by Adrian Levy
The new ISI chief’s greatest problem was the mountain he had to climb every day. He was already inundated by investigations. Shortly before he walked through the doors at Aabpara, a truck had crashed through the security barrier outside the Islamabad Marriott, a five-star hotel redolent of a more affluent and peaceful age—a brazen attack on a much-loved institution that had shocked everyone.
Security guards had opened fire, stopping the driver, but the truck was carrying at least 1,300 pounds of explosives, military and commercial, muddled with mortar ammunition and aluminum powder, and it gouged a sixty-foot crater into the driveway, blowing off the front of the hotel. Hundreds were injured, and picking through the ruins of the charred building, at least fifty-four bodies were recovered, with five foreign diplomats among them.
The target—with its much-cherished vestige of lounge suits, sherwanis, and the softer, brighter era of Pakistan’s founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah—was emotionally significant, and the plot had been constructed to demoralize, demonstrating how febrile state security was and how fragile the last vestiges of secular Pakistan.67 The timing was also purposeful, as the attack took place just hours after President Zardari had made his maiden speech to parliament. Pasha had his work cut out in trying to pin down the perpetrators. But almost immediately there were new distractions. On November 26, three weeks after the U.S. presidential election ushered in a new era in Washington, ten Pakistani gunmen sailed out of the night to lay siege to the Indian megalopolis of Mumbai, killing 164 people, an act of terrorism that brought Pakistan and India once again close to nuclear war.68
Evidence quickly emerged that the attack had been orchestrated by the ISI-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba—with compelling evidence pointing to elements within the directorate as also being complicit. Pasha pleaded ignorance. “I was asking everyone, you need to tell me if you know something,” he recalled.69 When the answer came back “no,” he told the CIA’s Islamabad station the same.
In Washington, Michael Hayden remained unconvinced. “I began routinely harassing my counterpart in Pakistan … on the phone, urging him to get to the bottom of the attack and to discuss it frankly with us,” he recalled.70 “We had no doubt that the attack was the work of [Lashkar-e-Taiba], and there was mounting evidence that preparation for and direction of the attack took place from within Pakistan, where LeT enjoyed the protection and support of ISI.”
Hayden took to describing Pakistan as “the ally from hell,” citing as evidence a previous incident when he had gone to Islamabad during Musharraf’s tenure only for the president to refuse to refuel his aircraft to take him back to the United States. “The [U.S.] crew had forgotten their government credit card—you can’t make this stuff up—and the Pakistanis wouldn’t budge,” Hayden recalled.71 Having been paid millions, they would not lend the United States thousands to get the jet back home. Someone would have to front the cash.
The Mumbai postmortem rumbled on for weeks, with hard evidence against the ISI mounting. Pasha was summoned to Washington on Christmas Day for a showdown with Hayden. Working carefully from handwritten notes—as was his style—Pasha’s rebuttal was a delicate affair. One of those who attended recalled how he gave some ground, admitting that “some” former ISI agents may have been engaged in “some broad training of the attackers.” But he refused to name names and insisted that serving ISI officers were not connected to the plot. Afterward, Pasha visited Pakistan’s ambassador, Husain Haqqani, and told him that the planners of Mumbai were “our people” but it wasn’t “our operation.”72
Another high-ranking ISI official went further, concluding: “We lost track of this.”73 Pressed to explain, the officer said that a similar plan had been in the offing for many months and had been given “tacit support from the intelligence service.” However, it was supposed to remain “shuttered.” Instead, elements of the intelligence service, allied with the Pakistan Taliban and keen to undermine Zardari, who had offered India his “hand in peace,” had given the green light.74
With Mumbai, the Marriott bombing, and dozens more smaller terrorist incidents to investigate, a war to fight against the Pakistan Taliban, and Hayden breathing down his neck about homegrown Islamists, especially the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ISI-sponsored Haqqani network—which was accused of escalating attacks inside Afghanistan—the last thing General Pasha needed was to help out Osama bin Laden or go searching in the Tribal Areas for a minor Iranian diplomat.
