1
I was told by an impeccable source in the office of President Hamid Karzai, on March 31, 2003, that a former Taliban deputy intelligence minister, Asadollah Sadozai, who had recently been caught in Ghazni, admitted to helping kill the elder Karzai and said the murder had been planned in Karachi by a pro-Taliban Pakistani group that was advised by the ISI. Hamid Karzai never really forgave the Pakistanis for killing his father.
2
I gave the speech upon receipt of the Nisar Osmani Award for Courage in Journalism, awarded by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on March 25, 2001. The entire speech was broadcast by the BBC and the Voice of America.
3
Save for a brief interlude in 1929, when the capital, Kabul, was seized by the Tajik brigand Bacha Saqao.
4
To verify many of these facts, I’ve carried out many interviews with Hamid Karzai since he became president of Afghanistan in 2001. I have also been greatly helped by Jon Lee Anderson, “The Man in the Palace,”
The New Yorker,
June 6, 2005, and Tolo TV, Kabul, interview with Karzai, August 12, 2005. See also Ahmed Rashid, “Profile of Hamid Karzai,”
The Daily Telegraph,
December 8, 2001.
5
Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia,
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. I have used my earlier book to give a brief history of Afghanistan and the Taliban movement.
7
Ahmed Rashid, “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism,”
Foreign Affairs,
December 1999.
8
These estimates are drawn from interviews with Western intelligence officials, UN diplomats, and Afghans in the field. I and others wrote about the extensive deployment of foreigners under Pakistani officers. Anthony Davis of
Jane’s Intelligence Review
estimated in August that “foreign contingents now spearhead offensives and make up one fifth of a [total] Taliban force of 40,000.” Anthony Davis, “Foreign Fighters Step Up Activity in Afghan Civil War,”
Jane’s Intelligence Review,
August 1, 2001.
9
See Ahmed Rashid, “US Weighs Up Options on bin Laden,”
The Daily Telegraph,
November 22, 2000.
10
My last meeting with Masud was in Dushanbe on September 26, 2000. The most detailed book on the subject of the CIA’s relationship with Masud is Steve Coll,
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001,
New York: Penguin Press, 2004.
11
Several books confirm meetings between Masud and the CIA. Gary Schroen was one of the CIA agents who went to see Masud and then led a team into the Panjsher Valley after 9/11. Gary Schroen,
First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan,
New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. See also Steve Coll,
Ghost Wars.
12
There are many emotional accounts of Masud’s death, but the best by far is by Nasrine Gross, “Masud: An Afghan Life,” personal message received by e-mail.
13
He had married Zeenat in Quetta in 1999. The daughter of an Afghan civil servant, she had trained as a gynecologist in Quetta, where she worked in a clinic and had been a doctor to the family when Karzai’s mother suggested to him that he marry her.
1
Mehmood had visited Washington in April 2000, where he had been bluntly told by Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering that “you are in bed with those who threaten us.”
2
Interviews with U.S. and Pakistani participants in the meeting, Washington, D.C., July 2004.
3
In March, Musharraf had written a four-page letter in Pushtu to Mullah Omar, asking him not to blow up the statues. Mehmood had secretly visited Kandahar and personally read the letter to the illiterate Mullah Omar, but to no avail.
4
The quotes are taken from interviews in 2001 and 2004 with Pakistani officials, who either were present at the meeting or had read the transcript. See also Bob Woodward,
Bush at War,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
5
Interview with Abdul Sattar in Islamabad, August 2004. He later wrote that Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States “should indicate a generally positive disposition and negotiate details later. Such a ‘Yes-but’ approach would allow Pakistan tactical flexibility. It could then also seek modification of US policy and its expectations of Pakistan.” See Abdul Sattar,
Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, 1947-2005: A Concise History,
Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
6
Woodward,
Bush at War.
Woodward provides the list of demands, as does
The 9 /11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,
New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
7
The 9 /11 Commission Report.
8
Interviews with senior military officers and civilian advisers to Musharraf, December 2001 and November 2004. See also Hassan Abbas,
Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror,
New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2004, which also gives details about the corps commanders’ meeting.
9
Interview with Pakistan Television, “Win-win Situation for Pakistan, says Musharraf, ”
The Nation,
Lahore, Pakistan, November 27, 2001.
