The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  Haqqani became the only casualty of the battle between the military and the civilian leadership after being sacrificed by his patron President Zardari. He had become a key adviser of Bhutto and Zardari after having been allegedly spurned by Musharraf, whom he then subsequently opposed vehemently from his academic perch in Boston University. His book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and the Military, 26 was seen by the military as a diatribe against that institution. In it he outlined his thesis that the military and the Muslim clerics had been in partnership since independence, though the strong evidence was of a patron–client relationship till the period of Zia-ul-Haq, when the relations became closer. After Zia, the military again changed tack away from close quarters with the mullahs. Surprisingly, when Zardari nominated Haqqani as ambassador, the military did not veto his appointment, though the ISI routinely vetted all such appointments. Haqqani had met the DG-ISI at the time and had called on then President Musharraf before taking up his post. In fact, he even won an extension after visiting Gen. Kayani and convincing him that he could serve the military’s interests in the US too. But the civil–military distrust was mutual and deep and proved to be the cause of his eventual removal from Pakistani politics.

  The army was also feeling vulnerable, having narrowly survived a successful terrorist assault on its main headquarters in Rawalpindi. And it had long harboured deep suspicions that Haqqani may have helped the American Congress draft specific conditions in the KLB legislation pertaining to civilian controls over the Pakistani military. Haqqani’s difficult position as Zardari’s man in Washington as well as the country’s ambassador led him to defend Pakistan and its military in public. Sotto voce, he sometimes hinted at the internal tensions inside a military-dominated polity, even in his public discussions. Under one plausible but unproven scenario, he could have encouraged the production of the Ijaz memorandum as a way of helping strengthen Zardari’s hand against the military. But the maladroit and incomplete handling of the inquiry by the ISI chief and the lack of forensic evidence from Haqqani’s BlackBerry, as well as the need to keep under wraps the nature and purpose of the special Pakistan embassy account helped quash the inquiry without a clear conclusion.

  There was further collateral damage too. In June 2016, while in the US, Haqqani publicly parted ways with the PPP, as did his wife, Farahnaz Ispahani, who had been a PPP senator and also media spokesperson for the president. ‘PPP spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, in a statement, said his party does not agree with Haqqani’s opinion or analysis and connecting his work with the PPP is wrong.’ 27 This led to Ispahani tendering a public resignation from the party. Pasha, who had earlier been subjected to a sometimes harsh and unusual grilling in parliament after the Abbottabad raid, also did not stay long in his post, having been given only a one-year extension as DG-ISI. Kayani’s final years as army chief were also rife with rumours and innuendo about corruption charges associated with his brothers’ business dealings. No one, it seems, neither in the army nor in the civilian government, came out the winner in this affair. No one in power appeared willing to pursue the case to a conclusion. Memogate further deepened the distrust between the two institutions of the state and between the US and Pakistan. Pakistan continued to muddle through its crises.

  6

  Salala: Anatomy of a Failed Alliance

  ‘In war, truth is the first casualty.’ 1

  Before it came to a close, the watershed year 2011 had another surprise up its sleeve for Pakistan and its US ‘partners’. An exchange of fire on the night of 25–26 November, in the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderlands, between Pakistani and US forces, led to an unrelenting US aerial attack for nearly two hours on two isolated Pakistani posts named Volcano and Boulder at a place named Salala. These prominent posts were on a ridgeline on the western shoulder of a desolate mountain range in Mohmand Agency of the FATA of Pakistan, facing Kunar (also spelled Konar) province of Afghanistan. The Pakistani troops were supposed to be monitoring the border for incursions by Pakistani Taliban and allied Swati rebels who had fled to sanctuary in Afghanistan after the army’s clearing operations in Swat and Malakand. Under the terms of the US–Pakistan arrangement, as allies, these posts were also supposed to stop the flow of militants fighting the Coalition and Afghan forces into Afghanistan from the Pakistani side. There were no indications of major Afghan Taliban infiltration from Mohmand Agency into Afghanistan. In fact, US sources indicated that there was no substantive US or Afghan ‘governance or development activity in Maya Village [opposite Salala] since 5 October 2011 because of an absence of ANA (Afghan National Army) or coalition military presence’. 2 Generally, the US footprint had almost disappeared from this area of Afghanistan as the US/ISAF interest shifted to the South.

