
in Afghanistan, Karzai received death threats and expulsion
orders from the ISI.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ISI
"created sufficient room to maneuver and circumvent US
demands". (p 33) It did not rein in jihadis fighting against
India, a fact that Rashid attributes to "the Pakistan army's
deeply rooted Islamic orientation". (p 35) Musharraf himself
strongly defended the Taliban worldview and had no
compunction about using terrorists as extensions of
Pakistan's foreign policy towards India and Afghanistan. On
several occasions, he pretended to the Americans to produce
"moderate Taliban who may be waiting to change sides", a
feint for Pakistan to retain its influence in Afghan
affairs.
Rashid characterizes ISI officers as "more Taliban than the
Taliban". (p 79). Right from the commencement of hostilities
in October 2001, the ISI's expertise and materiel helped the
Taliban to prepare their defenses. In November 2001,
hundreds of ISI officers, Pakistani soldiers and al-Qaeda
leaders who were trapped in Kunduz province were airlifted
to safety by Pakistan in a getaway that eventually serviced
the Taliban's revival. Rashid quotes a senior US diplomat
lamenting ex post that "Musharraf fooled us". (p 92)
Denying India any advantage in Kabul was the main motive
prompting the ISI to harbor the escaping Taliban, whose
close cousins waged jihad in Kashmir. Musharraf's claim that
he had "saved the Kashmir issue" by siding with the US was a
signal that nothing would change in the jihad against India.
Throughout 2002, he peddled a pseudo distinction between
"good jihadis", who fought in Kashmir, and "bad terrorists",
who were largely Arabs. Washington played along due to its
narrow focus on apprehending al-Qaeda suspects. Even as
Islamist extremism ran rampant in Pakistan, Bush lauded
Musharraf as a "visionary and courageous leader" and
rewarded him with unrivalled military and economic aid.
The single-most important cause for the recrudescence of the
Taliban was "systematic and pervasive ISI collusion". (p
222) Up to 2006, the ISI ensured that American attention on
Pakistan's Balochistan province would be minimal so that the
Taliban could develop a full-blooded offensive out of Quetta.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban flourished in Pakistan thanks to
the army's incessant patronage of extremist Islamists who
were proscribed on paper. Lack of international pressure on
Pakistan permitted all-round Talibanization of Pakistan
behind the charade of "reforms".
On rare occasions when Washington issued blunt ultimatums to
Musharraf about his support of the Taliban, Pakistan would
take action against terrorists, but only temporarily. Rashid
describes Pakistan's strategy as "minimally satisfying
American demands while not forsaking pro-Taliban policies".
(p 269) He excoriates then American defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld for "forcing the US military to become captive to
Islamabad's whims and fancies". (p 274) Washington bound
itself into such dependence on Musharraf that it naively
supported his peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban between
2004 and 2006 that aggravated Afghanistan's security.
On the subject of post-Taliban Afghanistan, Rashid blames
the US government's pro-warlord policy for hindering
institution building and financially crippling the Karzai
government. With a number of warlords on its payroll, the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)refused to cooperate with
the United Nations' objective of disarming them. Even as the
Taliban were staging a comeback from mid-2003, Iraq-blinded
Washington was unwilling to consider sending more troops to
Afghanistan. Germany was "pathetic, next to useless" in
training a new Afghan police force, and Italy was apathetic
to rebuilding the justice system.
One major reason for the dismal nation-building in
Afghanistan was the international failure to curb
cultivation of opium. Riding on Washington's theory that the
"war on terror" "had nothing to do with counter-narcotics",
the CIA befriended mafia dons. The drug epidemic fueled
government criminality and inter-clan feuds that opened the
door to the Taliban as adjudicators. This tectonic shift
happened while Rumsfeld was smugly arguing that eradicating
opium was "an unimportant social issue unconnected to
fighting terrorism". (p 324)
Rumsfeld's other critical mistake was to pull out US troops
from southern Afghanistan in 2005-2006, just as the largest
Taliban assault was about to be unleashed. The North
Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's)slow deployments,
riddled with caveats, boosted the Taliban's morale and
vindicated the ISI's assessment that the West would not last
long in Afghanistan.
With advice from the Pakistani military, the Taliban
exploited the time gap and power vacuum generated by NATO's
indecisiveness. When NATO's criticism of the ISI's hand in
elevating the insurgency became too strident, Islamabad
coolly retorted that it was being made the scapegoat for a
war that the US was losing.
Rashid devotes a couple of chapters to the rising might of
Islamist terrorists in Central Asia. His analysis highlights
how the open house for jihad in Pakistan and American
coddling of tyrannical regimes combined to turn the region
into a hotbed of fanaticism and state repression. With
Pakistan descending to become the world's "terrorism
central", neither Afghanistan nor Central Asian countries
could buffer themselves from the Islamist blowback. Rashid
concludes with the thought that only a new military culture
and reformed intelligence agencies can save Pakistan from
its destructive spiral that is inflaming the entire region.
While Descent Into Chaos is a work of original facts
and high-quality analysis, Rashid could have done better by
resorting to the power of cross-regional comparisons. For
instance, Pakistan's intrusion in Afghanistan is similar to
the Syrian interference in Lebanon. A policy-oriented
scholar should ask why something on the lines of a
mass-based "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon against Syrian
dictation could not be replicated in Afghanistan to defeat
Pakistan's unwarranted meddling.
Rashid's wish to recast Pakistan's notorious coercive
institutions is well intentioned but unrealistic, as the
recent flip-flops on bringing the ISI under civilian control
demonstrate. He is correct that reshaping Pakistan holds the
key to peace, but it is also imperative to forge popular
nationalist consciousness in societies that have suffered
greatly from the expansionist agenda of the Pakistan army
and the ISI.
Descent Into Chaos. How the War Against Islamic Extremism
is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid. Allen Lane, London, 2008. ISBN:
978-1-846-1175-1. Price: US$27.95, 484 pages.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.) |
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