Both the militias of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf received US funds. Sayyaf was a close friend of Osama Bin Laden and a mentor of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the architect of the 9/11 attack). He ran a well-known terrorism school in Peshawar called Dawa’a al-Jihad (Call of Jihad). Slahi, a foot soldier, had joined groups funded by the US and acknowledged by them as being on the ‘right side’ of history.
Between 1990 and 1992, in other words, Slahi was a ‘Good Islamist’ in the war against the Communists. He left al-Qaeda and tried to build his own life. When he was picked up in 2002, it was as a ‘Bad Islamist’ – although he had not been part of any terrorist network.
Brigadiers of Jihad
The Taliban attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar rattled Pakistan’s army leaders. Brigade commanders recently recounted their dismay at the attacks. Many of them have served in Waziristan, from where the Taliban attackers hail. In their long-standing battle in Waziristan, these brigadiers have seen their “boys” die in the line of duty. The war between the Pakistani army and the Taliban has been very bloody. A media blackout of the region has meant little understanding of what is happening in the high mountains. The Pakistani regime’s Interservices Public Relations and Military Intelligence control the storyline that emerges from its battle with the Taliban. But that narrative is changing. One brigadier says that the attack in Peshawar and his own experiences in Waziristan clarify matters – no longer should the Pakistani regime cooperate with the ‘Bad Islamists’.
The key words here are “no longer”. It is public knowledge that General Hamid Gul, Major General Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi and Brigadier Sultan Amir (Colonel Imam) had helped the Taliban from the early 1990s. In late 2001, it was these Pakistani military officers who helped the Taliban, routed by US airpower, reshape their forces into a guerrilla movement (Colonel Imam told Carlotta Gall this in 2009, which forms the most incendiary part of her The Wrong Enemy. America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014).
It was the Pakistani regime of General Zia-ul-Haq who drove a strongly Islamist agenda into the Pakistani state and society. General Zia introduced Pakistan to a virulent anti-Shia-ism, the ideological plank of the “Islamic State”. The very same people that the Pakistani brigadiers now see as their enemy (‘Bad Islamists’) were once their close friends (‘Good Islamists’). The cost this has claimed from ordinary Pakistani people is unaccountable.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi pays the price of thinking he was a ‘Good Islamist’. When the geopolitical tide turned, he had to be thrown to the wolves. So many Pakistanis from the border region are toyed with in the same way, and then they become far more dangerous than even their Frankensteins could have anticipated. People in power are playing very treacherous games. Consideration of the chaos that they spin does not bother them. The cost is borne elsewhere than in the halls of power.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, who heads the left-of-center Awami National Party, warns against being cavalier about the arrival of IS. “We ignored al-Qaeda,” he says, “and it became powerful here, at our expense. If we’re incompetent again, Daesh [IS] will divide Pakistan, just as it did Syria and Iraq.”
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate