The Hellhole Spectator: Orphans of the Cold War
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
THE HELLHOLE SPECTATOR by Kenneth R. Timmerman Orphans of the Cold War Islamabad, Pakistan I n the last decade of the Cold War, this desperately poor Muslim country of 14o million became the...
...On the minds of many American diplomats is the assassination of four American employees of the Texas Union oil firm in Karachi last November...
...As Soviet generals in neighboring Afghanistan sought to push the frontiers of the Evil Empire further south, Afghanistan's barely literate peasantry revolted...
...As we drive off, I ask him if this is really effective...
...All the same, there is something that should be said now that the wagon train is over...
...The air is so bad we have to raise the car windows despite the heat just to breathe...
...But what you especially look for is if somebody starts running away when you get back to the car...
...They fought the good fight, and they won, and now they intend to party, lining their pockets while the rest of the country starves...
...One evening I visit with the family of a former U.S...
...You see...
...At the end of the Afghan war, you had a long queue of unemployed mercenaries looking for new masters," Nabil Osman, a confidant of Egyptian president Mubarak, told me during a stopover in Cairo...
...Who created this monster...
...Villagers have set up a wedding party down on the broad sandbar in the middle of the bright green Indus, which runs across rapids giving promises of abundance and fish...
...He now works at the U.S...
...Without the exemplary courage of the Pakistanis, who for nearly eighteen months braved the Soviet bear virtually alone, the Soviets might still be in Afghanistan, and Communism the dominant force in this region...
...Prime Minister Sharif is now mounting a very popular campaign to demand forgiveness of Pakistan's foreign debt...
...We know at any moment, even if we are careful, it could happen to us...
...Then you probably want to run, too...
...An occasional traffic policeman stands in the middle of the road not even bothering to direct traffic, just watching it struggle against death to go by...
...The only time I saw an Arab fighter in Afghanistan was by accident...
...But he notes that the Pakistanis believe the hit was ordered by the Iranians, who jobbed it out to local talent...
...the policeman asks, taken aback at my voice...
...Corruption reaches all levels of society...
...After we cross the bridge and hug the river on our way to Peshawar, two flying coaches lurch past and try to pass a truck in front of us...
...We have an amiable chat with his wife and two small children over dinner, then the two of us adjourn to the living room for a forbidden whiskey and he gives me the lowdown on what is really going on...
...but washed out roads, blown bridges, and Afghan greed turned it into a ten-day odyssey...
...They were given money to hire 24 trucks...
...We can gear up for the big fight, make a tremendous national effort, but once it's over and we reach the coast, everybody knows it's time to party...
...Intelligence professionals wouldn't have done it that way...
...Jihad is still simmering and will express itself elsewhere...
...Most have religious inscriptions emblazoned across the front...
...Instead, they hired half that number, and pocketed the rest of the money," my friend said...
...Here's a country that has received nearly $14o billion in foreign aid and development funding in recent years—and has little besides corruption to show for it...
...Barefoot children sit in the dirt without moving, abandoning their lives to God's will...
...At first, I demure, but after yet another road block, I get the point: Naji and our driver will get shaken down for a considerable sum by the police if they are caught out alone without me at this time of night...
...T oday, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the Americans are gone from Peshawar...
...Tony's wife, a former military officer who is no scare-muffin, chimes in...
...Seventy-five percent of the Pakistani drivers are just crazy," Moshtak grins, tapping his head...
...Entering Peshawar is like descending to the seventh ring of Hell...
...As I was heading off to Peshawar in early March, news broke of two separate bomb blasts that ripped through passenger trains just outside of Lahore, killing more than twenty...
...You can actually see where the tworivers join further down, because the water of the Kabul is dark brown, and only gradually do the two rivers of color meld together...
...And you mean you left me there all alone to deal with them...
...On many buses, the driver looks out through a small round hole wiped clean from the paint decorating the rest of his vehicle...
...Moshtak is great," Kathy says as we set out...
...That looked like a contract hit," Tony says...
...D estabilizing Pakistan in the aftermath of the Cold War is a job made easier by the monumental greed of Pakistan's ruling class...