10
The 9 /11 Commission Report.
See also Ahmed Rashid. “Hitting Kabul,”
Far Eastern Economic Review,
September 20, 2001.
11
Ali Iftikar, “Powell defends US support to Pakistan,”
The Nation,
September 9, 2004. Powell was addressing students of Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.
13
These particular allegations first appeared on al-Manar, the TV channel of the Lebanese Islamic party Hezbollah. They quickly spread around the Muslim world on Web sites and were then headlined in the Urdu press in Pakistan, which tends to promote surreal and sensational news about Israel, India, and the United States.
14
The three layers of U.S. sanctions on Pakistan were as follows: In 1990 the U.S. president could not certify that Pakistan did not have a nuclear device in adherence with the Pressler Amendment, which stopped all military and economic aid. In May 1998, Pakistan’s nuclear tests triggered further sanctions under the Arms Export Control Act. The 1999 coup triggered sanctions under Section 508 of the same act, which forbade aid to a military regime.
15
“Wrong Step Can Spell Disaster: Musharraf,”
Dawn,
September 19, 2004.
16
“Text of President George W. Bush speech to the US Congress,”
The Nation,
September 21, 2001.
17
Ian Talbot,
Pakistan: A Modern History,
London: Hurst and Co., 1998. Talbot offers the best discussion of the colonial era and the genesis of Pakistan’s territorial makeup.
18
Pakistani sociologists Hamza Alvi and Eqbal Ahmad have termed the military and administrative institutions that Pakistan inherited and built on as “overdeveloped,” in comparison to civil society. Historian Khalid bin Sayeed has described the military’s ascendance as a continuation of the British “viceregal” tradition. Pakistan’s most prominent historian, Ayesha Jalal, describes in his book
The State of Martial Law
how as early as 1951 the growth of the military-bureaucratic apparatus stunted the development of democracy. Hamza Alavi, “Class and State,” in Hassan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid (editors),
Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship,
London: Zed Books, 1983. Also Eqbal Ahmad,
Between Past and Future: Selected Essays on South Asia,
edited by Dohra Ahmad, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004. Khalid bin Sayeed,
Pakistan: The Formative Phase,
Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1983. Ayesha Jalal,
The State of Martial Law: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defense,
Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991.
19
In 2002 there were 138 million Muslims in India, or 12 percent of the total population of 1 billion people. The Muslim population is expected to rise to 150 million by 2005. India has the third largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. Syed Shahabuddin, “Muslim Indians in Census 2001,”
Mainstream,
New Delhi, October 23, 2004.
20
Shahabuddin, “Muslim Indians.” Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan at Karachi, August 11, 1947. Jinnah went on to say, “Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
21
Attempts to get Jinnah’s words back into the national agenda and school curricula have failed, even under Musharraf. On October 19, 2004, Minoo Bhandara, a Parsee member of the National Assembly, persuaded the assembly to adopt a resolution to include Jinnah’s words in the academic curricula, but the state media and the Education Ministry blacked out the resolution in case it annoyed the fundamentalists.
23
Just after Partition, West Pakistan’s population was 34 million, compared with 42 million in East Pakistan, or 56 percent of the total. In 1971 West Pakistan’s population had climbed to 65 million, while East Pakistan’s stood at over 70 million. East Pakistan’s population consisted of a majority of Bengalis, and was thus more homogenous than that of the western wing; it always constituted an overall majority. However, that did not prevent a denial of Bengali rights by rulers in the west, which led to secession. Today Pakistan is the seventh largest state in the world, with a population of 151 million.
24
When U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles became the first high-level American official to visit Pakistan, in May 1953, the army’s commander in chief, General Ayub Khan, gave him a paper outlining a cold war version of the Great Game—that the Soviets were seeking access to the warm waters in the Persian Gulf and that the Pakistani army needed to be modernized by the United States in order to stop them. In fact, Ayub was seeking arms for the army to stand up to India. Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies,
Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2001.
25
BBC World Service, interview with Zia ul-Haq, April 15, 1978. Quoted in Omar Noman,
The Political Economy of Pakistan, 1947-85,
London: Kegal Paul International, 1988.
