Hans Rustad Pakistans militære og sikkerhetstjenester har oppfostret Taliban til egne formål. Men gjøkungen er for lengst blitt selvstendig og har nå vendt seg mot opphavet.
-Alle veier fører til FATA, de Føderale Administrative Stamme-områdene, sa innenriksminister Rehman Malik nylig.
Men veien går derfra og tilbake til Islamabad, skriver Dexter Filkins.
It was more than a decade ago that Pakistan’s leaders began nurturing the Taliban and their brethren to help advance the country’s regional interests. Now they are finding that their home-schooled militants have grown too strong to control. No longer content to just cross into Afghanistan to kill American soldiers, the militants have begun to challenge the government itself. «The Pakistanis are truly concerned about their whole country unraveling,» said a Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
Det kalles strategisk «blowback», når en strategi slår feil og man får den i ansiktet. Pakistan er et land der lite fungerer. De militante i FATA kan velte hele vogna. Verden kan ikke tillate det, men hva skal verden gjøre?
20.000 mennesker har nå flyktet fra Bajaur og over til Afghanistan, kunne FN mandag opplyse. Det sier noe om forholdene at strømmen nå går andre veien, fra Pakistan til Afghanistan. De har slått seg ned i leire i Kunar-provinsen og blir nå underholdt av FN.
Problemene i Pakistan kommer ikke til å forsvinne. Trolig har vi bare sett begynnelsen på dem.
Det er et stort paradoks at det var Benazir Bhutto som bestemte seg for å satse på de fanatiske religiøse studentene – taliban.
t’s all the greater a paradox, then, that the Taliban militias now threatening the stability of Pakistan owe their survival — and much of their present strength — to a succession of Pakistani governments that continues to the present day.
The origins of the present predicament date to 1994, when Pakistan, unnerved by the bloody civil war that had engulfed Afghanistan following the Soviet Union’s departure five years earlier, turned to a group of fierce but moralistic Afghan tribesman who had won a string of victories. They called themselves «the students» — in Arabic and Pashto, the Taliban. Sensing an opportunity, the Pakistani government, led then by Benazir Bhutto, threw its support behind them. Aided by Pakistani money, supplies and military advisers, the Taliban swept across Afghanistan, entering the capital in 1996.
Al Qaida hadde kalkulert med at Afghanistan skulle bli en hengemyr for USA, slik som for Sovjetunionen. De tok feil. Men de kunne hente seg inn igjen i stammeområdene. De gamle båndene til ISI ble reaktivitert. President Pervez Musharraf lovte amerikanerne én ting, men på bakken skjedde noe helt annet.
But over the years, something else happened: whatever President Musharraf said in public, the military and intelligence services over which he presided demonstrated every intention of strengthening the Taliban, who fled en masse to the borderlands after their expulsion from Kabul in November 2001.
Over the years, the evidence has been too obvious to ignore. In 2002, for instance, Musharraf ordered the arrest of some 2,000 suspected militants — many of whom had trained in Pakistani-sponsored camps. Weeks later, without fanfare, he released nearly all of them.
Likewise, after 9/11, President Musharraf promised to rein in the estimated 25,000 private Islamic schools — many of them incubators of Islamic militants — but never took the slightest steps to do so.
I juli ble Indias ambassade i Kabul bombet, og en indisk diplomat ble drept. Amerikanerne sa ISIs innblanding var så massiv at den var umulig å overse.
Myndighetene er presset fra et annet hold: sin egen befolkning som de indoktrinert med antiamerikanisme. USA er alltid en kjærkommen syndebukk i den muslimske verden. Det gir myndighetene handlingsrom, men til en pris: jo sterkere og mer inngrodd antiamerikanisme, jo vanskeligere blir det å innfri USAs krav, og USA kan ikke tillate at grenserområdene er rugekasser for ekstremister som angriper Afghanistan.
And there’s the rub. Each time Gilani has sent troops into those areas, he has succeeded only in sparking the outcries of his fellow Pakistanis, who are growing increasingly bitter toward what they see as the Bush administration’s overbearing ways. The attack on the Marriott, for instance, came on the heels of a recent Pakistani offensive in the Bajaur tribal agency. While there is no direct evidence that the attack on the Marriott was launched in retaliation for that offensive, many Pakistanis certainly saw it that way.
Våpenhvilene Musharraf inngikk med de militante for to år siden, var nok et eksempel på hvordan man gir fra seg initiativet.
Den nye hærsjefen Kayani skiftet mandag ut lederen for ISI, med en general som sies å være mer handlekraftig.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha oversaw military offensives against militants in the lawless border regions with Afghanistan in his most recent job as director general of military operations.
His appointment as head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the country’s main spy agency, was part of a broader shake-up of army top brass announced late Monday by military chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The moves were seen as a bid by the reform-minded general to revive the prestige of Pakistan’s armed forces and assert control over the spy agency following the downfall of ex-President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in August.
A month earlier, the Pakistani government reportedly tried to bring the ISI under the control of the civilian Interior Ministry but quickly reversed the decision after military dissent.
The long road to chaos in Pakistan
