South Africa's refusal to side with the US in the conflict in Afghanistan came close to setting the country on a diplomatic collision course with the super-power. A terse communique among the nearly 80,000 secret documents posted on the internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks records the threat of severe diplomatic sanctions against South Africa for being allegedly remiss in supporting the US in its wars against international jihadists.Dated May 3, 2007, the communique, posted by the American embassy in Ottawa, details an approach made by the US government to Canada to force South Africa to clamp downon fundraising inside the country for Aghanistan's Taliban. What the US proposes, as recorded in the communique, is nothing less than a joint demarche - a strong rebuke - to force the South Africans to get into line, and it seeks Canadian backup.
No follow-up is recorded in the massive bundle of documents and it remains unclear whether the threat went any further. Indeed, a source close to the Canadian diplomatic corps contacted by Weekend Argus said it appeared unlikely any action resulted. The source pointed out that the Canadian response to the grandstanding request was guarded, to say the least.
| My response to the journalistic grandstanding involved in the last sentence will be guarded as well, to say the least. |
| The narrative that clever Canadians successfully foiled arrogant Yankee grandstanding is certainly putting a thrill up someone's leg. |
Usually fronted by then deputy foreign affairs minister Aziz Pahad and pro-Palestinian intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, the South Africans had, since 1994, nurtured a neutral stance on US foreign policy wars in the Middle East and south Asia. Co-operative structures between the US and their European allies on one side and the SA National Intelligence Agency had fallen into disuse - despite mounting evidence that South Africa was being used as a safe haven by allies and possibly operatives of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah and other organisations internationally proscribed by the US-led alliance.
In particular the SA government had declined to act against organisations styling themselves as charitable and relief NGOs, which US intelligence claimed served as covert funding agencies and support networks for terror groups. One of the most prominent of these was the Fordsburg-based Al Aqsa Foundation, led by cousins Junaid and Moulana Farhad Docrat. Though the Docrats and the Al Aqsa Foundation were included in the US Specially Designated Nationals blacklist by 2007, the foundation continued to be registered as a legitimate charity with the SA Department of Social Development - and was thus in a position to move foreign exchange via the Reserve Bank.
While the major accusation against the foundation was over support for Hamas, it also hosted a series of religious speakers linked to the Taliban on international fundraising missions. Among these was Mufti Mizamuddin Shamzai, a proponent of international jihad and one of the godfathers of Afghanistan's Taliban. Shamzai was also associated with what amounted to the spiritual hijacking of the venerable Deobandi movement from its opposition to violent jihad, to becoming one of the key allies on the global stage of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda. When Shamzai was assassinated in 2004, SA sympathisers reportedly donated R500,000 to his heirs.