Dirty Wars (85 page)

Three days after Obama announced to the world that JSOC had killed Osama bin Laden, the president's counterterrorism team presented him with an urgent intelligence update on Yemen. The CIA and JSOC believed they had pinpointed Awlaki's location in the south of Yemen and said they had to seize this moment to take him out. Emboldened by the bin Laden raid, Obama's generals had been agitating for the president to authorize a blitzkrieg of sorts to deliver a “
knockout blow
” to al Qaeda in a variety of countries. In Yemen, JSOC was talking about “running the table” and taking the fight to the enemy.

President Obama had
ordered John Brennan
to update him at every Terror Tuesday meeting on all available intelligence on Awlaki. Now the president was presented with a concrete opportunity to finish him off. According to Daniel Klaidman's account, Warsame had provided crucial intelligence on Awlaki. The Navy SEALs who captured Warsame had also taken possession of his laptop, thumb drives and other data storage devices. “
The hardware was filled
with emails and other evidence tying him directly to Awlaki. Warsame had met with the cleric only two days before, completing a major weapons deal,” according to Klaidman. “Warsame's exposure to Awlaki and other high-ranking members of AQAP gave him access to critical ‘patterns of life' intelligence, which he divulged to US officials when they interrogated him. He told them how Awlaki traveled, including the kinds of vehicles he used and the configuration of his convoys. He provided information about Awlaki's modes of communications as well as the elaborate security measures he and his entourage took.”

Along with signals intercepts by JSOC and the CIA and “
vital details of Awlaki's whereabouts
” from Yemeni intelligence, the White House now had what it believed was its best shot to date at killing Awlaki. US military aircraft were at the ready. Obama gave the green light. JSOC would run the operation. A Special Ops
Dragon Spear aircraft
mounted with short-range Griffin missiles blasted through Yemeni airspace, backed by Marine Harrier jets and Predator drones, and headed toward Shabwah. A Global Hawk surveillance aircraft would hover above to relay a live feed back to the mission planners.

The American cleric, well aware that the United States was trying to kill him, had taken precautions to limit the number of people with whom he communicated. He changed locations frequently and switched vehicles often. On the evening of May 5, Awlaki and some friends were driving through Jahwa, in rural southern Shabwah, when their pickup truck was rocked by a massive explosion nearby, shattering its windows. Awlaki saw a flash of light and believed a rocket had been fired at the car. “
Speed up
!” Awlaki yelled at the driver. He looked around the truck and took stock of the situation. No one was hurt. The back of the truck was filled with canisters of gasoline, yet the vehicle had not exploded. Alhamdulillah, Awlaki thought. “Praise God.” He called for backup.

While Awlaki and his colleagues scrambled to get away from what they thought was an ambush, JSOC planners watched via satellite as his car emerged from the dust clouds the Griffin had caused. They'd missed. There had been a malfunction of the targeting pod, and the guidance system was unable to keep a lock on Awlaki's vehicle. It would now be up to the Harriers and the drone. Strike two. A massive fireball lit up the sky. Just as the celebrations were to begin, the mission's planners watched in shock as the truck emerged once again. Its back bumper had been hit, but the truck was on the run. The Harriers were running low on fuel and had to abandon the mission. The third strike had to come from the drone. Awlaki peered out the window, looking for the perpetrators of the ambush. It was then he saw it: a drone hovering in the sky. As smoke and dust engulfed the area, Awlaki told the driver not to head toward any populated areas. They pulled into a small valley with some trees.

Two brothers, Abdullah and Musa'd Mubarak al Daghari, known in the AQAP community as the
al Harad brothers
, had seen the strike from a distance and were speeding to Awlaki's rescue. As the drone hovered overhead, the US war planners could not see what was happening below. A former JSOC planner, who read the US after-action reports on the failed mission, told me that the mission only had satellites that provided “top down imagery.” With such satellites, he said, “
You can't see shit
. You're looking down at ants moving. All they saw were vehicles and the people in the vehicles were smart.” Dust, gravel, smoke and flames had shielded the High Value Target. The Harad brothers quickly marshaled Awlaki and his driver into their
Suzuki Vitara SUV
and they took Awlaki's vehicle. They gave Awlaki directions to a cliff where he could go to take shelter, if he could make it past the American missiles. Awlaki hastily said goodbye and sped off in the Suzuki. The Harad brothers then headed in the opposite direction, driving in the truck the Americans had tried to blow up moments earlier.

