The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (10 page)

At 4pm, the top defence and intelligence people went through what the US were asking for from us on the military side and TB gave his go-ahead. C, Scarlett and Jack set out the thinking about India/Pakistan. Jack felt we had to go for Musharraf over the help given to terrorists in Kashmir. Scarlett felt that any heavy pressure at the moment on Kashmir was a deal breaker and if our aim was to keep Musharraf on board, we should avoid it. Lander said that the Indians and Pakistanis effectively fought a proxy war over Kashmir and if you removed the proxy, there was a danger they would fight a real war with nuclear weapons. The VC10 plan meant that we had to cut down on the number of journalists we could take which led to lots of rows, all a bit pathetic. The VC10 was a bit of a nightmare because
it was so old [first flown in 1962] and slow. I wrote to all media outlets pointing out that there could be no speculation as to where we were going.

Fiona was demanding a date again, and it was obvious there was going to be an awful lot of travelling. TB and I had worked on his Commons statement late but the US intelligence agencies had taken out four of the seven pieces of information we had hoped to put in as evidence. TB was still keen to do it. We went through the statement one more time. The story was the assertion that it was definitely Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
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I had running battles through the day with the BBC over them constantly saying where we were going in Pakistan. I travelled out to the airport with TB. He was very up for the visit. He had just briefed JP who told him he was really taken aback by my attitude to GB at Brighton. TB said I had to watch what I said, which was fair enough. TB had filled JP in on all the diplomatic manoeuvring and the military planning, with the strikes planned for Saturday. We went over what we needed from Putin. Something strong on OBL’s involvement would be a start. TB was looking at it also from the point of view of developing a deeper relationship.

TB said he feared the Indian leg of the trip most. We were warned that the point of maximum vulnerability on the plane was on arrival and departure from Pakistan. C joined us on the plane. He would be seeing his opposite number in Russia later, as well as [Russian defence minister Sergei] Ivanov. I picked his and David Manning’s brains on Kashmir. I had read up some of the disasters on previous visits. The problem was that both sides regularly just briefed that we shifted our line even if we didn’t. The general feeling on the evidence document was that it was OK but there was no smoking gun. Both IDS and [Liberal Democrat leader Charles] Kennedy said they were convinced though.

On arrival, Rod Lyne [UK ambassador to Russia] came on the plane to brief us, then off to the residence and a brief meeting on Putin. TB
was beginning to wonder whether the conference speech hadn’t put him too far out in front. I said I feared it did and he was going to have to do this stuff anyway. We set off for the Kremlin. The meeting was largely one-on-one, plus interpreters, and then David Manning in for a bit before Tom Kelly [AC’s deputy], Magi [Cleaver, press officer] and I were taken to meet him. Putin spent a lot of the time talking about how TB might go tomorrow to Tajikistan to persuade them to let us use their bases. The problem was the US would be opposed because it would mean the Russians effectively controlling our bases.

The joint press conference was OK if a bit dull but TB warmed up towards the end. Putin was very warm about TB, though his interpreter was poor and the press couldn’t really hear him and when they did couldn’t really understand him. Tony Bishop [interpreter], who had done them all right back to Stalin, was a different class by comparison. TB then set off for Putin’s dacha while I went for a run with Rod before dinner. TB got back at 1am, Russian time. He said they had a good time, if a bit surreal at times. They played some form of Russian snooker and he said he won. Bush had called halfway through and spoken to them both. TB reckoned they were deadly serious about helping but felt that the US didn’t really want them closely involved.

Very little sleep. I had breakfast with Rod who was not just very good at his job but very human with it and willing to engage on different levels according to different needs. TB was up late and we set off immediately for the airport. He said that Putin’s problem was that he felt he was pushing out the boat but the Yanks were not responding and it made life difficult for him. On the flight to Islamabad, he said he was glad to have made the initial investment in Putin and felt they got on well. He was trying to work out what outcomes we wanted from Pakistan. I felt there was a danger now that the British public started to ask what is this all about, and why is he spending all his time on the needs of other countries not our own?

