Descent Into Chaos

by Ahmed Rashid

  48 Interview with Abdul Sattar, Islamabad, September 20, 2004.

  49 Independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks, public hearings, testimony of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Washington, D.C., April 8, 2004.

  50 “Interview with Richard Armitage,” The Nation, June 18, 2001. The interview, which was lifted from an unnamed Indian newspaper, was conducted by Indian journalist Malini Parthasarathy.

  51 “Pakistan Not Sponsoring Terrorism Says US,” Dawn, August 18, 2001.

  52 Independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks, public hearings, testimony of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Washington, D.C., April 8, 2004.

  53 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

  54 The 9 /11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

  55 Coll, Ghost Wars.

  56 The deputies developed formal policy papers, which they discussed in three subsequent meetings in June and July. Independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks, staff text of events, Washington, D.C., March 2004.

  57 I talked to several State Department and National Security Council officials about the April 30 meeting when I visited Washington, D.C., in July 2001. I met with Zalmay Khalilzad, the National Security Council director for Afghanistan and South Asia, on July 5, 2001.

  58 Interview with Khalilzad, July 5, 2001.

  59 “Musharraf Condemns UN Sanctions,” Dawn, August 20, 2001, report from Moscow on Musharraf’s interview to Russian newspaper Kommersant.

  60 The 9 /11 Commission Report. See also Bob Woodward, Bush at War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

  Chapter Four. Attack! Retaliation and Invasion

  1 Gen. Tommy Franks, with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, New York: Regan Books, 2004.

  2 See Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9 /11, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

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

  4 Bob Woodward, Bush at War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

  5 One e-mail read, “US citizenship required for SECRET level security clearances, positions are also available for non-US citizens. . . . Positions available for language instructors, interpreters, translators, analysts, human intelligence, area experts, liaison elements, transcription technicians and interceptors. Current or previous security clearance highly desirable.”

  6 Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a former lecturer at Kabul University, was jailed after the communist coup in 1978, then released. He fled to Saudi Arabia. When he returned to Peshawar he set up the Ittehad-e-Islami party with Saudi funding. He set up a jihad university and hospital in Peshawar and was a close friend of Osama bin Laden. Sayyaf was the leading Wahhabi warlord in Afghanistan but rejected the Taliban and joined with the NA. After the defeat of the Taliban he remained at his base in Paghman, outside Kabul, from where he terrorized the local population. He was cultivated and funded by the CIA.

  7 Franks, American Soldier.

  8 Julian Borger, “Blogger Bares Rumsfeld’s Post 9/11 Orders,” The Guardian, February 24, 2006.

  9 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, New York: Free Press, 2004.

  10 Wolfowitz raised the idea of attacking Iraq at the first full cabinet meeting after 9/11, at Camp David. See Woodward, Bush at War. Also Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right, New York: Times Books, 2005.

  11 Woodward, Bush at War.

  12 Quoted in Franks, American Soldier.

  13 George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.

  14 John Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, London: The Free Press, 2003.

  15 The United States continued to play a little-noticed role in monitoring the huge Soviet-era nuclear industry in Central Asia, which included active research reactors, uranium mines, and nuclear waste dumps. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also hosted major chemical and biological warfare facilities.

  16 Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

  17 Ahmed Rashid, “US Builds Alliances in Central Asia,” Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1, 2000.

  18 Agence France-Presse, “Uzbekistan Not to Allow Use of Land Bases,” Tashkent, October 5, 2001.

  19 Agence France-Presse, “US, Uzbekistan Reach Agreement on Bases,” Washington, D.C., October 12, 2001.

  20 The figures come from Alexander Cooley, “Base Politics,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 2005. See also Robert Rand, Tamerlane’s Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan, Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.

  21 In his more lucid moments, Zahir Shah would regale visiting American diplomats with stories of the last U.S. presidential visit to Kabul, on December 9, 1959, when Dwight Eisenhower arrived in Kabul on a daylong visit. The king’s memory was perfect about the past, but details related to recent events were not so forthcoming.

  22 In the weeks before the war started, deliberate ISI leaks encouraged the U.S. media to write about Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil as being a leader of the moderates one day, while the next day it would be Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of bin Laden’s closest associates, who had been on the ISI payroll since the early 1980s.

  23 Agence France-Presse, “Who Are Moderate Taliban,” The Nation, October 19, 2001.

  24 Reuters, “Musharraf Keen to End Campaign Soon,” The Nation, October 30, 2001.

  25 See Franks, American Soldier. Phase one: Set conditions and build forces to provide the National Command Authority with credible military options. This involved laying the groundwork for the operation and arranging basing rights. Phase two: Conduct initial combat operations and continue to set conditions for follow-on operations. This involved the bombing campaign and infiltrating in Special Forces units. Phase three: Conduct decisive combat operations in Afghanistan, continue to build coalition and conduct operations across the area of operations. This involved defeating the enemy and bringing in American troops to eliminate pockets of resistance. Phase four: Establish capability of coalition partners to prevent the reemergence of terrorism and provide support for humanitarian assistance projects. This would stretch for a three- to five-year period and would involve limited reconstruction.

  26 Ahmed Rashid, “A Path Paved with Pitfalls,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 4, 2001.

  27 Ahmed Rashid, “The War Starts Here,” Far Eastern Economic Review, September 27, 2001.

  28 James Traub, The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006.

  29 Agence France-Presse, “Powell Weighs Afghan Peacekeeping Option,” Washington, D.C., October 22, 2001.

  30 Interview with Lakhdar Brahimi, Paris, April 26, 2006. A year later Powell apologized and said he had been wrong, telling Brahimi that now he had another message for him: “Well done, well done, well done.”

  31 Gary Berntsen, Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and al Qaeda, New York: Crown, 2005.

  32 Ahmed Rashid, “Intelligence Team Defied Musharraf to Help Taliban,” The Daily Telegraph, October 10, 2001.

  33 Indian intelligence had leaked information that Omar Sheik, a Pakistani extremist who was later found guilty of murdering Daniel Pearl, had wired one hundred thousand dollars to Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, at the instigation of General Ahmad. This so-called larger conspiracy was never investigated by the 9/11 Commission, indicating that it was nothing more than an Indian petard. The story first appeared in The Times of Indi
a in an article by Manok Joshi, “Shocking ISI leak,” October 10, 2001. It was then picked up by the rest of the Indian press.

  34 Ashraf Ghani, “The Folly of Quick Action in Afghanistan,” The Financial Times, September 27, 2001.

  35 Lt.-General Aziz became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, with the rank of full general. Although his new job was largely ceremonial, as he had no troops to command, he had the job of helping the Americans set up their bases in Pakistan.

  36 Ahmed Rashid, “Easy to Start, Hard to Finish,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 18, 2001.

  37 The Taliban and al Qaeda had used Chechen heroin smuggling networks, which extended to Russia and Eastern Europe, to expand their control of the drug trade. High-ranking Chechen rebel leaders had sent their families to Afghanistan to escape the Russian crackdown in their homeland. In 2000, as the Taliban attempted to improve relations with China through the intercession of Pakistan, the Taliban moved the Uighur fighters from front lines outside Kabul to the north, to join up with the IMU. The Taliban then denied to the Chinese that they were enlisting Uighur militants.

  Chapter Five. The Search for a Settlement: Afghanistan and Pakistan at Odds

  1 Interview with Hamid Karzai over satellite telephone, November 11, 2001. See Ahmed Rashid, “Hamid Karzai Escapes Taliban Encirclement,” The Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2001. I spoke to him several times in the weeks ahead.

  2 Interview with senior U.S. intelligence official, Washington, D.C., February 2005.

  3 Interviews with senior aides to Musharraf and Pakistani diplomats present at the meeting, January 2002. See also James Carney, “Inside the War Room,” Time, January 7, 2002.

