The 9/11 Wars (119 page)

  85
.
Gallup World Poll 2007.

  86
.
Jason Burke, ‘Target Europe’,
Observer
, September 9, 2007; Erik Kirschbaum, ‘German suspects had deadline for attacks: report’, Reuters, September 8, 2007. The German case also threw a light on the continuing role of the tribal areas of Pakistan in many, though by no means all, European investigations. In the case of the German converts, the main suspects were believed to have trained not with al-Qaeda but with the little-known Islamic Jihad Union, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Converts had already figured significantly in terrorism in Europe, comprising 8 per cent of militants arrested in Europe. The Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael,
Jihadi Terrorists in Europe
, 2006.

  87
.
Some key changes were technical but important, such as the new ability of British financial investigators to use classified information to freeze assets.

  88
.
Author interview, London, spring 2009.

  89
.
From primary and secondary sources including the scores of trials of alleged militants. Legal proceedings did not always kill off some of the more fantastic claims – right-wingers in Spain continued to claim that Basque separatists were responsible for the Madrid attacks even after one of the longest and most exhaustive trials in Europe in recent decades convicted those responsible – but they did provide relatively well-founded evidence that could be deployed to contradict the ubiquitous conspiracy theorists. Diane Cambon, ‘L’Aile dure de la droite espagnole defend toujours la théorie de complot’,
Le Monde
, February 14, 2007.

  90
.
Dipak Gupta,
Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence
, Routledge, 2008, p. 3. The degree to which the public was well informed can be exaggerated. Even in 2006, counter-terrorist specialists and key Congressmen in America proved unable to explain the difference between Shia and Sunnis. Jeff Stein, ‘It’s not a trick question’,
International Herald Tribune
, October 18, 2006.

  91
.
The ruling was on June 29, 2006, in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.

  92
.
New York University Center on Law and Security, Terrorist Trial Report Card 2001–2009,
published 2010, pp. i–iii, 6–7. Convictions on headline charges of very serious offences were sought – and often denied – and suspects who could have been jailed on lesser charges went free.

  93
.
Ibid., p. v.

  94
.
Author telephone interview with Mudd, June 2010. See Scott Shane and Lowell Bergman, ‘F.B.I. struggling to reinvent itself to fight terror’,
New York Times
, October 10, 2006.

  95
.
Robert S. Mueller III, director Federal Bureau of Investigation, Citizens Crime Commission, James Fox Memorial Lecture, New York, April 26, 2006. Author interview with Carl Newns, Foreign Office, London, September 2006. Jason Burke, ‘Britain stops talk of “war on terror” ’,
Observer
, December 10, 2006.

  96
.
Author interview, London, September 2006.

  97
.
Author interview with Jonathan Freeman, London, September 2006.

  98
.
Matthew Lee, ‘ “Jihadist” booted from government lexicon’, Associated Press, April 24, 2008.

  99
.
United States Army,
Full Spectrum Operations, Unified Quest 2007,
pamphlet published April 22, 2008, p. 22.

100
.
‘Few Muslims back suicide bombs’, BBC News Online, 25 July 2007. Pew Research Center,
Pew Global Opinions Survey, 2007: A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the Developing World
, p. 55.

101
.
Ibid., p. 57.

102
.
Terror Free Tomorrow poll, ‘Saudi Arabians Overwhelmingly Reject Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Saudi Fighters in Iraq, and Terrorism; Also among Most Pro-American in Muslim World’, Washington, December 2007, p. 3.

103
.
Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, ‘The unraveling: the jihadist revolt against bin Laden’,
New Republic
, June 11, 2008. Omar Ashour, ‘De-Radicalization of Jihad? The Impact of Egyptian Islamist Revisionists on Al-Qaeda’,
Perspectives on Terrorism
, vol. 2, no. 5, May 2008.

104
.
See Mamoun Fandy,
Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent
, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, for an excellent account of the early activities and ideological development of al-Auda.

105
.
Bergen and Cruickshank, ‘The unraveling’. Sheikh Salman al-Auda, ‘Letter to Osama bin Laden’, September 14, 2007,
www.islamtoday.net
. Michael Scheuer, ‘Al-Qaeda: Beginning of the End, or Grasping at Straws?’,
Terrorism Focus
, vol. 4, no. 32, October 12, 2007.

106
.
Interview at the Saudi Interior Ministry, March 2008.

107
.
Transcript of Usama bin Laden Audio Recording produced by the As-Sahab Media Foundation: ‘A Message to the Islamic Nation’, released May 18, 2008, NEFA Foundation.

108
.
Author interviews with Western and Afghan intelligence officials, Kabul, August 2008. Amit R. Paley, ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader may be in Afghanistan’,
Washington Post
, July 31, 2008.

CHAPTER 12: AFGHANISTAN AGAIN

    1
.
Author interview, Maidan Shar, August 2008.

    2
.
The company was renamed Xe.

