Areesh
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Anybody who has interacted with Afghanistan’s citizens or with ANP/PkMAP supporters must have heard some or all of these unqualified sweeping statements. These statements paint Pakistan as a ‘Darth Vader’ that is up to ruining the innocent Afghanistan. Why? What has Afghanistan done to deserve this? Can there be any possible ‘grey areas’ in the midst of this ‘Black Pakistan vs White Afghanistan’ narrative? Anything to the effect?
Well no. You never hear the other side of the story. In fact the one-sided story has been repeated so much that even Pakistani literate circles (especially the so-called desi liberals) have accepted it as Holy Bible. Why? Because they either lack the basic knowledge of Af-Pak history or choose to ignore the other side of the story due to their personal ideological biases (especially against the so-called Establishment).
Timeline of Afghan Treachery:
1992-1994: Different factions fought for control of Kabul and other major Afghan cities. Hezb-e-Wahdat (backed by Iran), Ittihad-e-Islami (backed by Arabs), Hezb-e-Islami (backed by Pakistan), Junbash-e-Milli (Uzbeks), Jamiat-e-Islami and Shura-e-Nazar (Tajiks), Harkat-Inquilab (Nabi Muhammadi), Molvi Khalis and Jalaluddin Haqqani’s forces and countless local warlords fought each other for power. Afghanistan was literally a mess; USA abandoned the resistance movement after Soviet withdrawal and ALL players were playing their own game.
Although Pakistan was accused of arming the Taliban, it sounds ridiculous keeping in view the fact that Afghanistan already was a big dump of Soviet-era weapons. Taliban captured weapons including tanks from local warlords and with a steady supply of religiously-motivated fighters, they soon marched beyond Qandahar and by September 1996, were in control of Kabul.
Well no. You never hear the other side of the story. In fact the one-sided story has been repeated so much that even Pakistani literate circles (especially the so-called desi liberals) have accepted it as Holy Bible. Why? Because they either lack the basic knowledge of Af-Pak history or choose to ignore the other side of the story due to their personal ideological biases (especially against the so-called Establishment).
Timeline of Afghan Treachery:
- 14 Aug 1947: Pakistan was founded. A country having fractured institutions, almost no economy, weak military and apparently bleak future, fighting for survival in the face of a giant hostile neighbour like India at its throat.
- September 1947: Afghanistan became the ONLY country to vote against Pakistan’s membership of United Nations. Keep in mind the weak situation of Pakistan while considering this extremely hostile beginning by Afghanistan.
- September 1947: Pashtunistan flag was raised alongside Afghan national flag in Kabul.
- September 1947: Afghanistan started arming and funding proxies in the border areas (e.g. Afridi Sarishtas and Ipi Faqir) for the ‘Liberation of Pashtunistan’. This led to skirmishes between Pakistani forces and Afghan proxies.
- June 1949: While pursuing miscreants who attacked Pakistani border posts from Afghanistan, a PAF warplane inadvertently bombed the Afghan village of Moghulgai on the Waziristan border.
- July 1949: A Loya Jirga held by Afghan govt at Kabul unilaterally denounced all treaties related to Pak-Afghan international border and announced full support for Pashtunistan. 31 August was declared as ‘Pashtunistan Day’ which was regularly commemorated by Afghan govt every year.
- 1948-1949: Afghan-supported proxies announced the formation of ‘Pashtunistan’ in Tirah (Khyber) and Razmak (Waziristan), with Ipi Faqir as President.
- 1950: Afghan airforce planes dropped leaflets in support of Pashtunistan, inside Pakistan’s tribal areas.
- Sep-Oct 1950: Afghan army with artillery support attacked Dobandi area of Balochistan and occupied a strategic pass with the aim to cut off Chaman-Quetta Railway link. Pak army rushed reinforcements to the area and retook the pass after a week’s fighting.
- 1950-51: Three Afghan-led Lashkars attacked Pakistani areas across Durand Line in Khyber Agency.
- Afghanistan declared the miscreants as ‘Freedom Fighters’ and used its official Radio and Press for non-stop Pashtunistan propaganda.
- Pakistan responded by using ‘go slow’ approach on Afghanistan’s trade transit routes.