As two vehicles took off in opposite directions, the American war planners had to decide which one to follow. They
stuck with Awlaki's truck
. Awlaki looked up and saw the drones still hovering. He managed to make it to the cliff in the mountains. From there, he watched as another round of missiles shot out of the sky and blew up the truck, killing the Harad brothers.

As JSOC celebrated what it thought was a successful hit, Awlaki performed the evening prayers and reflected on the situation. Tonight has “increased my certainty that no human being will die until they complete their livelihood and [reach their] appointed time,” he thought. He fell asleep in the mountains, awakened later by colleagues who took him to safety at the home of his old friend Shaykh Nadari.

Nadari was asleep when the strikes happened, but he awoke to the sound of the explosions and had felt the ground shake. “When the time of dawn approached and as the light began to spread, it brought about with it Sheikh Anwar,” Nadari later recalled. “He entered upon us with a cheerful smile so we all knew that he was the one targeted.” The men embraced and Awlaki debriefed him on the strikes. He estimated that ten or eleven missiles had been fired during the attacks. Nadari asked him what it was like to be bombed by the Americans. “I found it much easier than we think of it. Something of fear befalls you, but the Almighty Allah sends down tranquility,” Awlaki told his friend. “This time eleven missiles missed [their] target but the next time, the first rocket may hit it.” Awlaki stayed with Nadari for a few days and then moved on. It was the last time the men would see each other.

“
We were hoping it was him
,” said a US official after the strike. As news spread of the attack, anonymous US officials confirmed that the strike had been aimed at Awlaki. And for a moment, they thought they had accomplished the mission. The US drone operators “did not know that
vehicles were exchanged
and resulted in the wrong people dying and [that] Awlaki [was] still alive,” according to a Yemeni security official.

Awlaki may have escaped, but the United States now had a serious bead on him. “The
U.S. government has been targeting al-Awlaki
now for some time, [and the] pace of that operation has been increasing,” said Fran Townsend, the former senior Bush administration official. “You've got to believe they had an operational plan to attack the entire leadership [of al Qaeda], that the drone attack against al-Awlaki, if they had the opportunity, was going to be timed to the operation against bin Laden so that they were going to send a very distinct message that the entire leadership of al Qaeda, wherever they could be found, would be under attack.”

Nasser Awlaki could not reach his son, but he had heard from intermediaries
that Anwar was alive. He knew that, having failed yet again in its mission to find and kill him, the United States would be more determined than ever to finish the job. He watched the international news reports on the bin Laden raid and listened as commentators, pundits and senior US officials compared his son to the al Qaeda leader and even suggested that Awlaki would now succeed him as its leader. “They've killed bin Laden and
now they're after my son
,” he said.

PAKISTAN,
2011—Three weeks after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the leaders of Pakistan's ISI were still fuming. President Obama and Pakistan's President Zardari publicly presented a unified front in celebrating the death of the al Qaeda leader, and Obama thanked the Pakistani government for its assistance over the years, saying, “Our
counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan
helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.” Zardari penned an op-ed in the
Washington Post,
praising the raid and asserting that Pakistan “
did its part
.” Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani declared, “
We will not allow
our soil to be used against any other country for terrorism and therefore I think it's a great victory, it's a success and I congratulate the success of this operation.”

Notwithstanding the diplomatic niceties, however, the
violation of Pakistan's sovereignty
was a scandal in the country. “
It was cold-blooded
,” a senior Pakistani security official said. A day after the raid, Pakistan's Foreign Office issued a statement calling the raid “
an unauthorized unilateral action
,” asserting: “Such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the United States.”

