by Steve Coll
15. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, p. 89, citing an intelligence report presented to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1992.
16. Who McWilliams saw and what they told him are from interviews with McWilliams, January 15, 2002.
17. Barnett R. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 249.
18. Interviews with U.S. officials.
19. Interviews with Yahya Massoud, May 9 and 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).
20. Cable in author’s files. “For God’s sake” is from an interview with Hamid Gailani, May 14, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).
21. Interview with McWilliams, January 15, 2002.
22. The account of the embassy’s reactions and the controversy over the earlier episode in Kabul are from interviews with several U.S. officials, including McWilliams, on January 15, 2002. The internal investigation described two paragraphs later is from McWilliams. Bearden’s quoted views about Massoud are from Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, p. 279. That Bearden saw Hekmatyar as “an enemy,” ibid., p. 283. In his memoir Bearden not only describes Hekmatyar “as an enemy, and a dangerous one,” but he also discounts “allegations that the CIA had chosen this paranoid radical as its favorite.” But the record shows no evidence of CIA pressure on Hekmatyar during this period, and other U.S. officials say that CIA records from these months show a persistent defense of Hekmatyar by the agency.
23. Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War, pp. 161-62. KGB chief ‘s tennis, ibid., p. 242. Polish ambassador, ibid., p. 239. Officer reading from book about 1904 Japan war, ibid., p. 233. Gromov on Massoud, ibid., p. 246. Last fatality, ibid., p. 278.
24. Bearden, “Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires,” Foreign Affairs, pp. 22-23.
25. Interview with Bearden, November 15, 2001. Also Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, pp. 358-59.
26. From Robert Gates’s unpublished original manuscript, p. 31/20, quoting Shevardnadze’s memoir.
CHAPTER 10: “SERIOUS RISKS”
1. The account of two stations inside the embassy and the details of payments to Afghan commanders are from interviews with U.S. officials.
2. Multiple published accounts of the failed attack on Jalalabad describe the role of ISI, discussions within the Pakistani government, and the problems of the Afghan interim government. See Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, pp. 298-99; Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap, pp. 227-31; Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 250; and Olivier Roy, Afghanistan: From Holy War to Civil War, p. 72. As Roy writes, “The Pakistani soldiers who pressed the guerrillas to join the conventional war in 1989 looked on Afghanistan as a ‘headquarters operations map’ upon which one moves little blue, red and green flags over a space where units are interchangeable and objectives quantifiable. As seen by Afghans, this was [a space] of tribes, ethnic groups, zones of influence of one chief or another.”
3. The figure of “about $25 million” is from Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan; he quotes U.S. diplomats citing reports that Saudi intelligence spent $26 million. The Gul quote is from the author’s interview with Hamid Gul during 1992.
4. The characterizations here and in preceding paragraphs are drawn from interviews with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002,Washington,D.C. (SC); Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW); Mirza Aslam Beg, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC); and Hamid Gul, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC); as well as with other U.S. officials and Pakistani officers. The conversation between Bhutto and Akhund, “I wonder if … turn out” is from Iqbal Akhund, Trial and Error, p. 38.
5. “Not some Johnnies” and “prepared to allow” are from Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 298. “Eyes blazing with passion” and “one week” are from the interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. “There can be no ceasefire … becomes Darul Amn” is from Akhund, Trial and Error, p. 177. In his memoir Bearden writes that he traveled through the Khyber Agency during the Jalalabad siege and found the battle “a halfhearted effort that senselessly piled up casualties on both sides.” Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 362. Bearden also writes that as he left Pakistan that summer, he presented Hamid Gul with a U.S. cavalry sword and tried to help Gul choose a university in America for his oldest son to attend. Some years later, Bearden acknowledges, “the CIA would describe the plucky little general as ‘the most dangerous man in Pakistan.’ And that, too, would be right.” Ibid., p. 367.
