In April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan overthrew the feudal Daud regime and implemented fundamental reforms. Immediately afterwards the strategic centers of the West decided that this Afghanistan must not become a precedent. If it did, the entire region would be revolutionized and would endanger the West’s oil supply. The Iranian February revolution of 1979 confirmed the fears of Western strategists. Subsequently, the elimination of the government in Kabul was determined. It was labeled communist, and Islamism was invented to combat it. That was the birth of the Mujahideen, Taliban and al-Qaeda, the same Islamists we do now observe worldwide.
The Taliban were orphans of Afghan refugees as well as Pakistani children of poor families. The latter could not pay for their children’s education. They were taught for free in Islamic schools built around Peshawar, as well as ideologically trained and later they were militarily trained and equipped. The CIA and Pakistan’s ISI provided for their organization and military training and the Gulf Arab monarchies for the financing. Thus, the US, Pakistan and the Arab sheikhdoms were actually the obstetricians of Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Since 1980, the Pakistani ruler General Zia Ul Haq had a large number of new Islamic schools built, probably approximately 50,000 as estimated by today’s experts. Even if only a single Talib from each school joined the fighters, the Taliban would annually have recruited 50,000 fighters. In addition there are Afghan, Uighur, Turkmen and Arab Taliban or voluntary jihadists. One can therefore indeed speak of an Islamist International.
Only after 11 September 2001, the United States declared their former pupils to be terrorists. For the last thirteen years, they have led a merciless war against them. Many of their old and weary commanders, tired of the long lasting fights, were eliminated, even though they had finally signaled their willingness to compromise, but the movement could not be destroyed. The young Taliban commanders are uncompromising. Due to the CIA drone operations and their many civilian casualties, relatives of the latter join the Taliban as volunteers, accommodate them and make donations. Thus the Taliban can move in the tribal areas like fish in the water. They continue to receive funds from the booming Islamist parties in Pakistan as well as from Arab sources. They purchase weapons on the black market or capture them during attacks on the convoys that supply US forces in Afghanistan from Karachi via the Khaybar Pass. Since the Islamist parties of Pakistan consider them as freedom fighters against the United States, they are politically supported by them, personally and financially.
About four years ago the NATO strategists began to make a differentiation of the Taliban movement. A distinction was made between the domestic and the international Taliban. The locals were said to have no international agenda as opposed to al-Qaeda. They just wanted to expel the foreign soldiers from their country, which is why one might negotiate with them. The aim of the Western strategists was to integrate the Taliban into the colonial-like structures in Afghanistan and neutralize them this way. When the Pakistani government then tried to apply the same NATO strategy and negotiated with the Taliban a cease-fire, the USA exerted massive pressure on the government in Islamabad and ultimately demanded to continue the fight against the Taliban. The Pakistani army conducted several operations, most recently in the Spring of 2013, in which civilians were killed. As a result, the Taliban took cruel revenge when their suicide bombers attacked a school for children of the military in Peshwar on 16 December 2014 and killed over 140 students or teachers and themselves. “You must feel what it is like when children are murdered,” said a Taliban spokesman, addressing the military to justify this vendetta.
There is no alternative to negotiations with the Taliban to solve the conflict in and around Pakistan. The Western countries, especially the United States, should stay out of the conflict. It has been proven more than once that external factors do not solve the problems, but rather worsen them. The US has long been not only part of the problem, but the main problem preventing a solution of the conflict in and around Pakistan. They have become an obstacle to a peaceful resolution of internal conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. •
(Translation Current Concerns)
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