Michel's Commentary

by Michel Dresser

12/20/2001  888WebToday

The end of a war brings with it the problem of accounting for prisoners.  At the end of the Second World War., hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war were turned over to Stalin, to disappear into his prison camps forever.  At the end of the Korean War, peace negotiations almost broke up over the question of what to do with North Korean P.O.W.'s who did not want to be repatriated.  There are those who claim that there are still American service personnel Missing in Action in Vietnam.

So, it should not surprise us that we have a bit of a "prisoner problem" now in Pakistan. There are reports that at least 59 prisoners captured from the Taliban in Afghanistan are missing.  They were given to our Pakistani allies - and may have been released!

If so, it would be understandable, Pakistan is, like Afghanistan, a conservative Muslim country -- with many adherents of Osama's Wehhabi sect. There are doubtless many covert sympathizers in the Pakistani armed forces. We have been holding our breath from the very beginning, praying that our partnership with Pakistan does not collapse from internal pressure.

Pakistan is not only crawling with Taliban sympathizers, it is one of the most unstable nations on earth; and it has the atomic bomb!  The fear that the present regime, friendly to the USA, could fall, and be replaced by one willing to wage a Jihad against the West, has been a real and chilling fear.

Nor should we forget, that our internal allies within  Afghanistan are not great admirers of the American way of life.  They, too, are traditionalist Muslims whose main quarrel with the Taliban is not theological but ethnic. They have always resented the dominance of the Pushtun minority within the Taliban Party.  They are likely to give an interpretation of Muslim Shariah, or secondary law, that will prove almost as conservative as that of the Taliban.

Afghan women may no longer be forced to wear the burqua which covers their entire body except for the eyes.  They are still being required to wear the only slightly less restrictive chodor which covers the face with a veil. Women are now permitted out in the streets without a male relative as a chaperone -but any woman who spends the night outside her husband's roof is still subject to criminal prosecution.  All education remains in the hands of the local Mullah.  In short - a rigidly orthodox Muslim society, even without the Taliban.  Not the sort to welcome American suggestions on how to "modernize" things ...maybe even the sort to produce anti American terrorists in the future.

That is why the disappearance of those 59 prisoners of war is so unsettling. If our relationship with Pakistan breaks up, if Afghanistan - even after having been supposedly "liberated", remains hostile to the USA - then the War Against Terrorism may prove even longer and more bitter than we have feared.

And those are my thoughts....................
 
 

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