Magnificent Delusions (55 page)

Durrani responded to Rice's angry tone with some heated remarks of his own. He said that the ISI was involved in training LeT, “just as we were all involved together in dealing with Afghanistan during the 1980s.” He insisted that Pakistan's “point of view on Jammu and Kash
mir was right, and that allowed us to use” the option of supporting militants. But he claimed that the ISI's links with LeT were broken in 2002. “To the best of my knowledge,” Durrani stated, “there is no operational correction between ISI and LeT.” He said that Pakistan had changed the ISI leadership four times and had changed three layers of personnel. “Pakistan is not keeping the Jihadis as an option,” he emphasized. But Rice did not relent. Without raising her voice but remaining extremely curt, like a schoolteacher reprimanding her favored pupil, she proceeded again: “You are truthful as far as you know but not right.”

According to Rice, there were continued contacts between LeT and ISI. “There is material support to LeT and the LeT has just recently killed six Americans,” she added. I sent a detailed account of the Rice-Durrani conversation to Islamabad. “As I have said in many telegrams since becoming ambassador,” I remarked, “the view from Washington is very different from the way issues and matters are being perceived in Islamabad.”
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Soon after Durrani's trip the United States shared intelligence with Pakistan that proved the LeT's culpability. Individuals involved in planning the attacks were arrested after it became obvious that lack of action could again bring India and Pakistan to blows. ISI Chief Pasha then visited the United States for a meeting with CIA Director Michael Hayden. He admitted that the planners of the Mumbai attacks included some “retired Pakistani army officers.” According to Pasha, the attackers had ISI links, but this had not been an authorized ISI operation.

Pasha came for tea to the embassy before returning to Pakistan. He spoke of the “difference between having links and exercising authority, direction and control.” According to Pasha, it was important to put the Mumbai incident behind us and move on. There was clearly no intention to act against LeT. I took the opportunity to share with Pasha the names of ISI officers who had been egging on journalists back home to attack me as an American agent. He promised to “take care of the problem” just as he had promised Hayden to deal with the fallout of the Mumbai attacks.

Subsequently the CIA received “reliable intelligence” that the ISI was directly involved in the training for Mumbai.
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The trial of the LeT masterminds arrested in Pakistan for the attacks dragged on. On several occasions Americans detected the terrorist prisoners using cell phones to direct further terrorist attacks.

In January 2009 Gilani fired Durrani, possibly at the behest of some ISI officers, for publicly acknowledging Kasab's Pakistani citizenship.
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Thus, the government had lost one of its main interlocutors with the Americans. The position of national security adviser was never filled again. This left discussion with the United States of counterterrorism issues solely in the hands of the ISI. Later Kasab's Pakistan connection could not be kept a secret anyway. He gave detailed testimony to an Indian court about his life in Pakistan and his training for terrorism. Pakistani journalists were able to trace his family, some of whom expressed pride in his contribution to Jihad. Officially, however, Pakistan maintained the fiction that it had no knowledge of Kasab. When he was executed in India three years later, Pakistan did not allow his family to claim his body for burial in his hometown.

R
IGHT BEFORE
Barack Obama's inauguration Vice President–elect Joe Biden arrived in Islamabad on a one-day trip. As a senator, Biden had strongly supported the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. He had been persuaded by Bhutto's argument that elected civilians could fight terrorism more effectively than could dictators such as Musharraf. Zardari conferred one of Pakistan's highest civilian awards, Nishan-e-Pakistan, on Biden.

Biden shared Obama's position with Zardari. Obama would make a concerted effort to win the war in Afghanistan and to defeat Al-Qaeda, he said. Pakistan could help the United States in fixing Afghanistan, and in return the United States would help Pakistan address its fundamental problems. If the ISI broke its ties with the Taliban, the United States could prevail in Afghanistan with a lot less bloodshed. America's next vice president was speaking of a “grand bargain” that would
strengthen a democratic Pakistan, benefit its people, and rid the region of terrorism.

Zardari said that he could help only if he were sufficiently strong at home. He did not want to be hated “for being an American stooge.” He said that Pakistan needed “economic resources so that I can show the people that there's something in it for them.” Biden said he understood Zardari's political needs. As vice president, he would help get a significant aid package through Congress for Pakistan.

But, Biden added, “If you do not show spine then all bets are off.” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who was accompanying Biden, asked Zardari to end “the indecision that plagues your country.” Pakistan had to figure out its enemies and its allies, Graham said. “We're your allies,” he emphasized; “We're not your enemies.” When Zardari brought up the subject of India, Biden said that the change Americans sought included a fundamental transformation in Pakistan's attitude toward India and vice versa.

Soon after his inauguration Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke had brokered the Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia-Herzegovina, among other diplomatic achievements. He knew how to coax and bully recalcitrant foreign leaders. However, he abhorred war and conveyed genuine caring for the people of other nations. Although many Americans commented on his ego and his penchant for publicity, among Pakistanis he was seen as a master negotiator who made even the weakest leaders feel good.

Holbrooke and I met the day his appointment was announced. He told me that his objective was “to ensure a successful end to the war in Afghanistan and a stable Pakistan and a stable Afghanistan.” He said that contrary to views expressed in some circles, the United States had no ulterior motives regarding Pakistan. “The US will never ask Pakistan to do anything that harms Pakistan's national interest,” he remarked. But as a friend, the United States wanted to have “candid discussions about what Pakistan's national interests and priorities might be.”

