by Ahmed Rashid
Apart from a handful of CIA officers, no U.S. officials had been inside Afghanistan for a decade. Few CIA officers spoke Persian or its Afghan dialect, Dari, and nobody spoke Pushtu, the language of the Pashtuns. CIA and Special Operations Forces personnel who entered Afghanistan spoke either Russian or Arabic. This lack of language skills in every department of the U.S. government was exposed as being a critical problem. I was flooded with e-mail appeals from American companies hired by the U.S. government to find U.S. citizens who could speak “Farsi, Pushtu, Dari, Turkmen, Urdu or Uzbek.”5
The Dari-speaking CIA veteran Gary Schroen, fifty-nine, was pulled out of retirement to head the first ten-man Afghanistan Liaison Team, code-named Jawbreaker, that flew to Tashkent and landed in the Panjsher Valley just two weeks after 9/11. They brought with them $3 million, which was immediately dished out to NA leaders—Fahim received $1 million as goodwill money. Another $10 million was quickly flown in so that the CIA could pay off other warlords, such as Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Rashid Dostum.6 When Gen. Tommy Franks met with Fahim on October 30 in the back of his giant C-17 cargo aircraft parked at Dushanbe Airport, there was some haggling before Franks handed him $5 million for the NA’s military operation to take the north but to promise to stop short of Kabul.7
It was the cheapest war America was ever to fight. Yet on the back of its easy success and the laxity given to the CIA by Bush, for the next two years the agency was to run Afghanistan not by democratization or nation building but by paying off warlords to keep the peace, determining what was to be rebuilt and at what pace, running the Karzai administration, and slowing down everything else with the excuse that it was pursuing bin Laden. The attaché cases full of dollar bills they received would allow the warlords to build huge houses in Kabul and the Panjsher Valley after the war, set themselves up in business as suppliers of goods and local manpower to U.S. bases, ply the drug trade, and play the region’s currency markets. General Fahim would become one of the richest men in Afghanistan, buying up property and an entire gold market in Kabul, while Abdul Rasul Sayyaf would buy up most of Paghman. When the CIA money ran out, the same warlords would turn back to the drug trade.
Even as Cheney and Rumsfeld were preparing to fight the war in Afghanistan, they were already thinking of fighting the next war in Iraq. The distraction of Iraq, which materialized just hours after the 9 /11 attacks and continued indefinitely, was first to undermine and then defeat both U.S. policy in Afghanistan and the struggle to capture al Qaeda leaders. From insider accounts, we now know that even as the Pentagon building was still burning on the morning of September 11, the neocons were trying to blame Iraq’s Saddam Hussein for the attacks. Donald Rumsfeld told his aide Stephen Cambone to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement: “Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly. Near term target needs—go massive—sweep it all up, things related and not,” Cambone’s notes read.8
Richard Clarke attended meetings on Iraq on September 12. He later wrote, “At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.”9 I visited Washington several times in early 2002, sincerely believing that now the United States would do the right thing by Afghanistan and rebuild the country. I came up with suggestions for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development as to how they could speed up nation building. By the early summer of 2002, when it became clear that the United States had no intentions of rebuilding Afghanistan, disillusionment set in as I saw that Iraq was the real target.
Despite the total absence of evidence, the neocons wanted to believe that bin Laden had pulled off 9/11 with help from Iraq. On September 15, at Camp David, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued for a simultaneous attack on Iraq and Afghanistan.10 On November 21, the day before Thanksgiving and just as the Northern Alliance was trying to negotiate the Taliban surrender of Kunduz and Kandahar, Bush asked Rumsfeld to draw up new plans for attacking Iraq. “What kind of a war plan do you have for Iraq?” Bush asked him.11 Rumsfeld then ordered an incredulous Franks to draw up the plans. “Son of a bitch,” Franks muttered under his breath.12
For decades the neocons had pushed for promoting big ideas on how to get Saddam Hussein, secure Iraq’s oil supplies, and secure Israel.13 Their idea for Iraq could immediately be translated into a military strategy, but there were no such plans for Afghanistan, even though bin Laden had been living there since 1996 and had directly attacked American power several times. The neocons had assiduously avoided any serious discussion of the real threat from Afghanistan.
The first U.S. failure was to snub potential allies. Two days after the 9/11 attacks, NATO invoked Article 5 of its constitution, declaring that the attack on the United States had been an attack on NATO, which was now obliged to respond. NATO and Russia issued an unprecedented joint statement of support. European countries primed their militaries, expecting to be called upon by the United States on the lines of the grand alliance the elder Bush had created for the first Gulf War, in 1991. They were totally unprepared for the policy of unilateralism Washington now followed. The message to NATO from Rumsfeld was essentially, “Thank you, but no thank you—we don’t need you.” When NATO secretary-general George Robertson arrived in Washington, he was first abused and then badly snubbed by an arrogant Wolfowitz. Senior German, French, and Scandinavian diplomats complained to me bitterly about the attitude of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. The bitterness it created was to linger until the United States asked for European help for the war in Iraq.
Only British prime minister Tony Blair seemed oblivious to the damage being done to the Atlantic alliance as he accepted America’s unilateralism without question. Blair became obsessed with his role as an interlocutor between the international community and Bush, who in fact wanted no international help. Blair was convinced that as the world’s great charmer and persuader, he could get people to do things by the sheer weight of his personality.14 European pique at Blair was somewhat tempered by the hope that British input into planning the war would be beneficial, since the Americans were so ignorant about Afghanistan. After Blair and his aides read my Taliban book, I was invited to meet the prime minister when he came to Islamabad. I was impressed by his knowledge and charmed by the interest he showed in Afghanistan and the perceptive questions he asked me. But even in his asking them there was an element of showmanship, as one question followed another without his waiting for an answer—as though he wanted to perform rather than learn.
Blair was the only European leader whom Colin Powell asked for help in bringing Afghanistan’s neighbors on board. Pakistan was on board within the first forty-eight hours of 9/11. The sensitive task of wooing Iran was handled by British foreign secretary Jack Straw. The Iranian leader, President Mohammed Khatami, was amenable to a war that would see Iran’s hated enemy, the Taliban, destroyed, and he sent Bush a message to that effect through the Canadian government. On September 20, U.S. officials met with Iranian diplomats as part of the Geneva Group, after which Straw visited Tehran. Iran promised to provide search-and-rescue help if U.S. pilots were shot down, and deployed its military to seal its 560-mile-long border with Afghanistan. Turkey, which had opened a secret supply route to General Dostum through Uzbekistan even before 9/11, was asked for further help. On September 22, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit declared that Turkey would join with Russia and Iran and step up aid to the Northern Alliance.
Muslim nations urged the United States to go to the UN Security Council for a clear mandate for war. On September 28, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1373, authorizing the use of force against terrorists. The resolution demanded that all 189 member states of the UN shut down financing, support, and safe havens for terrorists. President Bush ordered a freeze on all assets in the United States held by twenty-seven terrorist entities and asked all countries and banks to follow suit or
risk jeopardizing their relations with Washington.
The next challenge was the complex task of wooing Central Asia. Although the five states—Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—were ruled by dictators who could say yes or no to U.S. demands, they all had a supreme adviser in the shape of Russia. Ten years after achieving independence, it was still inconceivable that the five states would take a major foreign policy decision without Moscow’s go-ahead, and President Vladimir Putin was determined to extract the maximum concessions from Washington. Both the United States and Russia had had a complex relationship with Central Asia in the past decade.
In 2001, Washington’s relations with Central Asia were at a low ebb. After showing some initial concern for the welfare of these states in the early 1990s, largely dictated by the possibility of oil and gas contracts in three of the states, Washington all but lost interest. However, in 1994 and 1995, the United States helped Kazakhstan dismantle 104 SS-18 ballistic missiles and the 104 nuclear warheads were transferred to Russia under agreement. Kazakhstan was declared free of nuclear weapons.15 In 1994 all the Central Asian states except Tajikistan joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace alliance, and their forces participated in joint exercises with NATO. There was a renewed flirtation with Central Asia by the Clinton administration in 1997, when Strobe Talbott, a Russia specialist and deputy secretary of state, outlined a “Silk Road Strategy” for supporting democracy in Central Asia, but it never caught the imagination of Congress or the American public. Most important of all, the infrequent U.S. appeals for democratic and economic reform in the region increasingly fell on deaf ears among its authoritarian leaders because the United States never backed such appeals with either serious aid or serious recriminations.
Russia had gone through similar swings in its policy toward Central Asia. In the early 1990s, it pulled back from Central Asia as its own economy and armed services went into decline. Moscow could not project power when it did not have the instruments of power, and there was no public support for sustaining a relationship in a region that many Russians considered a backwater. Under Putin, Russia—now considerably richer and stronger on the back of Siberian and Central Asian oil and gas exports to Europe—began to insist that Central Asia was its backyard and that no major power should try to gain influence there without first going through Moscow.
Central Asian leaders also had to consider China’s reaction. In 1996, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan had joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with China pledging to demilitarize their common borders. A year later China pulled its troops from 4,300 miles of its borders with Central Asia. China’s major security thrust was to deter the Central Asian states from providing any support to the ethnic Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province. The Uighurs were China’s only Muslims, living mainly along the borders of Central Asia. Many had gone into exile in Central Asia to escape repression during the Maoist revolution. Now China considered any political expression of Uighur sentiment as a sign of separatism and Islamic extremism. China was extremely reluctant to see U.S. troops based just a few hundred miles from its borders.
Yet all the Central Asian regimes were predisposed to helping the Americans, because by doing so they could distance themselves from both Russia and China, demonstrate their independence to their own people, and gain from the political legitimacy that an alliance with the United States would offer—legitimacy that would allow them to rule more ruthlessly at home. Moreover, they all felt threatened by the Taliban. Afghanistan borders three of the Central Asian states—Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Tajikistan had long supported Masud and the Northern Alliance, allowing Russia, Iran, and India to provide military supplies to Masud through Dushanbe. Uzbekistan had supported the Uzbek faction of the Northern Alliance, led by Dostum, providing him arms and funds as well as a sanctuary when his forces were routed by the Taliban. Only Turkmenistan had reached an understanding with the Taliban regime, providing it electricity and other commodities. All the Central Asian states had become saturated with the heroin emanating out of Afghanistan and they were anxious to stem the flow of drugs.
The post-communist regimes in Central Asia were all deeply secular and fearful of Islamic extremism spreading within their territories. They were eager to defeat the Taliban for another reason. Before 9/11, incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) had terrified governments in the region. Made up of Uzbek and Tajik militants from the Ferghana Valley and led by commander Juma Namangani and ideologue Tahir Yuldashev, the IMU had undergone several political metamorphoses. It had first emerged as an Islamic party opposed to Uzbek president Islam Karimov, before he drove them underground. The IMU reemerged to fight in Tajikistan’s bloody five-year civil war (1992-1997), on the side of the Islamists. After the war, they settled uneasily in the Pamir Mountains, in central Tajikistan, where I tried to track them down to write the first book about the IMU.16 They continued to build underground cells in Uzbekistan and the Ferghana Valley, with help from the ISI and the Saudi intelligence service, which had funded them for some time. At one point Yuldashev spent several years as a guest of the ISI in Peshawar. The IMU aimed to create an Islamic state in Uzbekistan and then in the rest of Central Asia, but their ideology was confused and contradictory.
In February 1999, explosions in Tashkent close to President Karimov’s office, which claimed two dozen lives and wounded several hundred people, were assumed to have been carried out by the IMU. Karimov used the bombings to arrest hundreds of political dissidents and Islamic activists, leading to speculation that the government itself may have carried out the bombings. The IMU then led guerrilla incursions into southern Kyrgyzstan and eastern Uzbekistan in the summer of 1999, and again in 2000, creating mayhem and fear. In the winter of 2000, the IMU retreated into Afghanistan and into the arms of Osama bin Laden, who immediately adopted them, seeing them as a ready-made instrument for introducing al Qaeda into Central Asia. The Taliban also were anxious to enlist the IMU fighters, as a source of additional manpower in their battle with the Northern Alliance.
By now Namangani was a cult figure among Islamists in the entire region—all the more so because, like Mullah Omar, he remained mysterious, never giving interviews or allowing himself to be photographed. In September 2000, the United States designated the IMU a terrorist group, thus providing Karimov with a major political boost, as now his enemies were also America’s enemies. After 9/11, Mullah Omar appointed Namangani head of all Taliban and foreign forces in the north. He had proved to be fearless and brave, if not rash, while his IMU fighters were known for their ferocity and barbarity on the battlefield.
The roots of radicalization in Central Asia among young people lay in the appalling policies of leaders such as Karimov, who waged war against all political dissent and anything remotely Islamic. In Uzbekistan there was a total ban on all political parties, trade and student unions, and political gatherings. More than ten thousand political prisoners filled Uzbek jails, where torture and death under interrogation were common. Anyone appearing too Islamic or even saying his prayers five times a day could be arrested and tortured. As long as such regimes considered secular democratic parties a threat, it was natural that a violent Islamic underground would flourish.
Yet Uzbekistan was the potential springboard for any U.S. invasion of northern Afghanistan. The largest country in the region, with a population of twenty-nine million, Uzbekistan also had the largest air bases, inherited from the Soviet era, and the only trained army in the region. It was from these bases that the Soviet Union had launched its disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Moreover, the CIA and the Pentagon had been closely collaborating with the Uzbek army and secret services since 1997, providing training, equipment, and mentoring in the hope of using Uzbek Special Forces to snatch Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan, a fact I uncovered on a trip to Washington in 2000.17 Now the CIA wanted to inject its own teams into northern Afghanistan using Uzbekistan’s air bases.
> Anticipating this, Russia first tried to block any U.S. deployment in Central Asia. Two days after 9/11, Russian intelligence officials held a meeting in Dushanbe with the Northern Alliance and their counterparts from Iran, India, and Uzbekistan, promising to step up military assistance to the Northern Alliance—in a bid to outbid the CIA. Russia also persuaded Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rakhmonov, to say that his country would not to allow its air space to be used by U.S. aircraft. The seven-thousand -strong Russian division guarding the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border was placed on a heightened state of alert, as Russian officials insisted that Central Asia would not offer the United States military bases.
Behind the scenes the mood was entirely different, as Karimov and other leaders were all anxious to entice the Americans. After Washington offered to increase U.S. aid, Tashkent privately told the American embassy that it would offer the United States bases. The Uzbek assurance was hastened by news from Kabul that the Taliban had appointed Juma Namangani commander of northern Afghanistan. Putin now realized that once Karimov had broken with Russian guidance, other Central Asian leaders would do the same, so it was better for Moscow to make a collective offer to the United States.
Almost overnight Moscow began to play the role of conciliator and ally to the United States. On September 17, Putin hosted a meeting of all Central Asian leaders in Moscow to hammer out a joint stand on the bases issue. A formal deal was finally struck between Moscow and Washington on September 22, after Bush spoke with Putin on the telephone. Putin insisted that any U.S. bases in Central Asia should be temporary. In return, Bush promised to desist from criticizing Russia’s controversial war in Chechnya and to consult with Moscow before taking any steps in Central Asia, while promising to help accelerate Russia’s integration into Western economic institutions. By then, the CIA was already flying its teams into the massive Karshi-Khanabad, or K2, air base in southern Uzbekistan, where U.S. army engineers were repairing the runway. Now Tajikistan said that it, too, would offer the United States bases on its soil.