26
Zia maintained that “we have no intention of leaving power till the accomplishment of our objectives of Islamization of the national polity . . . until then neither I will step down nor will let any one rise.” Hasan-Askari Rizvi, “Military, State and Society in Pakistan, ” press conference by Zia ul-Haq, Islamabad, March 22, 1982.
27
I have outlined in much greater detail in my earlier book on the Taliban the ISI’s ability to enrich itself. Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,
London: I. B. Tauris, 2000. Published in the United States by Yale University Press.
28
Ibid. See chapter 10 for a detailed description of this process.
29
President George W. Bush was to do exactly the same in 2003, when he accepted without question the military’s pardon of nuclear scientist Dr. A. Q. Khan, who had sold nuclear technology to several countries.
30
For a more detailed description of Zia’s aims and desire for strategic depth see my book
Taliban.
Also Diego Cordovez, and Selig Harrison,
Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
31
See Rizvi, “Military, State, and Society.” In a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1997, it was charged that the ISI chief Lt.-Gen. Assad Durrani obtained 145 million rupees ($ 6.5 million) from a banker to fund IDA candidates, some journalists, and other IDA activities. The case is still undecided.
32
The PPP won 93 seats, compared to the IDA’s 43 seats, out of a total of 207 elected seats in the National Assembly.
33
Benazir Bhutto’s first term of government was from December 1988 to August 1990. Her second term was from October 1993 to November 1996. Nawaz Sharif’s first term was from December 1990 to May 1993, when he was dismissed as prime minister but reinstated by the Supreme Court (May 1993-July 1993), only to be dismissed again. His second term was from February 1997 to October 1999.
34
Sharif’s Muslim League won 134 out of the 204 seats contested for the National Assembly, giving him a two-thirds majority, sufficient to amend the constitution at will. Since 1970, when voter turnout was 60 percent, it has steadily fallen. In the 1988 elections there was a 43 percent turnout; in 1990, 45 percent; in 1993, only 40 percent; and 1997, 32 percent.
35
Several former army chiefs told me that they had always rejected an incursion into Kargil in the past because they knew full well that crossing the LOC would invite swift Indian reaction and an international outcry. “In the ten of years of insurgency we never allowed our troops to operate with the militants but now that taboo has been broken,” said one former army chief.
36
The generals who knew about the plan were the chief of general staff Lt.-Gen. Mohammed Aziz; the corps commander of Rawalpindi Lt.-Gen. Mahmood Ahmad; the force commander northern areas Maj.-Gen. Javed Hassan; and the director, general operations, Maj.-Gen. Tauqir Zia. The head of the ISI, Lt.-Gen. Ziuddin Ahmad, was not fully informed of the operation because he was considered too close to Sharif.
37
Alan Sipress and Thomas Ricks, “India, Pakistan Were Near Nuclear War in 1999,”
The Washington Post,
May 15, 2002.
38
Ayaz Amir, “Core Issue,”
Dawn,
July 28, 2000.
39
The commander of the Northern Light Infantry, Maj.-Gen. Javed Hasan, who had carried out the operation and considered himself a great intellectual, was promoted and appointed to head the National Defense College and later the Civil Service Staff College in Lahore. India set up a Kargil Review Committee, which issued a 2,200-page classified report to the government in February 2000. As a result, India ordered a complete review of its intelligence and security systems and admitted that Kargil had been a huge intelligence failure.
40
“Kargil was a military success . . . diplomatically it highlighted Kashmir. It’s been in focus ever since. That was something the jihadis achieved,” said Musharraf. Isabel Hilton, “The General in his Labyrinth,”
The New Yorker,
August 12, 2002.
41
Council of Foreign Relations, “Engaging India,” Speech by Strobe Talbott, New York, November 10, 2004.
42
Clinton had no doubt about the ISI’s proximity to al Qaeda. “Pakistan supported the Taliban, and by extension, al Qaeda. The Pakistani intelligence service used some of the same camps that bin Laden and al Qaeda did to train the Taliban and insurgents who fought in Kashmir,” said Clinton. Bill Clinton,
My Life,
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004.
43
Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan’s Coup: Planting the Seeds of Democracy?”
Current History,
December 1999. Much of the following is based on my investigation of the Musharraf coup in 1999 for this article. An excellent blow-by-blow account of the coup is in Owen Bennett Jones’s
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm,
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.
44
Pervez Musharraf, speech to the nation, October 13, 1999.