UNIVERSITY OF FLORDA

Choosing Sides and Guiding Policy United States’ and Pakistan’s Wars in Afghanistan

Azhar Merchant 4/24/2019

Table of Contents

I. Introduction… 2

II. Political Settlement of the Mujahedeen War… 7

III. The Emergence of the Taliban and the Lack of U.S. Policy… 27

IV. The George W. Bush Administration… 50

V. Conclusion… 68

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I. Introduction

Forty years of war in Afghanistan has encouraged the most extensive periods of diplomatic and military cooperation between the United States and Pakistan. The communist overthrow of a relatively peaceful Afghan government and the subsequent Soviet invasion in

1979 prompted the United States and Pakistan to cooperate in funding and training Afghan mujahedeen in their struggle against the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union,

Afghanistan entered a period of civil war throughout the 1990s that nurtured Islamic extremism, foreign intervention, and the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, ultimately culminating in the devastating attacks against Americans on September 11th. Seventeen years later, the United

States continues its war in Afghanistan while its relationship with Pakistan has deteriorated to an all-time low.

The mutual fear of Soviet expansionism was the unifying cause for Americans and

Pakistanis to work together in the 1980s, yet as the wars in Afghanistan evolved, so did the countries’ respective aims and objectives.1 After the Soviets were successfully pushed out of the region by the mujahedeen, the United States felt it no longer had any reason to stay. The initial policy aim of destabilizing the USSR through prolonged covert conflict in Afghanistan was achieved. However, the following political settlement of Kabul failed and turned into a gruesome civil war between former mujahedeen. Securing a fully representational interim government that achieved self-determination for the Afghan people became the new official policy objective of the United States from 1988 onwards, yet this objective never came to fruition. The Americans

1 Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies (Washington, D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2001), 256-257.

2 left the region and Afghanistan became much less of a foreign policy priority for the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The attacks faced by Americans on September 11th then reignited United States’ interest in Afghanistan and the country became the first among many battlefields in the United States’

Global War on Terror. The United States articulated an objective to rid of terrorists and their sponsors all around the world, but especially in Afghanistan where the raids on Manhattan and the Pentagon were planned and organized. While the United Nations and certain Americans advocated for the reconstruction of Afghan political and civilian institutions, the George W.

Bush administration largely depended on regional warlords to try to stabilize the country while

American joint military forces could continue the search for Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan, meanwhile, felt it had to continue funding its own proxies during the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. Pakistan backed its allies in the Hezbi Islami faction of mujahedeen on their march to Kabul, and then switched to supporting a more direct proxy—the Taliban. Other factions in the civil war, such as the Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Shura-e-Nazar, were perceived to be ripe with enemies in the eyes of Pakistani military figureheads. The fear was that the new government in Kabul could potentially become dominated by Indian influence, something that

Pakistan considers as a dire threat to its own existence. Pakistani army generals perceived warlords favored by the United States post 9/11 as agents in cahoots with their enemy India. The greatest national security concern for Pakistan has always been its giant neighbor to the east with whom it fought four devastating wars and suffered numerous other military conflicts. The two

South Asian neighbors still had unresolved conflicts dating back to issues caused by the Partition of 1947 when the two nations were split at birth. The principle issue between Pakistan and India can be attributed to the status of the former princly state of Kashmir, whose ruler did not declare

3 for Pakistan nor India during the partition and so propelled the two new nations to claim its sovereignty. The promised further discussions on settling Muslim-dominated Kashmir never came to be and instead Pakistan and India occupied the regions they conquered after the Indo-

Pakistani wars of 1947 and 1965. To this day, Kashmiris are caught in between military aggression from both sides and suffer from a non-citizenship status that stifles their own chances to represent themselves in either government.

Pakistan’s army generals, many of whom fought directly in the many wars with India, became enamored with the possibility that Afghanistan would become an Indian proxy power.

Pakistan was worried that this would cause its Kashmiri movement to suffer, as India would gain a diplomatic upper hand with a government in Kabul that could pressure the international community in settling Kashmir on Indian terms. Pakistan’s objectives in Afghanistan throughout its period of instability was therefore one aspect of Pakistan’s foreign policy designed to limit

Indian influence in the region and promote its own. The fundamentalist mujahedeen factions that sprang up in the 1980s, largely due to funding from the ISI and CIA, thus were empowered by

Pakistan to carry out covert military expeditions against India in its administrative areas of

Kashmir. The jihadis exported by Pakistan’s military and intelligence officials to fight in

Kashmir generated stark backlash from India and resulted in escalations of war that repeat up to this day. India in turn refuses to negotiate a settlement with Pakistan claiming such deals could not be made since Pakistan continues to promote terrorism and anti-Indian sentiment in the region.

Therefore, Pakistan always viewed its efforts in Afghanistan through the prism of its never-ending conflict with India. The United States did not share this concern and so its purposes in Afghanistan would divert with Pakistan eventually. After the September 11th attacks against

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Americans in 2001, Pakistan and the United States worked closely in Afghanistan but now faced issues regarding who is an enemy and who is a friend. Pakistan continued to support the Taliban in the region even after the Americans declared them an enemy for protecting the terrorists that committed the acts of 9/11—Al-Qaeda. Pakistan played a double game that resulted in a blowback of internal pressure and homegrown militancy spurring an increase in suicide attacks on Pakistani soil against its own citizens. It also resulted in international condemnation and a deterioration of relations with the United States culminating in the end of all U.S. foreign assistance to Pakistan in 2017.

With Pakistan and the United States pursuing such different policies in Afghanistan, ever since the late 1980s, one questions how the alliance was kept intact for so long when their respective policies were often working against each other. Looking at the periods of settling the

Mujahedeen-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war, and the subsequent War on Terror, one can analyze the nature of how U.S.-Pakistani efforts diverged. In this analysis, my research questions beg to ask how much the United States-Pakistan alliance is based on institutional principles/policy goals versus it being based on actions by major players in either country? Why did the U.S.-Pakistani strategy favor warlords and regional leaders in Afghanistan sometimes at a disadvantage of the elected Afghan government? Is the U.S. warlord policy comparable to the

Taliban policy enacted by Pakistan?

The findings largely indicate that major players in the alliance have repeatedly overrode efforts initiated by policy goals that were set by institutions. These major players varied in the positions they held within the American and Pakistani governments and were still able to guide policy in a direction that benefited their own agendas even if civilians and lawmakers protested at home. As a result of policy being dictated largely by major players, the United States’ Afghan

5 policy drifted towards supporting regional warlords just as Pakistan was empowering the

Taliban. When the United States gave the warlords support and unbridled monetary funds, they would prove to be just as ruthless as the Taliban in the areas they conquered.

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II. Political Settlement of the Mujahedeen War

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan during the 1980s was primarily led by the intelligence agencies of both countries and key leaders within them. Institutional principles and policy goals directed at ending the war and establishing a new independent government in Kabul were forced to take a backseat as the CIA asserted its military campaign that attempted to install a Pakistan proxy as the new head of state. This alliance between the

Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) failed to politically settle the Soviet-Mujahedeen War while managing to stifle diplomatic strategies proposed by

American Congressmen, Pakistani civilian leaders, and secular Afghan commanders. Despite the efforts of the State Department and the newly elected civilian government in Pakistan, major actors such as Milton Bearden, Robert Oakley, and General Hamid Gul were able to pursue efforts in Afghanistan that ignored policy directives aiming for a broad political solution. The settlement of the mujahedeen war was thus never accomplished, a goal set by the UN-mandated

Geneva Accords and ratified by the United States in 1988, because key players in both Pakistan and the United States were able to command foreign policy even as there was considerable opposition within their respective governments.

The active efforts of leading CIA officers to misguide official US policy are evident in scenarios that involved an untimely dismissal of a US special envoy and the rejection of an inter- agency effort to establish a more representative government than the one Pakistan’s intelligence had produced. The same can be said of military leaders in Pakistan, General Aslam Beg and intelligence director General Hamid Gul, who created an opposition force against Prime Minister

Bhutto in parliament and commanded the Afghan policy without civilian leaders’ permission.

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Afghan Self-Determination

United States’ institutional principles and policy goals were reiterated by President

George H.W. Bush once he renewed the CIA covert policy in Afghanistan after he was inaugurated in 1989. He adjusted the objectives to promote “self-determination” for Afghan people now that the Soviet military had withdrawn from the country, an adjustment that ushered in a new discussion about American policy aims and practical steps to take.2 The adjustments were not totally new, as the previous administration’s Secretary of State George Shultz stated publicly “it will be important for all concerned to assist the Afghans in their efforts to establish a government which reflects the will of the Afghan people. The present regime does not do so, and we cannot regard it as legitimate.”3 Now the new policy specifically asserted those goals for the

United States and its mission in Afghanistan.

Congressional leaders backed the new policy objectives fervently and even travelled to

Afghanistan and Pakistan to create intelligence reports with serious operational suggestions.4

Senators Claiborne Pell, Gordan Humphrey, Robert Dole, Robert Byrd and House

Representatives Charlie Wilson, Don Ritter, and Dana Rohrabacher promoted the campaign in

Washington to secure true Afghan self-determination through political negotiations rather than purely military efforts.5 This policy matched the interests of powerful Mujahedeen commanders such as independent Pashtun commander Abdul Haq and the head of the Northern Alliance

2 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 195. 3 U.S. Dept. of State, Agreements on Afghanistan (Washington D.C, 1988), 2 4 Claiborne Pell, Stalemate in Afghanistan, Democracy in Pakistan, October 1, 1989: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate (Washington D.C., 1990). 5 Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 270.

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Ahmed Shah Massoud, and leaders like Benazir Bhutto and Yaqub Khan in the newly elected parliament of Pakistan.

Head of the Afghan task force Frank Anderson and the CIA Near East Division, however, felt that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies should spearhead Afghan politics even if that meant

Pakistani hegemony over the new government in Kabul. It should not concern America if

Pakistan installed their client Hekmatyar in Kabul, certain officers at the CIA felt. This sentiment was especially shared by CIA’s Islamabad station chief Milton Bearden who believed that the

United States’ involvement in the region should be over once the communist PDPA government fell. He expressed years later in an interview with journalist Steve Coll, “Did we really give a shit about the long-term future of Nangahar? Maybe not. As it turned out, guess what? We didn’t.”6 Yet Frank Anderson and Milton Bearden failed to deliver on the policy objective laid out by numerous State Department, Congressional officials, and the George H.W. Bush administration itself. For the CIA to support ISI proxy Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as the head of state in Kabul would mean that the US Afghan policy was misguided to match those objectives of the

Pakistani Army.

Senators Gordon Humphry and Claiborne Pell were some of the most influential figures who began to question the CIA-ISI relationship and their support for Hekmatyar. To them, it most certainly mattered if Pakistan was able to install Hekmatyar as a head of state in the region.

A special National Intelligence Estimate, “USSR: Withdrawal from Afghanistan,” found that the regime that would replace Najibullah’s government would likely be Islamist-based with a moderate to openly hostile attitude towards the United States.7 State Department officials

6 Coll, Ghost Wars, 173-176. 7 Central Intelligence Agency. USSR: Withdrawal From Afghanistan. Langley, VA: CIA, 2013 (SNIE 11137-88)

9 criticized how the CIA could predict a hostile government in Afghanistan and yet continued to support Hekmatyar without any clampdowns on his party Hezb-e Islami’s increased anti-

Americanism.8

The differences of opinion on Hekmatyar and U.S. collaboration with Pakistani intelligence in 1989 was further represented by the scathing report developed by U.S. Special

Envoy to Afghanistan Edmund McWilliams. It is in episodes like these where one can analyze how different institutions in the American government disagreed so strongly with its major players who participated directly in the US-Pakistan alliance, and how it is these players who were able to avoid compromise to push one agenda. Milton Bearden’s power to interpret US policy and guide it towards actions that would complement Pakistan’s own strategic interests is indicative of how much the US-Pakistan relationship was charged by key players within both countries rather than the policy objectives laid out by its state institutions. The newfound suspicion and disagreement shown by members of Congress and the State Department about the settlement of the war culminated in the appointment of Edmund McWilliams as he was tasked to report independently about the war and analyze US policy. McWilliams began his analysis in

1988 by personally meeting all actors involved in the Afghan war, the Peshawar Seven that made up the AIG, Mujahedeen commanders that rejected the AIG (Haq, Massoud, and others), political refugees in Peshawar, and many Pashtuns in Pakistan’s tribal areas and southern

Afghanistan.9

The special envoy’s scathing report on the ISI and Guldbuddin Hekmatyar claimed that

CIA support for them had caused “growing frustration, bordering on hostility, among Afghans

8 Coll, Ghost Wars, 172-173. 9 Coll, Ghost Wars, 180-182.

10 across the ideological spectrum and from a broad range of backgrounds, towards the government of Pakistan and towards the U.S. […] the extent of this sentiment appears unprecedented and intensifying.”10 McWilliams reported that the ISI paid off lesser Afghan commanders in

Nangahar to defect to Hekmatyar, or withheld crucial aid if they refused to do so; all with the money provided by the CIA. At the same time, McWilliams found that Hekmatyar’s forces had systematically killed other mujahedeen commanders and threatened any sort of compromise with other strong Afghan commanders such as Ahmed Shah Massoud, with whom Hekmatyar had a stalwart rival.