- 16 October 1951: Pakistani PM Liaquat Ali Khan was shot dead in Rawalpindi by an Afghan national Said Akbar Babrak. Afghanistan’s govt disowned his act.
- Afghanistan’s material+propaganda support for Pashtunistan miscreants continued unabated throughout the 1950s.
- 30 March 1955: Pakistan’s diplomatic missions in Kabul, Qandahar, Jalalabad were attacked at the behest of Afghan govt and Pashtunistan flag was hoisted on the chancery of Pakistan Embassy in Kabul.
- September 1959: Afghan King Zahir Shah and PM Sardar Daud reaffirmed their support for Pashtunistan.
- September 1960: Afghan army troops and militias attacked Bajaur. The attack was repulsed by Bajauri tribesmen with help of SSG forces from Cherat. An account of the battle is here in this declassified US Embassy document.
- March 1961: Afghanistan supplied arms and ammunition to proxies led by Pacha Gul in Bajaur’s Batmalai area for an uprising. The ammunition dump was destroyed by PAF aerial bombing.
- May 1961: Thousands of Afghan troops disguised as militias attacked Bajaur, Jandul and Khyber. The attacks were repulsed by tribesmen with support of Frontier Corps and aerial bombing by PAF warplanes. President Ayub warned the Afghan side against unprovoked escalations.
- Afghanistan’s official annual gazette (Afghanistan Kalany) propagated outrageous claims on Pashtunistan regularly. A couple of snapshots from the 1961 gazette are shown here. The 1961 gazette alone narrated the deaths of thousands of Pakistani soldiers in miscreant attacks by ‘Milli Mujahideen of Pashtunistan’; obviously a pack of lies (Talk about ‘proxy wars’ though :p ).
- 6 September 1961: Diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan were cut off after Pakistan decided to restrict Afghan transit trade due to its continuous support for Pashtunistan proxies. The relations were resumed two years later, in 1963, when Sardar Doud (the main engine behind Pashtunistan) resigned as PM.
- September 1964: Afghan Loya Jirga again reiterated support for Pashtunistan (though much mildly than in past).
- 1964-1972: Relative calm in relations due to Afghanistan’s domestic power struggle issues and democracy experiments. The Pashtunistan issue went on backburner and Pak-Afghan relations normalized to such extent that Afghanistan remained neutral in 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars and didn’t try to trouble Pakistan. However, Pashtunistan propaganda by Radio Kabul continued unabated, giving fabricated accounts of hundreds of killings on Pakistani side annually.
- 1972-73: Afghanistan restarted support for Pashtunistan; intensified Radio Kabul propaganda and sheltered NAP activists led by Ajmal Khattak.
- July 1973: Sardar Doud led a bloodless military coup to overthrow King Zahir Shah and declared himself President. One of the reasons he quoted for the coup was Zahir Shah’s supposedly soft approach on Pashtunistan.
- Afghan official gazette published the Pashtunistan flag (image attached) and also ran inflammatory reports about terrorist activities of Pashtunistan miscreants. Radio Kabul’s propaganda reached a peak.
- 1973: In response to renewed Pashtunistan focus by Afghanistan, Pakistani PM Z.A.Bhutto authorized a tit-for-tat response to Afghanistan. IGFC Naseerullah Babar was tasked to train dissident Afghans for proxy purposes inside Afghanistan. This was Pakistan’s first act to use proxies against Afghanistan, after 26-year long proxy war perpetrated by Afghanistan in the name of Pashtunistan (1947-73).
- Feb 1974: Afghan animosity to Pakistan was so great that Afghan President Doud didn’t participate in the ‘OIC Leaders Summit’ held in Lahore. Abdul Rahman Pazhwak, the Afghan delegate at the summit, tried to raise Pashtunistan issue on this Unity forum too but got snubbed as no Muslim country’s leader paid any heed.
- 1973-78: Soon after Doud assumed power, Afghan govt started supporting the Baloch insurgents fighting against Pakistan. Afghanistan sheltered thousands of Marri tribesmen and gave them training+weapons for militant activities inside Pakistan. Pakistan crushed the insurgency with Iranian military support.
