by Ahmed Rashid
4 Reuters, “Afghanistan Being Stabilized, Says Rumsfeld,” Kabul, May 1, 2003. See also David Rohde and David Sanger, “How the Good War in Afghanistan Went Bad,” The New York Times, August 12, 2007.
5 Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, New York: Free Press, 2004.
6 In 2005 General Eikenberry was to return to Kabul as the commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
7 Interview with Gen. John McColl, Kabul, March 7, 2002.
8 I saw several reports and letters exchanged between the UN, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
9 United Nations document, “Creating the New Afghan National Armed Forces,” June 2002.
10 Brahimi spoke to me in Kabul. He made these same points in his address to the UN Security Council on July 19, 2002, in New York.
11 William Maley, Rescuing Afghanistan, London: Hurst and Co., 2006.
12 See Michael Bhatia, Kevin Lanigan, and Philip Wilkinson, “Minimal Investments, Minimal Results: The Failure of Security Policy in Afghanistan,” Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, Kabul, June 2004.
13 Judy Dempsey, “Germany Assailed for Training Afghan Police Poorly,” International Herald Tribune, November 15, 2006.
14 For the best discussion on U.S. policy related to the police, see Vance Serchuk, “Cop Out: Why Afghanistan Has No Police,” American Enterprise Institute, July 25, 2006.
15 International Crisis Group, “Reforming Afghan Police,” Brussels, August 30, 2007.
16 Interview with Chris Alexander, Kabul, November 2006.
17 Associated Press, “Unpopularity of Karzai Government Threatens Afghanistan War Effort, Holbrooke Warns,” Brussels, April 28, 2007.
18 Confidential UN report to the UN secretary-general, Kabul, March 6, 2002.
19 The British Foreign Office-organized conference was held at Wilton Park, England, in October 2002.
20 In September the State Department’s diplomatic security service took over Karzai’s protection, and a few weeks later they arranged for the task to be taken over by DynCorp.
21 Interview with Gen. Mohammed Fahim, Kabul, December 14, 2002. See Ahmed Rashid, “Karzai Risks All to Confront the Militia Generals,” The Daily Telegraph, December 24, 2002.
22 I was told these details by UN and U.S. officials. See also Daily Times, “NA Printed Themselves a Fortune,” reprinted from The New York Times, May 3, 2002.
23 United Nations document, Report by Lakhdar Brahimi to the UN Security Council, January 15, 2003.
24 Report of the high-level panel set up by UN secretary-general, “Threats, Challenges and Change,” December 2004.
25 Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, "S.O.S. from Afghanistan,” The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2003.
26 David Rohde, “Afghan Symbol for Change Becomes a Symbol of Failure,” The New York Times, September 5, 2006.
27 Ahmed Rashid, “Warlord Adds to Woes of Coalition,” The Daily Telegraph, July 4, 2003.
28 “Non-Paper: Centrist, Ethnic and Fundamentalist Politics in Afghanistan,” paper circulated to senior U.S. officials in Washington and received by me on May 12, 2003.
29 Members of the Constitutional Commission of Afghanistan, appointed April 24, 2003, and their ethnic origins: Chair and deputy, Neyamatullah Shahrani (head of commission) , Uzbek; Abdul Salam Azimi (deputy), Pashtun. Members: Mohammad Musa Maroofi, Pashtun; Mohammad Musa Ashari, Tajik; Dr. Rahim Shirzoi, Pashtun; Mohammad Sarwar Danish, Hazara; Dr. Abdulhai Elahi, Tajik; Mohammad Ashraf Rasooli, Tajik; Abdul Haq Wala, Tajik; Abdul Aziz, Pashtun; Dr. Mohammad Tahir Borgai, Pashtun; Dr. Mohammad Yaqub Wahidi, Uzbek; Shamsuddin Khan, Tajik; Dr. Mohammad Alam Eshaqzai, Pashtun; Judge Mohammad Amin Wiqad, Pashtun; Eng. Mohammad Akram, Tajik; Nadir Shah Nekiyar, Pashtun; Likraj, Hindu; Mrs. Parwin Momand, Pashtun; Mohammad Amin Ahmadi, Hazara; Mrs. Fatima Gilani, Arab; Sulaiman Baloch, Baloch; Mrs. Shukria Barikzai, Pashtun; Mrs. Sidiqa Balkhi, Hazara; Mrs. Amina Afzali, Tajik; Mohammad Sidiq Patman, Pashtun; Abdulhai Khoorasani, Tajik; Mrs. Parwin Ali Majrooh. The following were of unknown ethnic origin: Mir Mohammad Afzal, Prof. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Eng. Merajuddin, Mrs. Fatima Mashaal, Eng. Dawoud Musa, Nadir Ali Mahdawi, Prof. Tahir Hashimi. Three additional members’ names are not available.