McWilliams also reported how the Afghan Interim Government (AIG), created by

Pakistani and Saudi intelligence through coercion, was merely a paper cabinet meant to take hold of possible political seats in the cities that ISI and their Islamist militants hoped to capture. He noted that Hekmatyar’s hatred among the ethnic Pashtuns was so strong that even if he was successfully placed as head of state, he would not be able to hold power among the Pashtuns or the Tajik. In essence, McWilliams found the promotion of Hekmatyar and the AIG as the opposite of fighting for Afghan self-determination. In a cable sent through the State

Department’s Dissent Channel, McWilliams wrote that the AIG was “the wrong vehicle to advance the entirely correct U.S. policy objective of achieving a genuinely representative Afghan government through Afghan self-determination.”11 The Dissent Channel is a serious policy channel meant for U.S. career diplomats to express their constructive disagreement with U.S. policy or its management and McWilliams’ use of it prompted officials to review the situation.

The State Department’s intelligence bureau endorsed McWilliams, and its midlevel bureaucrats

10 McWilliams to State, “ISI, Gulbuddin and Afghan Self-Determination,” October 1988, quoted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 183 11 Coll, Ghost Wars, 196.

11 openly began to challenge the active CIA policy in the region. He had more supporters in

Congress as well. Cries to support a more credible, representative Afghan government grew louder in Washington as the military failures of the CIA-ISI-Hekmatyar triad mounted one after another in 1989.12

Senator Claiborne Pell met with Benazir Bhutto and members of her government as well as the constituents of the AIG around August of 1989. His report expresses his disagreement with the United States commitment to the AIG, finding it to be unrepresentative and unstable.

Pell makes it clear that “the alternative to the PDPA—the Afghan Interim Government (AIG) of the resistance—does not seem to have enough military clout or political support to oust the

PDPA. The AIG is rent by internal dissention and has failed to win the support of large segments of the anti-communist Afghan community.” Pell was certain that the AIG would not be a feasible replacement government for when the PDPA falls because neither side will be able to settle peacefully, and the AIG itself couldn’t hold together as the Afghan commanders inside the country (Ahmed Shah Massoud, Abdul Haq, etc.) who hold the “real power in the country, by in large did not participate in the Pakistani-sponsored shura (consultative council) that set up the

AIG.”13

Pell was just another voice in the matrix of those in Washington who did not understand the complexities of Afghan politics and Pakistan’s regional influence, Milton Bearden felt.

Bearden was furious at McWilliams, whom he called “that little shit” for exposing the CIA and cut him off from sensitive agency reporting. Ambassador Robert Oakley also began kicking him out of delegation meetings, even telling McWilliams to “shut up” in one instance, to the shock of

12 Coll, Ghost Wars, 195. 13 Pell, C. “Stalemate in Afghanistan, democracy in Pakistan, October 1, 1989: a report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.”, report, Washington D.C. p 5-7.

12 many officials in the room who reported the episode back to Senator Humphrey.14 Although it was not directly the CIA that had Edmund McWilliams removed, Milton Bearden shared a close relationship with Robert Oakley and managed to convince him that McWilliams’ dissenting reports were doing damage to CIA’s operation in the effort to end US involvement in the war. In an effort to undermine the special envoy, Bearden and Oakley launched a futile investigation into

McWilliam’s possible homosexuality and/or drinking habits to somehow discredit his cables to

Washington that criticized CIA’s support for ISI policy in Afghanistan. Once the investigation failed to provide any evidence of unacceptable behaviors by McWilliams, Oakley found an opportunity that allowed him to transfer McWilliams out of Islamabad and back to Washington for good.15 Even as McWilliams was able to get endorsement from the State Department, members in the Senate, and even the British intelligence officers who worked on Afghanistan,

Milton Bearden and the CIA’s connection to the ISI and Pakistani intelligence almost exclusively guided US policy in Afghanistan.

As many at Capitol Hill expressed dissent from CIA action in Afghanistan and pushed for a change, Milton Bearden and the CIA continued its curious support for ISI-Hekmatyar’s advance on Kabul. Despite reservations of civilian institutions in his own country, Bearden was convinced that the opportunity Pakistan’s intelligence chief presented was the only effective option to bring down Najibullah’s communist government.16 ISI chief Hamid Gul put together the Afghan Interim Government by twisting arms using funds provided by Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency GID to spread money until the consultative Afghan shura decided on a government suitable for Pakistan’s intelligence officers and one that was easy to manipulate.17

14 Coll, Ghost Wars, 183. 15 Coll, Ghost Wars, 184, 199. 16 Coll, Ghost Wars, 197-198. 17 Coll, Ghost Wars, 191.

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Gul argued to the Americans that, though not everyone was satisfied with the outcome of its cabinet, the AIG was needed as a political resolution for when the rebels took Jalalabad and

Kabul. CIA leaders seemed to be on board with such an excuse. Gul’s was not an attempt to secure an early representative government as he argues, but rather was a proxy constructed with the hopes of dominating other political factions in Afghanistan. Essentially, the Pakistani military was not in favor of a political settlement between Najibullah, Zahir Shah, various rebel commanders, and especially Ahmed Shah Massoud. Rather, Hamid Gul and Pakistani intelligence favored a military solution; forcibly toppling the PDPA government while installing its own carefully crafted Afghan interim government.18

The Military Solution

The CIA, especially Bearden and those at the Near East Division, also favored the military solution that fell in line with Hamid Gul’s plan to establish a pro-Pakistan proxy in the capital of Afghanistan. Institutional efforts and policy objectives outlined in the 1988 Geneva

Accords aimed for true Afghan self-determination but were forcefully overshadowed by leaders in the CIA-ISI campaign that wished to put Hekmatyar and a puppet interim government in place.19

The 1989 Jalalabad assault was one such instance where the CIA proved it had overridden the policy objectives defined by the State Department and was now simply helping

Pakistan achieve its interests in the region. The Jalalabad assault featured the CIA aiding an ISI led coalition of fundamentalist mujahedeen forces that fought the PDPA’s Afghan army. The

18 Coll, Ghost Wars, 192-193. 19 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs. “Agreements on Afghanistan”. Washington, D.C: Bureau of Public Affairs, 1988.

14 goal was to win the region and give Hekmatyar and the Pakistan proxy AIG government a foothold on the rebellion against the PDPA in Afghanistan, yet the mission failed and dissent within both Pakistan and the United States grew louder.20

Pakistan’s new civilian parliament was now in place and shared power with its formidable military and intelligence officials. Benazir Bhutto’s government was elected in 1988 and she became the first female prime minister of a modern Muslim state as well as the first elected leader of Pakistan after Zia Ul-Haq’s martial law. Even though Bhutto had given up most foreign policy powers regarding Afghanistan to her army and the ISI, she was nonetheless furious at the failure of Jalalabad and fired Hamid Gul as ISI chief.21 Shortly before the assault,

Hamid Gul explained to Bhutto in a meeting with ISI and Pakistani civilian leaders that Jalalabad would fall in one week if she is prepared for a “degree of bloodshed.” Since the plan to assault

Jalalabad was already in place and Gul’s forceful promises were agreeable with US Ambassador

Robert Oakley at the time, I would suggest that Benazir Bhutto agreed to this assault on eastern

Afghanistan hesitantly. She recalled in an interview in 2002 that she tried to appease the ISI when she first came to power.22 She also revealed, after her dismissal from office, that she wanted to pursue peaceful political solutions in Afghanistan personally but had to appease ISI’s military wish to take Kabul “as conquerors.”23 Even her advisor Iqbal Akhund and her foreign minister, Yaqub Khan, told the ISI officials at the meeting that the interim government that

Hamid Gul constructed needs to prove itself first.24 It had failed to do so.

20 Coll, Ghost Wars, 192-196. 21 Saeed Shafqat, Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan (Boulder, 1997), 227. 22 Bhutto, Benazir. Interview on May 5, 2002. The possibility that she fired Gul specifically because of the failure of the Jalalabad assault comes from Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan, The Bear Trap: Defeat of a Superpower (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2001), 235-240. 23 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 292. 24 Coll, Ghost Wars, 192.

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Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s dismissal of General Hamid Gul as the director of the

ISI was her display of force and political autonomy in Pakistan. However, it was more representative of which actors and institutions truly controlled Pakistan’s Afghan policy. Bhutto fired Gul on May 31, 1989 and overrode the chief of army General Aslam Beg to appoint a new successor to the position. General Beg, the true director of Afghan policy regardless of efforts made by Pakistan’s civilian government, sabotaged Bhutto’s change in Pakistan’s military direction by emasculating her successor to the position of ISI director, Shamsur Kallue, by making all ISI subordinates report to Beg instead of Kallue. Beg also gave Hamid Gul a corps command in Punjab and kept him appointed as “special advisor” so he may continue his hand in the war in Afghanistan.25 This power-play is indicative of the Pakistani army’s supreme hold on foreign policy even as a new civilian government occupied Islamabad.

The situation paralleled in Washington as Congress tried to check the CIA by appointing

Edmund McWilliams only to have him dismissed by Milton Bearden. Yet, the decision of the

CIA and ISI to sideline Abdul Haq and Ahmed Shah Massoud in their efforts to support a nonrepresentative interim government was challenged once more by Congress after McWilliams’ dismissal. Secretary of State James Baker finally granted the special envoy an ambassadorial- level designation that gave the position more authority than when Edmund McWilliams was special envoy; the new designation would be on par with that of Ambassador Oakley.26 The new special envoy and Ambassador to the Mujahedeen, Peter Tomsen, set up a fresh interagency

Afghan working group in Washington to thoroughly review the U.S. covert policy in

Afghanistan and found many of the same issues his predecessor McWilliams had uncovered.27

25 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 291. 26 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 270-271; also noted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 205 27 Coll, Ghost Wars, 206-208.

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The group included chief of the CIA Near East Division Thomas Twetten, National

Security Council’s Richard Haass, as well as delegates from the Pentagon and State Department.

They produced a new two-track policy finalized by Tomsen himself. One track would be to pursue political negotiations that sidelined Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf by working with the UN, the Soviet Union, the civilian government in Pakistan, former King Zahir

Shah supporters, and moderate Afghan commanders Haq, Massoud, and Ismael Khan in order to create a more moderate, broad-based representative government for Afghanistan. The other track would be to continue military pressure on Najibullah’s PDPA government in Kabul, so they may cease their hold on the capital and give into the political negotiations.28

The Islamabad station chief and other CIA leaders did continue to pursue the military track yet refused to sideline Hekmatyar and the fundamentalist commanders. In a large presentation to Pakistan’s foreign ministry diplomats, CIA leaders and members of the ISI, Peter

Tomsen introduced the new two-track US policy initiative that he and others had agreed upon back in Washington. The presentation was well received, especially by the diplomats and

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Yaqub Khan, who had long been advocating a resettlement plan involving the Zahir Shah option. Only a few hours later, Tomsen was told by the CIA Islamabad

Station Chief that the plan to include the exiled king would have to be cancelled.29 According to

Tomsen, and relaying reporting in Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, Thomas Twetten had complained directly to the Under Secretary of State Robert Kimmitt that pursuing the exiled king option would only anger and isolate the warlord Hekmatyar while he and ISI prepared for an early 1990

28 Coll, Ghost Wars, 206-208 29 Ibid, 208-209.

17 offensive against Kabul.30 Tomsen was furious as the whole point of the new policy initiative was to sharply disconnect from warlords like Hekmatyar.

The new two-track U.S. policy on Afghanistan was thus misguided once again. This time by CIA’s Thomas Twetten and the successor to Bearden’s post as Islamabad Station Chief

“Bill/Harry” (pseudonyms as his identity was never disclosed), who were the ones who urged

Kimmitt that the Zahir Shah option would compromise the assault that the ISI were planning in early 1990.31 Tomsen declared that he and Kimmitt were always in agreement, that they knew this military offensive would prove to be a failure like the one in Jalalabad previously. Kimmitt told Tomsen that if he did not let CIA stall the Zahir Shah political option, then the eventual failure of the next assault would inevitably be blamed on the State Department for they would not have heeded the CIA warning. Kimmitt explained to the ambassador that it was better to stop the political discussion at the behest of the CIA, so that they would have no one to blame when the assault failed.32 Kimmitt’s willingness to allow the CIA to continue pursuing its own competing agenda, even if he believed they would fail, is not only indicative of the State

Department’s divergence with the CIA strategy but also reveals how major players act in their own interests as opposed to implementing stated U.S. policy. Indeed, as Kimmitt predicted, the

March 1990 assault on Kabul proved to be another failure of the CIA backed ISI-Hekmatyar agenda in Afghanistan.33

The Tanai Coup, as the assault on March 6th was aptly named, was the plan for Defense

Minister of Najibullah’s army Shahnawaz Tanai to defect from the army and forcefully open a

30 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 349; Coll, Ghost Wars, 210. 31 Coll, Ghost Wars, 210-211. 32 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 349, 357. 33 Steve Coll, “In Afghanistan, Dinner and Then a Coup." The New Yorker, November 28, 2012

18 path for Hekmatyar and his personal “Army of Sacrifice” to come take the capital. The assault was crafted by Pakistan military intelligence and a lesser-known Saudi Islamist funder named

Osama bin Laden who was just establishing Al-Qaeda as an organization that promoted Islamist jihad campaigns worldwide.34 The effort was part of a secret grand scheme to pull off two coups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani intelligence aims coincided with those of Osama bin

Laden, to oust both Najibullah and Benazir Bhutto from their respective positions of power.

Steve Coll describes this as “the first step in a Pakistan army plan to remove her forcibly from office.”35 Leaders in the army, Generals Beg and Gul, could no longer tolerate the elected civilian government and specifically asked bin Laden to bribe parliament legislators to produce a no-confidence vote that would throw Benazir Bhutto out of office so the generals could then get a more compliant Prime Minister in August 1990. The Islamists and bin Laden viewed Bhutto and Najibullah as “enemies of Islam,” perhaps a different motive than the Pakistan army’s own but at least a force that shared the same end goals.36

The failure of a grandiose double coup attempted by the Islamists and covertly by the

Pakistan army was exactly the kind of aggressive military propulsion of which members of

Congress, the State Department, and especially Benazir Bhutto’s parliament were extremely afraid. Peter Tomsen and many others in the Afghan policy group had reviewed U.S. policy to specifically push for a prevention of such a disaster by withdrawing any support for Hekmatyar and radical Islamist dominated commanders. Once again, an ill-fated assault on Najibullah’s government occurred due to the misguidance of just a few individuals over the policies and principles laid out by Pakistani and American state institutions. Although Washington publicly

34 Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 253. 35 Coll, Ghost Wars, 212. 36 Ibid.

