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Afghanistan, terrorism, andAmerican and AustralianresponsesAmin SaikalPublished online: 09 Jun 2010.

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Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 23–30, 2002

Afghanistan, terrorism, and American andAustralian responses

AMIN SAIKAL

The apocalyptic terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September2001 were unprecedented in their scale, symbolism and impact. They were highlydestructive in terms of loss of lives, property and economic opportunities , ex-tremely symbolic as they targeted the heart of America’s global economic andpolitical-military power, and effective in changing the US’s perceived view both ofitself as a secure superpower and of the international order which it had cherishedsince the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The enemywas no longer a state actor, but a sub-national actor with an extensive, shadowyinternational network, committed to ‘Armageddon-type’ missions. Isolationism wasno longer an option for the US in world politics. The US now found itself at warwith international terrorism—violence perpetrated to cause pain and suffering of acivilian population in pursuit of either speci� c or notional political objectives. Thisterrorism had many invisible operatives and facilities in both the United States andabroad. The task ahead was not only to identify and eliminate the culprits and theirnetworks and those who harboured them, but also to rede� ne America’s interestsand security requirements, based on new alliances and geopolitica l con� gurations.

The axe had to fall on Afghanistan. This was a country in which the US hadshown little or no interest since the triumph of its counter-interventionis t strategyin defeating Soviet communism by the turn of the 1990s, but where the primesuspect, the rich Saudi dissident, Osama Bin Laden, and his Al Qaeda (‘the base’)network had succeeded in forging organic ties with the ruling Pakistan-backed,extremist, Islamic Taliban militia to set up a puritanical state. But to get to BinLaden and his protectors, the US needed to build an international coalition against‘international terror’. It put its allies and adversaries to the test: either to join theUS against terror or be identi� ed with terror and become a target. Australia was oneof the � rst allies to declare full support for the US and invoke Article 4 of theANZUS defence agreement to justify its military participation in America’santi-terror campaign.

There are indeed many dimensions to this development that can be analysedfrom various perspectives and ideological leanings. However, this article limits itsobjectives to three. The � rst is to look at the situation in Afghanistan before 11September and America’s failures to heed warnings about the serious anti-Ameri-can problems arising from that situation. The second is to evaluate America’s

ISSN 1035-771 8 print/ISSN 1465-332 X online/02/010023-0 8 Ó 2002 Australian Institute of Internationa l Affairs

DOI: 10.1080/1035771022012080 1

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anti-terror campaign and its consequences for Afghanistan and beyond. The thirdis to examine the wisdom of Australia’s military contribution .

The Afghan situation

By the late 1990s, the geopolitical contours of Afghanistan were shaping asdangerous for international stability and more speci� cally for the United States.Afghanistan was rapidly falling under the � rm control of an alliance between thepredominantly Afghan Taliban militia, which was created and supported byneighbouring Pakistan in late 1994, and the mainly Arab Al Qaeda network. Butmore importantly, this alliance was facilitated and backed in no uncertain terms byPakistan’s military intelligence (ISI) which operated as a ‘government within agovernment’ and had been responsible for Pakistan’s Afghanistan and Kashmirpolicies since the early 1980s. These three forces coalesced for varied butinter-related reasons and objectives. The Taliban, headed by an unknown, poorly-educated Islamic cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, needed � nancial and humanresources to conquer the chaotic post-communist Afghanistan. Osama Bin Ladenand his Al Qaeda network, manned by Islamic militants from a number of Arabcountries, had much of what the Taliban needed but were in search of a viablesanctuary for their opposition to ‘corrupt pro-Western regimes’ in the Arab world,most importantly Saudi Arabia, to ‘US domination of the Arab world’ and to‘America’s support of Israel’ as a means for this domination.

