The "confessions" of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, made under CIA interrogation, should be treated with
skepticism rather than accepted at face value. While the
circumstances of Mohammed's interrogation are not known, according
to book author Gerald Posner, Zubaydah's confession was made under
the alternating influence of sodium pentathol and another unnamed
drug, providing him with a roller-coaster -like experience during
questioning.
This technique was explored in depth in the CIA's secret MKULTRA
drug and torture experimentation program. Unfortunately, most of the
records from the program were apparently destroyed. The 1963 CIA Kubark
interrogation manual is available online, though. It
provides some good background reading on theories of prisoner
interrogation, if you can stomach it.
Here is the pertinent section on the use of drugs during
questioning
"Like other coercive media, drugs may affect the content
of what an interrogate divulges. Gottschalk notes that certain
drugs "may give rise to psychotic manifestations such as
hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or disorientation", so
that "the verbal material obtained cannot always be
considered valid." For this reason drugs (and the other aids
discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to
facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation.
Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from
resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished,
coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and
because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive."
I'm disappointed that the confessions were leaked to publicly
discredit these individuals. It's an old technique, often used by
the FBI when the evidence they have doesn't stand up in court. Their
goal in doing this is extra-legal punishment of the individuals.
Another goal in this case is obviously to try to put the 9/11
matter to rest -- any explanation will do. Just ask Mr. Hatfill,
widely believed to have been responsible for the anthrax mailings
which followed shortly after 9/11. He was never charged with a
crime. The same thing happened with the bombing at the Olympics in
Atlanta a decade ago, and in many other high profile cases over the
years.
A further goal is to implicate the Saudi and Pakistani
governments in the 9/11 attacks.
In 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court set the standard for the
admissibility of confessions in court, in Brown v. Mississippi, 297
US 278. In Brown, the defendants were whipped with a leather strap
with buckles until they agreed to confess. Then the defendants were
forced to memorize detailed confessions provided by their
interrogators, and whipped until they could repeat the confessions
perfectly. The Supreme Court held that this method violated the
defendants' due process rights under the 14th Amendment and that
"voluntariness" was an essential element of a confession.
However one feels about the use of torture or drugs in
interrogation to protect public safety, these are not
"confessions" in any sense.
One should take into account that the defendants had probably not
slept in weeks, and may have been tied to chairs, with serums
pumping into each arm, perhaps even screaming in pain at the time
the statements were made. Without knowing the circumstances of the
"confessions" it's hard to say whether they were coerced.
But the reference to the use of drugs during interrogation implies
that no holds were barred.
- Paul
1. September 11 plan was to hijack ten planes, says
mastermind
2. Confessions of a Terrorist
3. The Guilty Men of 9/11
4. Nuclear-tipped Pakistan Remains a Powder Keg
September
11 plan was to hijack ten planes, says mastermind
By Katherine Butler, The Independent, September 24, 2003
The original plan for the September 11 attacks involved up to 10
planes and targets on the American west coast, the al-Qa'ida
mastermind of the atrocities, has told interrogators.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was seized in Pakistan in March and is
being held by the CIA at a secret location, said he first broached
the hijack plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996.
Interrogation records obtained by the Associated Press show the
plan was to hijack five commercial jets on both US coasts but that
was considered impractical by bin Laden.
An early version of the plot also envisaged blowing up 12 western
aircraft simultaneously over Asia in a second wave of attacks which
would be done by groups allied to al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia.
Mohammed's statements also indicate Al-Qa'ida is planning fresh
attacks on western targets.
Until the confessions, investigators had assumed the ringleader
of the 19 men who committed the 11 September attacks was the
Egyptian, Mohammed Atta. But two of the hijackers on the plane that
crashed into the Pentagon were more pivotal to the plot, the
interrogation records suggest.
Mohammed said Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were among the
four original operatives bin Laden assigned to him. Yemenis Walid
Muhammed bin Attash and Abu Bara al-Yemeni were the others named.
Mohammed's statements claim he communicated with the ringleaders
in internet chat rooms while they lived in the US preparing for the
atrocities.
Originally, hijackers were to be picked from different countries
on the al-Qa'ida recruiting list, Mohammed's answers reveal. But as
the plan advanced, bin Laden decreed the hijackers would be composed
of a large group of young Saudis.
Confessions
of a Terrorist
By Johanna McGeary, Time Magazine, August 31, 2003
Author Gerald Posner claims an al-Qaeda leader made explosive
allegations while under interrogation
By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the
most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's
brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of
al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S.