...Ordinary Pakistanis travel either in the Suzukis or in "Flying Coaches," 20-passenger buses crammed with fifty people or more that careen around the curves on two wheelshence their name...
...64 May 1998 • The American Spectator launched a rocket attack zo kilometers inside the Soviet border in Tajikstan, the Soviet ambassador delivered an ultimatum to the Pakistani foreign ministry, threatening a nuclear attack if the mujahedeen did not break off their assault against the soft underbelly of the Russian bear...
...Strings of metal beads hang from the fenders to the ground, while psychedelic poster art of tigers, jinns, and houris decorate every available panel even windshields...
...They pull out side by side so they are three abreast, taking the whole two-lane road and the dirt apron alongside...
...We never trained the Afghans directly, except on very rare occasions for things like satellite map reading and army medicine," a former Deputy Director of Operations in charge of the Afghan war effort told me...
...he climate of intrigue and mayhem that reigned in Pakistan during the Afghan war years has changed very little...
...Pakistan paid heavily for taking on the Soviet Union so directly...
...We won that battle and Pakistan has been left behind to fight its own battles against regional players and its own demons, an orphan of the Cold War...
...We have tied many of these attacks directly to Iranian Cultural Centers in our cities," a top Pakistani official told me, "and we are looking for an opportune time to close them down...
...But it was only when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in 1981 that the United States began aiding the mujahedeen fighters in a big way...
...military academy many years back...
...While the Pakistani press is notorious for its economy with the truth, you don't need a muckraker's nose to smell the rottenness...
...After we stop at a bookshop on the way back to my hotel, Tony gives me a brief demonstration...
...He glances at the picture, then at me, hands me back the card...
...Former top CIA officials in charge of funneling weapons to the mujahedeen told me that they started complaining to the Pakistanis early on about the amount of aid going to the most radical Islamic factions led by Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, who were enlisting Arab volunteers in large numbers...
...We are journalists, returning to Islamabad from Peshawar," I say in English...
...But renewed fighting in Afghanistan, fueled by Russia and Iran, and attacks by Arab guerrillas still living in terrorist camps near the resettlement sites have made this a very slow process...
...each time, my press card gets us out of trouble...
...Within 24 hours, the Pakistani government announced it had arrested Indian-trained agents who it said confessed to planting the bombs...
...As for the Iranians, they have been fueling sectarian strife that has caused thousands of deaths over the past two years...
...Driving back to Islamabad with Naji, my Afghan translator, I get a brief insight into a practice that has turned the lives of ordinary Pakistanis and Afghanis into a daily torment...
...Clearly disappointed, he waves us on...
...The jihadis, as they are now called, have popped up all over the world since the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989...
...We pass a tiny Suzuki mini-bus powered by a lawn-mower engine, with eight people squeezed together on benches inside and another six hanging onto the rear bumper and roof rack behind...
...Embassy officials have special security training and are given defensive driving classes to enhance their chances of surviving an The American Spectator • May 1998 attack...
...Pakistan has never received full credit for its extraordinary contribution to defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War...
...He threatened to kill me, because I was an American...
...We thought this would be a great posting when we first arrived...
...Donkey carts and street sellers move among them...
...had little or no direct contact with the jihadis during the Afghan conflict...
...Some fought yet another war against the Russians in Chechnya...
...And I wonder: Do human beings really live like this...
...Down below, the immense plains of the Indian subcontinent meet the foothills of the Hindukush and Central Asia...
...Others joined Bosnian Muslims in Sarajevo...
...Even here, right in front of our house, they want to get a bribe...
...They called the Afghan struggle a "jihad," or holy war, against the Soviet "atheists...
...One of the policemen interrogates our driver, an elderly Pakistani with a white beard, asking where we are going, and then starts to question my Afghan translator, who becomes increasingly nervous...
...We are a nation of wagon trains," Eisenhower reportedly said...
...As they slow down, I start speaking loudly in English to our driver, shaking the old man's hand, touching my heart in the Muslim fashion, thanking him for his services...
...In Pakistan, the Iranians have an additional interest: blocking efforts by the U.S...
