Descent Into Chaos

by Ahmed Rashid

  17 Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, London: Hurst and Co., 1998. Talbot offers the best discussion of the colonial era and the genesis of Pakistan’s territorial makeup.

  18 Pakistani sociologists Hamza Alvi and Eqbal Ahmad have termed the military and administrative institutions that Pakistan inherited and built on as “overdeveloped,” in comparison to civil society. Historian Khalid bin Sayeed has described the military’s ascendance as a continuation of the British “viceregal” tradition. Pakistan’s most prominent historian, Ayesha Jalal, describes in his book The State of Martial Law how as early as 1951 the growth of the military-bureaucratic apparatus stunted the development of democracy. Hamza Alavi, “Class and State,” in Hassan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid (editors), Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship, London: Zed Books, 1983. Also Eqbal Ahmad, Between Past and Future: Selected Essays on South Asia, edited by Dohra Ahmad, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004. Khalid bin Sayeed, Pakistan: The Formative Phase, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1983. Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Law: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defense, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991.

  19 In 2002 there were 138 million Muslims in India, or 12 percent of the total population of 1 billion people. The Muslim population is expected to rise to 150 million by 2005. India has the third largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. Syed Shahabuddin, “Muslim Indians in Census 2001,” Mainstream, New Delhi, October 23, 2004.

  20 Shahabuddin, “Muslim Indians.” Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan at Karachi, August 11, 1947. Jinnah went on to say, “Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

  21 Attempts to get Jinnah’s words back into the national agenda and school curricula have failed, even under Musharraf. On October 19, 2004, Minoo Bhandara, a Parsee member of the National Assembly, persuaded the assembly to adopt a resolution to include Jinnah’s words in the academic curricula, but the state media and the Education Ministry blacked out the resolution in case it annoyed the fundamentalists.

  22 Interview with Qazi Hussain Ahmed, www.newsline.com, April 2005.

  23 Just after Partition, West Pakistan’s population was 34 million, compared with 42 million in East Pakistan, or 56 percent of the total. In 1971 West Pakistan’s population had climbed to 65 million, while East Pakistan’s stood at over 70 million. East Pakistan’s population consisted of a majority of Bengalis, and was thus more homogenous than that of the western wing; it always constituted an overall majority. However, that did not prevent a denial of Bengali rights by rulers in the west, which led to secession. Today Pakistan is the seventh largest state in the world, with a population of 151 million.

  24 When U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles became the first high-level American official to visit Pakistan, in May 1953, the army’s commander in chief, General Ayub Khan, gave him a paper outlining a cold war version of the Great Game—that the Soviets were seeking access to the warm waters in the Persian Gulf and that the Pakistani army needed to be modernized by the United States in order to stop them. In fact, Ayub was seeking arms for the army to stand up to India. Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies, Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2001.

  25 BBC World Service, interview with Zia ul-Haq, April 15, 1978. Quoted in Omar Noman, The Political Economy of Pakistan, 1947-85, London: Kegal Paul International, 1988.

  26 Zia maintained that “we have no intention of leaving power till the accomplishment of our objectives of Islamization of the national polity . . . until then neither I will step down nor will let any one rise.” Hasan-Askari Rizvi, “Military, State and Society in Pakistan, ” press conference by Zia ul-Haq, Islamabad, March 22, 1982.

  27 I have outlined in much greater detail in my earlier book on the Taliban the ISI’s ability to enrich itself. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, London: I. B. Tauris, 2000. Published in the United States by Yale University Press.

  28 Ibid. See chapter 10 for a detailed description of this process.

  29 President George W. Bush was to do exactly the same in 2003, when he accepted without question the military’s pardon of nuclear scientist Dr. A. Q. Khan, who had sold nuclear technology to several countries.

  30 For a more detailed description of Zia’s aims and desire for strategic depth see my book Taliban. Also Diego Cordovez, and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

  31 See Rizvi, “Military, State, and Society.” In a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1997, it was charged that the ISI chief Lt.-Gen. Assad Durrani obtained 145 million rupees ($ 6.5 million) from a banker to fund IDA candidates, some journalists, and other IDA activities. The case is still undecided.

