A documentary broadcast Sunday evening on France 5 looks at the history of this complex country, which occupies a determining place in the destiny of the West.
It is difficult to define Pakistan and identify its role on the international scene, as its history is murky, its politics unstable and its motivations obscure. This young nation, born in 1947 after the partition of India, which has 232 million inhabitants, the majority of whom are Muslims, has nevertheless acquired over time a major influence on the global geopolitical terrain. “It’s a country that matters. It has nuclear weapons. It has a great capacity to do good and evil,” explains Robert Grenier, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1999 to 2002, in a documentary entitled Pakistan, our best enemy, directed by Jean-Pierre Canet and broadcast Sunday November 19 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5.
The film notably retraces the tumultuous political history, shaken by tireless internal struggles between ethnic groups, returns to the conflict which opposes it to India but also to the instrumentalization of Islam by its army. He thus deciphers his privileged links with the United States, which uses Pakistan as a bulwark against communism with large amounts of dollars and military equipment. Means which will initially be used to finance the Afghan Taliban in their fight against the Soviets in the 1980s, but which will also allow the development of other terrorist groups. Pakistan has over time become the nerve center of international terrorism with the approval of its leaders. A country where fighters from around the world will come to train in jihad, as the documentary precisely explains.
The birthplace of international jihad
One of these fighters, now repentant, testifies openly. David Vallat was the first Frenchman to have been trained in jihad by Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization founded by Bin Laden. After an adolescence punctuated by various thefts in the early 1980s, he became interested in religion and converted to Islam at the age of 15. At the time, anger is brewing in many French suburbs “who dream of social justice”.
“What we aspired to was the right to indifference and we wanted access to the dignity and responsibilities that citizenship confers. (…) We were relegated to a category: ‘the Arabs’. ( …) This is where the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, who felt that there was something to recover from this anger, rushed in.”
David Vallat, former jihadist
in the documentary “Pakistan, our best enemy”
David Vallat decided to go to Pakistan in 1994 to train in jihad. Everything is done for welcome these future fighters to Peshawar, a city at the heart of Islamist indoctrination. “There is the house of martyrs, who are destined for the international scene, describes David Vallat. Candidates from any country can come, and there is the Algerian house (…) You leave your passport, they send you to train in Afghanistan, you come back to these houses and you return to your country.”
Pakistan’s double game
David Vallat will stay nine months in these military training camps created by Bin Laden. At the time, he witnessed the proliferation of Koranic schools called madrassas in Pakistan. An exploitation of religion whose objective is to shape the terrorists of tomorrow. Still in the name of Islam, Pakistan and its powerful secret services called ISI continue to protect the Taliban, allow paramilitary groups to proliferate and provide logistical support to numerous radical terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, behind which the authorities are hiding in order to fight the Indian army. But these jihadists will also begin to commit attacks against civilians, as in Bombay in November 2008.
Pakistan main supporter of terrorism
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These increasingly radicalized jihadists decide to strike beyond India’s borders. They decide to target the West under the rule of Bin Laden, supported by the Taliban. “In 1993, there was an attempted attack (at the World Trade Center) led by Ramzi Youssef, recalls David Vallat. (…) The Twin Towers were already a goal. We were given feedback on the reasons why his attack had failed.” David Vallat then meets engineers and technicians, who will work with precision to develop a particularly devastating attack. They will reach their goal on September 11, 2001.
The United States, under the presidency of George W. Bush, decides to attack Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, with the support of Pakistan. “When we attacked Afghanistan after September 11, we chose the wrong enemy. The enemy was neither Afghanistan nor the Taliban. The real enemy was Pakistan. But it was not possible to bomb Pakistan”, says exiled Pakistani journalist Arif Amal, a specialist in Pakistani radical groups, in the documentary. On May 2, 2011, the American army will launch a raid to eliminate Bin Laden who had taken up residence in Abbottabad, a city in northern Pakistan.
The documentary Pakistan, our best enemy, directed by Jean-Pierre Canet, is broadcast Sunday November 19 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5 and available on the francetv.fr platform.
