[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Quick history lesson here for the Congressgirl:
The main force of the mujahideen in the war against the Soviets was the Northern Alliance, headquartered in the Pandjir Valley
| ...also spelt Panjshir, Panjishir, and similar. The native population — primarily poor and illiterate — number about 173,000 earlier this year, though no doubt that is quickly changing. The capitol is Bazarak... |
and led by Ahmed Shah Masood, basically the Tadjiks in the country. They were allied, usually, with Abderrashid Dostum, leading the Uzbek contingent, and Ismail Khan, leading the Dari speakers. There were others, and Dostum used to have the habit of changing sides when it suited his purpose. The Paks supported them, usually, acting as a funnel for American and Saudi dollars.
The south of Afghanistan is Pashtun, who speak the Pashto language. Pashtuns make up (guesstimating, since there hasn't been a census in years) about forty percent of the population. They're the largest population in Afghanistan, but not the majority.
The Pashtuns were supported against both the Soviets and the Northern Alliance by the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami, headed by the late lamented Qazi Hussain Ahmed, and Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami, headed by Fazlur Rehman (Mullah Diesel ), and the also late lamented Samiul Haq (Mullah Sandwich ). Mullah Diesel got his name for the large amounts of diesel fuel that he resold at a profit, and Mullah Sandwich got his name from his habit of taking two boys to bed at once. Sami ran a madrassah that churned out little Pashtun fighters by the hundreds. Our friend Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ran his own Hizb, and he was Qazi's favorite. He got lotsa money, as did others like Yunous Kalis, the duke of Jalalabad, whom I kinda liked from my safe distance. Hekmatyar was also a double/triple agent, funneling information -- usually about Masood's forces -- to the KGB and separately to the KhaD, which was the Kabul government's secret police. After getting kicked out of Sudan, Osama bin Laden moved there to fight as well. I recall seeing at least one interview with him, probably on CNN, which did news in those days instead of whatever it does now. There were other Arab muj as well, not all of them virulent.
Now, nowhere in that list of names is Mullah Omar mentioned, nor is the word Taliban.
To make a long story short, the Soviets left in February 1988, the Northern Alliance kept fighting against the Najibullah regime, the Paks kept trying to control them through their mullahs for that "strategic depth" nonsense. The Northern Alliance eventually took Kabul. Najibullah and his brother took refuge with the UN headquarters. Barnhanuddin Rabanni (Tadjik) became president. Hekmatyar (Pashtun) became PM. Masood became defense minister. Dostum and Ismail Khan got Mazar and Herat, respectively.
Hekmatyar wanted to be in charge, which started what was known as "dog eat dog," basically Pashtuns against Northeren Alliance. Rabbani was a nice man, and Hek overlooked his guardian Masood in the background. Hekmatyar rocketed Kabul before finally being run out of town to Iran and earning himself the title "Most Evil Man in the World." Most of Afghanistan came under the control of local warlords. Rabbani and his government remained the legal govt of Afghanistan and remained such until he stepped down in 2001.
The net result was a weak and unstable government in Kabul and a lot of Pak pot stirring, courtesy of the thankfully late Hamid Gul and his ISI successors in league with Fazl, Qazi, and especially Samiul Haq. Got all that?
Sami and his kindred were still stamping out little murderous Moslems, full of Koranic maxims about killing people and how to strip an AK-47, not so much about how to function in any but the most primitive kind of society. As soon as they were out of the pretty dancing boy stage they were off to Kandahar or someplace.
Mullah Omar was a graduate of Sami's and he was a minor warlord around Kandahar. He may have fought against the Soviets. I have no idea what led to his dispute with Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar; I read that it was defending a maiden's honor, but that's probably Pak bull droppings. Maidens don't have any honor in Pashtunistan. Omar ran Gul Agha out of town, and the Taliban was founded in 1994. With Pak support, they took more and more territory, though they never did control quite the whole country.
Al-Qaeda assassinated Masood on September 9th, 2001, using two "journalists" from Belgium with exploding cameras. Probably twenty four hours later, not counting time zone shuffles, and the September 11th attacks were underway.
Now, why kill Masood? Perhaps if bin Laden knew, without doubt, that the U.S. was going to retaliate against Afghanistan, he wanted the most able -- and Pak-free -- commander in the country neutralized. There were a number of fumbles and bumbles that took place in that period. Rather than nuke Kabul, or land six combat divisions and shoot the place up and put it under occupation, we worked with the Northern Alliance to toss the Talibs -- they're called Taliban because they were Sami's students -- but also put together a stupid "Southern Alliance" made up of Pashtuns. The Talibs had made a show of wanting to hang Karzai, so we held a conference in Berlin, gave him a cape, and made him president.
That's how the decisions of December, 2001, led to this week's debacle. The moral of this story is: Never trust a Pak or a holy man and never put your full weight down on anything a politician tells you.
I can't attest to the absolute correctness in detail of the above. I'm an old man now. While my memory's not as bad as Joe Biden's, it's not infallible, and I've been writing off the cuff. |
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