Descent Into Chaos

by Ahmed Rashid

  Almost all latter-day al Qaeda terrorist plots around the world had a FATA connection. The four suicide bombers—three of them of Pakistani origin—who carried out the July 7, 2005, attacks on the London Underground that killed fifty-six people and injured seven hundred were connected to FATA. The ringleader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, visited FATA in 2003 and 2004, when he had “some contact with al Qaeda figures and some relevant training,” according to a British government report.23 As Sahab released a video showing another one of the bombers making his martyrdom speech. Five of the twenty-four terrorists arrested in England in August 2006 for plotting to blow up nine aircraft flying out of Heathrow with liquid explosives had allegedly trained in FATA. Subsequent terrorist plots unearthed in Denmark and Germany in September 2007 also appeared to have links to FATA.

  The 2005 London plot was investigated with the assistance of the ISI working closely with Britain’s MI6, but Musharraf remained in denial about al Qaeda’s presence in Pakistan and instead castigated Tony Blair for allowing radical mullahs to preach in Britain. Musharraf insisted: “Our . . . law enforcement agencies have completely shattered al Qaeda’s vertical and horizontal links and smashed its communications and propaganda setup. . . . It no longer has any command, communication and program structure in Pakistan. Therefore it is absolutely baseless to say that al Qaeda has its headquarters in Pakistan and that terror attacks in other parts of the world in any way originate from our country.”24

  The British government was less sanguine. In October 2005 it banned fifteen Islamic extremist groups, half of which were based in Pakistan. Britain had seen a spate of al Qaeda plots, starting with Britain’s first plot, uncovered in November 2000, and further plots in 2003 and 2004. In the latter, seven men, six of them British-born Pakistanis, were arrested with half a ton of chemicals ready to be turned into bombs. At their trial they testified that they had trained in Kashmir and in Kohat, in the NWFP.25 In November 2006 Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of Britain’s MI5, said that her organization was watching sixteen hundred people involved in thirty plots. The plotters, she said, “often have links back to al Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here....”26 British Pakistanis, who were legally allowed to hold both Pakistani and British passports, were now the most closely watched group of people in the world.

  By working closely with the British government on Britain’s terrorism problems, the ISI gained sympathy from London for its efforts in FATA. Tony Blair declined to criticize Musharraf’s policies or publicly pressure Pakistan about any clandestine support to the Taliban—even though British troops in Helmand province faced the brunt of Taliban attacks in 2006. Britain’s attitude created severe differences with NATO and U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, who wanted to forge a common diplomatic front to force Pakistan to do more in curbing the Taliban. Instead, while on a visit to Islamabad in November 2006, Blair heaped praise on Musharraf’s role in standing up to terrorism. However, by now Musharraf was being harshly criticized by the U.S. Congress and media for failing in FATA and in the hunt for bin Laden. The increasing estrangement in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was sarcastically summed up by veteran columnist Jim Hoagland: “We’ve got Musharraf right where he wants us. Washington and Islamabad are condemned to such strategic ambivalence. Each is unable to do without the other, while wishing it could.”27

  Washington had lavishly aided Pakistan’s military, and U.S. legislators now asked where were the results of that aid. Between 2002 and 2007, the Bush administration had provided Pakistan with $3.5 billion in aid, more than half of that for the military. Between 2002 and 2005 the military had received another $3.6 billion in payments for use of its facilities and services by the U.S. Defense Department, while the United States had forgiven Pakistani debt worth over $3.0 billion.28 The CIA had paid large secret sums to the ISI in order to improve its performance and provide reward money for catching al Qaeda leaders. The army received another $30 to $40 million to improve border security. Washington provided for the computerization of all international passenger traffic at the country’s airports, the creation of an air wing for the army to monitor FATA, the building of access roads in FATA, and police training in several fields, including crime scene analysis and a centralized fingerprint ID system. Officially, by 2007, the United States had provided $10 billion in aid to Islamabad, and unofficially the figure was much higher, yet FATA and indeed Pakistan were now greater threats than ever before. With terrorism on the increase, U.S. legislators were asking the Bush administration where the money had gone.

  By the summer of 2005, Washington maintained that bin Laden was no longer hiding “along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” but in FATA. Porter Goss, the director of the CIA, had made a tantalizing comment in June 2005 that rocked Pakistan. Asked about the whereabouts of bin Laden, he replied, “I have an excellent idea where he is . . . in the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links.”29 Pakistanis took his comment to mean that bin Laden was in Pakistan, while the “weak link” was Islamabad. Bin Laden was said to be protected by several rings of security lookouts with radios to alert one another if helicopters approached. The United States had spent more than $57 million in payouts to informants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but there were no leads on bin Laden.30 Of the 37 senior al Qaeda leaders identified by the CIA in 2002, only 15 had been captured or killed, although some 3,000 suspects had been arrested in 90 countries, of which 650 were in U.S. custody. Two senior figures were killed in 2005 in North Waziristan, while another two were killed in April 2006, also in FATA.31 However, al Qaeda had shown an uncanny ability to replace leadership figures so that its hierarchy of command and control was never too disturbed.

  It was clear that after 2004 the army had stopped looking for bin Laden and acted only when U.S. intelligence provided information. On several occasions Musharraf said that he hoped bin Laden would be found and killed in Afghanistan rather than in Pakistan.

  The United States was equally to blame for failing to provide sufficient resources and manpower to the hunt for bin Laden. American officials admitted in late 2006 that they had received no credible lead on his whereabouts for two years and that the trail had gone “stone cold.”32 None of the intelligence agencies seemed to be capable of carrying out the simplest of procedures, such as intercepting the couriers who delivered the dozens of video and audiotapes sent by al Qaeda to be aired on Al Jazeera. No courier was ever arrested.

  The reorganization of the Taliban in FATA enabled al Qaeda to reestablish a base area and pursue its role in providing training and financing to its global affiliates. Pakistani groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba provided a constant flow of foreign recruits and would-be suicide bombers, among them British Pakistanis. The first port of call for foreign recruits was the countrywide network of madrassas controlled by extremist groups. These madrassas had undergone neither reform nor change, despite all the promises made by the regime. Before he left his command in Kabul in 2005, Lt.-Gen. David Barno had prophetically warned, “Al Qaeda clearly still wants to see the Taliban stage some kind of a comeback in Afghanistan. . . . They’re still providing financing, with guidance, training, support and selected individuals that help lead and motivate the operations in Afghanistan. They clearly want to use the Taliban as they have in the past.”33

  The U.S.-led war in Iraq provided al Qaeda with an unexpected new battlefield and perhaps its greatest military successes, under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian aged forty. Al-Zarqawi had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989 and returned to Afghanistan in 2000, when he developed differences with bin Laden. After arriving in Iraq in 2002, he declared his loyalty to bin Laden and named his group “al Qaeda in Iraq.” Zarqawi developed independent links with the Taliban, and by 2005 there was a steady traffic of extremists between Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq. The Taliban traveled to Iraq via Iran and Turk
menistan, often in the company of drug smugglers. Arab trainers, explosives experts, and financiers from Iraq traveled in the opposite direction. In Iraq the Taliban learned the latest military techniques in preparing mines, improvised explosive devices, and ambushes.34 In November 2006, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that “the lessons learned in Iraq are being applied to Afghanistan” by al Qaeda.35

  By 2006 potential suicide bombers traveling from Europe and North Africa to join al Qaeda operations in Iraq were increasingly being diverted to Afghanistan. French intelligence monitored a new route for militants from North Africa that ended up in Peshawar. “There is less need for them in Iraq,” said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France’s counterterrorism agency. “The Iraqi insurgency is now very well organized around Iraqis. In contrast in Afghanistan there are certainly many Pakistanis and people from Arab countries and some from North Africa.”36 Dozens of British Pakistanis and half a dozen Germans traveled to FATA. With the right Pakistani extremist contacts, it was now easier than ever for foreigners to get in touch with al Qaeda. Whereas before 9/11 it could take several months before a recruit could join an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, now it took just a few weeks for a recruit to find himself in Waziristan.