...oil giant UNOCAL to build a gas pipeline to Pakistan from Central Asia across Afghanistan...
...I begin to see why this is an important consideration.44 The climate of intrigue and mayhem has changed very little since the Afghan years...
...Near Attock, we come to the dramatic junction of the Indus and Kabul rivers...
...Shortly after crossing the Kabul River we are passed by a police car, its lights flashing...
...Still others returned home to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and took up arms against the governments there...
...Ever since, we have been living on the edge...
...Embassy in Islamabad...
...The next day I embark on the three-hour drive to Peshawar along with Kathy Gannon, the Islamabad bureau chief of the Associated Press, a young Afghan translator named Naji, and Kathy's Pakistani driver, Moshtak...
...My friend—whom I will call Tony—says he no longer takes his family to church because he cannot ensure the safety of their kids during the service...
...Later when I describe the drive to a former senior CIA case officer, he just laughs...
...Whenwe reach Islamabad at one a.m., I ask my companions to drop me at my hotel, but Naji invites me to stay at his place instead...
...Tony drives me home at around ten in an embassy car—knocking on the door panels to show me the armor-plating and bullet-proof glass...
...To make matters worse, the road at this point plunges through a permanent shantytown...
...That's what Pakistan's leaders are doing...
...The Iranians want the pipelines to be built across Iran," a senior Pakistani official told me, "and to keep the United States out of the region...
...The old diesel engines emit wretched jets of foul smoke, swirling above the road like a tunnel of darkness set against the cloudless afternoon sky...
...The murders took place a day after a Virginia court convicted a Muslim extremist from Pakistan, Mir Aimal Kansi, for killing two CIA officers in front of CIA headquarters in 1993...
...and the International Committee of the Red Cross as "evil symbols of Western influence...
...The Muslim oil monarchies in the Persian Gulf contributed nearly three times that amount...
...The Arabs were fascinated by KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN is the publisher of Iran Brief, a monthly newsletter...
...It was a frontier town that made the Wild West look urbane by comparison...
...During the Cold War, the Afghan war effort was run out of Peshawar...
...They do not take taxis off the street or go out at night, for fear of assassination or kidnapping, and are careful when shopping in the local markets during the day...
...But our Muslim partners had an entirely different agenda...
...His Afghan aide just shrugged his shoulders...
...They loaded the trucks to the gills and put the refugees up on the roofs...
...But no one seems to take notice...
...Every day, the local newspapers are full of new allegations of corruption touching former44 'What you especially look for is if somebody starts running away when you get back to your car.' Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her family, or the current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his...
...Rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims have bombed each other's mosques, assassinated each other's leaders, and ransacked each other's neighborhoods...
...Once the jeep had passed he returned, visibly shaken...
...You've got to watch out for them...
...After more loud talk by me, the two policemen put feet to pedals and drive off, and Naji heaves a sigh of relief...
...04 The American Spectator • May 1998 67...
...my friend replied...
...Thinking of Pakistan today in the wake of its indispensable effort in the Cold War, I am reminded of a comment attributed to President Eisenhower during an address to a U.S...
...The drivers of the flying coaches sound their air horns, demonic blasts powerful enough to shoo anything living from their path...
...Approaching the car, parked in a well-lit local market area, he makes a deliberate sweep, peering under the engine compartment, feeling beneath the bumpers, and eyeing the young men milling around...
...Instead of the KGB and Afghanistan's Communist KHAD intelligence operatives setting off bombs in the frontier town of Peshawar, today it is the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of Indian intelligence, and Iran's Ministry of Information and Security, VEVAK, that have taken on the task of destabilizing Pakistani society...
...A handful of Arab aide agencies remain—as do the million or so Afghan refugees, crowded into two incredibly filthy camps on the city's outskirts 66 May 1998 The American Spectator that local entrepreneurs would like to turn into housing developments...
...Iran has regularly tried to undermine secular Muslim states in the neighborhood, especially those with some form of democracy (Turkey is another example), since their success highlights the failure of Iran's Islamic system...
...The U.S...
...They are brave people with a martial tradition...
...When the Arabs came," he said without hesitation...
...Under normal conditions, it would have been a 2-day drive...
