By
Arnaud de Borchgrave
TRYING
to refocus America's war on terror, Gen. Tommy Franks couldn't mention
the country by name without provoking a collective case of gastric
distress in the Bush administration. This war "won't be finished,"
he said during a visit to the Bagram air base near Kabul, until
terrorist cells are hunted down throughout the region.
Pakistan,
not Iraq, was in the general's crosshairs. The unspeakable is that
Pakistan is the new Afghanistan, a privileged sanctuary for hundreds
of al Qaida fighters and Taliban operatives. Some estimates go as
high as 5,000.
The
Iraqi-al Qaida connection is yet to be established beyond the fact
that so-called Afghan Arabs hailed from 22 Arab countries, including
Iraq, and most other Muslim nations. The Pakistani-al Qaida connection
is visible to all but the geopolitically challenged.
To
concede the obvious would not only undermine President (for life?)
Pervez Musharraf, now busy tailoring democratic sheep's clothing
for a military dictatorship, but would be an admission of military
failure in Afghanistan. Most al Qaida fighters slipped out of the
Tora Bora trap last December and into the mountainous Pakistani
tribal areas where the Pakistani army claimed to have deployed a
"watertight" blocking force. Those of us in the area at
the time saw no such thing and even Pakistani army officers told
us this was "mission impossible."
By
mid-December, there were only 4,500 Pakistani troops along several
hundred miles of possible escape routes. They were unfamiliar with
the terrain as tribal areas had been off-limits to the army since
independence. It was hardly surprising that the Pakistani military
intercepted only a handful of al Qaida fighters. Further inland,
security forces caught some 300 out of several thousand who got
away.
Some
15,000 Pakistani jihadis (holy warriors) -- not including the 10,000
who were pressed into "volunteering" by their mullahs
to assist collapsing Taliban forces last October -- were trained
in al Qaida camps since 1997. Most of them are now part of a formidable
clandestine network that is made up of mosques and madrassas (Koranic
schools) that cover the entire country.
Indian
intelligence has verified the claim of a prominent Pakistani tribal
leader that Osama Bin Laden and some 50 escorts escaped in the second
week of December and moved into Peshawar, the teeming capital of
the Northwest Frontier Province. Most of its 3.5 million inhabitants
are opposed to the Pakistani military government and are pro-al
Qaida and Taliban. In the past two weeks, according to the same
sources, bin Laden and several members of his family moved to Karachi,
the sprawling port city of 12 million located 900 miles to the south
on the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden's second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri,
is still with him.
U.S.
Special Forces have been working covertly with the Pakistani military
throughout the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for most of the
year. It's been slim pickings. Al Qaida terrorists have long since
scattered deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir
where they enjoy the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence
agency. ISI supervises
infiltrations of "freedom fighters" into Jammu and Kashmir,
the Indian-controlled Muslim state.
Musharraf
recently pledged to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage
to "permanently" halt these infiltrations across the line
of control as Pakistan's contribution to lowering tensions with
India. But Musharraf reneged -- or ISI did for him -- as accusations
flew about the land that he had betrayed the "sacred cause"
of Kashmir. At a closed meeting
with Pakistan's top media editors, three newspaper editors called
him "coward" to his face.
Despite
last April's rigged plebiscite that gave him five more years as
president and chief of the armed forces, hostile forces besiege
Musharraf. He has survived six assassination plots. Like Cerberus,
the three-headed dog of Greek mythology guarding the entrance of
Hades, he is keeping at bay (1) the unreconstructed and largely
irresponsible political parties that have
pushed the country into military dictatorships for half its lifetime
since independence; (2) the medieval clergy whose idea of progress
is Taliban; and (3) and the military spooks of ISI whose idea of
global power is al Qaida with nukes.
The
man orchestrating hostile extremist forces is the ubiquitous former
ISI chief Hamid Gul who is an admirer of bin Laden and a friend
of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the former Taliban leader. In his latest
media statement, Gul said this week, "America should concede
defeat in Afghanistan. All it controls is Kabul and even there it's
shaky. The country is slowly but surely coming back to (Taliban)
control."
Musharraf's
numerous political opponents point to his appointment of Raja Irshad
as deputy attorney general as proof he is keeping his options open
on the extremist side of the political ledger. One of Irshad's sons
was a member of al Qaida and died in Afghanistan during Operation
Enduring Freedom. A memorial service was conducted for him by Hafiz
Saeed, chief of the extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned by Musharraf.
Irshad is a known defender of the jihadi (holy warrior) cause. Some
of the FBI agents working in Pakistan with their Pakistani counterparts
say privately they sometimes get the feeling they are operating
in a wilderness of distorting mirrors. The ISI chief and his top
lieutenants are with Musharraf, but part of the 12,000-strong organization
is ignoring directives and supporting the religious opposition financially
and politically.
Musharraf
remains Pakistan's most popular man in the West. At home, he is
now arguably the most unpopular. He has antagonized every key segment
of Pakistani society, even his own beloved army. Ambitious corps
commanders in the queue for a fourth star are now looking at retirement
while Musharraf still holds the top military job, a situation Gul
keeps exploiting to
agitate Islamist generals further down the promotion ladder.
Musharraf
is between two dangers, either of which is difficult to avoid without
encountering the other, a classic Hobson's choice. If Musharraf
rigs the national elections, now scheduled for Oct. 10, as is widely
suspected he will have to do, he will face a formidable array of
opponents, both political and military. And if the elections are
free and fair, his opposition will write the music and Musharraf
will have to learn some new political dance steps -- or dissolve
Parliament, which he has decreed one of the 29 amendments to the
constitution permits him to do.
The
president can now appoint the prime minister, Supreme Court justices,
armed services chiefs, ten corps commanders and the heads of intelligence
and security services. A dictatorial democracy is a chimerical political
construct. More worrisome is the bitterness of Islamist generals
who backed both Taliban and al Qaida. It is most likely from their
ranks that the seventh assassination attempt will come from.
The
writer is Editor at Large of United Press International (UPI) http://www.csis.org/html/4deborch.htm
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