Alright y'all welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
Gareth Porter's on the line.
He writes for the interpress service, IPSnews.net, and we run all of it at antiwar.com/porter.
Welcome back Gareth, how are you doing?
I'm fine, thanks very much.
Thanks for having me back.
And does every bit of it include this opinion piece that Al Jazeera did the Rabini hit really killed peace talks?
Can we run that?
Yes, this is out, huh?
Yeah, I never got it in my email though.
Well, they said it was going to be published Tuesday.
I haven't checked the site to see if it's actually up today.
And is it okay for us to go ahead and run that at antiwar.com then?
No, I don't think so.
Not until we make sure it's posted on Al Jazeera, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Well, yeah, I guess ask them if it's alright if we rerun it or whatever.
I will.
I will ask about that.
I hadn't thought about the question of reprinting it.
Yeah, we want to have the complete Gareth Porter archive at antiwar.com.
And I've been telling people the complete archive is antiwar.com.
Yeah, of course.
All right.
So what the hell's going on in the world?
Seems like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is trying to pick a fight with the Pakistanis, who I thought were his best friends in the world.
What's going on?
Well, it's far more than Admiral Mullen, obviously.
This is a very concerted campaign being waged by the Obama administration, which is aimed at convincing the Pakistani military leadership and civilian government that the United States really does mean business this time, and that if they don't do something very dramatic to take on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, it's going to be held to pay for Pakistan.
I mean, this is definitely a far more serious campaign of pressure than has been waged previously by the U.S. And there have been a number of waves of this.
And in fact, I've now gone back to the earliest wave was early 2007, when none other than Vice President Dick Cheney read the Riot Act to the Pakistanis after it became clear that the U.S. was in serious trouble in Afghanistan for the first time, and accused the Pakistanis of supporting the Haqqani network.
And that is the first time that we know of in terms of actual documentation that the United States made the accusation and was really putting strong pressure on the Pakistanis.
So this has been going on for well over five years.
And we're really talking about a repeated pattern where the United States blames the Pakistanis for what's going on in terms of the threat to the U.S. regime, U.S.
-supported regime in Afghanistan.
Well, now, I always oversimplify everything because I'm kind of a simpleton that way.
But so I believe, though, when I think back on it, that the consensus of all my best reporter interviewee types on this show has been that that's basically the truth, that we've put them in a position where they really have no choice but to support the Taliban, whatever remnants are just fighting loyal to Mullah Omar or whatever we're supposed to believe the Taliban is exactly, and the Haqqani network, because they can't let us win or the Northern Alliance factions that we're backing in Kabul win and create any kind of real monopoly state there.
I mean, the answer is somewhat or partial yes to that.
I mean, the Pakistanis definitely have strong links to the Haqqani network.
I mean, that's clear.
And they do have links to the Taliban-Qadashira.
With regard to the al-Qaida global jihadist wing of the militant movement in that part of the world, it's a different story.
Obviously, Pakistan's military and the ISI have taken on the Tariqi Taliban, TTP and other pro-al-Qaida elements who have been attacking the army and the Pakistani state.
I mean, there is definitely a war going on, has been a war going on for years between the Pakistani military and those elements.
But yes, the Haqqani network definitely has close ties to the ISI and vice versa.
And the main reason is, at this point, not because the Haqqani network is carrying out attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as Admiral Mullen, of course, is beating the drum about, waving the bloody flag about.
The real reason for those ties, the reason that the ISI and the Pakistani military are supporting the Haqqani network or maintaining good relations with the Haqqani network is that the Haqqani network is their ally against their domestic violent opponents, that is, the Tariqi Taliban, TTP and al-Qaida.
And so really, it is a matter of national security, domestic national security for the Pakistani government and military to support Haqqani.
I'm not sure if you're including the Taliban in this, but you're saying that the Pakistani military and intelligence services support the Haqqani network, not for use against Americans, like in the recent accusations, which we can get back to.
But again, they're using the Haqqanis against al-Qaida and against the Pakistani Taliban.
Exactly.
You got it.
And are they using the Afghan Taliban that same way or not?
Well, I mean, the Afghan Taliban, of course, do play a different role here in that sense that they are engaged essentially in Afghanistan, whereas the Haqqani network is very active in North Waziristan.
They have large forces in Pakistan, and they're capable of playing a reasonably important role in balancing off against the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, in terms of military forces.
And I think it's very clear that that is the primary consideration.
In fact, I was just talking this morning to Moeed Yusuf of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
He's the South Asia advisor to the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, but he's now in Pakistan.
