Complicated relationships

By Radhavinod Raju

Washington is reported to be in touch with the Taliban led by Mullah Omar to work out an end game in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai and the Pakistan government are both uneasy that they have been kept out of the loop. The US is separately working out details of a partnership with Afghanistan that would allow them bases in certain strategic centres, after they withdraw from the country, to keep a watch on jihadi activities, mainly from North Waziristan by groups like al-Qaeda.

The Haqqani group, now led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the legendary jihadi leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, which operates mainly from eastern Afghanistan, and has been a tormentor of the US and NATO forces operating in Afghanistan, is said to be closely aligned with the ISI, and is based in North Waziristan. This was the group that attacked the Indian embassy on the ISI’s behest. There are reliable reports, some quoted from WikiLeaks, that Pakistan considers this group as a strategic asset once America withdraws, and as an insurance against New Delhi’s influence in Kabul. Islamabad’s proposal to bring the Haqqani group to the negotiating table was dismissed with disdain by Washington, which wants the Pakistan military to eliminate the Haqqani group.

Al-Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been addressing groups from his hideouts in North Waziristan to attack the Americans. He has also sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar, as his supreme leader: “And so, we renew the oath of allegiance to the Amir of Believers Mulla Muhammad Omar Mujahid, may Allah protect him, and we promise him to hear and obey, in bad and good (conditions/times), and on jihad for the cause of Allah and establishing Sharia and supporting the oppressed”. Expressing grief over the killing of Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri said that America is now facing the whole Ummah and not just an individual or group or sect, thanks to the work of Osama: “He left as martyr to his Lord; the man who defeated America alive and is horrifying her while dead, to the point that they are shaking over having a grave for him, because they know the love of tens of millions for him”.

He referred to America’s ‘defeats’ through the 9/11 attacks on its power and economic centres, and in Iraq, Afghanistan, and through the fall of its proxies in Tunisia and Egypt, and near fall of its proxies in Syria, Yemen and Libya. Addressing the mujahideen in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Arabian peninsula and the Islamic Maghreb, he asks them to increase their efforts to fight the ‘Crusaders and their helpers’.

Zawahiri is angry with Pakistan. Addressing the Muslim Ummah in Pakistan he urges them “to revolt against the mercenary soldiers and the bribed politicians who are in control of their (Pakistanis) fate; those who turned Pakistan into an America colony in which killing whomever they please, imprisoning whomever they please and destroying villages as they please. Those soldiers and politicians who sold Pakistan’s glory and dignity for a handful of dollars”. He reiterates al-Qaeda’s agenda of global jihad and says: “We have to continue working on the path of jihad to remove the invaders from the Islamic homelands and purify them from injustice and the oppressors”. It is clear therefore that al-Qaeda’s international agenda against the US and the West will continue as before.

While Zawahiri has sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar, Omar is silent about his support to al-Qaeda. His focus is only on getting rid of foreigners from Afghanistan, a nationalist agenda, not a global agenda for jihad. In his Eid message to the Ummah, Omar refers to the victories of the mujahideen over the Americans and their allies. He cites the downing of the US helicopter in which over 30 soldiers and others were killed, including some of the S NAVY SEALs who had participated in the operation that eliminated Osama. He also refers to US’ weakening economy. There is an oblique reference to contacts with the enemy, but he is clear that no peace is possible unless all foreign soldiers leave Afghanistan — a position that Washington cannot accept given the jihadi activities in the FATA region of Pakistan directed against their homeland. Though Mullah Omar is silent about Osama or al-Qaeda, we should not forget that he had refused to hand-over Osama to the US after 9/11, though pressed even by Pakistan. One therefore cannot be certain of the Taliban’s attitude to al-Qaeda if they come to power in Kabul.

As for the Haqqani group, known to be close to Pakistan, American think tanks have revealed that the Haqqani network is closely linked with al-Qaeda, and that Haqqani’s son is part of al-Qaeda’s decision-making body while ‘Haqqani himself has been accused of ensuring safe passage into Pakistan for many al-Qaeda figures after the collapse of the Taliban in 2001’. According to a report ‘the Haqqanis rely on al-Qaeda for mass appeal, funding, resources and training, and in return provide al-Qaeda with shelter, protection and a means to strike foreign forces in Afghanistan and beyond. Any negotiated settlement with the Haqqanis threatens to undermine the raison d’etre for US involvement in Afghanistan over the past decade’. The Haqqanis have also been collaborating with the Pakistani Taliban.

Thus, the US wants to eliminate the Haqqani group. Pakistan wants to preserve them as a strategic asset against India. Washington wants to strike an understanding with the Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar for a peace settlement in Afghanistan, but by keeping Islamabad and Kabul out of the loop. Pakistan and the Afghan government would try their best to sabotage the talks. The US wants to have permanent bases in Afghanistan after their forces move out so that they can keep operational units with surveillance facilities to watch over anti-American Jihadi activities in the FATA. Mullah Omar will have none of this. It appears that ultimately, because of the timeline imposed by the presidential elections in the US, America will have to go for a deal with the Karzai government and continue to pressure Pakistan to eliminate the Haqqani group — a prospect likely to be welcomed by Karzai, but not by Pakistan. The drone attacks in Waziristan can only intensify from here.

Radhavinod Raju 

is a former director general of the National Investigation Agency. E-mail: 

radhavinodraju@gmail.com

New Indian Express

07th September 2011