In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

CHAPTER SIX Operation Enduring Freedom

THE MORNING OF September 11, 2001, began like many others for Zalmay Khalilzad, who was serving as a special assistant to President George W. Bush at the National Security Council. He was sitting in a meeting run by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the White House Situation Room when the first hijacked plane flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center, tearing a gaping hole in the building and setting it afire. “There was a TV screen hanging in a corner of the room,” he told The New Yorker. “When the first plane hit, we had a sense that, oh, maybe it had lost its way. As soon as the second plane hit, the meeting was called to an end and she rushed away. We went outside the White House to Pennsylvania Avenue and waited awhile till we got the all-clear sign. While we were out, there had been all sorts of rumors and reports, that Capitol Hill had been hit, and the Pentagon, obviously, had been hit. Then we started to look at the intelligence. I started looking at Afghanistan, tracing al Qa’ida.”¹ The September 11 attacks opened another chapter in Afghanistan’s age of insurgency. Unbeknownst to most Americans, however, the struggle for Afghanistan had already begun. On September 9, 2001, two al Qa’ida terrorists, Dahmane Abd al-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer, had assassinated Northern Alliance military commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in Afghanistan. Posing as Belgian journalists, they had been granted an interview with Massoud in his bungalow near the Tajikistan border. After setting up their equipment, Bouraoui detonated explosives concealed in his camera, riddling Massoud with shrapnel. Massoud died shortly thereafter, along with one of his assistants, Muhammad Asim Suhail, weakening the already frail Northern Alliance.

U.S. policymakers planning the response to the September 11 attacks a few days later, which they named Operation Enduring Freedom, realized the gravity of this action: the charismatic military commander they most needed to overthrow the Taliban was dead. The situation required an unconventional approach, and the CIA and the Pentagon scrambled to make plans.²

History Begins Today

One of the first challenges, however, was securing Pakistan’s cooperation. Pakistan’s strategic location next to Afghanistan and its government’s involvement there since the Soviet invasion made it a key player. But the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, had arrived in Pakistan “expecting to spend most of [her] time dealing with a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the region.” A severe drought and famine in Afghanistan had caused refugees to flee to Pakistan, which was perhaps the most important domestic issue that summer.³ But the September 11 attacks changed everything.

A few weeks before the attacks, Chamberlin had a private dinner with President Pervez Musharraf at the house of Mahmud Ali Durrani, who would later become the Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “My vision of the country hinges on increasing foreign investment in Pakistan and economic growth,” Musharraf told Chamberlin. “But,” he continued, “the level of domestic terrorism is currently too high,” making it difficult to bring in outside capital. Musharraf also told her: “Pakistan needs strategic depth in Afghanistan to ensure that there is a friendly regime on Pakistan’s western border.”⁴ The timing was ironic. In less than a month, the United States would ask Musharraf to overthrow the very Taliban government that the ISI had painstakingly supported for nearly a decade, which meant putting his “strategic depth” in jeopardy.

On September 11, just hours after the attacks, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmed, who was visiting Washington. Armitage delivered a stern message: Pakistan’s leaders had to choose between the United States or the terrorists; there was no middle ground. “No American will want to have anything to do with Pakistan in our moment of peril if you’re not with us,” Armitage told him. “It’s black or white.” When Ahmed began to waver, pleading that Armitage had to understand history, Armitage cut him off. “No,” he replied, “the history begins today.”⁵ Armitage is an imposing figure. Barrel-chested, with broad shoulders and a thick neck, he had recently told President Bush he was still bench-pressing “330/6,” which meant six repetitions of 330 pounds each. It was down from a few years earlier, he remarked, when he had been bench-pressing 440 pounds.⁶

On September 12, Ambassador Chamberlin received State Department instructions to see President Musharraf in Islamabad and ask him a simple question: “Are you with us or against us?” The meeting, which took place the next day in one of Musharraf’s Islamabad offices, was tense. America was reeling from the terrorist attacks, and President Bush wanted a quick answer from Musharraf. After an hour, there had been little progress. Musharraf was waffling in his commitment to the United States, so Chamberlin resorted to a bit of drama. Sitting close to him, she half turned away and looked down at the floor in a display of exasperation. “What’s wrong, Wendy?” he asked. “Frankly, General Musharraf,” she responded, “you are not giving me the answer I need to give my president.” Almost without hesitation, Musharraf then replied, “We’ll support you unstintingly.”⁷

They agreed to discuss further details on September 15. Chamberlin presented a series of discussion points, such as stopping al Qa’ida operatives at the Pakistan border; providing blanket U.S. overflight and landing rights in Pakistan; ensuring U.S. access to Pakistani military bases; providing intelligence and immigration information; and cutting off all fuel shipments to the Taliban. A final request was bound to be controversial, as Secretary of State Colin Powell professed to Armitage: “Should the evidence strongly implicate Osama bin Laden and the al Qa’ida network in Afghanistan and should Afghanistan and the Taliban continue to harbor him and his network, Pakistan will break diplomatic relations with the Taliban government, end support for the Taliban and assist us in the aforementioned ways to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qa’ida network.”⁸

Musharraf had his own negotiating points. “He wanted us to pressure the Indians to resolve the Kashmir dispute in favor of Pakistan,” noted Chamberlin. “Even without instructions from Washington, I said no immediately, explaining to Musharraf that this was about the terrorists who attacked America on our soil and not about Kashmir.”⁹ He also asked that U.S. aircraft not use bases in India for their operations in Afghanistan, to which Chamberlin agreed. Musharraf clearly was interested in using his bargaining position to gain leverage over India. In the end, Musharraf agreed to most of America’s requests, though he refused to allow blanket U.S. overflight and landing rights, or access to many of Pakistan’s naval ports and air bases. And the United States agreed to many of Musharraf’s requests. U.S. aircraft could not fly over Pakistani nuclear facilities, the United States could not launch attacks in Afghanistan from Pakistani soil, and the United States would provide economic assistance to Pakistan.

Musharraf’s support was pivotal for America’s initial success in Afghanistan. “Pakistan was very cooperative,” Chamberlin stated. “Their support was critical.”¹⁰

Jawbreaker

With Pakistan’s collaboration ensured, the United States could now turn more assuredly to planning combat operations in Afghanistan. On September 13, CIA Director George Tenet had briefed President George W. Bush on the agency’s plan for conducting operations in Afghanistan. He and his counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, outlined for Bush a strategy that merged CIA paramilitary teams, U.S. Special Operations Forces, and airpower into an elaborate and lethal package to bring down the Taliban regime.

“Mr. President,” Black noted at the briefing, staring intently at Bush, “we can do this. No doubt in my mind. We do this the way that we’ve outlined it, we’ll set this thing up so it’s an unfair fight for the U.S. military.”

“But you’ve got to understand,” he continued, choosing his words carefully, “people are going to die.”¹¹

Two days later, at Camp David, Tenet explained that the plan “stressed one thing: we would be the insurgents. Working closely with military Special Forces, CIA teams would be the ones using speed and agility to dislodge an emplaced foe.”¹²

General Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, also began working on war plans. On September 20, 2001, Franks arrived at the Pentagon from Tampa, Florida, to brief Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his plan for invading Afghanistan. Wolfowitz outlined his views in a classified September 23 paper for Rumsfeld entitled “Using Special Forces on ‘Our Side’ of the Line.” He argued that U.S. Army Special Forces should be used on the ground with Northern Alliance forces to help direct U.S. air attacks, gather intelligence, and help deliver humanitarian aid where needed. Wolfowitz, well aware of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was concerned that the United States would fall into the same trap.¹³ The thinking was that the blending of U.S. and Afghan forces would limit American exposure in Afghanistan.

A CIA team led by Gary Schroen, appropriately code-named Jawbreaker, landed in the Panjshir Valley in northeastern Afghanistan on September 26, 2001, only two weeks after the attacks on the United States. The team was part of the agency’s Special Activities Division, the paramilitary arm of the CIA. At the time, it had no more than a few hundred officers with both classic intelligence and special operations backgrounds. Schroen and his team were soon joined on the ground by several U.S. Special Operations Forces A-teams, including operational detachment alpha (ODA) 555, known as “Triple Nickel.” These forces worked with local Afghan commanders and provided arms, equipment, and military advice, as well as coordinated U.S. airstrikes.

They also provided money to buy—or at least rent—the loyalty of local commanders and their militia forces. Schroen once frankly acknowledged, “Money is the lubricant that makes things happen in Afghanistan.”¹⁴

Overthrow of the Taliban Regime

The U.S. bombing campaign began the night of October 7, 2001. The initial objective was to destroy the Taliban’s limited air-defense and communications infrastructure. American and British Special Operations teams had been conducting scouting missions in Afghanistan. Some of the first major combat actions of the war occurred in the mountains near Mazar-e-Sharif, as the teams working with Northern Alliance Generals Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad fought their way north up the Dar-ye Suf and Balkh River Valleys toward the northern city.¹⁵

The terrain and conditions were unlike anything the Americans had ever seen. They found themselves traversing steep mountain paths next to thousand-foot precipices. Since even four-wheel-drive vehicles couldn’t effectively maneuver on the winding mountain trails, military and intelligence forces used Afghan horses to haul their equipment. Many of the Americans had never been on a horse before. Because of the sheer drop-offs, they were told to keep one foot out of the stirrups so that if the horse stumbled, they would fall onto the trail as the horse slid off the cliff. In especially steep areas, U.S. forces were prepared to shoot any stumbling horse before it could drag its rider to his death.¹⁶ Mike DeLong, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, captured the novelty of the situation appropriately, if a bit sarcastically:

