The 9/11 Wars (125 page)

  48
.
Fair and Jones, ‘Pakistan’s War Within’, p. 172. In one survey of tribesmen in 2008, 80 per cent of respondents said that the local tribal
jirgas
frequently provided justice. Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme, Islamabad,
Understanding FATA: Attitudes towards Governance, Religion and Society in Pakistan’s FATA,
xxvii, pp. 62–8.

  49
.
In one day – June 25, 2008 – ten schools were burned in Swat. Gul,
The Most Dangerous Place
, p. 113. A total of twelve boys’ and seventeen girls’ schools had been burned down by the various TTP factions between January and May 2008, and dozens of teachers killed. Mohammed Amir Rana, ‘The Taliban Consolidate Control in Pakistan’s Tribal Regions’,
CTC Sentinel
, June 2008, vol. 1, no. 7, p. 8. Author phone interview with Ibrahim Paracha, Kohat politician and cleric, February 2008.

  50
.
On
sharia
, Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme,
Understanding FATA,
p. xvii. Author interview with Shafi Rullah Wazir, political agent, Bajaur, November 2008. Mushtaq Yusufzai and Hasbanullah Khan, ‘Salarzai Lashkar kills militant in Bajaur to avenge elders killings’,
The News
, August 27, 2008.

  51
.
On interpreters see Shuja Nawaz, ‘The Pakistan Army and Its Role in FATA’,
CTC Sentinel
, vol. 1, no. 1, January 2009, p. 20.

  52
.
Gul,
The Most Dangerous Place
, p. 22.

  53
.
Fair and Jones, ‘Pakistan’s War Within’, p. 175.

  54
.
The first occasion was in January 2006.

  55
.
Jason Burke and Imtiaz Gul, ‘The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden’s deputy’,
Observer
, January 15, 2006.

  56
.
Testimony of Hicham Beyayo to Belgian police, statements on April 2, 2009, May 6, 2009, May 15, 2009, Brussels. Author collection.

  57
.
Testimony of Walid Othmani to French interrogators, January 30, 2009, document M.20-2-9, p. 43. Author collection.

  58
.
‘The dark pursuit of truth’,
The Economist
, August 1, 2009.

  59
.
Nigel Inkster, deputy director of MI6 to 2006, said he knew of no strong lead-up to his departure from the service. Author interview, December 2008. In June 2010, Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, said that there had been very little new information in recent years. Paul Cruickshank, ‘New information emerges on post-9/11 hunt for bin Laden’,
CNN.com
, September 13, 2010. Other British security officials admitted in 2009 that they still had no ‘solid information’ on a location since 2001. Also Rory McCarthy, ‘The inside story of the hunt for Bin Laden’,
Guardian
, August 23, 2003.

  60
.
Author telephone interview with Bob Grenier, former CIA station chief Islamabad, 2009.

  61
.
Author interview with Ron Nash, London, April 2009.

  62
.
Keller said Pakistan had a poor reputation too as a workplace. Even Afghanistan was seen as a better posting. Author telephone interview, December 2008.

  63
.
Author telephone interview, December 2008.

  64
.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had spent much less time in the FATA than often thought, having passed much of the 1980s in Peshawar and the late 1990s in Afghanistan itself.

  65
.
New American Foundation / Terror Free Tomorrow,
Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Pakistan
, August 2007.

  66
.
Interrogation testimony of Bryant Neal Vinas, March 10 and 11, 2009, New York, dossier of Hicham Beyayo. United States of America vs. Bryant Neal Vinas. Indictment, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, November 14, 2008.

  67
.
See Burke, ‘Target Europe’. Author telephone interview with MI6 officials, September 2007.

  68
.
Vinas testimony.

  69
.
Othmani and Beyayo testimony.

  70
.
USA vs. Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, ‘Criminal Complaint’, Northern District of Illinois, 2009.

  71
.
‘Sabine am Orde, un gamin de la Sarre perdu au Waziristan’,
Die Tageszeitung
, republished
Le Courrier International
, May 20, 2010.

  72
.
Othmani testimony.

  73
.
Paul Cruickshank, ‘Enlisting Terror: Al-Qaeda’s Recruitment Challenges’, in
Al-Qaeda’s Senior Leadership
, Jane’s Strategic Advisory Services, November 2009, p. 14.

  74
.
Not all, however. Cüneyt Ciftci, a twenty-nine-year-old German of Turkish origin born near Munich in 1979, who on March 3, 2008 died in a huge explosion, having driven a delivery truck loaded with several tons of explosives up to barracks in Khost. The blast killed five, including two American soldiers and Ciftci himself.

  75
.
Author interview with Western intelligence official, Kabul, August 2008. See also Ron Moreau and Sami Yusufzai, ‘The Taliban in their own words’,
Newsweek
, September 26, 2009.

  76
.
Author interviews, MI6, London, April 2009.