Cole in October 2000. After the spectacular success of the airliner
assaults on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, he continued to devise
terrorist plans.
Seventeen months ago, the U.S. finally grabbed Zubaydah in
Pakistan and has kept him locked up in a secret location ever since.
His name has probably faded from most memories. It's about to get
back in the news. A new book by Gerald Posner says Zubaydah has made
startling revelations about secret connections linking Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan and bin Laden.
Details of that terrorism triangle form the explosive final
chapter in Posner's examination of who did what wrong before Sept.
11. Most of his new book, Why America Slept (Random House), is a
lean, lucid retelling of how the CIA, FBI and U.S. leaders missed a
decade's worth of clues and opportunities that if heeded, Posner
argues, might have forestalled the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Posner is
an old hand at revisiting conspiracy theories. He wrote
controversial assessments dismissing those surrounding the J.F.K.
and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. And the Berkeley-educated
lawyer is adept at marshaling an unwieldy mass of information-most
of his sources are other books and news stories-into a pattern made
tidy and linear by hindsight.
His indictment of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies
covers well-trodden ground, though sometimes the might-have-beens
and could-have-seens are stretched thin. The stuff that is going to
spark hot debate is Chapter 19, an account-based on Zubaydah's
claims as told to Posner by "two government sources" who
are unnamed but "in a position to know" -- of what two
countries allied to the U.S. did to build up al-Qaeda and what they
knew before that September day.
Zubaydah's capture and interrogation, told in a gripping
narrative that reads like a techno-thriller, did not just take down
one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly
provided what one U.S. investigator told Posner was "the
Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was
his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." The tale
begins at 2 a.m. on March 28, 2002, when U.S. surveillance
pinpointed Zubaydah in a two-story safe house in Pakistan. Commandos
rousted out 62 suspects, one of whom was seriously wounded while
trying to flee.
A Pakistani intelligence officer and hastily made voiceprints
quickly identified the injured man as Zubaydah. Posner elaborates in
startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs -- an unnamed
"quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the
old movie truth serum -- in a chemical version of reward and
punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled,
according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex
fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two
Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be
Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more
confessions.
Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes
Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief."
Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior
member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you
what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin
Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a
publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem
won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the
numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of
lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the
Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle. Zubaydah, writes Posner, said
the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul
Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin
Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which
Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him
with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad
in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force
officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a
1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck
a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists
in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection,
arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin
Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."
Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998
with Turki, senior isi agents and Taliban officials. There Turki
promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the
Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition,
so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct
fundamentalism away from the kingdom." In Posner's stark
judgment, the Saudis "effectively had (bin Laden) on their
payroll since the start of the decade." Zubaydah told the
interrogators that the Saudis regularly sent the funds through three
royal-prince intermediaries he named. The last eight paragraphs of
the book set up a final startling development.
Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one
another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack
at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud,
41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The
last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir,
officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh
one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then
Pakistan's Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather
over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife
and closest confidants. Without charging any skulduggery (Posner
told TIME they "may in fact be coincidences"), the author
notes that these deaths occurred after cia officials passed along
Zubaydah's accusations to Riyadh and Islamabad.
Washington, reports Posner, was shocked when Zubaydah claimed
that "9/11 changed nothing" about the clandestine marriage
of terrorism and Saudi and Pakistani interests, "because both
Prince Ahmed and Mir knew that an attack was scheduled for American
soil on that day." They couldn't stop it or warn the U.S. in
advance, Zubaydah said, because they didn't know what or where the
attack would be. And they couldn't turn on bin Laden afterward
because he could expose their prior knowledge.
Both capitals swiftly assured Washington that "they had
thoroughly investigated the claims and they were false and
malicious." The Bush Administration, writes Posner, decided
that "creating an international incident and straining
relations with those regional allies when they were critical to the
war in Afghanistan and the buildup for possible war with Iraq, was
out of the question." The book seems certain to kick up a
political and diplomatic firestorm. The first question everyone will
ask is, Is it true? And many will wonder if these matters were
addressed in the 28 pages censored from Washington's official report
on 9/11. It has long been suggested that Saudi Arabia probably had
some kind of secret arrangement to stave off fundamentalists within
the kingdom.