  32 The PPP won 93 seats, compared to the IDA’s 43 seats, out of a total of 207 elected seats in the National Assembly.

  33 Benazir Bhutto’s first term of government was from December 1988 to August 1990. Her second term was from October 1993 to November 1996. Nawaz Sharif’s first term was from December 1990 to May 1993, when he was dismissed as prime minister but reinstated by the Supreme Court (May 1993-July 1993), only to be dismissed again. His second term was from February 1997 to October 1999.

  34 Sharif’s Muslim League won 134 out of the 204 seats contested for the National Assembly, giving him a two-thirds majority, sufficient to amend the constitution at will. Since 1970, when voter turnout was 60 percent, it has steadily fallen. In the 1988 elections there was a 43 percent turnout; in 1990, 45 percent; in 1993, only 40 percent; and 1997, 32 percent.

  35 Several former army chiefs told me that they had always rejected an incursion into Kargil in the past because they knew full well that crossing the LOC would invite swift Indian reaction and an international outcry. “In the ten of years of insurgency we never allowed our troops to operate with the militants but now that taboo has been broken,” said one former army chief.

  36 The generals who knew about the plan were the chief of general staff Lt.-Gen. Mohammed Aziz; the corps commander of Rawalpindi Lt.-Gen. Mahmood Ahmad; the force commander northern areas Maj.-Gen. Javed Hassan; and the director, general operations, Maj.-Gen. Tauqir Zia. The head of the ISI, Lt.-Gen. Ziuddin Ahmad, was not fully informed of the operation because he was considered too close to Sharif.

  37 Alan Sipress and Thomas Ricks, “India, Pakistan Were Near Nuclear War in 1999,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2002.

  38 Ayaz Amir, “Core Issue,” Dawn, July 28, 2000.

  39 The commander of the Northern Light Infantry, Maj.-Gen. Javed Hasan, who had carried out the operation and considered himself a great intellectual, was promoted and appointed to head the National Defense College and later the Civil Service Staff College in Lahore. India set up a Kargil Review Committee, which issued a 2,200-page classified report to the government in February 2000. As a result, India ordered a complete review of its intelligence and security systems and admitted that Kargil had been a huge intelligence failure.

  40 “Kargil was a military success . . . diplomatically it highlighted Kashmir. It’s been in focus ever since. That was something the jihadis achieved,” said Musharraf. Isabel Hilton, “The General in his Labyrinth,” The New Yorker, August 12, 2002.

  41 Council of Foreign Relations, “Engaging India,” Speech by Strobe Talbott, New York, November 10, 2004.

  42 Clinton had no doubt about the ISI’s proximity to al Qaeda. “Pakistan supported the Taliban, and by extension, al Qaeda. The Pakistani intelligence service used some of the same camps that bin Laden and al Qaeda did to train the Taliban and insurgents who fought in Kashmir,” said Clinton. Bill Clinton, My Life, New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004.

  43 Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan’s Coup: Planting the Seeds of Democracy?” Current History, December 1999. Much of the follo
wing is based on my investigation of the Musharraf coup in 1999 for this article. An excellent blow-by-blow account of the coup is in Owen Bennett Jones’s Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

  44 Pervez Musharraf, speech to the nation, October 13, 1999.

  Chapter Three. The Chief Executive’s Schizophrenia: Pakistan, the United Nations, and the United States Before 9/11

  1 ABC television, Australia, documentary on Pakistan, interview by Mark Corcoran, February 2000.

  2 Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, New York Simon & Schuster, 2006.

  3 Ayeda Naqvi, “Hum dekhein gay,” interview with Musharraf, The Friday Times, Lahore, Pakistan, December 12, 1999.

  4 Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain, “Pakistan’s striving son,” Newsweek, January 22, 2002.

  5 My notes from Musharraf’s first press conference, Islamabad, November 1, 1999.

  6 George Polk, “Power Breakfast with Musharraf,” The Financial Times, January 25, 2006.

  7 After 9/11, I had the opportunity to meet many European prime ministers and foreign ministers, who all said they liked Musharraf at a personal level but had great qualms about his ability to deliver on policies and his inability to listen. “He should talk less and listen more,” one foreign minister said.

