Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Anand Gopal, his website is anandgopal.com, he is an independent journalist who's written for pretty much every very important newspaper and magazine, he's working on a book about the war in Afghanistan right now.
Welcome back to the show, Anand, how are you?
Good, thanks for having me.
Well, I appreciate you joining us today.
I want to talk about Pakistan first of all, a big controversy all week after Leon Panetta and Admiral Mullen accused the Pakistanis of basically supporting the Haqqani Network in Pakistan and Afghanistan to such a degree that they are a veritable arm of the ISI and I forget the exact language, but Mullen pretty much accused the Pakistanis of orchestrating the attack on the American Embassy on September 13th and since then they've backpedaled a little bit in the Washington Post, but the controversy continues to reign on in the international politics between the different American and Pakistani factions and maybe factions within those factions, so I wonder if we can get your take on all this.
Well, it's been a glaring problem for years now that Pakistan is supporting the Afghan insurgents and particularly the Haqqani Network.
We don't know exactly if they orchestrated the attack on the U.S. Embassy, I mean U.S. officials have said this, but there's been very little evidence to substantiate that claim.
What we do know, though, is that there is a relationship between the Haqqani Network and the Pakistanis and there's a sense from officials here that Pakistan is sort of playing both sides.
On the one hand, they're getting tons of money from us and on the other hand, they're supporting insurgents that are fighting against the U.S.
Well, and why?
Well, from Pakistan's point of view, and their policy has been remarkably consistent over the last 30 years, which is they want to support a posthumous, islamist, friendly government in Afghanistan, which isn't close to India or Iran or anything else.
And for about 20 years, we supported that as well, so U.S. and Pakistani policy has been pretty much aligned.
And then in 2001, there was a 180 that was done by the U.S., whereas Pakistan continued its policy.
And that's really been the nub of the issue, is that now the United States, all of a sudden, the same guys that we were supporting, like Haqqani, which the CIA backed for a number of years, now we've declared them to be the enemy.
And so for Pakistan, they're looking at a much longer term.
They're looking at it, well, after the Americans are gone, we're still going to have to want to have a role in Afghanistan and back the same people we've been backing since day one.
Now, Gareth Porter was saying earlier this week on the show that the Haqqanis have made themselves useful to the Pakistanis in keeping a lid on, perhaps orchestrating strikes against the Pakistani Taliban and their al-Qaeda friends, which the Pakistani state considers an actual threat, unlike the Haqqanis, who seem to do their bidding inside Pakistan.
Well, that's right.
I mean, the Haqqanis and the rest of the Afghan Taliban don't actually target any installations or facilities within Pakistan.
They just focus within Afghanistan and just focus within sort of against the U.S. government interests, against the Afghan government interests.
And so it's really sort of...
Is that right that they focus on, they fight against the Pakistani Taliban for the Pakistani military?
Who?
The Americans?
No, the Haqqanis.
This is one of the...
This is...
Gareth, I think, said this is one of the things that's valuable about the Haqqanis to the Pakistanis is they fight against the Pakistani Taliban, even if with the Afghan Taliban.
I don't know if I agree with that.
I don't know if they're actually fighting against them.
I mean, they use the Haqqanis to sort of cut deals and just, you know, amongst the Pakistani Taliban factions.
But at least there haven't been any public, to my knowledge, attacks by the Haqqanis against the Pakistani Taliban.
OK.
So I guess I didn't get specific, so we'll leave that.
But so why are the Haqqanis, I mean, obviously the Pakistanis have their interests, but what's the Haqqani family's interest in them and their allies in fighting against the Americans?
I mean, if we'll make General Dostum the head of the military over there, why not hire Haqqanis, our old friend?
Right.
Well, that's a good question.
I think the Haqqanis want, I mean, they've been in control of that region in the southeast of Afghanistan for about 20 years, until 2001.
And I think they'd be quite happy to have that control back.
And in fact, there's been a number of times in which the Haqqanis have tried to cut a deal with the U.S., but the Americans have rebuffed them.
And so they're still, I think, open to some sort of deal.
That's right.
