Descent Into Chaos (80 page)

1
For more information on FATA and the Durand Line issue, see Barnett Rubin and Abubakar Siddique, “Resolving the Afghanistan-Pakistan Stalemate,” United States Institute of Peace, October 2006; International Crisis Group, “Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants,” Islamabad, December 11, 2006; Hassan Abbas, “Profiles of Pakistan’s Seven Tribal Agencies,” Jamestown Foundation,
Jamestown Terrorism Monitor
20 (October 2006).

2
Interview with Afrasiab Khattak, February 12, 2007.

3
The United States abandoned the Lawara firebase in December 2002, after phosphorous rockets fired on the base burned several U.S. SOF vehicles. The Taliban claimed the U.S. retreat as a major victory.

4
Reuters, “Pakistan Could Do More, Says US General,” Bagram, December 27, 2002. Agence France-Presse, “US Says Attackers May Be Pursued in Pakistan,” Bagram, January 3, 2003.

5
Marc Kaufman, “On Afghan Border, War Drags On,”
The Washington Post,
January 25, 2003.

6
On October 2, 2003, Pakistani security forces, aided by gunship helicopters, attacked an al Qaeda camp in Baghar village, in South Waziristan, killing eight and arresting eighteen suspects. Ahmed Said Khadr, alias Abu Abdur Rehman Khadr al-Canadi, an Egyptian-born Canadian and a key al Qaeda financer, was believed to be among the dead.

7
Zulfiqar Ali, “Musharraf Warns Against Failure of Wana Operation,”
Dawn,
March 16, 2004.

8
Major Qudoos, an officer of the Signal Battalion, who was arrested on March 1, 2003, for allegedly helping al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was sentenced to ten years in jail. Col. Khalid Abbasi, also a Signal officer, was arrested on May 30, 2003, and sentenced to six months in jail. Col. Abdul Ghaffar, serving at the Army Aviation Headquarters, was arrested on March 4, 2004, and sentenced to three years in jail. The cases of two majors and a captain were dismissed.

9
For more economic details, see International Crisis Group, “Pakistan’s Tribal Areas.” An interesting book on education in FATA by a Mahsud female school inspector is Zaiba Mahsud,
Touchstone,
Islamabad: self-published, 2006.

10
“FATA Sustainable Development Plan, 2006-15,” Peshawar: Government of Pakistan, June 2006.

11
Interview (in July 2007) with Christine Fair, formerly of the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., and presently working with UNAMA in Kabul.

12
See Sohail Nasir, “Baitullah Mahsud,” Jamestown Foundation,
Terrorism Focus,
July 5, 2006.

13
Owais Tohid, “Cash Weans Tribes from al Qaeda,”
Christian Science Monitor,
February 16, 2005.

14
Carlotta Gall and Mohammed Khan, “Pakistan’s Push in Border Areas Is Said to Falter,”
The New York Times,
January 22, 2006. Those killed in the strike included Egyptians Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, alias Abu Khahab al-Masri alias Abu Ubayda alias Mustafa Osman; the Moroccan Abdel Rehman al-Maghrebi; and Khalid Habib. Al-Maghrebi was believed to be the son-in-law of al-Zawahiri. Carlotta Gall and Douglas Jehl, "U.S. Raid Killed Qaida Leaders, Pakistanis Say,”
The New York Times,
January 19, 2006.

15
The madrassa was run by Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, or the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, the same extremist group that had persuaded thousands of tribesmen to cross into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces during the war in 2001. The organization was banned in 2002 and its leader, Sufi Mohammed, jailed, but the ISI allowed it to reestablish its influence in FATA. Sufi Mohammad’s son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, revived the movement. Nicknamed “Maulana Radio” due to his expertise in launching illegal FM radio stations, he had close ties with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

16
General Orakzai had been corps commander in Peshawar from October 9, 2001, to March 12, 2004.

17
Reuters, “Bush Says US Watching Pakistan Deal with Militants,” Washington, D.C., September 7, 2006.

18
Ahmed Rashid, “Nato’s Top Brass Accuse Pakistan over Taliban Aid,”
The Daily Telegraph,
October 6, 2006.

19
Anwar Iqbal, “Taliban Command Structure in FATA Alarms US,”
Dawn,
December 28, 2006. Boucher made the comments while on a visit to Canada.

20
The first agreement was the Shakai deal in South Waziristan in 2004; the second and third took place in North Waziristan, in 2005 and 2006.

21
Zahid Hussain, “Terror in Miramshah,”
Newsline,
April 2006. “In Tank, the Taliban have ordered barbers not to shave beards, people are prohibited to play music, even at weddings, and the traditional fairs, which provided some form of entertainment to the public, have been banned. In Dera Ismail Khan, the Taliban have forcibly stopped people from organizing their spring fair and instead asked them to hold a religious conference. In Swat district, some pro-Taliban clerics set television sets on fire. In Peshawar, clerics have threatened to take action against those cable operators who show western television channels.”

