The Battle for Pakistan
Page 15
But there were some ground rules for this cooperation.
The Pakistani government placed certain constraints on TF 58 throughout the operation, adding a level of complexity to the impending mission. These constraints reflected the Pakistani desire to conceal its support of US military operations and to control the information released to the public due to the volatile nature of its internal politics. One restriction required TF 58 to conduct all ship-to-shore and air movement into and out of Pakistan during hours of darkness. Others involved the movement and staging of equipment and personnel required to support the FOB seizure, at sites in Pasni, Shamsi, and Jacobabad. 7
There was still a lingering lack of trust between the Pakistani military and civilians, and this affected the sustainability of the US–Pakistan relationship. It was guided by exigencies. Despite all this, the Pakistani military pulled out all stops for their US military counterparts to facilitate the invasion of Afghanistan.
As the history of TF58 states:
Pasni, located on the coast of Pakistan, provided both access from the sea and the air. Movement occurred from the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) to a Beach Landing Site (BLS) under the cover of darkness for subsequent ground movement to Pasni airfield, approximately an hour’s drive away. Upon arrival at the airfield, the Pakistanis placed restrictions on the amount of equipment allowed at Pasni at any given time and required that personnel ashore maintain a low profile during the day (initially many of them remaining confined inside hangers). Despite the restrictions, without the cooperation and willingness of the Pakistani government to open Pasni in support of TF 58 operations, the assault into Afghanistan would not have been possible. 8
Once the US invasion of Afghanistan had gained its foothold and achieved its early objectives, Mattis wrote to Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan to thank him.
We both recognize that there would have been no successful Marine operations in southern Afghanistan without your adroit orchestration of support for Task Force 58.
Committing my Naval forces into a fight over 300 miles from the seas required the assistance that you willingly and professionally provided. 9
These sentiments were echoed by the commanding officer of the 22D Marine Expeditionary Unit K.F. McKenzie a month later. Maj. Gen. Robert J. Elder, Jr, of the Combined Air Headquarters US Air Force, also wrote to Farooq Ahmad Khan in December 2003 to acknowledge that ‘Working side by side [with Pakistan] has been vital to the success of Coalition air operations in Afghanistan’. Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, Commanding General, Coalition Forces Land Component Command, in February 2002, and Lt. Gen. David W. Barno of the Combined Forces command, Afghanistan, heading Operation Enduring Freedom, capped off the US appreciation for Pakistan’s role in a letter to Farooq Ahmad Khan in 2004. 10
Key to this close collaboration was Mattis, the commander of TF58. Mattis was never one to sit tight and stay within the lines of his original remit. After all, his chosen call sign for the Afghanistan invasion was ‘Chaos!’ When he heard that Al-Qaeda remnants, perhaps including bin Laden, had retreated into Tora Bora with its high peaks and deep valleys, he reverted to his study of early American history and especially the battle to capture the legendary Native American chief, Geronimo. He first told me the story of his plan to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora during one of his visits to my office at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC. At that time, he said he knew that I would not use the material without permission. Later, he confirmed it in a formal interview and allowed me to repeat his story. Characteristically, he put it succinctly: ‘I had the plan, basically, to seal off—it was in one of two valleys, do that much. So, seal off the two valleys and move against them. And with the line of sight outposts, basically, he [Osama bin Laden] wouldn’t have gotten away.’ 11 Mattis would have encircled bin Laden in Tora Bora and then tightened the noose to capture or kill him. This had been the approach in the Geronimo campaign of 1886, and, as I told Mattis, similar to what the British Indian Army did in the North West Frontier warfare in India: establish line-of-sight heliograph posts on the high ground and thereby dominate the rugged terrain.