19 denied any such involvement in the failed coup in Kabul, the CIA station chief “Harry” did warn

Tomsen and Kimmitt not to upset the ISI before its assault in early 1990, indicating his support for such an endeavor. On top of that, journalists Steve Coll and James Rupert asserted that their sources claimed there was an attempt by the United States to urge Mujahedeen agents to attack on Kabul simultaneously with Hekmatyar’s forces.37

I favor this view, as the CIA did organize attacks on Najibullah’s supply routes and cities throughout the country only months before the Tanai Coup attempt. The CIA payed the ISI to conduct missions leading rebels in Khost and Kabul, supplied Hekmatyar with rockets to bomb

Bagram airport near Kabul, and even paid Ahmed Shah Massoud half a million US dollars to attack the Salang Highway near the border of northern Afghanistan.38 This CIA offensive in the first few months of 1990 seemed to be a military prelude designed to weaken Najibullah’s army to support the forthcoming Hekmatyar and Tanai coup attempt. That Washington would declare

CIA’s offensive as having nothing to do with the Tanai coup could suggest an unwillingness to admit to another misguidance of U.S. objectives. Support for the two-track policy had become popular at Capitol Hill by 1990 with even the George H.W. Bush administration.39 Since his inauguration, the senior Bush and his administration was predominately focused on the reunification of Germany, signaled by the Berlin Wall’s destruction in late 1989, and the deterioration of the Soviet Union. Afghanistan became a “third-tier foreign policy issue” and there was an overall assessment among state diplomats and congressional leaders that the White

House was generally apathetic as to what occurred in Afghanistan.40

37 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 365-366; see also Steve Coll and James Rupert, “Afghan Rebels Reject Offensive; Pakistan backed by U.S., Tried to Press Guerillas into Action,” Washington Post. March 17, 1990. 38 Coll, Ghost Wars, 211. 39 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 357. 40 Coll, Ghost Wars, 217.

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However, by 1990, Tomsen’s two-track policy appealed to the administration’s main

Afghan policy director, Undersecretary of State Robert Kimmitt, who finally gave Tomsen the approval to open talks with Zahir Shah and to command a shura that would elect a more moderate, friendly government to replace the AIG. The March Tanai coup attempt pushed

American skepticism about Pakistani intelligence over the edge. From about October 1989 to

October of the following year, Congress cut sixty percent of the funds that were allocated for

CIA’s covert Afghan policy.41 The CIA was simply not achieving the goals set out by the interagency team and the Bush administration, in Congress’ view. Ambassador Robert Oakley changed his perspective as mounting evidence of anti-Americanism within AIG head commanders grew. Oakley, too, began to feel that the CIA had chosen a wrong path by appeasing Pakistani intelligence, and even denounced the ISI as “a rogue elephant” marking a sharp change in attitude towards the Pakistani intelligence bureau than he had during Ed

McWilliams’ time as special envoy.42

Tomsen’s shura was the last-ditch effort by the U.S. administration to apply a sound policy that could create a government in Kabul modeled after true Afghan self-determination and end U.S. involvement in the region once and for all. Even the CIA was in favor of the idea of a fresh commander’s shura to bring about a more acceptable government; they approved the plan without any more stalls.43 Tomsen set up National Commanders Shura that amassed hundreds of prominent Afghan commanders in its conferences, many of which were Pashtun, but the conference also included Hazaras, Uzbek, Turkmen, and some Tajik commanders as well. The shura also bridged the gap between Shias and Sunnis (which was a large problem within the

41 Coll, Ghost Wars, 216. 42 Ibid, 219. 43 Ibid, 227.

21

AIG) by making sure a large portion of the representing commanders—about fifteen percent— were Shia.44 It was not only an effort by the U.S. State Department, but also of the Saudi intelligence arm GID and the Pakistani intelligence community. While leaders in the ISI did not want to forfeit their proxy AIG faction from becoming the leading government in Kabul, the ISI figured it may have more influence in determining the shura’s outcomes if it was allowed to fund it and participate.45

The National Commanders Shura saw enemies of the CIA-ISI alliance gain considerable political clout. Abdul Haq, a prominent Afghan commander from the early days of the anti-

Soviet jihad and a popular figure among ethnic Pashtuns, had become the de facto leader of the shuras set up by Tomsen. Haq was a moderate but also vehemently independent.46 He earned the

CIA’s scorn in the days of station chief Milton Bearden who cut off all aid and unilateral contact from Haq and ridiculed him as “Hollywood Haq” after his media campaign exposed how the

CIA-ISI funding of Hekmatyar and Sayyaf was dividing Afghan Mujahedeen commanders.47

Haq had also always been vocal about his own denouncement of the ISI and their attempts to influence Afghan politics, attempts that breached the Afghan people’s sovereignty Haq believed.

The new ISI chief, Asad Durrani, attended the shuras but was never allowed inside a meeting. He found it harder and harder to influence the growing independents that backed Abdul Haq.

Hekmatyar was banned from attending and Abdul Rasul Sayyaff ordered a boycott of the delegation.48

44 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 403. 45 Coll, Ghost Wars, 219-220. 46 Afghan Warrior: Life and Death of Abdul Haq, directed by Malcolm Brinkworth, aired February 18, 2004 (London: BBC Documentaries, 2004) 47 Ibid; also Coll, Ghost Wars, 167. 48 Coll, Ghost Wars, 219.

22

Decline of U.S. Involvement

The leading generals of Pakistan were in a phase of anxiety and uncertainty as the

National Commanders Shura had procured their perceived enemies, Haq and Massoud, political victory.49 It was also clear that the U.S. was rapidly devolving itself from the situation in

Afghanistan and losing interest in its partner Pakistan. The ISI and CIA’s relationship was also steadily declining. CIA’s budget shrunk at an alarming rate making the Gulf states the largest contributor of aid to Pakistan. ISI chief Asad Durrani also learned of the secret direct payment that the CIA had made to Massoud which was another reason for Pakistan to defer fully to the

Islamist-Hekmatyar cause.50 The CIA itself as an institution was clearly moving away from its alliance with the ISI, especially once a new CIA finding of increased nuclear bomb-making activity in Pakistan triggered the Pressler Amendment which effectively ended all U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan. This was a major betrayal in the eyes of many Pakistanis.51

The disintegration of the United States-Pakistan alliance proved to be the catalyst for another major policy decision take-over by key figures in the Pakistan army. General Mirza

Aslam Beg ordered the President of Pakistan remove Bhutto from office on charges of corruption and abuses of power.52 But the dismissal was likely contributed by the shura’s growing independence, the CIA’s new perceived partnership with Ahmed Shah Massoud, and United

States opening talks with Zahir Shah which was always seen as a goal pursued by Bhutto and her foreign minister. The dismissal is characteristic of the Pakistan army’s unwillingness to allow a civilian government to ever carry out its parliamentary terms. It suggests that only figures in the

49 Tomsen, The Wars in Afghanistan, 403-407. 50 Coll, Ghost Wars, 227-230. 51 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 310. 52 Shafqat, Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan, 235.

23 army and its intelligence wing, the ISI, that wield considerable power among its constituency can operate Pakistan’s foreign policy on Afghanistan. Bhutto had placed her own man in the seat of

ISI director, yet her pick General Killue, was not able to use his institutional powers to operate any part of the ISI even as he was its head. His resignation came after he realized that all of his powers were subverted by General Beg and that the former ISI chief Hamid Gul still had a guiding hand in the policy that Beg was pursuing.

It seemed now to Peter Tomsen and other diplomats that the CIA was finally willing to pursue the State Department policy on Afghanistan whole-heartedly. However, Tomsen was shocked to learn that another Tanai-Hekmatyar coup had been planned, likely as an anxious ISI response to fading U.S. involvement and partnership in the region. Tomsen was told of this

“Tanai Two” attempt by CIA Islamabad station chief “Harry” who explicitly told Tomsen that he planned to back Hekmatyar by supplying him with rockets.53 The U.S. was now pursuing two completely separate Afghan policies that were directly at odds with each other. Tomsen’s policy for years had been to cut off all aid to Hekmatyar, yet the station chief still expected to carry out military objectives outlined by Pakistan’s intelligence network.

Tanai Two was not kept secret for long. As intel poured into all factions about ISI’s plan to repeatedly launch rockets into Kabul until Najibullah gave in, Mujahedeen commanders declared openly that this had to be stopped as the civilian casualties in Kabul would be unprecedented and the move would spark a civil war with the northern forces commanded by

Massoud.54 Tomsen heard the denouncements of this Kabul assault all throughout his

Mujahedeen contacts. Even members within the AIG, Sayyaf and Khalis, were opposed to

53 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 407-410. 54 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 407.

24

Hekmatyar’s bloody taking of the capital. Tomsen sent cables back to Washington, warning of the severe consequences that would occur if this assault was allowed to happen.55 US

Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley intercepted the messages and forced General Durrani to call off the attacks at the last second by using warnings of the “gravest consequences for

American-Pakistani relations” if he went ahead with the assault.56

The CIA-ISI partnership had dismissed Abdul Haq’s widespread effort to form a Pashtun alliance against the PDPA, they distrusted Ahmed Shah Massoud and his coalition of commanders from the north, and they had discredited the efforts of State Department and

Congressional officials who feared true Afghan self-determination would be stymied by Pakistan hegemony in the region. Institutional pressures from within the United States government eventually aimed to fix the misguidance of U.S. policy by the CIA after the multiple ISI led assaults on Kabul proved to be a failure. This maneuver finally opened talks with the U.S. and the Zahir Shah supporters in Rome as well as the popular Pashtun commander Abdul Haq; both opportunities had been previously thwarted by certain leading CIA figures at the time. Within

Pakistan, institutional pressure from Benazir Bhutto, Yaqub Khan, and Iqbal Akund were met with a stifling of civilian governmental powers and a dismissal of the Prime Minister.

The insistence of certain players in the United States to continue the operational relationship with the ISI, such as the CIA Islamabad station chief, even after the rest of the CIA had fallen in line with State Department objectives, can represent how much the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is affected by major players that operate within the alliance. The failures of the assault on Jalalabad and the two assaults on Kabul increasingly

55 Coll, Ghost Wars, 232-233; Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 409-410. 56 Coll, Ghost Wars, 219.

25 forced congressional leaders and ambassadors to reassess the CIA’s role in Afghanistan and what should be done to achieve U.S. objectives. It caused the Bush administration to slowly heed to

Peter Tomsen and the State Department’s demands that support for Hekmatyar and other radicals in the Mujahedeen leadership had to be thwarted. However, the State Department’s policy itself was never achieved either, because once it had been recognized and moved into a higher priority than the CIA’s own policy, the Bush administration decided it was time to withdraw all political and military efforts in Afghanistan and merely leave it to the Pakistanis.

26

III. The Emergence of the Taliban and the Lack of U.S. Policy

The most prominent international relations concern for the United States since the end of

World War II, the Soviet Union, had vanished entirely by 1991. The demise of America’s greatest geopolitical enemy provided a fresh review of foreign policy principles for South Asia and signaled the end of bilateral support from both superpowers for all factions fighting in

Afghanistan. The Bush administration had to now pursue a “hands off” policy regarding

Afghanistan since the goal of full Soviet withdrawal had been achieved and covert action officially ended.57 The United States would abandon South Asia altogether as the Afghan civil war began while Pakistan, feeling betrayed, still considered the struggle over Kabul of major significance to its own national interests.

Islamic fundamentalist parties such as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) actively supported the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir.58 The Pakistan army would in turn empower these

Islamist parties so that they could pursue a policy of using militants generated by the fundamentalist-controlled madrassas. Both the army and the fundamentalist groups would sideline the nascent civilian governments—led by Benazir Bhutto and then Nawaz Sharif—for their phasedown of military conflicts and efforts to improve relations with India. Once both countries tested nuclear weapons by 1998, tensions between the South Asian neighbors raised to an all-time high. In its seemingly eternal struggle against India, the Pakistan army needed a government in Kabul that would support insurgencies in Kashmir and provide a military alliance

57 Coll, Ghost Wars, 232. 58 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 534.

27 against any Indian aggression—both things that Ahmed Shah Massoud was not likely to do as an independent Afghan nationalist.59

Shifting Foreign Policy Concerns in the 1990s

The United States’ foreign policy institutions began to redirect their focus on rapidly emerging issues like the humanitarian disaster in Somalia, the Persian Gulf Crisis, Arab-Israeli mediation, and other post-Cold War issues, which largely left Pakistan and Afghanistan behind on America’s list of priorities. The Pakistan relationship suffered even more as President George

H.W. Bush reluctantly unauthorized the Pressler amendment certification that allowed for continual U.S. aid to Pakistan. The Pressler amendment was a law passed in 1985 that was a product of Congress’ effort to cut all military and economic aid to Pakistan for their clandestine nuclear weapons program, yet, the U.S. president maintained the ability to sign a certification to bypass the law if Pakistan had shown signs of cooperation. Bush’s inability to allow aid to continue is a sign of the growing institutional policy power at a time where there were no special interests shared by particular relationships within the US-Pakistan alliance.