  8 Interview with Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Khushab, September 3, 2000.

  9 Interview with Amir ul-Azim, Lahore, July 13, 2000.

  10 Jeffrey Goldberg, “Inside Jihad,” The New York Times Magazine, June 25, 2000.

  11 Pervez Musharraf, speech to the nation, October 17, 1999. The aims and objectives of the military regime were to: (1) rebuild national confidence and morale; (2) strengthen the federation, remove interprovincial disharmony, and restore national cohesion; (3) revive the economy and restore investor confidence; (4) ensure law and order and dispense speedy justice; (5) carry out the depoliticization of state institutions; (6) devolve power to the grass-roots level; (7) and ensure swift and across-the-board accountability of all corrupt people.

  12 With a foreign debt of $32 billion, Pakistan was spending 90 percent of its revenue servicing interest repayments on its foreign debt and military expenditure. There was little left over for the social sector. Pakistan’s traditional growth rate of 6.0 percent in earlier decades had come down to under 4.0 percent in the 1990s. With a population growth rate at 2.8 percent a year, real growth was just over 1.0 percent—barely sufficient to provide jobs for a population of 160 million people. One third of the country’s industry was shut down and exports were collapsing.

  13 I attended several hearings of the case in Karachi. Sharif’s statement, personal record, Karachi, March 12, 2000.

  14 There was a constant reshuffling of judges hearing the case, and Sharif’s lawyer Iqbal Raad was shot dead in Karachi in March 2002 by unidentified gunmen. Sharif’s wife, Kulsoom, was charged with treason after making provocative speeches against the army. “His lawyer was assassinated, judges were changed, reports of witness tampering arose repeatedly, the bench complained about the indirect influence of intelligence agents who packed the courtroom, and basic rights protection were missing,” said Paula New-berg, an American legal expert.

  15 Ahmed Rashid, “Nearing High Noon,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 27, 2000.

  16 Inderfurth said, “Pakistan’s support to the Taliban, who harbor and protect Osama bin Laden, is of concern to us. We hope that Pakistan will take steps against such extremist groups, which carry out acts of violence inside Pakistan as well as in the region, including the Harkat ul-Ansar and Hizb ul-Mujahedin.” Transcript of press conference by Inderfurth, U.S. embassy, Islamabad, January 21, 2000.

  17 Interview with Ambassador William Milam, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2005.

  18 Independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks, public hearings, testimony of National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004.

  19 Bill Clinton, speech issued by U.S. embassy, Islamabad, March 25, 2004.

  20 Ahmed Rashid and Nayan Chanda, “Deadly Games in South Asia,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 6, 2000.

  21 Voice of America transcript, www.fas.org/news /pakistan/2000 /000502=pak1 .htm.

  22 Quoted in Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan’s Pashtun Policy in Afghanistan,” The Nation, July 13, 2000. Musharraf made the comment on May 25 in a press conference in Islamabad.

  23 Interview with Maj.-Gen. Ghulam Ahmad, May 15, 2000.

  24 On May 17, 2000, Musharraf went back on his promise to reform the blasphemy law, which allowed anyone to bring blasphemy charges against another person without proof. The law carried the death sentence. Musharraf’s promised reform was relatively mild—merely a procedural change—but General Aziz advised Musharraf to back down because it would annoy the fundamentalists.

  25 In April several leading clerics, including Maulana Fazlur Rehman, said that ministers such as Javed Jabbar were dangerous for Pakistan. Such comments were repeated by other clerics through the summer, and Musharraf failed to support his ministers. The governor of Sindh province, Azim Daudpota, resigned on May 24, citing differences with the corps commander of Karachi, Lt.-Gen. Muzaffar Usmani, whom he blamed for dominating decision making in the province. Mohammed Shafiq, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, resigned on August 13. Derek Cyprian, the minister for minorities affairs, resigned on August 16. In October, Shafqat Jamote, the minister for food and agriculture, resigned, as did Shafqat Mehmood, a key minister in Punjab province.