Mattis laid out the plan to his superior in Tampa on the telephone, making the case for speed and stating that he had the Marine force ready to encircle and capture or kill bin Laden. He was told to drop the idea since the CIA and Northern Alliance commanders had made local arrangements with tribal allies to stop bin Laden from escaping into the Pakistani borderlands or to kill him in the process. According to one report, Mattis yelled his disappointment at his superior and with some choice words slammed the phone down. 12
Despite Mattis’s plea to Gen. Tommy Franks at CENTCOM, and repeated urgent requests for troops from the CIA team leader Gary Bernsten to encircle and capture Bin Laden, CENTCOM did not respond. Berntsen recalls Hank Crumpton at CIA headquarters telling him, ‘You need to remember that even though you work for me, any time Gen. Franks tells you he needs something or wants something done, you do it immediately and then inform me. We have to be married to CENTCOM.’ Berntsen’s reply was, ‘We fight together or die separately.’ 13 Yet, Berntsen’s own request for Rangers to be dropped behind bin Laden’s hideout to cut off their escape route to Pakistan was refused, and the CIA redacted the segment dealing with that request from his book. 14
Bin Laden survived, as the hugger-mugger approach of the tribal surrogates that the CIA had hired dissolved in chaos. He melted away into the Pakistani borderland. Had Mattis’s plan for Tora Bora been accepted, it is highly likely that the bin Laden story would have ended in those remote mountains, seriously damaging the future development of Al-Qaeda, as well as obviating the huge and expensive US intervention in Afghanistan and the region. It took another ten years for bin Laden to be eliminated, and billions of dollars of expenditure on a never-ending war, with thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and American casualties.
In some ways, the debacle of Tora Bora reflected the confusion about US goals as well as the internal organizational battles that affected the progress of the war in Afghanistan.
The CIA had taken the lead with its insertion of six teams into Afghanistan, loaded with hard cash and relying on their contacts with tribal chieftains in the north, west and south. Operating under their codenames of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc., they sought to energize and organize the local resistance to the Taliban while the military prepared to move larger numbers of troops into the fight.
Team Echo and then Team Foxtrot ended up in the southern part of the country, in the heavy Pakhtun belt, aiming to secure the Taliban ‘capital’ Kandahar. TF58, the Naval Expeditionary Force under Mattis, meanwhile, headed to Helmand and their FOB Rhino. (The joke among US Army types was that the Marines chose that site in Helmand then and later only because it was the end of the range of their heli-lift capacity.) Foxtrot team leader Gary Schroen described one conflict within the CIA. Islamabad CIA Station chief, Robert Grenier, was seen by Schroen as ‘loudly beating . . . the Pakistani drum song—that focusing on the north and concentrating our military efforts against the Taliban forces there would allow the Tajik Northern Alliance to capture Kabul and sweep across the northern half of Afghanistan’. 15 This would leave the Pakhtuns fragmented and militarily weak.
Pakistan would have preferred the US bombing to hold the Taliban fighting in the north while bombing them over time, allowing the Pakhtuns to rally in the south and giving them a greater advantage in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Then, Hank Crumpton, at CIA Headquarters, asked Schroen to invite SOCOM to send a team to assist the Panjshiris. This after Schroen states he had been begging and pleading for SOCOM to send troops! ‘We had limited communications with the outside world, and only indirect contact with CENTCOM or the other military commands’ involved in the invasion of Afghanistan, recalls Schroen. In his view, the infighting among the Special Operations components led to delays in entering the fight. Nowhere in his account does Schroen acknowledge or explain the role of TF58 or Special Forces operations in tandem with the CIA’s teams.
