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Bodansky Rips Off Benazir's Ideological Purdah

A P Kamath in Washington

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto gets high marks for double-speak and hypocrisy from Yossef Bodansky, a leading expert on Islamic fundamentalism, and author of the recently published explosive book, Bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden, the man who has declared war on America, Bodansky told rediff.com in an exclusive interview this week, has thrived in his jihad (Islamic holy war) to a great extent because of the support he has received from Pakistan.

While the Pakistani rulers pretend to help America in its efforts to nab bin Laden, the billionaire-turned-Islamic revolutionary, they actively work with their Inter-Services Intelligence to safeguard and shore him up. "He is the security blanket" for Pakistan, Bodansky, director of the House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, argues passionately.

When Washington suspected Bhutto's close links with bin Laden and other Islamists, she used shocking deceptive tactics to safeguard her relationship with America, Bodansky asserts.

Like other Pakistani rulers, Bhutto dreams of making Pakistan the strongest country among Islamic nations, he says. She pretends to be a friend of the West and an opponent of fundamentalism, but if fundamentalism could help her stay in power and hit against India, she would quietly support it.

But she would also sacrifice her own people in order to live a lie, so that she could win favours from Washington.

Bodansky cites in his book an Islamist coup that was narrowly averted in September 1995 as an example of Bhutto's duplicity.

Brigadier Mustansir Billah and a colonel in civilian clothes were intercepted on September 26 at the border with Afghanistan with a car full of AK-type assault rifles and other weapons. The investigation led to Major General Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former senior ISI officer. According to official versions, the top officers, along with other lower-ranking officers, were getting ready to eliminate the high command and declare Pakistan an Islamic state.

In reality, the "coup" was a set-up, a purge of past or current ISI officers who had actively sponsored terrorism against America. "They were deeply and directly involved in Kashmir operations too," Bodansky says with authority, speaking in a blend of Israeli and American accents.

If Abbasi and Billah wanted weapons, they could have found them in the stockpiles of the Kashmiri terrorists on Pakistani soil rather than trying to smuggle them from Afghanistan, he argues.

So why the drama?

Bodansky reveals that Bhutto and her cohorts had realised that as a result of the intense interrogation of Ramzi Ahmad Youssuf and others connected with the World Trade Centre bombing in New York, Washington was likely to learn the extent of the ISI officers' involvement in Islamist terrorism.

Washington had sent many investigators to Pakistan to study the involvement of ISI officers in the fundamentalist movements and militias.

"To maintain deniability to Bhutto, the ISI officers most likely to be implicated had to be sacrificed," he notes.

But why were the officers charged with a coup?

Bhutto could not have tried a more effective drama, Bodansky argues. "Since Bhutto had insisted repeatedly, even while at the White House in April 1995, that Pakistan was not involved in sponsoring terrorism, the purge could not be related to the 'discovery' of say, 'rogue elements' in the ISI who were involved in international terrorism," he notes. "Hence the arrest of the officers for plotting a coup."

Many Pakistanis and certainly Washington did come to know of Bhutto's dirty tricks, but Washington could not bring itself to confront her vigorously.

Some of the ISI and military officers thought, meanwhile, that Pakistan could afford to defy Washington and the "coup" be put to rest and the purged officers released.

Some of the officers were released to placate the Opposition, Bodansky notes, and they plunged into the operations in Kashmir.

Bhutto would soon face the wrath of Islamists who accused her of being an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and slammed her for the alleged betrayal of jihad in Kashmir.

Despite her desire to use Islamists and their benefactors in the ISI to humiliate India in Kashmir and offer a hypocritical face to America, she began to face more hostility from radical Muslims.

The explosion at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad was one of the many warnings she received for sacrificing ISI officers to safeguard her own interests.

The Islamists in Pakistan, supported by fellow radicals in Afghanistan and the Arab countries, were ready for more striking terrorists operations in the coming year.

"And they will continue to do so," Bodansky says. "Unless the West and the rest of the world stands together and isolates such countries as Pakistan."

Too much of attention is being paid to the Taliban and Afghanistan being the breeding ground for international terrorism, Bodansky feels.

"But Pakistan certainly backs terrorism," he asserts. The backing is not confined to Kashmir alone, he adds.

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