We talked about that on the show, your article about how the Taliban and all their associated groups had a pretty golden offer for the Americans right off the bat.
We'll lay down our arms and we'll participate in a democracy.
Let us in.
Including him.
Including him, in fact.
He sent an emissary to Kabul to try to strike a deal, and the special forces arrested him and tortured him, and then sent him back.
And that sort of destroyed any chance for a peace deal.
I wonder about that, huh?
You torture somebody, then he doesn't want to be your sock puppet anymore.
Is that it?
Imagine that, huh?
All right.
Well, so how goes the war in Afghanistan anyway?
Because, I mean, come on, we're talking about the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps and air power and Hellfire missiles, and these guys have got to be able to defeat any enemy they're up against.
What good could a Haqqani networked militia be compared to the American empire?
Well, the fact that the war today is going just as poorly as it's been going for the last eight or nine years shows that all the firepower in the world is not going to solve fundamentally the political issues in Afghanistan.
And so the Taliban and the Haqqani network still control most of the territory in the Pashtun areas.
The U.S. has not been able to make any real ground in that over the last year.
We're still seeing extremely high levels of violence, and civilians are bearing the brunt of it.
So there hasn't been any real progress on any of those fronts.
Well, what about the political backlash from all these accusations?
Because obviously, whatever the relationship is between the Karzai government and the Pakistanis, it's got to be pretty tenuous at best in the first place.
And then you have Mullen hurling all these accusations, and then, of course, the Pakistanis at least rhetorically have to defend themselves from this onslaught.
Yeah, and we may see an increased number of attacks against the U.S. as possible.
But I think at the end of the day, the U.S. relies too much on Pakistan to really be able to fundamentally change the relationship in any way.
Well, yeah, we sure hope so.
I mean, you like to think that Lindsey Graham won't get his way, but then again, he's in Libya today celebrating the installation of the NTC, whoever that is.
Well, if Lindsey Graham got its way, I think it would be an extraordinary disaster for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the U.S. if there was any sort of grounding incursion to Pakistan.
Well, and why?
Just because of the geography or what?
The mountains?
I mean, obviously, that's the most obvious thing.
Well, at least the Indian invasion in Afghanistan, the U.S. was able to ally with one section of the population against the other.
You won't even be able to do that in Pakistan.
You try to go into Waziristan, into these tribal areas, people where they've already been pretty opposed to U.S. intervention after years of drone strikes and night raids there.
I don't think they'll find any allies.
I think it's the sort of situation where you'll see every man willing and capable will take up arms against the U.S.
Taking it a step further, Will, are you saying that you think that an invasion, even with a coerced wink and a nod out of the Pakistani military or Zardari government, that if we put ground troops into any part of Pakistan, that that is going to eventually mean war with the state of Pakistan?
Or just against every man with access to a rifle?
At least it will be every man with access to a rifle, which is quite a lot in the tribal areas, but it may actually cause some real fissures within the state of Pakistan as well, and who knows what will happen coming out of that.
You know, Eric Margulies has traditionally said on this show, and I say traditionally because I mean over the last six, seven years, that the Pakistani nukes are not easy for anyone to get a hold of.
They're not in danger.
People can be paranoid about Pakistan's nukes falling into the wrong hands or whatever, but they're very protected by the military there.
And although when pressed, he's always said that, OK, look, worst case scenario, how these nukes could ever get loose would be if America pushes that country so far that the military unity unravels and there is some kind of major factional fight within the military between those who are nationalists first and those who sell out to the Americans, and if the Pakistani military comes apart and therefore the country comes apart, because they're pretty much the only thing holding it together, that at that point, that's when we risk somebody who would be willing to actually use these nukes, getting a hold of them.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
I mean, and is that a danger that we're messing with here, that you could really have the Pakistani military turn against itself?
Not at the moment, but I think, I mean, if you pursue the sort of policies that Lindsey Graham is proposing, then that is a real danger.
I mean, then you're actually talking about the integrity of the state of Pakistan itself.
You start talking about ground invasion, and then all bets are off.
Who knows what's going to happen out of that.
Right now, I think it is just a bunch of ship.