- 1973-78: Afghan govt under Doud continued to support the Pashtunistan proxies. NAP’s militant wing ‘Pakhtun Zalmay’ was funded / trained / armed by Kabul for terrorist attacks in Pakistan. These facts have been confirmed by Jumma Khan Sufi, a close aide of Ajmal Khattak, in his memoirs ‘Faraib e Na Tamam’. Sufi remained in exile for 20 years in Afghanistan and was involved in the Afghan proxy activities in Pakistan.
- 1973-onwards: Not only was Afghanistan supporting NAP terrorism in Pakistan itself, it also became a hub for Indian interference into Pakistan via Pashtunistan and Balochistan proxies. NAP leaders were paid monthly stipends and other funds by Indian govt as admitted by Jumma Khan Sufi in his memoirs.
- February 1975: Hayat Khan Sherpao, Senior PPP minister and ex-Governor NWFP, was killed in a bomb blast. The assassination was carried out by NAP militant wing operating out of Afghanistan (as confirmed by Jumma Khan Sufi some three decades later).
- April 1978: Afghan President Doud and his whole family were massacred in the Soviet-sponsored ‘Saur Revolution’. The new pro-Communist regime announced all-out support for Pashtunistan.
- December 1979: Soviet secret service KGB assassinated Afghanistan’s President Hafizullah Amin and nearly 100,000 Soviet forces entered Afghanistan. Babrak Karmal was installed as President by Soviets who pledged to free the ‘holy land of Pashtunistan’ (from Pakistan).
- January 1980: UN General Assembly passed resolution on Afghanistan and asked unequivocally for pull-out of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.
- OIC also held an extra-ordinary session of OIC Foreign Ministers in which the leaders of Afghanistan resistance movement narrated the ordeal of Afghans at the hands of Soviet invaders. OIC condemned the Soviet invasion in a joint resolution of Islamic countries.
- 1980-1991: Every year UN passed a resolution condemning Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. There are a total 13 such UN resolutions.
- 1979-81: Soon after the Soviet occupation, millions of Afghans were forced to flee their homes by Soviet atrocities especially aerial bombing of rural Afghanistan. KGB and its Afghan front KHAD (led by Dr Najibullah) made life hell for anybody who even dared to speak against the Communist regime. Thousands of innocents Afghans were killed brutally in KHAD torture cells across Afghanistan. These worn-down Afghans entered Pakistan and Iran in search of shelter.
- Pakistan, not being signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, was not legally bound to shelter the millions refugees. However, in good brotherly faith, Pakistan accepted this burden on its economy and already limited resources. Nearly 3 million Afghan refugees were housed in refugee camps in KP and Balochistan. Many more spread into cities from Peshawar to Lahore to Karachi in search of work or businesses. Unlike Iran, Pakistan didn’t stop the mingling of Afghan refugees into Pakistani society so as to facilitate them (something that proved disastrous for Pakistan in the long run).
- 1980-89: With a Superpower (USSR) knocking at its Western border, Pakistan felt genuinely threatened. The prospect of a direct Soviet invasion or indirect Pashtunistan proxy war was enough to alarm Islamabad and force it into full throttle against the regime in Kabul. Pakistan, USA, China and Arab countries made an alliance to counter the Soviet threat using the legitimate Afghan resistance movement that already existed in Afghanistan. With funds from USA and Arab states; technical support from CIA; weapons from China; training and coordination support from ISI, the Afghan resistance movement consisting of various groups took on the Soviet forces and their Afghan comrades.
- Main Afghan resistance groups were Hizb-e-Islami (Hekmatyar), Jamiat-e-Islami of Rabbani (including Massoud's Shura-e-Nezar), Hizb-e-Islami (Khaalis), Ittehad-e-Islami (Sayyaf), Harkat-e-Inquilab-e-Islami (Nabi Mohammedi), Mahaz-e-Islami (Gilani), Jabha Milli Nijat (Mojaddedi) and the so-called 'Tehran Eight block' of several Shia groups, chief among them (Abdul Ali Mazari's Nasr group).
