In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones

  50. Rashid, Taliban, p. 1.

  51. Quoted in 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), p. 521.

  52. Memorandum from Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, Subject: Presidential Policy Initiative / Review—The Al-Qida Network, January 25, 2001. Released by the National Security Archive.

  53. See, for example, Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 520–21.

  54. U.S. Department of State, Cable, “Osama bin Laden: Taliban Spokesman Seeks New Proposal for Resolving bin Laden Problem,” November 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

  55. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 327–44, 363–65, 379–86,400–15.

  Chapter Five

  1. See, for example, Neil MacFarquhar, “Tapes Offer a Look Beneath the Surface of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda,” New York Times, September 11, 2008.

  2. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, translated by Laura Mansfield (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2002), p. 23.

  3. Ibid., p. 38.

  4. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 61–80.

  5. Chris Suellentrop, “Abdullah Azzam: The Godfather of Jihad,” Slate, April 16, 2002.

  6. Quoted in Kepel, Jihad, p. 145.

  7. Abdullah Anas, The Birth of the Afghan Arabs (London: Dar al-Saqi, 2002), p. 36; Mohammed Salah, Narratives of the Jihad Years: The Journey of the Arab Afghans (Cairo, 2001), pp. 43–62, 65–84.

  8. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office), vol. 16, no. 4, January 28, 1980, pp. 194–96.

  9. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), p. 485.

  10. On the differences between defensive and offensive jihad, see Alfred Morabia, Le gihâd dans l’islam médiéval: Le combat sacré des origines au douzième siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993); Rudolf Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979); Ramadan al-Bouti, Le jihad en islam: Comment le comprendre? Comment le pratiquer? (Damascus: Dar el-Fikr, 1996).

  11. Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection, translated by John King (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 14–15.

  12. Imtiaz Hussein, “Usama Prepares a List of Arab Martyrs of Afghan Jihad,” The Frontier Post, May 13, 2000.

  13. Basil Mohammed, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan (Jeddah: House of Learning, 1991), p. 241.

  14. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qa’ida’s Leader (New York: Free Press, 2006); Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 133.

  15. The quotes are from the exhibit of “Tareekh Osama” (Osama’s history), document presented in United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnaout, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

  16. Quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 157.

  17. U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Intelligence Assessment, “Bin Ladin’s Jihad: Political Context,” August 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

  18. Kepel, Jihad, pp. 213–14.

  19. Ibid., pp. 159–84, 237–53, 254–75.

  20. Central Intelligence Agency, Usama bin Ladin: Islamic Extremist Financier, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

  21. Central Intelligence Agency, “Harakat ul-Ansar: Increasing Threat to Western and Pakistani Interests,” August 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

  22. Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, pp. 51–52.

  23. On conflict between the Taliban and al Qa’ida, see U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “TFX01: SITREP 5: Pakistan/Afghanistan Reaction to U.S. Air Strikes,” August 24, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive. Also see Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 83.

  24. Gerges, The Far Enemy, pp. 38–40; Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, pp. 48–52.

  25. U.S. Department of State, Cable, “Message to the Taliban on Bin Laden,” August 23, 1998. Also see, for example, U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Usama Bin Ladin: Bin Ladin Uses Recent Interviews to Assert Right to WMD, and to Threaten U.S. and U.K. Over Iraq,” December 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

  26. Laura Mansfield, His Own Words: A Translation of the Writings of Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2002), pp. 314–15.

  27. Gerges, The Far Enemy.

  28. “UK’s Arabic Paper Interviews bin Laden’s Former ‘Bodyguard,’” BBC Monitoring International Reports, March 30, 2005. “Interview of Bin Ladin’s Former Body Guard, Abu Jandal,” Al-Quds al-Arabi (London), August 25, 2005.

  29. Alan Cullison stumbled upon several al Qa’ida computers in Kabul shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban regime. Alan Cullison, “Inside al-Qa’ida’s Hard Drive,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 294, no. 2, September 2004, p. 67.

  30. Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim fi-l-Tariq [Milestones] (Karachi: International Islamic Publishers, 1981).

  31. The Qur’an, 5:50.

  32. On Qutb’s work, see Gilles Kepel, The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Olivier Carré, Mystique et politique (Paris: Presses de la FNSP et Cerf, 1984); Ibrahim M. Abu Rabi, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Muslim Arab World (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996).

  33. See, for example, Qutb, Ma’alimfi-1-Tariq, p. 57.

  34. See, for example, Kepel, Jihad, pp. 25–27.

  35. Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 113.

