The 9/11 Wars (124 page)

    6
.
Significant funding from Saudi Arabia was part of the effort to extend the reach of Gulf strands of rigorous conservative Sunni Islam to counter the expansion of Shia influence in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

    7
.
The contrast they made between their supposed rural, Pashtun religious rectitude and the lack of faith of the urbanized communities and elites of Pakistan would have been entirely familiar to their grandfathers and great grandfathers.

    8
.
Author interview, Khyber Pass, Afghanistan, November 2001.

    9
.
Ahmed was on a visit largely aimed at convincing American counterparts and policy-makers that their view of the Taliban was overly harsh.

  10
.
After all only eighteen months before Musharraf had publicly stated: ‘The Taliban cannot be alienated by Pakistan. We have a national security interest there.’ Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, p. 28.

  11
.
Ibid., pp. 50–51.

  12
.
Both Bhutto and her interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, hoped too to open trade routes from Pakistan to central Asia, another constant theme of Pakistani diplomacy and strategic thinking over previous decades and a further reason for the continual insistence on having a favourable government in Kabul. One reason was also internal – the Deobandi Jamaat Ulema Islami party were crucial allies of Bhutto’s government – and another was the personal proclivities of the Pashtun Naseerullah Babar. Babar claimed, slightly hyperbolically, to be the ‘father of the Taliban’. Author interview, Islamabad, 1998.

  13
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Author interview with Maleeha Lodhi, London, February 2008.

  14
.
Musharraf,
In the Line of Fire
, p. 237: ‘We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars’.

  15
.
Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, p. 241.

  16
.
See Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
The Bear Trap
, Casemate, 2001.

  17
.
Author interview, Kandahar, November 2003.

  18
.
Author interviews, Peshawar, October 2002, February 2008. Joshua T. White,
Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier
, Center on Faith and International Affairs, 2008. ‘Government helped MMA leaders’ contest elections’,
Daily Times
, November 8, 2002. The MMA alliance of conservative religious parties which came to power in the North West Frontier province and, in coalition, in Baluchistan in elections in 2002 benefited from support from the state, which recognized that the Islamists could serve as a useful proxy by which the Musharraf government could marginalize its chief political rivals in the Frontier (the PPP, PML-N and the secular Pashtun nationalist Awami Nationalist Party). The Pakistani military prevented all three parties from campaigning. The religious alliance took 48 of 99 provincial assembly seats, and 29 of 35 national assembly seats from the Frontier.

  19
.
Declan Walsh, ‘Across the border from Britain’s troops, Taliban rises again’,
Guardian
, May 27, 2006. Also Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, p. 250.

  20
.
Author interview with Maulana Rahat Hussain, Peshawar, October 2007. Not only did the new government of the two provinces embark on a project of radical Islamization, thus creating an atmosphere that encouraged further extremism, but it also proved itself to be predictably incompetent in the management of the provinces’ complex social problems.

  21
.
Author telephone interview with Robert Grenier, former Islamabad CIA station chief, January 2009. Author telephone interview with Philip Mudd, former CIA and FBI senior official, June 2010.

  22
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Author telephone interview with senior serving CIA official, June 2010.

  23
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Author interviews with intelligence officials, London, Kabul, Islamabad, 2007, 2008.

  24
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A joint United Nations and European Union paper spoke of ‘the wide-ranging nature of ISI involvement’. Jones,
In the Graveyard of Empires
, p. 267. Jason Burke, ‘Guantánamo Bay files: Pakistan’s ISI spy service listed as terrorist group’,
Guardian
, April 25, 2011.

  25
.
Officers echoed the statements of President Karzai and said publicly that the Taliban leadership was coordinating its campaign from Quetta. Declan Walsh, ‘Pakistan sheltering Taliban, says British officer’,
Guardian
, May 19, 2006. Author interviews with British officers, Helmand, January, 2007, General David Richards, Kabul, February 2007.

  26
.
Author interview with US defence official, Islamabad, October 2007.

  27
.
Author interview, Islamabad, November 2007.

  28
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Author interview, Riyadh, March 2008.

  29
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Author interview, London, August 2009.

  30
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Hearing of the United States Senate select committee on intelligence, Annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, February 5, 2008, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, witness testimony.

  31
.
Sanger,
The Inheritance
, p. 248.

  32
.
Mark Mazzetti and Erik Schmitt, ‘Pakistanis aided attack in Kabul, U.S. officials say’,
New York Times
, August 1, 2008.

  33
.
Burke, ‘Pakistan’s ISI spy service listed’. Guantanamo Bay Threat Indicator Matrix, September 2007, author collection.

  34
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Author interview, London, May 2009.

  35
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In the conversation, intercepted by the ISI and purported to be between Baitullah Mehsud, addressed as Emir Sahib, and an associate, addressed as Maulvi Sahib, the two speakers congratulate each other on an event which, Pakistani government officials claimed on the day after the killing, was the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The ISI told UN investigators that they already had the voice signature of Baitullah Mehsud and were in a position to identify his voice on the intercept. They also said that they were already monitoring Mehsud’s communications, which is how they recorded the conversation. In the English translation of the intercept, the man identified as Mehsud asks his interlocutor: ‘Who were they?’ The reply comes: ‘There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.’ Mehsud then asked: ‘The three did it?’ The cleric he was talking too – ‘Maulvi sahib’ simply being an honorific for a middle-ranking Deobandi scholar – replied: ‘Ikramullah and Bilal did it.’ The conversation did not mention Bhutto by name.
Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry
, p. 42.