22
Letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
The New York Times,
October 20, 2005.

23
Peter Bergen, “The Return of al Qaeda: Where You Bin?”
The New Republic,
January 29, 2007.

24
Nasir Jamal, “Musharraf Rules Out Pakistan Link to Blasts Abroad,”
Dawn,
July 25, 2005.

25
The ringleader, Omar Khyam, testified in his trial that “they taught me everything I needed for guerrilla warfare in Kashmir, AK47s, pistols, RPGs, sniper rifles, climbing and crawling techniques, reconnaissance and light machine guns.” See ibid.

26
Text of speech delivered by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5. “The Internationalist Terrorist Threat to the UK,”
The Daily Telegraph,
November 9, 2006.

27
Jim Hoagland, “Message to Musharraf,”
The Washington Post,
January 22, 2006.

28
Khalid Hasan, “US Paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars to Counter Terror,”
Daily Times,
October 29, 2006. The figures are based on a report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service. In 2002 Pakistan charged the U.S. Defense Department $420 million for logistical facilities given to U.S. forces as they waged the war in Afghanistan. The charges were for the rental of air bases and the supply of fuel, water, and ammunition transported from Karachi port to U.S. forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

29
Tim Burger, “Ten Questions for Porter Goss,”
Time,
June 27, 2005.

30
“Report on the Congressional Research Service of the US Congress,”
Dawn,
February 25, 2005.

31
Haitham al-Yamani and Abu Hamza Rabia were killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan in 2005. In 2006, Muhsin Matwalli Atwah, an Egyptian bomb maker, was killed in an air attack in Miran Shah, while Abu Marwan al-Suri, a Saudi national, was killed at a checkpoint in Bajaur.

32
Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson, “Bin Laden Trail Stone Cold,”
The Washington Post,
September 10, 2006. U.S. intelligence still referred to bin Laden and al-Zawahiri as High-Value Targets, or HVT 1 and HVT 2.

33
Agence France-Presse, “Al Qaeda Funding the Taliban, Says Top US Commander,” Kabul, March 29, 2005.

34
Ron Moreau and Sami Yousfzai, “Unholy Allies,”
Newsweek,
September 22, 2005.

35
Dafna Linzer and Walter Pincus, “Taliban, al Qaeda Resurge in Afghanistan, CIA Says,”
The Washington Post,
November 16, 2005. Hayden and Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, both spoke to the Congressional Intelligence Committee.

36
Sebastian Rotella, “War on West Shifts Back to Afghanistan,”
Los Angeles Times,
October 26, 2006.

37
Text of John Negroponte speech to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Washington, D.C., January 11, 2007.

38
The initial cost of the port, which was opened in 2006, was $250 million, out of which China contributed $198 million.

39
Ahmed Rashid, “Explosive Mix in Pakistan’s Gas Province,” BBC News Online, January 24, 2005.

40
Carlotta Gall, “In Remote Pakistan Province, a Civil War Festers,”
The New York Times,
April 2, 2006.

41
Hussain Haqqani, “Talking Without Thinking,”
The Nation,
December 13, 2006.

42
They asked the Court for a judgment on whether the accession of Balochistan to the Pakistan state in 1947 was legitimate—thereby questioning the very creation of Pakistan.

43
Two weeks before his death, Bugti had privately asked Karzai for political asylum in Afghanistan, which Karzai was sorely tempted to grant but declined, fearing greater tensions with Pakistan. The army said Bugti’s killing had sent a strong message to India and Afghanistan that “Indian proxies” would not be in Balochistan.

44
Research carried out by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, at Monterey Institute of International Studies. See Humayun Akhtar, “China Fully Supports Pakistan Nuclear Plans,” September 7, 2000.

45
Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies,
Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001.

46
General Beg apparently “thought in terms of ‘democratizing’ the global nuclear non-proliferation order and moving to a multipolar world.” See Gordon Corera,
Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

47
See note 14 of chapter 2.

48
Khan once explained succinctly how he made the bomb and put together his network: “Being an engineer has its own advantages. You do not have to do much. You just have to put a few parts of a machine together and you have done your job. This is how the nuclear program was done. We just picked up a few pieces, joined them together and it became a centrifuge producing enriched uranium and there you have an atom bomb.” “Government Assures Dr Khan of Support, Islamabad,”
Dawn,
December 24, 2002.

49
Much of this information comes from the most comprehensive book on Pakistan’s nuclear program: See Corera,
Shopping for Bombs.