But this appears to be the first description of a repeated,
explicit quid pro quo between bin Laden and a Saudi official. Posner
told TIME he got the details of Zubaydah's interrogation and
revelations from a U.S. official outside the cia at a "very
senior Executive Branch level" whose name we would probably
know if he told it to us. He did not. The second source, Posner
said, was from the cia, and he gave what Posner viewed as general
confirmation of the story but did not repeat the details. There are
top Bush Administration officials who have long taken a hostile view
of Saudi behavior regarding terrorism and might want to leak
Zubaydah's claims.
Prince Turki, now Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, did not
respond to Posner's letters and faxes. There's another unanswered
question. If Turki and Mir were cutting deals with bin Laden, were
they acting at the behest of their governments or on their own?
Posner avoids any direct statement, but the book implies that they
were doing official, if covert, business. In the past, Turki has
admitted -- to TIME in November 2001, among others-attending
meetings in '96 and '98 but insisted they were efforts to persuade
Sudan and Afghanistan to hand over bin Laden. The case against
Pakistan is cloudier. It is well known that Islamist elements in the
isi were assisting the Taliban under the government of Nawaz Sharif.
But even if Mir dealt with bin Laden, he could have been operating
outside official channels. Finally, the details of Zubaydah's
drug-induced confessions might bring on charges that the U.S. is
using torture on terrorism suspects. According to Posner, the
Administration decided shortly after 9/11 to permit the use of
Sodium Pentothal on prisoners. The Administration, he writes,
"privately believes that the Supreme Court has implicitly
approved using such drugs in matters where public safety is at
risk," citing a 1963 opinion. For those who still wonder how
the attacks two years ago could have happened, Posner's book
provides a tidy set of answers. But it opens up more troubling
questions about crucial U.S. allies that someone will now have to
address.
The
Guilty Men of 9/11
B Raman, Rediff, September 10, 2003
Time magazine (August 31, 2003) has carried a commentary on
Gerald Posner's book Why America Slept.
The commentary says 'Most of his new book is a lean, lucid
retelling of how the CIA, FBI and US leaders missed a decade's worth
of clues and opportunities that if heeded, Posner argues, might have
forestalled the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Posner is an old hand at
revisiting conspiracy theories. He wrote controversial assessments
dismissing those surrounding the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr
assassinations. And the Berkeley-educated lawyer is adept at
marshaling an unwieldy mass of information -- most of his sources
are other books and news stories --into a pattern made tidy and
linear by hindsight. His indictment of US intelligence and
law-enforcement agencies covers well-trodden ground, though
sometimes the might-have-beens and could-have-seens are stretched
thin. The stuff that is going to spark hot debate is Chapter 19, an
account based on Zubaydah's claims as told to Posner by 'two
government sources' who are unnamed but 'in a position to know' of
what two countries (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) allied to the US did
to build up Al Qaeda and what they knew before that September day.'
The reference is to Abu Zubaidah, then projected by the US
intelligence agencies as the No 3 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda. He
was arrested by the Pakistani authorities, at the instance of US
intelligence, from the house of an office-bearer of the
Lashkar-e-Tayiba, a member of bin Laden's International Islamic
Front at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab on March 28 last year and
flown by the FBI to the US naval base on the Indian Ocean island of
Diego Garcia for interrogation. It is not known where he is kept
presently.
The book, according to the commentary, refers to a 1996 meeting
in Pakistan between bin Laden and Mushaf Ali Mir, a high-ranking
officer of the Pakistan Air Force who subsequently became chief of
the air staff in November 2000 and died in a mysterious plane crash
last February. The book, according to Time, cites Abu Zubaidah as
having claimed that he was present at the meeting during which 'bin
Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely
to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence, to get
protection, arms and supplies for Al Qaeda. Zubaydah told
interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was blessed by the
Saudis.'
The mention of Mushaf Ali Mir by Abu Zubaidah as the ISI's
contact man with bin Laden is surprising for the following reasons.
First, the Pakistani army, which always controls the ISI, never
associates officers of the air force and the navy with its sensitive
covert operations. Second, it generally does not allow officers of
the air force and the navy to head the ISI or to occupy sensitive
positions in it.
Since 1988, when the Pakistani army used bin Laden and his tribal
hordes for brutally suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit, the
contacts with bin Laden had always been handled by senior army
officers. Amongst those who had handled bin Laden (in order of
importance) are General Mohammad Aziz, a Kashmiri from Pakistan-
occupied Kashmir belonging to the Sudan tribe, who is now Chairman,
Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Pervez Musharraf, General
Mahmood Ahmed, director general of the ISI from October 1999 to
October 2001, when he was reportedly removed under US pressure
because of his links with Al Qaeda, and Lieutenant General Ehsanul
Haq, DG of the ISI since October 2001, who was corps commander at
Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province before his
current appointment.
