George Bush’s game-plan for terrorism has had its bizarre moments: stalling on the 9-11 investigation was one; standing up Osama to tango with Saddam was another. But when, on 18  March 2004,  Secretary Powell made Pakistan a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA), a status also shared  by Japan, Australia, New Zealand,  Israel, and Egypt, we enter the world of Mad Hatters, Red Queens, and vanishing Cheshire cats.

Pakistan’s Musharraf is being rewarded for his help in investigating the leak of nuclear secrets by top scientist, A. Q. Khan, to Libya, Iran, and North Korea, despite a good chance that Musharraf knew, turned a blind eye, and has therefore pardoned Khan. The MNNA status brings a few plums with it – Pakistan gets to store US-owned military stockpiles outside US bases, gets easier terms and priority on defense purchases, and becomes eligible to buy depleted uranium ammunition.

A rather tidy deal for a country which, since its creation in 1947 has been front and center in the lurid annals of terrorism. In a 1998 interview, National Security Advisor Brzezinski admitted that the CIA, using Saudi money, and working through Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), destabilized the pro-Soviet Afghan government deliberately to provoke an invasion that would lead to a Soviet Vietnam. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. channeled some 40 billion dollars through the ISI to mujahedeen fighters from all over the world. Unaware of this, they believed that they were fighting a jihad against godless communism. Osama Bin Laden, with his Saudi royal ties, fit the ISI bill exactly for a Saudi connection that would ensure royal money flowing in. Meanwhile, the rebels’ drug trafficking was tacitly sanctioned, the funds going to sponsor madrassas and military training. No wonder then that former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto had warned that, in funding the Islamic freedom fighters, the U.S. was creating a Frankenstein monster.

But the ISI’s terrorist ties are even more blatant:  Pakistan’s Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) funds financed practically every major terrorist network in the world; Saeed Sheikh, a central figure in the financing of 9/11, was earlier trained and defended by the ISI; the Taliban was midwifed by the ISI and therefore indirectly by the CIA;  ISI head, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed was linked to the wiring of 100,000 dollars to Mohammed Atta, one of the WTC bombers prior to 9/11, and met top US government officials both before and after the attack.

All this is a matter of public record. So, a theocratic military government that even the US government admits sponsors terrorism is now its ally, and the press has nothing to say about it.

Afghanistan is only the best known of Pakistan’s terrorist credentials. Pakistan was involved in terrorism much before that, beginning with the bankrolling of insurgency in Kashmir soon after its ruler acceded to India in 1947. Democratic India has had Muslims in high office, but Pakistan, in the hands of  corrupt military juntas since the late 50’s, is a theocracy, run by a well-heeled minority for whom war is a lucrative business and where madrassas churn out generations of jihadists who can supply the common fodder for that war. Suffering from paranoia about its more powerful neighbor, the Pakistani junta has been inciting insurrection in India for quite some time using the same tactics that it used in dismembering Soviet central Asia.

After pro-India Bangladesh leader Mujibur Rehman was killed, Bangladeshi intelligence started receiving  ISI help to foment trouble across its eastern border with India.  In the 1980’s, the ISI was involved in funding Sikh fundamentalists fighting to dismember the Punjab.  In these brazen politics, religious fundamentalists, Sikh or Muslim, are cannon fodder to achieve military objectives.

What are we missing here? Could it be that the Bush government is not interested in pursuing the terrorist threat, but in covering up its own complicity with the ISI in creating the threat in the first place? Or is this part of another “great game” being played by the U.S. and the U.K. for control of the oil and gas in Central Asia, from where fuel can be piped to the vast Asian market? In this game the control of Afghanistan, through which the most viable pipe line runs, is paramount. Otherwise, what are we to make of the US courting Pakistan but downgrading India, a country which has been democratic and secular, since its inception and has been actively fighting terrorism for much longer than the US?