Pakistan's former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi—who was sacked for his bold stance in the Raymond Davis case—called the raid an “
unprovoked aggression
” against the country, while opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan called for the Pakistani president and prime minister to step down. “The operation tramples on our honor and dignity, and the president and prime minister must either give an explanation or resign,” he said. “The government is keeping silent and there appears to be nobody to respond to propaganda against Pakistan.”

“
Every Pakistani wants to know
how the US troops crossed over into a sovereign and independent Pakistan without permission,” said the Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief, Altaf Hussain. “How was it possible that a raid was conducted well inside Pakistani territory? How was it possible that the raiders managed to leave unhurt and undetected? How come the government and intelligence agencies remained in the dark about all this?”

The Pakistani parliament condemned the operation as a “violation of
Pakistan's sovereignty” and called on Islamabad to “revisit and review its terms of engagement with the United States.” Despite the delicate state of relations between the two governments, some US officials appeared to throw gasoline on the fire. During a press conference after the raid, Brennan charged that it was “
inconceivable
that bin Laden did not have a support system” in Pakistan.

As a group of
1,500 Pakistanis protested
the killing of bin Laden, the United States had resumed its drone strikes. Just four days after the raid, a CIA strike targeted a house in North Waziristan. Coming on the heels of the Raymond Davis saga, the bin Laden raid was seen as an ominous symbol by Pakistan's intelligence services: Washington was becoming ever bolder in its operations in Pakistan and would strike with or without the ISI's permission. Obama had made good on his threat to use unilateral force inside Pakistan.

Although the ISI could not do much to strike back at the United States directly, it began a hunt to track down any Pakistanis it believed might have assisted the Americans in the bin Laden operation. Three weeks after the raid, intelligence agents arrested Dr. Shakil Afridi, the doctor who had helped the CIA run the fake Hepatitis B vaccination program in Abbottabad. He was locked up, tried and
sentenced to thirty-three years
in prison. Secretary of State Clinton and leading US lawmakers pushed for Afridi's release. Senators John McCain and Carl Levin said the sentence was “
shocking and outrageous
” and asserted that Afridi was a hero. “Dr. Afridi set an example that we wish others in Pakistan had followed long ago,” the lawmakers wrote in a joint letter. “He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not punished and slandered.” The Pakistani foreign minister later pushed back. “
For us, he's no hero
, believe me,” she said. “He is somebody whose activity has endangered our children.”

The death of Osama bin Laden certainly did not impede the pace of killing in Afghanistan. “
Since the killing of the al Qaeda leader
, ISAF shows no sign of slowing down or cutting back on its mission. In fact, the pace has been higher than usual the past three months,” boasted an ISAF press release issued just one week after bin Laden was killed. Incursions into Pakistan continued as well. On several occasions, NATO forces based in Afghanistan conducted operations along the border, in one case killing twenty-five
Pakistani soldiers
. At times, teams of SEALs or members of the CIA's Special Activities Division would cross into Pakistan to conduct operations. Drone strikes continued unabated. Despite Pakistan's protests, it was clear that the Obama administration would continue to act unilaterally in Pakistan, even after bin Laden's death.

YEMEN, LATE
2011—While the Obama administration was basking in the success of the bin Laden killing and JSOC and the CIA were closing in on Anwar Awlaki, the Arab uprisings were spreading. Three weeks after the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government in Yemen was on the brink of collapse. The protests were growing and President Saleh had played almost every card he had to keep the Americans on his side. He had given the US counterterrorism machine a virtual free hand to bomb Yemen and opened the doors wide for the evolution of a not-so-covert war. But as his grip on power weakened, AQAP saw opportunity in the chaos. By the summer of 2011, the elite US-backed
counterterrorism units were pulled away
from the fight against AQAP to defend the regime from its own people. In southern Yemen, where AQAP had its strongest presence, the mujahedeen sought to take advantage of an imploding state whose leaders had earned a reputation for corruption as they failed to provide basic goods and services.