In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

Security Archive.

34. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Bad News on Pak Afghan Policy: GOP Support for the Taliban Appears to Be Getting Stronger,” July 1, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

35. U.S. Department of State, From Ron McMullen (Afghanistan Desk), “Developments in Afghanistan,” December 5, 1994. Released by the National Security Archive.

36. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: [Excised] Criticizes GOP’s Afghan Policy; Says It Is Letting Policy Drift,” June 16, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

37. From [Excised] to DIA, Washington, DC, Cable, “Pakistan Interservice Intelligence/Pakistan (PK) Directorate Supplying the Taliban Forces,” October 22, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

38. Ibid.; U.S. Consulate (Peshawar), Cable, “Afghan-Pak Border Relations at Torkham Tense,” October 2, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

39. Declan Walsh, “As Taliban Insurgency Gains Strength and Sophistication, Suspicion Falls on Pakistan,” The Guardian, November 13, 2006.

40. Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, pp. 55–56.

41. U.S. Department of State, Cable, From Ron McMullen (Afghanistan Desk), “Developments in Afghanistan,” December 5, 1994. Released by the National Security Archive.

42. U.S. Department of State, Action Cable from Karl F. Inderfurth to Embassy, Islamabad, “Pakistan Support for Taliban,” September 26, 2000. Released by the National Security Archive.

43. From [Excised] to DIA, Washington, DC, “IIR [Excised] Pakistan Involvement in Afghanistan,” November 7, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

44. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Bad News on Pak Afghan Policy: GOP Support for the Taliban Appears to Be Getting Stronger,” July 1, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

45. US Mission to the UN (USUN New York), Cable, “Letter of GOP Permrep to SYG on Afghanistan,” November 1, 1995; U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: Taliban Seem to Have Less Funds and Supplies This Year, But the Problem Does Not Appear to Be that Acute,” February 17, 1999; U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “In Bilateral Focussed [sic] on Afghanistan, GOP Reviews Pak/Iran Effort; A/S Inderfurth Expresses U.S. Concerns About the Taliban,” July 23, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

46. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: Foreign Secretary Mulls over Afghanistan,” October 10, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

47. The report indicated that the ISI provided at least $30,000—and possibly as much as $60,000—per month to Harakat ul-Ansar. Central Intelligence Agency, “Harakat ul-Ansar: Increasing Threat to Western and Pakistani Interests,” August 1996. Also see, for example, U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “Afghanistan: British Journalist Visits Site of Training Camps; HUA Activity Alleged,” November 26, 1996; U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, To Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel, “Scenesetter for Your Visit to Islamabad: Afghan Angle,” January 16, 1997. Released by the National Security Archive.

48. Ali A. Jalali, “Afghanistan: The Anatomy of an Ongoing Conflict,” Parameters, vol. XXXI, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 86–89.

49. U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, To Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel, “Scenesetter for Your Visit to Islamabad: Afghan Angle,” January 16, 1997. Released by the National Security Archive.

50. Rashid, Taliban, p. 1.

51. Quoted in Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 521.

52. Memorandum from Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, Subject: Presidential Policy Initiative / Review—The Al-Qida Network, January 25, 2001. Released by the National Security Archive.

53. See, for example, Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 520–21.

54. U.S. Department of State, Cable, “Osama bin Laden: Taliban Spokesman Seeks New Proposal for Resolving bin Laden Problem,” November 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

55. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 327–44, 363–65, 379–86,400–15.

Chapter Five

1. See, for example, Neil MacFarquhar, “Tapes Offer a Look Beneath the Surface of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda,” New York Times, September 11, 2008.

2. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, translated by Laura Mansfield (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2002), p. 23.

3. Ibid., p. 38.

4. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 61–80.

5. Chris Suellentrop, “Abdullah Azzam: The Godfather of Jihad,” Slate, April 16, 2002.

6. Quoted in Kepel, Jihad, p. 145.

7. Abdullah Anas, The Birth of the Afghan Arabs (London: Dar al-Saqi, 2002), p. 36; Mohammed Salah, Narratives of the Jihad Years: The Journey of the Arab Afghans (Cairo, 2001), pp. 43–62, 65–84.

8. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office), vol. 16, no. 4, January 28, 1980, pp. 194–96.

9. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), p. 485.

10. On the differences between defensive and offensive jihad, see Alfred Morabia, Le gihad dans l’islam medieval: Le combat sacre des origines au douzieme siecle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993); Rudolf Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979); Ramadan al-Bouti, Le jihad en islam: Comment le comprendre? Comment le pratiquer? (Damascus: Dar el-Fikr, 1996).

11. Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection, translated by John King (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 14–15.

12. Imtiaz Hussein, “Usama Prepares a List of Arab Martyrs of Afghan Jihad,” The Frontier Post, May 13, 2000.

13. Basil Mohammed, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan (Jeddah: House of Learning, 1991), p. 241.

14. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qa’ida’s Leader (New York: Free Press, 2006); Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 133.

15. The quotes are from the exhibit of “Tareekh Osama” (Osama’s history), document presented in United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnaout, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

16. Quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 157.

17. U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Intelligence Assessment, “Bin Ladin’s Jihad: Political Context,” August 28, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive.

18. Kepel, Jihad, pp. 213–14.

19. Ibid., pp. 159–84, 237–53, 254–75.

20. Central Intelligence Agency, Usama bin Ladin: Islamic Extremist Financier, 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

21. Central Intelligence Agency, “Harakat ul-Ansar: Increasing Threat to Western and Pakistani Interests,” August 1996. Released by the National Security Archive.

22. Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, pp. 51–52.

23. On conflict between the Taliban and al Qa’ida, see U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, “TFX01: SITREP 5: Pakistan/Afghanistan Reaction to U.S. Air Strikes,” August 24, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive. Also see Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge