Just days after US secretary of state John Kerry’s visit to Pakistan, senior officials in Islamabad said that the Haqqani Network and the Jamaat ut Dawaa (JuD) would be banned. The Haqqani network, of course, is a militant group that has been blamed for several high profile attacks against western, Indian and government targets in Afghanistan. And the US has designated the JuD as a front for it.
This is why Pakistani action matters. For years, the US has demanded that Islamabad do something about the Haqqanis. But after the Pakistani Taliban moved from south Waziristan to the north, shifting its very operational base, Pakistan knew it had to do something.
It did. Operation Zarb e Azb began last June in north Waziristan. The massive military offensive against several militant groups dispelled any doubts that anyone might have had about the government and the army’s intention to clear the region of terrorists.
Even so, the Haqqanis were no longer in north Waziristan and had moved back to Afghanistan. So why was the US still so insistent on a ban?
It does serve a purpose. It reassures both Washington and Kabul that the Haqqanis will no longer be permitted safe havens in Pakistan and that if some of them cross over, Pakistan will force them back. After the Peshawar school massacre, it is obvious that the ban is part of a larger agreement on shared security between the US and Pakistan.
That said, Washington’s focus on Haqqani – the man –might be seen as puzzling. Haqqani is the very person that US Congressman, Charlie Wilson, once described as “Goodness Personified”. To put that in context, Wilson is best known for leading the US Congress into supporting the CIA’s covert operation to supply military equipment to the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Why would the US be willing to talk to the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar but not to Haqqani?
Perhaps it might be useful to recall some of Afghanistan’s history over the last four decades.
Jalaluddin Haqqani made a name for himself during the 1980s struggle against Soviet occupation. During this period, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was out in front, directing the Afghan struggle, supported by American and Saudi funding and weapons. But Haqqani remained the CIA‘s exclusive asset. He was not prepared to seek the neighbour’s help and would not deal with Pakistan.
When Moscow was finally forced to pull out in 1989 and Pakistan’s protégé, Gulbadin Hikmatyar, failed to deliver, Afghanistan descended into chaos.
Meanwhile, the US left Afghanistan and Haqqani to their fate.
Five years later, the Taliban came on the scene. When Mullah Omar began his crusade to bring peace to Afghanistan, he had a mere 150 followers. Many of them had no weapons and were only able to obtain these from sympathisers in Quetta. At the time, Islamabad and the ISI mocked their ambitions.
But, a factor that no one had reckoned with worked in their favour. Afghans were fed up with the chaos that prevailed under feuding warlords.
Kandahar was the first to fall to the Taliban without a battle. It was only then that the ISI decided to take the Taliban under its wing. Among the first warlords to join the Taliban was Hamid Karzai, the very man who was Afghanistan’s president till last year.
Haqqani continued to oppose the Taliban until Kabul was about to fall in 1996. According to some accounts, he was the Taliban’s ambassador-designate to the United Nations but the UN never recognised the Taliban government. Eventually, Karzai left.
Islamabad has often been accused of supporting the Afghan Taliban but at that particular time, Mullah Omar’s government was recognised not only by Islamabad and Riyadh, but also very briefly, by Washington. Within hours of announcing recognition, Michael Sheehan, the State Department spokesman, swiftly withdrew it.
There is no forgiving Islamabad’s support to the Taliban post 9/11, but people forget that, not only did the Afghan people want the Taliban when they first came to their notice, but the first 18 months of their rule was the most peaceful and representative in recent Afghan history.
It was Osama bin Laden – newly arrived in Afghanistan, after being ousted from Sudan – who offered Mullah Omar economic support and greater returns from the drug operations run by Al Qaeda. That was when Mullah Omar succumbed to the lures of the extreme religious conservatism that bin Laden believed in. That was when the Afghan religious police came into being and cruel repression followed.
Meanwhile, Haqqani accepted Mullah Omar’s rule and found it difficult to revolt against him even though the Taliban leader was changing. But Haqqani refused to accept the Al Qaeda “worldview”.
It is probably true that Haqqani did help bin Laden escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in 2001 but that was probably because of Pashtunwali, the code of the Pashtuns, which always prescribes assistance to anyone seeking help against a common enemy.
Some time after the US invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA tried to win over Haqqani again. But the US had invaded his country and he would have none of them.If Afghanistan’s new president Ashraf Ghani does his job well, Haqqani will probably lay down arms.
Brig Shaukat Qadir is a retired Pakistani infantry officer