January 2009, Bilal Town, Abbottabad
Saad bin Laden had crossed into Pakistan five months earlier and still there was no news from him. Osama’s long-suffering companion and protector, Ibrahim, prayed that Saad would never find his way to Abbottabad as he fretted about a house that echoed to the sound of ever more children. He had signed up to care for the Sheikh as a favor to his friend Khalid Shaikh Mohammad at a time when there had been one wife and one child only. Now, there were so many people living in the house that neighbors had dubbed it the Waziristan kothi (palace). Despite the women’s best efforts, it was impossible to keep the children subdued around the clock. To make matters worse, Amal, Maryam, and Abrar’s wife, Bushra, were all pregnant again.
After discussing with Abrar, Ibrahim gave Osama an ultimatum: no more relatives.75 No more guests. No more traffic in and out of the building. In the future it would be one out and one in. Secretly, he and Abrar, whose nerves were shot, began discussing their exit strategy.
Both of them were bound to Osama by a bayat—their oath—but also by the Islamic notion of fard (obligation). More practically, they had stuck by him in the hope of receiving a generous nest egg, enough to buy a villa or two in Saudi Arabia, where they intended to retire. But whenever Ibrahim tried to commence a discussion about the future, suggesting that it was time for the family to move elsewhere, or tried to ascertain what their compensation might be, the Sheikh rounded on him, saying that the brothers’ selfishness was endangering “the jihad and the nation’s issues.”76
Riskier still was the endless messaging, Osama even recruiting members of Ibrahim’s family in Kohat to keep his covert postal service functioning. So many letters passed between Abbottabad and Waziristan these days that Ibrahim’s family in Suleman Talaab acted as a postbox. Both his brother-in-law and two teenage nephews went to Peshawar to collect thumb drives, meeting with trusted Pashtun middleman Mohammed Aslam.77
Ibrahim’s sister, Haleema, was agitating for change, too. The Saeed family had done more than enough to help the mystery sheikh over the years, she said—although she did not know it was Osama. “It’s time for someone else to carry the burden.”
Ibrahim tackled Osama again, and finally he agreed to a new system.
Khadija bin Laden’s widower, Daood, who was still in Mir Ali, knew a talented document forger, and he was commissioned to prepare fake Pakistani ID cards for Osama and his son Khalid, so that they could begin traveling themselves. Khalid sent a personal letter to Mir Ali with photographs and all relevant details, requesting that Daood keep an eye on the work “because we need them quickly.”78 Even though his father refused to contemplate it, he knew that if they did not make an effort to ease the pressure, the situation with the companions was in danger of spinning out of control.
When no news came back from Daood, Seham also wrote to him. Unaware of her husband’s arguments with Ibrahim, she was still lobbying for Daood to join them. “My precious son,” she began. “I pray day and night to join you with your children. They have not forgotten you, and they always ask about you. They are fine and well and we surround them with our love.”79 Daood’s eldest son, Abdallah, had finished the third chapter of his book and his daughter, Aisha, was studying. The surviving baby, who was named Fatima after dead Khadija’s favorite sister in Iran, was now walking and spent most of her time running away from her foster mother—Khadija’s nineteen-year-old sister, Miriam. Turning to the still raw memory of her daughter’s death, Seham became emotional again, recounting a dream Khadija had had when she was a child. “Ten y
ears ago she told me, ‘Do not be sad. I see myself standing in the door of Paradise and knocking on the door. He asked who [goes there]? And I said, “I am Khadija.” And then I entered, [beneath the bows of] a beautiful tree and all of you came with me.’ ”
Her daughter had foreseen that she would die before her family, said Seham. “But we will follow her to heaven, God willing.”
A few days later, with still no news from Daood, Khalid wrote again, reassuring him and also urging him into action. “Regarding our security situation after the kids’ arrival right over here, I would like to let you know that it is good.”80 As soon as the ID cards arrived, he and his father would start traveling.
