In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones

  The Razor’s Edge

  The challenge of borders had perhaps best been evoked by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who served as viceroy of India and British foreign secretary in the early twentieth century. While riding horseback as a teenager, he incurred a spinal injury that required him to wear a metal corset under his clothes. This gave him a formal air of rigidity and haughtiness. In January 1899, he was appointed viceroy of India and had to deal with insurrection in the tribal areas, along the border with Afghanistan. In a 1907 lecture at All Souls College, Oxford University, that regal bearing was on display during his speech, in which he famously remarked: “Frontiers are indeed the razor’s edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war and peace, of life and death to nations.”71

  As for the most recent insurgency, external frontiers and support were critical at the onset. Of particular significance was the use of Pakistan by insurgent groups; after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, there was a massive exodus of Taliban, al Qa’ida, and other fighters across the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains. Over the next several years, these fighters regrouped and began their sustained insurgency to overthrow the Afghan government. The solution to this problem was to have the Pakistani government, or tribal proxies—with U.S. support—target groups operating out of this sanctuary. A U.S. State Department document averred that the United States needed to “move against the Taliban in Quetta” and other areas of Pakistan:

  Actions to support this would include detaining Taliban leaders, financiers and operational support cells; pressing Pakistan to close madrassas whose students participated in the recent Pashmul/Panjwai fighting; seizing Taliban-linked financial assets in Quetta; interdicting courier movement between Quetta, the FATA, and Afghanistan and closing arms bazaars in the Quetta area. While Pakistani-led action is ideal, we may need to consider unilateral action, or the threat of it, to encourage a sufficiently energetic Pakistani response.72

  Most of these steps, however, did not occur. In 2007, for example, an American military proposal outlined an intensified effort to enlist FATA tribal leaders in the fight against al Qa’ida and the Taliban. It was part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy. The proposal came in a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). The planning at SOCOM had intensified after Admiral Eric Olson, the SOCOM commander, met with President Pervez Musharraf and senior Pakistani military leaders in late August 2007 to discuss how the U.S. military could increase cooperation in Pakistan’s fight against the extremists. The briefing stated that U.S. forces would not be involved in any conventional combat in Pakistan but that elements of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes against militant leaders under specific conditions.73

  But there were no sustained operations. The vast majority of U.S. planning was on paper, not in practice. The United States refused to take concerted action against the Taliban and other insurgents in Pakistan—especially in Baluchistan Province, where the Taliban’s inner shura was located—or to put serious pressure on Pakistan to do it. At least one White House official acknowledged that the U.S. government did not place any serious conditions on its assistance to Pakistan. It did not request a quid pro quo in which the United States provided money and equipment and Pakistan helped capture or kill key Taliban and other militants.74 Several Western ambassadors—especially those from countries whose troops were fighting and dying in Afghanistan—became frustrated at America’s apparent unwillingness to confront Pakistan.75 At the same time, a resurgent al Qa’ida on Pakistani soil became an increasingly acute threat.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Al Qa’ida: A Force Multiplier

  SINCE ITS CREATION IN 1973, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) has provided U.S. policymakers with assessments on current and future threats to U.S. national security. Located at the CIA’s wooded headquarters near the Potomac River in northern Virginia, the NIC meets on a regular basis to craft perhaps its most important official assessments: National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). These documents contain the judgments and predictions of the U.S. intelligence community on a wide range of issues. In 2007, representatives from U.S. intelligence agencies met to hone and coordinate the full text of a document on the terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. The directors of the CIA, National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as the assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, submitted formal assessments that highlighted the strengths, weaknesses, and overall credibility of their sources in developing the document’s key judgments. In other words, it had been thoroughly vetted by the U.S. intelligence community.

  The conclusions of the document, titled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, were grim: “Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland.” Although many commentators in the United States had looked to Iraq as the center of international terrorism, the report revealed that the core al Qa’ida threat emanated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions. “We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.”1 The best and brightest minds in the American intelligence community had effectively discovered that since the September 11, 2001, attack, al Qa’ida had barely moved from its base in eastern Afghanistan. Scarcely 100 miles separated al Qa’ida’s Darunta camp complex near Jalalabad—one of bin Laden’s most significant training complexes before September 11—from North Waziristan, a key al Qa’ida haven after September 11. American military action, then, had succeeded in moving senior al Qa’ida leaders only the distance between New York City and Philadelphia.

  The significance of the 2007 NIE was clear: al Qa’ida presented an imminent threat to the United States, and it enjoyed a sanctuary in Pakistan. Another U.S. intelligence assessment unambiguously concluded:

  Al-Qa’ida has been able to retain a safehaven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that provides the organization many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale. The FATA serves as a staging area for al-Qa’ida’s attacks in support of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as a location for training new terrorist operatives, for attacks in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States.2

  The FBI came to a similar conclusion, warning in a June 2008 report: “A large number of terrorists have escaped from prisons around the world, raising the threat these terrorist escapees might pose to U.S. interests.” FBI officials were particularly concerned about several operatives in Pakistan, including Abu Yahya al-Libi and Rashid Rauf. “Al-Libi is arguably the most dangerous,” the FBI concluded, “because of his demonstrated ability to spread al-Qa’ida ideology” and to target the United States.3

  The Return of al Qa’ida

  By 2007, if not before, it was clear that al Qa’ida had enjoyed a resurgence in Pakistan’s tribal belt and that it remained committed to conducting attacks on a global scale, not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qa’ida had launched successful attacks and had been foiled in other plots, including the successful attack in London in July 2005 and the thwarted transatlantic plot in the summer of 2006 to detonate liquid explosives aboard several airliners flying from Britain to the United States and Canada. In 2007, officials drew worldwide attention when they broke up an al Qa’ida cell in Denmark and an Islamic Jihad Union cell in Germany led by Fritz Gelowicz. In 2008, police and intelligence forces uncovered several terrorist plots in Europe (including in Spain and France) linked to militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. People taking part in each of these operations received training and other assistance in Pakistan.

  The July 2005 terrorist attack in London serves as a useful example. British authorities initially believed that t
he attacks were the work of purely “home grown” British Muslims. However, subsequent evidence compiled by British intelligence agencies indicated that key participants, including Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer, between November 2004 and February 2005 visited Pakistani terrorist camps, where they were trained by al Qa’ida operatives. In September 2005, Ayman al-Zawahiri said that al Qa’ida “was honoured to launch” the London attacks. “In the Wills of the hero brothers, the knights of monotheism,” Zawahiri remarked, “may God have mercy on them, make paradise their final abode and accept their good deeds.”4

  A year earlier, British and American authorities had foiled a plot by a London-based al Qa’ida cell, led by Dhiren Barot, to carry out suicide attacks on the New York Stock Exchange and the Citi-Group Building in New York City; the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. The trail similarly led back to Pakistan.5

  Al Qa’ida was also involved in the infamous 2006 transatlantic plot.6 One of the controllers of the operation, which the British MI5 code-named Operation Overt, was Abu Ubaydah al-Masri, a senior al Qa’ida operative. What surprised U.S. intelligence analysts, however, was how little they knew about some of the individuals involved. “When the British government handed us the names of the individuals they believed were involved in the 2006 translatlantic plot,” remarked Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA officer who was at NATO, “we had no idea who many of them were. They were complete unknowns.”7

  Al Qa’ida was involved in more terrorist attacks after September 11, 2001, than during the previous six years. It averaged fewer than two attacks per year between 1995 and 2001, but it averaged more than ten major international attacks per year between 2002 and 2006 (excluding in Afghanistan and Iraq).8 Between 1995 and 2001, al Qa’ida launched approximately a dozen terrorist attacks—beginning on November 13, 1995, when they detonated an explosive device outside the office of the program manager of the Saudi Arabian National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indian government officials. The Saudi government arrested four perpetrators, who admitted connections with Osama bin Laden.9 Over the next several years, al Qa’ida conducted attacks in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, among other places. In 1996, bin Laden issued a declaration of jihad against the United States, in part because he felt that the “presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world.” Consequently, America’s oppression of the Holy Land “cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets.”10

  In 1998, bin Laden called specifically for the murder of any American, anywhere on earth, as the “individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”11 A growing number of extremists all over the world sought training from al Qa’ida in Afghanistan and other countries. A British House of Commons report noted that, as “Al Qaida developed in the 1990s, a number of extremists in the UK, both British and foreign nationals—many of the latter having fled from conflict elsewhere or repressive regimes—began to work in support of its agenda, in particular, radicalising and encouraging young men to support jihad overseas.”12

  After 2001, as al Qa’ida significantly increased its number of attacks, it continued to operate most actively in Saudi Arabia. But the group also expanded operations into North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan), the Middle East (Jordan and Turkey), and Europe (the United Kingdom). Most of these attacks were located in the area that had been controlled by the Caliphate, notably the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750 AD, the land in which al Qa’ida wanted to establish its own pan-Islamic empire.13