After a day or two of riding, our troops were terribly saddle sore, to the point of serious disability. To ease the friction, we sent in a hundred jars of Vaseline. But in Afghanistan the dirt is a fine dust and it’s everywhere; it lingers in the air and covers you from head to foot. This fine dust collected on the Vaseline; instead of helping, it converted the Vaseline into sandpaper. Now their legs were being cut up. What they really needed were chaps, like cowboys wear. But there wasn’t time to measure them for chaps. So we decided on pantyhose. We sent over two hundred pairs. If it worked for Joe Namath in Super Bowl ’69, why not for our troops? Lo and behold, it worked like a charm. The pantyhose saved the day.¹⁷

The first forays against the Taliban were in northern Afghanistan because Tajik and Uzbek opposition to the Pashtun regime was strongest there. Dostum’s forces took the village of Bishqab on October 21. Engagements followed at Cobaki on October 22, Chapchal on October 23, and Oimetan on October 25. On November 5, Dostum’s cavalry overran Taliban forces occupying old Soviet-built defensive posts in the hamlet of Bai Beche. Atta Muhammad’s forces then captured Ac’capruk on the Balkh River, finally opening the door for a rapid advance to Mazar-e-Sharif, which fell to Atta Muhammad’s and Dostum’s forces on November 10, 2001.¹⁸

The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif unhinged the Taliban position in northern Afghanistan. Taliban defenders near Bamiyan in central Afghanistan briefly resisted before surrendering on November 11, and Kabul fell without a fight on November 13. The Taliban collapse was remarkable. Only two months after the September 11 attacks, the most strategically important city in Afghanistan—Kabul—had been conquered.

American and Afghan forces then encircled a force of some 5,000 Taliban and al Qa’ida survivors in the city of Kunduz; following a twelve-day siege, they surrendered on November 26.¹⁹ With the fall of Kabul and Kunduz, attention shifted to the Taliban’s stronghold of Kandahar in the south. Special Operations Forces in support of Hamid Karzai advanced on Kandahar City from the north. Born in Kandahar in 1957, Karzai was the fourth of eight children. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as chief of the Popalzai tribe until he was assassinated in 1999 by “agents of the Taliban.” Karzai’s childhood was rather unremarkable. He went to high school in Kabul and attended graduate school in India before joining the mujahideen during the Soviet War. He spent the Taliban years in Pakistan, but several weeks before the September 11 attacks he had received an ultimatum from the ISI to leave the country by September 30. As chief of the Popalzai tribe, centered on Kandahar Province, Karzai brought with him the support of one of Afghanistan’s most powerful southern tribes. And he was catapulted to prominence for his actions in the U.S.-led Coalition.²¹

FIGURE 6.1 Key Engagements against Taliban and al Qa’ida²⁰

In addition to Karzai’s troops, Special Operations Forces in support of Gul Agha Shirzai—nicknamed “Bulldozer” for his coercive tactics—advanced from the south. The first clashes occurred in late November at Tarin Kowt and Sayed Slim Kalay, just north of the city. There were also several skirmishes along Highway 4 south of Kandahar from December 2 to 6. On the night of December 6, Mullah Omar and the senior Taliban leadership fled the city and went into hiding, effectively ending Taliban rule in Afghanistan.²² Allied forces subsequently tracked a group of al Qa’ida survivors, thought to include Osama bin Laden, to a series of caves in the White Mountains near Tora Bora. The caves were taken in a sixteen-day battle ending on December 17, but many al Qa’ida defenders escaped and fled across the border into Pakistan.²³

As the Taliban’s power base collapsed, international and local attention turned to nation-building and reconstruction. The United Nations had helped organize a meeting of Afghan political leaders in Bonn, Germany, in late November 2001. On December 5, with Coalition troops about to overtake Kandahar, Afghan leaders signed an agreement that established a timetable for the creation of a representative and freely elected government. The following day, the UN Security Council endorsed the outcome in Resolution 1383.²⁴ Under the Bonn Agreement, the parties agreed to establish an interim authority comprising three main bodies: a thirty-member acting administration headed by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, which took power on December 22; a supreme court; and the Special Independent Commission for the Convening of the Emergency Loya Jirga (a traditional meeting of Afghan tribal, political, and religious leaders).

