Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  18. The Washington Post, December 27, 2001.

  19. Toronto Star, December 9, 2001.

  20. “A simple band … goal” is from Time, October 1, 2001. “The Taliban … our people” is from the Associated Press, September 20, 2001.

  21. Roy, “Has Islamism a Future in Afghanistan?,” p. 211. “Of course, the problem with the Taliban is that they mean what they say,” Roy wrote three years after their initial emergence. “They do not want a King, because there is no King in Islam… . The Taliban are not a factor for stabilization in Afghanistan.”

  22. Interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). This section is also drawn in part from interviews with Pakistani officials close to Bhutto.

  23. The Bhutto quotations are from the Benazir Bhutto interview, May 5, 2002.

  24. Ibid.

  25. All quotations, ibid.

  26. Interview with Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi (Ret.), May 19, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). Qazi was the director-general of Pakistani intelligence at the time. “This was seventeen tunnels!” he said. “Seventeen tunnels full of arms and ammunition. Enough to raise almost half the size of Pakistan’s army.” The dump had been created just before the end of the anticommunist phase of the Afghan war. “Both sides, they pumped in an immense amount of weapons… . And dumps were created.” Other detailed accounts of the seizure of the Spin Boldak dump include Anthony Davis, “How the Taliban Became a Military Force,” in Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn, pp. 45-46, Rashid, Taliban, pp. 27-28, and Rashid, “Pakistan and the Taliban,” in Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn, p. 81. Rashid, citing interviews with Pakistani military officials and diplomats, estimates the dump held about eighteen thousand AK-47 assault rifles and 120 artillery pieces.

  27. The extent of Babar’s involvement with the Taliban at the time of their emergence remains unclear. A boastful man, Babar fueled suspicion that he had created and armed the movement by introducing Taliban leaders to the likes of Prince Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief, and calling them “my children.” But several associates of Babar said these quotes have been blown out of proportion and they mainly reflect Babar’s habits of blustery speech.

  28. Mullah Naqibullah, one of Kandahar’s dominant warlords at the time, said that as the Taliban swept into the city, he and other local Pashtun powers were urged by Hamid Karzai, other Pashtun leaders, and President Rabbani in Kabul not to fight against the Taliban. For Rabbani and Massoud the Taliban initially looked like a Pashtun force that could hurt their main enemy, Hekmatyar.

  29. Davis, “How the Taliban Became a Military Force,” pp. 48-49.

  30. Interview with Qazi, May 19, 2002.

  31. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. The CIA reported on the links between ISI’s Afghan training camps and the Kashmir insurgency during this period, at one point threatening to place Pakistan on the U.S. list of nations deemed to be terrorist sponsors.

  32. All quotations from “chap in Kandahar” through “all of them” are from the interview with Qazi, May 19, 2002.

  33. All quotations from “I became slowly” through “carte blanche” are from the interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002.

  34. Rashid, “Pakistan and the Taliban,” p. 86, describes the internal ISI debate about the Taliban during 1995. “The debate centered around those largely Pashtun officers involved in covert operations on the ground who wanted greater support for the Taliban, and other officers who were involved in longer term intelligence gathering and strategic planning who wished to keep Pakistan’s support to a minimum so as not to worsen tensions with Central Asia and Iran. The Pashtun grid in the army high command eventually played a major role in determining the military and ISI’s decision to give greater support to the Taliban.”

  35. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002.

  36. Interview with Ahmed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC).

  37. Scene and quotations, ibid.

  38. Ibid. See note 27.

  39. Turki’s interview with MBC, November 6, 2001.

  40. After Hekmatyar was forced into exile by the Taliban, he visited Prince Turki in Saudi Arabia, hoping for assistance, according to Saudi officials. When a stunned Turki asked Hekmatyar why the kingdom should help him when he had denounced the royal family in its time of need in 1991, Hekmatyar shrugged obsequiously. His speeches then had been “only politics,” he said, according to the Saudi account.

