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After the New Year, Rubin flew to Saudi Arabia, where he met Holbrooke in Riyadh, the capital. Prince Muqrin received them in his small and dark office at the General Intelligence Department. He introduced them to a general who had worked for Prince Turki bin Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief during the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s. “The Taliban is still controlled by Pakistan,” the general said. Some Taliban leaders wanted to break free of Pakistan but they were weak and would need support to act independently. Also, if the United States and Saudi Arabia negotiated with the Quetta Shura, they would have to reassure Pakistan that any settlement of the war would not harm its interests. Otherwise, the I.S.I. would surely act as spoilers.
Muqrin seemed hesitant to proceed. He “won’t lift a finger,” Holbrooke complained. The Saudis seemed reluctant to become entangled in the triangle among the United States, Hamid Karzai, and the I.S.I. They needed good relations with the I.S.I. for their own reasons—Pakistan had nuclear know-how and infantry muscle that the kingdom might require in future crises. The inertia was typical of Saudi statecraft: The kingdom had high-level contacts across the Muslim world, it had wealth to buy influence, but its octogenarian royal family rarely took bold risks and lacked capacity to follow through. King Abdullah, Muqrin’s boss, was then eighty-five years old.10
They traveled next to Abu Dhabi, where Holbrooke had convened a conference of special representatives to Afghanistan from governments worldwide—his mini–United Nations of counterparts. The plenary, hosted by the Foreign Ministry of the United Arab Emirates, was largely ceremonial, designed to signal unity about Afghanistan to weary publics in Europe and Asia.
Bernd Mützelburg, the German representative, asked for a private audience with Holbrooke. When they were alone, Mützelburg disclosed that two months earlier, while visiting Kabul, he had met with Mullah Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, a founder of the movement, and later a prisoner at Guantánamo. After his release, Zaeef had settled in Kabul. Zaeef asked Mützelburg if he would sound out the possibility of direct contact between Germany and the Taliban leadership. Mützelburg had consulted with Hamid Karzai, who encouraged him to go ahead. So the envoy flew to Dubai to meet a man he now described as “the head of the political commission of the Quetta Shura.”
They had talked twice. Mützelburg had some trouble remembering the Taliban envoy’s name, but said that he had once served as number two in the Taliban embassy in Islamabad and also as Mullah Mohammad Omar’s private secretary. Soon it became clear that the negotiator was Tayeb Agha, the same representative identified to Rubin the previous summer.
What did the Taliban want? The “paramount” issue, Mützelburg said, was for the Taliban to find some sort of independence from I.S.I., as well as relief from international sanctions and blacklists. Once free to negotiate without I.S.I. coercion, the Taliban and N.A.T.O. could try to build mutual confidence. “Pakistan is playing its own games,” trying to manipulate the Taliban, the German said. Taliban leaders and their families depended on I.S.I. for identity cards, subsidies, and the right to live freely and earn a living. They wanted to negotiate directly with the Obama administration, not through I.S.I.11
Again, Holbrooke kept this startling disclosure largely to himself. Tayeb Agha’s bona fides remained uncertain. When Holbrooke did start to introduce what he had learned from the Germans to colleagues in Washington, he said that Tayeb Agha’s outreach merely represented “a thread” of contact with the Taliban high command. There were other “threads,” such as Zaeef and separate Taliban contacts the Karzai family had developed without American involvement. The prudent course was to pull on each thread to discover what might be promising. Meanwhile, Holbrooke promoted Rubin’s role within the administration. At I.S.A.F. headquarters in Kabul, a few days after the meeting with Mützelburg, Holbrooke enthusiastically introduced the professor as “a one-man C.I.A.” This did even less than his Trotskyite beard to endear Rubin to Langley or the Pentagon.
On January 22, 2010, Doug Lute convened a National Security Council subgroup meeting to talk about talking to the Taliban. Present were Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Rubin, Holbrooke, the Pentagon’s Michèle Flournoy, Marine General James Cartwright, who was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan, and Chris Wood, the former Kabul station chief. Wood had lately been sent by the C.I.A. to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to work on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Lute asked Holbrooke to open the discussion. Any negotiation would be “tougher than Vietnam or Bosnia,” Holbrooke said, because the Afghan war had “so many actors.” They were at the beginning of the beginning, he estimated. “There is no secret negotiation with the Taliban,” he said, in case they feared otherwise.