The capture of Kabul and other cities by U.S. and Afghan forces pushed surviving fighters east toward the Pakistan border. In January and February 2002, the U.S. military and the CIA began to collect intelligence about a concentration of a thousand or so holdouts from al Qa’ida, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Taliban, and other groups in the Shah-i-kot Valley and surrounding mountains east of Gardez. A combined offensive by Afghan, U.S., and other Western forces, code-named Operation Anaconda, aimed to take out this threat. The operation began on March 2, 2002, and continued through March 16. The group, truly reflecting the U.S.-led Coalition, comprised U.S. forces from the 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division. Special Operations Forces from the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, and Norway were also involved in the operation.²⁵

The fighting was intense. Insurgent fighters were equipped with sniper rifles, machine guns, recoilless rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and man-portable air defenses (MANPADS). The rugged, mountainous terrain offered excellent concealment for enemy fighters, who scattered in small teams and hid in caves and along steep ridgelines. It was virtually impossible for Coalition forces to surround and seal off the area, or even to target insurgents from the B-52 and AC-130 Spectre gunships circling overhead. An al Qa’ida manual recovered during the operation, titled The Black Book of Mountainous Operations and Training, outlined the utility of rugged terrain for defeating larger forces.

U.S. and allied forces eventually cleared the valley of al Qa’ida and other fighters, but not without a price. The insurgents shot down two Chinook helicopters using rocket-propelled grenades, eight U.S. soldiers were killed, and approximately eighty were wounded. Coalition forces killed a number of fighters, though few bodies were ever found. Hundreds more fled to Pakistan.

Escape to Pakistan

Pakistan’s help in overthrowing the Taliban regime had catapulted Pervez Musharraf to stardom. “Musharraf became an international hero,” remarked Ambassador Chamberlin. “Money was flowing into Pakistan. And Pakistan was no longer a pariah state. The situation was euphoric. Musharraf was on the cover of every magazine and newspaper.”²⁶ But despite these promising developments, peace and stability were fleeting. There was a worrisome exodus of fighters from Afghanistan to Pakistan, as well as disturbing new wrinkles in the complex web of alliances among the Taliban, al Qa’ida fighters, and the Pakistani military.

“The movement of Taliban and al Qa’ida fighters into Pakistan came in waves,” recalled Robert Grenier, the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad following the September 2001 attacks.²⁷ A polished operator, always impeccably dressed, Grenier was also a passionate Boston Red Sox fan who had received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Dartmouth College. He served a distinguished twenty-seven-year career in the CIA, including a stint as chief of “The Farm,” the CIA’s basic-training facility, where he was responsible for guiding and preparing all officers entering the CIA’s clandestine service. From his perch in Islamabad, he monitored the exodus of insurgents from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

In December 2001, after the fall of Kabul and Kandahar, a large contingent of Taliban leaders escaped into Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, among them Mullah Omar. According to the chief of targeting operations for U.S. Central Command at the time, “we conducted several strikes against Mullah Omar in late 2001, none of which were successful.”²⁸ In November, for example, U.S. forces targeted a qanat (underground tunnel) in Kandahar where they had intelligence that he was hiding. In Afghanistan, water is often drawn from springs and rivers and distributed through these qanats, which are excavated and maintained via a series of vertical shafts. U.S. Navy planes initially missed the target with several 2,000-pound general-purpose guided bomb unit-10s (GBU-10). But a subsequent U.S. Air Force strike hit the qanat with a guided bomb unit-28 (GBU-28), a 5,000-pound laser-guided conventional weapon often called a “bunker buster,” with a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead. The GBU-28 collapsed the tunnel, but it did not kill Mullah Omar.

Mullah Omar eventually arrived in Pakistan, and some speculated that he did so on a Honda motorcycle. As President Musharraf quipped to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, “the best advertisement for Honda would be an advertising campaign showing Mullah Omar fleeing on one of its motorcycles with his robes and beard flowing in the wind.”²⁹

Al Qa’ida fighters, including Osama bin Laden, escaped across the Pakistani border en masse. In November 2001, in one of his last public appearances, bin Laden gave a stirring homily to a gathering of local tribal leaders at the Islamic Studies Center in Jalalabad. He promised that they could teach the Americans “a lesson, the same one we taught the Russians.” He was dressed in a gray shalwar kameez, the long shirt and loose trousers worn by most Afghans, and a camouflage jacket. According to some accounts, he distributed cash to the tribal leaders to ensure their support, while many in the crowd shouted “Zindibad [Long live] Osama.”³⁰ American intelligence officials believe that over the next few weeks nearly 1,000 al Qa’ida fighters escaped through Tora Bora and other areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“You’ve got to give him credit,” noted the CIA’s Gary Schroen. “He stayed in Tora Bora until the bitter end.”³¹

