The 9/11 Wars (123 page)

  46
.
Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were in Pakistan for about eleven weeks from November 2004 to January 2005. They visited Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad together, and Tanweer visited his family village Chak-477 (called Chhotian Kota by the
Independent
newspaper), then Manshera in North West Frontier province.

  47
.
Investigations into Rauf quickly led to the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina
medressa
in Bahawalpur, a major religious school down a back street near the relatively upmarket area where the Briton had been living since arriving in the town four years before. Rauf had married into the family of Massod Azhar, the cleric who led Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Dar-ul-Uloom Medina
medressa
, founded by Azhar’s father-in-law, was widely considered to be a base for the group.Author interview with former Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, with ISI official, with MI6 official, Islamabad, November 2007. Despite repeated requests for extradition by the British, Rauf remained in custody in Pakistan and eventually escaped in mysterious circumstances in December 2007. He was killed, apparently, in November 2008, by a missile fired from an unmanned drone in the tribal areas on the Afghan frontier. The exact fate of Rauf remains unclear. Sir John Scarlett, director-general of MI6, told the author in the summer of 2009 that his service ‘simply did not know’ if Rauf was dead.

  48
.
Donald Rumsfeld, ‘Rumsfeld’s war-on-terror memo’,
USA Today
, October 22, 2003.

  49
.
JUI in Pakistan split from its parent Indian body. Its political involvement dates from the early 1970s. Author interview, Bahawalpur, November 2008. In fact JUI’s foundation pre-dated the creation of Pakistan by two years.

  50
.
Author interview with Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghani, Islamabad, July 2005.

  51
.
Maulana Sohaib, who ran the complex, denied any direct links with Jaish-e-Mohammed or that any students from the school ‘went for jihad’.

  52
.
Such as John Walker Lindh, a number of Australians, the 7/7 bombers, Rauf and many others. On Lindh see Burke,
Al-Qaeda
, pp. 195–6. On Australians,
Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat
, The New York City Police Department, 2007, p. 51. Presentation by Australian Secret Intelligence Service analysts, Riyadh, March 2008.

  53
.
Author interview with Bahawalpur police chief, November 2007.

  54
.
Around 40 per cent of students in public and private schools came from the poorest categories of society and only 43 per cent of
medressa
students. Andrabi et al., ‘Religious School Enrollment’.

  55
.
See Christine Fair, ‘Militant Recruitment in Pakistan’,
Asia Policy
, July 2007, p. 115, table 1.

  56
.
Andrabi et al., ‘Religious School Enrollment’. See also Fair, ‘Militant Enrollment’.

  57
.
See ibid., table III.

  58
.
Nikhil Raymond Puri, ‘The Pakistani Madrassah and Terrorism: Made and Unmade Conclusions from the Literature’,
Perspectives on Terrorism
, vol. 4, no. 4, October 2010, p. 53.

  59
.
See Abbas,
Probing the Jihadi Mindset
.

  60
.
RAND Corporation (C. Christine Fair),
Who Are Pakistan’s Militants and Their Families?
, January 1, 2008, p. 60. Puri, ‘The Pakistani Madrassah and Terrorism’, p. 53.

  61
.
This was in part due to the numbers of individuals educated in religious schools reaching adulthood but could equally be attributed to decades of state propaganda on Kashmir and to the generalized increased sense of religious solidarity so marked in much of the Islamic world since the early years of the decade.

  62
.
Author interview with Dr Omar Farooq Zain Alizai, Multan, December 2007.

  63
.
CIA factbook, updated in 2010.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2177.html
.

  64
.
From Terror Free Tomorrow/New American Foundation, Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Pakistan, 2007.

  65
.
Gilani Poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan, August 2009.

  66
.
C. Christine Fair and Seth Jones, ‘Pakistan’s War Within’,
Survival
, December 2009–January 2010, p. 181. Only 4 per cent saw the spread of American culture favourably. Gilani Poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan, August 2009.

  67
.
Zar Nageen, ‘Naming a baby in Pakistan’,
Daily Times
, July 9, 2007.

  68
.
‘78% Males Mostly Wear Shalwar Kameez, 22% Wear Trousers’: Gilani poll, Gallup Pakistan, Islamabad, August 27, 2010.

  69
.
Mohammed Hanif, ‘The power of the pulpit’,
Newsline
, January 2009.

  70
.
Author interview with Ershad Mahmud, columnist, Islamabad, October 2007.