6. Information on the Sarobi plan, the Peshawar meeting, and the truck supplies are from interviews with U.S. officials.
7. Interview with Gary Schroen, July 31, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC).
8. The estimate of the dollar value of Soviet monthly aid during this period is from Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s Endless War, p. 70.
9. CIA Stinger and sludge operations are from interviews with U.S. officials.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid. Some U.S. officials interviewed referred to the Bush administration’s renewed finding as “the bridge finding,” meaning that it bridged U.S. covert policy from the Soviet occupation period, now ended, with the final defeat of Najibullah, a Soviet client. Besides setting Afghan “self-determination” as an objective of CIA covert action, the Bush finding also set out humanitarian objectives for U.S. policy, as NSDD-166 had done earlier. These included the voluntary return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran. The full scope of this finding is not known, but it seems to have been a fairly modest revision of Reaganera objectives, undertaken mainly to account for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
12. Interview with Edmund McWilliams, January 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).
13. “To SecState WashDC Priority, Dissent Channel,” June 21, 1989.
14. While reporting in Pakistan during this period, and later in London, the author heard this argument repeatedly from British diplomats and intelligence officers involved in the Afghan program.
15. “Just because a few white guys” is from a written communication from Milton Bearden to the author, July 5, 2003.
16. The characterization of the view of CIA officers is from interviews with Milton Bearden, November 15, 2001, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC), and several other U.S. officials.
17. Oakley said that his “problem with McWilliams” was that McWilliams had a naïve, unrealistic desire to change U.S. policy that had been endorsed by the White House. By 1991, Oakley’s own views seem to have shifted more in McWilliams’s direction, but by then McWilliams was long gone from the embassy.
18. Letter from McWilliams to Oakley, July 23, 1989.
19. Interviews with U.S. officials.
20. The account of the Anderson-Bearden trip is from interviews with several U.S. officials, including Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC). Bearden later wrote and published a novel in 1998, Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan, based on his tour as station chief in Islamabad. Bearden’s fictional hero, Alexander, has a close encounter with a group of Algerian volunteers in the same eastern area of Afghanistan. In the novel Bearden writes a fantasy of revenge. An anti-Arab Afghan mujahedin commander lures the Algerians to a feast around a campfire and supplies a goat with “two claymore mines packed neatly inside the chest cavity.” Most of the Algerians are killed when the mines detonate, and a survivor is tortured and killed by Afghans.
21. Interviews with U.S. officials.
22. Ibid.
23. Richard MacKenzie, reporting for The Washington Times, broke the story of the massacre on July 11, 1989, to the author’s chagrin. See also Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, pp. 250-51.
24. Interview with an Arab activist familiar with Azzam’s visit with Massoud that summer. Olivier Roy, Afghanistan: From Holy War to Civil War, p. 86, also describes Azzam’s journey that summer. So did Daoud Mir, an aide to Massoud, in interviews, July 31 and August 8, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). That Azzam compared Massoud to Napoleon is from Mir interviews. After meeting with Massoud, Roy writes, Azzam
“endeavored to strike a balanced attitude” between Massoud and Hekmatyar.
25. The summary of the debates is drawn largely from interviews with two Arab participants. Al-Zawahiri’s published writings make clear where he and bin Laden stood on theological questions.
26. Azzam is quoted by his son-in-law, Abdullah Anas, in The New York Times, January 14, 2001.
27. Multiple published accounts, including from Anas, ibid., describe a split among the Arab volunteers then in Peshawar after Azzam’s death, and most accounts date to this period of bin Laden’s emergence as the new head of al Qaeda, as he called the successor organizaton of Azzam’s Office of Services. But the sequence of this split and takeover remains unclear. American intelligence dates al Qaeda’s founding to 1988. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., p. 60, quotes the British military journalist and inveterate Afghan traveler Peter Jouvenal as seeing bin Laden rebuilding his base in Jaji in February 1989, months before Azzam’s murder. “I witnessed them digging huge caves, using explosives and Caterpillar digging equipment,” Jouvenal said. At the same time multiple accounts, including from the chief of staff of Saudi intelligence, Ahmed Badeeb, describe bin Laden leaving Pakistan with his family at some point during 1989 for his home in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. By late 1990, bin Laden is clearly back in Jedda, fomenting jihad in South Yemen. How all of these movements and activities by bin Laden overlap with the takeover and rebirth of al Qaeda under his leadership is not fully clear.
