Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

21. Hot Pursuit

PAKISTAN, 2006–2008—Donald Rumsfeld’s run as defense secretary met an inglorious end in late 2006. A half-dozen retired generals, some of whom were important commanders in the Iraq War, joined several Republican and Democratic lawmakers to spearhead a campaign demanding his resignation. Many sought to blame him for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, others for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The Republicans suffered major losses in the 2006 midterm elections and handed the Democrats a majority in both the Senate and House, which many political analysts attributed to growing opposition to the Iraq War. Among those in the White House who had pushed hard for Bush to keep Rumsfeld on board was Dick Cheney. Although President Bush initially stood by Rumsfeld, he eventually accepted the resignation. Rumsfeld was undoubtedly a major figure in the secretive assassination and torture bureaucracy launched post-9/11, but his departure would not radically shift the course of the actions and programs he had helped to shape.

In December 2006, Robert Gates succeeded Rumsfeld. Gates had a close working relationship with the CIA, where he had spent much of his professional career. He first worked for the Agency in the late 1960s and ultimately went on to serve as its director in the early 1990s—the first basement-level recruit to rise through the ranks to become director. Gates had done several stints with the NSC and also had close ties to US Special Operations Forces. He was investigated over his alleged role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and though the independent counsel concluded Gates “was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities,” it was determined that his role “did not warrant indictment.” Gates was also a key player in the US-fueled war in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s. Among his first acts at the Pentagon was to put Pakistan firmly back on the US targeted kill campaign’s radar.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee three months into Gates’s tenure, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, director of operations for the Joint Staff, asserted that US military commanders had “kill-capture” or “direct action authorities in Afghanistan,” making them “free to strike against those demonstrating a hostile act.” Lute, however, added that those authorities also permitted operations inside Pakistan. If “the enemy” attempts “to flee across the border, [t]hen we have all the authorities we need to pursue.” When asked about authority to engage in more invasive operations, such as directly targeting Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Lute said he would only discuss it in closed session.

The “hot pursuit” arrangement had infuriated the ISI since it was first brokered by Musharraf and JSOC in 2002. Everyone in Pakistan knew the CIA was operating extensively in the country—every drone strike was a stark reminder—but the US military could not be perceived to be in the country for any purpose other than training Pakistani forces. While the Pakistani military and ISI were agitating for less US action on their soil, JSOC had been “pushing hard” for years to have greater latitude from the White House to strike inside Pakistan. JSOC wanted permission to hit, even in cases where the operation was more involved than the simple pursuit of suspected al Qaeda operatives across the border. “Give us greater latitude, we’ve got to hit where their sanctuaries are,” was how a US official described JSOC’s pitch at the time.

Although Pakistan was a fierce negotiator—at times outmaneuvering the United States—at the end of the day, it needed Washington’s money, weapons and support. The bottom line, therefore, was that if Pakistan didn’t want to deal with certain terrorist elements, JSOC and the CIA would. And the White House would sign off on it. In JSOC’s case, that meant targeted raids into Pakistan. “I think this is one of those things that the Pakistanis looked the other way at times, much like the drone program,” Anthony Shaffer, the DIA operative who worked on Pakistan extensively, told me. “I don’t believe for a minute that President [Asif Ali] Zardari and [ISI chief] General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani, and even Musharraf before, didn’t know we would be doing some of that.”

By 2007, the budget for US special operations had grown by 60 percent from 2003 to more than $8 billion annually. In January, President Bush announced the “surge” in Iraq. The number of conventional US forces was expanded by 20,000, but Bush also authorized a dramatic increase in targeted killing operations, spearheaded by JSOC’s forces. The operation was General McChrystal’s swan song at JSOC. By the end of 2007, the president began declaring the Iraq surge a success. This freed up JSOC to refocus on Pakistan.

Late in 2007, the Bush administration began drafting plans for a substantial escalation of the use of US Special Operations Forces inside Pakistan. The plan, however, was stalled as a result of the ongoing fight for control of Pakistan operations between the CIA and the Pentagon, described by the New York Times as “bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A.” over “whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.”

An incident in June 2008 underscored the risks associated with a potential expansion of US special operations activity in Pakistan. A battle between US and Taliban forces in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province spilled over into Pakistan. US forces called in air support and American choppers descended, launching missiles at the Taliban forces. The strikes also killed eleven Pakistani soldiers positioned on their side of the border. The action was denounced by Pakistan as an “unprovoked and cowardly” attack by the United States. “We will take a stand for sovereignty, integrity and self-respect,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani told parliament. “We will not allow our soil [to be attacked].” The fact was, Pakistan could not back up such declarations.

Two days after the incident, on June 13, 2008, Vice Admiral William McRaven assumed command of JSOC from General McChrystal, inheriting the role of running the hunt for bin Laden and other HVTs. The botched raid that killed the Pakistani soldiers clearly didn’t faze him. McRaven, a former Navy SEAL team leader and McChrystal’s deputy commander at JSOC, began advocating for wider latitude to strike in Pakistan. In July 2008, President Bush approved a secret order—which had been the subject of much debate among the CIA, State Department and Pentagon—authorizing US Special Ops Forces to carry out targeted kill or capture operations. Unlike the early arrangement with President Musharraf, the US Special Operations Forces would not be working alongside Pakistani forces and they would not seek permission from Pakistan’s government before conducting strikes on Pakistani soil. “To soothe the worries of U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson about the mounting civilian deaths from JSOC raids in other countries, commandos brought her a Predator console so she could witness a raid in real time,” according to reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin. In August 2008, Musharraf, long a malleable US ally, resigned from office under threat of impeachment. JSOC’s forces almost immediately began testing his successor. As a Special Operations source who worked with McRaven at the time told me, “Bill rapidly expanded operations” in Pakistan.

On September 3, 2008, two helicopters carried a team of JSOC Navy SEALs across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Backed by a high-powered AC-130 Spectre gunship, with the capacity to do serious damage, they descended on a village near Angoor Adda, a small Pakistani mountain town in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. The helicopters landed quietly, and more than two dozen SEALs, equipped with night-vision goggles, took up positions around the home of a fifty-year-old woodcutter and cattle herder. Some reports suggest that the Special Ops team had intel that an al Qaeda leader was inside. The Washington Post reported that it was “the first US ground attack against a Taliban target inside the country.” In any case, once in position, the SEALs executed their raid.

What happened after the first shots were fired remains in dispute. According to US officials, “about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters” were killed in “a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.” But according to local villagers, the SEALs opened fire, killing Payo Jan Wazir, the home’s owner, along with six children, including a three-year-old girl, a two-year-old boy and two women. When Payo Jan’s neighbors heard the gunfire and ran out to see what was happening, villagers said, the SEALs opened fire on them, killing ten more people. The Pakistani government said that all of the dead were civilians. The United States maintained they were al Qaeda militants. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Patterson. In a statement it denounced the operation, calling it a “gross violation of Pakistan’s territory” and a “grave provocation,” alleging the raid had caused “immense loss of civilian life.” The Foreign Ministry said it was “unfortunate” that US forces had “resorted to cross-border use of force against civilians,” asserting that “such actions are counter-productive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they undermine the very basis of cooperation and may fuel the fire of hatred and violence that we are trying to extinguish.”

After years of being directed to focus most of its resources on Iraq, JSOC was finally getting its chance to hit in a more concerted way in Pakistan. As it turned out, Rumsfeld’s vision of the world as a battlefield was more fully realized after he left than when he was in power. His departure ushered in an era in which America’s most potent dark side forces pivoted from Iraq to the US twilight wars in South Asia, Africa and beyond.