Aziz was deputy director general of the ISI as a major general till
November 1998, when Musharraf appointed him as his chief of the
general staff after his promotion as a lieutentant general. Since
Musharraf did not trust Lieutenant General Ziauddin, whom Nawaz
Sharif, the then prime minister, had appointed as DG of the ISI, he
ordered the transfer of all files relating to the Taliban, Al Qaeda
and terrorist operations in India from the ISI to the CGS' office.
Aziz continued handling these operations.
There were four phases in the ISI's relations with bin Laden.
In the first phase before 1990, the ISI did not feel the need to
keep the relations secret from the Central Intelligence Agency. The
two were operating him jointly. In fact, the CIA brought him from
Saudi Arabia initially for making use of his civil engineering
skills for the construction of tunnels in difficult terrain in
Afghanistan. He subsequently became the head and mentor of the Arab
mercenaries who had been brought by Western intelligence agencies to
Afghanistan to help the Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against
Soviet troops.
In the second phase between 1990 and 1996, there were no reports
of any contacts between the ISI and bin Laden. He was initially in
Saudi Arabia and then the Sudan. During this period, Pakistani
jihadi leaders such as Maulana Masood Azhar, then of the Harkat-ul-
Ansar and now of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, then of
the Harkat-ul-Ansar and now of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and
Professor Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, the Amir of the Markaz Dawa Al
Irshad, the Lashkar's political wing, used to visit bin Laden,
initially in Saudi Arabia and then in the Sudan. Since all these
jihadi leaders had close contacts with the ISI, it was very likely
they kept the ISI informed of their discussions with bin Laden and
of Al Qaeda's activities in Somalia and Saudi Arabia.
The third phase was between 1996 and October 7, 2001. At the
beginning of 1996, the Sudanese government asked bin Laden to leave
Khartoum. Through Pakistani jihadi leaders, he sought the permission
of the Burhanuddin Rabbani government, then in power in Kabul, to
shift to Jalalabad in Afghanistan. After consulting the Benazir
Bhutto government, then in office in Islamabad, Rabbani allowed him
and his entourage to shift to Jalalabad. Shortly thereafter, the
Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul in September 1996. Mulla
Mohammad Omar, the amir of the Taliban, ordered bin Laden and his
entourage to shift to Kandahar where the Taliban had set up its
religious headquarters.
A number of serving and retired officers of the Pakistan army and
the ISI such as Mohammad Aziz, Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid
Gul, former DG of the ISI, and Lieutenant General (retired) Javed
Nasir, another former DG of the ISI, called on bin Laden at
Jalalabad and then in Kandahar and remained in touch with him. Aziz
organised periodic medical check-ups at a Pakistani military
hospital in Peshawar for bin Laden. None of the reports received
during this period mentioned the presence of either Mushaf Ali Mir
or Abu Zubaidah at any of these meetings.
The US was aware of bin Laden and his entourage moving to
Afghanistan. Though Al Qaeda had been suspected in the attack on US
troops in Somalia in 1993 and in the explosions in Saudi Arabia in
1996 targeting US troops, the US did not exercise pressure on the
Taliban to hand over bin Laden to it. During this period, UNOCAL,
the US oil company, was very hopeful of getting the Taliban's
approval for its oil and gas pipeline project. US officials like
Robin Raphael, then assistant secretary of state for South Asian
Affairs, interacted with the Taliban on this issue. There were no
reports of the Americans ever having raised the issue of bin Laden
with the Taliban.
It was only after bin Laden had formed his International Islamic
Front in February 1998 and called for a jihad against the US and
Israel that the US started pressurising the Nawaz Sharif government
to make the Taliban hand over bin Laden to the US for trial. The
pressure increased after the explosions organised by Al Qaeda
outside the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August
1998.
By then, UNOCAL had also abandoned its pipeline project in
collaboration with the Taliban following an outcry amongst women's
groups in the West over the Taliban's anti-women policies. In the
midst of all these events, Mohammad Aziz and Hamid Gul kept in
regular touch with bin Laden and Mullah Omar. The Taliban allowed
the Harkat to set up training camps in its territory with Arab and
Chechen instructors from Al Qaeda. These were amongst the camps
destroyed by US Cruise missiles in retaliation for the explosions in
Kenya and Tanzania.
