...My Charlie Wilson War...

My Charlie Wilson War... by FATIMA BHUTTO


Why is the University of Texas naming a chair of Pakistan Studies after the notorious U.S. congressman who helped destabilize that country? Fatima Bhutto—niece of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—demands an answer.

Pakistan’s new government, the only in the world headed by two former convicts—who have their fingers on the button of a nuclear-armed state, no less—is nothing if not a keen purveyor of irony.

There’s currently an effort underway by the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Texas to raise funds for a chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The chair, a dream of the Pakistani diplomatic community, is to be named after Charlie Wilson. For those who missed the movie, it’s worth noting that of all the people to name a chair of Pakistani Studies after, Charlie Wilson is possibly the stupidest.

Why Pakistan would chose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans.
“Good-Time Charlie,” as Wilson was affectionately known by Afghan warlords and Texan socialites alike, has the dubious reputation of being the godfather of what would later be known as the Taliban in Afghanistan. (He was also buddies with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.) In the 1980s, Wilson led Congress into supporting the CIA covert operation aimed at funneling money and arms into Afghanistan through Pakistan’s military and secret services, the ISI. That money, it should be said, did not go to Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet’s communist invasion. No, it went to the mujahideen in the form of $17 million worth of anti-aircraft weapons, armaments, and other war toys. By the end of 1983, Wilson had managed to siphon $300 million of unused Pentagon cash to the Afghan mujahideen. Before they were the Taliban bad boys of the region, the mujahideen were one of Wilson’s pet projects. And now, Pakistan has decided to honor him by naming a chair of studies after him.

Personally, this is a source of great revulsion for me. My aunt, Benazir, and I never agreed on much, and though she's no longer alive to debate the point, my guess is that the idea of such a chair would be one more thing we'd not see eye to eye on—she had quite a different relationship with the Taliban than I do.

Why Pakistan would choose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans. According to the university’s newspaper, the Charlie Wilson Chair prompted several professors to send a letter to the dean questioning the naming of the chair. And the Pakistanis? The liberal arts development office at the university said that it “has not heard any concerns from the Pakistani community about the naming of the chair.”

Well if that’s the case, count me as the first. There’s no need to go back in history to find this choice outrageous. Wilson’s legacy remains omnipresent in Pakistan. Inspired by the success of its neighbors, Pakistan now has their very own Taliban (thank you, Charlie), and the ISI continues to exert its might over the country in a distinctly undemocratic way.
Before 2008 was over, Wilson’s boys, the Taliban, had trickled from Pakistan’s northern tribal borders into the heart of the country. They took over Peshawar, once a garden city known for its Buddhist heritage, and in December attacked the Peshawar Model School. The school, which offers co-education to approximately 12,000 of the city’s underprivileged girls and boys, had twelve of its school buses set afire, and a tightly packed set of dynamite detonated in the principal’s office. Several groundskeepers and staff were critically wounded by the explosion and the school was forced to shut down for several days.

But that’s nothing compared to the militants’ hold on the northern city of Swat, the site of a violent civil war that the militants are considered to have won over the past year. The Taliban has set a January 15 deadline in Swat for girls to stop attending school. The choice given to Swat’s parents: take your girls out of school voluntarily, or face Taliban-style justice. Young schoolgirls have already been attacked, a warning of what’s to come should the city continue with its dastardly plan to educate girls...