Pakistan deployed between 70,000 and 80,000 forces to the tribal areas. Despite their limited experience, however, the Pakistan military and intelligence services helped capture or kill such important al Qa’ida leaders as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Abu Zubeida, and Abu Talha al-Pakistani.9 The government also deployed the Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps against foreign fighters in the Kurram and Khyber Agencies in December 2001. It continued deployments between 2002 and 2005, mainly in Baluchistan, just south of the FATA, and in North and South Waziristan.10 Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Pakistani soldiers died during these incursions. In early 2004, for example, Pakistan’s intelligence services had been gathering reports of al Qa’ida activities in the Wana Valley of South Waziristan. In March, the Pakistani Frontier Corps launched an operation to disrupt them, but when the troops reached Wana, they were ambushed. It was a typical al Qa’ida operation. Just as they had done to U.S. forces in 2002 during Operation Anaconda, the insurgents occupied the surrounding hills and mountains, leaving the Frontier Corps troops exposed in the low-lying area.11
A barrage of firepower from entrenched positions in the mountains delivered heavy casualties to the Pakistan troops. The Pakistan Army was called in to retrieve the trapped Frontier Corps soldiers. Nearly 6,000 troops immediately moved in, including 600 lifted by helicopters. They set up a cordon around the ambush site and sent out a search operation. After sustained fighting, the army launched an attack on the ridge and cleared it, killing sixty-three militants, including thirty-six foreigners. They also disrupted a major al Qa’ida command-and-control center and a network of tunnels containing sophisticated electronic equipment.
In June 2004, Pakistani forces conducted an attack in the Shakai Valley after a series of alarming intelligence reports claimed that a force of more than 200 Chechens and Uzbeks, some Arabs, and several hundred local supporters were gathering in the area. On June 10, the government deployed 10,000 Pakistan Army troops along with Pakistani Special Operations Task Force and Frontier Corps troops. Nearly 3,000 soldiers established an outer cordon before the Pakistan Air Force struck at dawn, using precision weapons against nine compounds. Pakistan Army forces used indirect artillery fire and precision rocket attacks by helicopter gunships. Other helicopters dropped off Pakistani Special Operations Task Force troops to search the compounds, and infantry troops initiated a simultaneous operation to clear the valley and link up with the Special Operations Task Force. Later, another 3,000 troops were brought into the area to clear more of the valley. During the operation, four soldiers were killed and twelve injured, while more than fifty militants were killed.
The Pakistani military, with help from U.S. Special Operations Forces and CIA assets, had just eliminated a major propaganda base and militant stronghold, which also included a facility for manufacturing improvised explosive devices. The haul from a large underground cellar in one of the compounds included two truckloads of TV sets, computers, laptops, disks, tape recorders, and tapes.12 But it was only a tactical, short-term success, since militant groups afterward developed an increasingly robust sanctuary in Waziristan.
Besides this type of organized assault, Pakistani security services also provided clandestine assistance. In March and April 2007, the army covertly supported Taliban commander Mullah Nazir against Uzbek militants. Nazir was a charismatic man in his midthirties who spouted a religious fervor far beyond his minimal credentials. Several months earlier, he had been endorsed by Mullah Omar as the Taliban “emir” of South Waziristan. The Uzbeks had been extended
One Pakistan government official said there was “a groundswell of support for action against Uzbeks and any attempt by the government to intervene in support of the tribal action would actually discredit it.”13 The Pakistan Army largely stayed out of the fighting, using Nazir’s forces as a proxy. But it eventually sent military and paramilitary forces into the area to seize strategic hilltops and ridges and to help establish law and order once the fighting stopped. In the end, Nazir’s forces were largely successful in pushing the Uzbeks out of Wazir areas.
Operation Al Mizan included several major operations, and Pakistani forces successfully killed or captured several local and foreign militants. But it ultimately failed to clear the area of militant groups, including al Qa’ida. There were several reasons for this failure.
First, Pakistan’s unresolved tensions with India meant that Pakistan’s national-security establishment, including the ISI, had a vested interest in supporting some militant groups directed at the Afghanistan and Kashmir fronts. Second, Pakistan’s operations were not sustained over time. Their efforts were marked by sweeps, searches, and occasionally bloody battles, but none of these operations employed a sufficient number of forces to clear and hold territory. Third, the government’s initiatives were hindered by religious conservative parties operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. These groups considered Pakistan government efforts against al Qa’ida and other militants an “American war.” Fourth, there was considerable local support for militant groups. Public-opinion polls indicated that even after the September 11, 2001, attacks, significant portions of the Pakistani population supported their government’s links to the Taliban and “favored by a wide margin increasing support for Mullah Omar’s regime.”14 In sum, Pakistan could not muster the political will to maintain the necessary operational tempo of counterinsurgency operations in the face of opposition within the country.
The United States Debates Pakistan
The debate in the U.S. government about Pakistan was a lively one. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said, “We had some information that there was assistance from the Pakistan government to the Taliban between 2002 and 2004. The question was how high up it went. Was it official Pakistan government policy?”15
Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Islamabad, was similarly blunt: “I never believed that government ties with these groups had been irrevocably cut.”16 A CIA operative deployed to Afghanistan further acknowledged that as early as 2001 and 2002, “ISID advisors were supporting the Taliban with expertise and material and, no doubt, sending a steady stream of intelligence back to Islamabad.”17 This caused some officials, both inside and outside of the government, to push for swift action. In an October 2003 memo to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, retired general James B. Vaught urged the secretary to “stop playing two faced games with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Syria. All three are supporting both sides to some degree.” He advised Rumsfeld: “Give them a choice, join and support the war against terrorism, no holding back, or we will neutralize them.”18
But U.S. government assessments were not uniform. When Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry took over as head of the Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan in 2005, he said the evidence of Pakistan’s complicity was not clear: “I was not initially convinced that Pakistan presented a grave problem. But that changed.”19
The confusion stemmed, in part, from the bifurcated nature of dealing with the insurgent threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Insurgents used both sides of the border, but the U.S. government had no joint Afghan- Pakistan strategy. In fact, there frequently were tensions between U.S. officials in Kabul and Islamabad. The CIA was virtually at war with itself. Agency personnel based in Islamabad argued that the Pakistani government, including the ISI, was still helpful in supporting U.S. efforts against al Qa’ida. They pointed to the capture of such targets as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, and Abu Zubeida. But CIA officials in Kabul were frustrated with what they viewed as slow efforts to target al Qa’ida, Taliban, and other insurgents in Pakistan.20 There was some concern among U.S. military officials, especially those based in Afghanistan, that the Pakistani Army had blundered in a number of operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and thus were extremely risk-averse.
There were also different command-and-control arrangements for U.S. “white” and “black” Special Operations Forces, most of which were based in Afghanistan. Black forces focused on high-value targets; their operations were covert. In contrast, white forces initially took on a variety of missions to build the capacity of Afghan security forces (what is often called “foreign internal defense”) and to conduct strikes against insurgents, though they increasingly focused on the latter over the course of the insurgency. Their efforts were thwarted by an increasingly questionable ally across the border in Pakistan.
A Stab in the Back
The Pakistani government often insisted that it was not providing assistance to the Taliban. Some U.S. analysts agreed. After a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan to meet with top U.S., NATO, Afghan, and Pakistani officials, retired general Barry McCaffrey concluded: “The Pakistanis are not actively supporting the Taliban—nor do they have a strategic purpose to destabilize Afghanistan.”21 But the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming. Some Pakistani forces—including individuals within the ISI and the Frontier Corps—abetted