  41. That Saudi intelligence paid cash bonuses to ISI officers is from an interview with a Saudi analyst. That Saudi Arabia subsidized Pakistan with discounted oil is from multiple interviews with Saudi officials. That Saudi intelligence preferred to deal directly with Pakistani intelligence is from the interview with Badeeb, February 1, 2002.

  42. “Situation reports” and development of the liaison are from an interview with a senior Saudi official.

  43. Prince Turki has said publicly that the Taliban “did not receive a single penny in cash from the kingdom from its founding,” only humanitarian aid. None of the kingdom’s records are transparent or published, so it is impossible to be sure, but Turki’s claim, even if interpreted narrowly, seems unlikely to withstand scrutiny. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi intelligence analyst, wrote in a 1998 master’s thesis, “Improving U.S. Intelligence Analysis on the Saudi Arabian Decision Making Process,” that most of the Saudi aid to the Taliban was funneled by the kingdom’s official religious establishment. Obaid quotes a “high-ranking official in the Ministry of Islamic Guidance” as saying that after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, the kingdom’s religious leaders “focused on funding and encouraging the Taliban.” Human Rights Watch quoted journalists who saw white-painted C-130 Hercules transport aircraft which they identified as Saudi Arabian at Kandahar airport in 1996 delivering artillery and small arms ammunition to Taliban soldiers. There were subsequent reports of strong arms supply links between the Taliban and commercial dealers operating from the United Arab Emirates as well. Taliban religious police, Human Rights Watch concluded, were “funded directly by Saudi Arabia; this relatively generous funding … enabled it to become the most powerful agency within the Islamic Emirate.”

  44. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC). Turki also said, “We had taken a policy, since the civil war started in Afghanistan, that we’re not going to support any group in Afghanistan, financially or otherwise, from the government but that humanitarian aid [from Saudi Arabia] could continue. And it was mostly through these [charity] organizations that the humanitarian aid went to Afghanistan… . Now, I can’t tell you that individuals did not go and give money to the Taliban. I’m sure that happened. But not the institutions themselves.”

  45. See note 43.

  46. Interviews with senior Saudi officials.

  47. Interviews with U.S. officials. All of the quotations are from State Department cables between November 3, 1994, and February 20, 1995, declassified and released by the National Security Archive.

  48. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. Quotations from Talbott meeting are from a State Department cable of February 21, 1996, declassified and released by the National Security Archive. Bhutto’s comments to Wilson and Brown are from a State Department cable, April 14, 1996.

  49. Interview with former senator Hank Brown, February 5, 2003, by telephone (GW). Brown was one of the very few elected politicians in Washington to pay attention to Afghanistan during this period. “I just get a lump in my throat every time I think about it, but Afghanistan really is the straw that broke the camel’s back in the Cold War,” he recalled. “If there ever was a people in this world that we’re indebted to, it would be the people of Afghanistan. And for us to turn our backs on them, it was just criminal. Who’s done more to help us? It really is a disgrace what we did.”

  CHAPTER 17: “DANGLING THE CARROT”

  1. Miller’s background, outlook, and involvement with the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan Pakistan pipeline deal are from the author’s interview with Miller,
September 23, 2002, Austin, Texas (SC and GW).

  2. In Unocal’s 1994 10-K, the company explained its losses by saying that “the 1994 operating earnings reflected higher natural gas production, higher foreign crude oil production, stronger earnings from agricultural products, and lower domestic oil and gas operating and depreciation expense. However, these positive factors could not make up for the lower crude oil and natural gas prices, and lower margins in the company’s West Coast refining and marketing operations.” Two years later, in 1996, the company sold its refining and marketing operations to focus more exclusively on international exploration and development.

  3. The company’s 1996 annual report was titled “A New World, A New Unocal,” and it detailed a major turnaround in the company’s business strategy.

  4. For a detailed discussion of the stranded energy reserves of the Caspian region and the dilemma faced by Turkmenistan in particular, see Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, pp. 143-56.

