October 25, 2006	Wednesday	Shawwal 1, 1427

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NEW YORK, Oct 24: President Pervez Musharraf is torn between his desire to support the Taliban and, at the same time, not wanting to offend the United States, according to the imam of Peshawar’s 17th-century Mahabat Khan Mosque, who is also director of the Jamia Ashrafia, a Deobandi madressah.

Maulana Yousaf Qureshi told The New York Times that he met the president twice a year and understand his predicament: “The heart of this government is with the Taliban. The tongue is not.”

Mr Qureshi was quoted in the course of an in-depth 10,000-word article in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine section about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan where its fighters are giving tough time to the coalition troops and Afghan armed forces.

He told Times’ correspondent: “I think they want a weak government and want to support the Taliban without letting them win.” He continued: “Why? ‘We are asking Musharraf, ‘What are you doing,’ and he says: “I’m moving in both ways. I want to support the Taliban, but I can’t afford to displease America. I am caught between the devil and the deep sea”.

He said that the ISI was supporting the Taliban, because of the “double policy of the government.” Even in the 1990s, he added, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was supporting the official Afghan government of Burhanuddin Rabbani while ISI was supporting his opponent, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He explained: “We are supporting them (the Taliban) to give the Americans a tough time. Leave Afghanistan, and the Taliban and foreign fighters will not give Afghan President Hamid Karzai problems. “All the administrators of madressahs know what our students are doing, but we won’t tell them not to fight in Afghanistan.”

A former chief of staff of Pakistan Army, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg told the paper that Muslims who were propelled by the religious belief that they must reach out to defend the tyrannised, are now a “global deterrent force”.

“As a believer,” the told Times, “I’ll tell you how I understand it. In the Holy Book there’s an injunction that the believer must reach out to defend the tyrannised. The words of God are, ‘What restrains you from fighting for those helpless men, women and children who due to their weakness are being brutalised and are calling you to free them from atrocities being perpetuated on them.’ This is a direct message, and it may not impact the hearts and minds of all believers. Maybe one in 10,000 will leave their home and go to the conflicts where Muslims are engaged in liberation movements, such as Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now it’s a global deterrent force.”

The NYT correspondent commented: “Aslam Beg played a leading role in the military’s creation of ‘asymmetrical assets,’ jargon for the jihadis who have long been used by the military as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan.”

In the report headlined ‘In the Land of the Taliban,’ Times writer says: “Meanwhile, the landscape next door in Afghanistan was changing. The warlords were back in action. The drug economy was surging. By 2003 and 2004, Musharraf’s men were becoming hysterical about what they saw a growing Indian presence in Afghanistan, particularly the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, the Pashtun strongholds that Pakistan considered its own turf. Karzai was doing business with Indians and Americans and was no longer a Pashtun whom Pakistanis would want to do business with.”

The NYT Times writer referred to a visit she had had from a former Pakistani general who had been active in the ISI. The general invited Kandahar’s leaders to lunch and warned them not to let the Indians put a consulate in Kandahar and to remember who their real benefactors were.

“Today there is a consulate there, and Indian films and music are sweeping through the Pashtun lands. What is more, many Pakistanis believe India is backing the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan’s far south, clouding the prospects for the new, Chinese-built port in Gwadar. The port is Pakistan’s single largest investment in its economic future and has been attacked by Baloch rebels. In many ways, Pakistani policy is already looking beyond both Karzai and the Americans; they believe it is prudent to imagine a future with neither. That future will be shaped by the past: the past with India, the past with the Soviet Union, the past with America. For Pakistan’s hard-liners, at least, the obvious choice was to take their assets off the shelf and restart the jihad,” according to the correspondent.

She believes that by being cooperative with the present Kabul regime, the Pakistanis may be hoping to force Mr Karzai to recognise the Durand Line in exchange for stability. Another theory is that Gen Musharraf must appease the religious parties whom he needs to extend his power past the end of his term next year.

President Musharraf bought them off, gave them control of the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan and let them use the Taliban. And finally, the Pakistanis see Afghanistan as their rightful client. They want an accommodating regime, not Karzai, whose main backers are the US and India, Pakistan’s nemesis. Pakistan’s secular Pashtun leaders point to another layer in Pakistan’s games: keeping the tribal areas autonomous enables Pakistan’s intelligence services to ward off the gaze of Westerners and keep their jihadis safely tucked away.