  4 Kamran Khan, “Kabul Fall Is Pak’s Strategic Debacle,” The News, January 14, 2001.

  5 These militias belonged to Maulvi Younis Khalis, a former Mujahedin commander from the Soviet war era, Hazrat Ali, an NA commander, and Commander Mohammed Zaman, who had arrived from Peshawar.

  6 His relatives included Hedayat Amin Arsala, who was in the king’s camp while his elder brother Haji Abdul Qadir was one of the few Pashtun leaders in the Northern Alliance. Arsala would become vice president, and Qadir the governor of Nangarhar province before he was assassinated in 2003.

  7 Rumsfeld had told NBC television on September 30 that “there is no question but that there are any number of people in Afghanistan, tribes in the south, the Northern Alliance in the north, that oppose the Taliban. We need to recognize the value they bring to this anti-terrorist, anti-Taliban effort and, where appropriate, find ways to assist them.”

  8 Gary Schroen, the CIA agent who led the CIA team into the Panjsher Valley, says that he was constantly resisting the complacent attitude of the CIA office in Islamabad. Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. The CIA station chief in Islamabad was Robert Grenier, the man who went to Quetta to meet with Mullah Usmani. He had remained undercover most of his life, until his cover was blown in February 2006, when it was reported that Grenier was removed as head of the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA. Greg Miller, “Top CIA Spy Removed,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2006.

  9 The Ritchie brothers were motivated by their love for Afghanistan, where they grew up and where their father had taught civil engineering before he died in a car crash in 1978. Their mother continued to work for Afghan charities. The Ritchies were joined by former national security advisor Robert C. McFarlane, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal and now an energy consultant. The Ritchie brothers lobbied hard to provide Haq with U.S. funds and support. They had personally donated funds to the office of Zahir Shah in Rome. The Ritchies’ presence in Peshawar made the ISI even more suspicious of Haq’s agenda.

  10 Ahmed Rashid, “Abdul Haq Buried,” The Daily Telegraph, October 29, 2001. See also Ahmed Rashid, “A Difficult War,” Far Eastern Economic Review, November 8, 2001.

  11 Franks, American Soldier.

  12 The extent of Pakistan’s support to Operation Enduring Freedom was inadvertently advertised by the CENTCOM Web site in May 2003, information that was swiftly taken down when the Pakistan government protested at the revelation of what were secret agreements with the United States. Some 330 vehicles, 1,350 tons of equipment, and 8,000 marines were off-loaded by the Americans on Pasni beach and flown directly to Kandahar in November.

  13 TNSM was founded in 1989 to introduce Sharia law in Pakistan’s far northwest corner. The TNSM had led protests in 1990 and had provided manpower to the Taliban since 1994. In Dir, Swat, and Chitral the mullahs were supported by the timber- and car-smuggling mafia, which had profited hugely from the lack of government controls. There were protests against and shootouts with the army in 1994, and again in April 2001. I am grateful to Khalid Ahmad for his articles in The Friday Times on the origins of the TNSM. For a brief history of the movement, see Muhammad Amir Rana, A to Z of Jihadi Organizations in Pakistan, Lahore: Mashal Books, 2004.

  14 The ICRC sent démarches to the United States and its Coalition partners demanding that humanitarian principles be observed for prisoners who surrendered at Kunduz. A public ICRC statement on November 23, 2001, expressed concern about the rights of captured foreign fighters because of reports “in some parts of the country that no prisoners would be taken.” The ICRC urges that “a fighter who clearly indicates his intention to surrender to an enemy is no longer a legitimate target according to rules of war.”

  15 “We are not interested in having a large, long-term presence of any kind or managing POWs, but clearly we would be interested in interrogating the prisoners,” said an American official. “We are looking for as limited a role as possible, with as much access to the prisoners as we can,” he added. Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall, “Pakistanis Again Said to Evacuate Allies of Taliban,” The New York Times, November 23, 2001.

  16 Ibid.

  17 “Efforts on for Pak Evacuation from Kunduz,” The News, November 24, 2001.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Masood Haider, “No Pakistani Jets Flew into Afghanistan Says US,” Dawn, December 2, 2001.

