The attack was disgraceful, Ahmed said, resulting in the deaths of innocent Afghans and a violation of Afghan sovereignty. If the Americans really wanted a solution to the bin Laden problem, he concluded, they should talk to the Saudis; if they did so, matters would be solved in ‘minutes not hours’.36 Ironically, the same assessment had already been reached separately by the US, as a flurry of diplomatic cables, research papers and recommendations about winning support in Riyadh show.37
The repercussions of the US strikes were disastrous. As a major US intelligence study of the al-Qaida threat written a year later put it, apart from the fact that the attempt to eliminate bin Laden had failed, the attack served to establish him across much of the Arabic-speaking world as well as elsewhere as ‘an underdog standing firm in the face of bullying aggression’. There were real dangers in the growing perception of ‘American cultural arrogance’; it was troubling too, the report warned, that the US attack ‘was morally questionable’ and mirrored aspects of bin Laden’s own bombings, where innocent casualties suffered because of a political agenda deemed to justify the use of force. As a result, ‘the retaliatory cruise missile strikes . . . may ultimately prove to have done more harm than good’. The US should also be aware, the report prophetically added, that the airstrikes were likely to ‘provoke a new round of terrorist bombing plots’.38
Even before that happened, the failed intervention brought unwelcome results. Views within the Taliban leadership about the outside world hardened as suspicions about the duplicity of the west took firm root. A siege mentality developed that served to accelerate the development of increasingly hardline religious views as well as a rising interest in exporting its brand of radical Islam on a worldwide basis – although one contemporary CIA report judged that it was highly unlikely that this could be done effectively.39
Nevertheless, US pressure served to make staunchly conservative voices become increasingly fundamentalist. Those like Mullah Rabbani, deputy leader and head of the Kabul Shūrā (Council), who feared that failing to expel bin Laden would deepen Afghanistan’s international isolation, were outmanoeuvred by Mullah Omar, whose hardline policy not to co-operate with or capitulate before outsiders prevailed. As a result, the Taliban moved closer to bin Laden’s aggressive proposals for freeing Muslims from the grasp of the west and reinstating a fantasy pre-medieval world.40
This was precisely the aim of the 9/11 attacks. An intelligence report written in 1999 had already noted how bin Laden had a ‘large and inflated ego [and saw] himself as a player on a very large and very old historical stage e.g., he sees himself resisting the latest Crusaders’.41 It was highly revealing, then, that every single audio and video tape he released after the attack on the Twin Towers mentioned the Crusades or the Crusaders as reference points. Revolutionaries often choose to evoke an idealised past, but few look back a thousand years for inspiration and justification for terrorist acts.
In the months leading up to 9/11, intelligence pointed to the rising threat of al-Qaida. A memo ‘For the President only’ with the ominous title ‘Bin Ladin [sic] Determined to Strike in US’ and dated 6 August 2001 reported the FBI’s conclusion that information gathered from ‘approximately 70 full field investigations’ ongoing throughout the United States ‘indicated patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks’.42 The US had been nervous enough in the interim to keep the door open to the regime in Kabul, offering reassurance that ‘the United States was not against the Taliban, per se [and] was not out to destroy the Taliban’. The problem was bin Laden. If he could be dealt with, US diplomats in the region advised, ‘we would have a different kind of relationship’.43
He was not dealt with. At 8.24 in the morning of 11 September 2001, it became clear that something was very wrong. Air traffic control had been trying to contact American Airlines flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles for eleven minutes since instructing the pilots to climb to 35,000 feet. When a response came, it was unexpected: ‘We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.’44 At 8.46 a.m. Eastern Time, the Boeing 767 was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. In the next hour and seventeen minutes, three other passenger jets that had been hijacked came down: United 175 impacted the South Tower of the World Trade Center; American 77 was flown into the Pentagon; and US 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.45
Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people died on 9/11, along with nineteen terrorists. The psychological impact of the attacks, which saw the collapse of both of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon building damaged, was intense. Terrorist acts committed against embassy buildings or American troops abroad were shocking enough, but a co-ordinated attack against mainland targets was devastating. The haunting and terrifying footage of planes being deliberately flown into buildings, and the scenes of disaster, chaos and tragedy that occurred in the aftermath demanded an immediate and epic response. ‘The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts,’ President George W. Bush said in a televised address on the evening of the attacks. ‘I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction’, he warned, ‘between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them.’46
Expressions of support flooded in from all corners of the globe – including from such unlikely quarters as Libya, Syria and Iran, whose President expressed ‘deep regret and sympathy for the victims’, adding that ‘it is an international duty to try to undermine terrorism’.47 It was immediately obvious that bin Laden was behind the attacks – although the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan claimed that the former did not have the resources necessary to execute such ‘a well-organised plan’.48 Wakīl Ahmed Muttawakil told the Qatari broadcaster al-Jazeera the day after the attacks that the Taliban ‘denounce this terrorist attack, whoever is behind it’.49
Within hours of the attacks, strategies were being drawn up to deal with bin Laden. An action plan issued on the morning of 13 September set out the importance of engaging Iran and contacting the authorities in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China – Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours. A plan was set out to ‘[r]e-energize’ them within the week that followed, with a view to preparing them for forthcoming military action against the Taliban.50 The first step of the response to 9/11 was to line up the countries of the Silk Roads.
