Holbrooke speaks

If there was still an incorrigible optimist here, shouldn�t he be shaken out of his sweet delusion of a change in US war policy in Afghanistan under the Obama administration by its special envoy Richard Holbrooke's latest take on the Pakistan army's and the ISI's commitment to fighting terrorism? But when America was stuck up deep in Vietnam, did a change of US administration also saw a change in its war policy in that country?

No, it did not, until America's war there became intolerably costly and its forces had to withdraw humiliatingly. Throughout, the US administrations remained in denial of Viet Cong guerillas being South Vietnamese. They kept shuffling South Vietnamese political leaders and military commanders to subdue the national resistance movement. And, quite culpably, they kept pulverising the neighbouring Cambodia and Laos on the excuse of providing safe havens and infiltration routes to Viet Congs and their sympathetic communist fighters.

And just as the Cambodians and the Laotians couldn't pull their chestnuts out of the fire in Vietnam, so cannot the Pakistanis in Afghanistan. America's problem in Afghanistan lies in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan; and its solution too lies there, not here. Indisputably, the US and its war allies from the very beginning acted stupid in Afghanistan and are now reaping a bad harvest, its worst victim having become Pakistan. After ousting the Taliban with a massive aerial pounding of their power centres and strongholds, they descended on Afghanistan with an expeditionary ground force that could only be a big joke with it and its history.

For years, the international peacekeepers, only 6,000-strong, remained ensconced fixedly in Kabul, and a roving American force, hardly 17,000-strong, took upon it the task of hunting down the al-Qaeda remnants. For a country as large as is Afghanistan, with as inhospitable and treacherous terrain as is its and with an independent-minded people as are the Afghans demonstrably intolerant of foreign occupiers, this force was not a patch on what even the Soviet invaders had put in the field and yet had to finally pull out ignobly.

Neither the international peacekeepers moved out of Kabul to mop up fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda rumps, nor did the American army attempt to plug off the border to corral them, both for the fear of collecting body bags of their troops. Worse, neither the Americans nor their war allies bothered bringing in fistful reinforcements to spread out and help their puppet Kabul regime in establishing its writ all over the country. Both remained confined mostly to their fortified bases, launching into air actions off and on.

And if now over 70 percent of Afghanistan is under the Taliban�s control, serving them as their nurseries, training grounds, regrouping centres, fund-raising outlets and launching pads, who else is to blame if not the occupiers themselves, both the Americans and their allies in more or less equal measure? And if Helmand, with its booming poppy production and drugs trafficking, has become a virtual treasure trove for the Taliban for cash, arms and recruits, who else is responsible if not the occupiers themselves? But if Holbrooke�s helicopter couldn�t land in Bajaur agency for the fighting, could he land anywhere in Afghanistan�s south and east, except the coalition forces� highly-secured bases? Even in the west, say, anywhere outside Herat? Even in the close vicinity of Kabul? You must be kidding. His worries about Swat and FATA are well placed.

But who is giving truckloads of arms and money to the Swati thug Fazlullah? He is running no ordnance factories to manufacture deadly sophisticated weapons he has armed his brigands with, nor he owns a goldmine to produce mounds of cash to pay his recruits and fund his war activities; and so don't the Baitullahs of FATA. Who are their financiers and arms suppliers, then? Aren't they based and entrenched in Afghanistan? And who they are? Don't the Americans know this? Again, you must be joking.

But will the Obama administration pack up its predecessor�s geopolitical enterprise in this region? Will it shut down CIA's shop in Afghanistan working overtime to infest our tribal region and settled areas? Will it dismantle the Kabul-centred evil CIA-RAW-Mossad axis engaged in destabilising Pakistan, particularly its tribal region and Balochistan province? You must be kidding, again. The Obama administration has evidently come with little knowledge and lofty vows about Afghanistan. The chances of its success are less, and of failure more. So expect more of the Holbrookespeak in times to come, particularly when the Russians, the Central Asians and the Iranians too are itching to fish in Afghanistan�s troubled water.