In mid-December 2001, according to some American intelligence estimates, bin Laden left Tora Bora for the last time, accompanied by a handful of bodyguards and aides. CIA forces on the ground repeatedly requested an additional battalion of U.S. Army Rangers to block bin Laden’s escape, but the U.S. military relied on local Afghan forces. Some reports indicate that bin Laden paid Afghans to let him through.³² According to one Pakistani military assessment, the fighters “hid in urban areas and mingled with the local populace by maintaining a relatively low profile.”³³ While al Qa’ida leaders dispersed via a number of different routes, bin Laden journeyed on horseback south toward Pakistan, crossing through the same mountain passes through which the CIA’s convoys passed during the mujahideen years. Along the route, in the dozens of villages and towns on both sides of the frontier, Pashtun tribes allied with the Taliban helped guide the horsemen as they trekked through the hard-packed snow and on toward the old Pakistani military outpost of Parachinar. The CIA later learned that a “group of two hundred Saudis and Yemenis…was guided by members of the Pushtun Ghilzai tribe, who were paid handsomely in money and rifles.”³⁴

Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force in the border regions, picked up some of the fighters streaming across the border. Al Qa’ida and foreign fighters were turned over to the ISI, and many were handed over to the U.S. government, which housed them temporarily in secret prisons in Kandahar, Bagram, and other locations. Al Qa’ida operatives relied on links with Pakistani militant groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), in cities such as Lahore and Faisalabad, to hide from Pakistan and U.S. intelligence services. They didn’t want to remain in Pakistan, however, because the government was cooperating with the United States. According to CIA assessments, most of the al Qa’ida and foreign fighters were trying to get to Iran, where they could temporarily settle or transit to other areas, such as the Persian Gulf.

By 2002 and 2003, though, the CIA began to gather intelligence indicating that al Qa’ida operatives were increasingly infiltrating back into Pakistan’s tribal areas. Many went to remote locations, such as the Shakai Valley in South Waziristan, hoping the Pakistani government would leave them alone to resettle among some of the local tribes. Sporadic Pakistani military operations in South Waziristan triggered an exodus of militants to North Waziristan. “It was harder for Pakistan government forces to get to them there,” said Grenier. “The social structure was more hospitable, and there was a heavier influence of mullahs and religious clerics.”³⁵

An Ideal Sanctuary

Over the next several years, these extremists used Pakistan’s northern Baluchistan Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and the North West Frontier Province as sanctuaries to rest and rearm. Sanctuary was critical for all major groups that targeted NATO forces and the Afghan government. “The Taliban was a flourishing dynamic network,” according to a joint European Union and United Nations document, “which relied on a strong and unchallenged support and recruitment base in Pakistan.”³⁶ In past insurgencies, border areas and neighboring countries have often been exploited by militants. Groups can plot, recruit, proselytize, contact supporters around the world, raise money, and enjoy a respite from the government’s efforts, enabling operatives to escape from the constant stress that characterizes life underground.³⁷ Pakistan’s border region was an ideal sanctuary for several reasons.

First, it was close to the Taliban and al Qa’ida strongholds in eastern and southern Afghanistan, which would be convenient once they decided to launch efforts to overthrow the Karzai regime. And virtually all major insurgent leaders had spent time in Pakistan, often at one of the Deobandi madrassas. Second, Pakistan included roughly twenty-five million Pashtuns, double the number in Afghanistan, many of whom were sympathetic to the Taliban.³⁸ Third, some insurgent groups also had close ties to individuals within the Pakistan government. The Taliban, as discussed earlier, had received significant support and legitimacy from Pakistan’s ISI back in the 1990s. Fourth, Pakistan’s mountainous terrain near the Afghan border offered superb protection.

“The role of geography, a large one in an ordinary war, may be overriding in a revolutionary war,” wrote David Galula in his classic book Counterinsurgency Warfare. Galula served in the French Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II, and later in the insurgencies in China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. “It helps the insurgent insofar as it is rugged and difficult.”³⁹ As Galula and others have pointed out, mountainous terrain can be useful for insurgent groups because it is difficult for indigenous and external forces to navigate and easier for insurgents to hide.⁴⁰

The border region was also deeply disputed. No modern government of Afghanistan had ever formally recognized the British-drawn border that divided the Pashtun territories. On November 12, 1893, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, the British foreign secretary of India, signed an agreement with the Afghan ruler, Amir Abdur Rehman Khan, separating Afghanistan from what was then British India. The Durand Line, as it became known, divided the Pashtun tribes in order to weaken them, making it easier for the British to pacify the area. On their side of the frontier, the British created autonomous tribal agencies controlled by British political officers with the help of tribal chieftains whose loyalty was ensured through regular subsidies. The British used force to put down sporadic uprisings, but they generally left the tribes alone in return for stability along the frontier.⁴¹ In 1949, Afghanistan’s loya jirga declared the Durand Line invalid and viewed Pashtun areas as part of their country, especially since British India ceased to exist with the independence of Pakistan in 1947.