One of Afghanistan’s neighbours was given particular attention. Pakistan had sympathies and close ties with the Taliban that went back one if not two generations. The terrorist attacks now required a straight choice for Islamabad, the head of Pakistan’s Intelligence Service was told, between ‘black and white . . . with no grey’. The country either had to ‘stand with the United States in the fight against terrorism or stand against us’.51
As the pieces were moved into position for an assault on Afghanistan, the Taliban were given a final, ominous warning – to be delivered in person either by the President of Pakistan or by his security chief. ‘It is in your interest and in the interest of your survival to hand over all al-Qaida leaders, to close the terrorists’ camps and allow the US access to terrorist facilities.’ The response would be ‘devastating’ if ‘any person or group connected in any way to Afghanistan’ was involved in terrorist attacks on the United States. ‘Every pillar of the Taliban regime’, the curt message said, ‘will be destroyed.’52 The ultimatum was emphatic and clear: surrender bin Laden, or suffer the consequences.
For all the efforts to track down bin Laden and destroy the capability of al-Qaida, there was more at stake than a manhunt. In fact, attention in Washington quickly turned to the bigger picture: controlling the centre of Asia decisively and properly. Influential voices argued that what was needed was a full reshaping of the countries of this region, one where US interests and security would be radically improved.
&nb
sp; For decades, the US had diced with the devil. For decades, the heart of Asia had been seen as singularly important – so much so that after the Second World War it became routine to refer explicitly to this region as being directly relevant to the national security of the United States. Its location between east and west made it strategically crucial in relation to superpower rivalry, while the natural resources – oil and gas above all – made what happened in the countries of the Persian Gulf and their immediate neighbours really matter to US national security.
By 30 September 2001, three weeks after the atrocities of 9/11, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, offered the President his ‘strategic thoughts’ about what the US could and should seek to achieve in the near future as part of its ‘war aim’. ‘Some air strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban targets are planned to begin soon,’ he noted, marking the start of what he referred to as a ‘war’. It was important, he wrote, to ‘persuade or compel States to stop supporting terrorism’. What he proposed next, however, was dramatic and astonishingly ambitious. ‘If the war does not significantly change the world’s political map, the US will not achieve its aim.’ What this meant was then spelled out clearly. ‘The [United States government] should envision a goal along these lines: New regimes in Afghanistan and another key State (or two).’53 He did not need to specify which states he was talking about: Iran and Iraq.
The 9/11 attacks transformed the way the US engaged with the world as a whole. America’s future depended on securing the spine of Asia, running from Iraq’s western frontier with Syria and Turkey to the Hindu Kush. The vision was set out emphatically by President Bush at the end of January 2002. By then, the Taliban had been dealt with decisively, pushed out of the major cities, including Kabul, within weeks of the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, which involved extensive air attacks and a major deployment of ground forces. Although bin Laden was still at large, the President laid out in his State of the Union address why the US had to set its sights on more ambitious goals. Many regimes that had previously been hostile to American interests ‘have been pretty quiet since September 11, but we know their true nature’. North Korea, a rogue state par excellence, was one. But the real focus was on the threat posed by two others: Iran and Iraq. These, along with the regime in Pyongyang, ‘constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world’. Dismantling this axis was crucial. ‘Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun.’54
The determination to take control was overwhelming. Deposing existing regimes deemed destabilising and dangerous became paramount in the strategic thinking of the US and its allies. Priority was given to getting rid of clear and present dangers, with little thought to what would, could or should happen next. Fixing short-term problems was more important than the long-term scenario. This was explicit in the plans made against Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001. ‘The [US government] should not agonise over post-Taliban arrangements,’ suggested a paper issued after the air campaign had already started. Defeating al-Qaida and the Taliban was key; what happened afterwards could be worried about later.55
The same short-termism was evident in the case of Iraq, where the sharp focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power was set against a lack of planning for how the country would look in the future. The desire to get rid of Saddam had been on the agenda since the first days of the Bush administration, with the new Secretary of State, Colin Powell, asking for clarification about ‘[US] regime change policy in Iraq’ less than seventy-two hours after George Bush’s inauguration – and months before 9/11.56 In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, attention turned almost immediately to Saddam Hussein. At a time when US troops seemed to be taking inexorable control of Afghanistan, the Department of Defense was working hard to prepare for a major move on Iraq. The question was simple, as planning notes for a meeting between Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, Chief of Central Command make clear: ‘how [to] start?’57
