AbuHamza
19-02-2010, 20:52
Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul was a military commander in the Pakistani Army in the 1980s, and served as the head of the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency from 1987 to 1989.
Al Jazeera interviewed Gul during a short visit to Doha.
Al Jazeera: You recently said 'the Taliban is the future, the Americans are the past in Afghanistan'. Isn't that a little far-fetched?
Hamid Gul: The Americans are defeated. It isn't necessarily because their firepower and their might has weakened, but it is because their own people are sick and tired [of engagement in Afghanistan]. There is fatigue now, fatigue is the threat and is the worst thing for a nation to suffer from. There is no way that the Americans can hold on to Afghanistan.
Could that lead to [Afghanistan President] Hamid Karzai's government being toppled?
Karzai is no more. He is now fighting for his life. They have already started telling him that by the end of this year he will have to shoulder the responsibility of security in Afghanistan. But what are they giving him for this? Nothing at all. In fact, more civilian casualties in military operations are going to weaken Karzai's position.
Some in Afghanistan believe that the extent of civilian casualties has empowered the Taliban's resurgence.
Hamid Gul says the latest US offensive against the Taliban will not work
It is not only that. While the civilian casualties have certainly made the Taliban a popular movement in Afghanistan - some 80 per cent of the population support them - the people of Afghanistan are fed up with corruption.
They are sick of the influence of warlords and drug barons, and the continued American occupation.
If it was a shot stint - come in and get out after completing the job - the situation would have been different. But the Americans didn't do that. If they wanted to disperse al-Qaeda, they succeeded after the first year, and after that they should have pulled out. The fact they stayed on betrays their real intentions in Afghanistan until Barack Obama, the US president, came and started talking about withdrawal.
It was only last December that Obama announced that the US will pull out of Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton said the same thing, but there is a dichotomy.
On the one hand they say 'We are not here to stay in Afghanistan', but on the other hand they carry out surges and want to prop up and build the Afghan Army.
However, they don't give the money to build the Afghan Army - just $140mn. Compare this to how much it costs the US to keep just one soldier in Afghanistan - $1mn dollars per soldier per year in Afghanistan. They have now about 68,000 US troops. It is currently costing them $65bn just to maintain these troops. There are another 30,000 US troops now coming, so it will cost the US $100bn a year to maintain its forces in Afghanistan.
The US is a heavily indebted nation so how are they going to afford this? Some 57 per cent of Americans in the polls say they don't like this war and want their boys to return home. The Americans can't take casualties, that is their problem. To compensate, they started employing security contractors, some 104,000 security contractors currently in Afghanistan.
What does this mean? Mercenaries to be used where troops cannot be deployed? We have already seen what mercenaries did in Iraq. The Americans are more and more inclined - because the US military cannot suffer casualties - to employ mercenaries, not just from the US but also from the local population.
This is a very dangerous trend if we are to believe that mercenaries can win wars and carry forward the political objectives of the country. This means that whoever has more money can employ more mercenaries, win wars, win territories, etc.
Given everything you have just said, how do you think the latest US and Nato offensive against the Taliban is going to play out?
It is not going to work. I think it is an 'eye wash', it has political purpose back home. But there is no political purpose for Afghanistan. They are saying that they are protecting the civilian population, but they are dislodging the civilians from their homes in very harsh weather conditions in Afghanistan.
The cold winds from the steppes of Central Asia sweep these regions. When you launch such military operations, the people are inevitably dislodged and their fields abandoned. In this situation, what are the Americans trying to achieve - I don't know.
There is much ambiguity about their political objectives. Every military conflict must have a political purpose. I cannot discern that there is any political purpose.
Civilian casualties in US/Nato operations have weakened Karzai [EPA]
From a strategic point of view, Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan has been seen as setting up a buffer, or deterrent, to India. But now that Pakistan has nuclear capability, how important is Afghanistan to Islamabad?
But Zardari once told a western journal that you are a "political ideologue of terror".
I wrote a letter to Zardari that I am an ideologue of jihad, which is common between us. He is a Muslim like me and believes in the Quran. Terror is a totally different thing. I do not support terror at all, but jihad is our right when a nation is oppressed. According to the United Nations Charter, national resistance for liberation is a right. We call this a jihad.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/02/20102176529736333.html
Al Jazeera interviewed Gul during a short visit to Doha.
