Loud Thinking June 14, 2014 at 09:26AM

An eye opening article for the bashers of Pakistan, its military and the ISI.

A testimony in favour of Pakistan by Ms HR Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Hard Choices’
News & Views
Mohammad Jamil

Saturday, June 14, 2014 – In her new book titled ‘Hard Choices’, Hillary Clinton stated: “America decided not to inform Pakistan about the operation against Osama bin Ladin, because there are some elements in ISI, which could inform Osama about the expected operation”. But it is a wrong perception in American Administration about the ISI, which is one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, and its sacrifices for war against terror are unforgettable. It was the ISI which arrested the largest number of terrorists during this war against terrorism. In her memoir ‘Hard Choices’, which hit the book stores the other day, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that top US officials, including President Barack Obama and the then Defense Secretary Robert Gates, had detailed discussions on the issue. In the same book, she admitted that supporting the war in Iraq was her biggest mistake. It appears that since she has decided to contest the next presidential election, she is trying to capitalize on unpopular war former president Bush started.

She wrote: “I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decisions. I got it wrong, plain and simple when I voted as a U.S. senator to authorize the war in Iraq”. But it was a belated acknowledgement of her mistake, as hundreds of thousands of children had died in Iraq because of lack of medicines during the occupation. And many more were killed in bombings by the forces of Coalition of the Willing, suicide bombings and civil war. Even today, the situation in Iraq is dismal. Only two days ago, at least 60 people were killed after seven car bombs ripped through the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The deadliest blast late on Saturday took place in the Bayaa district, which killed 23 people, many of them young people playing billiards. Several bombs went off within the following hour, mostly targeting commercial streets in Shia Muslim neighborhood. More than 110 people were wounded. During the last month, more than 900 people were killed across Iraq.

Anyhow, Hillary Clinton has been prevaricating and changing goalposts. In May 2009, talking to reporters at the Foreign Press Centre and the White House, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was once candid when she said: “It is fair to say that our policy towards Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent. I don’t know any other word”. Looking for the meanings in between the lines, it becomes obvious the US has wronged Pakistan for three decades. The secretary recalled that in the 1980s, the US partnered with Pakistan to help train the Mujahideen. “Their security service and the military were encouraged to go after the Soviets in Afghanistan, and when they withdrew in 1989, we said thank you very much”. She went to say: “While it was fair to apportion responsibility to Pakistan, but the US also had to share the responsibility for what happened during and after the Afghan war”. Earlier she had said that the United States had a share in creating terrorist groups such as the Taliban. That was perhaps the first time that a high-ranking US official admitted about America’s share of responsibility.

In a congressional hearing, she explained how the militancy in Pakistan was linked to the US-backed proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. “Let’s remember here. The people we are fighting today, we funded them twenty years ago. And we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union,” she said. It is too well known that the US along with Saudi Arabia, UAE and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had joined hands in 1980’s to counter the Soviets’ influence in the volatile region at that time. There is no denying that in 1979 after Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and ISI launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. The objective of the US was to harness the Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war – an Islamic jihad – which would turn Muslim states within the then Soviet Union against the Communist regime and eventually destabilize it. Over the years, the CIA had funded and recruited almost 100,000 radical mujahedin from around 40 Muslim countries as soldiers for America’s proxy war.

After Soviet withdrawal, America left the region in state of turmoil; civil war in Afghanistan raged on and jihadis tried to export their version of Islamic revolution to other countries. It slapped nuclear-related sanctions on Pakistan In fact, a lot of confusion had been created by the statements from members of the Obama administration, and of course by President Obama himself giving rise to suspicions. American media especially print media had been carrying reports regarding plans to take control of Pakistan nukes, should the government fail or terrorists take over Islamabad. There was a perception that after having given some equipment for the security of the nukes Americans wanted from Pakistan to disclose its nuclear sites but Pakistani government had been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear was actually used, because Pakistanis did not want to reveal locations of their weapons, or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country was producing.

Some American experts were of the view that they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced. However, Pakistan was suspicious of the goal of the United States under the guise of protecting Pakistani nukes was to gather intelligence about how and where these were located, and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal. Analysts were of the view that the US was playing a very dangerous game to destabilize Pakistan, which could set the ball rolling for destabilization of the region. The strategy was dividing the nation, creating doubts about the ability of the armed forces and bringing the ISI into disrepute. But the nation stands united today; both political and military leadership have complete agreement on how to fight terror internally and how to deal with the external threat. Of course, Pakistan’s armed forces have the capacity and capability to meet challenges to its internal and external security.

—The writer is Lahore-based senior journalist.

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