There was no Ronald Raegan-Zia Ul-Haq relationship anymore that could override

Congress’ demands, nor was there a Milton Bearden nor William Casey to skew the CIA towards such special agendas. By 1991, the White House had almost no special foreign policy interest in

Pakistan or Afghanistan at all to warrant challenging Congress’ demands. One of Bush’s national security advisors said that the president was “genuinely sad” about allowing the sanctions to be imposed yet he had no option but to go with the interagency recommendation.60 His reluctance

59 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (New York: Viking, 2008), 41. 60 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 308.

28 was also evident in the efforts of the administration to delay the sanctions in order to negotiate a plan to continue aid if Pakistan destroyed certain core reactors, however, when Pakistani politicians engaged in this dialogue they found that the United States “had about as much interest in Pakistan as Pakistan had in the Maldives.” And the talks died relatively fast.61

While Kabul was left to be desecrated and split by the encroaching mujahedeen warlords,

Pakistan’s army allowed Benazir Bhutto to return and participate in semi-legitimate elections in late 1993 albeit with significant restrictions placed on the prime minister’s position.62 As she came into office, Bhutto’s new strategy was to keep a watch on the ISI and appease the Pakistan army as much as possible as to be able to produce alternate policies that could serve broader agendas. The prime minster had an innovative vision of Central Asian trade that would open up western consumer products, cotton, and oil pipelines to and from the newly open markets of the independent Muslim republics that used to be dominated by the Soviet Union. For an ISI that was working unsuccessfully to place Hekmatyar as the power head in Kabul, Bhutto proposed a new Afghan policy: build roads and infrastructure through Kandahar and Herat, bypassing

Kabul, and empower local Pashtun warlords so they can control a free commercial passage through southern Afghanistan for Pakistan.63 Bhutto’s plan was to ultimately cut Kabul out of the strategic picture completely as it wasn’t needed for the supply routes. The ISI adopted her efforts but continued the pressure against Massoud with Hekmatyar’s forces.64

Bhutto’s policy fell in line with the Pakistan military institutions’ grand strategy of establishing a pro-Pakistan government in Afghanistan that would tilt the regional power balance

61 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 315. 62 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 345-346. 63 Coll, Ghost Wars, 291. 64 Ibid.

29 of South Asia away from India. The army was also getting increasingly frustrated with

Hekmatyar and the Islamists losses in Afghanistan, Massoud had taken the capital early and the power struggle between the two opposing factions resulted in a fractured, ineffectual government unable to stop the fighting. The Afghan Interim Government (AIG) leaders tried to appease the commanders by giving Hekmatyar the position of Prime Minister and Massoud the position of

Defense Minister in their new government, but Hekmatyar would not relent.65 Now that Kabul was in a bloody deadlock, the countryside was left to be plagued by rampant heroin production, routine theft, and intra-faction rivalries.66 The revulsion experienced by rural Pashtuns for such injustices would produce a movement in Kandahar that gave birth to a new militancy group— the Taliban— that would suit Bhutto and her army’s larger geopolitical South Asian strategy.67

Various players found the Taliban, led by the one-eyed mujahedeen Mullah Mohammed

Omar, as a force that shared synonymous security, commercial, and ideological interests in the region. The Saudis and Pakistanis openly began to fund the movement once their former client

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar remained determined to bomb Kabul from its outskirts until Massoud gave in, perpetuating a gruesome civil war even when other Islamists factions were ready to settle with Massoud politically.68 Around ten thousand Afghan civilians would die in the first year of Massoud’s and Hekmatyar’s struggle over Kabul.69 Hekmatyar also proselytized a growing anti-Saudi sentiment for the American involvement in the 1991 Gulf War.70 The sentiment was arguably initiated by the rogue Saudi donor, Osama bin Laden, who had by now

65 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 317-318. 66 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 12-13. 67 Coll, Ghost Wars, 290-291. 68 Coll, Ghost Wars, 291; for how Islamists factions settled with Massoud see Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 488. 69 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 226. 70 Coll, Ghost Wars, 296.

30 used his Islamists connections forged in the days of the anti-Soviet jihad to set up his own office that called for international jihad against those deemed as anti-Islamic invaders.71 The organization would come to be known as Al-Qaeda.

The Karzai family, leaders of an influential Pashtun tribe known as the Popalzai, also offered their support to the Taliban after Hamid Karzai encountered a tumultuous post as deputy foreign minister in the Kabul government.72 Karzai was imprisoned and tortured by Massoud’s security chief, Mohammed Fahim, under the suspicion of being a Pakistani spy. Fahim was an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshiri Valley just like his commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. The

Panjshiris were a close-knit brotherhood of commanders that unified under Massoud’s leadership and slowly dominated the government in Kabul. Their clampdown on Pashtun power, in a capital that had been historically ruled by Pashtuns for over three hundred years, created an anti-Tajik sentiment popular among Pashtuns throughout Southeastern Afghanistan that the Taliban were able to capitalize on.73 Karzai escaped his imprisonment as one of Hekmatyar’s rocket shells miraculously blasted a hole in the torture chamber’s walls allowing Karzai to escape back to

Pakistan. Karzai’s people, the Popalzai, were now certain of Kabul’s lack of Pashtun representation in the government and decided then to support the Taliban by supplying them with money and arms.74

The Tilt Towards the Taliban

Along with the Karzai family, the Pakistani and Saudi governments, and the Haqqani network, foreign policy drivers from the Clinton administration also viewed the Taliban as a

71 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 15. 72 Coll, Ghost Wars, 285-288. 73 Ibid, 287-289. 74 Ibid, 288.

31 legitimate force in Afghanistan that might help move along certain special projects. Unocal, a major oil and gas company, was in talks with the Taliban about creating oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistan and India, an $8 billion project.75

Robin Raphel, the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Clinton’s Afghan foreign policy overseer, promoted the creation of the pipelines as it would potentially build commerce for the region and allow the Taliban to force an all-party peace process.76 She would urge U.S. ambassador Tom Simons to confront Bhutto for siding with the oil company Bridas over Unocal, a choice that many Americans and Pakistanis saw as corrupt business dealings involving

Bhutto’s opportunistic husband.77 Raphel was critical of the Taliban’s harsh interpretations of

Islam but feared “economic opportunities would be missed,” if the United States did not engage with the Taliban.78

Raphel’s plan to back Unocal’s pipelines were met with support from the National

Security Council’s energy issues director Sheila Heslin, Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy

Berger, and some in Clinton’s cabinet. They anticipated Taliban victory would finally end

Afghanistan’s civil war, curtail heroin production, expand lucrative trade routes, root out terrorist organizations, and perhaps most importantly, increase hostility in the region towards Iran.79 The policy was concocted by the few policy hands that still kept an eye on Afghanistan. Steve Coll notes pointedly that “In the absence of alternatives the State Department took up Unocal’s agenda as its own.”80 However, there wasn’t an entire absence of alternatives. Senator Hank

75 Taliban Oil: American Involvement in the Construction of a Taliban Oil Pipeline, directed by Tore Buvarp, aired April 14, 2015 (Paris: Java Films Exclusives, 2015) 76 Coll, Ghost Wars, 308. 77 Coll, Ghost Wars, 311; Rashid, Taliban, 160. 78 Coll, Ghost Wars, 330. 79 Ibid, 305. 80 Ibid, 330.

32

Brown, a vociferous supporter of Afghans and their right to self-determination, claims that his

Afghan policy initiative was essentially ignored at the State Department.81 Instead, officials like

Robin Raphel took the opportunity of there being no U.S. policy in Afghanistan to promote certain special interests. The CIA would come to oppose the State Department’s policy once again, but only after the agency went through significant changes and slowly reopened contacts with Afghan agents in counterterrorist operations.

The CIA, during the mid-1990s, was going through a process of internal change, demoralization, and rearrangement of priorities. President Clinton had fired CIA Director James

Woolsey in 1995 for the egregious spy case that involved a double agent exposing intelligence to the Soviet Union from within the CIA for years. The case caused a national backlash against the intelligence agency, so much so that a bill to abolish the agency altogether was introduced in

Congress. John Duetch was appointed director in order to “fix” the agency, causing even more distrust and uncertainty.82 The intense scrutiny, budget shrinking, personnel loss, and operational restrictions placed on the CIA had diminished its capacity in foreign policy decision-making yet there were still vocal dissenters. CIA Near East Division’s Robert Baer insisted that there were corrupt elements lying beneath the decision of backing Unocal’s pipelines, as he criticized Sandy

Berger’s business affiliations with Aramco and claimed, “the White House and the National

Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interest of protecting American citizens at home and abroad.”83 Gary Schroen, appointed as

CIA’s Islamabad Station Chief in 1996, said that the Unocal pipeline project was a useless path to follow that he would ignore.84 After the CIA’s castration of operational abilities by John

81 Coll, Ghost Wars, 299. 82 Ibid, 317. 83 Ibid, 307. 84 Coll, Ghost Wars, 315.

33

Duetch and congressional budget allocators, the agency and its limited resources and personnel were used for Clinton’s secret war against bin Laden.85 The CIA was bureaucratically barred by the State Department to not operate in Afghanistan unless it had to do with the Stinger missile buy-back program or eventually to track down bin Laden.

The Taliban took Jalalabad and Kabul swiftly in 1996 with the help of the ISI.86

Hekmatyar escaped into Iran and Massoud took his forces back up north to the Panjshir Valley in order to build a coalition of anti-Taliban forces. A State Department cable from Washington to

Islamabad and other embassies on September 28, 1996, declared that “we wish to engage the

Taliban ‘interim government’ at an early stage” as to address and overcome key issues of

“stability, human rights, narcotics, and terrorism.”87 At the UN, Robin Raphel expressed the need to accept the Taliban as a real seat of power in Afghanistan’s capital, stating “it is not in the interests of Afghanistan or anyone here that the Taliban be isolated.”88 It was clear now that the

State Department would be willing to work with the newest conquerors of Kabul in order to achieve the capture of bin Laden or securing certain economic deals. As a result of the neutral stance of the American foreign policy establishment on Afghanistan, the Clinton administration was able to go ahead with appeasing Taliban leaders in order to potentially fulfill other commercial and security interests. It was an indirect choosing of sides, yet still a significant one.

Julie Sirrs, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst, traveled to Afghanistan to do primary source reporting on the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud’s coalition. Sirrs believes she was fired for her critical reports about the U.S. support for the

85 Ibid, 327. 86 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 538-539. 87 Coll, Ghost Wars, 334. 88 Ibid, 335.

34

Taliban.89 Not only did Sirrs report on the massive extent of human rights abuses committed by the Talibs in Kabul, but Sirrs also found that Massoud had intelligence proving how Unocal helped the Taliban take Kabul. Unocal would only be able to establish such communications with the help of American foreign policy power, which it found readily at Robin Raphel’s office.

Julie Sirrs insisted Massoud’s evidence was believable and asserts that she was ostracized by leaders at the Pentagon because her reports damaged Taliban credibility in the region and undermined potential negotiations that may have been in place with the Taliban and the United

States.90

Sirrs was heavily critical of the Clinton administration’s willingness to legitimize the

Taliban government in exchange for Osama bin Laden. She argued that the Taliban were a foreign invading force within Afghanistan that did not find support from the various ethnicities that made up the Afghan population, nor did the Taliban intend to represent them. Much of their fundamentalist notions, such as the removal of women from all public spheres and the implementation of harsh Wahabi-influenced penal codes, were not agreeable even with Pashtuns from different tribes.91 Abdul Haq, the battle-scarred Pashtun who once commanded anti-Soviet forces just a decade prior, maintained his disdain for the Talibs for their barbaric rule and their connection to Pakistani and Arab fundamentalists.92 Julie Sirrs dismissal from the Pentagon is indicative of the Clinton administration’s willingness to carry out special interests deals with the

Taliban regardless of what intelligence officers say about which Afghan factions should be

89 Gail Sheehy, "Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected." Observer. March 15, 2004. 90 Taliban Oil: American Involvement in the Construction of a Taliban Oil Pipeline, directed by Tore Buvarp, aired April 14, 2015 (Paris: Java Films Exclusives, 2015). 91 Ibid. 92 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 549.

35 backed. Sirrs maintains, “with even a little aid to the Afghan resistance, we could have pushed the Taliban out of power.”93

1996 was also the year the Bin Laden Issue Station opened at the CIA Counterterrorism

Center, codenamed “ALEC”, the station tracked Osama bin Laden exclusively. His name was popping up in all sorts of intelligence reports coming from Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia and other parts of North Africa, as an international financier of terrorism.94 By the time the Taliban had captured

Kabul, Osama bin Laden was back in Afghanistan financing attacks against Massoud’s northern coalition forces. President Bill Clinton had begun his secret war against Osama bin Laden, and he employed the now “reformed” CIA and its empowered Counterterrorism Center to take the lead in this manhunt.95 Clinton’s assessment that Osama bin Laden was a top security threat that needed to be dealt with preemptively could not have been more accurate, and the sentiment was almost unanimously shared among analysts and operators at the CIA. However, Clinton and the

State Department’s strategy of working with one evil—the Taliban—to capture another was not met with enthusiasm by American Congressmen nor members of the CIA.

Thus, the stated U.S. objective of staying neutral in efforts to promote peace settlements between the Afghan warring factions was overhauled by major players in the Clinton administration. Within the context of neutrality, the United States tilted a bit towards the Taliban by negotiating pipeline deals with them and by offering diplomatic recognition in order to capture Osama bin Laden. Ahmed Shah Massoud, on the other hand, did not get such sweet deals

93 Gail Sheehy, "Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected." Observer. March 15, 2004. 94 Coll, Ghost Wars, 319. 95 Coll, Ghost Wars, 327.

