Ghost Wars (96 page)

“We deliberated for six months, and we came to the conclusion that we should destroy them,” Omar explained when they were settled.

Haider quoted a verse from the Koran that said Muslims should not slander the gods of other religions. Allah would decide who was worthy on the day of judgment, Haider said.

He cited many cases in history, especially in Egypt, where Muslims had protected the statues and art of other religions. The Buddhas in Afghanistan were older even than Islam. Thousands of Muslim soldiers had crossed Afghanistan to India over the centuries, but none of them had ever felt compelled to destroy the Buddhas. “When they have spared these statues for fifteen hundred years, all these Muslims who have passed by them, how are you a different Muslim from them?” Haider asked.

“Maybe they did not have the technology to destroy them,” Omar speculated.

Omar said he feared what Allah would say to him on the Day of Judgment. He talked about himself in the third person. “Allah will ask me, ‘Omar, you have brought a superpower called the Soviet Union to its knees. You could not break two statues?’ And what would Mullah Omar reply?”

Peering from his one healthy eye, the Taliban leader continued: “On the Day of Judgment all of these mountains will turn into sand and fly into the air. And what if these statues in this shape go before Allah? What face, then, will Mullah Omar show to God?”
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HAIDER RELAYED an account of Omar’s visions to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, which in turn cabled a report to Washington. The embassy had largely given up on the idea that the Taliban might be persuaded to voluntarily hand bin Laden over to the United States. Omar’s rantings to Haider about the apocalypse only reinforced this analysis.

Yet Milam and others in the embassy continued to advocate close engagement with Musharraf’s government. Their conversations with relative liberals like Haider persuaded them that Pakistan’s attitude toward the Taliban might be shifting.

Diplomats, defense attachés, and CIA case officers in the Islamabad embassy reported continually on whether Taliban-style Islamic radicalism had begun to infect Pakistan’s army or government elite. Among other things, with help from American and European exchange students at Pakistan’s two prestigious colleges for army officers, the U.S. embassy conducted an annual “beard census” of Pakistani army officers, counting the number of officer graduates and serving generals who kept their beards in accordance with Islamic tradition.
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The numbers seemed reassuring. Only two or three Pakistani generals at the rank of lieutenant general or higher kept beards in 2001. The rate was less than 10 percent among graduates of the elite officers’ schools.

Anglophilic education, a vast and mobile business diaspora, satellite television, a free domestic press, and the lively, open traditions of Pakistan’s dominant Punjabi culture still insulated its society from the most virulent strains of political Islam. The Punjabi liberals who mainly ran Pakistan’s government resented the fearful, nattering lectures they heard from former Clinton administration officials such as Strobe Talbott, who spoke publicly about the dangers of a Taliban-type takeover in Pakistan. Yet even these liberals acknowledged readily by early 2001 that two decades of official clandestine support for regional jihadist militias had changed Pakistan. Thousands of young men in Quetta, Peshawar, and Karachi had now been inculcated in the tenets of suicide warfare. The country’s main religious parties—harmless debating societies and social service agencies in the first decades after partition—had become permanent boards of directors for covert jihadist wars. They were inflamed by ambition, enriched with charity funds, and influenced by radical ideologies imported from the Middle East.

The U.S. embassy poured out cables and analytical papers about the potential for “Talibanization” in Pakistan. The embassy’s defense and political analysts mainly concluded that while the danger was rising, it remained in check. Yet even a slight risk of a takeover by Islamic radicals argued for continued close engagement with Musharraf’s government, these American analysts believed.
28