There's just a lot of saber rattling trying to get the Pakistanis to try to get them under control a little bit from the U.S. perspective and Pakistan doing the same from their perspective.
So, in other words, this really is just the same story on a different day, a different year going on and on here that we back the Pakistanis who back our enemies in Afghanistan because our friends in Afghanistan are 180 degrees from the Pakistanis interest.
And so this thing will just keep on going on.
I guess we'll have the same conversation another 10 years.
I hope not.
But the way we're going, I think, yeah, you're right.
This is fundamentally the same dynamic we've been seeing since day one.
And every once in a while, the tensions rear their head.
But then they go back under the table for months or years.
Hmm.
Well, now, you know, when they killed whoever was killed Hamid Karzai's brother, all the media said, yeah, he was a CIA agent and yeah, he was the biggest heroin dealer in the country.
And it sort of was supposed to go without saying, I guess, that he was a CIA agent or asset, I guess, despite the fact that he was the biggest heroin dealer around.
But I wonder whether you think that that's right.
Maybe that's why he was a CIA asset.
Well, that's a lot of cash money in the heroin business.
We can't just turn away.
I do know that I don't know about the details of whether the CIA is involved in that specifically, but I do know that the CIA has allied with all sorts of people and their only interest is to kill who they see are bad guys.
And so that means heroin dealers and drug traffickers.
In fact, one of the other major CIA assets was just arrested and brought to the US and tried under drug charges, except the fact that he was actually in the pay of the CIA for a number of years.
Well, I guess, you know, the story out of, you know, Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series is that the CIA, far from targeting the black population of Los Angeles for destruction with the crack epidemic, they simply didn't care.
They were just trying to make money for their death squad friends down in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Yeah, and I would be surprised if there's a similar dynamic happening Afghanistan.
It's certainly the the heroin capital of the world and only growing all this time, right?
Only growing and the biggest players in the heroin business are people who are allied with us.
And now, so how much of the division between the different factions in Afghanistan at this point is simply just along ethnic lines?
I mean, I know Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, but it seems like every other bit of the politics in that country could be maybe oversimplified down to the Hazaras and Uzbeks and Tajiks against the Pashtuns.
Well, I don't think it's just about the ethnic issue.
I mean, a lot of it also has to do with the old Mujahideen parties from the 80s.
Those are the groups that fought against the Russians and a lot of those networks are still intact.
And so a lot of these groups are positioning themselves to try to get something in an eventual negotiated settlement.
Then you also have warlords who are not so much on ethnicity, but based on tribe or some other sort of parameter.
So it's actually quite complicated.
Well, and then you have anti-Soviet groups on both sides of this divide, right, where a lot of the Taliban types were descended from that same project.
But then so were some of the Northern Alliance guys, too.
Like the prime minister that was just assassinated was an anti-Soviet guy, right?
That's right.
I mean, in fact, everybody on all sides pretty much were anti-Soviet guerrillas at one point.
The divisions between them just happened later on after the Soviets left in the 90s.
Well, all right.
So now if somehow you are the deputy national security advisor or whatever and you're up there telling these people what to do, what's your recommended policy for winding this thing up?
Or is that your recommended policy?
Well, I guess what I meant to say, right.
I would argue that everything we've tried in the last 10 years militarily does not work.
We need to withdraw troops from there and at the same time push hard for a negotiated settlement between all the sides, the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, Pakistan, etc.
Well, then how much power are we ceding at that point to foreign players rather than the people who are actually from there, such as Pakistan, Iran, etc.?
Well, given that the people that are actually from there now don't have much sovereignty or power to begin with, I mean, most of the politics is US or by Pakistan, we won't be ceding much.
The hope is that we have a ceasefire, we have peace, and then over the number of years, the Afghans themselves hopefully can develop the sorts of movements and institutions they need to assert themselves and get rid of, let's say, Pakistani influence.
Now, when the Taliban says that they're willing to make a deal along the lines that they will cut off any association whatsoever with al-Qaeda as long as we promise to leave the country eventually, do you take their word on that?
You think they mean that?
I do, because they don't have much of an association with al-Qaeda right now.