Al Jazeera: You recently said 'the Taliban is the future, the Americans are the past in Afghanistan'. Isn't that a little far-fetched?
Hamid Gul: The Americans are defeated. It isn't necessarily because their firepower and their might has weakened, but it is because their own people are sick and tired [of engagement in Afghanistan]. There is fatigue now, fatigue is the threat and is the worst thing for a nation to suffer from. There is no way that the Americans can hold on to Afghanistan.
Could that lead to [Afghanistan President] Hamid Karzai's government being toppled?
Karzai is no more. He is now fighting for his life. They have already started telling him that by the end of this year he will have to shoulder the responsibility of security in Afghanistan. But what are they giving him for this? Nothing at all. In fact, more civilian casualties in military operations are going to weaken Karzai's position.
Some in Afghanistan believe that the extent of civilian casualties has empowered the Taliban's resurgence.
Hamid Gul says the latest US offensive against the Taliban will not work
It is not only that. While the civilian casualties have certainly made the Taliban a popular movement in Afghanistan - some 80 per cent of the population support them - the people of Afghanistan are fed up with corruption.
They are sick of the influence of warlords and drug barons, and the continued American occupation.
If it was a shot stint - come in and get out after completing the job - the situation would have been different. But the Americans didn't do that. If they wanted to disperse al-Qaeda, they succeeded after the first year, and after that they should have pulled out. The fact they stayed on betrays their real intentions in Afghanistan until Barack Obama, the US president, came and started talking about withdrawal.
It was only last December that Obama announced that the US will pull out of Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton said the same thing, but there is a dichotomy.
On the one hand they say 'We are not here to stay in Afghanistan', but on the other hand they carry out surges and want to prop up and build the Afghan Army.
However, they don't give the money to build the Afghan Army - just $140mn. Compare this to how much it costs the US to keep just one soldier in Afghanistan - $1mn dollars per soldier per year in Afghanistan. They have now about 68,000 US troops. It is currently costing them $65bn just to maintain these troops. There are another 30,000 US troops now coming, so it will cost the US $100bn a year to maintain its forces in Afghanistan.
The US is a heavily indebted nation so how are they going to afford this? Some 57 per cent of Americans in the polls say they don't like this war and want their boys to return home. The Americans can't take casualties, that is their problem. To compensate, they started employing security contractors, some 104,000 security contractors currently in Afghanistan.
What does this mean? Mercenaries to be used where troops cannot be deployed? We have already seen what mercenaries did in Iraq. The Americans are more and more inclined - because the US military cannot suffer casualties - to employ mercenaries, not just from the US but also from the local population.
This is a very dangerous trend if we are to believe that mercenaries can win wars and carry forward the political objectives of the country. This means that whoever has more money can employ more mercenaries, win wars, win territories, etc.
Given everything you have just said, how do you think the latest US and Nato offensive against the Taliban is going to play out?
It is not going to work. I think it is an 'eye wash', it has political purpose back home. But there is no political purpose for Afghanistan. They are saying that they are protecting the civilian population, but they are dislodging the civilians from their homes in very harsh weather conditions in Afghanistan.
The cold winds from the steppes of Central Asia sweep these regions. When you launch such military operations, the people are inevitably dislodged and their fields abandoned. In this situation, what are the Americans trying to achieve - I don't know.
There is much ambiguity about their political objectives. Every military conflict must have a political purpose. I cannot discern that there is any political purpose.
Civilian casualties in US/Nato operations have weakened Karzai [EPA]
From a strategic point of view, Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan has been seen as setting up a buffer, or deterrent, to India. But now that Pakistan has nuclear capability, how important is Afghanistan to Islamabad?
But Zardari once told a western journal that you are a "political ideologue of terror".
I wrote a letter to Zardari that I am an ideologue of jihad, which is common between us. He is a Muslim like me and believes in the Quran. Terror is a totally different thing. I do not support terror at all, but jihad is our right when a nation is oppressed. According to the United Nations Charter, national resistance for liberation is a right. We call this a jihad.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/02/20102176529736333.html