Regarding India, Holbrooke said, “I will deal with India by pretending not to deal with India.” Then he added that India also came within the purview of his brief to the extent that it impinged on Pakistan and
Afghanistan's security. He asked me rhetorically if the United States could be “friends with both India and Pakistan at the same time.” He wondered if Hamid Karzai was the best man to lead Afghanistan under the circumstances and whether alternatives were available.

Holbrooke said that Pakistan had become the focus of the policy community in Washington, and he did not envy my job. “Increased focus and scrutiny,” he commented, “raise questions to which there were no easy answers.” From that day Holbrooke and I became good friends. He assembled a huge staff drawn from various agencies within the US government as well as nongovernment advisers. He traveled frequently to Pakistan and around the world to drum up support for a comprehensive strategy to end the Afghan war.

On the eve of Holbrooke's first visit to Pakistan as special representative, a Pakistani court ordered the removal of all restrictions on nuclear proliferator A. Q. Khan. The timing of the decision was meant to convey to the United States that Pakistan's fundamental attitudes would not change anytime soon. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, cautioned that Khan's release “could lead to reduction of U.S aid to Pakistan.”
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But Holbrooke chose to ignore the event. His sights were on the broader strategic picture.

Over the next two years Holbrooke developed close ties with Zardari, Kayani, and a host of Pakistani politicians and public figures. Along with National Security Adviser James Jones and with the full support of Secretary of State Clinton, Holbrooke organized a multilayered “Strategic Dialog” between Pakistan and the United States. The Dialog covered many tracks, from agriculture to security. Holbrooke's team became involved with schemes for conserving water and managing Pakistan's energy crisis. They sought to win the trust of Pakistani officials by handling issues such as opening the US market for Pakistani mangoes.

But the Pakistani military and ISI mistrusted Holbrooke from the start. Kayani preferred to deal with Mullen, assuming that a man in uniform would be prove to be the more effective interlocutor. When the US Congress approved what came to be known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, which authorized $1.5 billion annually for five years (a total of $7.5 billion), the Pakistani military reacted negatively to the
bill's conditions against military intervention in politics. The aid package was the largest the United States had ever offered Pakistan for civilian purposes such as education, health care, poverty alleviation, and infrastructure.

All US foreign aid legislation included reporting requirements for the executive branch, and this bill was no exception. But hard-liners in the Pakistan army had convinced themselves that Holbrooke and I had connived to insert “humiliating” conditions about civilian control over the military. Pakistan's religious nationalists termed it a conspiracy to put Pakistan's army under American control. Holbrooke worked with Mullen and Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, to defuse the situation. I offered to resign, but Zardari laughed off the affair as a routine effort to derail civilian rule.

In an attempt at humor I sent a copy of Samuel Huntington's book
The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations
to Kayani along with a four-page summary. The book deals with the role of a professional military in a democracy. Kayani acknowledged receiving the book and appreciated the summary. But I have no reason to believe that it affected his thinking or decisions in any significant way. Kayani was personally always agreeable with civilians. The Pakistan army, as an institution, still remained a long way from accepting the right of civilians to debate, let alone define, national interest.

Holbrooke's efforts at finding a comprehensive solution for the Afghan problem, including an end to terrorist safe havens, received little support from Pakistan's generals. They sensed that he did not have the full backing of all parts of the US government. Media reports and some books spoke of Holbrooke lacking Obama's full support, and Holbrooke's critics suggested that he was “all over the place” and lacked pointed aims. But in Islamabad the sense was that the ISI could still deal separately with the CIA, and Mullen remained Kayani's principal conversational partner.

Pasha and the ISI continued to propel hypernationalist sentiment. Pasha once told me that this was one of the few tools Pakistan had for leveraging itself in an asymmetric relationship. Americans often ignored the rumors and misinformation routinely circulated through Pakistan's media, though sometimes they reacted to point out the absurdity of
the tactic. Holbrooke once mentioned a story in which Pasha had snubbed Mullen, “the highest ranking U.S. military officer” and “the Special Representative of the U.S.” He said he realized that it may have something to do with “perceived domestic needs in Pakistan,” but it should not be forgotten that “there were domestic political compulsions on the US side as well.” He asked, “Now why would your side lie about something like that?”

Parallel to the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialog, Holbrooke also initiated tripartite talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States. After the first round of the tripartite talks Pasha complained that this format amounted to boxing Pakistan in. The civilians were able to keep the dialogue going. But more often than not, discussions about Afghanistan always ended up being about the ISI's role there. One of Holbrooke's deputies remarked that the frequency of interaction had only one advantage: it had inadvertently made Pakistan's generals incrementally less deceitful.

US media and members of Congress criticized Pakistan for its appeasement of terrorists when, on several occasions, it showed a preference for talking to Taliban instead of fighting them. Although several agreements were signed in different parts of the country, the Taliban broke all of them. Americans could not understand why Pakistani leaders had difficulty making a clear choice, but Zardari and Gilani did not find sufficient support at home for a bold decision. They thought US economic support was insufficient and anti-Americanism in Pakistan was too strong to sign up as closer US allies than they already were.