He's just completed this study of the Pakistani foreign policy elite, meaning basically the military elite views on the so-called endgame in Afghanistan.
And this is a fairly revealing piece because it shows that the fundamental problem there is that the Pakistani government has no faith whatsoever in U.S. policy.
It doesn't think it's going to work.
It has no reason to believe that it's going to work in Afghanistan.
And the price that Pakistan is being asked to pay in terms of its own internal security is very high to ask them to support the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, obviously.
So the question that I asked Moeed Yusuf of U.S. Institute of Peace is, what about the role that the Haqqani network plays in terms of domestic national security policy of Pakistan?
And he said, yes, there's no question about it.
This is the primary concern of the Pakistani military and the government in terms of their contacts with the Haqqani group, that they are an invaluable ally, an almost indispensable ally against the Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban.
And what has been happening over the last two or three years, which has not been covered in the U.S. news media, is that a large part of the strategy of the Pakistani military toward the Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, has been to split off as many commanders as possible from the Pakistani Taliban to get them to make agreements with the Pakistani government so as to weaken the Pakistani Taliban.
And they've been quite successful in that.
And this is a part of the story that, again, I think needs to be understood to put in perspective this propaganda campaign that's now being waged by the Obama administration, which, of course, resembles in some ways the run-up to war in Iraq in terms of the accusations being made about a government that supposedly is supporting terrorism.
All right.
Well, daylight, nothing.
I'm as confused as can be.
Not that I start with the premise that American foreign policy ought to make any sense.
But that makes sense.
We'll get this all straightened out.
We will right after this break.
It's Gareth Porter from Interpress Service, Antiwar.com/Porter.
A new one at Al Jazeera.net about the assassination of Rabbani, which is very important.
We'll be back after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Gareth Porter from Interpress Service, Antiwar.com/Porter.
We're talking about America's relationship with Pakistan, which never did make a whole lot of sense and now seems even more confusing to me than before.
I'll probably get this wrong, but do you straight me out here, Gareth.
You're telling me that Lindsey Graham and Mullen and Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, and all these people are hawking up, putting ground troops in Pakistan in order to fight, or at least special forces, in order to fight against the Haqqani Network there, which you're also telling me, or what you're telling me about it is that the Pakistanis support the Haqqani Network, but not because they attack Americans in Afghanistan, which I'm not sure if you're disputing that they do or not, but they support them because they use them against their Pakistani Taliban, who probably many people were confused for the target of the raids into Pakistan in the first place.
That's right, and of course absolutely that the Haqqani Network does attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and very effectively so.
They are the largest single force probably in the war in Afghanistan.
If you identify them as a coherent force in relation to the overall insurgency, they might very well be the largest of the 15,000 to 20,000 troops under the command of the Haqqani Network commanders.
So yes, I mean that's essentially correct, and what I'm suggesting is that Pakistan is not urging them on to kill Americans.
What they are doing is telling the Americans that you want us to go into North Waziristan and have a huge war against the Haqqani group, which is our ally in the war to preserve the Pakistani government and military against the attacks from the jihadists, the global jihadists in Pakistan.
First of all, it's going to be a huge bloody conflict with heavy cost to the Pakistani army.
We might not have the wherewithal to win that war, and secondly and more importantly, it's simply not in our interest, because they're our ally.
Well, and so then, do the...
Of course, no, they're not saying that.
They're not saying the latter, at least.
It's not being reported that they're saying that to the Americans.
It's a question that I cannot, not been able to settle yet, whether they have in fact told the Americans, look, why should we attack these people?
They're one of our most important allies against the real enemies of the Pakistani state, Al-Qaeda and Tariqi Taliban.
Well, and it seems like since the Americans had been friends with Haqqani so closely in the past, that maybe they could, you know, befriend him again and work with the Pakistanis and with the Haqqani network against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who supposedly were the enemy in the first place here, hiding inside Pakistan, and then work out the rest later.
Well, of course, I mean, the Americans, the fact that they...
I'm not much of an imperialist, but I'm trying.
The fact that the Americans are responsible for this whole mess, because they used the jihadists in Afghanistan against the Soviets, makes absolutely no difference now.
They don't give a hoot about the past.
Now the Haqqani network is a problem for the United States, so that's not going to be on.
But I mean, the important point here is that the United States does not care about the stability of Pakistan.
I mean, you know, it claims to say, oh, you know, our real concern here is regional stability, and of course, Pakistan is at the center of that with its nuclear weapons and, you know, the Al-Qaeda jihadist threat in Pakistan.
