Author: Subhash Agrawal
Publication: The Financial Express,
Mumbai
Date: September 13, 2001
Fear of communism blinded America
to more serious dangers
It was November 1979 and I had newly
arrived in the United States. The university campus was tucked amidst lush
hills and valleys, and the maple trees were still glistening with amazing
hues of orange in a typical New England autumn. America was emerging
from the turbulent Vietnam era and Jimmy Carter was a touchy-feely kind
of President. But most Americans I met were staunchly anti-communist. Threat
to the `American way of life' was a common phrase.
Then the 444 day long siege of the
US embassy in Teheran began. Thanks to extensive media coverage, I learnt
about the heavy-handed regime of the Shah and the US role in propping him
after deposing Prime Minister Mossadegh's duly elected government in 1953.
That was my first lesson in America's geo-political failures. A couple
of years later; I saw Ronald Reagan calling Russia the "evil empire." Casper
Weinberger came to Islamabad, hugged General Zia and then presented AK-47s
to young mujahideen at the Pak-Afghan frontier.
The democracy-inspired Yanks and
religion-inspired tribesmen seemed strange bedfellows, and their alliance
a Kafkaesque embrace between the modern and medieval. But my American
friends reminded me of the manifold threats to the free world from communist
tyrants. As events would later prove, threat to mankind was nestling
not in communism but elsewhere.
In 1971 Pakistan had 900 madrassas.
By the end of Zia's rule there were 8,000 registered madrassas plus around
25,000 non-registered ones. These went on to become the breeding
grounds for the Taliban. The US role in creating this modern-day monster
continued well into the mid-90s. In 1996, Kabul's capture was made
possible after a secret deal between Robin Raphael (then assistant US secretary
of state for South Asia), the Taliban and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence,
and there are many unconfirmed reports that the money for the final push
was provided by the US oil giant Unocal. Whether true or not, the
fact is that Robert Oakley, then Us ambassador to Pakistan, later became
a 'consultant' to Unocal.
Meanwhile, Raphaels' dealings for
the Taliban are well documented. John Burns of the New York Times, in a
detailed article How Afghanistan's Stern Rulers Took Power (December 31,
1996), described how Raphael in her various briefings praised the Taliban.
Through most of the mid-90s, Pakistan secured lavish American and Saudi
financial backing for the Taliban, a venture which the Americans thought
would open land routes to Central Asia, being lucrative hydrocarbon assets
and stem narcotics-trafficking. Robert Oakley has now re-positioned
himself as a counter-terrorism expert, giving interviews to the Los Angeles
Times, Washington Post etc. For a man who voted against targeting
Osama bin Laden, saying, "The risks of hitting the wrong place are very,
very high," his has been an amazing turnaround even by standards of intellectual
dishonesty.
And then there are American foreign
correspondents, most (not all) steeped in self-conceived notions of South
Asian dynamics and liberal ideals. For some reason, this lot seems
to get even more seduced by Pakistan than do US diplomats. They end
up writing the usual inane page-5 story on how "Kashmir is burning."
Their naivete is not so surprising given their young age, but not the delusional
view of senior people like William Pfaff of the Chicago Tribune.
In past articles Pfaff has termed Pakistan as "a reasonably tolerant Muslim
state, one with a sophisticated and often every secularised elite." But
the reporter who really stands out is Ric Margolis of The Toronto Sun.
This is the man who finds surprisingly
high-quality coverage - including in the Los angeles Times, an otherwise
sensible paper - despite his rabid language, ethnic slurs and lack of journalistic
objectivity. This man is not only anti-India, but also pro-Pakistan
and very pro-Taliban. The only western journalist who has the lunacy
to argue that "Taliban brought peace to 90 per cent of the country, largely
halted the opium poppy trade, and is holding off Russian attempts to infiltrate
northern Afghanistan... No matter how unlikeable, Taliban remains Afghanistan's
only legitimate government and the sole bulwark against Russian southern
expansion." He wrote this just a few monthis ago. Among his other
gems, he debunks the notion that Osama bin Laden was behind the bombing
of USS Cole. This man speaks to senior US diplomats and at high-profile
seminars and gets an award from the South Asian Journalist Association
in New York.
The bombing in New York is just
plain horrible. Having experienced the honesty, simplicity and large-hearted
nature of Americans, the terrorist attack on America carries personal pain
and not mere distant empathy. But regrettably, the list of America's
disastrous overseas judgements is a long and tragic one: Batista, Marcos,
Suharto, Zia-ul-Haque, among others. And in each case, a nation which
can proudly call itself the freest and the fairest in the world has subordinated
its liberal ideals to a virulent obsession against communism, only to be
even more isolated. All thanks to foreign policy experts like Raphael,
Oakley and Margolis. Thus, the Vietnam war was waged, thousands of
miles and billions of concerns away from everyday American lives.
That cost the US 58,000 lives and $ 150 bn. Manhattan may prove to be worse.
It may sound downright insensitive to say this now, but India has been
warning the US about religious terrorism for years. And the US did
not listen.
(Subhash Agrawal is an analyst of
India political and business trends and the editor of India Focus, a political
risk report for international investors.)