  36. Qutb, Ma’alim fi-1-Tariq.

  37. The Qur’an, 5:50.

  38. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, translated by Laura Mansfield (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2002), p. 61.

  39. Osama Rushdi, “How Did the Ideology of the ‘Jihad Group’ Evolve?” Al Hayat, January 30, 2002; Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. 97.

  40. Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. i.

  41. On the establishment of a caliphate, see, for example, Abu Bakr Naji, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass, translated and published by the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard Universit Ma 23 2006.

  42. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 201.

  43. Mansfield, In His Own Words, p. 47.

  44. ABC Television News interview, “Terror Suspect: An Interview with Osama bin Laden,” December 22, 1998 (conducted in Afghanistan by ABC News producer Rahimullah Yousafsai).

  45. See, for example, Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 48; Gerges, The Far Enemy, pp. 3–4.

  46. United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Transcript of Jury Trial Before the Honorable Leonie M. Brinkema, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria, VA, March 6, 2006.

  47. The Qur’an, 4:29–30.

  48. On paradise, see, for example, The Qur’an, 56:12–39.

  49. See, for example, Memorandum from the Rendon Group to J5 CENTCOM Strategic Effects, “Polling Results—Afghanistan Omnibus May 2007,” June 15, 2007.

  50. Mohammed el-Shafey, “Al-Zawahiri’s Secret Papers,” Part 6, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 18, 2002.

  51. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 200.

  52. Sayyid Qutb, “Letter to Tewfig al-Hakeem,” in al-Khaledi, Amrika min al-dahkhil, p. 39.

  53. Zawahiri argued: “Jerusalem will not be liberated unless the battle for Egypt and Algeria is won and unless Egypt is liberated.” See, for example, Montasser al-Zayat, Ayman Zawahiri as I Knew Him (Cairo, 2002), pp. 113–36; Salah, Narratives of the Jihad Years, chapter 5.

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p; 54. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 199.

  55. Osama bin Laden, video clip released in September 2007.

  56. Abdullah Azzam, Defense of Muslim Lands: The Most Important Personal Duty (Amman, Jordan: Modern Mission Librar, 2005), chapter 1.

  57. Quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, p. 35.

  58. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 128.

  59. Ibid., p. 111.

  60. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 209–18.

  61. Ayman al-Zawahiri, AlWalaa wa al Baraa, obtained by Al Hayat, January 14, 2003.

  62. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 113.

  63. Ibid., p. 111.

  64. The text is the second fatwa originally published on February 23, 1998, to declare a holy war, or jihad, against the West and Israel. It was signed by Osama bin Laden, head of al Qa’ida; Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of al-Jihad; Rifa’i Ahmad Taha, leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group; Sheikh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh.

  65. See, for example, Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Department of Energy, Dr. Gary W. Richter, Osama bin Laden: A Case Study, December 6, 1999. Released by the National Security Archive.

  66. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “TFXX01: Afghanistan: Reaction to U.S. Strikes Follows Predictable Lines: Taliban Angry, Their Opponents Support U.S.,” August 21, 1998.

  67. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: Reported Activities of Extremist Arabs and Pakistanis Since August 20 U.S. Strike on Khost Terrorist Camps,” September 9, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

  68. Executive Order 13129 of July 4, 1999, Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With the Taliban.

  69. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2000),. 98–100.

  70. On Saudi Arabia’s historical role in Afghanistan, see National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 371–74.

  71. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: Tensions Reportedly Mount Within Taliban as Ties With Saudi Arabia Deteriorate Over Bin Ladin,” September 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

  72. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: Taliban Seem to Have Less Funds and Supplies This Year, But the Problem Does Not Appear to Be that Acute,” February 17, 1999. Released by the National Security Archive.

  73. Memorandum from Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, Subject: Presidential Policy Initiative / Review—The Al-Qida Network, January 25, 2001. Released by the National Security Archive.

  74. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, pp. 38–39.

  75. Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2001).

  76. Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 110. Gilles Kepel also argues that “the Arabs seem to have played only a minor part in fighting the Red Army. Their feats of arms were largely perpetrated after the Soviet withdrawal in February 1989 and were highly controversial.” Kepel, Jihad, p. 147. And Fawaz Gerges notes: “There exists no evidence pointing to any vital role played by foreign veterans in the Afghan victory over the Russians.” Gerges, The Far Enemy, pp. 83–84.

  77. See, for example, ABC reporter John Miller’s interview with bin Laden in May 1998, a little over two months before the U.S. Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Part of the transcript was played at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001, shortly before the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Transcript of Jury Trial Before the Honorable Leonie M. Brinkema, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria, VA, March 6, 2006.

