Bashy Quraishy

on: Good Taliban, Bad Taliban, by Thomas Bärthlein

Dear editor, Once again Qantara publishes an article by another armchair journalists like Thomas Bärthlein in which the author blames the Pakistani army and the secret service for building up the Taliban in the first place. Such absurd claims verge on the border of anti-Pakistan propaganda and ignorance of history. The Taliban movement was created by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies to counter the Soviet occupation because they did not want their own precious soldiers to die in Afghanistan.

The movement was supported by Saudi money and the USA arm-twisted Pakistan through its zealot President Zia-ul-Haq to train the young students coming out of religious schools established by the CIA on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Denmark and many other European countries gave weapons, money and moral support to the Taliban movement which was called Mujahadeens – meaning noble warriors – at that time. So please, Qantara, do not indulge in spreading false information and maligning Pakistan alone. The country has paid a heavy price for protecting Afghanistan and Western interests. You should be thankful instead of vilifying Pakistan.

If you want to blame anyone, blame those whose interests are much larger than Pakistan’s, namely Europe's and those of the USA. Even Hilary Clinton, in a recent interview on CNN, acknowledged that, after Soviet defeat, the USA simply left the area and that Pakistan had to pick up the pieces in the shape of drugs, weapons and civil war in Afghanistan.