88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (19 page)

As I surveyed the area, my attention was immediately drawn to the far side of the field, where a slim, distinguished-looking gentleman with a full beard was standing with a small group. He towered over the others, but what most drew my eye was the distinctive turban he wore. The headdress was highly unusual in this context, and yet seemed vaguely familiar. As he slowly ambled across the field, it occurred to me: despite his age, the gentleman was wearing a Quranic student’s turban, of the sort frequently worn by bin Laden himself. Given the deference he was shown by others, I thought he must be some local notable.

By this time, Mahmud had arrived, and he joined me to wait as the technicians did their final checks on the aircraft. Looking up to see the tall gentleman’s approach, he addressed me with a flair. “Bob,” he said. “This . . .”—he paused for effect—“is Imam.” The old man had the playful, avuncular face of a clever grandfather; his eyes registered satisfied amusement as a look of surprised recognition came over mine. Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar, the infamous “Colonel Imam,” was a longtime operative of the ISI’s Afghanistan section. He had distinguished himself by his service with the Afghan
mujahideen
during the anti-Soviet
jihad
of the 1980s, and had gone on to function as a liaison between the ISI and the Taliban during the latter’s rise to power in Afghanistan. Most recently, he had been the Pakistani consul general in Herat, a suitable position through which to maintain links with Afghanistan’s leaders and, presumably, keep a watchful eye on what the Iranians were doing in western Afghanistan. Now, with the apparent imminence of hostilities, Colonel Imam and his ISI colleagues were being withdrawn; he had just arrived in Quetta after having traveled overland from Herat and Kandahar.

Imam had long been distrusted by the Western powers generally. For him, work with the Taliban was not just a matter of statecraft but of
personal passion: he had long shared the extremist Islamic ideology of his clients. For those claiming that the ISI could never be trusted and was in thrall to “rogue” elements, Colonel Imam was exhibit A. I could not have been more pleased to meet him.

Throughout the long ride to Islamabad on the prop-driven airplane, Imam and I bantered back and forth as he told stories of the
jihad
in excellent and colorful English, and I plied him with questions about the various
mujahideen
commanders. I found the old warrior marvelous company. When I called attention to the distinctive pin he wore on his waistcoat, he identified it as the insignia of the Special Services Group, the special forces of the Pakistan Army; he removed it and presented it to me with some ceremony. “But you must never wear it,” he said with some misgiving. Well aware of the strict military admonition against wearing an award or designation one has not earned, I laughed and assured him that he had nothing to worry about.

The sun was setting as we rolled to a stop at Chaklala Airbase in Rawalpindi. Barely pausing for goodbyes, Imam rushed off the plane to join a ragged group of airport workers who had spread out in a field just off the tarmac for the
magreb
prayer. I would never see him again. Well understanding that the retired ISI annuitant could not be trusted under the circumstances, the ISI leadership sent him home for the duration of the First American-Afghan War. When, a number of years later, I learned that he had been called back to duty, it was clear to me what that meant for Pakistan’s policy toward the Afghan Taliban.

Imam would meet his demise in January 2011, in a field in the South Waziristan tribal agency. His public execution was presided over by the head of the so-called “Pakistani Taliban,” Hakimullah Mehsud, himself since killed, reportedly, in a U.S. drone strike. Having tried to mediate between the government of Pakistan and the religious fanatics who had turned against it, Imam was ironically taken hostage and eventually murdered by those whose extremist cause he had long championed. He stands as a symbol and a stark reminder of the fate that waits in store for all those who would use religious extremism as an instrument of policy. He may finally stand as a poetic symbol of the Pakistani state itself.

