Ghost Wars (110 page)

34. Ibid. All quotations are from the document.

35. The estimate remains classified, but CIA director George Tenet quoted from it at length in his October 17, 2002, prepared testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee investigating the September 11 attacks. Eleanor Hill also quoted portions of the estimate in her September 18, 2002, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement. The quotations here are from Tenet's testimony, except for "new breed," which is from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, p. 4, and "As far as . . . his associates," from the final report, p. 313.

36. Ibid. "New terrorist phenomenon" from National Commission, staff statement no. 5, p. 1-2. Estimate title from staff statement no. 11, p. 4.

CHAPTER 16: "SLOWLY, SLOWLY SUCKED INTO IT"

1. The account of Durrani's ascension is drawn primarily from Olaf Caroe,
The
Pathans,
pp. 254-55, and Martin Ewans,
Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and
Politics,
pp. 22-23. A former British officer in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Caroe draws on multiple original and imperial sources.

2. Caroe,
The Pathans.
He attributes the story of Durrani's selection at the
jirga
to the 1905 autobiography of the "Iron Amir" of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman, who recorded the story as it was recounted "in the Kabul annals." Whatever its basis in fact, the story's themes-Durrani's humble silence and the attempt by more powerful khans to choose a weak king-became an oft-repeated, shaping narrative of Afghan politics.

3. Ibid., pp. 251-85. The first dynasty of Durrani royals passed from Ahmed Shah through his son Timur, located in the Saddozai Popalzai tribal branch. The second and third dynasties, terminating with King Zahir Shah in 1973, drew its leaders from the Mohammedzai Barakzai tribal branch.

4. The Naqibullah quotation is from Jon Lee Anderson,
The New Yorker,
January 28, 2002. Anderson had traveled in southern Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad and had spent weeks in a mujahedin encampment overseen by Naqibullah. After the Taliban lost Kandahar in December 2001, Anderson met up with Naqibullah again and spent several days in his company. He saw that the warlord was carrying a prescription written in Germany for antipsychotic medication and asked him about it, prompting Naqibullah's explanation.

5. Interview with Spozhmai Maiwandi, a Pashtun broadcaster with Voice of America who chronicled the Taliban's rise and spoke regularly with Mullah Omar and other Tal- iban leaders, March 28, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). Maiwandi's frequent interviews with the Taliban on VOA's Pashto-language service led some other Afghans, especially those loyal to Ahmed Shah Massoud, to denounce the U.S.-funded radio service as pro- Taliban. VOA's reputation in turn fueled suspicions in the region that the Taliban was an instrument of U.S. policy.

6. The account of the rural roots of the Taliban is mainly from Olivier Roy, "Has Islamism a Future in Afghanistan?," in William Maley, ed.,
Fundamentalism Reborn,
pp. 204-11, as well as from interviews with Maiwandi and other Kandahar Pashtuns. Ahmed Rashid's
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil,
and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
is the definitive book-length account of the movement. Michael Griffin,
Reaping the Whirlwind,
and Larry P. Goodson,
Afghanistan's Endless
War,
also provide detailed accounts of the movement's origins and rise.

7. Rashid,
Taliban,
pp. 90-91, reports that the
madrassa
long funded about four hundred places for Afghan students. In 1999 it had fifteen thousand applicants. Rashid quotes the Haqqannia's leader, Pakistani politician Samiul Haq, complaining that Pakistani intelligence ignored his
madrassa
during the anti- Soviet jihad, favoring a network of Muslim Brotherhood- linked religious schools affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami and Hekmatyar. Jamaa-e-Islami was the Islamist political rival to Haq's political party.

8. Martin Ewans,
Afghanistan: A Short History
of Its People and Politics,
p. 204. For deeper accounts of the roots of the School of Islamic Studies at Deoband and its role in Muslim theology and anticolonial movements, Ewans recommends A. A. Rizvi,
A
History of Sufism in India,
two volumes, 1978 and 1983, and Rizvi's
History of Dar al-Ulum
Deoband,
1980.

9. Rashid,
Taliban,
pp. 87-94.

10. Interview with Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, May 12, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).

11. Interview with Qayum Karzai, May 19, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW), and with Hamid Karzai, October 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (SC).