There's really no connection between them and al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda also is barely existing.
You know, it's, what, 100 guys or less in Pakistan, and then 100 guys in Afghanistan.
There's more of an al-Qaeda presence in the place like Yemen, to be honest.
So at this point, I think they're much—the Taliban are feeling a lot of pressure.from Pakistan and on the battlefield, so I think they'd be quite willing to do that.
Because, of course, the White House's talking point would simply be we can, I guess, never leave, certainly the Pentagon's point of view.
We can never leave because then the country will become a safe haven for al-Qaeda again.
Right.
It doesn't make much sense when there's already other countries.
I mean, there's Somalia, there's parts of Yemen, there's Niger.
There are all sorts of places where there are al-Qaeda line elements existing.
And to continue an occupation in Afghanistan on those grounds, I think it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Well, as they used to say, and you can't do that on television, don't encourage them.
Giving them bad ideas here.
They already know, they already want to expand this war to chase every enemy that they create, that they can create, particularly in Africa nowadays, it seems.
Well, yeah, that's right.
In terms of the contradiction in the policy, it's pretty glaring in that regard.
And by the way, I noticed you've written a little bit here about the revolution in Egypt, and I wonder now that we're wrapping up the month in which the elections were supposed to be held, and the headlines are reading that many of the dissident groups are going to boycott the upcoming elections, if they're upcoming indeed at all, I wonder if you can give us your version of the progress report on the Arab, almost autumn now, in Egypt.
Well, I actually just returned from Egypt a few weeks ago, and what you have there is the military, which is running the show, which is trying to manage things and bring it to elections at its own pace.
But the sort of popular pressure that's been there for the last 89 months is continuing unabated, and there's a huge strike wave right now in Egypt.
The economy is nearly paralyzed, and there's a lot of dissatisfaction amongst the groups that originally were part of the revolution in February, feeling that reform is not moving fast enough.
And so there's a lot of talk now about boycotting elections, if they even happen, which we don't know.
Well, I'm just guessing, but it must be the case, right, that there's, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of CIA and Joint Special Operations Command types running around over there trying to manipulate everybody?
Well, I'm sure there are.
I don't have any evidence for it, but especially across the border in Libya, we do know that there's tons and tons of those sorts of people running around.
I mean, they're not going to let Egypt go without a fight to, you know, let the people of that country have any sort of say in how it's run.
Well, yeah, I think what the U.S. wants is, I don't know if they're really interested in a genuine democracy, but they want to sort of manage democracy.
You know, they want elections as something that they can control, and they want to make sure that Israel stays intact.
They want to, you know, make sure their interests stay intact.
But if they actually had a real election, you know, for example, in Egypt, most people would vote against the peace treaty with Israel.
And that's actually against what the U.S. wants.
So in a sense, I don't think they actually want a genuine democracy there.
Yeah, they're looking more for the Iran model, right?
Only with them in charge of the Ayatollah committee.
That's right.
We're having the military in charge.
Yep.
Hey, look, everybody, elections.
Aren't you impressed?
Maybe that's the American model we're talking about.
True democracy.
Yeah, I think we're scared of real democracy and real elections.
All right.
So now tell us, Anand, where all are you writing these days?
Well, I'm finishing up my book on Afghanistan.
So most of my time is with that.
But when I make trips abroad, I'm writing for foreign policy magazines quite a bit nowadays, in addition to newspapers, Christian Science Monitor, etc.
Right.
I think that's where I first found you was the Christian Science Monitor.
Always appreciate your time on the show.
Is there anything really important about Afghanistan, Pakistan that I spaced out and didn't remember to ask you today?
I feel like I'm missing something.
I think we hit most of it.
I mean, the important thing now, I think, is that all sides agree that there's no military solution to the conflict yet.
The U.S. and the Afghan government aren't acting as if there is no military solution.
They're not really pursuing negotiations.
All right.
Great.
Well, thanks very much for your time, as always.
Appreciate it.
My pleasure.
All right, everybody, that's Anand Gopal.
His website is anandgopal.com.
And as he said, you can find him at Foreign Policy and the Christian Science Monitor.