CHAPTER 11: “A ROGUE ELEPHANT”
1. Interviews with U.S. officials. Interview with Peter Tomsen, January 21, 2002, Omaha, Nebraska (SC). Also “Special Envoy to the Afghanistan Resistance,” State Department action memorandum, April 19, 1989, declassified and released, March 23, 2000.
2. Interview with Tomsen, January 21, 2002, and with other U.S. officials.
3. Ibid. The CIA was under pressure from mujahedin supporters in Congress because of complaints from Afghan commanders about a sharp slowdown in weapons supplies. A Chinese factory dedicated to making rockets for Pakistani intelligence had burned down, and a major weapons depot in Rawalpindi had been destroyed, either by accident or sabotage. As a result, large shipments to Pakistan had been delayed at a time when the carnage at Jalalabad was draining ordnance supplies.
4. The author has seen a copy of the document.
5. The account of the shift in U.S. policy is drawn primarily from interviews with U.S. officials, including Tomsen, January 21, 2002. The policy is outlined in State Department cables from late 1989 and early 1990 that were reviewed by the author. Tomsen began to discuss his plans for the commanders’ shura publicly in early 1990. Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, pp. 247-80, provides a detailed, carefully reported account of Afghan political-military developments and U.S. policy gyrations during this period.
6. Tomsen’s travel to Pakistan, briefings to officials, and arguments with Harry are from interviews with U.S. officials. Harry: “Coming back” and “Why are you so anti-Hekmatyar?” are from interviews with U.S. officials. Twetten had participated in the interagency meeting and had signed off on the new policy on behalf of the CIA, according to Tomsen. He and others at the State Department saw the CIA’s reversal as an effort to appease Pakistani intelligence, which was upset by the new policy direction.
7. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).
8. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, pp. 261-62.
9. The account in this chapter of the CIA’s role in the winter offensive of 1989-90, including the details of the agency’s payments to Massoud, are from interviews with U.S. officials.
10. That CIA unilateral agents reported to Islamabad that bin Laden was funding a Hekmatyar coup attempt is from interviews with U.S. officials.
11. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 253. The author was in Pakistan at the time of the coup attempt and interviewed Pakistani, American, and, later, Afghan government officials and military officers about the events.
12. That the CIA had reports at the time that bin Laden had funded the Tanai coup attempt is from interviews with U.S. officials. The agency had sources among Afghan commanders and within Pakistani intelligence at the time, but it is not clear exactly where the reports about bin Laden’s role came from.
13. Interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). The no-confidence vote against Bhutto failed, but the army did forcibly remove her from office nine months later. According to Oakley, the American embassy in Islamabad concluded that Pakistani intelligence participated that winter and spring in conspiracies aimed at ousting Bhutto from power. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).
14. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 253, cites reports that funding for the Tanai coup attempt came from “ISI and Saudi intelligence.”
15. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002. Twetten said he had no recollection of any “piece of paper” coming into Langley from the Islamabad station providing advanced word or planning about the Tanai coup, and he felt certain that he would remember that “if they had told us” about the coup attempt. “They never were honest with us on Hekmatyar,” Twetten said. “When we insisted, they would arrange for a meeting with Hekmatyar, but it wasn’t very often and it wasn’t very productive, even in the best of times.”
16. Interviews with U.S. officials. While serving as ambassador to the Afghan resistance, Tomsen met with Prince Turki seventeen times.