These, together with a common cause in Islamic extremism, motivated the twosides to forge a rapid alliance, especially after Bin Laden moved into Afghanistanin early 1996, and to transform Afghanistan into a safe base for building a ruthlessmulti-national Islamic army and expanding Al Qaeda into an effective terroristnetwork with global reach. Neither of these was to be dedicated to any nationalgoal, but only trans-nationa l Islamic goals. However, the goals from the start werevery much formulated by Bin Laden and his lieutenants, given the Talibanleadership’s poor education and reverence for Bin Laden as a rich but dedicatedArab Muslim from Saudi Arabia—the birthplace of Islam. The ISI, on the otherhand, essentially wanted to use both the Taliban and Al Qaeda in pursuit of whatit had conceived as Pakistan’s regional interests. These included securing ‘strategicdepth’ in Afghanistan against Pakistan’s arch-enemy, India; diverting the attentionof Pakistani people, especially their Islamic militants, away from Pakistan’sdeep-seated political, social, economic and security problems; and helping theKashmiri militants � ghting for independence from India to train in Afghanistan andoperate in coordination with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The ISI role was criticalin the Taliban’s military domination of Afghanistan. It not only provided the militiawith arms, training, logistic support and operatives to supervise its military,administrative and propaganda operations, but also thousands of Pakistani � ghters;and, more importantly, it made Pakistan available as the only safe corridor throughwhich thousands of Al Qaeda Arab activists and combatants could get in and outof Afghanistan.

This triangular alliance produced one of the most dreadful examples of medieval-

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Afghanistan, Terrorism, and American and Australian Responses 25

ist rule in the name of Islam in modern history. Afghanistan, where moderate Islamhad traditionally been prevalent, had never experienced anything like it. Theregime’s extremist ideological disposition, designed to allow it to claim highermoral ground over the moderate Islamic regime of Burhannuddin Rabbani whichit drove out of Kabul to the north in 1996, proved to be highly dogmatic and brutal.It discriminated savagely against women and national minorities, especially theShi’ites, who make up about 15–20 percent of the Afghan population (with the restbeing Sunni Muslims). It also shunned those Afghans who were not ethnicPushtuns, the tribal cluster which has traditionally constituted about 40 percent ofthe Afghan population and populated both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, andto which the bulk of the Taliban belonged. Initially, the militia received asubstantia l amount of � nancial assistance through the ISI from Saudi Arabia andthe United Arab Emirates—the only other two countries apart from Pakistan torecognise the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Saudi andUAE support was mainly because of their desire to secure some anti-Iranianleverage—a factor which also appealed to their superpower ally, the United States,which had despised the Iranian Islamic regime since the fall of the US client, RezaShah Pahlavi, in 1979. But the Taliban as well as their ISI benefactors also thrivedon the millions of dollars that Bin Laden poured regularly into the militia’s coffers,and that they earned from poppy growing and drug traf� cking.

The sad fact is that the United States was privy to all these developments fromthe beginning. The CIA and the ISI still maintained close relations from the timeof the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. However, America turned ablind eye while the ISI hatched the whole idea of the Taliban. Meanwhile, themilitary leader of the anti-Taliban forces, Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, whowas assassinated by two Arabs disguised as journalists two days before the 11September events, was repeatedly warning the international community, and the USin particular, about the dangers of the Taliban-Al Qaeda-ISI alliance. He despairedthat the alliance was turning Afghanistan into an explosive source for narcoticproduction, illicit trading, massive human rights abuses and internationa l terrorism.However, for the � rst four years after the Taliban burst onto the Afghan scene,Washington by and large maintained silence. While only once or twice criticisingin 1977 the Taliban’s treatment of women, it even showed few qualms over BinLaden’s joining hands with the Taliban and throwing the weight of his wealth andArab connections behind the militia. Of course, the Americans had known BinLaden since the mid-1980s. He had come from a prominent Saudi business family,fought the Soviets in Afghanistan as an Arab volunteer under the watchful eyes ofthe CIA and ISI, and by the early 1990s made a series of anti-Saudi regime andanti-American pronouncements . Massoud’s bitter complaint about the in� ux ofthousands of Pakistani and Arab � ghters into Afghanistan also fell on deaf ears.The more Massoud produced captured foreign � ghters the more he was ignored.Washington appeared to have found the whole Taliban phenomenon to be servingits anti-Iranian cause and its desire for the American businesses to secure access tothe resources of Central Asia.

It took the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August

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1998 at the cost of hundreds of casualties to change the picture for the UnitedStates. Washington implicated Bin Laden in the bombings and demanded hisimmediate extradition by the Taliban. It also in retaliation launched a missile attackon his training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The missiles missed Bin Laden, butkilled some 20 Kashmiri militants who were receiving training there, establishingclear evidence of linkages between Al Qaeda and the Pakistan-backed insurgencyin the Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir.

