88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (38 page)

We raced westward along the flat tableland of the Potwar Plateau, then plunged downward into the Indus River Valley. We crossed by the ancient bridge just below the brooding Attock Fort, where Alexander the Great had forded the Indus to mount his invasion of India. From there the landscape became much more variable, as we cut through narrow passes in a series of sharp ridges interspersed between broad dry watercourses. We stopped briefly at Kohat, an army town and home to Pakistan’s Ninth Division. From there, we continued onward through Hangu, marveling at the narrow-gauge railway constructed by the British to carry supplies through the difficult terrain to their distant outpost at Thall, located at the eastern edge of the border between the Kurram Agency to the north and the North Waziristan Agency to the south. There we paid a short call on the commander of the Thall detachment of the Frontier Force Regiment, the only unit of the regular Pak Army in the area. I listened very closely to his briefing on available forces, anticipating that if we were to get agreement on a Pak Army deployment to interdict the southern passes leading from Tora Bora, the troops might well have to come from here.

Rushing onward, we were met by a small detachment of the Thall Scouts, the Frontier Corps unit charged with security in southern Kurram, who escorted us to their headquarters and another briefing by their commander. All this gave us some context on overall security conditions and the state of Pakistani forces in the wider area. But it was only an introduction to what we really needed to see: the status and deployment of forces in the so-called “Parrot’s Beak,” the wild salient of northern Kurram which made a sharp, narrow, westward triangular bulge in the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, and where it seemed bin Laden and his followers might emerge as they fled their U.S. and Afghan pursuers.

We continued north along the Kurram River, now escorted by two truckloads of scouts from the Kurram Militia, through the Chapri Post, past which no foreigners were allowed to venture without official permission into the dangerous areas beyond. The waning afternoon light gave the landscape—carved by millennia of floods—a timeless, ethereal quality as the road climbed up the flanking escarpment and then plunged back down, again and again, to the ever-shifting gravel bed of the valley floor below, crossing and recrossing the rushing torrent. Jafar was highly nostalgic about the area. Here he had served during the 1980s as the commander of a tank squadron charged with blocking a possible Soviet advance across the Afghan border and down the Kurram River Valley. The expectation was that if the Soviets sought to punish Pakistan for its support of the
mujahideen
, this would have been one of their prime axes of attack. As a young captain, he had had few illusions about how long he could resist the superior armor of the Soviet Army; his plan, once the last of his tanks had been destroyed, was to escape with his wife by disguising themselves as shepherds and driving a small flock of goats along a track to the east. In places where the river spread out in dozens of small watercourses across the broad rock and gravel expanse of the valley bottom, we splashed through shallow spillways flanked incongruously by weathered concrete “dragon’s teeth” tank barriers.

We arrived just at sunset in the small garrison town of Parachinar, located on a flat, treed expanse defining the far northern edge of the Kurram Valley, flanked on the north by the towering peaks of the Safed Koh, and on the west by the northern end of the Sulaiman range. We drove through the small cantonment area, finally stopping at the British-built stone fort, constructed in the 1890s as the headquarters of the Kurram Militia. It was a place straight out of Kipling. After being welcomed by the colonel in command, we ate a quick dinner and played a game of billiards in the dark, wood-paneled room that had once been the commander’s bar during British times, before retiring for the night in the officers’ guest quarters.

The following day, we stepped outside into the clear, cool morning air to see spectacular, snow-capped peaks towering above us. The commander provided us with a comprehensive briefing on his manpower and force structure, as well as the positions of all his border
posts and checkpoints, and the schedules and patterns of combat patrols being conducted all along the border for which he was responsible. It was an earnest and credible presentation, and made it appear, when viewed on a map, that the entire area south of Tora Bora—from the tip of the Parrot’s Beak at the western end of the Safed Koh, all the way to the Tirah Valley in Khyber Agency to the east—was well covered. One look at the difficulty of the terrain, however, made it clear that sealing this area would be nearly impossible. The problem was compounded by the fact that the slopes, ravines, and foothills leading up to the high peaks were a so-called “no-go” area, where even the troopers of the Kurram Militia could not patrol, by agreement with the tribes. It seemed clear to me that as and when al-Qa’ida “squirters” fled through the high passes, the best hope of intercepting them would be immediately on the Pakistani side, where the topography would naturally channel them into corridors that could be patrolled and surveilled. As things were, the Frontier Corps could only hope to capture the Arabs as they emerged onto the roads and tracks of the valley below—a much more difficult proposition, and one made nearly impossible by the modest forces at hand.