The 1,519-mile border has continued to be a source of tension. In the June 2006 issue of Armed Forces Journal, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters suggested a radical realignment of the boundaries of the greater Middle East. Peters generously gave part of western Afghanistan to Iran, but he balanced this by giving Afghanistan the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Peters argued: “What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren…. Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.”⁴² Though considerable blood might have to be spilled to move the borders, several senior Afghan officials praised Peters and expressed their support for redrawing the colonial boundaries. Shortly after the article was published, one senior Afghan official told me, “At least one American understands Afghanistan.”⁴³ Not surprisingly, Pakistani officials have been less than enthusiastic about the idea.

U.S. Limitations

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had aimed to overthrow the Taliban regime and destroy al Qa’ida’s organizational infrastructure. It achieved the former but not the latter. Key al Qa’ida training camps, such as Tarnak Farms outside of the city of Kandahar, were destroyed. But the Taliban, al Qa’ida, and other militants simply slipped across the border into Pakistan, where they established new camps. Over the next several years, these groups recruited, rearmed, and plotted their return. The Pakistani military conducted combat operations against foreign fighters—especially Central Asians and Arabs—in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but the government refrained from conducting operations against most high-ranking Taliban leaders. ⁴⁴ On September 15, 2001, President Musharraf told Ambassador Chamberlin: “We will hand over captured al Qa’ida operatives to you. But we will handle the Pakistanis and other locals ourselves.”⁴⁵

The Pakistan government’s desire to protect some of its assets was not lost on U.S. policymakers. Deputy Secretary of State Armitage argued, for example, that “Musharraf did not push hard against the Taliban” and was “only cooperative in targeting some key al Qa’ida militants.”⁴⁶ The CIA’s Grenier similarly acknowledged: “The ISI worked closely with us to capture key al Qa’ida leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, and Abu Zubeida. But they made it clear that they didn’t care about targeting the Taliban.” Neither did the CIA or the U.S. government more broadly. “The U.S. government was focused on al Qa’ida,” Grenier continued, “not on capturing or killing Taliban leaders. The U.S. considered the Taliban a spent force.”⁴⁷

Neglecting the Taliban, who had invited al Qa’ida into Afghanistan in the first place, was a dangerous gamble. A joint paper by the government of Afghanistan, the United Nations, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States later warned that insurgents were directing “their campaign against Afghan and international forces from Pakistan,” and most fighters were “trained in Pakistan in combat, communications, IEDs and suicide ops.”⁴⁸

Militant Groups Resettle

Among the groups that settled in Pakistan was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami. After the September 2001 attacks, Hekmatyar openly pledged to cooperate with al Qa’ida and Taliban forces to fight the “Crusader forces” in Afghanistan.⁴⁹ Hekmatyar’s organization, which included several hundred fighters, sought to overthrow the Afghan government and install him as leader. The group’s area of operations included Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and the northern part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as well as the Afghan provinces of Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman, and Nangarhar.⁵⁰ Despite occasional overtures to the Afghan government, one joint European Union and United Nations assessment revealed that Hekmatyar was periodically “offered funds to fill his empty coffers” by the Taliban and “agreed not to negotiate further with the Afghan government.”⁵¹

In addition to Hekmatyar’s fighters, Yunus Khalis’s branch of Hezb-i-Islami also began to rearm in Pakistan. One of Khalis’s sons, Anwar al-Haq Mojahed, began to gather a group of Hezb-i-Islami fighters, disgruntled tribesmen, and some ex-Taliban. So did a group called Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), which was led by Sufi Mohammad, whose objective was to impose sharia law in Afghanistan and Pakistan by force if necessary. He encouraged and organized thousands of people to fight against the United States and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan as the Taliban regime began to crumble in 2001, but the group was banned by Pervez Musharraf, and Sufi Mohammad was jailed in 2002. The group continued to rebuild, however, thanks to the untiring work of his son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, an influential firebrand known for his long, flowing hair. He was dubbed “Mullah Radio” because of his pirate FM radio broadcasts.

There were also a number of groups that rested and rearmed in Pakistan’s tribal areas. As Figure 6.2 illustrates, there are seven agencies (Khyber, Kurram, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan). There are also six frontier regions: Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, and Lakki Marwat. The Pashtun tribes that controlled this region had resisted colonial rule with a determination virtually unparalleled in the subcontinent. The tribes were granted maximum autonomy and allowed to run their affairs in accordance with their Islamic faith, customs, and traditions. Tribal elders, known as maliks, were given special favors by the British in return for maintaining peace, keeping open important roads such as the Khyber Pass, and apprehending criminals. After partition in 1947, Pakistan continued this system of local autonomy and special favors.

