by Steve Coll
13. Interviews with Sageman.
14. Ibid.
15. All quotations, Sageman, “The Insider Threat in Afghanistan in 2012.”
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Interviews with Sageman.
Chapter Thirty-four: Self-inflicted Wounds
1. The account in this chapter of White House–led negotiations with Pakistan, Qatar, and the Taliban during 2012 and 2013 is drawn from extensive interviews with ten Obama administration officials involved, as well as with several senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials and diplomats.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Interviews with Rubin, correspondence from Pataudi. The latter confirmed “the gist” of the conversation and added, “It was believed the Taliban would want a share of the political pie if they were to be encouraged to talk. . . . The Taliban were and as events have shown are on the ascendant even now. What’s changed since then is that the government in Kabul has lost a lot of its power and slipped in its ability to govern the country.”
5. Quotations from author’s interviews.
6. The quotations are from a contemporaneous interview with Abdullah Abdullah, who had just met with Khalilzad. Abdullah related Khalilzad’s summary of Karzai’s remarks.
7. Interview with Dobbins.
8. All quotations, interview with Dobbins.
9. Interview with Hagel.
10. All quotations from author’s interviews with the participants, including Rahmatullah Nabil, then the N.D.S. director.
11. The account of the N.I.E. is from interviews with a senior intelligence official familiar with its findings, as well as other Obama administration officials who read it. I.S.A.F. troop figures: www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/107995.htm.
12. Dobbins: Author’s interview.
13. All quotations, interview with Khalilzad. Karzai confirmed the essence of the exchange.
Chapter Thirty-five: Coups d’État
1. Biography, quotations, interview with Nabil.
2. Ibid. On the N.D.S. relationship with the Mehsuds, see also a New York Times report by Matthew Rosenberg on October 28, 2013, and his interview with Nabil, January 16, 2015. According to Nabil, in correspondence relayed through a spokesman, U.S. Special Forces, tipped by N.D.S., arrested Latif Ullah Mehsud in Logar Province in October 2013. N.D.S. asked the Americans to turn him over, but “Secretary of State Kerry stated that Mehsud had blood on his hands and was responsible for the Times Square bomb attempt.” Later, however, in December 2014, as part of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s attempt to forge a new understanding with Pakistan, the United States did release Mehsud to I.S.I. custody, according to Nabil’s spokesman.
3. Interview with Nabil, ibid. “One-man band”: State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, May 19, 2007, WikiLeaks.
4. Interviews with multiple Afghan cabinet members and palace officials.
5. Interview with Nabil.
6. “Take sheep to the mountains”: The Guardian, June 22, 2014. Transcripts of the leaked intercepts, as well as an authoritative analysis of the election’s patterns of fraud, are at www.afghanistan-analysts.org/elections-2014-36-some-key-documents/.
7. Interview with Nabil and other Afghan officials familiar with the episode.
8. The New York Times, June 29, 2014.
9. Saleh: From his Twitter feed. Atta: The New York Times, July 8, 2014. German warning: The New York Times, July 15, 2014.
10. “Any action to take power”: The New York Times, July 8, 2014.
11. “Civil uprising”: The Washington Post, August 14, 2014. Saleh: Interviews with Afghan and American officials involved in the coup prevention effort.
12. Quotations from interviews with Nabil. Other senior Afghan officials involved also described the plan. In correspondence, Spanta denied that the quartet had ever discussed the formation of an interim government. Their focus “was very clear,” he wrote, namely, “no interference by Afghanistan’s security forces in the electoral or post-election process in 2014.” He denied any role or knowledge of how the matter reached The New York Times. Spanta also wrote that because he believed the 2014 presidential election “was rigged and massively fraud-infested,” he proposed annulling the results, encouraging Karzai to remain in office, and rerunning the poll the following year, simultaneously with parliamentary elections. Karzai and the “international community” rejected this suggestion.
13. The New York Times, August 18–20, 2014. “Secret relations”: Rosenberg’s Twitter feed.
14. Christina Satkowski, who was in Kabul conducting research for this book in August, visited the facility during this period.
15. Cheney and Hadley: Bush, Decision Points, p. 189.
16. All quotations are from a translation of a video prepared by Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent in the autumn of 2014, which contains interviews with Rafiq, other conspirators, and the A.Q.I.S. emir.
17. Ibid.
18. The Al Qaeda video says Jakhrani retired. The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2014, in one of the few thorough media reports on the attack, quoted unnamed Pakistani officials saying he was dismissed because of his radical views.
19. The Pakistani military announced the Naval Strategic Force Command in a press release, www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&id=2067. The release described the command as “the custodian of the nation’s second strike capability” and said that its role would strengthen Pakistan’s “policy of Credible Minimum Deterrence.”
20. Retired Vice Admiral Kumar Singh, of the Indian Navy, described the PNS Zulfiqar’s 2012 tests and the efforts to fit ship-borne cruise missiles with tactical nuclear weapons in a column in the Deccan Chronicle, October 8, 2014.
21. Al Qaeda video.
22. All quotations and details of the attack plan, ibid.
23. Alistair Reed, “Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent,” The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague, Policy Brief, May 2015.
24. The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2014, and several Pakistani media accounts. The press reports leave a number of questions unanswered about how the attack unfolded and how it was thwarted. The Pakistani military seems to have imposed an informal press blackout on the case, although it did announce that naval officers involved who survived the assault were later tried and sentenced to death.
25. Interview with Indian intelligence officials familiar with the reporting.
26. The New York Times, September 21, 2014.
27. The New York Times, September 23, 2014.
28. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, www.sigar.mil/pdf/special%20projects/SIGAR-16-23-SP.pdf, as well as related Pentagon reports.
29. United Nations: www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50111#.V_Pc_GPB9lI. Anderson: Pentagon briefing transcript, www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/606959/depart ment-of-defense-briefing-by-lt-gen-anderson-in-the-pentagon-briefing-room. Brown University figures: http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/.
30. Ruttig, “Crossing the Bridge.”
31. Quotations from Reuters, Al Jazeera, and Washington Post coverage of the event on site, December 28, 2014.
Epilogue: Victim Impact Statements
1. Signals operation: Interview with an intelligence official involved. Salangi: Interview with Holly Loftis, who was briefed on the investigation by J.A.G. officers. “Preaching in favor . . .”: General Mohammad Zahir, Ministry of Interior, at a press conference, April 21, 2016.
2. All quotations from the April 21 press conference.
3. Interviews with Holly Loftis, with gratitude to Elizabeth Barber.
4. The author is grateful to Camille, Alison, and Holly Loftis for providing copies of their statements.
5. The account of the trial and the quotations are fro
m notes taken in the courtroom by an American military observer and supplied to the Loftis family.
6. Casualty figures, attrition: The New York Times, October 12, 2016.
7. Uthman Ghazi statement: www.lawfareblog.com/statement-islamic-movement-uzbekistans-leader-uthman-ghazi-its-been-thirteen-years-we-have-heard-you.
8. Interviews with U.S. military officials at Resolute Support Mission, Kabul, September 2016.
9. Ibid.
10. Helicopter crash details: Interviews with current and former Afghan security officials. The author visited this region of Logar in 2002 and talked with residents about the history of I.S.I. supply to the region through corridors of linked valleys running from the province east toward Waziristan.
11. Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2016.
12. “Expected future disputes”: BBC News, August 4, 2015.
13. Author’s interviews with Ahmad Massoud and other family members, September 2016, in Kabul and Panjshir.
14. Ahmad’s biography, ibid. Billboard, from author’s travels. Quotations, interviews with Ahmad Massoud.
15. All quotations, author’s interview, September 2016.
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