36 brokered by the U.S. government even as certain CIA operatives and data analysts felt Massoud would be more effective against bin Laden.96

State Department heads, Madeline Albright, Tom Pickering, Karl Inderfurth, and other

South Asian specialists believed Ahmed Shah Massoud’s forces were rapidly crumbling.97

Another explanation to the State Department’s anti-Massoud sentiment would be his acceptance of minor aid from Russia, Iran, and Tajikistan who all wanted to curb Pakistani hegemony in the region. There was a clearly stated policy of neutrality for the State Department towards the

Taliban, as the strategy was to engage lightly in hopes of a diplomatic exchange of recognition for handing over Osama bin Laden.98 Officials like Inderfurth defended their actions by suggesting that the United States did not want to get involved with choosing sides between the

Taliban or Ahmed Shah Massoud’s United Front and would rather use neutrality to bring about peace talks.99 Yet, Americans Robert Baer, Peter Tomsen, and Julie Sirrs would find the support for Unocal’s pipeline plans as evidence that one side was at least favored, resulting in diplomatic arrangements with private companies and resources that were not being given to Massoud’s

United Front. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s personal investigative research on the Taliban throughout the ‘90s confirmed the concerns of the likes of Sirrs that there was, “massive regional polarization [in Afghanistan] between the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Taliban on one side and Iran, Russia, the Central Asian states and the anti-Taliban alliance on the other. […] it became apparent to me that the strategy over pipelines had become the driving force behind

Washington’s interest in the Taliban.”100 The Clinton administration, even after imposing harsh

96 Coll, Ghost Wars, 458-459. 97 Coll, Ghost Wars, 431. 98 Ibid, 430. 99 Ibid, see note 29, 631. 100 Rashid, Taliban, 167.

37 sanctions and even putting Pakistan on the terrorist watch list in ’93, ultimately pursued

Pakistan’s Afghan policy and its regional interests in hopes of securing Osama bin Laden. CIA operators, especially in the Counterterrorist Center, instead advocated supporting Massoud’s anti-Taliban forces in hopes of capturing bin Laden.101

Massoud accelerated international pleas for assistance once the Taliban took the northern

Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He was invited to address the European Parliament in Brussels, where he asked for humanitarian aid for Afghan people and warned the United States about a potential attack from Al-Qaeda that would be more devastating than the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.102 Massoud had also tried to assure those in Washington that he shared their goals by sending a heartfelt letter to the U.S. Senate recognizing the mistakes

Afghans had made in the civil war and then pleaded for help against the “foreign intrigue, deception, great-gamesmanship and internal strife” presented by the Taliban, the Pakistani intelligence, and Osama bin Laden’s influx of Arab jihadists.103

Instead, Unocal’s pipeline plans continued, and Clinton began dialogue with Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (Bhutto had been dismissed by her own president largely for corruption charges) and his handpicked ISI chief Khawaja Ziauddin to discuss a potential capture of the ex-Saudi terrorist financer Osama bin Laden.104 Sharif and Ziauddin were not strong commanders of Pakistan foreign policy; Sharif was intrinsically afraid of his army’s control over him and Ziauddin was seen as an outsider within the intelligence bureau that was too close to

101 Coll, Ghost Wars, 467-469. 102 CNN, “They Had a Plan.” CNN. August 5, 2002. 103 Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan (London: Pluto, 2003), 208 104 Coll, Ghost Wars, 442.

38

Clinton and the CIA at a time when ISI anti-Americanism had been at an all-time high.105

Nevertheless, Clinton approved the plan to train and fund ISI militants to help capture Osama bin

Laden not knowing that elements within the ISI would stay loyal to him.106

As back-channel negotiations between Pakistan, the Taliban, and the United States about

Osama bin Laden dragged on, CIA officers were visiting Ahmed Shah Massoud in the Panjshir

Valley drafting plans to cooperate on assaults against bin Laden. Most CIA officers and analysts admired Massoud not only for his genius of modern warfare but also for his progressive, intellectual Afghan nationalist identity.107 CIA Counterterrorism director Cofer Black, the ALEC station, and others at CIA Near East Division urged for a renewed American alliance with

Massoud and eventually got the State Department to allow a limited transfer of arms and payment for snatch operations against bin Laden. Ahmed Shah Massoud criticized the single- minded US policy to get bin Laden at all costs, and the CIA agreed yet hoped that the success of such an operation would finally improve relations with the rest of Washington enough to help

Massoud in his wider war against the Taliban.108 Karl Inderfurth met with all parties at a UN sponsored peace talk in Tashkent, reiterating the United States’ stance on neutrality and advocated a settlement between Massoud and the Taliban.

William Milam, Robin Raphel, Madeline Albright, and Rick Inderfurth were the major players at the State Department who were influenced by their close contacts with Pakistani allies to be skeptical of Massoud’s objectives over the Taliban. They remembered his inability to secure Kabul from Hekmatyar and found his military connections to Iran, Russia, and India

105 Coll, Ghost Wars, 439. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid, 459. 108 Ibid, 468.

39 disagreeable at best. Tom Pickering stated that peace in Afghanistan was not possible without

Southern Pashtun representation, which he believed resided solely with the Taliban.109 In this instance, Pickering was choosing to ignore the growing anti-Taliban forces that were willing to work with Massoud. These forces included those led by prominent Pashtuns Abdul Haq and

Hamid Karzai who were more than willing to ally with Massoud in order to push the Taliban and

Al-Qaeda out. Abdul Haq had returned to politics by constructing a broad alliance that consisted of all Afghan ethnicities and even Taliban moderates who were ready to defect.110 The Karzai family announced their frustration with the influx of Arab foreigners and their influence in the

Taliban government, and started developing a political resistance that consisted of royalist

Pashtuns and former King Zahir Shah.111 Peter Tomsen, now a retired U.S. diplomat, lobbied for all three causes in Washington. The ISI and the Taliban responded to such resistances with extreme measures: murdering Abdul Haq’s wife and son in Peshawar and gunning down Abdul

Ahad Karzai in Quetta.112 Both assassinations would result in the opposite intended effect as the crimes would only serve to bolster Haq and Karzai’s resolve in opposing the Taliban.

The CIA’s vocal and monetary support for Ahmed Shah Massoud and the State

Department’s resistance to such an approach to Afghan foreign policy in late 1999 inversely mirrored the situation a decade earlier when CIA head Milton Bearden rejected State Department proposals to support the Northern Alliance. The decision to work with Pakistan on Osama bin

Laden caused President Clinton and his cabinet to deter from a policy of neutrality regardless of the mounting human rights abuses and political instability caused by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

109 Coll, Ghost Wars, 461. 110 Afghan Warrior: Life and Death of Abdul Haq, directed by Malcolm Brinkworth, aired February 18, 2004 (London: BBC Documentaries, 2004). 111 Coll, Ghost Wars, 459-460. 112 Ibid.

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Clinton and his cabinet’s faith in the seemingly pro-American foreign policy crafters (Bhutto,

Karamat, Sharif, and Ziauddin) in Pakistan caused the State Department to remain cynical about

Massoud and ignore the rising anti-Taliban forces that emerged as Kabul fell. The institutional

U.S. policy of neutrality was then undermined when officials like Robin Raphel and Tom

Simons encouraged discussion between Unocal, the Taliban, and Benazir Bhutto in order to get lucrative oil and gas deals secured. The negotiation bargain that the White House maintained with the Taliban that they would exchange political legitimacy for handing over bin Laden was yet another breach of supposed U.S. neutrality. Clinton and the State Department’s willingness to go with Pakistan’s Afghan policy in order to accomplish certain special interests is reminiscent of how Milton Bearden and his case officers helped support the ISI proxy Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in order to oust the Soviet-sponsored government in Kabul. Both times, US policy was interpreted by major players to aid Ahmed Shah Massoud as little as possible, whilst institutional pressures argued for a more inclusive approach that would help Massoud capture bin Laden and further all-party peace talks.

Pakistan and India’s nuclear weapons proliferation in the 90s reinforced the Pakistan army’s national security concerns. Its geopolitical strategy of trying to place a Pashtun- dominated government in Kabul would theoretically back Pakistan in any future conflicts with

India and could increase pressure for a settlement on the Kashmir issue.113 ISI believed the

Taliban government would also be a safeguard against home-grown extremism, which stemmed from the jihad-preaching madrassas that lay scattered across the tribal areas of the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.114 Pakistan’s political and military support for

113 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 431. 114 Ibid, 338.

41 the Taliban continued even after the UN imposed sanctions to try and suppress it. This policy was actively being carried out by the ISI and army. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif unexpectedly dismissed his army chief Jahangir Karamat, a rare moment in the country’s martial law dominated history, for Karamat’s proposal to create a Pakistani National Security Council. The proposal urged for more military and think tank experts to guide Pakistan’s foreign policy, and

Karamat remarked openly about the civilian government’s current shortcomings in the field.115 It was an attempt to put a check on Sharif’s foreign policy, however it was a much more democratic attempt at securing army policy-crafting power compared to what would happen with the next army chief, General Pervez Musharraf. Generals and officers in the Pakistan army saw

Sharif’s replacement of the head of the army and his growing friendship with Bill Clinton as another instance of the civilian government gone astray. Other civilian politicians criticized the decision as well, saying that Karamat was one of the country’s most democratic and secular- minded generals whose removal would cause more problems than solutions.116

The acquisition of nuclear weapons prompted the new Pakistan army chief Pervez

Musharraf to accelerate insurgencies in Kashmir with deeper incursions and threats of using nuclear force. The Kargil war and subsequent coup in 1999 is representative of the Pakistan army’s increasingly weary sentiment towards civilian rule and its military prudence. It also represented the Pakistani army’s intention to pursue drastic military operations against Indian- occupied Kashmir. Nawaz Sharif approved a plan that allowed Musharraf to send a Pakistani commando team to Kashmir in order to seize the district of Kargil from Indian occupation.117

The operation was very briefly successful, but Indian retaliation and swelling of military forces

115 Celia W. Dugger, “Pakistani Premier Prevails in Clash with General,” New York Times. October 20, 1999. 116 Ibid 117 Coll, Ghost Wars, 477.

42 in the region on both sides resulted in a gruesome localized war that could have easily been escalated to a global nuclear conflict.118

President Clinton’s South Asia policy by 1999 was now focused entirely on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and escalation with India over Kashmir, and the Afghan civil war dropped farther down on the list of foreign policy concerns.119 The United States had by now ended talks with the Taliban about the pipelines and had significant evidence of elements within the ISI working with Osama bin Laden.120 It was only after the Taliban ignored or stalled on thirty requests from President Clinton and his cabinet to hand over bin Laden and growing evidence of

Al-Qaeda’s connections to Mullah Mohammed Omar that the White House finally decided to end its tilt towards the Taliban within the Afghan policy of neutrality.121 President Clinton and his State Department still believed working with Nawaz Sharif and his ISI director Ziauddin was an avenue in which they could capture Osama bin Laden, despite the apparent civil-military division at the time.

During the Kargil conflict, Clinton sent numerous secret letters to Sharif and Musharraf’s generals about the severity of the army’s actions and the need to de-escalate and withdraw their troops. Clinton took this opportunity to announce his plan to declare Pakistan as a state that sponsors terrorists whilst scolding the prime minister about Kargil.122 Clinton was essentially applying pressure on Prime Minister Sharif to gain power over his army and intelligence agency.

Sharif, afraid of the international sanctions that would result from such a declaration, gave into

118 Coll, Ghost Wars, 476-477. 119 Coll, Ghost Wars, 441. 120 Ibid, 477. 121 Taliban Oil: American Involvement in the Construction of a Taliban Oil Pipeline, directed by Tore Buvarp, aired April 14, 2015 (Paris: Java Films Exclusives, 2015). 122 Coll, Ghost Wars, 477.

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Clinton’s demands and forced the troops to withdraw after he returned home from their meeting in Washington.123 Sharif faced intense backlash from the army after this decision, and the quips between Musharraf and Sharif blaming each other about the incident would continue in multiple media appearances years later.124

The de-escalation of the Kargil war deepened the Pakistan army’s discontent with the prime minister and his political allies in the government. Nawaz Sharif and Ziauddin’s frequent travels to the White House and CIA headquarters, pulling forces out of Kargil, and adherence to

Clinton’s demands on foreign policy by creating a CIA-led Pakistan commando team to capture bin laden had all created immense opposition against Sharif within the Pakistan army. Sharif would wait until October of 1999, only four months after the Kargil war, to announce the removal of General Musharraf as army chief and replaced him with General Ziauddin. The prime minister’s attempt to display any kind of authority over his army failed remarkably. The army largely stayed loyal to Musharraf as their army chief during the incident and helped his plane land after Sharif had given orders to redirect it.125 Leading army generals Mehmood Ahmad,

Mohammed Aziz, and Muzaffar Usmani defied Sharif’s orders and reversed his attempt at gaining power in Pakistan.126 The generals secured Musharraf’s landing, arrested Sharif,

Ziauddin and over two hundred politicians from Sharif’s party. General Pervez Musharraf suspended the writ of the constitution and titled himself as the Chief Executive, a fictitious label that even he admitted was intended to invoke a “civilian façade.”127 In reality, Musharraf was

123 Cole, Ghost Wars, 477. 124 NDTV, “Sharif blames Musharraf for Kargil War,” YouTube Video, 1:01, February 22, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg7uYmrSZF0 and also ABP News, “Musharraf claims Kargil was a big success militarily for Pak,” YouTube Video, 5:03, January 31, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvqOKTpBKjg 125 Coll, Ghost Wars, 479-480. 126 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 29. 127 Profile of a General, produced by Ian Altschwager, aired on April 11, 2000 (Sydney: Journeyman Pictures, 2000).