30 Ahmed Rashid, “A Strong Constitution,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 14, 2003.
31 The others were the 1931 Constitution issued by King Nadir Shah, the 1964 Constitution by King Zahir Shah, the 1977 republican constitution by President Daud, and a subsequent communist constitution, in 1987. Zahir Shah had set up a seven-member commission that spent a year deliberating the draft constitution, which was ratified on September 9, 1964, after just nine days of discussion by a 455-person Loya Jirga. See International Crisis Group, “Afghanistan’s Flawed Constitutional Process,” June 12, 2003.
32 Kofi Annan address to the UN Security Council, e-mail of speech received from the UN, December 8, 2003.
33 The four candidates were Dr. Ranjbar from Kabul, a former communist, who got 29 votes; Azizullah Wasifi, a monarchist, who received 43 votes; Hafiz Mansur, a firebrand from the Jamiat-e-Islami and close to Burhanuddin Rabbani; and General Fahim, who had headed Afghan state TV after the liberation of Kabul in December 2001 and received 154 votes; and Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, who received 252 votes.
34 I was present for much of the CLJ, both inside the main tent for several days listening to the debate and outside meeting foreign diplomats and soldiers. Ahmed Rashid, “Let’s Make a Democracy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, December 25, 2003.
35 Human Rights Watch, “Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Legacy of Impunity,” New York, July 7, 2005. Karzai refused to question Sayyaf about the brutal allegations made about him in this document.
36 Human Rights Watch, “Killing You Is a Very Easy Thing for Us: Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan,” July 2003. See also Ahmed Rashid, “The Mess in Afghanistan, ” New York Review of Books, February 12, 2004: “In Paghman district, the district’s governor and the local police are under Sayyaf’s command. One of the most powerful commanders in the Kabul region, Shir Alam, is also one of Sayyaf’s subordinates and controls most military checkpoints in Paghman. Zalmay Tofan, a commander of the Kabul Liwa, a large military base in Kabul province, is loyal to Sayyaf and close to Defense Minister Fahim. Mullah Taj Mohammad, the governor of Kabul province, is also a subordinate of Sayyaf.”
37 Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, New York: Ballantine Books, 2005.
38 President Hamid Karzai’s closing speech to the CLJ, Kabul, January 4, 2004. Karzai also spoke out against ethnicity: “Our vision for Afghanistan is of a country where people relate to each other through reason and shared ideas, convictions and behavior, not through ethnic bonds, because this is not the way of building nations. I never want— neither do you—I am sure that a person who belongs to the majority ethnic group necessarily becomes the president, and another belonging to the second largest ethnic group becomes the vice president, leaving the leftovers to the smaller ethnic groups. I do not want such an Afghanistan.”
39 Speech by Lakhdar Brahimi at the closing of the CLJ, Kabul, January 4, 2004. Karzai tried to prevent Brahimi from leaving: “I had told Mr. Brahimi that I would not let him leave Afghanistan, and that the Loya Jirga will not allow him to leave. We are not happy about his departure. He has been a real friend of Afghanistan. He has shown real feelings and shed tears for this country. We pray for him.” Brahimi answered, “The president and many of you are telling me that I shouldn’t leave. But I have a boss, a kind of central government in New York, and he has given me orders to leave. If I don’t, then I will be called a warlord for refusing the instructions of the central government. I am sure that you don’t want me to be called a warlord . . . I will leave, but my heart will stay here and my prayers will be with you and my support is yours as long as I live.”
&nb
sp; 40 I am grateful for the use of several internal UN documents for this analysis. Barnett Rubin, private note for the UN, “A Brief Look at the Final Negotiations on the Constitution of Afghanistan,” Kabul, January 4, 2004. Also “Political Analysis of CLJ Drafted on Behalf of Lakhdar Brahimi,” an internal UN document, Kabul, January 4, 2004. I also saw daily UN reports on the progress of the various CLJ committees. The European Union also shared their reports with me. However, the best publicly available analysis of the CLJ is Barnett Rubin, “Crafting a Constitution for Afghanistan,” Journal of Democracy, July 2004.