  By the time the firing ceased that night, twenty-four Pakistanis had been killed by American forces and another thirteen wounded. The dead included two officers and twenty-two soldiers. Significantly, there were no US or Afghan casualties.

  This attack, one in a number of such attacks by Coalition Forces on Pakistani military positions, represented the failure of the partnership between the US and Pakistan in a most glaring manner, fuelled by years of mistrust. The very first major instance of American boots on the ground inside Pakistani territory was in a village Musa Nika near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan on 3 September 2008. This attack, aimed at capturing or killing an alleged Taliban facilitator, was conducted by US Navy SEALS and followed a major Pakistan offensive in Bajaur Agency that displaced a large number of civilians and fighters from Bajaur to the southern agencies of FATA. At least twenty persons were killed in this raid. It also followed a meeting between the new Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and his prospective DG-ISI Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the JCS of the US, in the Indian Ocean on the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Pakistan denied that ‘hot pursuit’ raids were discussed or agreed to at that meeting. 3 Other US incursions via helicopters occurred from time to time. Interestingly, Steve Coll’s definitive Directorate S does not mention the attack on Angoor Adda or other US cross-border raids.

  The attack on Salala provoked anger and recriminations on the Pakistani side, and awkward and seemingly reluctant attempts to express regret but not to apologize from the American side. The relationship went into a tailspin. The ground lines of communication into Afghanistan were closed by Pakistan. Parliament took umbrage at what it considered to be American high-handedness in dealing with Pakistan, and got into reviewing and debating the situation. It took some four months for the issue to be laid to rest. Unresolved in terms of assignment of fault or punishment, one more painful episode was thus added to Pakistani memory banks about the overbearing attitude of the American ‘friends’, while on the American side many on the ground in Afghanistan and in the White House thought it was an overdue lesson for the Pakistanis for being duplicitous and non-compliant non-NATO ‘allies’ over a long time. On Pakistan’s side, this was the beginning of the end of a misbegotten misalliance in which it, as a junior partner, had to suffer American pressure to ‘do more’ and be rewarded with snubs and abiding distrust. Yet, the story of Salala has never been fully told nor understood by either the Americans or the Pakistanis. 4

  What Happened? The American Story

  On the day of the Salala attack, Gen. John Allen, the commander of ISAF and former deputy commander of CENTCOM under Gen. David Petraeus, was on a visit to Rawalpindi, accompanied by Maj. Gen. James B. Laster 5 and Maj. Gen. John W. Nicholson, 6 to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and his colleagues at General Headquarters. Among other things, they had discussed recent and ongoing operations in Afghanistan, especially in the border regions abutting Pakistan. Notably, Operation Sayaqa, an Afghan commando operation guided and supported by US forces to clear suspected ‘enemy’ forces from the village of Maya, a few miles from the Pak–Afghan border inside Afghanistan, was not mentioned by the Americans although both, and most certainly
Maj. Gen. Laster, had been briefed on the operation and had suggested alterations in the plan. Pakistani military sources at General Headquarters indicated that,

  Detailed research about pre- and post Salala incident and overall environment leading to events of 26 Nov 2011, indicate that no info on Op SAYAQA either through formal memos / CONOPs [Concept of Operations] or interactions was shared with Pakistan. On 25 Nov 11, ISAF senior leadership visited MO Dte, [Military Operations Directorate] shared info (story boards) on two ops (Op Sarhad Khamana and Op Shamsheer). 7

  The later Pakistan statement on the investigation of the Salala attack reflected this view.

  Gen. Allen recalls being woken later during the night by an assistant to be informed that: ‘We’d had a firefight and there were Pakistani casualties.’ He was heading soon after to the airport in Chaklala to catch his Gulfstream back to Kabul.