Three possible triggers were envisaged – all of which could justify military action. Perhaps Saddam ‘moves against the Kurds in [the] north?’, wondered Donald Rumsfeld in November 2001; maybe a ‘connection to Sept 11 attack or to anthrax attacks’ (following mailings to several media outlets and to two US senators in September 2001); or what if there was a ‘dispute over WMD inspections?’ This seemed a promising line – as revealed by the comment that follows: ‘start now thinking about inspection demands’.58
Over the course of 2002 and at the start of 2003, pressure was ramped up on Iraq, with the issue of chemical and biological weapons and that of weapons of mass destruction taking centre stage. The US pursued this with an almost evangelical zeal. In the absence of ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of a link between 9/11 and Baghdad, one report noted, only Tony Blair could be relied on to support war, albeit ‘at substantial political cost’, while another underlined the fact that ‘many, if not most, countries allied with or friendly towards the United States – especially in Europe – harbour grave doubts about . . . an all-out attack on Iraq’. Work therefore went into establishing a legal framework for full-scale war in anticipation of the likelihood that the United Nations would not give a clear mandate for action.59
Particular emphasis was given to building up the case that Iraq was not just determined to make weapons of mass destruction but was doing so covertly – and obstructing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the same time. In some cases, this created problems with the monitors themselves, who found their positions overstated, compromised or even at risk altogether. In the spring of 2002, for example, José Bustani, the Brazilian director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was ousted following a special closed session – this was the first time the head of a major international organisation had been forced from their position.60 Information gathered from one-off and often unreliable sources was given prominence, and speculation was presented as fact, the result of a single-minded determination to make the case against Iraq and Saddam appear watertight. ‘Every statement I make today’, Colin Powell told the UN on 5 February 2003, ‘is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.’61
They were nothing of the sort. Barely a week earlier, a report by the IAEA had concluded that ‘we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the programme in the 1990s’, and it added that ‘further verification activities [would] be necessary’.62 This chimed with an update released the same day, 27 January 2003, by Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), who stated that although inspectors occasionally faced incidents of harassment, ‘Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far’ with the demands of inspectors.63
As it later emerged, there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida’s attacks of 2001. Indeed, the millions of pages recovered from Baghdad following the invasion that began on 19 March 2003 have revealed conspicuously few references to terrorism at all. Rather, documents relating to the Iraqi Intelligence Service suggest that considerable care was taken to rein in those like Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front which undertook some spectacular attacks in the 1980s, and made clear that no attacks should be made on American targets under any circumstances – other than in the event of a US attack on Iraq.64
Likewise, as we now know, the supposedly extensive and elaborate nuclear weapons programme, which was so vividly real in the minds of those who saw Iraq as a threat to regional and world peace, had little basis in fact. Trailers that Colin Powell described as mobile biological weapons facilities ‘hidden in large groves of palm trees and . . . moved every one to four weeks to avoid detection’ turned out to be weather balloons – just as the Iraqis had said they were.65
The determination to get rid of Saddam Hussein at any cost went hand in hand with chronically poor planning for the aftermath. Blueprints and books pro
duced before and as the invasion got under way set out the idyllic future that lay ahead for Iraq after liberation. The oil of Iraq, one major study claimed optimistically, was ‘a tremendous asset’. It had the potential to ‘benefit every last citizen of the country, regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation’.66 The naive assumption that wealth would be shared happily and fairly says much about the unrealistic expectations of what the consequences of the invasion would be. Yet the motif of spontaneous resolution was omnipresent. ‘Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country,’ the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, stated in a briefing in February 2003. It has ‘tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so . . . Iraq [should easily] be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.’ This was echoed almost precisely by Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy, in a hearing with the House Appropriations Committee eight days after the invasion began in March 2003. There was no need to worry, he insisted, ‘we’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon’. Oil revenues, he breezily predicted, would bring in $50 billion to $100 billion over the next ‘two or three years’.67
The idea that removing Saddam would turn Iraq into a land of milk and honey was wishful thinking on an epic scale. When troops went into Afghanistan, policy planners noted solemnly that the United States ‘should not commit to any post-Taliban military involvement since the US will be heavily engaged in the anti-terrorism effort worldwide’.68 Expectations in Iraq were similar: 270,000 troops would be needed for an invasion of the country, according to plans drawn up by US Central Command; but three and a half years later there would be no need for more than 5,000 ground troops. This all looked plausible when presented on PowerPoint slides to those who saw what they wanted to see.69 These were light wars, in other words, ones that would be resolved quickly and enable a new balance to be established across a pivotal region of Asia.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Page 63