BY NORM DIXON
Last November, US government spokespeople flatly denied reports that mysterious aircraft were taking off in the dead of night from the besieged northern Afghan city of Kunduz. They were lying. The White House secretly approved the escape to Pakistan of thousands of Pakistani military advisers and intelligence agents working with the Taliban, Pakistan nationals fighting with the Taliban and al Qaeda and high-ranking Taliban leaders.
These revelations were made in an article written by Seymour Hersh that appeared in the January 28 New Yorker magazine. Disgruntled US military and intelligence personnel disclosed the information to Hersh.
At the time of the siege of Kunduz, Washington's Northern Alliance allies were sweeping all before them as the Taliban regime crumbled under the weight of massive US air raids. Thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters had retreated to Kunduz, the last city in the north held by the Taliban. With them came many advisers seconded by the Pakistan military and its intelligence service, the ISI.
Throughout the siege — which ended on November 25 when the Taliban surrendered and the Northern Alliance took control — there were persistent reports from villagers and Northern Alliance commanders of mysterious comings and goings of heavy aircraft at the Kunduz airport, mostly after dark. The November 24 New York Times reported that several flights were departing each day and lines of foreigners waiting to board aircraft had been observed by villagers.
Questions began to be asked because the US military enjoyed absolute air superiority, and thus would have known about, if not approved of, any air traffic. In response, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared on December 16 that, "If we see them, we shoot them down". On December 21, he stated: "Any idea that those people should be let loose on any basis to leave that country and go to bring terror to other countries and destabilise other countries is unacceptable."
However, according to Hersh, "in interviews, American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown to safety, in a series of night-time airlifts that were approved by the Bush administration".
Hersh added that "an unknown number of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters managed to join the exodus. 'Dirt got through the screen', a senior intelligence official told me". The Pakistanis fleeing Kunduz "brought their friends with them", Hersh was told.
According to Hersh's informants, Washington approved the airlift because Pakistan military dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, feared that the capture or death of thousands of Pakistanis may threaten his political survival. The Pakistan dictator has been Washington's key — if at first reluctant — ally in its war on Afghanistan.
A CIA analyst told Hersh that, "many of the people they spirited away were the Taliban leadership". At the time, Washington and Islamabad were hoping to rehabilitate so-called "moderate" (read pro-Pakistan) sections of the Taliban to play a dominant role in a post-Taliban regime. "Musharraf wanted to have these people to put another card on the table [in future political negotiations]", the CIA official told Hersh.
A CIA official and a US army military analyst told Hersh that the White House ordered the US Central Command to set up a special air corridor to ensure the safety of the Pakistani flights. According to Indian intelligence officials, who closely monitored the escapes, around 5000 Pakistanis, Taliban fighters and al Qaeda members flew to Pakistan. They included two Pakistani generals.
Brajesh Mishra, India's national security adviser, told Hersh that many of the evacuated Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are likely to be deployed immediately in Kashmir. The Pakistan military and ISI have for years collaborated with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban to train religious terrorists in Afghanistan for action in Kashmir.
Washington's double game — loudly fighting a "war on terrorism" while secretly aiding the very people it is fighting — and the fact that Pakistan was still supplying military and intelligence advisers to the Taliban 14 weeks after September 11, show up the "war on terrorism" as a bloody and murderous charade.
For Washington, the key test is not whether a regime "harbours" or "sponsors" terrorists, but whether or not it collaborates to maintain the United States' global economic, political and military hegemony.
From Green Left Weekly, February 6, 2002.
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