44 now the supreme commander of Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policy, a parallel to the power his predecessor General Zia-Ul Haq attained after his military coup in 1979. Sharif and

Ziauddin’s special relationship with Clinton and his cabinet ultimately resulted in yet another military coup in Pakistan. Relations between the United States and Pakistan soured, and the CIA- led Pakistani commando team trained to capture bin Laden had disappeared once Ziauddin was arrested.128 Musharraf and his army made it clear that Sharif and Ziauddin’s relations with the

Clinton administration were not welcome in influencing Pakistan’s foreign policy.

The United States’ foreign policy on Afghanistan by the year 2000 had finally gone back to the institutional notion of maintaining neutrality on both sides. Clinton and his National

Security Council prioritized terrorism and nuclear proliferation, keeping their South Asian policy largely aimed at capturing Osama bin Laden and keeping an eye on Pakistan covert action in

Kashmir.129 The focus on bin Laden caused the Clinton administration to skew its notion of neutrality and to tilt towards working with the Taliban and the civilian governments in Pakistan in order to achieve the American objective. The CIA and other defectors of State Department policy advocated a new alliance with Ahmed Shah Massoud who had a clearer enmity towards bin Laden and his influx of Al-Qaeda militants.130 The State Department and White House officials’ relations with the Bhutto and Sharif governments caused Afghan policy to stagnate.

The American-Pakistani relationship caused a shift in the institutional policy of neutrality because it influenced Clinton’s decision to continue negotiating with Taliban and to train ISI commandos into capturing bin Laden. Clinton’s cabinet also attempted to entice the Taliban with lucrative pipeline deals and political recognition in hopes that they would finally extradite bin

128 Coll, Ghost Wars, 479. 129 Ibid, 481; 505. 130 Ibid, 503.

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Laden as a result. Meanwhile, Ahmed Shah Massoud continued to lead the largest anti-Taliban and anti-Al-Qaeda forces from within Afghanistan, and received minimal resources from a weakened CIA.131

Pakistan’s army overhauled its civilian government’s institutions altogether so that

Musharraf and the three generals that secured his throne in Islamabad would have ultimate policy guiding powers. Sharif and his PML-N politicians were largely incriminated and jailed for corruption or ineffective government planning. Musharraf addressed the country following the coup and questioned, “is this the democracy our Qaid-i-Azam [Great Leader] imagined?” after blaming the Sharif government for Pakistan’s economy, loss of reputation on the world stage, and for attempting to create dissention within the army.132 Nawaz Sharif’s political party declared the coup illegal and unwarranted, yet many political opponents welcomed his dismissal in hopes for the creation of a new democratic government. The Chief Justice of Pakistan was forced to resign after declaring the coup unconstitutional along with the nine other senior judges who refused to take an oath of loyalty to Musharraf.133 Musharraf and his principle generals had effectively taken over legal and civilian institutions so that they might redirect the country’s economic policies and start enforcing their South Asian military agenda. Sharif and Bhutto were not able to carry out the inter-institutional policies that they helped create with the army, the supreme court, and parliamentary officials. Instead, powerful army generals were able to capitalize on the growing anti-American sentiment and tension between civil-military relations to carry out a coup that replaced the civilian institutions altogether. Those within the army that did not agree with Musharraf or were seen as too close to the CIA, such as General Ziauddin and his

131 Marcela Grad. Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader (St. Louis, MO: Webster University Press, 2009), 310. 132 Musharraf, “Pakistani General Speech” CSPAN, 22:03, October 17, 1999. 133 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 355.

46 loyalists in the ISI, were arrested and stripped of military authority. Major players had clearly dominated their institutions in the struggle for governmental power in Pakistan.

Musharraf consolidated ever more power for him and his generals in the eighteen months that followed the coup. Musharraf cancelled his reform of the blasphemy law in order to appease fundamentalist parties in Pakistan only to anger the liberal civilians in his cabinet.134 Pakistan’s two main opposition parties—PML-N and the PPP—created the Alliance for Restoration of

Democracy (ARD) that would then campaign and protest for a return to civilian government.

Musharraf and his army arrested thousands of these protesters in the year 2000. At the same time, Musharraf faced criticisms from within the army as well. Lt.-General Imtiaz Shaheen was fired after he demanded a change in Afghan policy and support for the Taliban. Musharraf’s own interior minister and former three-star general also voiced concern over support for the Taliban causing fundamentalist blowback within Pakistan. The generals that placed Musharraf in power,

Generals Ahmed, Aziz, and Usmani gained considerable strength in the country’s affairs. Ahmed and Aziz would systematically block policy change ideas from getting to Musharraf.135 A governor of Sindh province in Pakistan resigned after noting that General Usmani had taken all decision-making power away from him.136

Bill Clinton’s last year in office, the president took a cautious approach to dealing with

Musharraf’s government. Clinton urged a quick return to democracy and meanwhile hoped to work with Musharraf to get bin Laden, yet overall relations deteriorated with the United States and Pakistan as Clinton was leaving office. Al-Qaeda’s devastating attack on the USS Cole provided the CIA another opportunity to try and sell the Clinton administration on backing

134 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 51. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid, 414.

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Ahmed Shah Massoud and his war against Al-Qaeda. The CIA proposed a plan to Clinton’s

National Security Council on December 20, 2000 to pledge anywhere from $50 million to $150 million to Massoud’s campaigns against Al-Qaeda training camps.137 The CIA clarified that such an operation was not meant to help Massoud gain victory over Kabul at the Taliban’s expense, as that would breach the policy of neutrality, but rather meant as a retaliation to Al-Qaeda’s increase of violent terrorist attacks against America’s state and military institutions. Richard

Clarke was the only one at the National Security Council meeting that supported the CIA plan.

Tom Pickering still believed there was a twenty-five percent chance that the Taliban would eventually give up bin Laden, Sandy Berger did not want to antagonize the military in Pakistan by backing their rival Massoud, and others at the meeting brought up Massoud’s drug trafficking history as a concern. Clinton and his team maintained their interpretation of Afghan policy by continuing to negotiate deals with the Taliban, claiming that this did not breach neutrality.138

President George W. Bush won a contentious election in 2000 on a campaign that promised a limited extension of American foreign policy and the avoidance of unnecessary nation-building. The new administration kept South Asia and Al-Qaeda threats very low on their list of foreign policy priorities in their nine months in office before the September 11th tragedy.

Richard Clarke, who had lost his cabinet ranking from the Clinton administration, reported to

Condoleezza Rice a thirteen-page document that outlined Al-Qaeda’s threat to the United States and the recommendation of arming Massoud’s Northern Alliance for offensives against bin

Laden’s Al-Qaeda training camps.139 Two-hundred and sixteen internal threat reports from the

137 Coll, Ghost Wars, 535-537. 138 Ibid. 139 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 56.

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FBI were sent to the White House about an imminent strike coming from Al-Qaeda. A CIA special report just two months before 9/11 also directly warned about an attack on U.S. soil.

The Bush administration would also get the message from Ahmed Shah Massoud himself in April 2001. Just months before the attacks on September 11th, Massoud attended a news conference in Paris to warn that, “if he [President W. Bush] does not help the Afghan people arrive at the objective of peace, then the Americans and rest of the world will have to face the problem.”140 Yet the new administration failed to heed any warnings. Only two days before the devastation in Manhattan, Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers during a fake interview, killing the only commander in Afghanistan that was able to defend vast parts of the country’s strongholds against the Taliban onslaught. Al-Qaeda targeted the United

States days after assassinating Massoud. The attacks on September 11th that killed thousands of innocent civilians created the impetus for the United States to invade Afghanistan and conduct the longest war in American history.

140 Afghanistan Revealed, directed by Sebastian Junger, released November 13, 2001, Washington, D.C. (National Geographic Television, 2001).

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IV. The George W. Bush Administration

The American war in Afghanistan was directed with vague policy objectives and broad definitions that caused institutions within the United States government to conduct the war according to their own interpretations of foreign policy. There were and still are serious disagreements between different Afghan policy crafters in the American government over legal and operational issues on reconstruction efforts, the strategic relationship with Pakistan, and empowering of regional commanders (warlords) over the elected central government. These warlord commanders were the remnants of Pakistan’s rival, the Northern Alliance, and so the

Pakistani military regime directed its Afghan policy by siding with the Americans against Al-

Qaeda whilst simultaneously safeguarding Taliban leaders covertly. The decision sent rifts throughout various political opposition parties in Pakistan and ignited militant blowback from its integrated fundamentalist groups including Jamiat Ulema-Islami (JUI), for both the secular and

Islamist parties felt betrayed.141 Yet, cooperation from major players between the two nuclear armed states continued despite internal dissent, the pursuit of differing policies, and acts of neglecting the central Afghanistan government brokered by the UN Bonn Agreement.

The fear of another devastating strike and the conviction to retaliate caused the Bush administration to announce a broad, grandiose War on Terror that was framed as a global struggle between freedom and fear. The grand strategy of the Bush Doctrine was to eliminate not just Al-Qaeda but all terrorist groups and states that may harbor them.142 The United States’ policy for Afghanistan thus became a small part of the overall objective that focused on rooting out all terrorists and their sponsors. The ensuing War on Terror became the basis for the United

141 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 46. 142 Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 154-155.

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States to wage wars in Iraq and elsewhere, leaving many U.S. policy decisions on Afghanistan in the hands of conflicting CIA, Pentagon, FBI, State Department practices and third-party partners such as Pakistan along with the remaining warlords that made up the Northern Alliance. The limited resources dedicated to Afghanistan after the initial collapse of the Taliban prompted the

United States to pay off those warlords (Abdul Rashid Sayyaf, Ismael Khan, Gul Agha Sherzai,

Nur Atta Muhammed, Rashid Dostum, etc.) to carry out broad United States policy objectives of keeping peace and targeting Al-Qaeda. However, the warlords in turn would devastate the country, ply the drug trade, empower themselves at the expense of the central Karzai administration, and even double-deal with militants hostile to the United States.143

Pakistan made it clear that if it was to assist the United States in the War on Terror in

Afghanistan that no Northern Alliance government in Kabul would be tolerable and that

Pashtuns must be fully represented.144 Yet, the Northern Alliance commanders swept in to secure

Kabul and proceeded to dominate the UN mandated interim government led by Hamid Karzai.145

Although Karzai himself was a moderate Pashtun and repeatedly tried to assure he was an independent nationalist, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf perceived Karzai’s government as dominated by Northern Alliance and Indian influence.146 Once the Bush administration refocused its military operations to Iraq in 2003, Musharraf was convinced that the United States was not serious about settling the region and thought it safer to protect Pakistan’s own interests by giving refuge to the Taliban.147

143 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, LIV-LV 144 Ibid, 78. 145 Ibid, 86-87 146 Ibid, 248-249. 147 Ibid, 50-51.

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The United States and Pakistan’s war in Afghanistan, as carried out by the competing warlord and Taliban policies, resulted in a seventeen-year long war that continues to ravish the country killing more than forty thousand civilians and over three thousand United States and allied military personnel.148 The Taliban received very little support among majority of Afghans from 1996 onwards because of the regime’s indiscriminate killing of civilians and its imposition of ultra-orthodox interpretations of Islamic law that stripped rights from women and barred the use of modern technology.149 Once the Taliban was successfully defeated by joint American,

Pakistani, and Northern Alliance forces, certain commanders of the coalition were incorporated into the interim Afghan government. Although the human rights situation had somewhat improved since the Taliban’s rule, many commanders-turned-warlords no longer had to conform to their former leader Ahmed Shah Massoud’s attempt at forming a stricter political structure.

So, warlords such as Rashid Dostum, Atta Muhammed, Ismael Khan and others carried out sectarian violence, civilian terrorism, and rampant corruption in the Afghan provinces where they controlled virtually every aspect of commerce and use of militia force.150 Ahmed Shah

Massoud’s attempts at encouraging democratization, education, and equal rights for men and women would not transfer through to the war commanders that replaced him after his assassination.

The United States’ most vaguely defined war, in terms of policy objectives, and

Pakistan’s double dealings with designated enemies of war culminated in internal opposition, stifling of central Afghan governmental authority, and a deterioration of foreign relations

148 UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), The 2018 Annual Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, February 2019. 149 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 18-19. 150 Human Rights Watch, "’Today We Shall All Die’: Afghanistan's Strongmen and the Legacy of Impunity." Human Rights Watch, July 18, 2016.

52 between Pakistan and the United States of America. The alliance was able to endure for so long because of supposed cooperation needed to capture Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders as well as the American fear of Pakistan becoming an unstable state privy to losing control of nuclear weapons to its militant anti-American opposition groups.

Retaliation and the Bush Administration in Afghanistan

The U.S. Congress issued a joint resolution that authorized the President’s “use of United

States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks” including those who harbor organizations found to be responsible.151 This Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) became the foundation for U.S. policy objectives in Afghanistan in the larger context of the War on Terror and the legal basis for invading Afghanistan after the Taliban’s refusal to hand over

Osama bin Laden. The resolution contained no specifics about how the war should be conducted, how reconstruction of the country should be handled, democratization, nor any concrete goals that would provide an exit strategy for the United States. The mere sixty-word congressional resolution provided policy principles for American institutions to conduct the war in Afghanistan with no clear goals rather than the capture of Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda affiliates. The

United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1368 and 1373, which condemned the attacks in Manhattan but failed to define terrorism or what qualifies invading another country as retaliation. The ambiguity allowed the United States to cite self-defense as its reason to invade

Afghanistan and human rights issues or humanitarian aid concerns were not mentioned until the

UN Security Council passed Resolution 1456 in 2003.152

151 United States. Congress. Joint Resolution To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States. 107th Cong. S.J.Res 23. 115 Stat. 224 (2001). 152 John D. Negroponte, Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations Addressed to the President of the Security Council, U.N. Doc. S/2001/946 (Oct. 7, 2001); S.C. Res. 1373

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Reconstruction

The policy principles listed by the AUMF and UN security resolutions allowed the Bush administration to refocus its attention on Iraq while leaving the UN to largely direct and implement reconstruction efforts for Afghanistan. Secretary of State Colin Powell got together

Afghan and foreign policy experts on September 24th, 2001 and concluded that some form of nation-building must take place after the military victory, much to the chagrin of the neoconservatives that advocated an avoidance of nation-building efforts abroad.153 The limited plan noted that the United States should help in the stabilization of a future Afghan government but that the UN should carry out humanitarian and state building projects that governments worldwide chose to fund.154 In 2002, the White House proposed a weak $151 million budget for all assistance to Afghanistan for that year, which was not even ten percent of how much the

United States spent on the military operations of 2001. Only after Army analyst David

Champagne, State Department official Robert Finn, and the Afghan aid coordinator protested the initial budgetary proposal was it raised to just under $1 billion. Champagne, Finn, and even Bush advisor Dov Zakheim still found the budget short of about $500 million.155

Not only was the budget hotly debated in Washington, but even the implementation of such reconstruction tasks was split between different US departments making delegation of tasks a bureaucratic mess. This is one factor in the reason why the ring road was never successfully completed. The ring road that circled Afghanistan’s five major cities—Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-

Sharif, Kandahar—was a source of central Afghan government power since the 1960s but

153 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 74-75. 154 Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan And Pakistan (New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 129. 155 Ibid.

