Shortly after the US declared eternal war on international terrorism and "evil-doers," US foreign policy began to work its magic. Which is to say, kept doing pretty much what it had been doing all along, only more of it, and with more fervor, and with a lot more money.

"With us or against us" bore only incidental resemblance to actual policy. Apiece of political theater for the home front, it was promptly ignored by the State Department.

In reality, the balance of with vs. against is calculated, as usual, based on how much bully power the US can exert (without disrupting the useful interests of patrons and proxies), and how politically useful one or the other label is any particular case.

These are the calculations that create terrorist groups in the first place. But it was a great speech nevertheless.

Pakistan, the Taliban's neighbor and military patron, had been, along with its rival India, under US sanctions since they exploded competing nuclear test bombs in 1998. Pakistan is one of only three nations to ever recognize the Taliban government (along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). The former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's elected head of state, was overthrown in a military coup in October 1999 and the country has since been under harsh military rule. Pakistan's military and Intelligence Service has for years been recruiting and training Taliban "jihadi" terrorists that it sends into India as part of the two nations' long simmering war over the Kashmir region.

When lining up the arrays of with us and against us, Pakistan's military government, and any of "some 60 countries," would seemingly be on the receiving end of the impatient displeasure of the USA.

That's not likely. Instead, we've attacked the Taliban. Pakistan is being rewarded, not only with the lifting of sanctions. "It is important to the security interests of the United States to furnish up to $50 million for Pakistan," said a George Bush memo to Colin Powell recently. Other economic considerations include rescheduled loans and trade concessions. The IMF and everybody else promise that this time the money will benefit the people and not buy military hardware and corrupt politicians.

Pakistan will also have a strong say in the composition of Afghanistan's imminent next government.

In the 1980s, as the Afghan resistance fought Soviet occupation, Pakistan became the United States' key conduit for supporting the Mujahideen. The CIA worked closely with their colleagues in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, to train, arm and provide logistical support to the Mujahideen.

The US presence was preceded by Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations and interests, in official and unofficial efforts, with motives ranging from authentic solidarity to pan-Islamic ideologies to protecting and pursuing business interests. The US was concerned with the threat to Pakistan and the Mideast posed by a USSR-dominated Afghanistan. Once the USSR withdrew, the US was also concerned that the replacement regime be unfriendly with Iran.

Saudi Arabia funded and Pakistan created and nurtured the Taliban as their own faction in Afghanistan's fractious "nation (re)building." The US smiled, approved, and lent tacit support. As the (London) Independent said, upon the Taliban's ascendance in 1996: "In many ways, the Taliban might be more acceptable to Islamabad and even to Washington than they are to the majority of Afghans."

The Taliban, with Pakistani military aid, soon controlled most of Afghanistan. They were initially welcomed by many Afghans simply because they brought an end to the fighting and the mass rape indulged in by several fighting factions, including some now in the Northern Alliance. The US government welcomed the Taliban as well. "Diplomats in Islamabad and New Delhi said that the Americans are not displeased by the Taliban conquest of Kabul, despite the refusal of the militia's ruling six-man council to behave according to the minimum acceptable norms on human rights."

The Taliban was considered useful to the US "in preventing the spread of Islamic revolution from neighboring Iran, since Kabul's new lords belong to the Sunni sect and consider the Shia of Iran to be little better than heretics." Iran's ruling clerics, however, say they are less concerned with the Taliban being Sunni than that their primitive ideas and practices give Islam a bad name. Iran is also alarmed over the Taliban massacres of Afghan Shias and ethnic Persians.

The US in 1996 considered the Taliban not only an "ally" in the War on Drugs, but as a bulwark against international terrorism. Barnett Rubin, the Afghanistan expert at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, told Time in October, 1996, "The Taliban do not have any links to Islam's international radicals. In fact, they hate them."

