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Dec 01 Issue FINAL 11/9/01 5:48 PM Page 410 “Should the United States simply relegate Afghanistan, and South Asia in gen- eral, to the outer fringes of its concerns once bin Laden and his acolytes in the Al Qaeda terror network have been either prosecuted or destroyed, Afghanistan could again become a fertile arena for the genesis of other militant Islamist organizations intent on wreaking havoc on the Western world.” Putting South Asia Back Together Again SUMIT GANGULY Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/100/650/410/389778/curh_100_650_410.pdf by guest on 05 November 2020 hortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, acolytes in the Al Qaeda terror network have been the first war of the twenty-first century erupted either prosecuted or destroyed, Afghanistan could Sas the United States began the aerial bombard- again become a fertile arena for the genesis of other ment of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The locus militant Islamist organizations intent on wreaking of this new war surprised many: most discussion havoc on the Western world. Such willful amnesia and predictions of United States military action over about Afghanistan and the concomitant demise of the past decade envisioned a war in East Asia—with policy attention would ill serve American interests. China over Taiwan, or with North Korea—or in the What should the United States do to lessen the Middle East. Instead, the countries of South Asia are chances that its current actions will simply lay now the focus of the world’s attention. another minefield to be negotiated 10 years further The military action that has been undertaken to down the road? Part of the answer to that question unearth the roots of terrorism in South Asia comes can be found in looking back at the reasons why fraught with geopolitical dangers. Pakistan has Afghanistan, and the region as a whole, became a placed itself in an extremely tenuous position—as haven for malign forces. a Muslim country supporting a war against another Muslim country, as a military dictatorship without AFGHANISTAN’S RUPTURED HISTORY domestic or international legitimacy, and as home Afghan society suffered considerably in the last to a plethora of Islamist groups that have been few decades of the twentieth century. Its recent spate implicated in terrorist acts in South Asia and of conflict and despair started in 1973 with the over- beyond. India, which has long been complaining to throw of King Mohammed Zahir Shah by his ambi- the international community about the terrorist tious cousin, Mohammed Daoud. A series of coups strikes it has endured for the past dozen years, is and countercoups followed until the Soviet Union being asked to exercise restraint in the face of con- invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in an tinuing provocations. Muslim states spanning half attempt to prevent what had become a socialist- the globe, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, face ris- oriented regime on its borders from collapsing. It ing tides of internal dissent. Some of this dissent is was also an attempt to prevent the percolation of a closely linked to longtime American support for brand of radical Islam into the Soviet Central Asian quasi-authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. The republics, where Islamist disaffection with Moscow path that the United States has laid out for itself—to was already brewing. vanquish terrorism and the regimes that support or The regime of Babrak Karmal that the Soviet enable it—is armed with its own risks. army installed quickly became the focus of Should the United States simply relegate Afghan- widespread international opposition. The Soviet istan, and South Asia in general, to the outer fringes invasion was overwhelmingly condemned in the of its concerns once Osama bin Laden and his United Nations. The United States, under the lead- ership of its newly inaugurated president, Ronald SUMIT GANGULY is a professor of Asian studies and government Reagan, whose initial years in power were marked at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of the forthcoming Conflict Unending: Indo-Pakistani Tensions by demonization of the Soviet Union, embarked on since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press). a campaign to curb Soviet expansionism on a global 410 Dec 01 Issue FINAL 11/9/01 5:48 PM Page 411 Putting South Asia Back Together Again • 411 basis and made Afghanistan one of its principal bat- In the end, Najibullah was ousted not by the ISI’s tlegrounds in that campaign. To this end, it elicited favorite, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had demon- the support of the Pakistani military dictatorship of strated far greater skill in proselytization than in President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq in supplying and battle tactics, but by the forces of the ethnically training the mujahideen, the various groups fight- Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. After Najibul- ing the Soviet invaders. lah’s fall, Pakistan attempted to broker a power- Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had ostra- sharing arrangement among the various insurgent cized Zia’s regime because of its abysmal human groups, who were still divided along lines of ideol- rights record and its feckless pursuit of nuclear ogy, tribal loyalty, and personality. Massoud and his weapons. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan political mentor, Burhanuddin Rabbani, however, the United States government overlooked the Zia proved incapable of reaching any viable accommo- regime’s significant democratic deficit and its head- dation with the other mujahideen organizations. long pursuit of nuclear weapons. It also acquiesced Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/100/650/410/389778/curh_100_650_410.pdf by guest on 05 November 2020 to the extortionate demands of the Pakistani army’s ENTER THE TALIBAN counterintelligence organization, the Inter-Services As civil war and unrest continued to shred the Intelligence agency (ISI). This shadowy organiza- remnants of Afghan society, another, far more tion, unaccountable to any entity but the highest vicious group was forming in the refugee camps in echelons of the Pakistani military and the dictator Pakistan. This new force was composed of young himself, obtained control over the aid pipeline to men who had grown up in the camps during the the Afghan mujahideen. Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, detached from General Zia, meanwhile, was intent on bolster- the normal ties of kith and kin and imbued with ing his own domestic legitimacy by courting the radical Islamic fervor in the madrassas (Islamic Muslim clergy within Pakistan. As a result, and with schools) that Saudi financiers had set up in the the tacit acceptance of the Central Intelligence refugee camps. Left to themselves, these young men Agency, Zia’s minions in the ISI directed a dispro- might have joined one of the many mujahideen portionate amount of the American assistance to groups fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, or the most religiously zealous mujahideen organiza- they might have become members of one of the tion in Afghanistan—the Hizb-i-Islami—even various insurgent groups that the ISI was also nur- though this group was not at the forefront of the turing to spread terror in the Indian-controlled military confrontations with the Soviet army. Armed portion of the disputed state of Jammu and Kash- with Pakistani-supplied American weaponry and mir, where an indigenously based insurgency had Saudi money, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of erupted in 1989. the Hizb-i-Islami, and his followers were given free But these taliban (students) from the madrassas rein in the Afghan refugee camps that had been were singled out by the Harvard-educated prime formed in western Pakistan. There Hekmatyar’s minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto (who had been forces began to indoctrinate many young, hapless elected after Zia died in 1988 in a plane crash), and Afghan men, both to fight against the infidels who her interior minister, Naserullah Babar, a former had come to occupy their country and to adhere to military officer, and were carefully organized into a a particularly harsh and unyielding form of Islam. viable fighting force. Bhutto hoped to use this group The American-aided war against the Soviet occu- of religious zealots as a pliant entity to serve Pak- pation was slow but eventually successful. After 10 istan’s strategic interests in Afghanistan. Bhutto and years of fighting, the Soviet government, now led by Babar, along with significant segments of the Pak- Mikhail Gorbachev, finally decided to withdraw from istani strategic community, believed these fighters Afghanistan. As Soviet troops left, they replaced Kar- could bring to power a regime dependent on and mal with Mohammed Najibullah, a Pashtun (one of grateful to Pakistan, thereby giving Pakistan “strate- the country’s largest ethnic groups), who had been gic depth” in the event of yet another conflict with the head of KHAD, Afghanistan’s dreaded intelligence its long-standing adversary, India. and espionage organization. Within months, the var- Even after the fall of Bhutto’s government, suc- ious mujahideen groups were challenging the cessive Pakistani regimes continued the policies she Najibullah regime and fighting among themselves in had initiated, and in 1996 the Taliban successfully a wasteful civil war. Thanks to the significant mili- overthrew the Rabbani regime. Afghanistan’s battle- tary and organizational resources at Najibullah’s com- weary population initially greeted the Taliban as lib- mand, he managed to cling to power until 1992. erators who could bring some stability to their Dec 01 Issue FINAL 11/9/01 5:48 PM Page 412 412 • CURRENT HISTORY • December 2001 beleaguered land. As with most things in Afghani- THE INDIAN CONNECTION stan, their joy did not last long. As the Taliban consolidated its hold over Afghan- Almost immediately, the Taliban ruthlessly elim- istan, they played host not only to bin Laden and Al inated nearly all sources of opposition.