Lessons Learnt?

This is a guest-post by Chris Blackburn

The recent deluge of sensitive information by Wikileaks on the US in AfPak has made me really mad. I don’t care about the breach of security, although, the naming of Afghan informants was highly cavalier and Julian Assange should have blanked out assets names. Intelligence and the suppression of strategic information should become more open in some respects, but what Wikileaks have done is just simply reckless. The Afghan people have been risking their lives to give us information and intelligence which they hoped would help defeat the Taliban and its allies. But, what really annoys me the most is the fact that Pakistan has been complicit in sponsoring militants and playing us for fools, or have they? That position is certainly conventional wisdom at the moment, but is it strictly accurate?

While trying to dissect our recent strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, we should reflect, that this new information- the regrouping of the Taliban and the continued sponsorship by Pakistan’s ISI was known by the Prime Ministers, Presidents, diplomats and politicians, but has been hushed up since the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were making progress in Quetta, Pakistan in 2003 just as British troops were heading off to Basra. I know what the Taliban were getting up to- receiving help from the ISI and Pakistan’s religious parties. I didn’t need Julian Assange and Wikileaks; I simply picked up a Pakistani newspaper and read about it. OK, so I guessed the ISI involvement, but normally the ISI and the religious parties are joint at the hip. That’s another fact, which has been muzzled by the US and British press. The religious parties help breed jihadi culture, the army and ISI help polish their best recruits and send them on their way- Kashmir, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Xinjiang, Kargil, London, Mumbai, New York…

Our political leaders and diplomats muzzled their military leaders and intelligence specialists. Tony Blair and Bush knew about what was happening in Pakistan, yet decided to exasperate the situation by invading a Muslim country in a different geographical region under false pretences. The Iraq inquiry needs to address this or it will fail to teach our future leaders anything.

We need the press to help to break the chains of their governments; they need to delve into investigating militancy like Daniel Pearl tried to. You, the media, are our only hope especially with our intelligence services steeped in a history of supporting Islamist militants. They have put more effort into covering their tracks than destroying their former allies. I’ve never met a former intelligence officer that was posted in Pakistan in the 1980s who didn’t say that Jamaat were anything but democratic, these guys should know they helped Jamaat create jihad and militancy in Pakistan. They feign shock when confronted with it “have you got evidence we actually funded Bin Laden”, and I’ve replied “ well no, not on me, but if you pop into your local Waterstones or Borders you will be able to buy a few books; authors from the left and the right- oh and French, which will hopefully refresh your memories…”

We also have political elite which hasn’t bothered to learn about the radical Islamist phenomenon. I remember listening to a tale of how senior US politicians while being briefed by the US’s most seasoned counter-terrorism experts were asked by Jeff Stein, a renowned reporter whether Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were either Sunnis or Shias- they all managed to guess wrong. I mean, c’mon! The only people who seem to know anything about Islamists are the neocons and that’s only because they once cheered them on. The neocon Achilles heal is that they don’t do anything but the Mid East. If it’s not a problem which affects Israel directly you might as well be whistling in the wind. They’ve even tried to link AfPak to Iran in recent months. It’s so bad in an academic sense, but if US politicians who sit on Intelligence Committees don’t know their Sunnis from their Shias you could have a field day to be honest. Good luck to the neocons.

David Cameron may have been cavalier in his recent comments on Pakistan’s continuing support for Islamist militancy, but at least he didn’t invade another Muslim country knowing you were allowing the culprits of 9/11 to retrain, re-arm and regroup whilst also reducing your military personnel to a literal skeleton crew. Tony Blair and Bush muzzled their Generals so they couldn’t put daylight on the problem. A seasoned journalist or a crusading politician could have raised the problem and dragged it before an influential foreign affairs committee. It may have helped turn the tide. Maybe it is too late. That was a strategic mistake; that was cavalier…