As the US pressure increased, Musharraf and Mohammad Aziz
presented to Nawaz Sharif at the beginning of 1999 a plan for
shifting all the terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda and its allied
organisations from Afghanistan to the Kargil heights in Jammu and
Kashmir and let them loose against the Indian Army. They argued that
by doing so they would be able to escape US pressure and, at the
same time, add to the Indian army's difficulties. It was this plan
which Nawaz Sharif approved.
After the fighting in Kargil broke out, Nawaz Sharif was
surprised to learn that Musharraf and Aziz had used regular
Pakistani army troops and not the terrorists for occupying the
Kargil heights. Why Musharraf changed the plans is not clear. Some
say he and Aziz did shift some terrorists from Afghanistan to Skardu
in Gilgit and sent them to occupy the Kargil heights. They were
surprised by the ease with which they moved into the heights and by
reports from the terrorists that there were no Indian Army troops on
the other side. They then decided to send in the army to replace the
terrorists and occupy the area.
Others say Musharraf and Aziz had from the beginning planned to
send the troops, and not the terrorists, but told Nawaz Sharif they
would be using the terrorists since they felt he would not approve
the plan if they told him they intended to use troops.
After the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from Kargil under US
pressure, the US again took up with Nawaz Sharif the question of
Pakistani help to get hold of bin Laden. This matter came up during
Ziauddin's visit to Washington, DC. The US wanted Pakistan's help to
organise a commando operation into Kandahar to catch hold of bin
Laden and his entourage. Nawaz Sharif asked the US to be patient and
sent Ziauddin to Kandahar to persuade Mullah Omar to hand over bin
Laden to the US. He refused.
Nawaz Sharif and Ziauddin had not kept Musharraf and Aziz in the
picture. On discovering Ziauddin's secret visit to Kandahar,
Musharraf sent Aziz to Mullah Omar to tell him that he should not
obey any instructions issued by Ziauddin. Sharif found out about
this, and this was one factor which contributed to his decision to
sack Musharraf on October 12, 1999, which in turn led to his
overthrow and the general assuming power.
After Musharraf took over power, Aziz, who continued to be his
CGS, and Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, who had replaced Ziauddin
as DG of the ISI, continued to remain in touch with bin Laden, who
kept coming to Peshawar for medical check-ups at the local military
hospital. In mid-2001, a function was held in Kabul at which the
first group of Taliban officers trained by the Pakistan army passed
out. Amongst those who attended this event were bin Laden, Hamid Gul
and Ehsanul Haq, then corps commander, Peshawar.
After 9/11, under US pressure, Musharraf sent a team of Pakistani
mullahs headed by Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, chief of the Binori
madrasa in Karachi, to Kandahar ostensibly to persuade the Taliban
to hand over bin Laden to the US. Mahmood Ahmed accompanied them.
Surprisingly, instead of asking Mullah Omar to hand over bin Laden,
the mullahs, in Mahmood Ahmed's presence, complimented him for
resisting US pressure.
It was reported the US somehow discovered this and it was under
its pressure that Musharraf removed Aziz and Mahmood Ahmed from
their posts when the US operations began in Afghanistan on October
7, 2001.
During his interrogation by the Karachi police, Omar Sheikh,
principal accused in the Daniel Pearl murder case, was reported to
have stated that during a visit to Kandahar in mid-2001 he had
discovered Al Qaeda's plans for the terrorist strikes in the US and
had conveyed this to Ehsanul Haq at Peshawar on his return from
Kandahar. Haq is a close personal friend of Musharraf and it is very
unlikely that he would not have immediately informed Musharraf about
it. Thus, definitely Haq and most probably Musharraf himself, were
aware of Al Qaeda's plans for the terrorist strikes in the US, but
for reasons not clear, they chose not to alert the US about it.
From his new post as chairman, joint chiefs of staff committee to
which he had been transferred from his post as corps commander,
Lahore, Aziz continued to keep in touch with bin Laden and other
jihadi leaders. It was he who alerted Al Qaeda, the Harkat and Jaish
of the impending freezing of their bank accounts last year and
advised them to remove the bulk of their balances before
instructions reached their banks.
It was Aziz, who reportedly persuaded Mufti Shamzai to give
shelter to bin Laden at the Binori madrasa after an injured bin
Laden escaped into Pakistan from Tora Bora. It was also reported
that Aziz arranged for the treatment of bin Laden for a shrapnel
injury by serving and retired Pakistan army doctors.