  26 Pakistan television, Musharraf’s speech to the nation, December 20, 2000.

  27 Ahmed Rashid, “The General’s New Power Play,” Far Eastern Economic Review, May 3, 2001.

  28 Ahmed Rashid, “Musharraf Appoints Deputy,” The Daily Telegraph, May 3, 2001. See also “Politicians Played Useless Innings: CE,” The News, Lahore, Pakistan, April 30, 2001.

  29 “CE Rules Out Army Role in Future Set Up,” The Nation, May 17, 2001.

  30 Musharraf said, “I personally think with all sincerity and honesty that I have a role to play in this nation. I have a job to do here and therefore I cannot and will not let the nation down.” Ahmed Rashid, “Coup Chief Makes Himself President,” The Daily Telegraph, June 21, 2001. Ihtashamul Haq, “Takeover in National Interest,” Dawn, June 20, 2001.

  31 Editorial, Dawn, June 21, 2001.

  32 Shaheen was replaced by Lt.-Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, the former head of military intelligence, who after 9/11 became head of the ISI and a key Musharraf adviser and ally.

  33 Interview with Musharraf’s adviser, who asked to remain unnamed, as he still holds a key post, Lahore, November 30, 2004.

  34 On March 1, 2001, the British issued a list banning twenty-one terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Harkat ul-Mujahedin, and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

  35 Private correspondence between Lakhdar Brahimi and the author, July 8, 1999.

  36 William Maley, Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan and the Taliban, London: Hurst and Co., 1998.

  37 Vendrell headed UNSMA, or the UN Special Mission to Afghanistan, while UNOCHA, or the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, was the economic and aid arm of the UN and run separately.

  38 In track two, each country was represented by three officials. Pakistan sent three retired generals, the United States three former State Department officials, including Karl Inderfurth, the former assistant secretary of state for South Asia. Russia sent Yuli Vorontsov, the former ambassador to the UN who had played a key role negotiating the Geneva Accords in 1998; while Iran’s team was headed by its former ambassador to the UN, Saeed Rajai Khorassani.

  39 Interview with Francesc Vendrell, Islamabad, March 1, 2006.

  40 Some of the points from the concept paper were: “Neither the Taliban nor the NA can bring peace and stability and are thus not the solution for Afghanistan. At the same time, neither can be wished away. At present, neither is in a position to achieve a military victory, nor woul
d they be allowed to by others. The Taliban as currently constituted are highly unlikely to be capable of real reform.” Concept paper, United Nations, 2001.

  41 Barnett Rubin, Ahmed Rashid, William Maley, Olivier Roy, and Ashraf Ghani, “Afghanistan: Reconstruction and Peacemaking in a Regional Framework,” paper originally prepared for the Swiss government but widely circulated among European governments, spring 2001.

  42 “The Situation in Afghanistan,” Report of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Afghanistan to the UN Security Council, New York, August 17, 2001. “The Security Council might wish to consider adopting a comprehensive approach to the settlement of Afghanistan, in its political, military, humanitarian, and human rights dimensions, setting forth the basic requirements for a settlement of the conflict and the principles on which it should be based, together with a coherent strategy to resolve the conflict . . . no military solution to the Afghan conflict is possible, desirable or indeed acceptable, that the pursuance of the conflict is futile since territorial gains achieved on the battlefield do not constitute the basis for the legitimization of power and that a piecemeal, as distinct from a step-by-step approach is unlikely to succeed.”

  43 Bill Clinton, My Life, New York: Knopf, 2004. The others were the Middle East, North Korea, and Iraq.

  44 Scott Shane, “2001 Memo to Rice Warned of al Qaeda and Offered Plan,” The New York Times, February 11, 2005. In 1998, Richard Clarke was elevated to become the national coordinator for counterterrorism with cabinet rank and a seat on the Principals Committee—an unusual position for a bureaucrat.

  45 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, London: HarperPress, 2007.

  46 Rocca had last dealt with Afghanistan in the early 1990s, when she had helped run a covert $70 million program to buy back Stinger missiles from the former Afghan Mujahedin.

  47 Bush went on to say, “The continued presence of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization is a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed. I believe al Qaeda also threatens Pakistan’s long-term interests.” Independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks, public hearings, testimony of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Washington, D.C., March 23, 2004.