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PRC-GHQ Role in US Defeat in Afghanistan

The manner in which the PLA-GHQ Rawalpindi alliance sabotaged the US-led war against terror in Afghanistan has never been documented, at least in public, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat

On 12 December 2000, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed the Presidency to George W. Bush, ignoring the numerous flaws in the vote counting process in Florida, a state where the Republican nominee’s brother Jeb was the Governor.

The 43rd President of the United States (POTUS) created history by emerging as the only US President elected not by the people but selected by the Supreme Court of the United States. Vice-President Dick Cheney by his side, George W. Bush initiated a necessary war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, winning it together with the Northern Alliance.

After that triumph, error after error was made by US policymakers in that unfortunate country, which culminated in the US surrender to the Taliban in 2021. This was through President Biden operationalizing the surrender document approved by President Trump in 2020. What has thus far gone unmentioned by multiple accounts of the 2001-21 Afghanistan war is the role played by elements who were citizens of the PRC, as well aspects of the role played by GHQ Rawalpindi.

It is a matter of worry for countries that have de facto or de jure security alliances with the US that its numerous intelligence agencies seem to have several blind spots about the CCP. In Afghanistan, among the “active methods” used against US forces in particular was for nationals of the PRC, to not just infiltrate women and young men into brothels and bars, but also to financially control several such establishments.

Many of the ladies and youths who gave Coalition troops hours of happy escape from the war reported their interactions with such soldiers to conveyors of intelligence to agencies in the PRC. As a consequence of drunken stupors and drug-induced loquacity, several bits of actionable intelligence were gleaned by the faraway controllers of the bars, brothels and bedrooms frequented even by senior officers and officials from the US and from other coalition partners.

Useful intel was transmitted to the Taliban, usually through contacts linked to the Pakistan military, to ensure that the extremist militia kept a step ahead of the Coalition. A consequence of such actions was that by 2006, drug addiction had become ubiquitous among US servicemen in particular, leading several to mow down innocent civilians in the belief that they were “hostiles”.

More generally, elements who in actuality opposed the Taliban were labelled as Taliban sympathisers by GHQ Rawalpindi with the consequence that the Taliban secured the advantage of having their most capable Afghan opponents in the field of battle eliminated by Coalition forces acting on the basis of tainted intel supplied to them. An army that had sworn to support the war against the Taliban in actuality went about doing the opposite.

As for the PRC nationals who were in the “Happy Hours” trade in Afghanistan, information about combat operations and deployments gleaned by sex workers in such establishments was passed on via Pakistan army contacts to Taliban elements, so much so that by 2009, the tide of battle had changed in favour of the Taliban in more than two-thirds of Afghanistan. This was despite the fact that the majority of the Afghan population, not just Tajiks and Hazara but many Pashtuns as well, were opposed to a return of the Taliban.

The manner in which the PLA-GHQ Rawalpindi alliance sabotaged the US-led war against terror in Afghanistan has never been documented, at least in public. Such a conclusion would have gone against the triumphalist narrative that characterised the George W. Bush years. Routing the Taliban during 2001-3 was laudable, but what happened afterwards was criminal.

Such a folly was capped by the manner and scope of President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, an act that is certain to make the country once again a breeding ground for extremism and terror. Few countries would now trust the US as a security partner after such a withdrawal, at least as long as Joe Biden is President.

Despite some erroneous past decisions, the US Supreme Court redeemed itself on March 4 by unanimously striking down efforts by the Department of Justice to influence the forthcoming Presidential poll. This is being sought to be accomplished by ensnaring Donald Trump in a medley of cases, and seeking to send him to prison well before November 5, the date of the election.

Were the Department of Justice to succeed in sending Trump to prison months or even weeks before the US Presidential polls, the 46th POTUS would be elected the 47th POTUS in a landslide. US voters respect fair play, and the present administration’s Operation Imprison Trump resembles events that have just played out in Pakistan, where Imran Khan, the actual winner of the popular vote, is in jail and an individual known for his deference to GHQ Rawalpindi has been anointed as the Prime Minister.

These columns have more than once pointed to Biden’s feverish prosecution of the Ukraine war as the single biggest factor behind his unpopularity, given the worldwide economic hardship the US-UK-EU war effort against Russia and its sanctions have had.

The Ukraine war that intensified in 2022 may mark the end of the Atlantic Alliance as the primary force in global geopolitics, and the emergence of India, Brazil and Indonesia as the troika to watch. Those Democratic Party functionaries in charge of some states in the US such as Colorado sought to block Trump from the Presidential ballot on the fictitious charge of having led an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that it ought to be the US Congress rather than individual states that ought to have the final say on eligibility, and given that the Presidency is a national and not a state position, such a ruling makes complete sense. In these columns, almost at the start of his term in the White House, it had been suggested that Joe Biden declare that he would only serve a single term. Had he done so, the historical record for the Biden years would be very different from what it is shaping up to be.

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GHQ Rawalpindi has no good options on Imran

If Imran once again becomes an instrument of the generals, Pakistanis are unlikely to follow him, which is what makes any softening of Imran’s stand unlikely, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat

If ever any additional proof was needed that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif serves at the pleasure not of the people of Pakistan but of the star officers of GHQ Rawalpindi, it was provided in his nervous press appearance on 12 May. In a somewhat tremulous voice, the younger of the Sharif brothers appealed to the public to turn away from Imran because his supporters had “attacked the military”.