Ignoring Ibrahim’s concerns, Khalid also rekindled discussions about his long-delayed betrothal to Karima—as Daood was the only one still in regular touch with her family. “You, my brother, have gotten me a fiancée and an agreement was granted. You also have asked for a fiancée from my dad, and an agreement was granted,” he wrote, referring to the news that Miriam had been promised to Daood. But when would he meet his wife-to-be? Many times before his sister’s death, Khalid had tried to bring his intended over to Abbottabad only for security or an earthquake to get in the way. “It is the same problem that is preventing me from getting married now,” he complained, a sideways reference to Ibrahim’s ultimatum that no new people could come. He had heard that Karima’s jaded mother was threatening to look for another husband for her daughter.
Daood replied and addressed Khalid man-to-man, promising to reason with Karima’s family. Marrying within the mujahideen was every young person’s duty, he said. “And God willing, I will continue [canvassing on your behalf] until God grants you a good woman.”81
Despite that good news, there was no update about the counterfeit ID cards.
January 2009, Washington, D.C.
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States, promising “a new birth of freedom” in his address. But beyond the “can-do” attitude and the goodwill, beyond the promises to close Guantánamo within a year, end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and build a more inclusive world, the new president told his closest national security advisers that he suspected he had to strike hard at Al Qaeda if the never-ending war was to be diminished.
Within days, CIA director Michael Hayden was out, and Obama met with his successor, Leon Panetta, to discuss the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden, asking him: “How’s the trail? Has it gone completely cold?”82 Despite the successes of the drone program, the search for the Al Qaeda emir had barely progressed since the closure of “Alec” station, the CIA unit that had run from 1996 to 2005 and was dedicated to hunting Osama and his deputies.83
In May 2009, after receiving a briefing from counterterrorism officials, Obama and Panetta sat down to plot a new strategy.84 “We really need to intensify this effort,” said the president. On June 2, he signed a memo for the CIA chief: “In order to ensure that we have expended every effort, I direct you to provide me within 30 days a detailed operation plan for locating and bringing to justice” Osama bin Laden and to “destroy, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda.”
Panetta’s team did a lot of blue-sky thinking. They rewatched all the Al Qaeda videos, scouring every inch of every frame for potential clues, studying types of vegetation and even rock formations.85 An obvious starting point was to examine how Osama’s written and audio communications reached the outside world. This in-and-out contact with an otherwise closed system was a fissure to be exploited. The CIA recommended refocusing its energies on identifying and following Osama’s couriers. At the top of the list was Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, who had been named by several Al Qaeda prisoners.
One of the first things Panetta’s new team did was conduct a thorough review of detainees’ statements, discovering several nuggets of information about bin Laden’s Kuwaiti courier that had been previously overlooked.86
A CIA intelligence report entitled “Probable Identification of Suspected Bin Laden Facilitator Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti” noted that the review of old data had determined that his real name might be Habib al-Rahman and that he was “living in Pakistan, probably in the greater Peshawar area.”87
Back in 2002, a young Saudi detainee named Mohammed al-Qahtani, who had been recruited as a 9/11 hijacker but failed to gain entry to the United States, had told interrogators that he had been introduced to an Al Qaeda official called Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti in the summer of 2001, when he had been sent to Karachi to prepare for his mission.88 The Kuwaiti had taken al-Qahtani to an Internet café and shown him how to use a computer and how to send “dead-drop” e-mails, whereby two correspondents who shared the same e-mail address and password logged in and wrote messages to each other that they saved as drafts, allowing each of them to read the other’s messages before erasing them.
During their time together, the Kuwaiti told al-Qahtani that his main job was working as a courier for Khalid Shaikh Mohammad.89 If he was telling the truth, al-Qahtani’s evidence, long overlooked by the CIA, directly contradicted that given by KSM, who had said that the Kuwaiti was a low-level operative who he did not know well and who had never worked as a courier.
