The Economic Times dt. 24 December 2021
I read the above article with great interest since, after having lived and worked 25 years of my professional career in Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and travelled all across the Middle-East, I am familiar with the history and politics of its peoples and can relate to why Saudi Arabia reacts the way way it does today to Pakistan with whom it has a blow-hot, blow-cold, love-hate and on-off relationship.
Pakistan a state that is nearly rogue, a state that looks the other way when terrorism strikes anywhere in the world … if not a terrorist-state itself run by the dreaded Pakistani Haqqani Network, a protege of the Pakistani ISI … now bats and lobbies for international diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Afghanistan — which is virtually a government of the Haqqanis, by the Haqqanis, for the Haqqanis.
The Minister of Interior in the Taliban Government is the head-honcho of the dreaded Pakistani Haqqani Terrorist Network. Alhaj Mullah Sirajuddin Haqqani, claimed responsibility for multiple suicide attacks in Afghanistan with dozens of civilians killed.
Najibullah Haqqani, Minister for Communication played an important role in the Haqqani Network’s operations from 2008 by taking charge of all operations in Kunar and Lagman province. Najibullah is alleged to have an important role in organising terrorist attacks and raising funds for the group.
Khalil ur Rehman Haqqani, Minister for Refugees has been described as a key fundraiser for the Haqqani Network, charged with running a network of front companies in Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and Pakistan, with interests in mining, transport and construction.
Abdul Haq Waseeq, Intelligence Chief was freed in a 2014 Guantanamo Bay prisoner swap. He is part of the Haqqani Network.
Molvi Ahmed Jan Ahmedi, In-Charge of Administrative Affairs is a key commander of the Haqqani Network. He acts as deputy spokesperson and advisor for the Haqqani network.
Molvi Noor Jalal, Deputy Interior Minister, is a cousin to Najibullah Haqqani, the telecom minister.
Saudi Arabia, for long since the extinction of the Ottoman Empire, became the de jure and de facto major domo of the entire Arab Sunni world and is currently having to deal with a rather testy and frosty relationship with an Islamic, intra-faith adversarial Axis of Evil — an unacknowledged modern-day Caliphate that seeks to dislodge the House of Saud as the Custodian of the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina viz.: Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia directly and indirectly funded several Islamic mujahideen networks of Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan who were fighting the Soviet occupation of the country. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire who became to the Afghan cause what Lawrence of Arabia before him had been to the Arab cause during World War-1, eventually became the enfant terrible (after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan) … and an ultra-orthodox Wahhabi hardliner-rebel, an anti-establishmentarian with his own private army of mujahideen warriors and militia rising up against the ruling Saudi dynasty for what he believed was their apostasy against the true verities and values of the Prophet Mohamed.
After the Gulf War 1, Bin Laden, as we all know, became a rallying crusader for terrorist-sponsors first within Saudi Arabia plotting against the House of Saud — and, when exiled by them from Saudi Arabia, also became soon a celebrity international terror-Don inciting, organising, sponsoring and master-minding cross-border terror-attacks all over the world against America, the Sauds and their Arabian allies — from his headquarters in Sudan first to where he was banished, and thereafter from his multiple hideouts high in the god-forsaken hills of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Then came the 9/11 attack on the New York twin towers in 2001 … and the rest, as we all know too again, is history …
Then in 2003 came Gulf War-2 , the fall of Saddam Hussein, the dissolution of Iraq, the rise of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate in Syria.
Right across the vast geography of the Islamic Crescent that runs from East to West in the Middle-East, from Pakistan through Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt all the way into Libya, Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia and Morocco… ideological terrorism became the largest alternate religion, after genuine Islam, to seize hold of the geopolitical reality of the region. Terror-networks of hundreds of thousands of youthful radicalised operatives and volunteers mushroomed like one thousand flowers blooming in the wild killing fields of jihadism and salaafism …
It was in that very international context of regional history that Pakistan —- wherein state-sponsored terrorism was already at the very core of a long-standing, unstated policy of a theocratic State sworn to wage proxy jihaad in Kashmir against the Indian nation which it sought to “bleed to death by a thousand cuts” —- emerged to become easily the most popular international hub and the most friendly investment-destination too of global Terrorism….
Meanwhile after what American propaganda falsely boasted was a so-called “defeat of ISIS in Syria and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (!) ” in 2014-15, the US and NATO went and occupied the land there to “shatter it to bits” (in the words of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam) “to remould it nearer their heart’s desire” —- i.e. to “nation-build” it into a “Democracy”, which was really nothing but an inelegant euphemism for positioning strategic-outposts and military staging-posts right in the middle of the Middle-East and which would serve the mighty forces of Western imperialism in containing Russian and Chinese expansionist sway over the Asian continent right inside their own geopolitical backyard. . .
In the raging cauldron of superpower imperialist politics that Afghanistan soon became in the second decade of the new millennium, Pakistan with its deep and penetrative influence over the tribal and ethnic landscape in that country, was molly-coddled by one and all despite being deeply distrusted by every major player that had strategic stakes and interests in Afghanistan. They saw successive Pakistan governments from Gen. Musharraf to Imran Khan’s as a two-timing, fork-tongued, dissimulating, double-dealing, cynical, opportunist, exploitative, scheming, insidious minor player —- that everyone knew was necessary evil which was, in fact, a lot more evil than necessary.
That in a nutshell is the brief historical process through which was born the Pakistani Haqqani Network that rules the roost today in the Afghanistan government. It is a preeminent Terror-Organization that has been spawned, cultivated and grown by the Pakistan ISI to become what it is today — the jewel in the crown of the underworld monarchs and overlords of global terrorism.
Over the last two decades this network has, under the stealth of international diplomacy and realpolitik, been befriended, fraternised, molly-coddled, encouraged, funded, emboldened, blessed, connived with by powers and superpowers of the world …. The Haqqani Network at different times in different situations for different reasons both in Pakistan and Afghanistan was indeed everyone’s client, everyone’s under-cover agent , everyone’s agent provocateur and everyone’s Knights Templar …
The Knights Templar of Terror have finally arrived today on the scene in Afghanistan as conquerors who once were hunted fugitives on the run and hiding from the long arm of international law and, ironically, and made pariahs by and in the “international community” … It is they in fact who run the all-powerful Ministry of Fear there … And now they feel is the moment for them to take their rightful place in the same “international community” … On their behalf, Pakistan is demanding the honour of legitimacy that diplomatic recognition will at last bestow upon the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Once such diplomatic recognition is accorded to the Taliban, Terrorism and Jihaadism will rapidly become the alternative and dominant Islamic pedagogy if not exactly mainstream political ideology of the region. And that would shake and disrupt the very foundational and structural order of the entire Sunni Muslim world.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should therefore have every reason today to fear the Taliban Government … The Holy Custodians know indeed that they face today what certainly is a gathering storm … an existential threat in the new millennium from an Unholy Crook called Pakistan.
Sudarshan Madabushi
Very interesting.