The Independent reported that the Clinton Administration was counting on the "20,000-strong Taliban militia to also deal harshly with the various Islamic revolutionaries and terrorists, from the Middle East, the Gulf and even Chechnya, who have been using Afghanistan as a sanctuary and arms bazaar."

Instead, the Taliban, with Pakistani support, fought the coalition army arrayed under the flag of the UN-recognized government. This coalition is very friendly with India, which provides close support and advice. Pakistan is strongly opposed to strong influence of the coalition in a future Afghan government, which it sees as leaving Pakistan isolated and surrounded.

Pakistan, meanwhile, used the Taliban to support its long simmering war with India over disputed Kashmir. The Taliban provide jihadis anxious to, according to one jihadi recruitment ad, conduct holy war "at all costs and in all seasons, against Israel, India, US, Russia, UK, and Serbia." These Jihadis are trained in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistani intelligence smuggles them into India to conduct military assaults, terrorist bombings, and massacres of Indian civilians.

India has long complained of this activity, especially whenever the US makes loud noises about the evil Taliban. One such group operating openly from Pakistan, the Harkat ul Mujahadin, was behind the kidnapping and murder of six western tourists, including one American, in Kashmir, in 1995.

But the US, mindful of Pakistan's useful yet precarious position, has always been careful to not say anything unhelpful about Pakistan's position on Kashmir.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Harkat ul Mujhadin was the only Pakistani-backed Kashmiri militant group whose assets the US requested frozen. The group says they have no assets.

"I'm happy and satisfied. This clearly shows the United States has made a difference between terrorism and the Kashmir freedom struggle," Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a leader of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, said regarding the current US position. The Conference is the umbrella group uniting most of Kashmir's Pakistan-based militant groups.

Pakistan, impoverished, with a small national economy and widespread instability, relies on Kashmir for more than just expanded national territory. The liberation of Kashmir is a patriotic rallying cry in Pakistan. It's a symbol of unity against its giant and diverse neighbor, India. While there is popular dissent against New Delhi's treatment of Kashmir, whether a majority there wish to leave the relatively stable and prosperous India to join Pakistan seems open to question.

The Petro-Connection

The US has smiled benignly on terror in Kashmir and Pakistan's thuggish and corrupt military leaders, because fractured, chaotic Pakistan could dangerously threaten US interests in the region. Among that constellation of interests is a long planned pipeline for natural gas. California Petrogiant Unocal heads up a consortium that wants to build a pipeline for Turkmenistan's natural-gas, across Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Iran has a competing proposal with more advantageous geography, but less advantage to the US economy.

Business Week reported in October, 1996 that "Unocal Vice-President Marty F. Miller recently told the US Senate he's concerned that Iran, which wants to sell gas to Pakistan and has a competing pipeline in the works, will 'promote conflict in order to advance their own economic interests.' Still, senior Unocal execs in Islamabad hope the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan will bring stability."

Following the bombing of the US embassies in East Africa in 1998, the US launched cruise missiles at Taliban training camps near Khost, Afghanistan, in an attempt to kill bin Laden, the identified perpetrator. The targets were provided to the US by Pakistan, who reportedly disclosed bin Laden was attending a "terrorist summit" at one of the camps.

Pakistan's military had precise knowledge about these camps and their activities because it built and supplied them. Pakistan also, it is widely suspected, told the Taliban of the impending strike and the camps were evacuated.

The United States later reportedly trained twenty Pakistani soldiers for a mission to assassinate bin Laden. The plan was shelved after the military took power in 1999.

Having fostered widespread domestic support for the Taliban, Pakistan's military is now threatened with massive popular unrest should they act too openly on behalf of the United States. Nationalist military officers are also concerned with the appearance of kowtowing to the US. The citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan have remained the main and ongoing recipients of Pakistan military and Taliban-sponsored terrorism. The US, in bombing one sponsor of terror and rewarding the other, continues to find both of them useful props in launching its infinite war.