October 20. 2006

Quantum Note

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Taliban—I

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal

If someone had stood in front of the now pulverized Twin Towers in New York on September 10, 2001 and asked passersby who are Taliban or where is Afghanistan chances are that only two out of every ten Americans would have answered correctly. If the same survey was done on September 12, 2001, virtually all Americans across the length and breadth of that great land of lost opportunities would have repeated the carefully crafted story they had seen on their TV screens. Such is the power of media these days.

The techniques used by virtually all mainstream American and Canadian media to influence, brainwash, and mislead their captive audience have been borrowed from the market place where products are sold through making brand images which stick to the memory of buyers. Millions of dollars are spent every year to construct brand names, symbols, and logos. Once successful, the companies have to do nothing but put that name, symbol, or logo on their product and consumers would not even bother to read labels. A coffee can made of tin transforms into a brand name product as soon as a green and golden label is affixed on it. Once it has that label, it becomes a particular can of coffee which customers would buy without reading the fine print. The company which has patented that logo and label with a particular color scheme can now change the quantity of the coffee from 350 grams to 333 grams without its customers noticing the difference.

Two labels, Taliban and al-Qaeda, were “marketed” post 9/11 with the most aggressive marketing techniques ever used to influence public opinion about a foreign country. Within 48 hours of the dreadful events of September 11, 2001, CNN and FOX News had it all figured out and sold to their viewers. The story put together so quickly had an amazing amount of details: the names and life stories of all the hijackers, details of their secret links with training camps in the remote mountains of Afghanistan and the rest. At the end of this trail was a Saudi billionaire sitting in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan.

Once the label had been marketed and sold, there was nothing left for the Bush administration to worry about. No one would raise any legal, moral, or ethical questions about the deadly bombardment that began at 2100 local time on Sunday, October 7, 2001. The rallying cry was “go get him”. This was so because by the time American and British war planes started their indiscriminate bombardment of Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad, the media had already prepared ground for most Americans to think of Taliban as the most evil, subhuman species on the planet which must be destroyed. Taliban were painted in the blackest possible colours: haters of women, freedom, and fanatics.  They were everything an American would hate.

Two weeks into the campaign, the US had found local soldiers who would do the fighting for them: the Northern Alliance. Yet, Taliban could not be dislodged. It was then decided to simply bomb them out of existence. Front lines were the first to receive indiscriminate bombardment. Civilian casualties began to mount. Several Red Cross warehouses were bombed. Meanwhile, thousands of Pakistanis had started to arrive in Afghanistan, joining the fight against the U.S. led forces. Now carrier based F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers were hitting Taliban positions in pinpoint strikes, while other U.S. planes began cluster bombings with 15,000-pound daisy cutter bombs. Totally unfretted by the American firepower, Taliban would often stand on top of bare ridgelines where US Special Forces could easily spot them and call in close air support. By November 2, Taliban front positions were decimated, and a Northern Alliance march on Kabul seemed possible for the first time.

On November 9, 2001, the battle for Mazar-e-Sharif began. U.S. bombers carpet-bombed Taliban defenders concentrated in the Chesmay-e-Safa gorge that marks the entrance to the city. At 2 P.M, Northern Alliance forces then swept in from the south and west, seizing the city's main military base and airport. While a massacre of Talibans was taking place in Mazar-e-Sharif, the Northern Alliance forces were sweeping through five northern provinces. With the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, Taliban were on the retreat, but it would still take weeks before a victory could be pronounced. Through all of this, the first American combat death took place on November 25, the day Taliban in Konduz were being herded into the Qala-e-Jangi prison complex near Mazar-e Sharif. In revenge of the killing of the CIA operative Mike Spann by prisoners who had taken up arms, Americans bombed the entire area for three days with AC-130 gunships and Black Hawk helicopters. Less than 100 of the several thousand Taliban prisoners survived this deadly campaign.

Then came the decimation of Tora Bora, the mountain range where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters took refuge in bunkers and caves. US bombers literally swept through the rugged terrain, bombing each cave and hideout. But it was not until December 17 that the locally hired soldiers captured the last cave, finding nothing but dead bodies of Taliban and Arab fighters who had refused to surrender.

In the meanwhile, toward the end of November, 2001 Kandahar became the last stronghold of Taliban. Now a man by the name of Hamid Karzai appeared on the scene. He was a one time loyalist of the former Afghan king, who had moved to the United States and had become involved in secret deals with CIA. He and Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Kandahar before the Taliban seized power, started to put pressure on Taliban forces from the east and cut off the northern Taliban supply lines to Kandahar. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 Marines, ferried in by CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, arrived and set up their Forward Operating Base in the desert south of Kandahar on November 25. On December 7, Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Omar left Kandahar on motor cycle with a group of his followers. Victory was declared. Taliban no longer controlled any part of Afghanistan.

(To be continued)

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