54 decades of war had destroyed the road and Karzai’s new administration desperately needed it to assert its authority. Robert Finn constantly urged the State Department and USAID to build the road, but USAID claimed they no longer built roads and the CIA declined to approve the project.156 Finn commented sometime later, “…the Pentagon was conducting its own foreign policy, while the State Department, USAID, the Pentagon, and the CIA were all trying to do reconstruction. To put it simply, you had a hundred and fifty cooks.”157 Hamid Karzai’s constant pleading finally got President Bush to agree to build the Kabul-Kandahar section of the road by

2003, which the United States did but only at an astronomical price ($1 million a mile) due to urgency and security issues. The urgency and security issues can be attributed to the Bush administration’s turned attention towards Iraq. William Taylor, the State Department appointee for Afghan reconstruction, found that his efforts at progressing projects like the ring road were often unassisted due to the redistribution of resources and attention given to the Iraq War from

2003 onwards.158

The mangled and embarrassing effort of nation-building attempted by the United States can be attributed to the Bush administration due to its continual efforts to undermine the USAID, particularly by neoconservatives like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld. President Bush never renewed Presidential Decision Directive 56 which expired under his office and was the basis for creating an interagency planning process needed for complex nation-building projects. It was Bush’s campaign promise as well as neocon ideology that state building projects be kept to a minimum as such projects were not deemed important in their overall grand strategy on the world stage.159 In the years after 9/11, several

156 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 186. 157 Ibid, 185. 158 Ibid, 184; 194-195. 159 Brand, What Good is Grand Strategy?, 150

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USAID workers resigned due to feeling ineffectual and disheartened by a distracted U.S. policy.

USAID officials claimed that they were given less and less authority to proceed with projects even though their budget increased substantially. Their attempted advancements in agriculture were usually suppressed by Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon which did not allow USAID officials to leave their Kabul embassies in order to direct operations in person. One such official maintains that security issues never stopped USAID before to operate on the ground and that the restriction now was because “…DOD [Department of Defense] did not want us around to see how they were aiding the wrong guys. In Washington our leadership simply lacked the motivation to stand up to DOD. We were too tame, and DOD took advantage of that.”160 Thus, reconstruction efforts urged on by Americans such as Richard Haass, Robert Finn, David

Champagne, and even Colin Powell were ultimately stifled due to President Bush and neocon aversion to state building projects, the bureaucratic disorganization caused by not renewing

PDD-56, the warlord policy, and the distraction of the War in Iraq.161

Warlords

On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed an order that gave the CIA more than $1 billion to manage and conduct the war in Afghanistan.162 George Tenet, director of the CIA, gained approval to fly CIA operatives into Afghanistan before major combat operations so they may reconnect and pay the remaining commanders of the Northern Alliance in an effort to consolidate all anti-Taliban forces. These warlords, no longer bound by the considerate leadership of Ahmed Shah Massoud, were of crucial assistance in a remarkable U.S. victory over the Taliban regime but then used their newfound autonomy and power (stemming from massive

160 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 175. 161 Ibid, 185; 195. 162 Ibid, 62.

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CIA funding) to establish warlord fiefdoms in the country that terrorized populations and weakened the central government. Warlords Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Rashid Dostum, Ismael Khan, and Gul Agha Sherzai were among the many such commanders that took this route as they helped topple the Taliban regime in late 2001.163

Ahmed Shah Massoud made many steps toward progressing peace, equal rights for men and women, education, democracy, and other humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan.164 After

Massoud’s assassination, the Northern Alliance was considerably less unified as commanders

Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed Nur were able to reignite rivalries that mimicked the brutal

Afghan Civil War period in the 1990s. Now that Massoud was gone, CIA officials found it more effective to just pay off such warlords independently, without filtering it through one leading commander, which consequently resulted in the empowering of warlords who would continue to destabilize the country years after the major operations that took down the Taliban.165

Rashid Dostum commanded Uzbek forces while his rival Atta Muhammed Nur commanded Tajik forces, both in northern Afghanistan. They were both essential in capturing the city of Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taliban, yet, still continued to commit war crimes and conduct ethnic massacres. Dostum horridly asphyxiated several thousand of his Taliban prisoners in scorching hot lorry containers as he was transferring them to a prison. Their corpses were buried in mass graves unidentified. The Physicians for Human Rights reported the atrocity to the

UN and United States, yet nothing was done—Dostum was a significant military force entering politics and still an asset to the CIA.166 Dostum did not extend cruelty to just the Taliban but also

163 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 597-598. 164 Grad, Intimate Portrait, 310. 165 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 598. 166 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 94.

57 other ethnic Pashtun civilians. He and Atta Mohammed Nur caused half of the entire Pashtun population under their northern fiefdom to flee southward.167 Human Rights Watch reported in

April 2002 of the systematic rape of Pashtun boys and girls conducted by Dostum’s forces throughout the province of Faryab as well as continual extortion of the locals for money and permanent use of their land.168

Another warlord empowered by the CIA and ally of American Special Operations Forces was Ismael Khan, the governor of Herat. Ahmed Rashid, journalist and at one time a personal friend to Ismael Khan, claimed, “The time Khan spent in a Taliban jail had turned him into an insomniac and changed him from a religious conservative into a fanatic.”169 Khan now forced women to wear burqas, restricted their ability to work (especially for foreign NGOs and humanitarian organizations), and barred them from governmental activities.170 Along with torturing those he deemed his enemies, Khan also stifled the press and other journalist endeavors, even shutting down a magazine that simply offered technical advice on reconstruction efforts.171

On top of all this, Ismael Khan was possibly the most wealthy warlord as he earned $3-5 million every month in border customs and yet refused to share the income with the desperate central

Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai.172

Gul Agha Sherzai was the Pashtun warlord that the CIA and Special Forces chose to work with as the strongman for southern Afghanistan. He was not a Northern Alliance commander, as there were no significant Pashtun commanders connected to the Northern

167 Ibid. 168 Human Rights Watch, “On the Precipice: Insecurity in Northern Afghanistan” June 2002. 169 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 126. 170 Human Rights Watch, “’We Want to Live as Humans’: Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan” 50, no. 11 (2002). 171 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 127. 172 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 127.

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Alliance after Abdul Haq was killed. However, he was no less a criminal warlord than his Uzbek and Tajik counterparts. Sherzai, funded by both the CIA and the ISI, used his new-found power to forcefully seat himself as governor of Kandahar in Karzai’s government. Hamid Karzai had appointed the seat to Mullah Naqibullah and insisted that Sherzai accept this nomination.

However, Sherzai refused and forced Karzai to give in and appoint him as the official governor.173 The Pashtun warlord would then use his governorship to embezzle reconstruction funds through his stone quarry, water, taxi, and gasoline distribution monopolies. He also ran protection rings for opium traffickers, extorted money from civilians with his police force, and remained in suspicious close contact with the Taliban.174 State Department officials raised concerns over these issues, and called him a “weak administrator” for his routine pay offs of political opportunists and for giving fifty-two out of sixty civil governmental seats to his own

Pashtun tribe—the Barakzai—at the expense of other Pashtun tribes.175 While his forces’ crimes do not mirror the rape and sexual abuses that were reported extensively in northern Afghan provinces under Rashid Dostum, Sherzai still curiously kept preadolescent girls and boys dressed as girls at his side often, much to the discomfort of Western diplomates, and he kept a wife from

Pakistan that he claimed when she was only twelve.176 Nevertheless, Gul Agha Sherzai was yet another warlord who depreciated the central Afghan government’s legitimacy and power.

Despite the demurrals of fellow State Department officials and congressmen, Donald

Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz persisted in their execution of promoting a warlord strategy for

Afghanistan. This involved Rumsfeld sabotaging efforts encouraged by fellow American

173 Ibid, 96. 174 Ibid, 129; see also Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), 160-169. 175 Coll, Directorate S, 137. 176 Coll, Directorate S, 137.

59 statesmen, Hamid Karzai, numerous newspapers and think tanks, and the UN-mandated

International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF). President Hamid Karzai and General Sir John

McColl from ISAF argued for expansion of the international forces outside Kabul, since their protection of Kabul had been so successful and well-appreciated by locals, and then take control away from the warlords in the countryside. Washington refused, likely at the behest of Rumsfeld, who then cut out General McColl from all decision-making processes and declined to meet him.177

More instances of dissent on policy occurred when Senator Joseph Biden objected to such strategies warning, “America has replaced the Taliban with the warlords. Warlords are still on the US payroll but that hasn’t bought the cessation of violence. […] Why does the

Administration steadfastly resist any expansion of ISAF when everyone has called for an expansion of ISAF.”178 Both U.S. Ambassadors to Kabul Ryan Crocker and then Robert Finn expressed similar frustrations with the administration, namely Rumsfeld, for continuing to support the warlords. Finn laments, “we should have moved away from the warlords much earlier and we should have stopped visiting them. We should have supported the government more visibly. I stopped visiting Ismael Khan and Dostum, but Rumsfeld visited them several times.”179

Institutional policies mandated by the UN and the Bonn Agreement, such as demilitarization of militias and payment of customs revenue, were overruled by the warlord strategy enacted by major players in the Bush administration. Paul Wolfowitz was the “architect of the warlord policy” and Rumsfeld its ardent campaigner who blocked the expansion of ISAF

177 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 132. 178 Ibid, 134. 179 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 143.

60 and delayed the UN demilitarization plan against the wishes of ambassadors, congressmen, international forces, and American and Afghan citizens alike.180 Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the major players, conducted a gross misguidance of institutional international and U.S. policy, meant to strengthen the government agreed upon at Bonn, to instead empower and protect regional warlords who took the responsibility largely off of American hands as the Bush administration got ready to invade Iraq.181

The subversion of policy aimed at strengthening an interim government headed towards democracy were felt primarily by the Afghans who, once again, had to suffer the brutalities of many of the same commanders that initially gave rise to the Taliban in the 1990s. The 2004

Human Development Report for Afghanistan reported that the country suffered immensely, people had a life expectancy of forty-four to forty-five, a quarter of the infants born every month died before the age of five, and preventable diseases were killing thousands because reconstruction efforts were stifled by warlords.182 The Human Rights Watch continued to investigate illegal land seizures, extensive torture, extortion, and the sexual abuses committed against the Afghan people as these incidents increased throughout 2002 and well into 2004. The

Afghan people had their arms wide open for international support to save them from the Taliban and to restore civil liberties, however, many found the warlords to be just as ruthless.183 The half a million Pashtun civilians who fled the north from Rashid Dostum’s reign is a parallel to how the same Pashtun had initially fled north to escape the Taliban.184

180 Ibid, 135-136. 181 Ibid, 133-134. 182 UNDP, Afghanistan National Human Development Report, 2004. 183 Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue, 170. 184 Human Rights Watch, “On the Precipice: Insecurity in Northern Afghanistan” June 2002.

61

In this effect, the U.S. warlord policy was comparable to the Taliban policy enacted by

Pakistan. The Talibs are Pakistan’s version of regional commanders that they heavily funded and trusted to carry out its larger geopolitical aims. Both the United States and Pakistan attempted to delegate foreign policy power and responsibility to third party groups that are not necessarily loyal to their international patrons. The warlords received money from the United States, but they didn’t always have to obey, which is indicative in their covert contacts with the Taliban and

Al-Qaeda, suppression of human rights, refusal to assist Karzai’s administration, and their rampant production and exportation of opium. The Taliban also received protection and money from Pakistan’s ISI and military as a whole, yet their aggression towards Pakistan grew as

President Musharraf’s double game casted him as an American puppet even as he harbored them in the Pakistani tribal areas. The result of such discontent with the seemingly pro-Western

Pakistani government has now culminated in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (also known as the

Pakistani Taliban) who seek to overthrow the government in Islamabad.185

Pakistan’s Dubious Taliban Policy and its Effects at Home

By 2001, Pervez Musharraf became Pakistan’s self-titled president after he banned political rallies and arrested members of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy.186 Just days after the September 11th attacks, President Musharraf was faced with ultimatum whether to side with the United States on its War on Terror or not.187 Musharraf’s acceptance of the war caused immense backlash from all sides of the Pakistani political spectrum, even though his plan was to play a double-game supporting the Taliban whilst aiding Americans against Al-Qaeda.188 He was

185 Coll, Directorate S, 646; Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 400-401. 186 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 52. 187 Ibid, 28-29. 188 Ibid, 73.

