Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm very happy to welcome Gareth Porter back to the show.
I've interviewed him more than a hundred times.
He's kind of Clark Kent to my Mr. White.
Writes for Interpress Service, IPSNews.net.
We run all of it at AntiWar.com/Porter.
Welcome back to the show Gareth, how are you man?
I'm good, thanks again Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
The most recent piece at AntiWar.com is called US Uses Peace Talks to Divide Taliban from Pakistan.
But I want to get to that in a minute.
I wanted to ask you first about your reaction to the murder of Salim Shahzad, the great reporter from the Asia Times.
Yes, I'm very, very profoundly disturbed and saddened by this.
I did not know Salim personally, although I had limited email contact with him and had given a blurb for his new book, which I'm now reading.
I was reading it when I got the news that he had been murdered.
And it's very disturbing because of the implication that he may have been killed because of his knowledge of the story that he had been working on at the time of his death, just been published, about the penetration of the ISI, or by the military at least, not the ISI but the Pakistani military, by Al-Qaeda cell.
Obviously an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan.
And it appears one that was directly connected with his death.
Well, you know, I interviewed him one time and I always thought that I should have made a habit out of it, and I never did.
I'm not sure why.
And I've just been thinking recently about getting back on the show to talk about the death of bin Laden and the way things stand now and that kind of thing.
He was, the way I remember it, brilliant.
I want to go back and listen to that interview now.
But he talked then on the show about, he was concerned that the war had gone on for so long that the Taliban and the Haqqani types and all the militant fighters in the northwestern provinces and so forth were turning more and more to Al-Qaeda, whereas before they had really hated him and resented him for getting him into this mess and that kind of thing.
And they ended up saying, you know, you Egyptians are pretty good at battle tactics.
Maybe we need to start hanging out with you guys some more.
And so he talked about the Al-Qaeda-ization of the Taliban movement, where, you know, our side pretended they were the same thing this whole time.
Now they are, was basically the case he was making.
Now it looks like, as he was talking about in that most recent piece, apparently the one that got him murdered, this infiltration extends into the military, the navy of Pakistan as well.
Well, two points about that.
I mean, one, he certainly was making a huge contribution to our understanding of the intricacies of politics in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and his book is definitely a must-read for somebody who's serious about trying to understand all this.
Send me yours when you're done.
The second thing is that his point about the relationship between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is important to understand in all of its subtlety.
I mean, I think clearly he's talking about, as I think you correctly put it, the relationships at the basic level between Taliban fighters and Al-Qaeda, and no doubt that there has been a closer relationship, particularly in obviously the Haqqani group with Al-Qaeda than previously, because of, as he correctly put it, the length of time the war has gone on, the ferocity of the war in Afghanistan.
This was bound to happen, I think.
And again, it's important to distinguish between that phenomenon and the question of whether the Taliban leadership, the Qatar Shura leadership, would be willing to rupture its relationship, to bring a halt to its relationship with Al-Qaeda as part of a settlement.
And I think that there's no doubt that that is the case, that it is prepared to do that.
It's signaled that already, and I don't think that Salim Shahzad would disagree with that at all.
That the Pakistani military or the Taliban would be willing to completely break from Al-Qaeda?
The Taliban would be willing to break with Al-Qaeda.
Because first of all, of course, the closeness of that relationship, even at the basic level, is a function of the ongoing war.
And when you move from that to the level of political leadership, obviously the differences between the Taliban's aims and objectives and those of Al-Qaeda, as well as the religious and ideological differences between them, begin then to become more relevant.
Well, it would seem to me that any Egyptians or Saudis, or former friends of Osama bin Laden, et cetera, up there running around with the Taliban, their main interest is survival, right?
Their main interest is not being hung out to dry by the Taliban.
Well, that's right, of course.
That's pretty much all they have going for them at this point.
Yeah.
I mean, they are very much dependent on the Taliban for their political fortune.
I mean, as Shahzad makes the case in his new book, Al-Qaeda very early on, after the start of the war in Afghanistan, made the crucial strategic decision that Afghanistan was going to be the focus of their activity and the centerpiece of their strategy.
They've made it clear that they're willing to hang them out to dry.
The Taliban are willing to hang the Al-Qaeda out to dry.
Yeah.
I mean, there are two parts of this.
One is that we know that the senior commanders of the Taliban, as of 2001, were very upset that they lost power because of bin Laden's plotting against the United States.
This was something that, as I've pointed out in the past, the Qadashirah, what is now the Qadashirah, the Taliban leadership in 2001 and before 2001, was very much opposed to.
There's no question about that.
They had no reason to support or to tolerate bin Laden's plotting against the United States.
They knew that that was very dangerous to their own interests, even to the ability to stay in power in Afghanistan.
But it was more complicated than that.
There are reasons why they could not simply boot him out of the country, having to do with his relationship with Islamic forces around the Middle East.
And that's why you had this tension between a lot of people in the Taliban movement at high levels who really did want to get rid of bin Laden and who were pushing for a solution to that, and Mullah Omar and some others, particularly Mullah Omar, who was reluctant and slow to move on it.
So that was an enduring legacy of the events of 2001, that the senior commanders of the Taliban were quite sore about bin Laden and did not want to continue to have very close relationships with him.
And then, of course, as we've talked about this before, the hawks always win.
When the United States goes to war, again, in that part of the world, it starts a war in Pakistan, as well as escalating the war in Afghanistan.
It inevitably has consequences for the internal politics of the Taliban, no doubt about it.
Sure.