They reviewed the policy on Taliban talks they had inherited from the Bush administration. It dated to 2004, when Zalmay Khalilzad had worked successfully with Karzai to bring some former Taliban ministers and diplomats into Kabul from Pakistan, as defectors. The Bush administration policy, which had been revised in 2007, concerned what the United States thought was acceptable for the Karzai government to do by itself when it talked to the enemy. It did not contemplate direct U.S. talks with the Taliban. The policy’s main provision was a blacklist of thirty-one names. These were senior Taliban leaders that Karzai should not talk with under any circumstances, at least according to the United States. Mullah Mohammad Omar was at the top of the list. Several Haqqanis were listed, as were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and some of his commanders. Tayeb Agha was also banned. He was described as a “former aide to Mullah Omar” who “continues as an aide to Omar.” Lute asked one of his deputies, Jeff Hayes, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the White House, to “review the bidding” and see how they should handle the blacklist if serious talks now developed, through Tayeb Agha or otherwise.12
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In Hamid Karzai’s growing alienation from the Obama administration, Generals Kayani and Pasha saw an opening for Pakistan. N.A.T.O. governments had strong intercept coverage of at least some of the telephones Kayani and Pasha used. After Obama’s West Point speech, the eavesdroppers heard Kayani express fears that a U.S. pullout would leave Pakistan vulnerable to more domestic violence as Afghanistan fell into chaos again. The army chief decided to see if he might lessen this risk by persuading Karzai to reach a political deal with Pakistan that might cut out the United States, at least partially. That winter, Pasha sent messages to the Arg Palace to indicate that Pakistan wanted “to break the ice” about a new alignment between Karzai and Pakistan.
The Afghan president summoned Amrullah Saleh. “I want to invest in peace,” Karzai told him. “I want to invest in friendship in Pakistan.” Karzai invited Pasha to Kabul, unannounced, on January 18, 2010. Karzai did not mention the visit to Saleh until Pasha was already at the Arg Palace. As it happened, that day, the sounds of gunfire and grenade explosions had Kabul in a panic. As the I.S.I. chief settled in at the palace, small squads of Taliban raiders attacked the Central Bank, near the palace, as well as a hotel and a cinema. The timing was apparently coincidental.13
Karzai summoned Saleh, who was helping to direct the day’s counterattack. Saleh greeted the I.S.I. chief and provided a situation report. Karzai then asked him to leave the room. The implication was unsubtle: I don’t trust my spy chief, and neither do you, General Pasha, so let us talk without him.
“You are more independent of the U.S.” now that you have been reelected, the I.S.I. chief told Karzai. Pakistan, Pasha emphasized, was pleased to hear Karzai talk publicly from time to time about a broad-based, inclusive government in Afghanistan, one that might accommodate elements of the Taliban. The United States was on its way out, even as its forces flowed in for their temporary “surge.” Pakistan and Afghanistan could shape the region’s future separately, without the burdens of American interference or hubris. Pasha invited Karzai to Islamabad for deeper talks wit
h Kayani.
As the conversation went on, Saleh waited in a reception area. Explosions echoed in the distance. He worked his cell phone as Afghan counterterrorism police tracked down and eventually subdued the Taliban attackers, who had disguised themselves in Afghan police uniforms.
Karzai and Pasha emerged. The president asked Saleh to escort Pasha to the airport safely.
“Do you have any leads as to who is doing this?” Pasha asked him in their sport utility vehicle as they wove toward Kabul International.
“Yes, if you want, I can share with you—the attack is not finished, Mr. Director. The people inside the bank are communicating with a number in Pakistan. They are taking instructions. Right now, while you are with me.”
“Brother, give it to me,” Pasha said.