Chapter Eleven. Double-Dealing with Islamic Extremism: Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan
1 Al Qaeda had a close relationship with Harkat ul-Ansar in the early 1990s, until it was banned by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It then divided into two groups, Harkat ul-Mujahedin and Harkat ul-Jihad-i-Islami. Both groups were active in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Jaish-e-Mohammed emerged as the third group after the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in 1999.
2 After 2002, I carried out numerous interviews with senior U.S., British, other European, and UN diplomats, military and intelligence officials in Islamabad and Kabul, and U.S. and British officials in Washington and London. I interviewed President Karzai frequently and Afghan ministers and officials from all the key ministries dealing with the insurgency. I also interviewed senior retired Pakistani army and ISI officers who were opposed to the policy of backing the Taliban. It was interesting to note that although mid-level Western officials in their respective embassies would admit to a clandestine ISI operation in support of the Taliban, their ambassadors refrained from doing so, because any such admission would have led to the inevitable question about whether Musharraf was directly giving the orders.
3 Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, London: Mainstream Publishing, 2003.
4 Abu Ressam, an Algerian militant who had been caught on the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999 while planning to bomb Los Angeles airport during the millennium celebrations, had told U.S. interrogators that he had been recruited by Zubaydah in Peshawar.
5 Dan Eggen and Dafna Linzer, “Secret World of Detainees Grows More Public,” The Washington Post, September 7, 2006.
6 Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni living in Germany, had desperately wanted to join the 9/11 hijackers, but his four requests for a U.S. visa were turned down. He fled Germany six days before 9/11 and arrived in Afghanistan via Pakistan.
7 Fouda and Fielding, Masterminds of Terror. The authors give a fascinating account of the interview and of subsequent events.
8 See Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9 /11, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
9 That claim is made by Jane Mayer, “The Black Sites,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2007. The quote comes from Ahmed Rashid, “The Net Tightens on al Qaeda Cells,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 13, 2003.
10 He had evaded capture in Karachi in September 2002, when his wife and two children were arrested along with Ramzi bin al-Shibh. In February 2003 he had again escaped capture in Quetta when police arrested Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the son of the blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in New York in 1995 for conspiring to blow up the UN building. KSM had stayed with Rahman before traveling to Rawalpindi.
11 Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist, New York: Knopf, 2004. Randal gives the most insight into KSM’s life and travels. Both Randal’s and Fouda’s books demonstrate how KSM had been thinking of such a plot since 1993, when he had failed to carry out the simultaneous hijacking of eleven commercial aircraft over the Philippines. Ramzi Yousuf, the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was one of KSM’s nephews, while another nephew, Musaad Aruchi, organized attacks in Pakistan after 9/11. Aruchi was arrested in June 2004 in Karachi.
12 Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
13 In 2002—the year of the worst tensions with India—Lashkar-e-Tayyaba claimed that 292 of its militants, including 23 suicide bombers, were killed in 118 clashes with Indian troops.
14 For a more detailed analysis of both parties, see Muhammad Amir Rana, A to Z of Jihadi Organizations in Pakistan, Lahore: Mashal Books, 2004. Also Mariam Abou Zahab and Oliver Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection, London: Hurst and Co., 2004.
15 Hazaras living in Quetta migrated from the Hazarajat in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century after working as porters for the British army in the Anglo-Afghan wars. Subsequently they have monopolized trade and shops in Quetta. Ashura is the Shias’ most revered day, when they mourn the death of Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in battle.
16 Shamzai, a close friend of Osama bin Laden, had also helped set up Jaish-e-Mohammed and had provided hundreds of cadres to Sipah-e-Sahaba, whose leader, Azam Tariq, has studied at Binori.
17 How the Pakistani military has used the sectarian conflict to its advantage is best described in Vali Nasr, “Military Rule, Islam and Democracy in Pakistan,” Middle East Journal, Spring 2004. See also Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival, New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
18 Mohammed Shehzad, “Suicide Bombing Is the Best Form of Jihad,” The Friday Times, April 17, 2003.
19 UN expert group report on continued activities of al Qaeda, December 17, 2003.
20 Dexter Filkins, “US Might Pursue Qaeda and Taliban to Pakistan Lairs,” The New York Times, March 21, 2003.
21 Musharraf interview with The Washington Post, Islamabad, June 25, 2003.
22 Khalid Hassan, “Pakistani Security Setup Not Fully Cooperative: Armitage,” Daily Times, October 2, 2003. Pakistan’s foreign office answered by saying, “All security agencies are answerable to the president and they follow his direction faithfully.”