  An Apostate Regime

  Al Qa’ida leaders based in Pakistan had three main objectives in Afghanistan. First, they wanted to overthrow the “apostate” regime of Hamid Karzai. In their mind, Karzai was doubly guilty of failing to establish a “true” Islamic state and of cooperating with the infidel Western governments. Second, al Qa’ida leaders wanted to replace the Afghan regime with one that followed a radical version of sharia law envisioned by Sayyid Qutb and other Islamist thinkers. Al Qa’ida leaders appeared content with the prospect of another Taliban victory in Afghanistan and the establishment of a Taliban-style interpretation of Islam, including sharia law—even though the Taliban had objectives that were largely parochial and limited to Afghanistan. The third objective was to wage a war of attrition against the United States and other Western governments, with the hope of weakening them and ultimately pushing them out of Muslim lands.

  All of these goals were interconnected and consistent with the philosophy of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and others—an ideology that had been forged in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and the struggle against Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other “apostate regimes.” They wanted to unite Muslims to fight the United States and its allies (the far enemy) and to overthrow Western-friendly regimes in the Middle East (the near enemy).14 Ultimately, they envisioned the establishment of an “Islamic belt” that connected Pakistan to Central Asia, cut through the Caucasus, and then moved into Turkey and the Middle East.15

  In an audio message in 2007, bin Laden rhetorically asked the people of Europe: “So what is the sin of the Afghans due to which you are continuing this unjust war against them? Their only sin is that they are Muslims, and this illustrates the extent of the Crusaders’ hatred of Islam and its people.”16 Westerners brought with them such concepts as democracy, which Islamists considered nizam al-kufr (a deviant system). They viewed democracy—as evidenced by the free elections in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005—as supplanting the rule of God with that of a popular majority. Jihadis were obsessed with controlling state bureaucracies and using them to advance their Islamic project.17

  Al Qa’ida leaders were also quick to draw parallels between the United States and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad, Zawahiri argued, was an extension of the struggle against the Soviets. The rhetoric was very much the same. Discussing the necessity of attacking the United States, he wrote that it is “of the utmost importance to prepare the Muslim mujahideen to wage their awaited battle against the superpower that now has sole dominance over the globe, namely, the United States.”18

  Al Qa’ida’s Organizational Structure

  After the overthrow of the Taliban, al Qa’ida evolved a fairly decentralized and nonlinear network based out of Pakistan. Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman divided the group into four categories, or a series of concentric circles: al Qa’ida central, affiliated groups, affiliated cells, and the informal network.19

  Al Qa’ida central included the remnants of the pre-9/11 al Qa’ida organization. Despite the death or capture of key al Qa’ida figures, such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the core leadership included many old faces, such as bin Laden and Zawahiri.20 Much of the founding core was scattered across Pakistan. After the death of his wife and two children during U.S. attacks in Afghanistan, Zawahiri married a woman from the Mahmund tribe in Bajaur Agency. This enabled him to develop even stronger tribal links to the leadership of militant Deobandi groups, such as Mullah Faqir Muhammad, the leader of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).21

  As we have seen, al Qa’ida central was directly or indirectly involved in a number of terrorist efforts outside of Pakistan, such as in London in July 2005 and the foiled transatlantic plot in 2006. In some cases, this included direct command and control, such as commissioning attacks and planning operations. Relative freedom to operate in Pakistan enabled al Qa’ida to maintain operational capabilities, conduct training, and arrange meetings among operational planners and foot soldiers, recruiters, and others in relative safety. It also gave al Qa’ida’s leaders the space to focus on future attacks rather than to waste effort trying to hide from U.S. or Pakistani forces. Hoffman writes that this freedom allowed them the same latitude to operate as when they planned the 1998 East African embassy bombings and the Sept
ember 11 attacks. Such attacks were entrusted only to al Qa’ida’s professional cadre—the most committed and reliable individuals in the movement—though locals were usually critical to executing the operation.22

  The affiliated groups included formally established insurgent or terrorist groups that cooperated with al Qa’ida. They benefited from bin Laden’s financial assistance and inspiration and received training, arms, money, and other support. In some cases, such as al Qa’ida in Iraq, burgeoning groups also funneled funds back to al Qa’ida central. Al Qa’ida in Iraq sent money to al Qa’ida in Pakistan—funds they had raised from donations as well as kidnappings and other criminal activity.23 These affiliated groups hailed from countries as disparate as Pakistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Philippines, as well as Kashmir. Among them were al Qa’ida in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the various Kashmiri Islamic groups based in Pakistan, such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) officially merged with al Qa’ida in September 2006, changed its name to al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and attacked a U.S. contractor bus in December 2006 in greater Algiers, marking its first attack against a U.S. entity.24