&n
bsp; Even after the initial bombing had begun, Grenier in Islamabad protested the lack of progress as well as the ‘political disappointment’ while making the case for cooperating with the Pakistani intelligence under the new leadership after the firing of pro-Taliban Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed. Indeed, Duane Evans, the eventual team leader of Team Foxtrot, recalls also that Grenier had tried to name one of his own staff to lead Team Foxtrot since that officer knew Gul Agha Sherzai, the local Pakhtun leader whom the CIA was trying to use to infiltrate and capture Kandahar. 16 Evans claims that Foxtrot entered Kandahar on 7 December 2001, the first team inside the Taliban stronghold. Within two days, Team Echo had brought Karzai into Kandahar. And then Evans recalls travelling outside the city to get Sherzai’s fighters to hand over the airport to Mattis’s expeditionary force. 17
Grenier reserved his best shot for the Marines: ‘Fortunately, rather than moving north to create mayhem as we had feared, the Marines had sat on their haunches at Camp Rhino and done nothing.’ 18 Mattis, who is one of the best-read generals around, despite his reputation as a profane and rough Marine, had already jabbed at the dapper Grenier, who arrived at Kandahar airport in a spiffy blazer: ‘You must be the best-dressed man in Kandahar.’ Grenier retorted, ‘Well, sir, I was planning to pay a call on the headmaster of Kandahar Prep and thought I should dress appropriately!’ The Marines did not think this was the CIA’s war to fight and win. The CIA did not think the military alone would account for the victory.
In all this confusion, Bin Laden escaped. The ‘necessary war’ became an unending one.
Picking Up bin Laden’s Trail
Pakistan had earlier tried to set up a commando team with US help to track and capture bin Laden in Afghanistan. But this ISI-led team was disbanded after Musharraf took over the government of Pakistan, largely because the main architect was Lt. Gen. Ziauddin Khwaja, the ISI chief whom Nawaz Sharif had chosen to replace Musharraf as army chief. The Pakistanis also believed that the US would take unilateral actions via drones or otherwise if they found Al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. The attack on Damadola in FATA to get Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda second-in-command, was one such effort. Musharraf also believed bin Laden was sick and dying.
The US set up a unit to track bin Laden, but the trail had gotten cold, as their target went off the grid by not using electronic communications and employing human cut-outs to receive and carry his messages. A small team of female analysts at the CIA carried the torch though, and devoted thousands of hours to their dogged pursuit of bin Laden. The CIA had already infiltrated many agents into the country since 2004. The third floor of the US embassy in Islamabad where the CIA agents maintained their offices was a busy place. More than trying to track their target, agents were in place to subvert the loyalties of Pakistanis in civil and military positions, or even retired officers of the military, who might have useful information that could fill in the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of the hunt for bin Laden.
Among these was a Lt. Col. Eqbal Saeed Khan of ISI, 19 who had once been in Military Intelligence and commanded the MI’s 408 Battalion in Rawalpindi. His son from his first marriage, Shaheryar (known as Sherry), was an aide-de-camp to President Musharraf and continued to work with him after Musharraf left office. Saeed himself was commissioned in the 24th War Course into the Pakistan Army and joined 44 SP (self-propelled) artillery regiment, Musharraf ’s regiment. He did his intelligence staff course in 1993, and his colleagues recall him being ‘a bright guy and lively company’. He was well known by his nickname of Bailee, a Punjabi word equivalent to ‘buddy’ in English. 20 He was reportedly retired prematurely by the army chief for dealing in fake currency. 21 Another report has him being passed over for promotion to brigadier and then prematurely retired. There were many such disgruntled former intelligence officers. Military promotion boards were ruthless in sifting through the candidates and intelligence officers often did not stand a chance against regular army officers who had served with many army commanders who then sat on promotion boards.
Many of these retired intelligence officers became security contractors. Some took on religion and joined jihadi outfits whom they had once monitored or controlled, including Al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba. This was also fertile recruiting territory for the CIA. Col. Saeed, who ran a security firm in Islamabad, may have been responsible for providing logistic and surveillance assistance to the Americans in tracking and locating movements related to what turned out to the final lair of bin Laden in Abbottabad. Col. Saeed’s office in Abbottabad is reported to have been used as a listening and staging post. He is reported to have been recruited by Lt. Col. Hafeez, his predecessor at the helm of the 408 Intelligence Battalion, who had been hired by the US, and according to one report was even in the US team that CIA Director George Tenet brought to a meeting with Gen. Kayani. 22
According to another senior retired ISI officer, Saeed may have been rewarded by the Americans for having kept mum about the final stages of the search for bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad. Another retired brigadier was also prominently mentioned in assisting the search for bin Laden, but no formal inquiries in Pakistan have been shared with the public. 23 Indeed, the Abbottabad Commission that was set up by Pakistan to investigate the raid that killed bin Laden appeared to clear Col. Saeed. 24 And a very senior military officer who spoke with me about a brigadier implicated in that case also indicated that they had not found much on him. The brigadier was not mentioned in the report.