At the tip of the Parrot’s Beak at the far western end of the Safed Koh is Peiwar Kotal, the mountain pass through which Major General Sir Frederick Roberts made his surprise attack on Kabul in the Second Anglo-Afghan War of the 1870s. It was there that we met the border guards who had shown so much equanimity over their close encounter with an American bomb. Crossing the border and marching several hundred yards up the road, our Pak Army and Frontier Corps escorts in tow, Jafar and I made an inspection of the wrecked Taliban border post, climbing up on the rubble of what had once been a large stone building. Looking down from this little promontory, Jafar spied a dark green plastic object on the ground; it had the shape of a large, rounded cakepan.

“That’s the cover of an antitank mine,” he said. We looked at one another. “Perhaps we should climb down,” he continued. I agreed, suddenly far more observant of where I was stepping. Close by, we found a jagged hole, clearly made by an American penetrator. It had burrowed at a slight angle, deep into solid bedrock. One couldn’t see the bottom. Jafar stared at it in wonder, eventually calling one of the Pak Army
jawans
over. He was to come back, Jafar ordered, with a long string, to which he was to tie a rock. Jafar wanted to know just how deep that hole was.

We climbed from there up the steep hillside where the Frontier Corpsmen were eager to show us the new fighting positions they had constructed overlooking the pass. They had taken advantage of the Taliban guards’ departure to move several of their observation posts to higher ground, in effect moving the Pak-Afghan frontier farther west. Jafar smiled and looked on approvingly. “I probably shouldn’t be witnessing this,” I thought.

On the long drive back to Islamabad, I compared notes and shared my thoughts with the general, who would be filing a report immediately upon his return. I cannot say for certain whether our inspection trip and Jafar’s report were the cause, but two days later, on December 1, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, Lieutenant General Iftikhar Hussein Shah, flew to Parachinar for a grand
jirga
with all the
maliks
of the Upper Kurram area. The tribal leaders agreed that for the first time in Pakistan’s history, they would permit Pakistani government forces to move up onto the slopes and into the high passes of the Safed Koh—provided that the government sent regular Pakistan Army troops, and not the Frontier Corps. Their rationale was that Pak Army troops would surely leave when their mission was completed, whereas the Frontier Corps, once permitted to move into that area, would be far more likely to stay.

The
maliks
agreed to organize
lashgars
, or local militia units, to guide and accompany the Pak Army troops in setting up watch posts high in the mountains. Each combined unit of militia fighters and Pak Army
jawans
was to include the son of a prominent
malik
, as a guarantee against betrayal by the tribes. The first Pak Army troops began to move in immediately, employing mules to transport their gear on the steep mountain tracks. In a matter of days, they had moved some six battalions—over 4,000 men—high above Parachinar. As the troops dug in to seek shelter from the frosty mountain winds, they could hear the rumble of huge explosions from across the peaks. The massive American bombardment of bin Laden’s Arabs, trapped in Tora Bora, was beginning.

NOVEMBER 30, 2001

I
ARRIVED IN MY
office, still tired from my late-night return from the Tribal Areas, to find the usual pile of overnight cables stacked neatly on my desk. I had only begun to glance at the top one when Dave came rushing in, holding yet another in his hand.

“They’re in the air!” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but already it didn’t sound good.

“
Who’s
in the air?”

“The Director!”

Good God. Director Tenet would be in Pakistan to meet with President Musharraf in a matter of hours, and had neither an invitation nor an appointment. At the moment, I didn’t even know where Musharraf was. I arranged to see General Ehsan ul-Haq, the ISI chief, immediately.