  36
.
Grave concerns remained over the huge shortfalls in the security provision made by the local police and by Musharraf’s government for Bhutto but at least two external inquiries, one by Scotland Yard and the other by the United Nations, found no evidence of active collusion in the killing on the part of the authorities. The general conclusion was that the authorities’ role in Bhutto’s death was determined by incompetence rather than conspiracy. though it was clear that no one was particularly interested in making a huge effort to protect the controversial former prime minister outside her own entourage. There does, however, appear to have been a genuine attempt to impede investigations by local police following the killing.

  37
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Either Broomikhel or Zarai Khel of the branch of the Shabikhel subtribe. Mehsud was actually born in Kotka Nor Baz Dawood Shah district near Bannu, according to Azam Tariq, ‘The Life of Baitullah Mahsood’, published in Urdu-language
Hiteen Magazine
, translation and publication by Global Islamic Media Front, autumn 2010, author collection. This is corroborated by reliable Pakistani sources. See Rahumullah Yusufzai, ‘Hidden hand’,
Newsline
, February 2008; and Imtiaz Ali, ‘Commander of the faithful’,
Foreign Policy Magazine
, July 9, 2009.

  38
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Tariq, ‘The Life of Baitullah Mahsood’. The author claims Mehsud matriculated from Bannu City School.

  39
.
Ibid.

  40
.
Author interviews, Peshawar and Islamabad, February 2008.

  41
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Author interviews with local journalists from Khyber Agency, Peshawar, February, 2008. Author interview with Khalid Aziz, former political secretary NWFP, November 2008. Rahumullah Yusufzai,
The News
, May 22, 2008.

  42
.
Imtiaz Ali, ‘The Taliban’s versatile spokesman: A profile of Muslim Khan’,
CTC Sentinel
, February 2009, vol. 2, no. 2. pp. 6–8. Author interview with aide to Muslim Khan, Karachi, January 2008. Imtiaz Gul,
The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier
, Penguin, 2010, p. 246.

  43
.
Hakimullah Mehsud, effectively Baitullah Mehsud’s deputy, was a member of the Eshangai subtribe, a branch with little prestige, who had never completed his education, either religious or secular, before going off to fight for the Taliban in the mid 1990s and returning in 2001 or 2002. In Waziristan, where war had been a way of making a living for centuries, the money militants could earn, in addition to the valuable weapons and ammunition that could be seized, was much better than that paid to the paramilitary frontier corps or the police, who received 7–8,000 Rs or 6–7,000 Rs respectively per month. A militant could easily earn half as much again. A literate tribesman could earn up to ten times more, as such people were needed to keep basic accounts, stocks of ammunition and so on. For a good example of how the TTP linked into criminal gangs see Tariq Saeed Birmani, ‘Riversides may be housing some militants’,
Dawn
, October 13, 2009, about the situation in Dera Ghazi Khan adjacent to the FATA.

  44
.
Author interview with Khalid Aziz, former secretary NWFP, November 2008. When peasants had rebelled in Charsadda district next to Mohmand in the 1970s, one of their chief demands had been land reform. See also Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, ‘The Taliban’s latest tactic: Class warfare; inroads are being made in Pakistan by playing poor against wealthy’,
New York Times
, April 17, 2009. See Owen Bennett-Jones, ‘Pakistan inequality fuelling Taliban support’, BBC, May 2010.

  45
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The fact that the Mahmund, with their greater links to the world outside the high valleys of birch trees and terraced sandy fields of the high frontier, were the most extreme of local factions was not in a sense surprising. The situation in the FATA was inevitably affected by the evolution of the 9/11 Wars more generally and it was those most exposed to the various effects of the conflict, particularly the broad currents of polarization and radicalization that had become so evident from 2003 onwards, who were most likely to end up on the frontline.

  46
.
Four hundred according to Gul,
The Most Dangerous Place
, p. xiv.

  47
.
Between 2003 and 2008, 1,200 Pakistani soldiers were killed, along with more than 6,000 tribesmen. The sums that could be earned from sheltering the foreign militants was made clear when Baitullah Mehsud and other militants concluded a ‘peace agreement’ with the Pakistani authorities, again after inflicting heavy casualties on the Pakistani army, in 2004. Mehsud and others were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to compensate them for the money they would have received from al-Qaeda. International Crisis Group,
Appeasing the Militants
, December 11, 2006, p. 17. The rents paid by militants were as high as 60,000 Rs per month. (Though exchange rates in the period were variable and thus make an accurate conversion difficult, the sums work out at around $1,000/£500 in the summer of 2008.) As foreigners would not be allowed to take residences in the centre of villages, this rent was for relatively cheap properties on the margins of settlements. Author interview with Khalid Aziz, former secretary NWFP, November 2008. Further funds were sourced through kidnaps of government officials, extortion and, on one occasion in mid 2007, an entire unit of 280 paramilitary troops.