  The worsening situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with more al Qaeda plots for attacks being uncovered in Europe, prompted U.S. intelligence to reevaluate al Qaeda’s potential. In January 2007, John Negroponte, the outgoing director of national intelligence, told Congress that “al Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat,” and pointed to Pakistan as its leadership base. “They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.”37 In mid-July a National Intelligence Estimate issued by the entire U.S. intelligence community stated that al Qaeda was based in FATA and that the United States would not hesitate to bomb or even invade any part of FATA if bin Laden was found to be hiding there.

  In the past six years the Pakistan army had virtually ceded its writ in FATA to the Taliban, in sharp contrast with how it reacted in another insurgency -hit region—Balochistan. The Baloch insurgency was to provide greater justification for the army to continue support to the Taliban and to castigate Karzai for allowing India to undermine Pakistan. The Baloch tribes, numbering just five million people, occupy the largest land area in Pakistan, much of it desert and arid mountains, agriculturally unproductive but rich in untapped mineral resources including oil, gas, and uranium. There are small Baloch minorities in eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. Traditionally the tribes have been seminomadic, grazing sheep, goats, and camels within specified tribal boundaries, but hundreds of thousands have sought work in Karachi and Dubai. Sixty years after independence, 45 percent of the Baloch are estimated to live below the poverty level.

  Unlike the Pashtuns, the Baloch are markedly secular, and mullahs have no standing in Baloch society, which has remained untouched by the waves of Islamization that have swept the region. Instead, Baloch leaders have joined up with secular Sindhi and Pashtun nationalists to oppose what they consider Punjabi hegemony. Since 1948, the Baloch have been demanding greater autonomy, more control over revenues from their gas fields, and greater funds for development. These demands have been ignored by the federal government and as a result Baloch nationalists have waged four insurgencies—in 1948, 1958-1959, 1962-1963, and 1973-1977—all of them brutally suppressed by the army. In 2003 a fifth rebellion got under way, led by the underground Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA.

  For centuries the Baloch have lived peacefully with other ethnic groups, especially the Pashtuns, who occupy a narrow band of territory along Balochistan’s desert border with Afghanistan. However, Baloch tolerance was sorely tested in the 1980s when millions of Afghan refugees arrived, grabbing Baloch grazing lands and tilting the ethnic balance in favor of the Pashtuns. Baloch nationalists opposed the army’s backing of the Afghan Mujahedin in the 1980s and of the Taliban in the 1990s because they saw the army strategy as one that favored Pashtun fundamentalism to the detriment of Baloch rights. Increasingly the Baloch have found themselves a minority in their own land.

  Ever since he came to power, Musharraf had ignored Balochistan, treating it as a playground for the army’s strategic aims in supporting the Taliban. In 2002 the army rigged the elections in favor of the Pashtun fundamentalist and pro-Taliban JUI Party, at the expense of Baloch nationalist parties. Quetta was turned into a Taliban town. The army’s construction of new cantonments for troops and, with Chinese help, a naval and commercial port at Gawadar, on the Makran coast, was seen by the Baloch as a colonial incursion by an occupying military.38 In Gawadar, local fishermen and farmers were deprived of their land, homes, and jobs to facilitate the building of the new port, and massive property speculation, much of it carried out by army officers, created widespread hatred for the military. The Baloch saw an unholy alliance of the ISI, JUI, and Taliban depriving them of their rights.

