By: MNZ Alan
LONDON: The BBC’s documentary on Pakistan on 26 October was a clever collection of excerpts of the interviews put together to create a picture that was aimed at portraying Pakistan’s ISI, in particular, and army, in general, as an evil.
Ten years after the US-led invasion the intelligentsia from across the globe are unanimous that the US and its allies were nowhere near winning the war in Afghanistan and that military operations had worsened the situation, economically and in terms of human losses for the allied countries and in terms of security for the entire world.
For the interviews, BBC – the world’s largest broadcasting service – chose all those from the US and UK, who were involved in the military operations in Afghanistan. The failure in Afghanistan lay squarely on the strategies of the US and UK and those involved on ground to implement those policies. What else one would expect from the failed commanders except that they would try to find a scapegoat lest they face the wrath of their own public and live with a stigma in their respective social circles.
BBC, wittingly or unwittingly, played to the American tunes. It toed the same line, the rhetoric US leadership driven by the Pentagon is harping on but in the attempt tried to appear in its documentary ‘more loyal than the King’. The message that emanated from the first part of its documentary was that Pakistan is responsible for the deaths of the British soldiers in Afghanistan and the terrorist attacks of 7/7.
BBC, in a fit of insane loyalty, did not realise the implications that it was indulging in a dangerous game, which would have far reaching implications for the UK itself. Already it was a common perception among Pakistanis across the UK and in Pakistan that British media was biased against them.
Media trial of Pakistani students arrested in 2009 on unproven terrorism charges, characterisation of a community sometimes as sex offenders and sometimes as terrorists and extremists and when it comes to good deeds like the one exhibited by the parents of the three slain Pakistani origin Britons in Birmingham riots in August referring them as Asian men are clear manifestations of the bias some elements in the British media hold against Pakistan. Those in the media, civil society and the government who condone this malicious campaign do so without realising the perils that surround it.
Constant portrayal of a community in the negative is bound to create feelings across the UK that would divide the society on ethnic lines and shatter the great cause of interfaith harmony and the dream of a big society. Pakistanis are a sizeable community and they can’t be wished away. They are here for over six decades and contributed immensely and sincerely to the UK’s economy, society and politics. They have a deep sense of ownership and attachment to the Britain, more than they have for the country of their origin.
Those who made the documentary either did not attempt to dig into the details of the past events or deliberately chose to omit it by design. The BBC documentary’s producer also did not give interview dates, locations and edited every interview at will for cherry picking.
Gary Berntsen, who succeeded Gary Schroen in Afghanistan to lead CIA’s Jawbreaker Team to get OBL and al-Qaeda and prepare ground for the US attack, was interviewed in the documentary. His statement in the documentary blaming Pakistan should be assessed in the light of what he wrote in his 2005 book, Jawbreaker.
He asserted that Osama bin Laden could have been captured at Tora Bora if the US military (specifically United States Central Command) had devoted more resources to the operation. This claim gained substantial traction due to a Senate Report on the circumstances of bin Laden’s escape. According to both Berntsen’s account and the Senate Committee’s report, “Bin Laden and bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared.”
Berntsen insisted ‘this could have been stopped by a US military presence on the Afghan-Pak border, instead of a reliance on corrupt local warlords.’ The deliberate mess that the US political elite created was to drag Pakistan deep into the quagmire. Ever since Pakistan has been cleaning the mess they created. Hundreds of al-Qaeda leaders who were allowed to flee to Pakistan were arrested by the Pakistani intelligence agencies and handed over to the US. When the ISI and other agencies were nabbing the al-Qaeda top notches at the tip-offs of CIA, they perhaps did not realise that these arrests from Pakistan’s soil was part of a plot to portray the country as a safe-haven for the terrorists.
Let me also refresh the memories of the readers that Schroen was CIA Chief in Islamabad from 1996 to 1999. During that time he had made several covert trips into Afghanistan, meeting with leaders of the Northern Alliance, the loose confederation of warlords and tribes that opposed the Taliban, and bringing in cash, normally $200,000 – a bag of money on the table. Gary-I distributing money to buy Afghan leaders and warlords and Gary-II being bitter about them should have many details hidden in it but never to be revealed.
US were befriending the Northern Alliance leaders, throwing millions of dollars, at the time when Taliban were in control, and Pakistan was supposedly the US ally. So the US was playing a double game since 1996, the year when Osama bin Laden was invited to Afghanistan by one of the members of Northern Alliance.
Ever since the attacks on the US establishments in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998, the US was planning incursions in Afghanistan. With the help of money they had also bought loads of Taliban by the time US forces got ready to launch the attack on 7 October, 2001, purportedly to avenge 9-11 attacks.
Pakistan was never on board about US plans in Afghanistan. This raises question that with Northern Alliance leaders on the US side and defected Taliban working for the US in the al-Qaeda ranks how could al-Qaeda top notches got away?
These details are quite intriguing but at least one thing becomes clear that the Americans didn’t want the game to end after they ousted Taliban and destroyed al-Qaeda sanctuaries there. Is it part of their strategic interests in Central Asia, dominant factor of which is containment of China, dealing with the threats from the remnants of fallen Soviet Union and to exploit the natural resources of the region?
They are playing a game in the region and they consider countries in the region as pawns. Pakistan is still not on board when the US had been attempting to bring the militants to the negotiation table. One part of the US and its allies’ game in the region is to project Pakistan as part of the problems in Afghanistan to maintain pressure on Pakistan while they play their game. Britain is either part of the game or oblivious of the great game, which it had played centuries ago. The probability of the former is higher.
One should also be intrigued as to why CIA always wanted Osama to be killed and not captured to be brought to justice. This could be testified from the investigative reports filed in the US media in the wake of the US attack on Afghanistan, revealing details of the events before and after 9-11.
This year’s successful clandestine operation of killing, supposedly, Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in May raised more questions than it answered. Instead of taking him alive they preferred to kill him and then hurriedly bury him in the sea to leave no trace. It is said that Umar Patek, the Indonesian Bali Bombing terror attack accomplice arrested in Abbottabad, had links to al-Qaeda. His arrest should have alerted OBL to move out but he stayed on to be arrested. The OBL assassination operation remains shrouded in the mystery just like the conspiracy theories that surround 9-11 tragic events.
BBC has scheduled to show the remaining part of the documentary on 2 November. In the wake of the documentary the debates have already started and people are creating perceptions. Apparently, the documentary had achieved the objective. But the distorted and malicious perception that is being created is bound to cause more harm widely than it benefits a few narrowly.
The British government that provides budgetary support to BBC for its international operations must intervene to stop the dangerous game the Corporation is becoming a party to. The reaction of the government and Pakistani public in Pakistan and also here to the documentary should be an eye-opener.
Source: The News
Date:11/3/2011
