Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan To A More Dangerous World. Christina Lamb
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Laden may have vanished into the mountains of the tribal areas, but his bony, bearded face was hard to avoid in Rawalpindi, where it stared out from boxes of sweets and posters on sale in the labyrinthine bazaars just a couple of miles from President Musharraf’s house. Right from the start it wasn’t clear whose side Pakistan was really on.
Although Pakistan had been a nominal ally of the US since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, it had never really been a happy marriage. Pakistan had long been ambivalent about the United States, which had poured money and arms in when it needed something – such as help in training and arming the Afghan mujaheddin to fight the Russians during the Cold War – then was never there when Pakistan needed it, such as in its three wars against India.
I always found this combination of Pakistan’s desire to be an American ally with its widespread anti-Americanism confusing. ‘Pakistan’s problem,’ said Husain Haqqani while he was the country’s Ambassador in Washington, ‘is that it is trying to be Iran and South Korea at the same time.’
‘America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America,’ Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah insisted to American journalist Margaret Bourke-White in an interview for Life magazine just one month after the country was born.
At the time that was clearly ludicrous. And indeed, during his election campaign in 2000, George W. Bush had been asked the name of the President of Pakistan, and had no idea.
But 9/11 had changed everything. Pakistan knew the Taliban better than anyone, for it had helped create them. Afghanistan was a landlocked country most easily reachable through Pakistan with its sea ports and air connections, and the two countries shared a 1,600-mile border which split Pashtun tribes living on either side, who crossed back and forth freely.
The Americans would have found it almost impossible to mount their operation to topple the Taliban regime without Pakistan. ‘And they knew it,’ said Richard Armitage, who was Deputy Secretary of State at the time.
In his memoir, President Musharraf recounted that Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, phoned him on the morning after 9/11 and warned: ‘You are either with us or against us.’1
The head of ISI, General Mahmood Ahmed, happened to be in Washington at the time, ironically to try to convince the CIA that the Taliban were ‘misunderstood’ and should be engaged with. On 9 September he had lunch with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, who later wrote, ‘The guy was immovable when it came to the Taliban and al Qaeda. And bloodless too.’
The day after the attack, Mahmood was called in by Powell’s deputy Armitage. ‘It was clear he was pretty much an Islamist,’ said Armitage. ‘9/11 for Americans was a life-changing event, because we’d always been protected behind our two great oceans, unlike almost any other country in the world. Yet Mahmood started out trying to tell me, “You’ve got to understand about what our people feel.” I could see he didn’t get it.’2
Musharraf wrote in his memoir that Armitage had used the meeting to make ‘a shockingly barefaced threat’ to bomb Pakistan ‘into the Stone Age’ if Islamabad decided not to cooperate. Armitage, a big hulk of a man who admits he can be ‘fearsome’, insists he said no such thing. ‘I’d love to have been able to,’ he laughed. ‘I would have needed a cigarette afterwards. I had no such authority. But we did have very strong discussions.’
As a former soldier himself, who understood the importance of honour, he did something else. ‘I took Mahmood to my private office, the small room behind the ornate main office, and said, “I want to show you something.” I opened a box, and inside was this Star of Pakistan I’d been awarded. “You see this?” I said. “No American would accept this ever if Pakistan is found wanting in assisting us. Ever.”’
The message got through. Musharraf chose cooperation, but it was hardly enthusiastic. ‘I made a dispassionate military-style analysis of our options,’ he later wrote. ‘I war-gamed them [the US] as an adversary. The question was if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught. The answer was no, we could not … we could not endure a military confrontation with the US from any point of view.’
The first American official to meet with Musharraf after 9/11 was Wendy Chamberlin, the US Ambassador, who had only been in Pakistan two weeks. She’d met the President when she arrived in August, and he had told her his vision was to encourage foreign investment, and to do that he realised he needed to control domestic terrorism and the sectarian violence in Karachi. ‘He thought Pakistan was the battleground in the proxy war between the Wahhabis and the Iranians, but didn’t feel empowered or think he had the tools to really crack down,’ she said.3
When she went in to see him on the morning of 13 September, she did not mince words. ‘It was the first time anyone had said directly to him, “Are you with us or against us?” He wasn’t persuaded at first.’ ‘It’s an opportunity,’ she told him. ‘We can help you in ways which will empower you to help us against internal terrorists.’ Musharraf was unconvinced. ‘He didn’t buy it. We went over and over – I said you can expect things – lifting of sanctions, the resumption of military aid, spare parts, direct assistance, grant aid … He waffled and danced around, giving me this whole bunch of crap, and in the end I turned away and put my head down in my hands. My DCM [deputy] kept looking and asked, “Wendy, what’s wrong?” I said, “I haven’t heard what I need to tell my President, which is we support you unstintingly.” Only then did Musharraf agree.’
‘Very good,’ she replied in relief.
As she walked down the long corridor out of the palace she saw CNN reporter Tom Mintier and his crew waiting. ‘I thought, “Do I tell CNN before I tell my government?” and I thought, “Yes, I do, because then I lock Musharraf in” – I felt him waffling.’
That night Colin Powell called Musharraf and sealed the deal.
For the wily Musharraf this was his chance to transform his image on the world stage. Until then he had been seen as an international pariah, having seized power in a coup on 12 October 1999 and locked up the elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the old Attock Fort.
He told anyone who would listen that Sharif had tried to kill him ‘and hundreds of innocent Pakistanis’. Musharraf had been in Sri Lanka attending a conference and playing some of his beloved golf when Sharif had clumsily tried to sack him as his army chief. Musharraf jumped on a PIA flight back to Karachi which Sharif then refused permission to land, even though the pilot said he had only twenty minutes of fuel left. With the plane circling over the Arabian Gulf the generals stepped in, took over the TV station, airport and key buildings, and arrested Sharif.
In Musharraf’s view he had done both his country and the world a favour. ‘Today we have reached a stage where our economy has crumbled, our credibility is lost, state institutions lie demolished,’ he said in an address to the nation late that first night. He suspended the constitution and disbanded parliament, but to try to make the situation seem less coup-like, he did not take the usual title of Chief Martial Law Administrator. Instead he called himself ‘chief executive’, as if Pakistan were a business. Just like previous military rulers, he insisted: ‘The armed forces have no intention to stay in charge any longer than is absolutely necessary to pave the way for true democracy.’ In the case of his predecessor Zia-ul-Haq that meant staying eleven and a half years.
I was in the country within days of the coup, and it was clear that it was widely welcomed, people handing out sweets to celebrate. Pakistanis generally viewed their politicians as corrupt and incompetent, while the army is the only really respected national institution, despite having lost every war it has fought.
I went to see Musharraf in the white-colonnaded Army House with neat rose gardens where eleven years earlier I had interviewed Pakistan’s last military ruler General Zia, and he took a leaf out of the Tony Blair speech-book on Princess Diana. ‘I’d like to be seen as the people’s general,’ he told me.
But on the eve