12. This account of Karzai's detention by Fahim, his interrogation, and the circumstances of his escape is drawn from interviews with multiple sources involved in the episode, including Qayum Karzai, May 19, 2002, and Afghan vice president Hedayat Amin-Arsala, May 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW). Amin-Arsala was foreign minister at the time of Karzai's detention. Amin-Arsala was never certain who ordered Karzai's arrest: "I'm not really quite sure if [then Afghan president Rabbani] ordered his arrest. But certainly the intelligence people, who were headed by Fahim, they knew."

13. Interview with Hamid Karzai, October 21, 2002.

14. That Karzai provided $50,000 in cash and a large cache of weapons is from Karzai's interview with Ahmed Rashid,
The
Daily Telegraph,
December 8, 2001. Why Karzai supported the Taliban and that many Pashtuns hoped they would lead to the king's return are from interviews with Qayum Karzai, May 19, 2002; Hedayat Amin-Arsala, May 21, 2002; Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, May 12, 2002; and Zalmai Rassoul, May 18, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).

15. Even Omar's birth year is uncertain. Rashid,
Taliban,
p. 23, places Omar's birth "sometime around 1959." An undated CIA biographical fact sheet about Omar describes his birth as "circa 1950." Each of these dates has been used in various press accounts to estimate Omar's age, compounding the confusion. The account given to U.S. diplomats is from the declassified State Department cable "Finally, a Talkative Talib," from Islamabad to Washington, February 20, 1995, released by the National Security Archive.

16. CIA fact sheet, ibid. Omar's ties to Bashar and "charismatic nor articulate" are from "Finally, a Talkative Talib," ibid.

17. Taliban legend, Associated Press, September 20, 2001. Red Cross,
Sunday Times,
September 23, 2001.

18.
The Washington Post,
December 27, 2001.

19.
Toronto Star,
December 9, 2001.

20. "A simple band . . . goal" is from
Time,
October 1, 2001. "The Taliban . . . our people" is from the Associated Press, September 20, 2001.

21. Roy, "Has Islamism a Future in Afghanistan?," p. 211. "Of course, the problem with the Taliban is that they mean what they say," Roy wrote three years after their initial emergence. "They do not want a King, because there is no King in Islam. . . . The Taliban are not a factor for stabilization in Afghanistan."

22. Interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). This section is also drawn in part from interviews with Pakistani officials close to Bhutto.

23. The Bhutto quotations are from the Benazir Bhutto interview, May 5, 2002.

24. Ibid.

25. All quotations, ibid.

26. Interview with Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi (Ret.), May 19, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). Qazi was the director-general of Pakistani intelligence at the time. "This was seventeen tunnels!" he said. "Seventeen tunnels full of arms and ammunition. Enough to raise almost half the size of Pakistan's army." The dump had been created just before the end of the anticommunist phase of the Afghan war. "Both sides, they pumped in an immense amount of weapons. . . . And dumps were created." Other detailed accounts of the seizure of the Spin Boldak dump include Anthony Davis, "How the Taliban Became a Military Force," in Maley, ed.,
Fundamentalism Reborn,
pp. 45-46, Rashid,
Taliban,
pp. 27-28, and Rashid, "Pakistan and the Taliban," in Maley, ed.,
Fundamentalism
Reborn,
p. 81. Rashid, citing interviews with Pakistani military officials and diplomats, estimates the dump held about eighteen thousand AK-47 assault rifles and 120 artillery pieces.

27. The extent of Babar's involvement with the Taliban at the time of their emergence remains unclear. A boastful man, Babar fueled suspicion that he had created and armed the movement by introducing Taliban leaders to the likes of Prince Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief, and calling them "my children." But several associates of Babar said these quotes have been blown out of proportion and they mainly reflect Babar's habits of blustery speech.

28. Mullah Naqibullah, one of Kandahar's dominant warlords at the time, said that as the Taliban swept into the city, he and other local Pashtun powers were urged by Hamid Karzai, other Pashtun leaders, and President Rabbani in Kabul not to fight against the Taliban. For Rabbani and Massoud the Taliban initially looked like a Pashtun force that could hurt their main enemy, Hekmatyar.

29. Davis, "How the Taliban Became a Military Force," pp. 48-49.

30. Interview with Qazi, May 19, 2002.

31. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. The CIA reported on the links between ISI's Afghan training camps and the Kashmir insurgency during this period, at one point threatening to place Pakistan on the U.S. list of nations deemed to be terrorist sponsors.