  In 2003-2004 the BLA carried out hit-and-run raids against the military and the province’s infrastructure, blowing up gas pipelines, electricity pylons, and telephone exchanges. In May 2004 this violence escalated dramatically when the BLA killed three Chinese engineers in Gawadar. The BLA had emerged out of the insurgency of the 1970s, which was led by two nationalist sardars, Khair Bux Marri and Ataullah Mengal, who led the Marris and Mengals, the two largest fighting tribes. At that time their opponent was a former colleague and chief of the Bugti tribe, Sardar Akbar Bugti, who was allied with the central government to crush the insurgency. A mercurial insomniac who could be both viciously cruel and intellectually engaging and charming, Bugti regretted his role in the 1970s and now tried to make amends in his old age by joining hands with the BLA, which was led by his grandson, Baramdagh Bugti, and Balach Marri, the son of Khair Bux. Ostensibly the BLA was demanding greater autonomy; in reality it was now fighting for an independent Balochistan.

  The key to the conflict was the pittance of revenue that the Baloch and the Bugtis in particular received from the gas fields operated by a state-owned company at Sui, in the Bugti tribal area. The Sui gas fields provide some 45 percent of Pakistan’s gas needs. Eighty wells in Sui produce between 720 and 750 million cubic feet of gas a day, which generates an estimated $1.4 billion in revenue for the central government In 2005, only $116.0 million was returned to Balochistan in the form of royalties. Tensions around Sui escalated dramatically in January of that year when a five-day battle ensued between the Bugti and the army. Pipelines were blown up and the supply of gas to the rest of the country came to a standstill. The army rushed 2,500 troops and tanks to defend Sui as Musharraf threw fuel on the fire by taunting the Baloch: “Don’t push us. It isn’t the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains,” he said. “This time you won’t even know what hit you.” Ataullah Mengal promised the Baloch would fight “till the last drop of our blood.”39

  Fighting continued around Sui as the Bugtis ambushed army convoys and the besieged military in Sui responded with artillery strikes. The rebels blew up pipelines, railway tracks, and electricity pylons across the province. Opposition politicians warned the army not to create “another Bangladesh”—referring to the 1971 civil war that divided the country. The civilian government tried to broker peace talks with Bugti, and a parliamentary committee tasked with compiling a report on Baloch grievances made considerable headway, offering the Baloch greater provincial autonomy, additional gas royalties, and jobs. However, the deal collapsed after Musharraf told the politicians to stand down.

  On December 14, 2005, Musharraf was addressing a rally in the Marri area when the BLA fired eight rockets upon the gathering and on a helicopter carrying a general and his deputy, seriously wounding both men. A humiliated Musharraf ordered a major offensive against the BLA. Hundreds of guerrillas and civilians were killed as helicopter gunships
, provided by Washington to fight the Taliban, were redeployed against the Baloch. Musharraf insisted that only three sardars were causing the trouble while the rest of the Baloch supported the government. In July, after his home in Dera Bugti was shelled, Akbar Bugti, seventy-nine, suffering from severe arthritis and unable to walk, mounted a camel and took to the mountains with hundreds of fighters. “I have had a good and full life—it is better to die quickly in the mountains than slowly in your bed,” he ruminated. “If we are removed from the scene, I can guarantee the government will have a heck of a time from the younger generation because they are more extreme.”40

  As he had wished, his end came quickly and fiercely. On August 26, Bugti was killed, along with thirty-five followers, after a cave he was resting in was bombed. Some sixteen soldiers, including four officers, were killed in a fierce battle over possession of Bugti’s dead body. The army had hoped also to kill Baramdagh Bugti and Balach Marri, but the two escaped. The entire province erupted in fury. Quetta and all major towns were shut down for a week as mobs rampaged through the streets, attacking and burning banks, vehicles, and government buildings. Protests intensified after the government refused to hand over Bugti’s body to his family and buried him in a now-deserted Dera Bugti. In a later interview to an Indian television station, Musharraf acknowledged that Bugti had been deliberately targeted. “Anyone who maintains a military and tries to challenge Pakistan . . . there is no doubt in my mind . . . there is no duplicity in this—we will crush him,” he said.41 The media asked why, if the army could bomb Baloch rebels, it was unable to crush the Taliban. The ruling PML asked Musharraf to resume talks with the Baloch, but he refused.