GEORGE TENET INTRODUCED HIMSELF to the new Bush Cabinet by issuing dire warnings about an imminent threat of new terrorist strikes from bin Laden. CIA threat reporting surged during January and February, leading up to the
hajj
pilgrimage in March. There were “strong indications” that bin Laden was “planning new operations” and was now “capable of mounting multiple attacks with little or no warning,” Tenet said. The CIA warned Prince Turki that it had reports of a planned terrorist strike in Mecca. Al Qaeda recruitment videos circulated in the Middle East, showing bin Laden reading poems in praise of the
Cole
bombers while touring martial Afghan training camps. For the first time since he was sworn into office, Tenet put terrorism first on his list as he reviewed the most important security challenges faced by the United States in his annual winter briefing to the Senate. The CIA director showed Rice and others the video of bin Laden at Tarnak Farm and outlined the agency’s disruption efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Rice asked Tenet to prepare a memo on covert action authorities for Afghanistan that would expand the CIA’s permissions in the field. When Tenet presented his draft, he and Rice’s office decided to wait to implement the new authorities until the Bush Administration had developed new policies on al Qaeda and Central Asia. Bush himself recalled that Tenet told him the CIA had all the authority it needed.
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Zalmay Khalilzad, at the National Security Council, sought to use the Bush administration’s leverage to establish credible Pashtun opposition to the Taliban on Pakistani soil. But Musharraf’s government refused that spring to allow official Afghan opposition groups, as Khalilzad urged, “because we’d have a civil war,” as one Pakistani official recalled. The discussions continued warily. The Pakistanis told the Americans they were being taken for a ride by self-aggrandizing Afghan exiles. They asked for names of America’s favored “moderate” anti-Taliban Pashtuns. The CIA had to protect unilateral contacts and recruitments among anti-Taliban Pashtuns, however, some of whom lived in Pakistan.
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Tenet traveled secretly to Islamabad that spring of 2001. Mahmoud had remained cold and recalcitrant in the year since his CIA-escorted tour of the Gettysburg battlefield.

Tenet said he saw nothing to lose by keeping the lines open. Mahmoud had tightened up on American access to every sector of the Pakistani army and intelligence service. He had decided to enforce strict liaison rules that blocked American contacts with Pakistani corps commanders, division commanders, and other generals. CIA access to Pakistani intelligence officers remained limited. Inside the U.S. embassy, opinion about Mahmoud’s motivations was divided. Accounts of the ISI chief’s new religiosity had begun to circulate widely. Yet Mahmoud remained correct, formal, and condescending in one-on-one meetings.
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Mahmoud hosted a dinner for Tenet at the ISI mess in Islamabad. There was a numbing routine to these official liaison meals: starched uniforms, exotic headdresses, fruit juice, smiles, and stiff formality. The working sessions were little better. Mahmoud tried to reassure the Americans that he was on their side. Tenet asked for practical help. The CIA’s objective was to penetrate bin Laden’s security, arrest his aides, and break up his operations, Tenet said. The Americans continued to believe that Pakistani intelligence could do much more to help track bin Laden’s location and disrupt his terrorist planning.

The CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration had managed to maintain some cooperation with Pakistani police and intelligence services on drug trafficking issues. They talked about whether it would be possible to use the counternarcotics channel to get bin Laden.
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Tenet came and went quickly. After decades official liaison between the CIA and ISI had its own self-perpetuating momentum. One meeting followed another. High-level visits were reciprocated. As Tenet left, planning began for when Mahmoud might travel again to the United States. Early September 2001 looked as if it might be convenient.

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“Many Americans

Are Going to Die”

AHMED SHAH MASSOUD retained a Washington lobbyist as the Bush administration took office. He wanted someone who could arrange meetings on Capitol Hill for his Panjshiri advisers. He wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney urging the new administration to reexamine its alliance with Pakistan. He traveled secretly to Russia and Iran to shore up supply arrangements. In Moscow, the tycoon-ruled capital of his former communist enemy, Massoud met quietly with Russian defense officials worried about bin Laden’s drive into Chechnya and Central Asia. In the Panjshir, Massoud welcomed European visitors worried about his ability to hold his ground. A sympathetic Belgian politician invited him to travel in early April to Strasbourg, France, the seat of the European parliament, to deliver a speech about the al Qaeda threat. Massoud accepted. With the loss of his headquarters in Taloqan, his military prospects looked grave. He told his advisers and visitors that he knew he could not defeat the Taliban on the Afghan battlefield, not so long as they were funded by bin Laden and reinforced from Pakistani
madrassas.
He sought to build a new political and military coalition within Afghanistan and without that could squeeze the Taliban and break their grip on ordinary Afghans. For this, sooner or later, he would require the support of the United States, he said.
1