Saleh wrote down the number. “I will get back to you,” Pasha promised. A week later, according to an Afghan account of the episode, Pasha called Saleh to report that he was right, but that, after the attack, the number was switched off and there was nothing more to be done. According to a Pakistani version of the same episode, the army followed up on the number, arrested seven Afghans, and handed them over to N.D.S. without publicity, only to have Saleh go public with a statement that he had proof the whole thing had been an I.S.I. operation. The Pakistanis swallowed their frustration, according to this account, and the Pakistani security services concluded that Saleh was more interested in anti-Pakistan propaganda than cooperation.14
Toward the Americans, on the subject of talking to the Taliban about peace, Pasha adopted a posture of passive aggression. That winter, he summoned a Pakistani journalist and told him that Obama’s “surge” into Afghanistan would inevitably fail. There were not enough Pashtuns in the Afghan army and police; the Taliban were popular and had the moral high ground as resisters to occupation, he went on. He denied outright that his service was supporting the Quetta Shura or the Haqqani network yet indicated that only Pakistan could deliver the Taliban away from war and into politics—not the Saudis, not the Americans on their own. I.S.I. did not regard a Kabul government controlled by the Taliban as the only acceptable outcome, Pasha said. “No, no, not at all. Our national interests have to be protected, that is our main concern.” Pasha’s message was clearly intended to reach the Obama administration, to signal that I.S.I. was indispensable to any negotiation and that it did not seek a maximalist outcome.
The morning after Pasha departed Kabul, Karzai summoned Saleh to breakfast. The Afghan spy chief did not know what had gone on between the president and the I.S.I. director in his absence. He was insulted by the exclusion, but he tried to be cordial. “Mr. President,” he said, “whatever your purpose in pushing me out of the meeting, in my opinion, it didn’t give a good signal to the Pakistanis.” It showed I.S.I. that the Afghan government lacked unity, that there was friction at the highest levels.
Karzai said he wanted to accept the invitation to meet with Kayani and Pasha again in Islamabad, to advance the discussions. He assured Saleh that he would participate fully. In fact, Karzai would again exclude Saleh from some meetings with Pasha, which fueled Saleh’s suspicion that Karzai was discussing removing him or making other compromises for the sake of improved relations between the two countries.
They flew to the Pakistani capital on March 11. Karzai met with his civilian counterparts, President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Gillani. At the Serena Hotel, a fourteen-acre compound of gardens with touches of Islamic architecture, Karzai met with Kayani and Pasha in a V.I.P. suite. As promised, this time, Saleh was there.
Kayani’s message was “Talk to us, not the Americans.” If there was to be peace, it had to come through Pakistan. The door is open. The support of I.S.I. is essential to any workable resolution of the war, Kayani emphasized.
If they were going to talk about a new relationship, Saleh said, they had to be honest about what Pakistan was trying to achieve. “Mr. Kayani, please don’t tell me you are not supporting the Taliban,” Saleh ventured. “Please tell me why you are supporting the Taliban. What is it that they do for Pakistan that we do not do?”
Kayani demurred. Saleh pressed the point several times. Finally Kayani said, addressing Karzai, “Mr. President, if you want us to trust you, let us create a strategic framework for our relationship, to define it.” They agreed to move forward.
“Will the Northern Alliance comply if you agree with us?” Kayani asked.
Karzai turned to Saleh, putting him on the spot. “Mr. President, I am not Northern Alliance,” Saleh said. “I’m serving you. And I tell my Pakistani brothers, there is no ‘Northern Alliance.’ It will be Pakistani pressure that will recreate the Northern Alliance—it doesn’t exist now. And if it does, it is entirely in support of Karzai as the legitimate president of Afghanistan. President Karzai is representing Afghanistan.”