32. All quotations from "chap in Kandahar" through "all of them" are from the interview with Qazi, May 19, 2002.

33. All quotations from "I became slowly" through "carte blanche" are from the interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002.

34. Rashid, "Pakistan and the Taliban," p. 86, describes the internal ISI debate about the Taliban during 1995. "The debate centered around those largely Pashtun officers involved in covert operations on the ground who wanted greater support for the Taliban, and other officers who were involved in longer term intelligence gathering and strategic planning who wished to keep Pakistan's support to a minimum so as not to worsen tensions with Central Asia and Iran. The Pashtun grid in the army high command eventually played a major role in determining the military and ISI's decision to give greater support to the Taliban."

35. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002.

36. Interview with Ahmed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC).

37. Scene and quotations, ibid.

38. Ibid. See note 27.

39. Turki's interview with MBC, November 6, 2001.

40. After Hekmatyar was forced into exile by the Taliban, he visited Prince Turki in Saudi Arabia, hoping for assistance, according to Saudi officials. When a stunned Turki asked Hekmatyar why the kingdom should help him when he had denounced the royal family in its time of need in 1991, Hekmatyar shrugged obsequiously. His speeches then had been "only politics," he said, according to the Saudi account.

41. That Saudi intelligence paid cash bonuses to ISI officers is from an interview with a Saudi analyst. That Saudi Arabia subsidized Pakistan with discounted oil is from multiple interviews with Saudi officials. That Saudi intelligence preferred to deal directly with Pakistani intelligence is from the interview with Badeeb, February 1, 2002.

42. "Situation reports" and development of the liaison are from an interview with a senior Saudi official.

43. Prince Turki has said publicly that the Taliban "did not receive a single penny in cash from the kingdom from its founding," only humanitarian aid. None of the kingdom's records are transparent or published, so it is impossible to be sure, but Turki's claim, even if interpreted narrowly, seems unlikely to withstand scrutiny. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi intelligence analyst, wrote in a 1998 master's thesis, "Improving U.S. Intelligence Analysis on the Saudi Arabian Decision Making Process," that most of the Saudi aid to the Taliban was funneled by the kingdom's official religious establishment. Obaid quotes a "high-ranking official in the Ministry of Islamic Guidance" as saying that after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, the kingdom's religious leaders "focused on funding and encouraging the Taliban." Human Rights Watch quoted journalists who saw white-painted C-130 Hercules transport aircraft which they identified as Saudi Arabian at Kandahar airport in 1996 delivering artillery and small arms ammunition to Taliban soldiers. There were subsequent reports of strong arms supply links between the Taliban and commercial dealers operating from the United Arab Emirates as well. Taliban religious police, Human Rights Watch concluded, were "funded directly by Saudi Arabia; this relatively generous funding . . . enabled it to become the most powerful agency within the Islamic Emirate."

44. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC). Turki also said, "We had taken a policy, since the civil war started in Afghanistan, that we're not going to support any group in Afghanistan, financially or otherwise, from the government but that humanitarian aid [from Saudi Arabia] could continue. And it was mostly through these [charity] organizations that the humanitarian aid went to Afghanistan. . . . Now, I can't tell you that individuals did not go and give money to the Taliban. I'm sure that happened. But not the institutions themselves."

45. See note 43.

46. Interviews with senior Saudi officials.

47. Interviews with U.S. officials. All of the quotations are from State Department cables between November 3, 1994, and February 20, 1995, declassified and released by the National Security Archive.

48. Interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. Quotations from Talbott meeting are from a State Department cable of February 21, 1996, declassified and released by the National Security Archive. Bhutto's comments to Wilson and Brown are from a State Department cable, April 14, 1996.

49. Interview with former senator Hank Brown, February 5, 2003, by telephone (GW). Brown was one of the very few elected politicians in Washington to pay attention to Afghanistan during this period. "I just get a lump in my throat every time I think about it, but Afghanistan really is the straw that broke the camel's back in the Cold War," he recalled. "If there ever was a people in this world that we're indebted to, it would be the people of Afghanistan. And for us to turn our backs on them, it was just criminal. Who's done more to help us? It really is a disgrace what we did."