  5. Ibid., p. 168.

  6. Interview with Miller, September 23, 2002.

  7. That the control tower was built on the wrong side is from Steve LeVine, The Washington Post, November 11, 1994. LeVine quotes a Western diplomat as saying, “The builders warned them, but the Turkmen said, ‘It looks better this way.’ ” Other colorful depictions of Niyazov’s post-Soviet rule include Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times, November 23, 1995; Daniel Sneider, The Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 1996; and Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post, July 8, 2002.

  8. The numbers on trade between the United States and the Central Asian republics are from the testimony of James F. Collins, the State Department’s senior coordinator for the new independent states, before the House International Relations Committee, November 14, 1995.

  9. “Promote the independence …” is from the testimony of Sheila Heslin, former National Security Council staffer, before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, September 17, 1997. The assistance of the U.S. ambassador and others in the government to Unocal is from the interview with Miller, September 23, 2002, and American government officials. For an examination of U.S. energy strategy in the region, see Dan Morgan and David Ottaway, The Washington Post, September 22, 1997.

  10. Interview with a senior Saudi official.

  11. Author’s interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). Bhutto would only say that Bulgheroni’s Bridas visited her “through one of the Muslim Arab leaders.” In a separate interview, however, Turki said that he was the one who made Bulgheroni’s introductions with the Pakistani leadership.

  12. Platt’s Oilgram News, October 23, 1995.

  13. Dan Morgan and David Ottaway, The Washington Post, October 5, 1998. Kissinger quoted Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was commenting on a man who had wed for a second time immediately after the end of a miserable first marriage.

  14. Robert Baer, See No Evil, pp. xix and 244.

  15. Raphel’s views on the pipeline and her activities in support of it are from interviews with a senior Clinton administration official. “We were all aware that business advocacy was part of our portfolio,” the official said. “We were doing it for that reason, and we could choose Unocal because they were the only American company.”

  16. Simons’s background, his tenure as ambassador, and his perspective on the pipeline are from the author’s interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  17. Ibid. More than half a decade after the fact, Bhutto spoke with indignation about those who invoked her husband’s name to get her to change sides: “They started saying my husband is interested [in Bridas] and that’s why I’m not going to [cancel the MOU with Bridas], which made me really, really upset because I felt that because I am a woman, they’re trying to get back at me through my husband. But nonetheless, the fact of the matter was that it had nothing to do with my husband. It had to do with an Arab leader. It had to do with the country he represented. And the fact that [Bridas] had come first. I mean, they’re wanting us to break a legal contract …”

  18. Interview with a Pakistani government official.

  19. Interviews with Bhutto, May 5, 2002, and Simons, August 19, 2002. Despite the contentious nature of the meeting, Bhutto and Simons provided similar accounts, with neither one attempting to mask just how poorly it had gone. Simons described it as “a disastrous meeting,” and Bhutto called it “a low point in our relations with America.”

  20. The account of the Unocal-Delta expedition into Afghanistan is based on the author’s interview with Miller, September 23, 2002, interviews with Delta’s American representative, Charlie Santos, in New York on August 19 and 23, 2002, and again on February 22, 2003 (GW).

  21. A copy of the Unocal support agreement was provided to the author. The agreement contained the caveat that “a condition for implementation of the pipeline projects is the establishment of a single, internationally recognized entity authorized to act on behalf of all Afghan parties.” The word entity was deliberately used instead of government to give Unocal some wiggle room down the line.

  22. In June, Santos returned to Kandahar without Miller and stayed for more than a week, to try one more time to get the Taliban to sign the support agreement. Finally, Santos got fed up and tore into one of the Taliban negotiators: “We’ve been sitting here for ten days, and you keep saying, ‘Wait another day. Wait another day. Wait another day.’ I’m going! This is bullshit! Forget this project!” With that he went out to his car and started to drive away. As he did, he saw one of the Taliban in his rearview mirror yelling for him not to go. After several more hours of negotiations, the Taliban at last agreed to sign a handwritten two-sentence statement saying that they supported the concept of the pipeline, but nothing more.

