COMMENTARY:

With Friends Like These

It seems that Pakistan's Musharraf is being rewarded for his help with the leak of nuclear secrets by top scientist, A. Q. Khan, to Libya, Iran, and North Korea, despite a good chance that Musharraf knew, turned a blind eye, and has since pardoned Khan. MNNA status brings a few plums with it --Pakistan gets to store US-owned military stockpiles outside US bases, gets easier terms and priority on defense purchases, and becomes eligible to buy depleted uranium ammunition.

A rather tidy deal for a country which since its creation in 1947 has been front and center in the lurid annals of terrorism. In a 1998 interview, National Security Advisor Brzezinski admitted that the C.I.A., using Saudi money and working through Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), destabilized the pro-Soviet Afghan government deliberately in order to provoke an invasion that would lead to a Soviet Vietnam. Saudi Arabia and the US sent up to 40 billion dollars through the ISI to mujahedeen fighters from all over the world who, unaware of this, believed they were fighting a jihad against godless communism. Osama Bin Laden, with his Saudi royal ties, exactly fit the ISI bill for a Saudi connection that would ensure royal money flowing in. Meanwhile the rebels’ drug trafficking was tacitly sanctioned, the funds going to sponsor madrassas (schools of religious indoctrination) and military training. Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto herself warned that, in funding Islamic freedom fighters, the US was creating a Frankenstein monster.

But the ISI's terrorist ties are even more blatant: Pakistan's Bank of Credit and Commerce International money (BCCI) did dirty work for practically every major terrorist network in the world; Saeed Sheikh, a central figure in the financing of 9/11, was earlier defended and trained by the ISI; the Taliban itself was midwifed by the ISI and therefore indirectly the CIA; ISI's head, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, was linked to the wiring of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, one of the WTC bombers prior to 9/11 and met top US government officials both before and after the attack. All this is a matter of public record. So a theocratic military government which even the US government admits sponsors terrorism is now an ally and the press has nothing to say about it.

Afghanistan is only the best known of Pakistan's terrorist credentials. Pakistan has had its hand in terrorism well before that, beginning with the bankrolling of insurgency in Kashmir soon after its ruler acceded to India. After pro-India Bangladesh leader Mujibur Rehman died, Bangladeshi intelligence started receiving ISI help to foment trouble on the eastern border of India. In the 1980's, the ISI was involved in funding Sikh fundamentalists fighting to dismember the western border. In this brazen politics, religious fundamentalists, Sikh or Muslim, are simply cannon fodder on the road to military objectives.

What are we missing here? Could it be that the Bush government is not as interested in pursuing the terrorist threat as it is in covering up its own complicity with the ISI in creating the threat in the first place? Or is this all part of the 'great game" being played by the US and the UK for control of oil- and gas-rich Central Asia, from where fuel can be readily piped to the great Asian market? A game in which the control of Afghanistan, through which the most handy pipe line runs, is paramount.

Otherwise, what are we to make of a government that courts Pakistan but ignores India, a country which has been democratic and secular since its start and has been actively fighting terrorism for much longer than the US?

If we are judged by the company we keep, it may be high time for America to go out and make new friends.