...And one year later, Pakistani President Zia al-Huq and most of his top brass perished in a still-unexplained crash of his C-139 transport plane...
...I think I was exposed to more danger in that three-hour drive to Peshawar than during my entire four-year tour in Beirut in the late 1970's," he said...
...A few minutes later, they pull us over, beaming a flashlight into the car to illuminate our faces...
...At the same time, as many as 20,000 young Arabs from Algeria to Saudi Arabia flooded into Pakistan in the 1980's, to dip their swords in the blood of the infidel Soviets...
...Only a few weeks later, terrorists blew up the Egyptian embassy...
...Bus and truck drivers in Pakistan have an ongoing competition to see who can decorate their vehicles in the most lavish fashion...
...Those who provided the religious connotation of jihad, those who provided the training, those who provided the armaments, those who had a specific interest...
...Is this life on earth as we know it...
...While Osman and others like to point the finger at the United States, the U.S...
...Eventually the buses squeeze round the truck, just as another truck blares past them, lights flashing in a tornado of dust, just another hell hound racing against death in an interminable game of chicken...
...The most notorious Arab veterans of the Afghan war today lead the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, which has been responsible for scores of horrific massacres, carving up entire villages of women, old men, and children in Algeria's civil war...
...The four Karachi victims were driving across a bridge when the assassins swerved in front of them, leapt out of their car, and gunned them down in cold blood...
...THE HELLHOLE SPECTATOR by Kenneth R. Timmerman Orphans of the Cold War Islamabad, Pakistan I n the last decade of the Cold War, this desperately poor Muslim country of 14o million became the premier battleground in the colossal struggle between the superpowers...
...And much of their money was spent building a network of Islamic schools, known as "madrassas," across Pakistan, which instilled a radical Islamic vision in the hearts and minds of an entire generation of young men...
...Earlier this year, Western aid workers and Afghan staff members led a convoy of refugees back to their home village inside Afghanistan, some loo kilometers from the border...
...Do you have some ID...
...Aided by the Pakistani military, they began fighting back...
...On April 25, 1987, after an Afghan mujahedeen leader A report from the ravaged last front of the Cold War...
...With Moshtak, you know you will get where you're going...
...Army pilot I have known for several years...
...M ayhem of a different sort is evident on the roads...
...Peshawar, Pakistan's gateway to Afghanistan, is still home to more than a million Afghan refugees, not to mention a motley population of crackpots, terrorists, spies, and do-gooders from two dozen countries...
...As they camped along the roadside one evening, a Soviet-built jeep carrying two armed Arab-Afghans approached...
...A Western aid worker in Peshawar described the problem to me...
...was pouring close to $1 billion a year into the fray, purchasing weapons for the mujahedeen in China and Egypt...
...In it they found an expression for their bottled up feelings of being thrashed three times by Israel...
...In February 1993 they pumped a U.N...
...four-wheel drive vehicle full of automatic weapons rounds, killing three aid workers and wounding a fourth...
...By 1986 the U.S...
...I pull out my press card, which happens to have my photo on it and, in large letters across the back, the word "PRESS...
...The Arab-Afghans, he says, have always seen the U.N...
...Standard issue these days," he says...
...Every time they dipped into a pothole, it looked like they were about to tip over...
...Bit by bit, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is trying to take the Afghans back home...
...Even as we get out of the taxi in front of the gated house which Naji shares with an AP television producer, two local policemen approach us on bicycles, clearly seeing us as prey...
...So instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan serves their strategic purpose...
...a bicycle peddled by a father carrying his two small children inches forward through the crowd...
...Probably not," he admits...
...was seeking to "roll back" Communism, and by all accounts, succeeded...
...My friend's Afghan assistant calmly excused himself to relieve himself behind a tree in the darkness...
...That scenario is repeated four times over the next two hours...
...the Afghan jihad," a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, told me in his living room in a military housing development in Rawalpindi...
...Later, my friend asked him what was the most tense moment of the ten-day journey...
...Even the police have joined in, preying on ordinary citizens while major criminals and terrorists go unpunished...
Vol. 31 • May 1998 • No. 5