  CHAPTER 18: “WE COULDN’T INDICT HIM”

  1. Interview with Marty Miller, September 23, 2002, Austin, Texas (SC and GW).

  2. Interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  3. Interviews with several U.S. officials familiar with the CIA-ISI liaison during this period. Rana’s professional background is from Pakistani journalist Kamran Khan. Rana’s outlook is from interviews with U.S. officials and also an interview with his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi (Ret.), May 19, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). He recalled that ISI had come under “tremendous fire” in Pakistan because of the raid in Quetta in search of Kasi that had been based on faulty information.

  4. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  5. “All the way down to the bare bones” is from The New York Times, April 27, 1995. The portrait of Deutch here is drawn from multiple published sources and interviews with former colleagues of Deutch at the White House and the CIA. Moynihan’s legislation was introduced in January 1995: Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1995.

  6. “A technical guy” is from The New York Times Magazine, December 10, 1995. “From what I know” is from his confirmation hearing, The New York Times, April 27, 1995.

  7. Twelve case officers in training and eight hundred worldwide is from Bob Woodward, The Washington Post, November 17, 2001, confirmed by interviews with U.S. officials. That this represented about a 25 percent decline from the Cold War’s peak is from interviews with U.S. officials. See also testimony of George Tenet before the Joint Inquiry Committee, October 17, 2002. “California hot tub stuff ” is from an interview with a Directorate of Operations officer who retired during this period.

  8. Interview with Fritz Ermath, January 7, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  9. Portrait of White House terrorism analysis, Clinton’s interest in biological terrorism, and policy review in the first half of 1995 are from interviews with former Clinton administration officials.

  10. “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” June 21, 1995, redacted version declassified and publicly released. Context for the decision directive’s issuance can be found in Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 229-30. Benjamin and
Simon arrived in the White House counterterrorism office soon after the new policy took effect.

  11. The UBL acronym as the ultimate sign of importance is from an interview with Anthony Lake, May 5, 2003, Washington, D.C. (GW). That the bin Laden unit was formally known as the bin Laden Issue Station is from the testimony of George Tenet, Joint Inquiry Committee, October 17, 2002. That the Counterterrorist Center’s bin Laden unit began with about twelve people is from the National Commission’s final report. That it was a “virtual station” and a management prototype is from interviews with U.S. officials. That the NSA had tapped bin Laden’s satellite telephone during this period is from James Bamford, The Washington Post, June 2, 2002. The bin Laden issue station’s startup was accompanied by classified White House directives that delineated the scope of its mission. Whether this initial document authorized active disruption operations against bin Laden’s network is not clear. At least some authorities beyond normal intelligence collection may have been provided to the CIA by President Clinton at this stage, but the precise scope is not known.

  12. “One of the most significant” is from “Usama bin Ladin: Islamic Extremist Financier,” CIA assessment released publicly in 1996. Clarke quotations from his written testimony to the National Commission, March 24, 2004. See also National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 4. “Let’s yank on this bin Laden chain” is from the author’s interview with a former Clinton administration official.

  13. The account in this chapter of internal U.S. deliberations surrounding bin Laden’s expulsion from Sudan is based on interviews with eight senior American officials directly involved as well as Saudi and Sudanese officials. Among those who agreed to be interviewed on the record was former U.S. ambassador to Sudan Timothy Carney, July 31, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Carney provided the chronology of the Emergency Action Committee’s decision-making and cables to Washington. Benjamin and Simon, strongly defending White House decision-making during this episode, provide a detailed account in Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 244-45. “He says that … to kill him either” is from an interview with a former Clinton administration official. The plot against Lake probably originated with Hezbollah, not bin Laden, according to former officials. At one stage the plot became so serious that Lake moved out of his suburban home and authorized a countersurveillance effort aimed at detecting his assassins. This security effort required Lake to authorize secret wiretaps of all his telephones. In 1970, Lake was subject to a secret FBI wiretap by the Nixon administration after he resigned his job as Henry Kissinger’s special assistant and then went to work for Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. In 1995, Lake sat at Kissinger’s old desk in the Old Executive Office Building as he signed the papers authorizing wiretaps of his own phones. He looked up at the FBI agents, according to one account, and said, “You know, there’s a certain irony to all this.” The FBI agent reportedly replied in a deadpan tone, “Oh, we know, sir.”