50
David Sanger, “In North Korea and Pakistan, Deep Roots of Nuclear Barter,”
The New York Times,
November 21, 2002.

51
Powell assured a skeptical world that Musharraf “gave me 400 percent assurances that Pakistan has not supplied any nuclear know-how to North Korea,” but he added, “I cannot talk about the past.” Masud Haider, “Nuclear Material Not Supplied to North Korea,”
Dawn,
October 21, 2002.

52
Reuters, “Pakistan Nuclear Scientist Seeks Clemency for Leaks,”
Dawn,
February 4, 2004. Text of Dr. Khan’s statement,
Dawn,
February 4, 2004.

53
Josh Meyer, “Officials Say Pakistan Has Secretly Bought High-Tech Components for Its Weapons Program from U.S. Companies,”
Los Angeles Times,
March 26, 2005.

54
Interview with Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, Washington, D.C., February 19, 2004.

55
Just before North Korea’s nuclear test, the Americans publicly demanded that they be allowed to speak to Khan directly. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, said, “I do not think any of us have the whole story. That is important for Pakistan to know, that is important for us to know and it is important for the international community to know, as we face the ongoing proliferation of Iran and North Korea.” See “Let’s Have the Whole Story: US Envoy,”
The News,
October 3, 2006.

56
Carlotta Gall and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush Rules Out a Nuclear Deal with Pakistanis, ”
The New York Times,
March 5, 2006.

57
Pervez Musharraf,
In the Line of Fire,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
The Wall Street Journal
described the book “as a highly selective auto-hagiography, by turns self-congratulatory, narcissistic and mendacious.” Quoted in Hussain Haqqani, “Talking Without Thinking,”
The Nation,
December 13, 2006.

58
Fouad Ajami, “With Us or Against Us,”
The New York Times,
January 7, 2007. Ajami was reviewing Musharraf’s book.

59
Stephen Cohen,
The Idea of Pakistan,
Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 2004.

1
Gabor Rona, “Interesting Times for International Humanitarian Law: Challenges from the War on Terror,”
The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs,
Summer/Fall 2003.

2
Bob Woodward,
Bush at War,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

3
Madeleine Albright, “Confidence in America: The Best Change the Next President Can Make,”
The Washington Post,
January 7, 2008.

4
David Rose,
Guantánamo: America’s War on Human Rights,
London: The New Press, 2004.

5
For the full text of the memos, see Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray,
Guantánamo: What the World Should Know,
Moreton, Eng.: Arris Books, 2004.

6
See Rose,
Guantánamo.

7
This chapter is a result of interviews with many figures, including U.S., European, and NATO military officers and diplomats, officials from the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other humanitarian and aid agencies. Many of them had visited jails in Guantánamo, Kandahar, and Bagram. Due to the highly sensitive nature of their information, I cannot quote them by name or organization. As a result, I have usually defined their information as coming from “a Western official,” unless I can give readers a more specific identity.

8
Interview by my researcher Abu Bakr with Noor Habibullah on June 2, 2004, in Sholana village, twenty-five kilometers south of Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan.

9
See Chris Mackey, with Greg Miller,
The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda,
London: John Murray, 2004. For the abilities of the U.S. SOF, see Robin Moore,
The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger,
New York: Random House, 2003.

10
Robert Baer,
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism,
New York: Crown, 2002.

11
Mackey, with Miller,
The Interrogators.

12
Human Rights Watch, “US Systematic Abuse of Afghan Prisoners,” New York, May 13, 2004.

13
This list has been compiled from documents from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the U.S. Defense Department.

14
Tim Golden, “In US Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates’ Deaths,”
The New York Times,
May 20, 2005. Golden published long extracts from the two-hundred-page military file.

15
Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, “US Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide, ”
The New York Times,
March 16, 2005. Also Douglas Jehl, “Some Abu Ghraib Abuses Are Traced to Afghanistan,”
The New York Times,
August 25, 2004.

16
Douglas Jehl, “Army Details Abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq,”
The New York Times,
March 12, 2005.

17
Elise Ackerman, “Blows That Led to Detainees’ Death Were Common Practice,” Knight Ridder newspapers, March 25, 2005. See also Carlotta Gall and David Rohde, “New Charges Raise Questions on Abuse at Afghan Prisons,”
The New York Times,
September 17, 2004.

18
The autopsy was performed by Lt.-Col. Elizabeth Rouse, who testified in the trial. Associated Press, “Medical Examiner Testifies Beaten Afghan Falling Apart,” Washington, D.C., August 16, 2005.

19
Tim Golden, “Years After Two Afghans Died, Abuse Case Falters,”
The New York Times,
February 13, 2006.

20
Conversation with Nader Nadery, August 24, 2005. The minor punishments received by the fourteen men on trial were documented by the Associated Press, “A Look at the Afghanistan Prisons Abuse Scandal,” September 28, 2005.