  20 Seymour Hersh, “The Getaway,” The New Yorker, January 28, 2002.

  21 My conversation with the first U.S. official took place in February 2005 in Washington; I spoke with the other through e-mails, in 2006.

  22 "U.S. forces were in the area at the time. What did the U.S. know, and when and where and what did they do about it?” asked Jennifer Leaning, from Physicians for Human Rights. John Barry, Ron Gutman, and Babak Dehghanipisheh, “The Death of a Convoy,” Newsweek, August 26, 2002.

  23 For the Newsweek cover story, see ibid. I am extremely grateful to John Heffernan, who investigated the grave sites, for his help on this issue.

  24 Press conference by Lakhdar Brahimi, Kabul, August 27, 2002.

  25 Interview with Lakhdar Brahimi, Paris, April 26, 2006.

  26 Karl Vick, “Rout Near a Desert Stronghold Took the Heart out of the Taliban,” The New York Times, January 2, 2002.

  27 Mullah Naqibulla had first resisted the Soviets in the 1980s, then threw in his lot with the government of President Rabbani after 1992 and finally helped the Taliban come to power in 1994. He was considered the grand old man of Kandahar.

  28 The breakdown was $1.9 billion for the deployment of sixty thousand troops, $400 million for munitions, $500 million for the replacement of damaged equipment, and $1 billion for fuel and operating costs.

  29 Interview with Ryan Crocker, Islamabad, February 7, 2006.

  30 Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, New York: Free Press, 2004.

  31 Jonathan Steele, “Forgotten Victims,” The Guardian, May 20, 2002. Statement by Human Rights Watch, “The Use of Cluster bombs,” December 18, 2001.

  32 Steele, “Forgotten Victims.”

  33 Mary Anne Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora,” The New Yorker, September 11, 2005. This is one of the best accounts of the battle.

&
nbsp; 34 Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al Qaeda—A Personal Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander, New York: Crown, 2005.

  35 “Osama Resurfaces on TV Screens,” Dawn, quoting Agence France-Presse, Doha, December 27, 2001.

  36 Peter Spiegel, “Ex-CIA Agent Says US Missed bin Laden in Afghanistan,” The Financial Times, January 3, 2006. Franks wrote the New York Times piece on October 19, 2004.

  37 Abdallah Tabarak, a Moroccan bodyguard of bin Laden’s who spent twenty days guarding him in Tora Bora and was later captured in Pakistan and shifted to Guantánamo, provided details of bin Laden’s presence. See Craig Whitlock, “Al Qaeda Detainee’s Mysterious Release,” The Washington Post, January 30, 2006. So did Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a doctor from Yemen who was carrying out amputations on al Qaeda fighters in Tora Bora with a knife and scissors and who met with bin Laden. Associated Press, “Doctor Says bin Laden was at Tora Bora,” September 7, 2007.

  38 Associated Press, “US to Hunt AQ Fighters in Pakistan—General Franks,” January 7, 2002.

  39 Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, New York: Berkley, 2005. Shahi Kot is twenty-five kilometers south of Gardez. The valley is in the Sulaiman mountain range that forms the southern end of the Hindu Kush mountain system in Afghanistan. The Sulaiman range is also an extension of the Spin Ghar range, in southeastern Afghanistan.

  40 Interview with Abdullah Abdullah, Kabul, November 23, 2001.

  41 Ahmed Rashid, “I Would Step Down to Help My Country,” The Daily Telegraph, November 24, 2001. Interviews with Vendrell in Kabul, November 22 and 24, 2001.

  42 Rashid, “I Would Step Down.”

  43 The Northern Alliance had eleven delegates plus seven alternatives and two women. The Rome group had eight members plus three alternatives, seven advisers, and two women. The Peshawar and the Cyprus groups had three delegates each, two alternates each, and one woman each. Three women attended as full members of the conference, Amina Afzali and Siddique Balkhi from the Northern Alliance, and Sima Wali from the Rome delegation.