To pursue the Saudi fugitive, Washington adopted a three-pronged strategy overthe next two years. First, it took direct actions by placing a substantial bounty onBin Laden, undertaking two failed covert operations from Pakistan to capture him,and imposing economic sanctions against the Taliban. Second, it led the UNSecurity Council to enforce the US measures by instituting at � rst limited economicsanctions against the Taliban at the end of 1999 and then a more comprehensiveregime of sanctions including an arms embargo a year later—a development whichthe UN sought to reinforce by adopting another resolution in June 2001 to stationmonitors at main Afghan border crossing points, especially with Pakistan. Third, inthe process it became increasingly amenable to closer policy coordination withMoscow and New Delhi, which shared Washington’s concerns over internationalterrorism, although for reasons of their own.

However, the American strategy failed. It underestimated the organic strength ofBin Laden’s ties with the Taliban, and of the relations between these two and theISI. It also overlooked the fact that the Taliban had so much income from theirnarco-economic activities and Arab sources in the Gulf that they could easilyoverride the impact of the sanctions. Further, it did little to pressure the real sourceof the problem: that is, the ISI. Washington persistently refrained from namingPakistan as a supporter of international terrorism for fear that it might cause theeconomically bankrupt but nuclear-powered South Asian state to implode, withserious internationa l consequences. Beyond this, it stubbornly refused to provideany assistance to Massoud’s forces (now the United Front or the so-called NorthernAlliance), which by the turn of 2000 had been con� ned to northeasternAfghanistan, with very few resources at their disposal. It refused to change itspolicy of no assistance to any Afghan faction.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda not only remained de� ant, with successive Pakistanileaders, including General Pervez Musharaf who seized power in October 1999,maintaining their usual denial of any military involvement in Afghanistan, but AlQaeda remained on course for more anti-American operations. It allegedly bombedthe USS Cole, badly damaging the destroyer, off Aden harbour in November 2000.The more the US and UN adopted anti-Taliban measures, the more the militia,helped by its ISI spin doctors, reacted by adopting counter-measures to force theinternational community to violate the UN sanctions to deal with it. In the � rstseven months of 2001, for example, it decreed the destruction of pre-Islamic statuesin Afghanistan, most importantly the two Buddhas in Bamiyan, demanded thatAfghanistan’s tiny Hindu minority wear a yellow badge of distinction , and detainedeight foreign aid workers on charges of converting Afghans to Christianity . Whilethe world was being bemused and abused by such Taliban behaviour, the militia’s

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Afghanistan, Terrorism, and American and Australian Responses 27

‘guest’, Bin Laden, and his network were apparently busy planning their largestterrorist attacks yet on the United States.

Thus the horri� c attacks of 11 September did not take place in a vacuum. Theyhappened against the backdrop of appalling changes in Afghanistan and its region,and America’s policy failures in understanding and dealing with those changesperceptively and effectively. The fact that the US irresponsibly turned its back onAfghanistan after achieving its prime objective of defeating Soviet communism,and that it remained until mid-1998 quite favourably disposed towards the Talibanand indifferent to what Al Qaeda and the ISI were doing in Afghanistan, suggeststhat Washington has a great deal to answer for.

The military campaign

The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon of course left the US withno choice but to act decisively. They were so massive, catastrophic and symbolicthat if left un-answered would have substantially degraded America’s position athome and abroad, with a potential seriously to undermine America’s superpowerstatus and global faith in capitalism and democracy as the ‘best’ modus operandi.They could have undermined the dominance of the United States and its allies inthe international order that the US has worked so hard to shape in its favour in thepost-Cold War era. Yet the attacks, killing some 3,000 people, had left the UnitedStates with an unprecedented degree of moral and political freedom to respond.Nonetheless, the US response had to be in a form that it would not play into thehands of Bin Laden to achieve a possible global confrontation between Islam andthe West, and that by the same token it would not enable the proponents of a ‘clashof civilisation’ thesis in the West any opportunity to claim credit.