I really felt for David Manning on the flight out. He had pages and pages of notes to do on the Putin meeting, plus trying to debrief TB, who was always notoriously difficult to debrief because he would be straight on to focusing on the next thing. TB briefed the press on the plane, talking about the trap we were laying around the Taliban. TB’s words in Pakistan were going to be important and we took a bit of time to work on that. I talked to C about what might follow any
military attack. He believed there would almost certainly be some kind of al-Qaeda retaliation, possibly London, more likely a lesser-known European city. We flew over Everest at one point. The arrival was covered live with TB, straight into the cars and off to Musharraf’s palace. They seemed to have shut down pretty much every road and the crowds were also kept well away. It was about as big a security operation as we’d had. They started off one-on-one.

TB reckoned him [Musharraf] to be a very tough character. I think their basic hope was that we wipe out the Taliban leadership, felt that if we did the whole show would crumble. They seemed pretty keen to get OBL, but you could never be absolutely sure who was saying what for what reason. He told TB we shouldn’t underestimate how unpopular the Americans are here. He said Mullah Omar was impossible to talk to because he is a mystic, constantly talking about the afterlife. TB’s impression was that he was determined to hold firm but it would get very difficult once military action started and he would need a lot of hand holding. Guthrie had done a good job laying the ground for the visit. He thought it sensible not to come to India with us because he was keen to be seen as Pakistan’s man within the equation. It was amusing to watch him operate. He had been placed on the seating plan next to TB. When I suggested he might not want to be spotted, which he clearly would be as the cameras were due in, he was clearly not keen to move. And then when he and I were chatting and I asked him why he wasn’t coming to Delhi, he said, just loud enough for them to hear, ‘I think it’s very important that the Pakistanis know I’m basically their man.’

There was something of an irony in Musharraf saying military takeovers and military dictatorships were not accepted in the world.
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He talked over his road map for the introduction of democracy. TB did lots of warm words, made clear how important Pakistan was to this situation. We then got ready for a joint doorstep with a joint lectern which was a bit weird. I said to Musharraf he would be asked about the evidence we had presented and whether he accepted it. When he came over as a bit equivocal TB immediately stepped in at the lectern and said he strongly welcomed what Musharraf said.

At dinner I was between two five-star generals who spent most of the time listing atrocities for which they held the Indians responsible, killing their own people and trying to blame ‘freedom fighters’. They were pretty convinced that one day there would be a nuclear war because India, despite its vast population and despite being seven
times bigger, was unstable and determined to take them out. When the time came to leave, the livelier of the two generals asked me to remind the Indians ‘It takes us eight seconds to get the missiles over,’ then flashed a huge toothy grin. We arranged it so that we had an early dinner there and then flew to Delhi but I sensed they were holding us back as long as possible. The service was unusually slow, especially after the starters, and I could sense that they were sensing that we were getting a bit impatient, and wanting to move on. We started to chivvy TB a bit, and he did his ‘Oh, is it time to go, I’m having such an interesting time’ look, which they took as the chance to start up a whole new strand of conversation.

As we took off, there was a lot of black humour flowing around about the prospect of us being downed by a stinger [anti-aircraft missile]. I think all of us, other than the experts, had been a bit taken aback at just how much Kashmir defined their relations and just how deep the mutual hatred and obsession was. We arrived in Delhi and TB, one of the cops and I got in with the ambassador [High Commissioner Sir Rob Young] and drove into town. TB motioned to the ambassador, asking if the car was bugged. He gave a kind of non-committal no. I was given my own valet, Sunil, who just would not leave me alone. He followed me to the gym and I literally had to tell him to disappear. He was waiting at my door when I got back.

