Paper no.461
21. 05. 2002
OPERATION WILD GOOSE CHASE
by B. Raman
The various operations mounted by the US and allied forces in Afghanistan under the umbrella of OP Enduring Freedom such as OP Anaconda, OP Mountain Lion, OP Snipe and OP Condor are turning out to be a farce, which would have been laughable but for their tragic consequences for the so-called war against international terrorism. OP Enduring Freedom is threatening to degenerate slowly into OP Enduring Farce. The US claims of having killed hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda dregs during OP Anaconda (March, 2002) in Eastern Afghanistan were not corroborated by subsequent ground evidence, which led to not more than 50 dead bodies, many of them of innocent villagers who fell collateral victims to the US air strikes on supposedly Al Qaeda concentrations. Following reports that the Al Qaeda/Taliban survivors of the OP Anaconda battle, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Mujahideen commander who subsequently joined the Taliban, had taken shelter in Waziristan and adjoining areas of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan , the US and the British forces mounted OP Mountain Lion to smoke them out with the help of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment. Over a thousand American and British commandoes were deployed on the Afghan side of the border and nearly 8000 Pakistani troops, including many from the Special Services Group (SSG) trained by the USA's Green Berets during the Afghan war of the 1980s, were deployed in the Waziristan area. Little did the US seem to have realised that it was the SSG, then headed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which had trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs of the Al Qaeda during the Afghan war of the 1980s and used them against the Soviet troops and that Musharraf had also used bin Laden and his tribal hordes for brutally suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988 and for occupying the Kargil heights in 1999 before sending across regular Pakistani Army troops to replace them. It was also the SSG which had trained the Taliban in Afghanistan. Thus, taking the assistance of the SSG to smoke out bin Laden, Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, Jalaluddin Haqqani and other Al Qaeda/Taliban dregs was the height of folly in view of the close links which the SSG has always had with bin Laden and his murderous hordes. Under the pretense of helping the Americans to smoke out the dregs, the SSG troops and other Pakistani military personnel have been taking about 50 officers in civvies from the USA's National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the covert action division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attached to them on a wild goose chase all over Waziristan, after having helped the dregs to escape from there. The only result of the Operation so far has been a series of anti-US demonstrations in the tribal areas. In Miranshah in Waziristan, the tribals demonstrated in protest over the action of the American experts in entering a local mosque without removing their shoes and covering their heads. They were searching for Jalaluddin Haqqani, who used to come to that mosque for his prayers. Apart from their close links with the dregs, there is another reason for the SSG and the other elements of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment avoiding helping the Americans in their search for the dregs. The FATA has a large concentration of ex-servicemen and many of the tribals of the area have relatives serving in the military in the lower and middle ranks. They are generally known for their anti-Americanism and Musharraf does not want to provoke their anger by really helping the US in its search for the dregs. OP Snipe was mounted by the British Marine Commandoes to unearth the arms caches supposedly left behind by the dregs in the caves of Eastern Afghanistan. Brig. Roger Lane, who co-ordinated the operation, claimed to have discovered in the caves 22 truckloads of rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms and ammunition belonging to the dregs and destroyed them. He then made another claim that the war against the dregs was over on the Afghan side of the border. It turned out subsequently that the arms and ammunition destroyed by him did not belong to the dregs, but to the Pashtun supporters of Hamid Karzai, the head of the interim administration in Kabul, to whom the CIA had issued them when Karzai and his supporters were inducted into Eastern Afghanistan post-October, 2001. OP Condor involved a joint force of Australian and British commandoes. Following a reported ambush of the Australian commandoes by supposedly large numbers of the dregs, again in Eastern Afghanistan, the British rushed to their rescue and Brig. Lane claimed that a major battle was on in which 10 of the dregs had already been killed. The British Government had to suffer a serious embarrassment when it was found that the Australian and British commandoes were fighting not the Al Qaeda, but a group of Afghan expatriates from the West whom the CIA's covert action division had recruited, trained and infiltrated into Eastern Afghanistan to help the US in the hunt for the dregs. The British Government has since reportedly transferred Brig. Lane out of Afghanistan. All this while, bin Laden, Mulla Omar and the other dregs have been sitting safely in their sanctuaries in Pakistan and giving interviews and releasing video cassettes to tell the Americans that they are alive and kicking and that the world, particularly the USA, has not seen the last of them. They must be having a hearty laugh at the way Tricky Mush and their other Pakistani handlers have been sending the Americans on a wild goose chase under the pretense of assisting them in hunting for the dregs.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde at vsnl.com )
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