Supporting
the Jihadists fighting
the Soviets in Afghanistan is the
cause of our present terrors
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
December 21, 2005
LONDON - After we had talked about
all manner of jihadists for an hour - jihadists in
Kashmir attacking India, jihadists in Afghanistan
attacking America and today jihadists in Pakistan
attempting to kill President Pervez Musharraf - I asked
the high American official, "don't you feel that you
spend all your time just picking up the pieces for the
wrongheaded policies when the West supported the
jihadists as a tool against the Soviet presence in
Afghanistan?" He sighed, nodded and replied, "That's
right".
Driving away from that conversation
I was convinced more than ever that the various terrorist
movements unleashed in this corner of the world over the
last twenty years have their origins in the policies of
Jimmy Carter, that most pacific of all post war American
presidents who, prodded by his National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to undermine and repel the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of Christmas Day, 1979, by
any means necessary, including the funding, training and
arming of Islamic militants who burned with
anti-communist zealotry much as they burn against the
Western or Indian 'infidel' today.
Indeed, later evidence provided by
Brzenzinski seems to demonstrate that the U.S. actually
wanted the Soviet army to invade Afghanistan. "We did not
push the Russians into invading", he is quoted as saying
in recent article in Lahore's Daily Times, "we knowingly
increased the probability that they would. The secret
operation was an excellent idea. The effect was to draw
the Russians into the Afghan trap."
Once the Soviets were in
Afghanistan the U.S. then whipped up the West and the
Islamic world into joint leadership of a UN majority that
went into overdrive to diplomatically and militarily
undermine the Soviet Union. Arming the jihadists, among
whom lurked Osama bin Laden, was one part of it, and all
the major Western powers and Saudi Arabia cooperated on
this. Another was to strike fear in the Middle East by
attempting to show that the Soviet army's real long-term
ambition, if it could quell the Afghani resistance, was
to reach a warm water port. The Soviet legions would move
down through Iran to the Arabian Sea, and from there
seize Iran's oil-laden ships, backbone to the Western
economies. Needless to say, if the Soviets had nurtured
that unlikely ambition the last thing they needed to do
was to detour through the often impassable, mountainous
terrain of Afghanistan.
If only the Soviets had been left
alone to face what would have been a long war of
attrition by local forces armed with their own more
elementary weaponry we would probably have never have
seen the rise of Al Qaeda from its protected redoubt in
Afghanistan. Nor would Pakistan's conflict with India
over Kashmir have become so difficult to halt. Pakistan
would not have been allowed to become a nuclear weapons'
state. Nor would Pakistan be so often on the abyss of
political disintegration, undermined by Islamic militancy
within. Critics of Pakistan's present day embrace of
militant Islam forget that it all began when the then
president Zia ul Haq, facing domestic resistance from the
secular parties to his alliance with the U.S., forged an
alliance with Sunni extremist groups. This led to the
steady Islamisation of many facets of Pakistani life, not
least the distortion of Pakistan's legal system and
provided militant clergy with unprecedented access to
political power.
The worst mistake of all was
Carter's policy somersault on Pakistan's development of
nuclear weapons. In April 1979, the U.S.Adminitration,
convinced that Pakistan was secretly building a bomb,
suspended military aid. In December, after the Soviet
invasion, it reversed its decision and persuaded Congress
to authorize a large arms aid program. For the next
decade Washington puts its telescope to its blind eye.
Not until 1990, the Cold War with the Soviet Union over,
did President George Bush Sr. end the annual White House
lie of giving assurances to Congress that all was well in
Pakistan's nuclear laboratories. Military sales were
terminated. But by then Pakistan was only a turn of the
screwdriver away from having its bomb and its chief
nuclear weapons' scientist was already deep into secret
deals selling his country's sophisticated knowledge and
equipment to the likes of Libya, North Korea and
Iran.
The West's obsessive anti-Soviet
policies during the Cold War meant that the Afghanis, the
Pakistanis, the Indians (and the Vietnamese, Cambodians,
Angolans, Somalis and the Central Americans et al) paid a
high price in war and carnage, whilst we in the West got
on with our economic growth and social development. But
now the mistakes of the pro-jihadist, Cold War warriors
have come to haunt us all. Are we any more ready than we
were then to stop the myopic policies of today's
decision-makers breaking the glass for the next
generation to have to pick up?
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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