TB, Anji and I had a chat over a drink but it was odd. I didn’t feel as much part of things as I was, how often I was thinking and asking myself whether I really wanted to be there, or whether I was only there because he wanted me to be, and because I had grown used to it. As ever, we ended up talking about GB, TB saying he was biding his time, knowing that in politics, nobody walked on water forever. C and I had a great laugh about the name of the Indian security service – namely RAW [Research and Analysis Wing]. I said I intended to rename R&I [Number 10 Research and Information Unit] and we would have RAW Domestic, RAW International, and the really secret stuff would be handled by a tiny elite team called RAW Hide. He was a bit like Guthrie in the way he had got himself close to TB and used that to generate support at the top for the service as a whole. He was astutely political in his grasp of issues and very good at sorting the point that TB would most likely want to zone in on.

Sunil was driving me bananas. Everywhere I went, he was there. I was beginning to wonder whether he had been put there either by the spooks or a paper. I told him at one point I was a tea-aholic, and
he kept making me tea after tea and bringing it in. When I came back from the gym, by the time I got out of the shower, my running gear had been picked up and folded. We set off for the prime minister’s residence, yet another purpose-built, well-equipped building, far better and more practical than Downing Street. Vajpayee was frail and his voice was weak, but in part because he had no fear of silence, there was a quiet force to him when he spoke. TB went through the mantra about military, diplomatic, humanitarian, and the need for restraint by India to build stability in the region. He said he had been very forceful with Musharraf over the attacks on the Kashmir Assembly.
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The Indians were very steamed up and you couldn’t help feeling that if a real refugee crisis absorbed Pakistan’s forces, the Indians would go for them on the other front.

TB said that what had happened to the US had the same psychological effect as if we had lost Parliament or Buckingham Palace. It had touched every nerve. Vajpayee was pretty frank about what he thought of Pakistan and Musharraf and how he came to power, kept emphasising he on the other hand led a democracy, and TB said ‘With humility, I think it’s important to continue with restraint.’ Jaswant Singh [foreign affairs minister] said it was not possible to separate the Taliban and OBL, they were totally interdependent. This was, as the general told me last night, a two-front war.

Singh did a lot of the talking. I sat next to him at the breakfast later and he was enormously charming. The joint press conference was in a beautiful garden setting which was home to all manner of exquisite brightly coloured birds flying around and singing. TB and Vajpayee were such different breeds of politician, TB all drive and words and desperate to get everything right, Vajpayee calm, something almost mystical about him.

We set off for the airport and, using the Kosovo statement we did in Berlin, I started work on a draft of a TB statement in the event of military action. TB was pretty anxious about the India–Pakistan situation. We were also still unclear when the US were going to strike. TB slept for a good bit on the way back and I had a chat with C who told me we were very loose on our mobiles during the Kosovo crisis. I chatted to Manning and enlisted his support in persuading the Americans, not least in his link to Condi and TB’s to Bush, of the need to get far better media co-ordination in the coming days. TB
had found the visit absolutely fascinating, said it was one thing to read all the briefs and listen to all the experts but you didn’t have to be there for long to get a sense of just how dangerous and volatile it was. And it was clear too that we were able to exercise some influence in stopping them. They were adamant that, helped by Pakistan, OBL had successfully made Kashmir terrorism worse than ever.

They were coming up to local elections in India in which 160 million people would vote. C said to me he saw TB’s strengths as many and varied but one of them was his ability to be nice to people whoever they were, however much was going on. We got back into Number 10 for TB’s phone call with Bush which began with GWB saying we were definitely going to launch the strikes tomorrow, that he would get his speech over and Karen and I should discuss the various statements and timings. I faxed over the TB draft. TB briefed him on the last couple of days and laid it on thick about his worries re India and Pakistan and the importance of trying to calm it all down. He suggested to Bush he speak to Vajpayee.

Fiona was in a foul mood when I got home, said she assumed that I was going to be off fighting another war again. I had a laugh with the boys about Sunil. About the only time he left me alone was when we left and he had disappeared and despite him driving me crazy, I had been hoping to see him to give him a large tip for at least enlivening the visit.