Well, now, is it really a crisis, the relationship between the political government of Pakistan, the military, and the United States right now, as bad as it seems on the front pages?
Well, it's very complicated.
And on one hand, there is always pressure from the United States to do all kinds of things.
One of the things the U.S. is pressuring them to do is to have continued, in fact, two military operations in North Waziristan.
And there are reports now that Mullen pressed them in his most recent meeting with the military leadership to carry out bombing raids and ground operations in North Waziristan, something that the Pakistani military has been saying, look, we're not really in a position to do that, we don't think it's time to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now they're saying they're going to do it.
I mean, this is a perfect example of that dynamic at work.
I don't think the Pakistani military is that eager to carry out military operations in North Waziristan, but they are pledged, apparently, to do something.
On the other side, I think we have to understand that the Pakistani military leadership clearly is very, very upset with the United States for a variety of reasons, starting, of course, with the fact that the United States has continued to carry out unilateral operations there with the intention of targeting people who the United States regards as its biggest enemies who are not necessarily the biggest enemies of Pakistan at all.
And this has to be understood, as you correctly put it, in the context of the enormous popular political pressure on the government and on the military to push back against the United States.
I mean, this is the most anti-American country, perhaps, in the world, in the sense that very large percentages, 60 to 75, 80 percent of the population, really regard the United States as the main threat to Pakistan.
Well, yeah, and I read in the New York Times that's because of Islamic extremism and conspiracy theories about the United States.
Well, of course.
I mean, that's like saying that the American people have supported the U.S. government because of the conspiracy theories that are woven by the U.S. government, and, of course, that's true.
Nevertheless, it's a political reality that we have to deal with.
Yeah, well, and, of course, they can hear the buzz in the sky of the robots that kids in Nevada are flying around killing people in their country.
That might have an effect on their conspiracy theories a little bit.
You know, if we really had black helicopters in the sky all day, it might give us some credibility.
People who are witnessing this war have a particular perspective on this, which is different from the rest of the population.
But, you know, let's be clear.
I mean, the unpopularity, the dislike, the fear of the United States goes very, very deep in Pakistan, and this is becoming increasingly a factor in policymaking towards the United States.
It's simply inescapable for any Pakistani civilian government or for the military leadership.
And this, of course, is in the larger context of the fundamental strategic differences that Pakistan and the United States have over who is the enemy, what is the threat to Pakistan, and we've talked about that before on your show.
Well, and to your most recent piece, you say here that there are some talks going on between the Americans and the Taliban right now.
I guess a year and a half ago you said, I guess we'll see if in a year and a half they start negotiating.
It looks like they're trying to, although I wonder whether this is just another imposter taking them for their pallets of cash or what.
No, this is not an imposter.
I think it's clear that the person they're talking with is well-known.
There are pictures, the photographs of him published.
There's no possibility of identity theft.
All right, well, so what's the progress being made, if any?
Well, I think what's happened here is that these are preliminary talks.
They are talks about talks.
The Taliban are saying, look, if you want us to talk with you, you've got to do certain things.
You've got to, first of all, give us a foreign office so that we are free from, you know, we have security.
We are not fearful of being arrested, detained.
If we're going to have somebody negotiate, it has to be somebody who's in an office which is completely secure.
And so there's been talk about putting up an office in Turkey, for example, to do that.
They're also saying, of course, they want an end to U.S. targeting of Taliban commanders and leaders.
In other words, none of this is going to happen at all.
Well, I don't think it is, no.
You can see from the statement that the U.K. AFPAC representative Mark Sedwell made in Islamabad last week that what's happening is that the United States is dangling the possibility of these concessions before the Taliban in order to get them to agree to certain things that would serve the political purposes of the United States very well, i.e., that they would agree to sit down with the Karzai government without any preconditions, meaning no timetable for withdrawal from the United States.
That, of course, is not going to happen either.
Well, speaking of which, Obama promised his own timetable, that starting next month would be the beginning of the end of the war and the beginning of the withdrawal of the troops, and by then the surge better have worked or else never mind it.
What about that?
Well, I mean, there is going to be withdrawal, we know that.
How fast it's going to happen still is up in the air, but yesterday's Washington Post had this story on the front page saying that for the first time the cost of the war is going to be a major factor in the drawdown.
That is huge news.
This is the first of a tsunami of stories that I think we're going to see in the coming two years, which will chronicle the growing realization by the White House, the Obama administration, that it cannot afford to continue this war.
Well, they're the last to know apparently.
It is going to result in the speed up of the withdrawal, I think that's clear.
Well, that is just amazing.
Could it really be that people inside the Washington, D.C. beltway there, the highway, whatever they call it, are actually beginning to understand how broke the United States government is?
That there's a limit on their ability to occupy the planet Earth?
That we are indeed bankrupt, yes.
And I just spoke with a friend, a retired military person, who is in touch with people in the military and in the administration, who says that indeed there is a growing realization that we can't afford to do the war in Afghanistan, we can't afford to do a lot of other things, and that very, very deep cuts are indeed going to be discussed seriously in the coming year.
Deep cuts in the military budget, I should say.
All right.
Well, it'll all be a little too late, but still I guess we'll wait and see.
Thanks very much for your time on the show, Gareth.
We'll have you back, of course.
Sure, my pleasure.
Thanks, Scott.
Everybody, that's the great Gareth Porter.
He's the author of Perils of Dominance, and he's a reporter for Interpress Service, ipsnews.net, antiwar.com/Porter.
It's Antiwar Radio, and we'll be right back after this.