For this reason, although capable of responding to the attacks on its own, theUnited States found it imperative to build an international coalition against‘international terror’, to involve not only allies, but also rival major powers and anumber of key Muslim states, most importantly Pakistan, whose cooperation wasnow deemed necessary for successful military operations against targets inAfghanistan. Washington confronted them effectively with two narrow choices: tosupport America’s anti-terror campaign or be identi� ed as siding with terror. Mostof the states quickly fell into line. This was especially the case with Pakistan.Islamabad made a complete about-face at the cost of a colossal betrayal of itsclients. Only two governments in the Muslim world refused to toe the line clearly:those of Iran and Iraq. The former had opposed the Taliban, but now also rejectedthe US’s military campaign as inappropriate, while the latter rejoiced over Amer-ica’s pains, with a serious risk of becoming itself a target. Many of those states thatsupported the US also did so because of their own individual struggle against arising tide of nationalist and cross-border nationalist opposition .

As Mullah Omar and Bin Laden stood � rmly de� ant, they miscalculated theirown strength and America’s need to respond in the same way as it had to the Iraqidictator Saddam a decade earlier. They appeared convinced that they could noteasily be reached in land-locked Afghanistan, especially if Pakistan were their

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avowed ally, and that they had the necessary in� uence to cause massive popularuprisings in the region on the basis of Islamic mobilisation against the US andIsrael. They remained ignorant of the fact that they had little support in the Muslimworld and that unity in the Muslim world is as elusive today as it has been for along time.

As could have been predicted, neither would the military campaign last very longnor would Afghanistan become another Vietnam. Despite all their public bravery,the Pakistan-backed Taliban and Al Qaeda had no more than a limited Third Worldmilitary capability, which after a month of American high-tech aerial bombardmentwas badly damaged. When it came to the ground war, there were the determinedand well-disciplined anti-Taliban United Front forces to do what otherwise theAmericans and their allies would have had to achieve, with a serious risk of highcasualties. Commander Massoud had gone, but he had left a number of excellentcommanders and a well-structured force to ful� l his dream of an independent,united and modern Afghanistan. Massoud’s assassination had given his forces anextra, powerful motivation to move against not only the Taliban, but moreconclusively against the thousands of Arabs and Pakistanis who could be treated asnothing more than invaders. As city after city fell to them within the space of amonth from early November to early December, it also became clear that theTaliban and Al Qaeda had little or no popular support.

However, winning the war does not necessarily mean winning the peace andestablishing stability. The daunting tasks confronting the US and its Afghan andinternational allies include capturing the elusive Bin Laden and Mullah Omar,building a new, lasting, stable political order in Afghanistan and rebuilding thecountry, destroying the extended cells of Al Qaeda and stabilising the region so thatnever again could a force like the Taliban or a network like Al Qaeda � nd fertilegrounds to emerge. Political stability and nation-building have always been in shortsupply in Afghanistan since its emergence as a state in mid-eighteenth century. Yetthis is what is going to be critical for not only the political and social-economictransformation of the country into a viable, modern state, but also for the return ofmore than four million refugees who are living a humiliating life in neighbouringPakistan, Iran and beyond. This is also where the Australian participation in the waragainst terror could make a difference.

Australia’s contribution

The Afghans have constituted the largest single group of refugees in the world fornearly two decades. Although Pakistan and Iran have borne the brunt, othercountries, most importantly Western democracies, have also taken smaller numbersthrough their orderly refugee programs. However, an issue has arisen in the last fewyears over the trickle of Afghan asylum seekers who have reached the shores ofsome of the very Western countries which have now actively participated inAmerica’s military campaign in Afghanistan. The issue has nowhere become ascontroversial as in Australia. To put it in a nutshell, the conservative coalitiongovernment of Prime Minister John Howard has been quick to support America’s

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Afghanistan, Terrorism, and American and Australian Responses 29

war efforts in Afghanistan with a military contribution , but has not been willing tomatch this with a comparable degree of compassion and generosity towards theAfghan asylum seekers who have formed the bulk of some 4,000 boat arrivals fromthe Indonesian Archipelago since 2000. Many of these asylum seekers, whom thegovernment has labelled as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘rich people capable of payingpeople smugglers’ and therefore worthy of suffering a life in Australia’s widely-criticised detention centres, have belonged to the very Shi’ite Hazara minority thatthe Taliban despised most. Yet, while invoking Australia’s moral and internationalobligations to justify its participation in America’s military campaign against theTaliban, the government has rejected any criticism of violating similar obligationsin its treatment of the asylum seekers.