17. Interviews with Saudi officials.
18. The meeting of Massoud’s representative Prince Bandar and Turki’s funding for the commanders’ shura are from interviews with U.S. officials and an aide to Massoud.
19. Funding levels and estimates of private Gulf money are from Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 182.
20. Gorbachev Foundation, documents presented at “Towards an International History of Afghanistan,” Cold War International History Project, Washington, D.C.
21. Interviews with U.S. officials.
22. That the CIA reported on the trucks rolling to arm Hekmatyar is from interviews with U.S. officials. Tomsen’s meeting and the quotations from the cable to Washington: “SE Tomsen Meeting with Shura of Commanders Oct. 6,” cable dated October 10, 1990, author’s files.
23. Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan, p. 115, and interview with Tomsen, January 21, 2002. Lunch meeting between Tomsen and Harry is from interviews with U.S. officials. “Not only a horribly bad … Afghan political context,” ibid.
24. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 254. Rubin, Search for Peace, p. 121.
25. The meeting between Turki and Massoud’s representatives is from an interview with Daoud Mir, July 31, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). Mir recalled that when he finally met Turki at a palace in Jedda, he began complaining vociferously that Saudi intelligence had misunderstood Massoud for many years. He talked, he recalled, until a frustrated Turki covered his ears with his hands, indicating that he had heard enough.
26. The increase in Massoud’s stipend and the struggle to ship weapons to the Panjshir are from interviews with U.S. officials.
27. “Sore on our backside” is from an interview with Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani (Ret.), May 20, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC).
28. Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, p. 309.
29. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002.
30. While traveling in Kashmir during this period, the author met with Kashmiri Islamist guerrillas who talked of their training in Afghanistan and displayed weapons clearly manufactured in China. The warning to Indian officials about sniper rifles is from interviews with U.S. officials in India during 1991.
31. Ahmed Badeeb interview with Orbit satellite network, early 2002; translated from original Arabic. See note 1 of chapter 4.
32. Ibid.
33. This account of bin Laden’s meeting with Khalil and the senior prince is from an interview with Khalil A. Khalil, Jan
uary 29, 2002, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (SC). Khalil declined to identify the prince by name but said that “King Fahd is his direct uncle.” This may have been Prince Turki.
34. Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, December 27, 2001.
35. Prince Turki, MBC television and Arab News, November 7, 2001. In an interview with ABC’s Nightline on December 10, 2001, Turki cited bin Laden’s proposals to lead an anti-Iraqi jihad as “the first signs of a disturbed mind, in my view.” The implication is that Turki was untroubled by bin Laden prior to the autumn of 1990.
36. “Whereas before … as well as beyond” is from the memo “Démarche to Pakistan on Hekmatyar and Sayyaf Gulf Statements,” January 28, 1991; excised and released April 6, 2000. The memo urges a “strong approach to the GOP [Government of Pakistan], preferably by both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia,” and also urges making the same points to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Badeeb’s trip is from an interview with Ahmed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC).
CHAPTER 12: “WE ARE IN DANGER”
1. The account in this chapter of the CIA covert action program to ship captured Iraqi armor, artillery, and other equipment to Pakistan for the Afghan rebels is drawn from interviews with multiple U.S. and Saudi officials. While working as a correspondent in Pakistan and Kabul, the author also reported on the program a few months after it began. Steve Coll,Washington Post, October 1, 1991.
2. Interviews with U.S. officials, including Peter Tomsen, January 21, 2002, Omaha, Nebraska (SC).
3. Charles Cogan, former chief of the Near East Division in the Directorate of Operations, wrote in 1990 that the Tanai coup “revealed, once again, that Gulbuddin, whatever his negative public image, leaves the other resistance leaders far behind in terms of tactics and maneuvering.” Cogan acknowledged, however, that this “still did not make Gulbuddin a credible alternative to Najibullah.” Not all of his former colleagues at the CIA accepted the second point. See Charles G. Cogan, “Shawl of Lead,” Conflict, p. 197.