23 “Armitage Says Army Fully Backs Musharraf,” Dawn, October 7, 2003.
24 Farhan Bohkari, “Pakistan Bans Three Hard Line Islamic Groups,” Financial Times, November 15, 2003. The three banned groups were: Khuddam ul-Islam, formerly Jaish-e-Mohammed; Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan, formerly Sipah-e-Sahaba; and Islami Tehreek Pakistan, formerly Tehreek-e-Jafria, a Shia party. A few days later, on November 20, the government banned three more groups. These were Jamaat ul-Furqan, a splinter group from Jaish-e-Mohammed; Jamiat ul-Ansar, the renamed former Harkat ul-Mujahedin; and Hizbul Tehrir, a previously legal group.
25 Reuters, “Osama Calls on Pakistanis to Depose Musharraf,” Islamabad, October 9, 2002.
26 BBC, text of broadcast of speech by Ayman al-Zawahiri on Al Jazeera, September 28, 2003.
27 The five officers under arrest and facing court-martial were Lt.-Col. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Col. Khalid Abbas, Maj. Attaullah Khan, Maj. Rohail Faraz, and Capt. Usman Zafar. A sixth officer, Maj. Adil Qadoos Khan, had been caught in the aftermath of KSM’s arrest in Rawalpindi. The army refused to allow their families to bring their cases to the civil courts.
28 Jaish-e-Mohammed had first attempted to kill him at a Pakistan Day parade in March 2002. When the parade was canceled, suicide bombers next tried to enter a mosque in Islamabad, on December 6, 2002, while Musharraf was saying his prayers, but the security cordon was too tight. They again planned to kill him in March, and then in April 2003, using car bombs. “Trial in Attack of Those Who Tried to Kill Musharraf,” Herald, June 2005.
29 Farooqi had first joined Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and was held responsible for multiple murders of Shias in the early 1990s. He later joined Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami, a splinter group of the main Harakat ul-Islam. The new group was formally allied to al Qaeda, and its chief, Qari Saifullah Akthar, was close to both Mullah Omar and bin Laden. Farooqi planned the murder of eleven French engineers in Karachi in 2002 and had a hand in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl. See Alexis Debat, “Why Al Qaeda Is at Home in Pakistan,” ABC News, March 3, 2004.
30 Interview with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Washington, D.C., February 19, 2004.
31 T
eresita Schaffer and Pramit Mitra, “Aid as an Agent of Change: The Experience of Pakistan,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., November 2004. The authors quote from the UN Development Programme reports on human development in Pakistan.
32 State Bank of Pakistan report, December 2004. In 1951, when the population of West and East Pakistan was 32 million, there were 22 million illiterates. By 2001, the population had reached 150 million.
33 Pervez Hoodbhoy, “Reforming Our Universities,” Dawn, January 3, 2005.
34 Yvette Rosser, “Pakistani Studies Textbooks Can Cause Cognitive Dissonance in Students,” paper read at Sustainable Development Policy Institute conference, December 8, 2004.
35 Stephen Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 2004.
36 The best history of the madrassa system in Pakistan is International Crisis Group, “Madrassas: Extremism and the Military,” July 20, 2002.
37 Aga Khan Development Network, “Philanthropy in Pakistan: A Report of the Initiative on Indigenous Philanthropy,” Karachi, Pakistan, 2001.
38 The Madrassa Registration Ordinance was issued by the government on June 19, 2001.
39 State Department, “Press conference of President George W. Bush and President Pervez Musharraf,” Washington, D.C., June 24, 2003.
40 Irfan Raza, “Almost One Madrassa Opened Every Week,” Dawn, December 31, 2006.
41 Khalid Hassan, “Americans Safer with Pakistan as Ally: Bush,” Daily Times, July 12, 2004.
42 Some U.S. think tanks did question whether Pakistan was a reliable ally. “The Musharraf regime is unlikely to evolve into a long-term ally in the war on terrorism,” said the Cato Institute. Pakistan’s decision to abandon the Taliban in 2001 was “not a strategic choice but a tactical decision to avoid US retribution and prevent Indian advantage.” Cato Institute Briefing Paper, reported by Khalid Hassan, “Musharraf Not a Long-Term Ally of the US,” Daily Times, January 31, 2005.
43 Associated Press, “Karachi Militants Funding Terror with Heists,” Karachi, September 21, 2004.
