Tangled web of terror

CURIOUSER and curiouser!'' mumbled a bewildered little girl, Alice, as she went deeper and deeper into Wonderland. But what can be curiouser than the fantasy world which the Americans worked like moles to create in distant Afghanistan and which has been seized from them by Osama bin Laden and turned against them?

Osama bin Laden. Those who are now considered middle-aged will remember a writer called Ian Flemming, the creater of the secret agent 007, James Bond. Well, the novel that brought Ian Flemming to fame was called Dr No. Dr No was an immensely wealthy man who nursed a grudge against the civilised world. He lived under the sea and from there plotted the destructions of humanity's most cherished institutions and systems of government.

How neatly does Osama bin Laden fit into the role of the fictional Dr No? He, too, is an immensely wealthy man, and he too wants to change the world to fit into a scenario of his own: Sinister, diabolically cunning, rich, fanatically dedicated, a sworn enemy of the United States of America and all that it stands for.

For their part, the Americans must have known well in advance that Osama bin Laden was their number two enemy, after Muammar Khadaffi of Libya, but before number three, who is Saddam Hussain of Iraq. So when their embassy buildings in Dar-es-Salam and Nairobi were destroyed by explosives, the Americans waited just long enough to warn their citizens to clear out of all countries which had been penetrated by Bin Laden's terrorists before launching a massive attack against selected targets in Afghanistan: Bin Laden's hideout and headquarters, the training schools and bases of his band of terrorists.

The American revenge-response took the form of sending cruise Tomahawk missiles from ships based in the Red Sea or the Arabian Sea. In all 75 missiles were fired. From the Red Sea, the Afghan border is all of 1600 miles, and from the Arabian Sea, at least 700 miles. At such distances pin-point accuracy is not possible. But the large majority of the missiles found their targets, which shows that the Americans knew exactly where these bases and training schools were located. Indeed in the case of the missile intended to fall on Bin Laden's house, it just couldn't land anywhere else because it had been locked in on Bin Laden's hand-carried cellular phone.

But Bin Laden foiled these plans. He switched off his mobile, shifted to a distant place and even refrained from making calls on any telephone in case the Americans had a device which could home-in on the voice.

And this itself shows that Bin Laden has among his advisors some people who were well-versed in the CIA's tradecraft; old timers who had received their training in sabotage and dirty-tricks in the training schools operated by the CIA in collaboration with the Pakistani ISI within Afghanistan, and which facilities have now been hijacked by Osama bin Laden and turned against the Americans.

All this means that, like the other two highest-profile candidates for assassinations, Saddam and Khadaffi, Bin Laden, too, is not going to be easy to kill. Recognising this, the Americans have announced a whopping reward for anyone who will do the job for them: $ 10 millions.

Afghanistan is a land-locked country. In firing their missiles at targets in Afghanistan, the Americans have brazenly violated the air space of at least two nations: Iran and Pakistan.

As to Iran, the Americans just don't give a damn about what Iran thinks of them; their relationship has been so heavily damaged that another crack just doesn't matter. Iran, in American eyes is a "rogue'' nation. They have never forgiven Iran for taking their embassy personnel hostages way back in the 70s and since then, have accused them of promoting terrorist movements, or at least harbouring terrorists, of one brand or the other.

But with Pakistan it is an altogether different story; different and also bewilderingly complex. Ever since the 50s, when Pakistan permitted the Americans to carry out U-2 intelligence surveillance from bases within Pakistan, Pakistan has been an ally of the USA.

As it happens, by and large, the majority of Pakistani people look upon the Americans as anti-Islamic if only because they're staunchly supportive of Israel. And these feelings boiled over in an incident that could have permanently soured US-Pak relations. In the late 70s, a mob marched to the US Embassy in Islamabad and torched it down while the Pakistani Police watched benevolently. But the compulsions of self-interest prevailed, and built-in animosities were suppressed... in exchange for dollars!

The Russians invaded Afghanistan. The Americans, desperate to foil Russia's designs could do so only from Pakistani territory. Pakistan, for its part, was still smarting over the crushing defeat it had suffered in the Bangladesh war and licking its wounds and nursing grievances. It offered its fullest cooperation — but at a price.

They got that price, a virtual torrent of dollars and whatever they asked for in military hardware.

Throughout the 80s, they were bhai-bhai; allies and, even more, partners in manipulating the warring tribes in Afghanistan to fit into a mutually agreed scenario. The Americans pumped money and arms into Pakistan and the American CIA and the Pakistani ISI between them set up an organisation to train and equip agents for sabotage work: blowing up bridges and dams, burning buses and houses by remote-controlled explosives, throwing bombs in crowded places, the sort of activities for which some other countries had been declared to be "rogue'' nations.

Islamabad crawled with CIA agents. At that, if only for the reason that there is no way of passing off an American, white or black, as any sort of an Afghan tribal, the operators in the field had to be exclusively Pakistanis. It was the ISI which recruited and trained these agents, and then sent them on their errands. The fact that Pakistan sent many of these saboteurs into Kashmir, instead of Afghanistan, could not have escaped the notice of their partners. But the Americans kept up a pretence that they had seen no evil, heard no evil.

With the 80s, the Cold War ended. America suddenly lost interest in the Afghan conflict. The CIA stuck its tents from Pakistani soil, abandoning the field to the ISI. The flow of arms and dollars abruptly ceased. The hundreds of agents, trained, equipped and primed for action had no longer any reason to either feel beholden to the Americans or be under an obligation not to harm their interests. Old animosities of the Embassy-burning days began to reassert themselves, and were harnessed and channelised by the Saudi billionaire, Osama bin Laden, who had come to live in Afghanistan just to be able to carry out his vendetta against the US. He took over many of these agents and turned them round, to carry out sabotage operations against the Americans.

A van carrying Americans to their consulate in Karachi was stormed. In Washington itself, a CIA agent was gunned down at the very gate of his office. Other incidents followed and finally the simultaneous wrecking of US embassy buildings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam.

That triggered off the missile attack on pre-selected targets in Afghanistan. By chance or design, one of the Tomahawks blew up a school which trained agents for work in Kashmir: the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and brought out an outraged yelp of protest from their leader, a Maulana, as though to say: "Hey, look! We've nothing to do with Bin Laden. We only send saboteurs into Kashmir. Our hands are clean, dammit!''

Can there be a more glaring admission that it is Pakistan that keeps the separatist movement in Kashmir alive and on the boil, by regularly sending its ultras across the border?