FIGURE 6.2 Pakistan’s Tribal Agencies Courtesy of RAND Corporation

Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, laid the foundation for this independence in remarks to a tribal jirga in Peshawar in 1948: “Keeping in view your loyalty, help, assurance and declarations we ordered, as you know, the withdrawal of troops from Waziristan as a concrete and definite gesture on our part…. Pakistan has no desire to unduly interfere with your internal freedom.”⁵² The system of administration remained fairly consistent after Pakistan’s independence, despite demands by the educated and enlightened sections of the tribal population, and Pakistani courts and police had no jurisdiction in the tribal areas.

One of the most significant groups harbored in this region was led by the legendary mujahideen warrior Jalaluddin Haqqani. Born in 1935 into the Jadran tribe, he was educated at a madrassa in Peshawar, Pakistan. With penetrating eyes and a thick black beard that became tinged with gray over time, Haqqani was described by a Soviet intelligence report as a “cruel and uncompromising person.” The report said he had close ties to Saudi Arabia and was a committed Islamist. “Jelaluddin regularly visits Saudi Arabia, where he holds direct talks with representatives of the government of that country…. He wages armed combat on a platform of establishing an Islamic republic on orthodox Islamic principles.”⁵³ Upon returning to Afghanistan, he opened his own madrassa in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Paktia, along the Pakistani border, and became active in the Muslim Brotherhood during the rule of Zahir Shah and Daoud Khan. During the Soviet War, Haqqani operated south of the Parrot’s Beak in Paktia Province, near bin Laden’s territory. He was viewed by some CIA officers in Islamabad as perhaps the most impressive battlefield commander in the war.

As a prominent jihadi leader, Haqqani sponsored some of the first Arab fighters who faced Soviet forces in 1987, and he was in frequent contact with bin Laden and ISI. Pakistan intelligence and the CIA relied on Haqqani to experiment with new weapons systems and tactics. The CIA officers working from Islamabad regarded him as a proven commander who could put a lot of men under arms on short notice.⁵⁴ It was with Haqqani’s militia that U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson traveled in Afghanistan in May 1987; Wilson was one of the few American government officials to step foot in the country during the Soviet War. He had wanted to fire a Stinger missile at a Soviet aircraft during the trip, but Haqqani’s men couldn’t pull it off. Milton Bearden, then the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan, recalled, “Though he never got to fire his Stinger—Haqqani’s people had actually dragged chains and tires on the dirt roads in a futile attempt to attract enemy fighter aircraft to the clouds of dust—he did manage to have a memorable combat tour at the front.”⁵⁵

After the overthrow of the Taliban, Haqqani’s network regrouped in towns such as Miramshah and Mir Ali in Pakistan’s tribal areas, as well as in a swath of territory in the Afghan provinces of Khowst, Paktia, Ghazni, and Paktika.⁵⁶ Haqqani was loosely allied with the Taliban leadership at this time, but he separately commanded several hundred fighters. Moreover, he had close relations with the Pakistani government, including the ISI.⁵⁷ Given the risks of traveling to Afghanistan, Haqqani spent this period expanding his base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.⁵⁸ His most ambitious son, Sirajuddin, known as “Siraj,” also became involved as the group prepared to fight the Americans in Afghanistan and overthrow the Karzai government. Siraj, the oldest of Haqqani’s sons, had a strong resemblance to his father, with a jet-black beard and similar facial expressions. He bragged that “we are waging jihad against the U.S. forces and our objective is to tire them out.”⁵⁹

Several of al Qa’ida’s key leaders also began to regroup in this area, along with a variety of other foreign groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The foreign jihadist contingent included two major types: those from the Caucasus and Central Asia (such as Chechens, Uzbeks, and Tajiks) and Arabs (such as Saudis, Egyptians, Somalis, and Yemenis). Many had settled in North and South Waziristan during the mujahideen wars against the Soviets; others streamed over after the collapse of the Taliban. A number of these foreigners were directly or indirectly affiliated with al Qa’ida, though some were simply inspired by the broader jihadist goal of pushing U.S. and other Western forces out of Afghanistan.⁶⁰

Much of al Qa’ida’s fighting force was located in an area that began around the Bajaur tribal agency in Pakistan. The leaders were mostly Arabs. Ayman al-Zawahiri was an Egyptian. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, bin Laden’s former treasurer, who headed al Qa’ida’s operations in Afghanistan, was also an Egyptian.⁶¹ Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior al Qa’ida operative who was captured in 2006 in Turkey, was born in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He served in Iraq’s army under Saddam Hussein and rose to the rank of major. He then joined the Afghan muhajideen and fought the Red Army in the 1980s. Finally, Abu Ubaydah al-Masri, who headed al Qa’ida’s external operations from Waziristan and died in 2007 of hepatitis, was yet another Egyptian.