The heart of Kayani’s offer to Karzai was “We can help you sort out the insurgency—we can turn it off,” as a N.A.T.O. diplomat briefed on the discussion soon after described it. In exchange, Pakistan would expect Karzai to “end”—that was the word Kayani used, according to these accounts—Indian influence in Afghanistan.15
How would Kayani define the “end” of India’s presence? As the clandestine contacts between I.S.I. and the Arg Palace evolved in 2010, reportedly including face-to-face meetings and encrypted digital messages, Kayani and Pasha pressed to be provided a detailed map of the Indian footprint in Afghanistan—lists of companies, contracts, and personnel. They pressed for access to the Afghan National Army, through the Pakistani military attaché in Kabul, to understand the army’s development and leading personalities. They proposed training dozens of Afghan army officers in Islamabad, which would create a channel of long-term influence. They sought an end to public rhetoric from Afghanistan bashing Pakistan. In exchange, the Pakistanis dangled the possibility of peace in Kabul, negotiations on strategic issues such as water and borders, and delivering the Taliban to a political settlement that might include Karzai continuing.
Kayani and Pasha were particularly aggravated that N.D.S. was protecting armed Baluch separatists from the Bugti tribe who were fighting the Pakistan Army in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province. One Bugti leader lived in a safe house on Street 13 in Kabul under N.D.S. protection. Baluch fighters trained in Kandahar, Kayani and Pasha reported, citing intelligence collected in part by the Pakistani embassy in Kabul. Pakistani diplomats lived near the Kabul safe house and documented the Bugti leader’s take-out orders from a local Lebanese taverna: The man was wanted for terrorism in Pakistan, yet he was enjoying kebab and shelter with N.D.S. connivance, the Pakistanis claimed. Karzai should make sure that India’s diplomatic, business, and humanitarian projects around Afghanistan did not become covert launching pads for destabilizing Pakistan. It seemed to them obvious that Afghanistan remained an essential aspect of India’s strategy of containing Pakistan. With its booming economy and expanding defense budget, India was a kind of irreversible tide, gathering influence in the region, including in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis saw India’s spy service, the Research and Analysis Wing, or R.A.W., behind every rock, Indian officials complained. True, this was unfair; India carried out reconstruction and humanitarian projects in Afghanistan in the same way many other countries did. There were about four thousand Indians in the country but more than half of those were cooks and maintenance workers on N.A.T.O. bases who were recruited from labor contractors in the Persian Gulf—they never left the bases. Yet in fairness to Kayani, it was not as if R.A.W. had dropped out of covert action specifically designed to undermine Pakistani stability.16
After the meeting at the Serena in Islamabad, Pasha and Saleh met secretly several times, in Ankara and elsewhere, to work on a draft strategic framework agreement. Pasha flew back to Kabul and met privately again with Karzai.
Yet Karzai seemed to change his mind from day to day about whether he should pursue a separate peace with the I.S.I. He seemed rattl
ed. Some of his aides advised him that Pasha and Kayani were right—Afghanistan would be better off dealing with Pakistan directly. “Don’t you think there’s too much Indian influence on Afghanistan?” Karzai asked several American visitors privately in the weeks after his trip to Islamabad.
“My first choice would be a strategic alignment of the United States, India, and Afghanistan against Pakistan,” Karzai explained to a senior American official. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re pursuing. I think you’re cutting a separate deal with Pakistan, leaving me out. If that’s the case, I need to cut my own deal with Pakistan.”
“It’s actually a lot less conspiratorial than you think,” the American tried to argue. “We’re trying to forge a moderate, balanced policy among all these parties.” But Karzai wasn’t buying it. He was clearly toying with a deal with I.S.I., but he also recognized that it would be a great risk.
In Washington, Barnett Rubin warned Holbrooke that it was not just Karzai who had lost confidence in American strategy. The United States, he wrote on March 18, “is in danger once again of allowing its policy in the region to be manipulated by the deception of the Pakistan military,” which would result in granting “Pakistan an outsized role in Afghanistan.” The perception that the United States “is positioning itself for a deal with Pakistan at Afghanistan’s expense” is “widespread in the Afghan political elite and is not confined to President Karzai.” The fear that Washington was prepared to sell out to I.S.I. or was too naïve to see that it was being had “is a major factor driving the Afghan government’s precipitous efforts” to find a line to talk with the Taliban or a separate deal with Pasha and Kayani. “Afghans believe that if their country is to be sold to Pakistan they would prefer to bargain over the price directly rather than rely on an agent,” meaning the United States, Rubin wrote.17