    3
.
‘Thanks to our British troops – along with allies from 40 countries – the Taliban have been beaten back.’ Des Browne, ‘Des Browne’s speech to the 2008 Labour Party Conference’, September 22, 2008. Transcript, Labour Party website.

    4
.
Author interview, Kabul, August 2008.

    5
.
Author interview with judges, Kabul, August 2008.

    6
.
Author interview with Sherard Cowper-Coles, Kabul, August 2008. A leaked French diplomatic memorandum described Sir Sherard talking privately of the need for an ‘enlightened dictatorship’.

    7
.
The plural of
medressa
in Urdu is
madari
. However
medressas
has entered common English-language usage and so is preferred here.

    8
.
Author interview with Rahmani, Kabul, 2009.

    9
.
Author interview with Mullah Taj Mohammed, former Taliban deputy intelligence chief, Jalalabad, Peshawar, June 2002.

  10
.
Karzai’s exile was initially ended when he accompanied
mujahideen
leaders into Kabul in 1992 on the fall of the Najibullah regime. However, he remained in Afghanistan for only a short period, being forced once more to leave for Pakistan. His exile was thus only definitively ended in 2001.

  11
.
See International Crisis Group,
The Problem of Pashtun Alienation
, August 5, 2003. Francesc Vendrell, the European Union special representative to Afghanistan and intimately involved in the planning of the conference, recalled that at Bonn ‘the Taliban were seen as subhuman’. Author interview with Vendrell, London, February 2009. The title of the US Congress House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, on 31 October 2001, Washington, DC, gives a fairly good idea of how the Taliban were considered: ‘Afghan people vs the Taliban: the struggle for freedom intensifies’. See both Dobbins,
After the Taliban
, and Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, for more. None of the opening speeches at the Bonn conference were translated into Pashtu but only into Dari, the language of the Tajik minority. One problem at Bonn was the disproportionate political and media attention accorded to a large number of long-term exiles whose understanding of contemporary Afghan politics was limited. Many delegates had not visited their country for several decades. Those who, at the very least, represented what Afghanistan had become over recent years were less welcome. When Abdul Qadir, the anti-Taliban Pashtun warlord, walked out of the conference in protest at the lack of ethnic balance, his gesture was largely dismissed as populist. Political theatre it may well have been, but Qadir’s understanding of what might resonate with many of his countrymen was sharp, and his gesture deserved more serious attention.

  12
.
Fourteen per cent in 2005 and 5.3 per cent in 2006.

  13
.
World Bank,
Afghanistan: Statebuilding, Sustaining Growth and Reducing Poverty
, Washington 2005, p. 373.

  14
.
An announced ‘Marshall plan’ for Afghanistan – the original post-war version comprised funds totalling between 3 and 7 per cent of American GDP at the time – was nothing of the sort. Dobbins,
After the Taliban
, p. 164.

  15
.
Conor Foley,
The Thin Blue Line
, Verso, 2008, p. 118. See ACBAR,
Falling Short: Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan
, March 25, 2008. Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, p. 399. The overall spend including for the military in Afghanistan per month was around a fifth of that in Iraq. Kilcullen,
The Accidental Guerrilla
, p. 43.

  16
.
Very rough back-of-the-envelope arithmetic revealed that this meant under $20 per capita per year since 2002.

  17
.
The coalition presence in Helmand consisted of 130 US special forces, civilians and contractors.

  18
.
In a poll in May 2002, 50 per cent of Afghans in rural areas said they had no contact with Afghan National Police and less than 20 per cent trusted them. The problem was most acute in the south. Jones,
In the Graveyard of Empires
, p. 181. See Sarah Chayes,
The Punishment of Virtue
, Portobello, 2007, for a fascinating if often provocative account of this time in south-east Afghanistan.

  19
.
A special forces team had fought alongside him and organized food supplies for his 800-odd armed followers.
United States Special Operations Command History
, 6th edn, p. 97. The two tribal figures were Mullah Naqib of the Alokozai and Bashir Noorzai.

  20
.
As Ahmed Rashid has pointed out, unlike Northern Alliance warlords, who tended to defy President Karzai’s authority, warlords like Sherzai were friends of the government and helped secure the local vote for Karzai in the two Loya Jirgas and the two elections in 2004 and 2005. These embedded, with the enthusiastic endorsement of the international community, his power. See Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, chapter ‘Drugs and Thugs’. Karzai eventually reassigned Sherzai to be governor of Nangahar province in 2005, replacing him with Asadullah Khalid, a family ally. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and head of the tribal council in Kandahar, was also suspected of involvement in the drug trade. In 2006, the author obtained a stolen US classified briefing naming him as a key trafficker.

  21
.
A 2006 poll by the US State Department found that more than 50 per cent of Afghans thought Karzai and his administration had failed to combat corruption. Nearly three-quarters of those who admitted supporting the Taliban said there was corruption among the police or the courts, and two-thirds said local government was corrupt. Anecdotal evidence in places like Kandahar indicated much higher levels of discontent.