Fictions and facts

Whether as a build-up to President Barack Obama's upcoming new strategy in Afghanistan or whether for creating conducive environment for its announcement, the American media has launched a massive campaign to malign Pakistan, its army and the ISI. Not that there is anything new about this vilification campaign of the American media as also to the country's think tanks, lobbies and pressure groups inveterately hostile to Pakistan. But lately there has been great spurt in their motivated campaign, irrefutably inspired by the American officialdom.

The latest is a leading American daily's longish report, based on interviews with unidentified American officials, though it also quotes some Pakistani officials, without identifying them too, leaving one in serious doubt if this isn't mere concoction for the sort of statements attributed to them. The report's crux is that an ISI's full-fledged wing comprising mid-level officers is working with Afghan Taliban, secretly, independently, even without their bosses' knowledge. We leave it to our esteemed readers' credulity to believe it or not. But what is of concern to us is its patent speciousness and sinister design.

It says this ISI's wing is supporting the Afghan Taliban with money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance. But do they stand in need of money when, according to American and NATO commanders' and diplomats' own admissions, the flourishing goldmine of Afghanistan's poppy and drugs trafficking is putting mounds of cash in the Taliban's hands to buy recruits and guns? And why should they be requiring military supplies from anybody else when they can press into service international drugs mafia to procure all they need through world gun-runners and when, according to America's own accounting hounds, some 200,000 weapons, including deadly guns, rocket-launchers and night-vision goggles, have intriguingly disappeared from coalition forces' armouries and Afghan Defence Ministry's stores? And why should they need any strategic guidance from foreigners when being the sons of soil they know their land's topography and terrain like the backs of their hands and have imbibed by inheritance skills and trades of guerrilla warfare with which the Afghans have throughout their history humbled alien conquerors and trounced invading armies? And surely it isn't Pakistani agencies playing a double game, as surmises the report.

It is the aliens who are playing a double game on Pakistan. Who is giving deadly weapons and cash to Baitullahs, Fazlullahs and the likes? Certainly, it can't be Pakistani agencies to kill and maim our own people. These thugs are running no mint mills and arms factories of their own. So who is arming and bankrolling them, if not the CIA and its collusion with Indian RAW, Israeli Mossad and Afghan intelligence, all inimically disposed to Pakistan? Isn't it America propping up its Jundullah proxy in our mineral-rich and strategically-located Balochistan province, drawing us so much ire of our brotherly Iranians for this outfit's subversive activities in their Sistan-Balochistan region? And who masterminded the killing and injuring of Chinese engineers while constructing our crucially-placed Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea? And who is funding and arming the terrorist outfit operating clandestinely from our tribal region to spread terrorism in Xingjian province of our all-weather friend, China? Who else could so infest this region that sits critically on China's neck, if not someone intolerant of this global economic giant emerging as a rival superpower to America as well?

The American officialdom's puerile posturing of righteousness indeed stinks unbearably. Their new viceroy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke blares if another 9/11 happens to America or another Madrid terrorism to Spain or another London mayhem to Britain, it will originate from our tribal region. His very premise is deceptively fallacious. 9/11 was planned not even in Afghanistan, leave aside our tribal areas; it was planned in Europe. Its perpetrators were not even Taliban or madrassas' pupils; they were graduates of western universities and American aviation academies. And they were no Afghans or Pakistanis; they were Saudis, Egyptians and other Arabs. And if our tribal region has become international terrorism's haven, as surmises Holbrooke, then why has there been no another 9/11 or Madrid or London while not a day goes by without Pakistan suffering a lethal suicide bombing, bomb blast or a terrorist strike? Then who is bolstering and buttressing this terrorist haven, and for it? It has to be somebody else; it can't be us. Why then is our establishment keeping its mouth shut, and not speaking out home truths? Is it waiting for a storm to erupt and blow us away for no sin or crime of ours?