The data-review produced more leads. Another Guantánamo detainee, a Mauritanian called Mohamedou Ould Slahi, had also mentioned the Kuwaiti. Slahi, who was married to a sister of Mahfouz the Mauritanian’s wife, said that “Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti was a mid-level Al Qaeda operative who facilitated the movement and safe haven of senior Al Qaeda members and families.” Slahi had gone on to say that the Kuwaiti was dead, killed during the battle for Tora Bora, at which point the CIA’s inquiry into him had paused.90
Now, matching Slahi’s story with others, the CIA realized that some of these accounts, or at least the ones that were not trying to misdirect them, contained kernels of useful truths.
According to other detainees, the Kuwaiti courier came from a large family of brothers, several of whom were involved in the jihad, and one of whom—named Habib Ahmad Saeed—had died at Tora Bora. Maybe Slahi had deliberately mixed up the Kuwaiti brothers, opening up a possibility that the brother working for Osama was still alive.
CIA reports from early 2008 drew out some common denominators. “Debriefings of the senior most detainees who were involved in caring for Osama have produced little locational information,” the cables reported.91 The true identity of the Kuwaiti was “the final nugget that detainees hold on to in debriefings (over threat info and even al-Zawahiri LOINT [Location Intelligence]) given their loyalty to the Al Qaeda leader.” One cable noted: “We assess that Abu Ahmad would likely be in the same category as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Abu Faraj al-Libi, so we advocate building as much of a targeting picture of where and when Habib/Abu Ahmad travels to flesh out current leads to bin Laden.”92
In order to pursue their quarry, President Obama was told, what the CIA really needed was a phone number, an address, a confirmed sighting, or, ideally, an asset inside the network. The only problem was that the ISI had lost both of its prime contenders—Aafia Siddiqui, who was now in U.S. detention, and the former Al Qaeda courier Hassan Ghul, who, according to the ISI, was AWOL. Had he returned to the Al Qaeda fold? the CIA repeatedly asked. The ISI would not comment, but it appeased the Americans by promising to track him down in the Tribal Areas. It was actively monitoring all e-mails and calls received by Ghul’s wife, who was a sister of the Rabbani brothers now in Guantánamo, and by Ghul’s own sister, Nabila, who lived in Karachi.93
Sooner or later he was going to have to contact one of his old friends or his family, the ISI promised the CIA, and then they would have him. In the meantime, the CIA let it be known that finding a suitable asset, and fast, was priority for all stations.
One candidate immediately floated to the top: a Jordanian doctor who by night was a digital jihadi. He had recently been arrested in Amman by local spies who had monitored him writing increasingly extreme postings, exhorting his brothers worldwide to commit acts of violence.
His name was Humam al-Balawi, and it fell to the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID) to flip him and set him in play in Pakistan.
June 2009, Mir Ali, North Waziristan
Saad bin Laden had been crisscrossing Pakistan’s Tribal Areas on foot and in shared rides for months, unable to locate his father and rejected by frightened villagers whenever he tried to ask for help, often unmasking himself. In the heightened paranoia of living with the drones, with at least one strike a week, no one wanted to help a bin Laden.
Traveling alone, carrying a small battered suitcase and his laptop, Saad sometimes returned to Quetta, which was beyond the drones’ area of activity and was thronged with young Taliban recruits who strutted about in black turbans and openly bore arms. The reality of Al Qaeda’s pact with the Taliban was visible everywhere, from the jihad recruiting posters papering the walls of the mosques to the boarded-up DVD shops.
Eventually, Saad located a Pashtun “supporter” to whom he had previously been introduced in Karachi in 2002. The man informed Saad that his half sister Khadija was dead and her children had been sent to join Osama at an undisclosed location.94 For security reasons, no one knew where this was, only that it was somewhere in Pakistan’s settled areas. There is no record of how Saad reacted to the news, but armed with jotted-down notes of the safest routes to follow, he set a course for Al Qaeda Central in Damadola.