Several factors explain this somewhat contradictory stand. The � rst is that at thetime of the 11 September attacks, Prime Minister Howard happened to be on anof� cial visit to the United States, experiencing � rst hand the American mood ofdespair and anger. He was not only shaken but also moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with what he had been promoting as Australia’s number one ally. Hesubsequently invoked Article 4 of the ANZUS Treaty to commit a considerablesegment of Australia’s defence force, involving in total 1500 personnel, to assistAmerica’s anti-terror campaign. The second factor is that since he was only twomonths away from a general election, with little con� dence of winning it, he nowfound Australia’s participation in the military campaign complementary to histough policy stand towards the asylum seekers, for electoral advantages. He hadalready identi� ed the factor of ‘strong leadership’ as an important election issue toturn around the declining electoral fortunes of his Liberal Party and its coalitionpartner, the National Party, vis-a-vis the Labor opposition . In August, when hiscoalition was still languishing in the opinion polls, he had refused a Norwegiancargo ship, the Tampa, which had picked up a large group of mostly Afghanasylum seekers from a sinking Indonesian boat at the request of the Australiancoast watch, permission to of� oad its human cargo on Australian soil. This incidenthad brought much internationa l disrepute to Australia as a humane society, butnonetheless proved popular with the voters.

While building on this, the 11 September events provided the Howard govern-ment with a unique opportunity to link its tough approach to asylum seekers to theissue of international terrorism by suggesting without a shred of evidence that someelements among the asylum seekers might be terrorists. It thus combined itsresponses to the two issues to claim that only he could provide the strongleadership which was needed to protect Australia’s borders and to provide Aus-tralians with the needed degree of certainty and security at a time of increasinginternational uncertainty and insecurity.

The strategy paid off handsomely: the Howard government won the election on10 November, but at the cost of polarising the Australian society and diminishingits international standing. More importantly, it was left with the daunting task ofreconciling Australia’s participation in the war in Afghanistan with the country’s‘inhumane’ approach to Afghan asylum seekers. The government has of coursemaintained a total denial of any politicking and anomalous behaviour. However, to

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overcome this anomaly and improve Australia’s international image, what thegovernment now needs to do is to match its commitment to waging war with adedication to building peace in Afghanistan. It has a unique opportunity to makea substantia l contribution to the post-con� ict reconstruction and stabilisation inAfghanistan as the surest way not only to stem the tide of asylum seekers fromAfghanistan but also to rebuild Australia’s reputation as a humane democracy andan ethical member of the international community. A failure to do this could onlyreinforce the widespread perception at home and abroad that its stands on war andasylum seekers have been guided mainly by electoral considerations .

Conclusion

The war against terror in Afghanistan has indeed been complex and multi-dimen-sional. On the one hand the situation in Afghanistan demanded it, not only toeliminate an important source of international terrorism but also to help the Afghanpeople to liberate themselves from the brutal, medievalist rule of the Taliban andtheir foreign supporters. This may well prove to be one of the most positiveoutcomes of the US-led military intervention. On the other hand, there is a dangerthat this outcome may not be realised if those who have waged the war become toointoxicated by their victory and decide to go back to their old ways to reclaim thepre-11 September world order. It would be disastrous if they fail to do what it takesto help the Afghans to establish a lasting, stable, political order and rebuild theircountry, and to deal with the other root causes of terrorism beyond the Afghanborders. The most important of these causes are: Israel’s continued repressiveoccupation of Palestinian lands, the lack of democratisation in the Arab world, andthe suffering of the Iraqi people because of the open-ended UN sanctions—causeswhich have enabled someone like Bin Laden to strike a common cord with manyin the Arab and Muslim worlds—as well as Pakistan’s potentially explosivedomestic situation and policy complications over the disputed territory of Kashmir.These issues require political, not military, solutions . Any attempt by the US to useits military prowess beyond Afghanistan could unleash forces which might proveperilously dif� cult to control.

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