The 9/11 Wars (130 page)

  55
.
Author interview with Mohammed Ehsan Zia, Kabul, March 2009.

  56
.
Matthew Rosenberg, ‘Corruption suspected in airlift of billions in cash from Kabul’,
Wall Street Journal
, June 25, 2010.

  57
.
The cable adds: ‘Many other notable private individuals and public officials maintain assets (primarily property) outside Afghanistan, suggesting these individuals are extracting as much wealth as possible while conditions permit.’

  58
.
Jonathan Steele and Jon Boone, ‘Afghan vice-president landed in Dubai with $52m in cash’, WikiLeaks, December 2, 2010.

  59
.
Jonathan Steele, ‘US convinced Karzai half-brother is corrupt, WikiLeaks cables say’,
Guardian
, December 2, 2010.

  60
.
Author interview, Kabul, March 2009.

  61
.
Author interview by email, October 2009.

  62
.
Units continued searches of homes, often using dogs, seen as unclean in Afghanistan and many Islamic nations.

  63
.
Insurgents knew this, and there was some evidence that they exploited it deliberately by drawing fire into areas where civilians were sheltering.

  64
.
UNAMA,
Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2009
, December 31, 2009, pp. 16–19.

  65
.
Most were grouped into ‘Taskforce 373’. Scores, possibly hundreds, of such events, often occurring in remote locations and systematically downplayed or denied by coalition spokesmen, had gone unreported. Some were revealed by WikiLeaks in August 2010. They included one incident in June 2007 in which seven Afghan National Police were killed. In another, in October 2007, an internal log listed casualties as follows: twelve US wounded, two teenage girls and a ten-year-old boy wounded, one girl killed, one woman killed, four civilian men killed, one donkey killed, one dog killed, several chickens killed, no enemy killed, no enemy wounded, no enemy detained. Nick Davies, ‘Afghanistan war logs: Task Force 373 – special forces hunting top Taliban’,
Guardian
, July 25, 2010. The leaked logs showed how coalition public statements had systematically been economical with the truth, if not downright misleading.

  66
.
Up to 3,000 Afghans served with American special forces units, according to some estimates.

  67
.
Author interview with McKiernan, March 2009, Kabul.

  68
.
The higher estimates were those of American commanders.

  69
.
UNAMA,
Mid Year Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict 2010,
Kabul, August 10, 2010, p. 15.

  70
.
Barader had taken over following the arrest of Mullah Obaidullah in early 2007.

  71
.
Thomas Ruttig, ‘The Taliban Arrest Wave in Pakistan: Reasserting Strategic Depth’,
CTC Sentinel
, vol. 3, no. 3, March 2010, p. 5.

  72
.
Munir Ahmad, ‘Pakistani officials: nearly 15 top Taliban held’, Associated Press, February 25, 2010.

  73
.
Chris Allbritton, ‘Holbrooke hails Pakistan–U.S. collaboration on Taliban’, Reuters, February 18, 2010.

  74
.
Author telephone interview, February 2010.

  75
.
Lieven,
A Hard Country,
pp. 470, 474.

  76
.
Declan Walsh, ‘WikiLeaks cables: US special forces working inside Pakistan’,
Guardian
, November 30, 2010.

  77
.
Declan Walsh, ‘The village that stood up to the Taliban’,
Guardian
, February 5, 2010.

  78
.
‘Admiral Mullen praises Pakistan army’s war plan’, CBS, December 16, 2009.

  79
.
Ruttig, ‘The Taliban Arrest Wave’, p. 6.

  80
.
Other cables referred to the relationship between Pakistan and the USA being ‘transactional in nature’ and ‘based on mutual mistrust’ and expressed deep concerns over the security of Pakistani nuclear fuel, potential ‘soft coups’ by the army, the collapsing economy, a lack of governance in much of the country and the deep anti-Americanism. ‘US embassy cables: “Reviewing our Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy” ’,
Guardian
. November 30, 2010. ‘US embassy cables: Relationship with Pakistan based on “mutual distrust”, says US’,
Guardian
, December 1, 2010. ‘US embassy cables: Despite massive US aid, anti-Americanism rampant in Pakistan’,
Guardian
, November 30, 2010.

  81
.
Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt, ‘Pakistan army finds Taliban tough to root out’,
New York Times
, July 5, 2010.

  82
.
Fedayeen
tactics are typical of Kashmir. The theological difference between actively seeking death – a suicide attack - and partaking in an attack which implies a very high chance of dying is important.

  83
.
The career of ‘Dr Usman’, the only survivor among the attackers on the army general headquarters in October 2009, gives a clue. Usman was a former army medical corps officer who, after leaving the military, became involved with a series of extremist groups around his hometown of Kahuta in central Punjab. Having risen up through the ranks of the Bahawalpur-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, he fled to the FATA like so many such militants, where he linked up with Pakistani Taliban groups and with Ilyas Kashmiri, the veteran Pakistani with close links to al-Qaeda. ‘Dr Usman’s desperate last act’,
Daily Times
, October 13, 2009.

