Anti-terrorism: The strategic challenges ahead

G Parthasarathy

Just after Pakistan’s military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf agreed to the demands of the United States to deal firmly with the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and his family quietly went into hiding from his home in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the spiritual capital of the Taliban. Close supporters from his Al Quaida organisation and their associates from Pakistani terrorist groups, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Toiba, followed suit in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.

The medieval values that motivate the Taliban are well known internationally because of the treatment meted out by them to women, and their wanton destruction of the ancient statues of Buddha in Bamiyan. But the lesser known is the all-pervasive religious bigotry that clouds the thinking of bin Laden’s supporters. In its official publication, the Voice of Islam, the Lashkar-e-Toiba proclaims: “Democracy is a wretched tree planted by the Jews. The Jews have designed democracy to destabilize other societies, particularly, the Muslim Ummah.”

Such references to democracy and to American values, policies and institutions are commonplace in the lexicon of bin Laden’s supporters. US President George W Bush has aptly characterised those who attacked the US as people motivated by hatred of the values for which America stands.

In the past week, much has been written about bin laden’s association with Afghanistan; when he was chosen by Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal to lead the Saudi contingent of volunteers against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan; his inside knowledge of the workings of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan’s ISI and a number of groups and organisations in the Middle East deeply committed to Islamist causes; his hatred for the US after the Gulf War and how he built up a vast network of contacts to determine American interests through the spread of terrorism.
The network spans more than 35 countries, reaching from Aghanistan and Pakistan to the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia and to Chechnya. It is spread across the Arab world and the Horn of Africa, and has cells located in Europe, the Balkans and even in India and the Philippines. Sections of the Saudi royal family and intelligence network continued to patronise bin laden and the Taliban until 1998, when US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi were bombed by bin Laden’s terrorists. The Clinton administration finally put its foot down. Prince Turki visited Kandahar to ask Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s top spiritual leader, to expel bin Laden. But what he got instead was a tongue-lashing and a demand to leave.

Even before US cruise missiles rained down on the Afghan border town of Khost in August 1998, bin Laden had moved to another location. The missiles hit a camp where Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorists were based by Pakistan’s ISI for infiltration into Kashmir. Referring to the ISI role in the missile attack, bin Laden was to later proclaim: “As for Pakistan, there are some governmental departments which, by the grace of God, respond to Islamic sentiments of the masses in Pakistan. This is reflected in sympathy and co-operation.”
Even today there are thousands of Pakistanis fighting alongside the Taliban and bin laden’s supporters in Afghanistan against the opposition Northern Alliance. They include officers and men drawn from the Pakistani army and the ISI.

Gen. Musharraf is therefore confronted with a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. The Pakistani army and the ISI have maintained close links with the terrorist groups close to bin Laden and the Taliban. Bin laden is almost worshiped by religious groups throughout Pakistan. Influential Pakistanis like former Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Beg and former ISI chief General Hamid Gul have expressed strong opposition to moves to get at bin Laden or the Taliban. Gen. Musharraf himself has frequently voiced support for Islamist causes. His support for the US will flow more from compulsion than conviction.

Gen. Musharraf is likely to get the tactic, if not explicit, support of mainstream political parties in Pakistan for moves he may undertake to meet American concerns and demands. But over the last two decades a mutually reinforcing nexus has developed between the ISI, on the one hand, and right-wing and fundamentalist religious groups and organisations on the other.

Pakistan’s army still remains a disciplined and tough fighting force. But younger officers and soldiers have all been constantly fed with the necessity and merits of Pakistan’s support for Islamic causes worldwide. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is not perceived as a triumph of western resources and technology, but as a victory achieved by Pakistan for the cause of Islam. There are naturally fears of a strong anti-western backlash should the US commence military operations against the Taliban and bin Laden in such an environment.

The effort to get at bin laden and dismantle his network is going to be a long haul. Operations out of Pakistan will be largely covert and aimed at locating, targeting and eliminating bin Laden and sections of the Taliban leadership that are close to him. But in an ultimate analysis there can be no lasting solution until the Taliban is replaced by a broad-based representative government.

It is significant that the bid to assassinate the legendary Tajik leader of Afghanistan Ahmed Shah Massoud took place barely two days before the attack on the US. Massoud was an implacable foe of the Taliban. Bin Laden’s Al Quaida has participated in several Taliban military operations against Massoud’s forces.

Bin laden and the Taliban have also earned the wrath of Iran for the massacre of thousands of Shiite Muslims in regions close to Iran’s borders. The only government in Afghanistan that enjoys wide international recognition is that of the Northern Alliance led by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Massoud was its defence minister until his assassination by suicide bombers on September 9.

The Bush administration has commenced a concerted diplomatic effort to build an international coalition to fight terrorism. It is imperative that Afghanistan’s neighbours—Russia, the Central Asian republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, China and India— are actively drawn into a coalition. Guvenits antipathy toward bin Laden and his Taliban backers, President Muhammad Khatami’s Iran will tacitly support such moves. The aim should be to surround and isolate terrorists and their supporters within Afghanistan.

Moreover, Afghan expatriates including the former King Zahir Shah, now in exile in Italy, would also be useful partners. This would, however, only be the beginning of a much wider effort that would have to extend to countries like Algeria and Egypt that have also been victims of terrorist violence from groups close to bin Laden.

The United States is now determined to block the sources of funding for extremist and fundamentalist groups across the world. The funding for fundamentalist organisations worldwide comes predominantly from Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bin laden is himself the product of such funding and support. Rather than funding schools imparting modern, secular education and employment-generating projects for Muslims worldwide, such funds are almost exclusively used for supporting and sustaining religiously conservative of fundamentalist organisations. Saudi Arabia should be persuaded to change course.

The fight against global terrorism is going to be long and arduous. But it can and will be won if democracies across the world unite.

(The writer, a recent High Commissioner to Pakistan, is visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)