by Omar Ali
Since then, the US has itself admitted that he worked for the CIA and relatively sober Pakistani military analysts have hinted that the two victims were ISI agents who had been tailing Raymond for over an hour.
Much is being made of these revelations, but to an outsider it seems obvious that his status cannot have been a surprise to the ISI. You cannot have 5 CIA agents renting houses in Lahore and tailing people without the ISI knowing about it. Nor would it be a huge surprise to learn that a CIA agent was there under diplomatic cover; all countries get diplomatic status for their spies and if the host country does not like a spy, they can always kick him out by declaring him persona non grata. The legal question revolves around whether he formally had diplomatic status or not, whether diplomatic status qualifies him for immunity once a truly serious crime has been committed, and what exactly happened in Mozang (was it an attempted robbery and therefore self-defense, or did he shoot two ISI agents, with or without provocation, or were they terrorists, or something else?).
When I wrote about “Pakistan predictions” last month, I got some flak from liberal friends for being insensitive and politically incorrect (too negative about certain third world groups, not enough condemnation of American imperialism). I promised to say more about this topic in this month’s piece. First of all, it is true that I assume that people in Pakistan have plans and ambitions of their own. I also assumes that the US is not some kind of God-like power. These assumptions run contrary to the kind of Eurocentrism that is commonplace in Western liberal academia and that assigns agency only to White people, while regarding Brown people as almost childlike victims of their superiors in the West (I am obviously being deliberately provocative in my choice of words…these are not the words which the liberals themselves would ever use about their beliefs, but I do feel that while these words are crude and inflammatory, I think they are still an accurate depiction of a certain mindset). But I think I will stick by those assumptions because I regard the fashionable Western (and Westernized) liberal view as being unconsciously racist and do not find their exalted opinion of imperialist prowess to be credible.
In addition there are also some specific delusions about Afghanistan and Pakistan that I think need to be confronted in this matter and I will try to explain my position about them a little.
1. The Imran Khan delusion: this delusion holds that all was well in Afghanistan and Pakistan until America invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and upset the peaceful status quo. According to this version of events the US and other powers got General Zia to arm and train Jihadist terrorists to fight the Russians in Afghanistan (no Pakistani interest in this scheme is implied) and then left Afghanistan without building schools and hospitals in 1992. Then things sort of coasted along more or less peacefully for the next 12 years, until 9-11 (which is frequently believed to be a Mossad-CIA operation) happened. After this event, the US came and said “we want our old friends dead now”. Since then, Pakistan has been dutifully trying to kill these maniacs and the current Pakistani government in particular is trying its best to kill them and suffering vastly in the process, so it is unfair of the US to ask us to “do more”. I think this version of events misses some crucial points.
First of all, the jihadi project was indeed a CIA project, but it was also our project from the very beginning. America wanted Russia humbled in Afghanistan, but we wanted that humbling to be done by Islamist jihadis under our control. Our leaders (specifically Zia and Akhtar Abdul Rahman) also had the “vision” to see in this an opportunity to settle scores with India and plant the seeds of a wider area of influence in Central Asia, and so on and so forth. Second, after the CIA finished its dirty business in Afghanistan and left, “we” multiplied the jihadi infrastructure by 10. We redirected it to Kashmir and spread it throughout Pakistan. Of course the Westoxicated middle class had very little notion of what was going on. These were serious things, handled by serious people in the security establishment, not shared with the rest of the country except on a “need to know basis”. But it is disingenuous to think the multiplication of jihadi militias throughout the nineties was also America's fault (though the US did ignore it, perhaps because they thought it improves their leverage over India, perhaps because they were busy with other things). Then, after 9-11 (which was not an inside job in my view, primarily because I see no reason to think that the US secret agencies are capable of such vast and successful deception), “we” (the Pakistani security services) protected good jihadis and failed to go after their indoctrination and finance pipelines because “we” wanted the infrastructure kept alive for future use against India.
I am aware that some people think that the primary reason this effort is not being conducted effectively is not because of any real or imagined Indian threat but because the existence of this insurgency is in fact our ticket to more aid and assistance. I personally think this is too conspiracy-minded, but who knows. Another factor to consider is the role of the Military-Mullah alliance in domestic Pakistani politics. i.e. the fact that the army uses the mullahs as muscle power against secularists, mainstream politicians and “pro-Indian” elements. And of course, some demented ideologically committed junior officers may find the jihadists useful against heretics like Shias and Ismailis and other “undesirables”. The last category (I hope) is confined to the lower ranks. The senior officers are not so much jihadist, as they are limited in their imagination and hooked on India-hatred and US aid, and not necessarily in that order.
2. The romantic Left delusion. This is the belief that Pakistan’s corrupt elite deserves to be overthrown by the lower classes and the Taliban are (an unfortunate but expected) instrument of this necessary revolution. Actually the first part of this delusion is not a delusion. The Pakistani elite is not just corrupt, they have been practically suicidal. Where other corrupt third world elites have mismanaged the state, provided poor governance, oppressed the poor and failed to evolve a stable political system, Pakistan’s elite (which in this case means the army high command and their supporters) have done something no other third world elite has managed. They have armed, trained and encouraged their own executioners in the course of a demented scheme of trying to wrest Kashmir from India while laying the foundation for a mini-empire in central Asia. But the second part of this delusion is the real delusion here. The Pakistani Taliban is not the Bolshevik party; in fact, they are not even the Iranian Mullahs. They were created by the army as an outgrowth of the American-sponsored Afghan jihad. Their leadership is derived from the Madrasahs and think tanks sponsored by Saudi money and inspired by Syed Qutb and the most virulent Wahhabi and Salafist clerics in the world. They were guided by the jihadist faction of GHQ, men inspired by Maudoodi and his children, not by Marx or even Ali Shariati. They have absolutely no workable social or economic plan. If they do overthrow the elite, what follows will be a nightmare of historic proportions. If the whole thing does not dissolve into anarchy, it will be stabilized by an army coup. After purging liberals and hanging Veena Malik, the dictatorship of the mullahtariat will degenerate into an Islamic version of Myanmar, not revolutionary Iran or Castro’s Cuba.