His CIA liaison had slackened, but his intelligence aides still spoke and exchanged messages frequently with Langley. That spring they passed word that Massoud was headed to France. Gary Schroen from the Near East Division and Rich, the chief of the bin Laden unit, said they would fly to Paris.
2

Massoud’s reputation—his myth—depended on his tenacious refusal to leave Afghan territory even in the darkest hours. At midlife he allowed himself and his family many more comforts than he had known in the Panjshir during the early 1980s, but only to the extent that cities like Tehran or Dushanbe could provide them. Many of his senior advisers, such as Abdullah, circulated regularly in European and American cities. Massoud did not follow. His political strength among Afghans rested on his claim to be the most stalwart, consistent fighter on Afghan soil, a claim that had the virtue of truth. Yet Massoud had been educated at Kabul’s
lycée.
He retained his French. At forty-nine, Paris in April was his well-chosen indulgence.

At the hotel Schroen discovered to his amusement that he had been officially registered as part of Massoud’s Afghan delegation. Massoud Khalili, the aide to the commander who had accompanied Schroen on his maiden flight to Kabul in 1996, had made his arrangements. He innocently included his CIA friend on the delegation’s official list. But Schroen had been “declared” or openly identified as a CIA officer to the French intelligence services. They surely were monitoring the guest lists and bugging the rooms. Now the French, so often irritating to the CIA’s Near East Division, would have even more reason than usual to wonder what the CIA was up to with Massoud.
3

They met in a sizable group. Massoud’s back was plaguing him, and he did not look well. A streak of gray now ran through his hair. He had not slowed much; he still worked through the night and flew off jubilantly on reckless helicopter reconnaissance missions in the Panjshir. But he was an aging lion, regal but stiffening.

The Americans wanted to reassure him that even though there had been no recent CIA visits to the Panjshir, the agency was still going to keep up its regular payments of several hundred thousand dollars each, in accordance with their intelligence sharing deal. The CIA also wanted to know how Massoud felt about his military position as the spring fighting season approached in Afghanistan. Would he be able to hang in there?

Massoud said that he could. He believed he could defend his lines in the northeast of Afghanistan, but that was about all. Counterattacks against the Taliban were becoming more difficult as his resources frayed. A drive on Kabul remained out of the question. The United States government had to do something, Massoud told the CIA officers quietly, or eventually he was going to crumble. The Americans told him that they would keep trying. There was a new administration in Washington, as they all knew. It would take time for the Cabinet to settle in and educate itself, but this was a natural opportunity to review policy.
4

Massoud doubted they had time. “If President Bush doesn’t help us,” he told a press conference in Strasbourg a few days later, “then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon—and it will be too late.”
5

Massoud believed that the Taliban were seeking to destroy him or force him into exile. Then al Qaeda would attempt to link up with Islamist militants in remote areas of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to press forward into Central Asia, burnishing bin Laden’s mystique as a conquerer of lost Islamic lands. Massoud’s clanking helicopters, patchwork supply lines, and Panjshiri volunteers could not stop this juggernaut. He could only rebound, he believed that spring, if outside powers put enough pressure on Pakistan and the conservative Persian Gulf kingdoms to cut off or severely pinch the Taliban’s supplies. Since Massoud could not strike these supply lines militarily, he had to attack them through politics. This is what had brought him to the European parliament. It was also why he pushed his aides to lobby the U.S. Congress that spring.
6

At the same time Massoud hoped to exploit the Taliban’s weaknesses inside Afghanistan. He called this part of his strategy “the new return.” For a year now Massoud had been stitching a revived
shura,
or governing council, that united Taliban opponents from every major Afghan ethnic group and every major region. From Quetta, Pakistan, Hamid Karzai organized among the Kandahar area’s Durrani tribes. Ismail Khan had entered western Afghanistan from Iran and was leading an uprising near Herat. Karim Khalili, the country’s most prominent Shiite leader, had returned from exile to Bamian province to work against the Taliban. Haji Qadir, a former Pashtun warlord-politician in Jalalabad, had slipped into Kunar province to lead a local rebellion. Aburrashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, had come back to Afghanistan from exile and fought behind Taliban lines in the rough northern mountains.
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