Bush behandelde omhoog Banden Musharraf met Qaeda, Khan
(IPS) - De Pakistaanse de berustingsMaandag van President Pervez Musharraf's houdt een buitengewoon dichte verhouding tegen tussen Musharraf en George W. Het beleid van Bush, waarin Musharraf met politieke en economische voordelen van de Verenigde Staten ondanks beleid werd verspild dat in scherp conflict met de V.S. was. veiligheids belangen.
Het is goed - geweten dat Bush herhaaldelijk Musharraf als loyaalste bondgenoot van de Verenigde Staten tegen terrorisme prijste, alhoewel de Pakistaanse militairen diep door zijn verhouding met de Taliban en Pakistaanse Islamitische militanten werden gecompromitteerd.
Wat niet is gemeld is dat het beleid van Bush omhoog de betrokkenheid van het regime Musharraf in de activiteiten van A. behandelde. Q. Behandelt het programma van de de kerntechnologieuitvoer van Khan en zijn al Qaeda Pakistaanse stammenbondgenoten.
Het probleem dat door het beleid van Bush onder ogen wordt gezien toen het in bureau kwam was dat Pakistaanse militair, waarMusharraf voorzat, de echte terroristensamenhang met Taliban en al Qaeda was. Als Bruce Riedel, was de Nationale Hogere directeur van de Veiligheidsraad (NSC) voor Zuid-Azige in het beleid van Bill Clinton, dat op het personeel NSC onder het beleid van Bush bleef, waargenomen in een gesprek met deze schrijver laatste September, al Qaeda „een verwezenlijking van de jihadistcultuur van het Pakistaanse leger“.
Als er een staatssponsor van al Qaeda was, bovengenoemde was Riedel, het Pakistaanse militair, handelend door zijn Directoraat van de inter-Diensten van de Intelligentie (ISI).
Ondervoorzitter Dick Cheney en het neoconservative-overheerste Pentagoon van Bush waren zich bewust van het vertrouwelijke verband tussen het regime van Musharraf en zowel Taliban als al Qaeda. Maar al Qaeda was geen prioriteits voor het beleid van Bush.
Na 9/11, leidde het Witte Huis tot de politieke mythe dat Musharraf, die met een duidelijke keus wordt geconfronteerd, " zich bij de vrije wereld in het bestrijden van de terroristen“ had aangesloten. Maar als Azië deskundige Selig S. Harrison heeft, op Sep gewezen op. 19, 2001, enkel zes dagen nadat hij vermoedelijk akkoord was gegaan met de V.S. de vraag naar samenwerking tegen het Taliban regime en al Qaeda, Musharraf gaf een op de televisie uitgezonden toespraak in Urdu waarin hij verklaarde, „wij probeert ons beste om uit deze kritieke situatie zonder enige schade aan Afghanistan en Taliban te komen.“
In his memoirs, published in 2006, Musharraf revealed the seven specific demands he had been given and claimed that he had refused both “blanket overflight and landing rights” and the use of Pakistan’s naval ports and air bases to conduct anti-terrorism operations.
Musharraf also famously wrote that, immediately after 9/11, Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” if Musharraf didn’t side with the United States against bin Laden and his Afghan hosts. But Armitage categorically denied to this writer, through his assistant, Kara Bue, that he had made any threat whatsoever, let alone a threat to retaliate militarily against Pakistan.
For the next few years, Musharraf played a complicated game. The CIA was allowed to operate in Pakistan’s border provinces to pursue al Qaeda operatives, but only as long as they had ISI units accompanying them. That restricted their ability to gather intelligence in the northwest frontier. At the same time, ISI was allowing Taliban and al Qaeda leaders to operate freely in the tribal areas and even in Karachi.
The Bush administration also gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the A. Q. Khan network’s selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan’s activities.
Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins wrote in their book “The Nuclear Jihadist” that one retired general who had worked with Khan told them there was no question that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership. “Of course the military knew,” the general said. “They helped him.”
But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet’s memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan’s operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.
The following January and early February, Khan’s house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan’s activities.
That whole scenario had been “carefully orchestrated with Musharraf”, Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.
But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al Qaeda officials — and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported Jul. 15, 2004 that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27 or 28 July.” Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.
The military source added, “If we don’t find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole.”
Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry’s acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al Qaeda leader.
Meanwhile, Musharraf was making a political pact with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to ensure victory in state elections in the two border provinces where Islamic extremist influence was strongest. This explicit political accommodation, followed by a military withdrawal from South Waziristan, gave the pro-Taliban forces allied with al Qaeda in the region a free hand to recruit and train militants for war in Afghanistan.
Yet another deal with the Islamic extremists in 2006 strengthened the pro-Taliban forces even further.
But Bush chose to reward Musharraf by designating Pakistan a “Major Non-NATO Ally” in 2004 and by agreeing to sell the Pakistani Air Force 36 advanced F-16 fighter planes. Prior to that, Pakistan had been denied U.S. military technology for a decade.
In July 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al Qaeda’s new “safe haven” was in Pakistan’s tribal areas and that the terrorist organisation had reconstituted its “homeland attack capability” there. That estimate ended the fiction that the Musharraf regime was firmly committed to combating al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Had the Bush administration accurately portrayed Musharraf’s policies rather than hiding them, it would not have avoided the al Qaeda safe haven there. But it would have facilitated a more realistic debate about the real options available for U.S. policy.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
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