62 initially supported by Pakistan’s Islamists political party Jaamat-e-Islami (JI), who had the vociferous connections to Kashmiri and Taliban militants, but the JI renounced Musharraf’s legitimacy once he accepted U.S. demands believing he had betrayed their Taliban brothers.189

Musharraf was the ultimate major player in this period of Pakistani history, as he utilized his ultimate decision power to side with the Taliban and the United States in the War on Terror.

Civilian institutions had already faced a devastating blow from Musharraf’s consolidation of power and had no means to oppose his covert plan to support the Taliban while Islamists army officers and Islamist political parties began to feel as if Musharraf was another lackey of the

Americans, as Nawaz Sharif was in their eyes.

President Pervez Musharraf’s first step in this double game policy was to convince his hardline generals that accepting the U.S. demands and assisting in the War on Terror would be good for Pakistan. The three corps commander that effectively secured Musharraf’s 1999 coup were ISI chief Mehmood Ahmad, Mohammed Aziz, and Muzaffar Usmani. Without them

Musharraf would not have any of the titles or powers that he carried at the time of 9/11 and more importantly, these generals were ardent supporters of the Islamist fundamental parties that were in bed with the Taliban and Kashmiri militants.190 Musharraf argued against their wishes to decline the U.S. demands, warning that India was extending full cooperation to the United States if the Americans were willing. This would forever cost Pakistan the Kashmiri cause and grant

India a huge ally in the new interim government that would be formed in Kabul. The three corps commanders retorted saying Pakistan was getting nothing in return and that there would be a devastating domestic fallout for betraying the Taliban, which they were correct. Musharraf’s

189 Ibid, 46. 190 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 28.

63 interpretation of Pakistan grand strategy ultimately won out over his kingmaker corps commanders, Musharraf accepted demands without the approval of his generals and then fired them just weeks later to reassert his authority over his regime.191

Musharraf was no stranger to interpreting Pakistan policy and crafting it unilaterally. If his invasion of Kargil in 1999 was not indicative of that than his sacking of the three most powerful corps commanders were. He continued in this manner in 2002 when he declared he would hold a national referendum where voters could decide if he should continue to be president for another five years. In the campaign leading up to the vote, Musharraf used the ISI to organize rallies to promote his support, ordered all military personnel to vote for him, and essentially promoted the Muslim League Party if they voted for him.192 Musharraf won the referendum, yet it was boycotted and declared unconstitutional by all major political parties in

Pakistan.193 Despite receiving a massive blow to his credibility, Musharraf successfully consolidated power so he could keep up his strategy of safe harboring the Taliban whilst simultaneously supporting the United States against Al-Qaeda.

The blowback that Musharraf would receive from such actions would be massive. The

2002 parliamentary elections saw the opposition political party—the Pakistan People’s Party

(PPP) led by popular Benazir Bhutto—securing the second most seats in the country’s National

Assembly.194 Using this polarity in parliament, the PPP refused to accept Musharraf’s unilateral measures and acted in defiance to his crafted government by paralyzing parliament through protest. The Islamist alliance political party, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), won the third

191 Ibid, 78. 192 Ibid, 150. 193 Ibid. 194 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 158-160.

64 most seats and while they supported most of the army’s measures, they continued to condemn

Pakistan’s role in the War on Terror in Afghanistan. 195 Regardless, even with parliamentary opposition, Musharraf was allowed to continue his unilateral policies involving the protection of the Taliban ultimately proving the foreign policy decision making power that Musharraf wielded.

Political marginalization was mainly felt by secular political parties but also by the more extreme militant forces that supported the Al-Qaeda within Pakistan. Musharraf did not account for the notion that Taliban supporters were very much linked with Al-Qaeda supporters and appeasing such parties while still operating against the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan would cause direct militant responses from such organizations. Osama bin Laden called on his “Pakistani

Muslim brothers” to rid of President Musharraf in 2002 and a year later President Musharraf experienced a deadly assassination attempt carried out by members of the militant organization

Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).196 JeM was founded by the ISI in 2000 and still remained in close contact with the intelligence agency with the main purpose to recruit and export jihadis to fight for the Kashmir cause.197 Now, three years later, JeM assassination attempts on President

Musharraf indicates the level of rising discontent of Pakistan’s armed forces. JeM were able to carry out such an operation because of their connections to army officers and air force personnel that leaked sensitive information about Musharraf’s security details (his location, the car he would be in, etc.) proving that “disaffected army personnel on the inside [are] linked to terrorist groups on the outside”.198

195 Ibid. 196 Ibid, 230. 197 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 46. 198 Ibid, 231.

65

Ultimately, Pervez Musharraf’s double-dealing strategy of appeasing religious fundamentalist groups by strengthening their political structures and safeguarding the Taliban in the city of Quetta served to unite political opposition against the ruling party in parliament. The

Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) continued to question President Musharraf’s unilateral power and repeatedly called for his resignation as the army chief if he was to remain as president.199 For the fundamentalists in the Pakistan army and those who made up Jamaat-e-

Islami (JI), the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), and its affiliates in Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM),

Musharraf’s decision to side with the Americans in Afghanistan and to help hunt down certain senior Al-Qaeda members was perceived as the ultimate betrayal.200 The blowback materialized in the form of suicide bombings against Pakistan army officials and rising militancy in the tribal regions.

The strategy that Musharraf and his loyalists in the army chose was to side with the

United States in Afghanistan in hopes to receive substantial financial aid, earn payments for military operations, and to snub India in any attempts in establishing a pro-Indian government in

Kabul. The second part of the strategy was to protect Taliban leadership in the city of Quetta,

Pakistan and to appease religious fundamentalist groups by delaying their disbandment and empowering them for their continued militancy support in Kashmir and in endeavors against

India. The double-dealing strategy conducted by Musharraf was in response to Northern Alliance domination of post-war Afghanistan, a violation of Musharraf’s demands for a pro-Pakistan predominantly Pashtun based Afghan government, which he believed was necessary in order to combat India’s amassing influence in the region and in the world.201 Yet, his efforts to appease

199 Ibid, 233. 200 Ibid, 160-161. 201 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 79.

66 both sides while simultaneously working against them garnered little sympathy in the eyes of fellow army affiliates and state politicians.202 Musharraf shattered any chance for Pakistan to even create any institutional policies that were not in line with his strategies, and in doing so, enraged a variety of opposition forces in the country.

202 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 161.

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V. Conclusion

Cooperation between the United States and Pakistan grew more complicated as Barack

Obama came into office in 2008. President Obama increased drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas while pulling armed forces out of Afghanistan after a brief surge of troops. Pakistan’s

Taliban policy was no longer a secret to the Americans and relations suffered immeasurably when Osama bin Laden was found in a compound less than a mile away from the Pakistan

Military Academy. The 2011 Operation Neptune Spear was carried out by the United States and succeeded in capturing and killing the prime suspect of the War on Terror, Osama bin Laden.203

Pakistan’s generals, Pervez Musharraf, and ISI officials vehemently deny that they had any knowledge of bin Laden hiding right under their noses and have maintained that story to this day.

Meanwhile, U.S. drone strikes enflamed a rising anti-American sentiment within Pakistan urging its politicians to condemn the War on Terror and Pakistan’s position as an American ally.

The newly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, won on a campaign that defamed the

American efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas citing its civilian casualties and breach of sovereignty as the reasons why terrorist organizations like the Pakistani Taliban continue to develop and retaliate.204 Khan has advocated rejection of all U.S. aid in efforts to make the War on Terror Pakistan’s own mission that does not have to be influenced or dictated by American pressure or assistance.205

Ultimately, the United States-Pakistan alliance suffered greatly since its foundation in the

Soviet-Mujahedeen War. Major players within the alliance were able to command their

203 Micah Zenko, "Osama Bin Laden's Death: One Month Later." Council on Foreign Relations, June 1, 2011. https://www.cfr.org/blog/osama-bin-ladens-death-one-month-later. 204 Oxford Union, “War on Terror | Imran Khan | Oxford Union,” YouTube Video, 6:43, March 8, 2013. 205 CNN, “Khan: Pakistan should reject U.S. aid,” YouTube Video, 5:42, May 13, 2011

68 countries’ respective foreign policies to override any institutional principles crafted by civilian politicians and lawmakers. Political settlement of the Soviet-Mujahedeen War could not be achieved as CIA station chiefs supported Pakistan hegemony over Afghanistan even when State

Department officials and Congressmen back in Washington urged for a representative government in line with U.S. policy that called for Afghan self-determination. The following civil war in Afghanistan and the U.S. policy of neutrality was also violated by major players such as Robin Raphel and President Bill Clinton, who insisted that a tilt towards the Taliban may help achieve the goal of capturing Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, the U.S. War on Terror in

Afghanistan was initially meant to root out the terrorists who planned the attacks on 9/11 and those who protected them. The UN authorized resolutions that asserted the need for a representative democratic government in Kabul, yet, major players like Donald Rumsfeld were able to interpret U.S. policy to deter from the UN resolutions by empowering regional warlords who stagnated attempts of the central government to gain power in Afghanistan while misusing

U.S. funds making it more difficult to capture the terrorists.

Pakistan’s major players have almost exclusively come from its formidable military establishment. Generals like Aslam Beg, Hamid Gul, and Pervez Musharraf were able to dismantle civilian governments completely on different occasions and operated covert policies in

Afghanistan and Pakistan that resulted in blowback from both the fundamentalist militant organizations in Pakistan and the various political parties that made up the opposition. Siding with the Americans while protecting the Taliban and its militant sympathizers was a foreign policy decision commanded by Pervez Musharraf solely who held unilateral power as army chief and president of Pakistan.

69

The strategy of supporting regional warlords over the civilian Afghan government was pursued by both the United States and Pakistan in the post-9/11 period. Pakistan felt it had to maintain support for the Taliban in case the Americans decided to leave the region as they had in the 1990s. Pakistan feared the growing influence of former Northern Alliance commanders that dominated the countryside and interim government of Afghanistan. These commanders had considerable contacts with India and other foreign investors causing Pakistan to fear its potential siding with India in any number of conflicts, especially on the Kashmir issue. Pakistan maintained the Taliban as its proxy faction in Afghanistan that would challenge Northern

Alliance dominance and pressure the Karzai administration into falling in line with Pakistan’s wishes. In a similar sense, the warlord commanders paid off by the United States rivaled the

Karzai administration in wealth and armaments and too worked against its empowerment. The

United States was shifting most of its resources and attention to the Iraq war by the end of 2002, resulting in the reliance on such warlords to “keep the peace” and help the CIA in its hunt for

Osama bin Laden. By keeping these warlords empowered, Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration felt they could maintain a leverage over Karzai’s government that faced problems of continual corruption and ineffectiveness of its nascent armed forces. These major American players hoped that the warlords would use their empowerment to help the United States search for Al-Qaeda operatives while letting the interim government and the UN deal with issues regarding reconstruction and political unity.

The warlords, both the Taliban and the U.S. favored commanders, committed many of the same atrocities against the Afghan people. The period of the Taliban was worse in the sense that its policies of denying women any human rights, outlawing basic cultural activities or modern technology, and the persecution of the Shia minority as well as non-Pashtun ethnicities

70 were systematic and overt. The subsequent rule of the commanders that helped topple the

Taliban had similar cases of the suppression of women’s rights, especially in Herat under warlord Ismael Khan. There were also many reported cases of rape and illegal seizure of land in the northern provinces commanded by warlord Rashid Dostum. Cases of corruption and embezzlement piled up against warlord Gul Agha Sherzai in the south. All in all, the warlords are akin to the Taliban in the sense that they destabilize the country for their own benefit and meanwhile refuse to even achieve the policy goals set out by their respective donors the United

States and Pakistan.

The warlords stripped power from the central government and many were in bed with the

Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces, resulting in difficulties for the Karzai administration to fight back against rising terrorist insurgencies. The U.S. policy goal of eliminating terrorists was tasked to such warlords who were to help the CIA and special forces in their struggle against terrorism.

The warlords, however, managed to do the opposite by destabilizing the country ultimately allowing the Taliban a chance to come back through insurgency and by appealing to the warlord’s civilian victims.

The Taliban were meant to achieve Pakistan’s goal of establishing a Pashtun force in

Afghanistan that was clearly pro-Pakistani and anti-India. Similar to the U.S.-backed warlords,

Pakistan eventually lost control of its Taliban proxies and could not prevent them from forming an offshoot branch—the Pakistani Taliban (TTP)—whose main purpose is to oust the Pakistani regime in Islamabad for its seemingly pro-western policies.206

206 Coll, Directorate S, 646-647.

71

The future of the United States and Pakistan relationship remains uncertain and uneasy.

Today, the United States has taken a more direct approach to negotiating a settlement between the Taliban and the warring factions in Afghanistan. Pakistan, the United States, the Taliban, and other state actors have agreed to multiple peace conversations in 2018 and details of a negotiated settlement are being hammered out. However, uncertainty looms in the air as the Taliban refuse to allow the central Afghan government to join in the conversation of peace and battles continue to be waged throughout country and cities experience an increase in suicide attacks.207

Pakistan and the United States must not repeat the same mistakes that were made in the end of the Soviet-Mujahedeen War. A political settlement must be reached, including all parties and factions involved, as to prevent perpetual civil war in Afghanistan and end foreign military intervention. Pakistan and the United States owe it to the Afghan people who fought the battles that decisively led to the end of the Cold War and collapsed the Soviet Union. Forty years of war has devastated the Afghan people and has constantly destroyed the repeated attempts at growing civilian institutions that try to rebuild civil society. Clearly stated policies, with little room for misguidance by major players, need to be carefully crafted by civilian institutions in both

Pakistan and the United States. A unified effort to end the war and focus on a new period of growth and security is essential to protect both American and Pakistani national interests.

207 Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), 113-125.

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