  77
.
Guido Steinberg, the German expert, has usefully emphasized how al-Yazid’s opposition to the 9/11 attacks helped bolster his credibility among Taliban figures who saw the strikes not merely as counterproductive but as extremely destructive. See Guido Steinberg, Towards Collective Leadership: The Role of Egyptians in Al-Qaeda’, in
Al-Qaeda’s Senior Leadership
, p. 9.

  78
.
Tariq, ‘The Life of Baitullah Mahsood’.

  79
.
Sanger,
The Inheritance
, p. 234.

  80
.
Author interviews, Pakistani and American officials, Islamabad, November 2009.

  81
.
Beyayo and Othmani testimony.

  82
.
Vinas testimony. Author collection.

  83
.
Dexter Filkins, ‘Right at the edge’,
New York Times
, September 5, 2008.

  84
.
‘Bin Laden in Palestinian call’, BBC News Online, March 21, 2008.

  85
.
Jarret Brachman, ‘The Next Osama’,
Foreign Policy
, September 10, 2009. Jarret Brachman, ‘Retaining Relevance: Assessing Al-Qaeda’s Generational Evolution’, in
Al-Qaeda’s Senior Leadership.
Jarret Brachman, ‘Abu Yahya’s Six Easy Steps for Defeating al-Qaeda’,
Perspectives on Terrorism
, vol. 1, no. 5 (December 2007). Michael Scheuer, ‘Abu Yahya al-Libi: Al-Qaeda’s Theological Enforcer – Part 1’,
Terrorism Monitor
, vol. 4, no. 25 (July 31, 2007).

  86
.
‘Al-Qaeda deputy pens book justifying armed struggle’, Associated Press, March 3, 2008.

  87
.
Some estimates were higher, up to 300,000. Zahed Hussein, ‘The turning point’,
Newsline
, October 2008.

  88
.
Account based on author’s reporting, December 2008.

  89
.
The attacks included two against the ISI, two against the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, one aimed at the air force in Sargodha and one directed at the base of the Pakistani special forces. This total does not include almost 500 security forces and civilians killed in armed clashes. Total Pakistani casualties in 2007, including the number of injured security forces and civilians, exceeded the cumulative total of all the years between 2001 and 2006 and overall the year was to see more than 2,000 terrorist, insurgent and sectarian attacks. Hassan Abbas, ‘A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’,
CTC Sentinel
, vol. 1, no. 2 (January 2008). 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. Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies,
Pakistan Security Report, 2008,
2009, p. 3.

  90
.
According to Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, the country’s civilian leadership had been scheduled to dine at the hotel but had changed location at the last minute. ‘Pakistan leaders’ “narrow escape” ’, BBC news, September 22, 2008.

  91
.
‘They are savages, beasts,’ Makhdoom Shahabuddin, the planning minister, told the author after one viewing.

  92
.
Including more than sixty men killed.

  93
.
Author interview, Bajaur, Peshawar, November 2008.

  94
.
Author interview with Colonel Nauman Saeed, Bajaur, November 2008.

  95
.
Author interview, Islamabad, November 2008.

  96
.
National Investigation Agency, Interrogation report of David Headley, June 2010, pp. 7, 9. Author collection.

  97
.
Private soldiers and NCOs for Pakistan’s army have long been recruited from rural villages, often through family connections to existing servicemen or a traditional relationship between a particular community and a given unit. This tradition has continued, though efforts to bring down the high proportion recruited from the northern Punjab have led to an increase in numbers from other provinces, largely unchanged for sixty years.

  98
.
Shuja Nawaz,
Crossed Swords
, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 571. See also Ayesha Siddiqa,,
Military Inc
., Oxford University Press, Pakistan, 2007, pp. 213–16; Malik,
Pakistan
, p. 118.

  99
.
Nawaz,
Crossed Swords
, p. 572.

100
.
See C. Christine Fair and Shuja Nawaz, ‘The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps’,
Journal of Strategic Studies
, forthcoming, pp. 26–7. Overall in 1998, 28 per cent of the Pakistani population was urban.

101
.
Nawaz,
Crossed Swords
, p. 571. Repeated bouts of military rule in which officers serve in government offices as managers and administrators has brought thousands of middle- and senior-ranking servicemen into prolonged contact with the workings and worldview of the Pakistan’s bureaucracy, which is itself perhaps the single most important factor in moderate political Islamism in the country. Musharraf inducted at least 3,500 officers into bureaucratic posts, for example. Siddiqa,
Military Inc.
, p. 211. A further factor was that, though the historic dominance of the officer corps by the Punjab had been mitigated slightly by efforts to increase the representation of other ethnicities within the forces, in 2005, 60 per cent still came from Pakistan’s biggest, richest, best-educated – and most Islamist – province. Interestingly, the proportion of officers from the NWFP had increased from 10 per cent in 1971 to 22 per cent in 2005.