There was some support from local tribes in the region. Academic Mariam Abou Zahab reported that “after the American intervention, foreign militants, Taliban, and others who fled Afghanistan entered the tribal areas and a sizeable number of foreigners settled in Waziristan where they developed deep links with Ahmedzai Wazirs.” Most disturbingly, she wrote, “almost every tribe supported al Qa’ida, actively or passively, as guests.”⁶² Nek Muhammad, a Taliban leader who was killed in June 2004 by a CIA Predator strike, was from the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe. So was Maulana Noor Muhammad, who joined the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and received Arab money and weapons in the 1980s. He was elected to the Pakistani Parliament in 1997 and became a prominent supporter of the Taliban in Waziristan.

Several individuals from the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe based in Wana, Pakistan, helped raise funds and recruited militants to fight in Afghanistan.⁶³ After the March 2003 capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, al Qa’ida’s head of external operations, the group received protection and support from local clerics and tribal members of the Mehsud and Wazir tribes. The Ahmadzai Wazirs and local Taliban members of the clans living in the Shakai Valley were the main hosts of the Arabs, while the Yargulkhel subclan of the Ahmadzai Wazirs became the main host of the Uzbeks in South Waziristan.⁶⁴

Finally, the Taliban resettled in Pakistan and began to reestablish political, military, and religious committees in the vicinity of Quetta. This city was critical because it allowed easy access to Afghanistan’s southern provinces, including Kandahar, a key front in the insurgency. The State Department realized the Taliban were attacking on two fronts, and one report said, “Quetta is the hinge, enabling communication between fronts and providing safe haven for Taliban leadership, logistics and information operations (IO). Dislocating this hinge would severely disrupt Taliban strategy, but would require a much greater degree of commitment and activity from Pakistan than we have seen to date.”⁶⁵

The Taliban sited propaganda and media committees in various locations, but most prominently in Peshawar, as well as in North and South Waziristan. They created a variety of Websites, such as www.alemarah.org (now defunct), and they used al Qa’ida’s production company, Al-Sahab Media, to make videos. They also established a radio outlet, Voice of Sharia, with mobile transmitters in several provinces. Some Taliban fighters even took video cameras onto the battlefield to videotape improvised-explosive-device (IED) attacks and offensive operations, which were useful for propaganda.⁶⁶ Indeed, the Taliban’s strategic information campaign significantly improved after September 11, 2001, thanks in part to al Qa’ida. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s videos became notably better in quality and clarity of message, and its use of the Internet dramatically increased to spread propaganda and recruit potential fighters. The Taliban also published several newspapers and magazines, such as Zamir, Tora Bora, and Sirak. Finally, the Taliban began to relocate much of their financial base to Karachi, Pakistan’s financial and commercial center on the Arabian Sea.

Over time, the Taliban began to link up with a number of Pashtun tribes, especially Ghilzais. Special arrangements allowed border tribes freedom of movement between Afghanistan and Pakistan—they were not subjected to any scrutiny and were allowed to cross the border merely on visual recognition or identification. A number of these tribes had lands that had been divided by the Durand Line, such as the Mashwani, Mohmands, Shinwaris, Afridis, Mangals, Wazirs, and Gulbaz. Pashtun military prowess has been renowned since Alexander the Great’s invasion of Pashtun territory in the fourth century BC. When asked about his identity, Abdul Wali Khan, a Pakistani politician, confidently responded: “[I am] a six thousand year old Pashtun, a thousand year old Muslim and a 27 year old Pakistani.”⁶⁷

The southern front also boasted a number of criminal groups, especially drug-trafficking organizations, which operated on both sides of the border. Farther north, there were Russian, Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen drug-trafficking organizations. Tajikistan served as a primary transshipment locale for opiates destined for Russia. Drug traffickers in Afghanistan used produce-laden trucks as a cover for drugs sent north toward Tajikistan, where the goods were handed off to other criminal organizations. Tajik criminal organizations were the primary movers of this contraband. Approximately half of the heroin that passed through Tajikistan was consumed in Russia. The rest transited Russia to other consumer markets in Western and Eastern Europe.⁶⁸

In light of this regrouping, it seems the overthrow of the Taliban regime was Janus-faced. The sheer alacrity with which United States and Northern Alliance forces overthrew the Taliban regime was awe-inspiring. It took less than three months and cost America only twelve lives—surely one of the most successful unconventional operations in modern history. But many senior Taliban and al Qa’ida leaders had not been killed or captured—they had escaped across the border into Pakistan. This haunting reality was not lost on many U.S. military and CIA officials on the ground at the time. Hunting them down, especially the Taliban, would be shelved for another day as U.S. policymakers turned to stabilizing Afghanistan.