  78. Memorandum from Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, January 25, 2001.

  Chapter Six

  1. Jon Lee Anderson, “American Viceroy: Zalmay Khalilzad’s Mission,” The New Yorker, December 19, 2005, p. 63.

  2. On the overthrow of the Taliban regime, see Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005); Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 2002); Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida (New York: Crown Publishers, 2005); Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002).

  3. Author interview with Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, August 27, 2008.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Transcript of Martin Smith interview with Richard Armitage, July 20, 2006. I received a copy of the transcript from Frontline.

  6. Woodward, Bush at War, p. 47.

  7. Author interview with Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, August 27, 2008. W

  8. Woodward, Bush at War, p. 59.

  9. Author interview with Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, August 27, 2008.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Woodward, Bush at War, p. 51.

  12. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 207.

  13. Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 75–76.

  14. Schroen, First In, p. 28.

  15. Andrew J. Birtle, Afghan War Chronology (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History Information Paper, March 22, 2002), pp. 2–3.

  16. Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare, pp. 8–10.

  17. Michael DeLong and Noah Lukeman, Inside CENTCOM: The Unvarnished Truth about the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004), p. 46.

  18. U.S. Army Military History Institute: Tape 032602p, CPT M. int.; Tape 032802p, CPT D. int. This information comes from deposits at the U.S. Army Military History Institute’s archive at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. See also Dale Andrade, The Battle for Mazar-e-Sharif, October—November 2001 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History Information Paper, March 1, 2002), pp. 2–3. Roadbound Taliban and al Qa’ida reserves moving from Sholgerah were decimated by American air interdiction as they moved south to reinforce the defenses of Bai Beche and Ac’capruk, then as they fled north toward Mazar after November 5. See U.S. Army Military History Institute: Memorandum for the Record, COL J. int., July 2002; Tape 032602p, CPT M. int.

  19. Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare, p. 10.

  20. Ibid., p. 9.

  21. Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (New York: Viking, 2008), pp. 3–6.

  22. U.S. Army Military History Institute: Tape 032802a, MAJ D. int.; Tape 032802p, MAJ C. int.; Tape 032602a, CPT H. et al. int. Also see John Car-land, The Campaign Against Kandahar (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History Information Paper, March 4, 2002), pp. 2–5.

  23. U.S. Army Military History Institute: Tape 032602p, CPT M. int.

  24. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1383, December 6, 2001, S/RES/1383 (2001).

  25. On Operation Anaconda, see Operation Anaconda: An Air Power Perspective (Washington, DC: Headquarters United States Air Force AF/XOL, February 2005); Paul L. Hastert, “Operation Anaconda: Perception Meets Reality in the Hills of Afghanistan,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 28, pp. 11–20; Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (New York: Berkley Books, 2005).

  26. Author interview with Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, August 27, 2008.

  27. Author interview with Robert Grenier, November 6, 2007.

  28. Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Ed O’Connell (ret.), July 8, 2007.

  29. Pervez Musharraf
, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 217.

  30. Philip Smucker, Al Qa’ida’s Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror’s Trail (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004); Berntsen and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, pp. 255–64; Mary Anne Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora,” New York Times, September 11, 2005.

  31. Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora.”

  32. Author interview with U.S. intelligence operative who was in the vicinity of Tora Bora at the time, March 6, 2009. Berntsen and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, pp. 314–15.

  33. Brigadier Muhammad Ijaz Chaudry, “Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Strategy,” Paper presented at National Defense University, Washington, DC, July 27, 2007, p. 12.

  34. Berntsen and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, pp. 307–8.

  35. Author interview with Robert Grenier, November 6, 2007.

  36. European Union and UNAMA, Discussion of Taliban and Insurgency (Kabul: European Union and UNAMA, April 30, 2007), p. 1.

  37. Stephen T. Hosmer, The Army’s Role in Counterinsurgency and Insurgency (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1990), pp. 30–3I; Daniel Byman et al., Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001); Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  38. Data are from the Population Census Organization, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics, Government of Pakistan, 2007. The Population Census Organization estimated that 15.42 percent of a total population of 160,612,500 had Pashto as their mother tongue.

  39. David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer Publishing, 1964), pp. 23–24.

  40. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review, vol. 97, no. 1, February 2003, pp. 75–90; Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, pp. 35–37.

  41. Agreement between His Highness Amir Abdur Rahman Khan G.C.S.I., Amir of Afghanistan and its Dependencies on the one part and Sir Henry Mortimer Durand K.C.I.C.S.I., Foreign Secretary to the Government of India representing the Government of India, on the other part. Signed in Kabul, Afghanistan, on November 12, 1893.