The masks of the 'Mahdi'

The Obama-Gates-Clinton caucus has a long rocky road to learn the history subject in this savage South Asian region where ragtag rebels once upon a time went about under the name of mujahideen and fought their formidable foe, the Soviets.

By Cyrus G. Robati

(May 11, London, Sri Lanka Guardian)Historically, Talibanisation is no new to anyone adept in politics in this part of the region.

Dating back to the 1980s Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence Agency and General Ziahul Haq's Inter-Services Intelligence - and backed by the Saudi cash -- orchestrated a fighting force and unleashed it against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

To anyone's guess, both politicos had reasons too: Mr Reagan wanted to revenge the Vietnam fiasco by booting out the communists; General Haq wanted to rule longer by bringing his brand of Islamisation.

And to no one's surprise, this fresh fighting force of the “faithful” - “fresh” because it was fatly filled with the brain-washed youth -- was to be made up of thousands of Afghan refugees and Pakistani madrassa men who were then recruited and trained by the general's agents in his central command city of Peshawar in the north. And to all, the rest is history, of course.

Ideologically, Talibanlogy is hardly a newly-born idea either.

Starting with Sudan in 1881, Muhammad Ahmad, calling himself the 'Mahdi', declared holy war against the entire British colonial region of North Africa. Precisely 31 years later, another Arab -- this time from Libya -- Omar Mukhtar, brought his own brand of holy war against the Italian colonialism. Although both believed in the same faith and were awfully adroit at guerrilla-fighting, there were however two distinct differences between the two resistance chieftains of the same continent: Mukhtar was fighting a war of attrition for patriotism, while the Mahdi was fighting a war of attrition for dominance. And although both were poor tribesmen of the desert, the former was by far more merciful than the latter who was quite a charlatan, so to speak.

Today's Taliban topguns and once the old mujahideen of Afghanistan -- now based in Pakistan and Afghanistan - Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Sufi Muhammad and his son-in-law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, and Mullah Omar are undoubtedly belong to the Mahdi brand, having typed out three types of Taliban. However unlike the other three, the once-forgiven Maulana Muhammad himself, now unforgiven, was once an old crony of General Haq in the 1980s, actively participating in the Jamaat-e-Islami-- the party the general had set up to silence his opposition parties at home. In 1992 Maulana Muhammad founded the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi -- or the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law -- but Mr Musharraf banned it a decade later. And despite the three editions, they do lend one other a helping hand too whenever it is needed.

Originally, cluster of the concern on the Americans' foreign policy was about their willingness to talk to some of their enemies, especially those considered “moderate”, using Saudis and Pakistanis, though the olive branches have already been presented to Iran, Syria, Russia, Venezuela and North Korea. Yet questions remain as to this administration's ability to influence or tame those countries. Barack Obama's ability to play politics was on show this month in a series of small summits with leaders from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel. All cases test the balance between these leaders' national political concerns and their accommodation of American strategic interests.

May witnessed the small summit of Mr Obama's “AfPak” partners -- Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari. At present the priority is Pakistan. Now, Mr Obama wants more consistency from Mr Zardari in taking on the Taliban and in no more talking and dealing with them. Mr Zardari, much like his predecessor Pervez Musharaff, has overseen a patchy policy towards the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata) of making bribe-for-peace offers one day and fight-for-peace overtures the next.

The coalition-led government is rumoured to have let the Taliban in the first place, deliberately, in order to attract more attention and more aid quicker from the Americans to save the state's sagging economy. And in the end, he got what he wanted from the Americans, Japanese, Saudis and other cash-rich nations. Today, 1000,000 refugees are on the run as the military moves in deeper to dominate part of its own territory. With Mr Obama persisting on Pakistan's prominence, the killing fields in Swat could deal a deathblow to his foreign policy credentials. And with Secretaries of State and Defence Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates pouring praises on Pakistan's push in the north, it remains to be seen if Islamabad has either the true guts or the desire to deliver.

But there is still this common Pakistani public suspicion though. There are reasons why this is so, and why even many Pakistanis deeply opposing the Taliban rule are also opposed to a tough military campaign against them. Three are worth noting. The first is -- at least to judge by my interviews on the streets and in the bazaars -- that the jihad of the Afghan Taliban against the Americans' “occupation” of Afghanistan enjoys overwhelming public approval in northern Pakistan; and the Pakistani Taliban gain a great measure of prestige from their alliance with this jihad. The second is that, with the exception of some of the higher courts, the Pakistani judicial system is such a corrupt, slow, impenetrable shambles that the Taliban's programme of sharia enjoys a great deal of public support, at least in the Pashtun areas that I have visited. The third is that the security establishment is determined to prevent Afghanistan becoming an ally of India, and continues to shelter parts of the Afghan Taliban as a long-term “strategic asset” against this threat.

This is the crucial challenge to the American approach. In both the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraqi theatres, the Americans and allies are challenging counter-insurgencies created by the past policies planned out prematurely. Therefore no matter how well or hard the American army fights, its success will ultimately be shaped significantly by the competency of Islamabad, Kabul and Baghdad.

Focus on “AfPak” comes as the Americans are cutting troop numbers in Iraq and preparing to hand over urban control to the Iraqis. Although the second summit is expected after the elections in August in Afghanistan, the focus will switch to better border security, more intelligence-sharing and more Indian involvement. Policy based largely on buttering weak governments in countries ridden by internal conflict is a risky business, much of the success or failure of the administration's approach will be defined by its ability to walk the fine line between too much and too little involvement in the affairs of American allies.

-Sri Lanka Guardian