Yet, Col. Saeed suddenly decamped from Pakistan immediately after the raid on Abbottabad, leaving behind an empty home in the DHA at Morgah, days before his child’s high-school exams and even as his second wife was reported to be recuperating from a medical procedure. 25 The house was then disposed of by the manager of his security firm, according to a former colleague of the colonel. He is living in San Diego, California, owns a $2.4-million home under his own name and also operates under the name Bailey Khan, a Western variation of his nickname Bailee in Pakistan. In May 2018, photographs emerged of the colonel and his wife enjoying their new life. A white BMW convertible with California licence plates is visible in some of the photos of the dapper colonel.
The US had a vast array of human and technological expertise to try to track bin Laden. Among these, the National Security Agency, from its perch in Maryland outside Washington DC and networks with intelligence agencies around the globe, captured electronic communications from all over the world. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency on its new campus 26 just off I-95, south of Washington DC, kept its eyes peeled via satellites on targets in war zones and in neighbouring countries to evaluate developments as quickly as possible and help analysts at the CIA and other agencies triangulate information on friends and enemies alike. Bin Laden became one of the targets of the combined searches by these and other agencies of the US.
The first CIA unit tasked to track and capture bin Laden was set up in 1996 under Michael Scheuer, a bearded and intense man who named his unit Alec Station, after his son, and provided a constant stream of reports and analyses to the CIA from his operation close to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. He left the unit and the agency in 2006 after writing a scathing bestselling book on US policy called Imperial Hubris 27 under the nom de plume Anonymous. His cover was soon blown and he went public with his critiques in open and private fora. 28 His website 29 began to serve as his primary launchpad for ideas that often excoriate official Washington. As a recent post explains: ‘Wasted lives, limbs, and dollars are three of the main characteristics of the US government’s military interventionism overseas.’ Robert Grenier, who had been CIA station chief in Islamabad at the time of the invasion of Afghanistan, and later headed the Counter Terrorism Center, was seen as a proximate cause of the departure of Scheuer, as Grenier sought to reorganize the search for bin Laden within a global strategy.
While the US focused attention on bin Laden, as did the Afghan NDS, there did not appear to be a major effort on the Pakistan side with its primary focus on domestic terro
rism and insurgency. An abortive attempt to create a special team of commandos to try to track and capture bin Laden created under DG-ISI Ziauddin Khwaja was disbanded soon after Gen. Khwaja was removed from the army by Gen. Musharraf, after Prime Minister Sharif tried to install Khwaja as Musharraf ’s successor as army chief in 1999. It appeared that Pakistan did not wish bin Laden to be found on its soil, and the story peddled by officialdom in Islamabad was that he was either dying or dead or had fled to some other country. The ISI’s Counter Terrorism Wing made its own effort to track terrorists operating inside Pakistan and at one point is reported to have requested the CIA to provide satellite surveillance of a house in Abbottabad that had aroused their suspicion. 30
The US search persisted and gained ground after 9/11. The US provided frequent information to Pakistan, but none of those leads produced anything tangible. A story told by President Musharraf at a dinner in suburban Maryland was one such dead-end tale. Someone had photographed a tall bin Laden–like figure sitting in an open Jeep in Chitral, often described as a likely hiding pace for bin Laden. This intelligence was shared by US officials with Musharraf who then deputed his people to track down the occupant of that Jeep. Kudos to the Pakistani intelligence team, they actually located the individual, who turned out to be Yaqoob, an Afghan from Khost, who resembled and liked to dress like Osama bin Laden. Yaqoob was found across the Afghan border in Khost and brought to meet Musharraf. He was a virtual doppelganger of the Al-Qaeda leader. The ISI released him with a sizable payment and told him to keep his mouth shut. 31