That evening, I was standing at the foot of the stairs as George stepped down from the plane, with his security detail, some seniors from the Near East Division, and a number of analysts from CTC/WMD following behind. As the visitors, baggage, and logistics were being sorted, he and I climbed into the backseat of an armored sedan, and sped off toward Islamabad. I still didn’t know precisely why he was there.

“We have to get to the bottom of UTN [Ummah Tameer-e Nau]. We’re operating on the assumption that they’ve given al-Qa’ida the means to build a nuclear weapon,” he said grimly. I was startled.

“I didn’t know that was our assessment.”

“It’s not,” he replied. “This isn’t an analytic judgment. It’s an operational one. If there’s any chance at all that it could be true, we have to pursue it as though there were a high probability that it
is
true.”

The November 4 revelation concerning Dr. Bashir’s nuclear discussion with bin Laden and his subsequent meetings with Abu Zaydan had certainly gotten Washington’s attention, but hadn’t generated quite the degree of panic I had anticipated. Perhaps Washington’s relative sobriety reflected that so far, at least, all we knew about was talk and bad intentions, with no hard evidence that al-Qa’ida had either fissile material or any substantive nuclear knowledge or capability. Everything depended on determining whether the well of Bashir’s knowledge about al-Qa’ida’s nuclear aspirations had in fact run dry, or whether his cooperation with al-Qa’ida had gone further than he had admitted. Almost four weeks later, we still didn’t know for sure.

In early November, at the end of his forty-eight-hour interrogation of Dr. Bashir, Barry McManus had felt that he had played out his string, at least for the time being. Bashir was exhausted, and would not budge beyond his current admissions. The polygraph indicated that he was still withholding some information, but it was Barry’s professional judgment that Bashir’s cooperation with al-Qa’ida, and his knowledge of their capabilities, was not significantly greater than what he had told us. In any case, in his current state he could not be usefully questioned further. During an evening video conference with a group of skeptical Washington WMD analysts, it was agreed that Barry and his colleague Dave would return home for consultations. It was time to regroup.

In subsequent days, the political pressure on the government of Pakistan greatly increased. Stories began to appear in the press that Dr. Bashir had been arrested by the ISI, and was being tortured by foreign interrogators. He and his family made renewed claims of ill-health. We had no other leads to pursue, and no new information with which to confront either Bashir or his ISI minders: none of Bashir’s colleagues in UTN appeared to know anything. ISI, feeling the heat and wondering how much longer this could go on, was beginning, again, to make noises about releasing him.

In the meantime, unsubstantiated clandestine reports began to appear
that al-Qa’ida was actively planning weapons of mass destruction attacks in the United States. Fear and tension were rising palpably in Washington. On November 29, George briefed President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice on our state of knowledge as to al-Qa’ida’s efforts to acquire WMD. Reacting to information on Dr. Bashir and UTN, the vice president asked if we thought al-Qa’ida had a nuclear weapon. A senior analyst accompanying George stated that we did not, but that we couldn’t exclude the possibility. Thus was born Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine”: If there is a 1 percent chance it could be true, he said, we have to pursue it as though it were true. Given the stakes involved, that was hard to argue with—particularly at a time when the crushing fear of another, infinitely more devastating attack on the homeland hung like an incubus over every moment, waking or sleeping. The president directed George to leave immediately for Pakistan and to get from President Musharraf whatever help we needed to determine absolutely whether or not al-Qa’ida had gained from Pakistan the ability to hit us with a nuclear weapon. This was why Tenet had appeared, so suddenly that some of his security people didn’t even have a change of underwear.

I dropped George at the ambassador’s residence for the night, with plans for a preparatory meeting early in the morning. The director did not look good: he was obviously exhausted. The next morning, he looked worse. I had serious doubts as to how this would go. His big advantage, I told George, was that he definitely had the Pakistanis’ attention. They had no idea why he had arrived with almost no notice, and given all that was happening, both across the border and on their own streets, they were highly concerned at what this might mean. If he was trying for a dramatic entrance, he had succeeded.