  84
.
Pew Global Attitudes,
Pew Global Attitudes: Overview: Concern about Extremist Threat Slips in Pakistan
, July 29, 2010, p. 11.

  85
.
From 70 per cent in 2007 to single digits at the end of 2008, according to TerrorFreeTomorrow polls. Kenneth Ballen, ‘Bin Laden’s Soft Support’,
Washington Monthly
, May 2008.

  86
.
Especially given the collapse of the boom that had benefited so many in the Pakistani lower middle class.

  87
.
Pew Research Center,
Overview: Pakistani Public Opinion
, August 13, 2009.

  88
.
British Council report,
Pakistan: the Next Generation
, November 2009.

  89
.
Gul,
The Most Dangerous Place
, pp. xvi–xvii.

  90
.
Forty per cent blamed the fighting in Waziristan on America. Military Action in Waziristan: Opinion Poll, Gilani Poll/GallupPakistan, Islamabad, November 3, 2009.

  91
.
‘US embassy cables: Despite massive US aid, anti-Americanism rampant in Pakistan’,
Guardian
, November 30, 2010.

  92
.
Aryn Baker, ‘Casualty of war’,
Time
, June 1, 2009.

  93
.
Pew Research Center,
Overview: Concern about Extremist Threat Slips in Pakistan
, p. 3.

  94
.
‘Into the heartland’,
The Economist
, June 5, 2010.

  95
.
Pew Research Center,
Overview: Concern about Extremist Threat Slips in Pakistan
.

  96
.
Arif Jamal, ‘Half-hearted security operations in Punjab do little to restrain Taliban’,
Jamestown Terrorism Monitor
, vol. 8, no. 31, August 5, 2010.

  97
.
Pew Research Center,
Overview: Concern about Extremist Threat Slips in Pakistan
, p. 10. Support for all extremist groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, was strongest in the Punjab. While 27 per cent in the Punjab offered a favourable opinion of al-Qaeda and 22 per cent expressed a favourable view of the Taliban, support for these groups was only in the single digits in Sindh, NWFP (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Baluchistan.

  98
.
South Asia Terrorism Portal, New Delhi. In 2008, 69 civilians and 90 members of the security forces were killed in terrorism-related violence in Jammu and Kashmir. There were 49 explosions using improvised devices or land mines or hand-grenades in which 29 persons were killed. There were no incidents of suicide or suicidal (
fedayeen
) terrorism. In 2009, 55 civilians and 78 members of the security forces were killed. There were only 7 explosions, in which 11 civilians were killed. There were no incidents of suicide or suicidal terrorism during 2009 either.

  99
.
The demonstrations were inspired directly by those in Palestine, down to the
keffiyehs
which the participants tied around their faces, in the same way that the first round of demonstrations in Kashmir, those that had sparked the first wave of the insurgency in the disputed state back in the late 1980s, had been inspired by the mass movements against Communist rule in eastern Europe.

100
.
Author interviews with senior police, Jammu, and Kashmir police officials, Srinagar, Sopore and Baramullah, Kashmir, February and June 2010.

101
.
Sixty-two per cent of the population are aged under thirty, and youth unemployment is 50 per cent.

102
.
Author interview, Srinagar, June 2010.

103
.
Muzamil Jaleel, ‘Alarm bells: Stone-pelters join militant ranks’,
Indian Express
, November 25, 2010.

104
.
One operation had seen a nineteen-year-old blow himself up in a strike against an army convoy on a road near Sopore, in the heart of wealthy apple-growing country and an area with a local tradition of political dissidence, Islamism and insurgency. The son of a radical preacher removed from his post as village cleric by the authorities, he had been raised in a harsh and politicized environment. Sent to a
medressa
in the western Indian state of Gujrat for his education at the age of sixteen, he had ended up in Pakistan, almost certainly recruited by Lashkar-e-Toiba, before finally returning to his village only weeks before committing his final, suicidal attack only a few miles from his home. ‘As a Muslim I am happy. As a father I am sad,’ his father said as he received visitors come to congratulate him on the martyrdom of his child.

105
.
Jason Burke, ‘Kashmir: young militants take pot shots at fragile peace process’,
Observer
, February 24, 2010. Author interview, Pett Sirr, February 2010. ‘Two terrorists killed as Srinagar gunbattle ends’, Press Trust of India, January 7, 2010.

CHAPTER 17: THE END OF THE FIRST DECADE

    1
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Shahawar Matin Siraj was found guilty of participating in a conspiracy to attack the Herald Square subway station in 2004, three days before the Republican national convention was to begin at Madison Square Garden.