21
His case was well documented by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul and by
The New York Times.
See Carlotta Gall, “An Afghan Gives His Own Account of US Abuse,”
The New York Times,
May 12, 2004. Also Hamida Ghafour, “Afghan Held by US Troops Recounts Agony of Interrogation,”
Globe and Mail,
May 15, 2004.

22
Craig Pyes and Kevin Sack, "Two Deaths Were a ‘Clue That Something’s Wrong,’ ”
Los Angeles Times,
September 24, 2006.

23
Dana Priest, “Salt Pit Case—What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?” reprinted in
Daily Times,
March 4, 2005.

24
Scott Shane, “CIA Contractor Guilty in Beating Afghan,”
The New York Times,
August 18, 2006.

25
The other two men were Brent Bennett, also a former soldier, and a New York journalist Edward Carabella, who appeared to be recording Idema’s activities. Idema and Bennett were each sentenced to ten years in jail, a term later cut to five years. Carabella’s original sentence of eight years was reduced to two years in 2005. They were both freed in 2007.

26
Cabinet Office, “The Handling of Detainees by UK Intelligence Personnel in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Iraq,” London, March 10, 2005.

27
“Rendition” is the capture or abduction of alleged terrorists. The prisoners are then sent to third countries, where they can be interrogated by foreign intelligence agencies who are known to use torture.

28
ICRC statement, Geneva, January 16, 2004.

29
Jane Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture,”
The New Yorker,
February 14, 2005.

30
Ibid.

31
Rose,
Guantánamo.
Black was speaking to the House and Senate intelligence committees, September 26, 2002.

32
Human Rights Watch, “All Our Hopes Are Crushed: Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan,” New York, November 2002. One young Afghan in Herat described the torture of a friend: “Then they gave my friend electricity shocks. They used a crank generator. They had to crank it very fast to produce the shock. They tied two electrical lines to each of his big toes. Three or four times they shocked him. . . . Each time, my friend’s body would be thrown by the shock. After that, my friend signed the confession paper. Then I signed it also so that I would not be beaten.”

33
Some months earlier I had met with Ismael Khan, whom I had known for fifteen years, and asked him to grant freedom of the press in Herat so that an NGO I had set up could fund new magazines and newspapers there. Shahir’s NGO received the first grant to publish a magazine, but he was arrested and beaten up.

34
Peter Beaumont, “UK Aid Funds Iraqi Torture Units,”
The Observer,
July 3, 2005.

35
Human Rights Watch, “Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,” New York, February 27, 2007. See also Dafna Linzer and Julie Tate, “New Light Shed on CIA’s Black Site Prisons,”
The Washington Post,
February 28, 2007.

36
Salman Masood, “Kin and Rights Groups Search for Pakistan’s Missing,”
The New York Times,
January 14, 2007.

37
Craig Murray, Speech at Freedom House, British embassy, Tashkent, October 18, 2003.

38
Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, “Diplomat: US, UK Used Torture Information, ” April 23, 2006.

39
Craig Murray, “Her Majesty’s Man in Tashkent,”
The Washington Post,
September 3, 2006.

40
Reuters, “US Adds Eleven Islamic Groups to Blacklist,” Washington, D.C., April 30, 2003.

41
Josh White, “Lawyers Demand Release of Chinese Muslims,”
The New York Times,
December 5, 2006.

42
Rose,
Guantánamo.

43
ICRC press conference by Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations, Geneva, May 8, 2004.

44
Isabel Hilton, “Held in Contempt,”
Financial Times,
August 29, 2004. Hilton’s account of the lawyers’ attempts to obtain justice is the most comprehensive published thus far.

45
Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh, “The Debate over Torture,”
Newsweek,
November 21, 2005.

46
U.S. Senate, “Are American Interests Being Disserved by the ICRC?” June 2005. Kellenberger responded on June 17 in Geneva.

47
Ibid.

48
Human Rights Watch put together a list of thirty-eight prisoners whose whereabouts were unknown, but said there were certainly more. See Human Rights Watch, “Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,” New York, February 27, 2007.

49
Associated Press, “27 Iraqis, Afghans Killed in US Custody,” March 25, 2005.

50
Karen DeYoung and Peter Baker, “Bush Detainees Plan to Add to World Doubts of US, Says Powell,”
The Washington Post,
September 19, 2006.

51
David Johnston, “Rice Ordered Release of German Sent to Afghan Prison in Error,”
The New York Times,
April 22, 2005.

52
The fourteen countries involved in unlawful interstate transfers were Bosnia-Herzegovina, Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. David Rennie, “Britain Helped CIA Kidnappers,”
The Guardian,
June 8, 2006.