OCTOBER 3, 2001

H
E WAS NOT THE
prototype of your typical CIA officer. “James” wore his long hair tied back in a ponytail. I had known one or two young officers in the recent past whose dress and body ornamentation hinted at an extracurricular lifestyle confined to weekends and carefully shielded from colleagues, but James was quite unabashed. Had he been a case officer, his eccentricities would probably have been written off as a somewhat unusual manifestation of a common psychological profile among his peers: extreme independence, inner-directedness, and a confident self-regard bordering on narcissism. But James was a reports officer. Gentle and mild-mannered, one would hardly have branded him an egotist; still, an independent spirit and a benign indifference to social expectations were doubtless assets for a young, first-tour male breaking into a field long dominated by women.

I sank to one knee by his chair, so that we could speak without disturbing the others, clacking away at their keyboards in the reports officers’ bullpen.

“I want you to take the lead on this debriefing. From now on, you’re the SNI Referent. You’re to follow all the traffic, and I’m going to direct anyone with information on the detainees to make sure it gets to you: maps, locations, diagrams, everything. This is yours.” It was a heavy responsibility to place on the shoulders of a young man with a few months’ experience. Lives, including those of two Americans, might depend on him as a result, but he was smart, thorough, and I knew I
could rely on him. He had absorbed too much of the agency’s understated professional ethos to show it, but I could tell he was pleased and excited.

In early August 2001, eight members of the German-based humanitarian NGO Shelter Now International (SNI) had been taken into custody by the Taliban in Kabul on suspicion of Christian proselytizing. Among them were two young American women in their twenties, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer. There were very few Americans in Afghanistan, and the plight of these two, suddenly subject to the medieval brutality of the Taliban penal system, quickly gained the attention of high-level American officials in both Islamabad and Washington.

This was no ordinary consular case. Apostasy is considered a crime throughout the Muslim world, and for the Taliban, it was a crime punishable by death. Woe betide any Afghan even suspected of having been converted to Christianity. The likely sanction to be meted out to those non-Muslims alleged to be the agents of such waywardness was less clear, but certainly something one would wish to avoid.

At first, I strongly doubted their guilt. Given the obvious dangers involved in spreading Christian faith in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, I thought it most unlikely that the SNI arrestees would have been so naive as to attempt it. Other religiously based NGOs active in the Muslim world are careful to confine their activities to humanitarian relief. No, it seemed to me far more likely that the arrests were the product of rumors, Taliban paranoia, and a general Afghan distrust of foreigners. Surely the charges against them would not withstand serious scrutiny.

David Donohue, the consul general in Islambad, was a tall, angular man in his forties, a mild-mannered and rather patrician New Englander. He and I had a constructive professional relationship, though our duties seldom brought us into contact. Paula and I got to know him and his wife socially through a local hiking club. Though he was always unfailingly friendly and polite, I still sensed a slight wariness in his dealings with me. I had the distinct impression that he was not entirely comfortable with the CIA. Imagined or otherwise, such diffidence on the part of State Department colleagues was neither uncommon
nor, given our secretiveness, difficult to understand; I certainly didn’t take it personally.

David moved quickly to engage Atif Ali Khan, a competent, Pashtu-speaking Pakistani lawyer with knowledge of
sharia
—Islamic law—and experience in Afganistan. Ali hadn’t been on the case in Afghanistan very long before the evidence against his clients was revealed to him: to our chagrin, materials on the SNI detainees’ computers made it clear that they were, indeed, seeking to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity. This was going to make their situation infinitely more difficult. It is always easier to plead innocence of an alleged infraction than to contest the justness or validity of the law in question, and arguing for religious tolerance with the Taliban was a losing proposition. At that point, official efforts shifted further in favor of politically inspired pleas for clemency, rather than legal defense.

