Even as the mighty Soviets of the 80’s were withdrawing from Afghanistan following their resistance from an army of disparate guerrillas who had humbled them by their sheer resilience (and definitely not without statistical help from their immediate neighbours and the US administration bent on achieving pretty much the same goal of the defeat of the Communists) what followed was something the US and the world was hardly prepared for though many might have feared it.

While the much celebrated Afghan holy warriors now turned their guns at each other in an attempt to wrest political power, the rest armed to the teeth with the cheaper, duplicated and sophisticated weapons dumped in this part of the continent and other technical know-how returned to wage their personal jihads.

They trained their weapons on Enemy No 2 – ironically their patrons who had elevated them to their exalted status – the west.

Rise of Osama

The final decade of the last century has been the time of what has now been infamously referred to as Islamic fundamentalism and raised Osama bin Laden – a man hardly remembered for his participation in the jihad against the Soviets – to the position of the saviour of a few and the murderer of many and yet the holiest of the holy warriors.

And single-handedly paying the price for this today are the Afghans – a battle-ravaged people, weary from the unending violence that they have witnessed over generations; once the toast of smaller nations who dreamt of standing up to the might of a huge empire like the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile the men whose blood President George W Bush and his army are baying for today are the same men who were once hosted on America soil during the Soviet occupation.

They were the same mujahideen who, because of their extreme fundamentalist credentials, enjoyed a lion’s share of the aid because the anti-Soviet bloc believed that is what could effectively challenge communism. While their calculations were correct what they miscalculated on was “what next” after the Soviets left, exactly the way in which they miscalculated “what next” after the Taliban were bombarded out of the country in the 2001 air-strikes.

Is that what is also happening in Pakistan? Is President Musharraf reaping the harvest of the support to the Taliban so far? The Taliban enjoyed the patronage of the Pakistani administration right from their first appearance in Afghanistan in the early 90’s when they are believed to have rescued a convoy of Pakistani diplomats from the clutches of the warlords.

Having found asylum in the autonomous region of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) their growing influence in the region appeared to have gone unchallenged. The pact with them in December 2006 only emboldened them further much to the chagrin of the US troops fighting them on the other side of the border in Afghan. And all this while President Hamid Karzai’s allegations of Pak support to the Taliban went unheeded.
Militia’s clout

The Lal Masjid siege was probably the most obvious sign of what the militia had come to mean even in Pakistan. And the recent parading of Pakistan’s paramilitary troops seized by a Pakistani Taliban commander in NWPF in full view of the media – an obvious attempt at conveying a very deliberate message to the international community – would have been the last nail in the coffin for President Musharraf’s tenuous control over the situation in the country.

With the President inspiring very little confidence and the country teetering on the verge of chaos after the imposition of emergency, what makes the situation even more fragile are the fears of the possibility of nuclear material, know-how or even a bomb, falling into the hands of these insurgent groups.

Even as the American administration oscillates between a “Pakistan policy” as opposed to a thus far “Musharraf policy” the current situation has exposed the hypocrisy of its actions. If for President Bush, Pakistan was meant to be the example, to the world, of democracy as a cure for terrorism (since the Afghan experiment is yet to take off) then they appeared to have pursued the policy with duplicity. A duplicity that even President Musharraf might just be paying the price for.