  ‘As we were driving to the airport, I’m getting call after call. First it’s four dead. Then it’s twelve dead, and . . . by the time I get to the airport, it’s over twenty dead.’ Allen called Kayani to offer his condolences. ‘I said, I don’t know what happened. I’m going to find out what happened. Please accept my sincere condolences and you know this was not intentional.’ Kayani’s response was crisp, recalls Allen. ‘You have no idea what’s happened here. I’ve lost my ability to manage our relationship now.’ 8

  The fraught US–Pakistan relationship was not faring well at that time. Accumulated anger and mistrust on both sides led to a by-the-book approach and unilateral actions resulting from a major tragedy such as the Salala attack. Upon the advice of the army chief, Pakistan immediately shut down the GLOC. The ALOC remained open, allowing the US to continue to prosecute its war in Afghanistan, albeit at a much higher cost. Clearly, Pakistan was not seeking a total break in the relationship.

  In Washington DC, the White House wanted quick answers. A senior official there told me immediately after the attack that the president wished to receive an initial report within a week. But, CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis had decided to follow strictly prescribed US military procedures and commissioned an investigation on Monday, 28 November, by Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark of the US Air Force, in conjunction with a five-person NATO team from Joint Force Command Brunssum in Europe, led by Canadian Brig. Gen. Mike Jorgensen. Clark, a command pilot with over 3,500 flight hours in eight different fixed-wing aircraft, was director of plans, programmes, requirements and assessments for Air Force SOCOM. Mattis asked that the final report be delivered by 23 December. This meant that Obama would have to wait for a final report. At the same time, it gave both sides a chance to cool things down.

  Pakistan Army headquarters confirmed that a request to Pakistan for ‘participation in the inquiry was received verbally through ODRP (Office of the Defense Representative in Pakistan, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen) as indicated to BG Stephan Clark in Gen. James Mattis’ memo ordering [the] inquiry. Pakistan chose not to be part of an inquiry, since it was “not mandated to affix specific resp[onsibility], within ISAF”.’ 9 In other words, Pakistan did not trust the purpose of the inquiry.

  The Firefight

  The attack on Salala emerged out of Operation Sayaqa, under which an Afghan National Army commando company, supported by US Army Special Forces, was to attack and neutralize insurgents operating in the Maya Valley, especially in Maya village in the Khas Kunar District of Kunar Province of Afghanistan. The concept of operation for this operation was defined as a shaping operation in support of Regional Command-East’s objective to neutralize the capability of insurgents to freely operate in the Maya Valley. According to Gen. Clark’s investigation report, the troops were supported by two Chinook heavy-lift utility helicopters, two AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters, one AC-130H/Spectre gunship, two F-15E Strike Eagle multipurpose fighter aircraft and one MC-12 Liberty turbo-propeller, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance aircraft. An estimated twenty-five to thirty insurgents were reported to be present in Maya village. On 5 October, four rocket-propelled grenades had been fired upon a CH-47 helicopter about to land near Maya village. The concept of operation was shared with Maj. Gen. Laster on 22 November. He asked that the helicopter landing zone north of Maya village be moved further away from the border and to confirm the location of Pakistani border posts. The landing zone was moved to 1.3 km north of Maya village (the objective) and 2.3 km from the Pakistan border. According to the Clark report, a map of the known Pakistani border points was provided to Maj. Gen. Laster the next day indicating the changed landing zone and known Pakistani border points. Notably, the declassified Clark report carried Figure 2 indicating the landing zone, the objective and the Afghan border, but not the ‘known locations’ of Pakistani check posts. 10

  The ground forces assembled at the landing zone at 2206 hours local time on 25 November, and proceeded to their objective along ‘goat trails’ in a very rugged terrain into a valley that opened up to the ridgeline to the east where the Pakistan border was located. It was a moonless night so the US forces employed their night-vision goggles with infrared capabilities. They split up into two elements in order to approach Maya village from two sides.