Since August last year, bin Laden has disappeared from the Binori
madrasa. One is no longer certain whether he is alive or dead and,
if he is alive, where he is. Since a number of messages purported to
be his have been circulating, he is presumed to be alive unless
proved to be dead. After August last year, there has not been a
single reliable report of his being sighted anywhere in Pakistan or
Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world. Like ghosts, he is only
heard, but not seen.
Why did Abu Zubaidah mention to his FBI and CIA interrogators
that Mushaf Ali Mir was in touch with bin Laden? One can only
speculate. It was probably to draw suspicion away from Mohammad Aziz,
Musharraf and Ehsanul Haq.
There is one intriguing aspect about Mushaf Ali Mir. He did not
enjoy a great reputation in the PAF. He headed the military
equipment manufacturing complex at Kamra. In November 2000,
Musharraf, who liked Mushaf Ali Mir tremendously, superseded five
highly distinguished PAF officers and appointed him chief of the air
staff. The supersession of so many officers came in for strong
criticism from a number of retired officers. Why did Musharraf feel
obliged to promote this mediocre officer, even at the risk of
causing widespread unhappiness in the PAF? A question to which there
has been no answer.
Nuclear-tipped
Pakistan Remains a Powder Keg
By Dan Rather, September 22, 2003
Is Pakistan (a) America’s ally in the war on terrorism; (b)
America’s enemy in the war on terrorism; (c) a powder keg that
could explode at any moment; or (d) all of the above?
On the question of ally or enemy, the answer might well depend on
what aspect of the United States-Pakistani relationship one chooses
to look at, on specific events and time frames, and on just what
part of the Pakistani power structure one focuses on. As to whether
Pakistan is a powder keg, those who know intelligence, terrorism and
the region can come up with any number of reasons to answer with an
emphatic "yes".
For those who have followed only the surface narrative, the fast
and fancy footwork necessitated by the immediate U.S. response to
9-11 obscured an important and inescapable fact Afghanistan’s
Taliban were in no small part a creation of Pakistani intelligence
and military operatives who wanted a way to keep Afghanistan under
Pakistani influence. Their competitors in this were neighboring
states Iran, Russia, India and some of the Islamic former Soviet
republics.
Pakistan’s machinations in the early and mid-1990s have been
reported to have had the tacit support of the United States, which
was involved in Afghanistan for years after the 1979 Soviet
invasion. When the Soviets left in 1989, the United States, too,
largely abandoned Afghanistan. Then, in 1996, the Pakistani-backed
Taliban were initially welcomed by the suffering Afghan population.
And somewhere along the line, under Presidents Bush I and
Clinton, the United States failed to recognize the danger when Osama
bin Laden first bought, then flat-out hijacked, the Taliban regime.
America, under Republican and Democratic administrations, slept.
The gradual awakening to the threat, in the late 1990s, came too
late. Bin Laden, with Mullah Mohammed Omar as his front man, had
become the kingpin. And among his allies were some very highly
placed Pakistani military and intelligence officers, along with
segments of Pakistan’s police force, scientists, teachers and
clergy. And they still are. That’s the problem.
It is most acute in the border "territories" of
Pakistan’s northwest, where tribal leaders are known to sympathize
with al-Qaida. But the problem reaches throughout Pakistan, where
President Pervez Musharraf must balance aiding the United States in
its war on al-Qaida with avoiding completely alienating Taliban- and
al-Qaida-sympathizing elements of the military and intelligence
services that brought him to power.
And because Pakistan has nuclear weapons, it is a balancing act
without a net. If Musharraf were to be overthrown, America’s most
bitter enemies in the war on terrorism could find themselves in
possession of the bomb.
The United States has pledged billions of dollars to Pakistan to
keep the government propped up. On the surface, its leaders appear
friendly and allied with U.S. interests. But deeper down -- in the
military, intelligence and police ranks and in the mosques -- danger
lurks.
This complex, frightening situation is a factor behind the U.S.
inability to find bin Laden or Mohammed Omar, and, because of
Pakistani exports of nuclear and missile technology to North Korea,
it is complicating U.S. foreign policy far beyond Central Asia.
So, the answer to the question at the start of this piece might
very well be (d) -- all of the above. There are, however, no easy
answers for what to do about it. But pretending it doesn’t exist
is to ensure that it will get worse. And perhaps explode. Is America
sleeping again?
Published September 21, 2003
