Dehshatgardi Murdabad! — II

Almost $40 billion were pumped into Pakistan in the Zia decade to support the jihadi network.

Following US President Jimmy Carter, President Ronald Reagan and Saudi Arabia provided another $3.5 billion to General Zia’s regime to arm and train the Mujahideen. Overall, an estimated $40 billion were pumped into Pakistan in the Zia decade to support the jihadi network, making Operation Cyclone the largest and most expensive operation in the history of the CIA. Leading Mujahideen commanders were trained by the CIA in the Brooklyn School in New York and in Virginia. In my video lectures available on YouTube, you will see rare footage of the Afghan revolution. You will see W Webster and Claire George with General Hamid Gul inspecting Mujahideen camps. You will see footage of CIA Director William J Casey in Pakistan. You will see US Congressman Charlie Wilson in Pakistan. You will see several prominent jihadi and secular leaders that were receiving money from US imperialism. You will see how James Bond and Rambo were used to glorify religious extremism. You will see General Zia meeting Carter and Reagan to facilitate arms for the Mujahideen. You will see these jihadis sitting within the White House. This was when President Reagan declared them the equivalents of the “founding fathers of America” and dedicated the space shuttle Columbia to them. In other words, you will see the truth behind the façade. You will see the real history of how religious extremism developed in Pakistan.

It is also clear today that not only Saudi Arabia, but Israel also financed and armed this counter-revolution undertaken by the Mujahideen (the evidence for this is available in Charlie Wilsons’ biography Charlie Wilson’s War). These so-called Mujahideen had no qualms about the fact that their financial support came from the same forces that were murdering Palestinians. They carried out terrorism against the Afghan population while increasing their numbers within Pakistan. Between 1979 and 1990, jihad-related organisations and sectarian organisations doubled. By 2002, more than 7,000 madrassas offered ‘degrees’ in higher education. It is estimated that about 22,000 madrassas reaching over 1.5 million children are active in Pakistan today.

With the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the final defeat of the Afghan left-wing government in 1992, tribal heads and landlords came back into power. But very soon they began to fight with each other. This clash occurred because the Pakistan Army considered Afghanistan to be an area of strategic depth. They wanted complete control over Afghanistan. They supported Afghan Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against the Rabbani government and this clash resulted in the complete destruction of Kabul. The Pakistan Army then prepared a new force called the Taliban. And by 1996 the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistan Army, had defeated nearly all its rivals and established a government in Afghanistan.

A few examples from the regime that the Taliban created in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 included a government declaration that: “a denier of veil is an infidel and an unveiled woman is lewd”; women’s clothes must not be decorated and colourful; women must not perfume themselves.

In October 1996, a woman had the tip of her thumb cut off for wearing nail varnish. When a Taliban raid discovered a woman running an informal school in her apartment, they beat the children, threw her down a flight of stairs causing her to break her leg, and then imprisoned her.

The legacy of nearly a decade of fundamentalist rule is as follows: currently, nearly 79 per cent of Afghan women cannot read or write; maternal mortality rates stand to be the highest in the world with nearly 1,900 deaths per 100,000 live births. It is the singular achievement of the Taliban that they managed to reach the highest rate of maternal deaths recorded in history in the province of Badakshan: 6,500 deaths per 100,000 births. Enrolment in schools as of 2004 was still at the dismal figure of nine per cent due to Taliban attacks; 57 per cent of women are married off before the age of 16; 72 per cent do not know of any form of contraception, nor any way of delaying pregnancy; 97 per cent of women surveyed show symptoms of major depression and opium is being taken by them to ease the pain from inadequate health care.

(To be continued)

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2011.