  71
.
Serious efforts at rapprochement between Ms Bhutto and General Musharraf had been underway since 2004. Bhutto met a series of different representatives to discuss her return. General Ashfaq Kayani, then the director-general of the ISI, led an initial round of discussions. The negotiations had begun in earnest, however, when Musharraf telephoned Bhutto while she was visiting New York in August 2006. By early autumn, following at least two direct interventions by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the outline of a deal had emerged. Bhutto and Musharraf met secretly on January 24, 2007 in Abu Dhabi and again six months later in Abu Dhabi. Multiple author interviews with PPP officials, Islamabad, Karachi, November 2008. See also Steve Coll, ‘Time bomb, the death of Benazir Bhutto and the unravelling of Pakistan’,
New Yorker
, January 28, 2008. See also
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the Facts and Circumstances of the Assassination of Former Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto
, April 15, 2010. Bhutto herself joked to the author about the long telephone conversations she had with President Musharraf, saying that he called her Benazir and she called him ‘Mushy’.

  72
.
Zaffar Abbas, ‘The emerging contours of PPP-govt deal’,
Dawn
, April 21, 2007. Author telephone interviews with Bhutto, September 2007, and in Islamabad, December 2007. See also
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the Facts and Circumstances of the Assassination of Former Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto
, p. 59, and on ‘deep’ ISI involvement, p. 60.

  73
.
Between September 2006 and September 2007, Musharraf’s approval rating plummeted from 63 per cent to 21 per cent. International Republican Institute (IRI),
Pakistan Public Opinion Survey
, January 19–29, 2008.

  74
.
Author telephone interview, October 2007.

  75
.
Owais Mughal, ‘Peshawar–Islamabad Motorway M1 is now open for traffic’,
Pakistaniat.com
. November 11, 2007.

  76
.
This account is based on the author’s own reporting, Islamabad and Nowshera, December 2007.

  77
.
Author telephone interview with Bhutto, in Dubai, September 2007.

  78
.
The author conducted three lengthy telephone interviews with Bhutto in June, August and September 2007.

  79
.
The scientific analysis of the suicide bomber’s remains by a Scotland Yard team established that he was a teenage male, no more than sixteen years old. According to the Punjab police’s investigations, he was called Bilal aka Saeed and from South Waziristan. British High Commission,
Scotland Yard Report into Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
, February 8, 2008, executive summary.
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry
, pp. 41, 60.

  80
.
Amir Mir,
The Bhutto Murder Trail: From Waziristan to GHQ,
Tranquebar, 2010, p. 7.

  81
.
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry
, pp. 3, 28
. Scotland Yard Report
, p. 3.

  82
.
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry
, pp. 3, 28
. Scotland Yard Report
, p. 3.

  83
.
Kayani was helped by the new ubiquity of cheap mobile phones, which meant that TV stations could put a locally hired volunteer correspondent in almost every polling station who gave an impromptu count, obtained from the local returning officers, within minutes of the booths closing thus rendering ballot-box stuffing much harder.

  84
.
Author interview with Qazi Hussein Ahmed, Lahore, February 2008.

  85
.
His consistently hawkish position on Kashmir and acts such as the decision in 1998 to respond in kind to India’s 1998 nuclear tests reinforced nationalist credentials too which had been subsequently polished by a stream of anti-Western outbursts and an ambivalent position on cooperation with America on counter-terrorism operations if he ever returned to power.

  86
.
A number of Sharif’s family and entourage were involved with the Tabligh Jamaat, a Deobandi-inspired mass organization based on preaching by example which, though non-violent itself, has been an entry point to violent radicalism for a significant number of militants.

  87
.
The reports were difficult to reconcile with reports that in July 1999 Sharif offered to allow US troops to try to kill bin Laden from Pakistani territory apparently to give Washington a stake in the survival of his government. See Bennett-Jones,
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm
, p. 40.

  88
.
Author interview, Islamabad, October 2007.

  89
.
Jason Burke, ‘The Guardian profile: Asif Ali Zardari’,
Guardian
, September 5, 2008.

CHAPTER 14: ANOTHER COUNTRY: FATA

    1
.
The writings of Henty, Kipling, Churchill and other, less-talented, authors are full of depictions of the Pashtun border tribes as warlike, brave, stoic and honourable and tell us more about the values of the British Victorians than about the Pashtuns. See Mukulika Banerjee,
The Pathan Unarmed
, Oxford University Press, 2001.

    2
.
Quoted in Sana Haroon,
Frontier of Faith
, Hurst, 2007, p. 89.

    3
.
Ibid., pp. 95–8.

    4
.
Ibid., p. 57. The religious police in Saudi Arabia go by the same name.

    5
.
Albeit one that allowed, through the extraordinary powers granted to the political agent who ran each of the seven FATA for the authorities of the Raj and then of independent Pakistan, the zone to be governed according to their interests rather than those of the locals.