In August and early September, some form of clemency seemed a good bet. The Taliban were not entirely unmindful of their international reputation, even if they frequently acted as though they were. Already heavily sanctioned through the United Nations for harboring Osama bin Laden, their global stock had reached an all-time low as a result of their destruction of the so-called “Bamian Buddhas”—two monumental statues, the larger of which some 150 feet high, carved in the sixth century into a sheer rock cliff in the Bamian Valley, and officially listed as a World Heritage Site. The Taliban dynamited the statues as pagan idols in March 2001, claiming it a religious necessity to do so, despite protests from around the world and contrary religious rulings from some of the globe’s most eminent Islamic scholars. A wave of international revulsion followed. If there were a time when the Taliban might be induced to make concessions to world opinion, this appeared to be it. As of September 4, our intelligence indicated that Mullah Omar was leaning in favor of trying the SNI detainees in court to establish their guilt (and thus justify their arrest), and then releasing them as a humanitarian gesture. On September 6, Francesc Vendrell, the UN secretary general’s personal representative for Afghanistan, met with Mullah Jalil on the matter. Jalil gave clear indications that he was trying to work out some arrangement that would provide a public relations boost to the Taliban.

All that changed following the events of September 11. With the United States threatening to go to war, it was clear that U.S. policy regarding bin Laden and al-Qa’ida was not going to change in deference to the SNI detainees; and with the Americans set to attack no matter what the Taliban did about the detainees, it was unlikely the Taliban would release them. In his State of the Union speech of September 20, in an obvious reference to the detainees, President Bush included in his list of demands of the Taliban that they “Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. . . .” But that exaction would not come into play unless and until the Taliban first turned over bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qa’ida leadership. When General Mahmud’s September 28 plea to Omar for the detainees’ release elicited no response, the ISI chief held a separate meeting with Mullah Jalil to press for action. Jalil gave his best spin, suggesting there would soon be a two- or three-day trial, followed by the detainees’ expulsion. His optimism was unconvincing. By the time the American bombing started, it was clear to us that the only way the detainees were going to be freed was if someone bought them out—or forcibly took them.

The eight—four Germans (three women and a man) and two Australians (one woman, one man), in addition to the two American women—began their incarceration at the Dar ul Tudib Reform School, but by late September they were moved to a prison controlled by the Taliban’s General Intelligence Directorate located near the Iranian Embassy and the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees. We hoped against hope that they would stay in one location long enough for us to gather the intelligence necessary to support a rescue effort.

In early October, we got two big breaks. First, one of my case officers made a terrific recruitment of an Afghan source with regular access to the General Intelligence prison. Thanks to “Isfandiar,” now we could be sure of the detainees’ location and monitor their condition, while incrementally building a detailed picture of the facility where they were being kept. The second break came from an unexpected quarter. A friend at the British High Commission called to say that one of their nationals, a female journalist, had recently been incarcerated
and then quickly freed by the Taliban, and was available at the British High Commission in Islamabad. She had had direct contact with the female detainees, and had briefly shared their spaces at the General Intelligence prison. This was the opportunity for which I mobilized James, telling him to work in tandem with “Marco,” the senior JSOC liaison officer assigned to work with us. Marco understood precisely what a hostage rescue team would need to know, and so could guide our intelligence-gathering efforts.

We would soon learn just how exacting JSOC’s planning process was. If a target facility has a staircase from the ground to the second floor, JSOC will want to know how wide the opening is, and whether a trooper with full gear will fit through. They will want to know how many stairs there are, and the height of the risers, so they will know how many stairs to take at a stride as they enter. If there is a door at the top, they will want to know whether it opens to the left or to the right, the position of the latch, and whether it is likely to be locked.

Marco and James found the British journalist to be quite remarkable: She had an absolutely photographic memory. By the time they finished, they had extraordinary detail on the entire facility, including the physical layout, the external security posture and procedures, the numbers of guards posted during the day and at night, where they stood, where they slept, and where they kept their weapons. Everything that we could corroborate with satellite photography and through Isfandiar checked out. Marco came to me.

“When we train, we never give ourselves this much information,” he said. “This is more than we would ever have a right to expect.” Now JSOC could begin to put together a serious rescue plan. A mock-up of the prison would soon be constructed in North Carolina, and a commando team designated to train on it.