- The Afghan resistance against Soviets had strong backing of repeated UN and OIC resolutions. Also the suffering of common Afghans at the hands of Soviets was not something that could have been ignored. Couple with that the activities of Soviet+Afghan proxies in Pakistan (from bombings to target killings to plane hijacking), Pakistan had little choice but to support the resistance. Afghanistan continued to host/fund/train/arm Pashtunistan proxies as well as terrorist groups like Al-Zulfiqar throughout 1980s.
- 1980s: Hundreds of Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks staged by KHAD and corss-border raids conducted by Soviet/Afghan forces including aerial bombing. A glimpse of the attacks in a brief period of 1987-88 is shown in pic.
- 1989: Soviet forces officially left Afghanistan (although large numbers of Soviet ‘military advisors’ remained in Afghanistan upto 1992).
- 1989-1992: Afghan resistance groups continued fighting against the Communist regime of President Dr Najibullah installed by Soviets. Village after village, City after city and province after province fell to the resistance movement.
- 1992: Dr Najibullah regime was overthrown and Afghan resistance groups captured Kabul. Pakistan facilitated the ‘Peshawar Accord’ for a consensus govt in Afghanistan and Sibghatullah Mojadedi was made transition President, succeeded by Burhanuddin Rabbani.
- Could the Afghan War be managed better? This is open to debate; especially since the after-effects of Soviet departure from Afghanistan couldn’t be managed well due to internal fighting of various resistance groups.
1992-1994: Different factions fought for control of Kabul and other major Afghan cities. Hezb-e-Wahdat (backed by Iran), Ittihad-e-Islami (backed by Arabs), Hezb-e-Islami (backed by Pakistan), Junbash-e-Milli (Uzbeks), Jamiat-e-Islami and Shura-e-Nazar (Tajiks), Harkat-Inquilab (Nabi Muhammadi), Molvi Khalis and Jalaluddin Haqqani’s forces and countless local warlords fought each other for power. Afghanistan was literally a mess; USA abandoned the resistance movement after Soviet withdrawal and ALL players were playing their own game.
- August 1994: Taliban movement emerged under Mullah Omar in Qandahar. The movement pledged to end the atrocities of the so-called ‘Toopakiyan’ (warlords). Therefore, it was largely welcomed by the public who were sick of the civil war.
- October 1994: Emergence of Taliban movement didn’t go unnoticed in Islamabad. Pakistan was fed up with the civil war because its hopes that millions of Afghans burdening its economy would return to their homeland were failed by the civil war. Since majority of the Taliban were refugee students of madressas in Balochistan, it was natural that Pakistan saw an ally in the movement.
Although Pakistan was accused of arming the Taliban, it sounds ridiculous keeping in view the fact that Afghanistan already was a big dump of Soviet-era weapons. Taliban captured weapons including tanks from local warlords and with a steady supply of religiously-motivated fighters, they soon marched beyond Qandahar and by September 1996, were in control of Kabul.
- 1996-2001: Taliban ruled Afghanistan and the country saw relative peace for the first time in decades, except in the North where Taliban battled Ahmad Shah Massoud’s forces, throught their 5-year rule. Taliban actions and their harsh style of governance was not liked by many Afghans but resentment grew steadily amongst the public.
- Oct~Nov 2001: USA-led coalition attacked Afghanistan and removed Taliban from power. Taliban regime collapsed in the face of severe aerial bombing by USA/NATO and ground advance by Northern Alliance forces. By December 2001, Taliban had vanished from the Afghan scene; many of them fled to neighbouring Pakistan.
- 2002-2014: Taliban resistance to US occupation was very weak initially (upto 2005). It was hoped that Afghanistan would finally find stability but the Karzai administration failed to seize the moment. Widespread corruption and warlord-ism under Karzai rule paved way for the return of Taliban. Year-after-year Taliban activities gained momentum as US/NATO forces battled them across Afghanistan.
- In the meanwhile a Pakistani Taliban movement (TTP) rose in Pakistan’s tribal areas with links across the border. Thousands of Pakistanis including security forces and civilians died in TTP attacks. Today, whole top leadership of TTP, from Mullah Fazlullah to Omar Khalid Khurasani and Khalid Sajna to Omar Narai (APS attack mastermind) is based in Afghanistan.