  At 2309 hours, they reported heavy machine gun fire ‘right over their heads’ from a position identified by the AC-130H gunship and MC-12 helicopter crews on the ‘eastern ridgeline’ in the ‘vicinity of the Pakistan border’, roughly 3,000 metres above Maya village. Within minutes, ‘accurate mortar fire’ was reported, effectively separating the two coalition force elements. The ground force commander called back to his higher headquarters for confirmation that there is no Pakistani military in the area because he identified the fire as coming from the ridgeline that he identified as the border. In addition, the Joint Terminal Attack controller requested a ‘show of force’ from the F-15E ‘to demonstrate a credible military presence’. The F-15E flew at high speed and low altitude over the ridgeline from where the fire was emanating, dispensing flares. The AC-130 gun ship also dispensed flares. Suddenly, the dark quiet valley was filled with the sound of the low-flying aircraft, and the AC-130 dropped its flares ‘effectively illuminat(ing) the entire valley’. The aircraft could now see the ‘machine gun nest’ on the ridgeline. But the machine gun and mortar fire did not cease. According to Clark, the ground force’s immediate headquarters came back at the same time to say that ‘there is no Pakistani military in the area’. This was the first in a series of witting or unwitting ‘miscommunications’ surrounding this incident. In fact, Regional Command East, the higher-level headquarters, had communicated, ‘We are checking with the BCC (Border Coordination Centre), but we are tracking no Pak mil in the area.’

  The Ground Force Commander then directed the AC-130 to attack the positions from where the fire was being conducted. This attack lasted six minutes. But at 2344 hours, fire was emerging from what were described as ‘rudimentary bunkers’, and both the gunship and the helicopters attacked those sites till ‘approximately’ midnight.

  All this while, Pakistani liaison officers attached to ISAF were making frantic telephone calls to their regional command contacts to say that their forces were coming under fire. The American liaison officers demanded specific location information and the response was, ‘You know where it is because you are shooting at them.’ Further, RC-East asked the ‘battlespace owner’ and the Nawa BCC to share with the Pakistani liaison officer at Nawa BCC only ‘general’ location information rather the specific latitude and longitude coordinates, ‘for security reasons’ that were not specified. Clark blames this on an atmosphere of ‘mistrust’.

  Notably, his report does not identify who issued this command at RC-East, nor did it propose any action against that individual for withholding information that could have halted the attack on the Salala posts. Compounding the confusion, Clark found that the ‘individual who received that information put it into his computer. Unfortunately, he had his overlays configured incorrectly.’ He conveyed the incorrect location, some 14 km away from the actual firefight
, to his Pakistani liaison officer, who told him there were no Pakistani forces at that particular location.

  Finally, a third firefight occurred at 0040 hours that lasted till 0100 hours in another area on the ridgeline slightly north of the first site. By 1 a.m., it became clear that there was indeed Pakistani military in the area, and the firing was stopped.

  The chief of the ODRP, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, normally was supposed to be given information on near-border operations in advance. The concept of operation for Sayaqa was not shared with him. Again, there is no explanation in the Clark report as to why this happened or if it was ordered by someone at RC-East or higher up the US command chain. He was first notified by his ISAF liaison officer about the attack at Salala at about 1.20 a.m., ‘after the actual engagement had ended’. Keen had, in fact, been informed by Pakistani authorities after the first US air attack on the Pakistani border post. According to the Clark report, the ISAF liaison officer at the ODRP informed the Night Director of the IJC’s Combined Joint Operations Centre of the incident at 0035 hours. At 0120 hours, that person updated Maj. Gen. Laster and US Army Brig. Gen. Gary Volesky, Deputy Commander Maneuver at RC-East. [On page 4 of the Clark report this time is given as 0115 hours.] Laster then contacted RC-E and directed them to de-escalate the situation without further delay. The report does not indicate if Laster briefed Gen. Allen immediately, with whom he was in Islamabad at that time.

  Notably, the Clark report does not indicate Laster or Nicholson’s Pakistan location at the time of the attack. Pakistani sources indicate that both were accompanying Gen. Allen on 25 November for his visit to Pakistan. They had briefed the Pakistani DGMO, Maj. Gen. Ishfaq Nadeem, on ISAF ‘operations in another zone but, as the Pakistanis noted later, chose not to share anything about an operation opposite Salala which was to happen the same night and so close to the border’. 11 During the night, Laster, who had been briefed about the operation in advance and contributed to its planning, asked the ISAF liaison officer at ODRP to connect him to Maj. Gen. Nadeem ‘in an attempt to defuse the situation’. He then informed US Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparotti of the incident, and Gen. Allen was informed en route to Islamabad airport. 12