There had been attacks and even torching (Sri Lanka style) of the private homes of the Sharifs brothers, but these were minor acts of violence in comparison with what had apparently horrified the Prime Minister of Pakistan the most, which was that high-ranking officers of the Pakistan Army were attacked, including the official homes of some Corps Commanders.

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The Corps Commanders were the electoral college that deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 and installed the dismissed Chief of Army Staff ex-General Pervez Musharraf as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. The senior Sharif was serially appointed and deposed (and lastly exiled) by the Pakistan military, and this has engendered in the mind of Shehbaz Sharif a fear of the military, the emotion that made the Corps Commanders in GHQ Rawalpindi catapult him to his present job.

Equally, it had been the Army generals who had chosen Imran Khan as the next Prime Minister and got him installed in August 2018, only to turf him out in April 2022.

The generals had by then made the Pakistan Army an auxiliary of the PLA, but were anxious to protect their assets and relatives located in Europe and in the US. They had calculated that Imran Khan, who had a long list of admirers in those parts of the world (not to mention in India), would be able to camouflage the sellout of the military to the CCP and once again prise open the cornucopia of benefits that western countries, the US in particular, had once showered on GHQ Rawalpindi.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of age or because wiser counsel had begun to prevail in Washington and Berlin, the flow of assistance from both sides of the Atlantic to Pakistan’s uniformed services failed to approach past levels of abundance. A decision was taken by the generals (the admirals and air marshals being of less consequence in military headquarters) to toss out Imran and bring in the younger Sharif, who was a full-blooded Punjabi and more importantly, had in the course of amassing his fortune, acquired as a by-product a host of legal vulnerabilities that made him the acquiescent Prime Minister that the generals sought.

Unlike the Zardaris and the Sharifs, Imran Khan Niazi does not come from a family whose members have become billionaires as a consequence of growing their businesses under the patronage of those that count in Pakistan, the uniformed services and the religious zealots. The deposed Prime Minister did not vanish into the shadows and shortly thereafter appeared at the doors of the generals begging to be given a second chance in the manner that some of his predecessors had done Rather than wasting time on puppets, he went after the masters themselves, directing his ire at the military.

Earlier, both Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif while in power had challenged the military hierarchy by seeking to install puppets of their own at the apex of the Pakistan Army. The first was executed with help from a compliant judiciary, while the other was sent into exile. Imran Khan has challenged the military not while he was in high office but after having been removed from it. He has stripped away the camouflage netting of the country’s civilian interface and exposed the involvement of the generals in his overthrow and subsequent harassment through multiple cases filed against him.

And rather than lose public support as a consequence, Imran has picked up much more backing from the people of Pakistan than he had ever enjoyed earlier. Finally, it would appear, even in the Punjab province the people of Pakistan understand that they have been taken for a ride by the generals. That they have been victims of a confidence trick designed to keep them in poverty, religious fanaticism and illiteracy by an army leadership that had long made a career out of serving as a mercenary force, initially for the US and later on, to China.

Throughout the 21st century, Chinese Communist Party functionaries have visited Pakistan in much the way that US servicemen used to visit the Philippines in the years prior to World War II, as overlords. They have provided generous assistance to GHQ Rawalpindi in the latter’s efforts to inflict a thousand cuts on India. At the same time, the men in khaki have covered up the reality of their parasitical existence by pointing to an imaginary threat from India as the reason why the military should be allowed to reign supreme over Pakistan while itself functioning under its Liege Lord, the CCP.

If the National Accountability Bureau of Pakistan were serious about accountability for the many charges that have been flung in the direction of Imran Khan Niazi, they would have arrested most of the higher ranks of the Pakistan Army as well as civilian officials, not to mention politicians. When those who have swindled hundreds of billions of dollars accuse Imran of illegally benefitting from much smaller sums, such accusations carry little credibility in the public mind.

GHQ Rawalpindi is as frightened of holding fresh elections as are the Sharif brothers or the Zardaris. They can of course be sure that the men in khaki can assure them a comfortable victory when the ballot boxes are emptied, but are aware that this time around, the public reaction will be what it was when Bilawal Zardari’s grandfather Z.A.

Bhutto rigged the 1977 polls and ignited a furious public reaction that gave cover to General Zia to depose and later on hang him. This time around, the cry of the public is that the generals themselves be punished for what they have done to the future of Pakistan.

If Imran reverses his stance and once again becomes an instrument of the generals, the people of Pakistan are unlikely to follow him in such a betrayal, which is what makes any softening of Imran’s stand unlikely. Will he go the way of Benazir Bhutto and die in an explosion or through a bullet? Will he be locked up and the key thrown away in the hope that he loses his spine? None of the available options are without grave risks for the generals. As for the Chinese, the reality is that Imran Khan Niazi would not have been thrown out of power unless Beijing had given the nod to GHQ Rawalpindi. This is a truth that the most popular, the most endangered, the most dangerous, politician in Pakistan must be mulling over.

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