But the fact is that the reality is that the United States doesn't care about that, because what really matters to the national security state of the United States is its political interests, and the political interests are all about claiming to be doing just a great job in Afghanistan, and justifying the war in Afghanistan.
And in order to do that, of course, they have to demand something of Pakistan that is not only not in the interest of the Pakistani government, but that would literally contribute hugely to this destabilization of the Pakistani state.
Well, and not only have they been insisting this whole time, and I guess the Pakistanis have gone along from time to time and waging a civil war up in the northwestern territory somewhat and that kind of thing, but now they want to put American special forces in there or American marines in there to, you know, clean out the economy network once and for all, something like that.
I wonder whether the Pakistani state can survive that, even if they go along with it.
If the United States were to send, you know, a large contingent of special operations forces into northwestern Pakistan, a Pakistani military officer friend of mine says this is the worst thing that would ever have happened.
And I think he's right.
In other words, it would lead to a war with the Pakistani state immediately.
We would be at war with the Pakistani state, and the consequences are just incalculable, but I mean, I think it's still a question whether they're seriously planning to do this, or whether this is again yet another round of leaning on the Pakistanis in the belief because after all, these imperialists in Washington and around the world in the U.S. military are not just capable of, but strongly tend to think that because we have all this power and the Pakistanis are so much weaker, they have to knuckle under.
I mean, after all, this was the mentality that got us into Vietnam.
This was the mentality that got us into Iraq.
The shock and awe theory that if we went in there and dropped all these bombs, the Iraqis would be completely, you know, unable to stand up against us, and the United States would be using Iraq to dominate the rest of Middle East.
That was the way, not just the neocons, but really a large part of the U.S. military thought as well.
So I mean, that's the real danger here, that the Americans are miscalculating once again in the belief that their power is such that these weaker people will have to knuckle under, despite the fact that it hasn't done any good so far.
In fact, it has had the opposite effect.
It has hit the spines of the Pakistani military leadership.
Okay, but if we talk about the government of Pakistan, you know, falling apart over this, that really means, because the state of Pakistan itself really is just the military, right, holding it all together.
So that means a civil war inside the military over whether to go along with the Americans or not on this one kind of thing.
Well, if the Pakistani military leadership were to be weak in relation to, in response to a U.S. military strike on the ground in Pakistan, absolutely there's a threat of mutiny from below.
This has been discussed quite widely.
And of course, public opinion is so inflamed by this situation.
Again, I mean, the fellow I was just talking about, Moeed Yusuf, says that he believes public opinion would absolutely demand a military response by Pakistan.
And then you have what he calls a tit-for-tat process that would have begun and then we're absolutely in uncharted territory here.
Well, I think this is an extremely dangerous situation.
I just want to emphasize the extremely dangerous situation, unlike anything we've seen so far.
Yeah, well, but I mean, that's the obvious part that you say they just don't care about what happens to the Pakistanis, how much they have to sacrifice their own interests, even to the point where it's threatening the integrity of their monopoly state, which is always, you know, supposedly anyway, first and foremost among American priorities is retaining the integrity of such things.
It must be that they've decided that if the state there falls apart and everything there gets worse, then we'll just have to intervene more.
Or are they that crazy or not?
Or are they really that dim-witted that they're not looking ahead?
Uh, some of both.
I think dim-wittedness, yes, certainly.
Irrationality is a part of this as well.
I mean, it is irrational to take the kind of risk that's being taken right now.
And I think that this is only happening, and I think now we come to what I think is really the true story of this policy on the part of the Obama administration and the national security state.
And that is that this is being done essentially for domestic political reasons in the United States, because they're back to the wall, as Tony Schafer, the lieutenant colonel who actually ironically was in Afghanistan, on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, plotting to carry out special operations raids deep in Pakistan a few years ago.
I just interviewed him this morning, and he says he's convinced that this is really all about the domestic political interest of the Obama administration, that they're desperately in need of having a scapegoat for the failure of the policy in Afghanistan.
Well, and is it realistic at all?
Let's say that they send in the Marines, and the Marines found the giant James Bond supervillain Haqqani hideout, and he wiped them all out.
Is that going to make any difference in the war in Afghanistan?
Because there's still Mullah Omar and all of his guys, and anybody who picks up a rifle is identified as the Taliban resistance is also there, right?
Well, if you absolutely did eliminate the Haqqani network as a force, of course that would make a big difference in Afghanistan.
But the possibility of doing that, it's just non-existent.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're gonna leave it there.
Thanks very much.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
