Important Seymour Hersh story on a secret Pakistani airlift of 5000 or so Pakistani nationals and other non-Afghani fighters for the Taliban trapped in the Northern Alliance siege of Kunduz. The US assented to, or even assisted in, this evacuation after stalling on surrender negotiations. General Musharraf persuaded the US that his slender hold on power in Pakistan would be jeopardized if his people came home in body bags. Reportedly, the US was supposed to have, but has never gotten, access to interrogate those evacuated.
India, whose intelligence service is the source of this story, is incensed but wary of offending the US with a public denunciation. Diplomatic notes of protest to the US and the UK have reportedly been ignored. Indian intelligence is convinced that many of the airlifted fighters will be encouraged to infiltrate into the ongoing Kashmiri conflict; Musharraf cannot afford to have them remain in Pakistan.
Hersh quotes sources who feel that India’s enraged “jilted lover syndrome” over this and other evidence of the Bush Administration’s decision to make Pakistan its chief ally in the Afghanistan war has contributed to the escalation of Indian-Pakistani belligerency in the wake of the December 13th attack on the Parliament Building. The precariousness of the standoff between these two hairtrigger nuclear powers grows daily.
India’s grievances—over the Pakistani airlift, the continuing terrorism in Kashmir, and Musharraf’s new status with Washington—however heartfelt, may mean little when it comes to effecting a dramatic change of American policy in South Asia. India’s democracy and its tradition of civilian control over the military make it less of a foreign-policy priority than Pakistan. The Bush Administration has put its prestige, and American aid money, behind Musharraf, in the gamble—thus far successful—that he will continue to move Pakistan, and its nuclear arsenal, away from fundamentalism. The goal is to stop nuclear terrorism as well as political terrorism. It’s a tall order, and missteps are inevitable. Nonetheless, the White House remains optimistic. An Administration official told me that, given the complications of today’s politics, he still believed that Musharraf was the best Pakistani leader the Indians could hope for, whether they recognize it or not. “After him, they could only get something worse.” The New Yorker
