while Laura and I flew secretly via Black Hawk helicopter.
In contrast to the rigid security precautions, President Musharraf organized a relaxed and enjoyable visit. He and his wife, Sehba, received us warmly at their version of the White House, known as the Aiwan-e-Sadr. We met with survivors of the previous October’s 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northern Pakistan, which killed more than seventy-three thousand people. America had provided $500 million in relief. Our Chinook helicopters became known as “angels of mercy.” The experience reinforced a lesson: One of the most effective forms of diplomacy is to show the good heart of America to the world.
Later in the day, I went to the embassy courtyard to watch some cricket, Pakistan’s national pastime. There I met national team captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, the Pakistani equivalent of Michael Jordan. To the delight of the schoolchildren on hand, I took a few whacks with the cricket bat. I didn’t master the game, but I did pick up some of the lingo. At the elegant state dinner that night, I opened my toast by saying, “I was fooled by a googly,*** otherwise I would have been a better batsman.”
Playing cricket in Pakistan.
My meetings with President Musharraf focused on two overriding priorities. One was his insistence on serving as both president and top general, a violation of the Pakistani constitution. I pushed him to shed his military affiliation and govern as a civilian. He promised to do it. But he wasn’t in much of a hurry.
I also stressed the importance of the fight against extremists. “We’ve got to keep these guys from slipping into your country and back into Afghanistan,” I said.
“I give you our assurances that we will cooperate with you against terrorism,” Musharraf said. “We are totally on board.”
The violence continued to grow. As the insurgency worsened, Hamid Karzai became furious with Musharraf. He accused the Pakistani president of destabilizing Afghanistan. Musharraf was insulted by the allegation. By the fall of 2006, the two were barely on speaking terms. I decided to step in with some serious personal diplomacy. I invited Karzai and Musharraf to dinner at the White House in September 2006. When I welcomed them in the Rose Garden, they refused to shake hands or even look at each other. The mood did not improve when we sat down for dinner in the Old Family Dining Room. Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, and I watched as Karzai and Musharraf traded barbs. At one point, Karzai accused Musharraf of harboring the Taliban.
A tense Rose Garden welcome for Pervez Musharraf (
“Tell me where they are,” Musharraf responded testily.
“You know where they are!” Karzai fired back.
“If I did, I would get them,” said Musharraf.
“Go do it!” Karzai persisted.
I started to wonder whether this dinner had been a mistake.
I told Musharraf and Karzai that the stakes were too high for personal bickering. I kept the dinner going for two and a half hours, trying to help them find common ground. After a while, the venting stopped and the meeting turned out to be productive. The two leaders agreed to share more intelligence, meet with tribes on both sides of the border to urge peace, and stop bad-mouthing each other in public.
As a way to staunch the flow of Taliban fighters, Musharraf informed us that he had recently struck a series of deals with tribes in the border region. Under the agreements, Pakistani forces would leave the areas alone, while tribal leaders would commit to stopping the Taliban from recruiting operatives or infiltrating into Afghanistan.
While well intentioned, the strategy failed. The tribes did not have the will or the capacity to control the extremists. Some estimates indicated that the flow of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan increased fourfold.
Musharraf had promised Karzai and me—both skeptics of the strategy—that he would send troops back into the tribal areas if the deals failed. But instead of focusing on that problem, Musharraf and the Pakistani military were increasingly distracted by a political crisis. In March 2007, Musharraf suspended the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who he feared would rule that he was violating the law by continuing to serve as both president and army chief of staff. Lawyers and democracy advocates marched in the streets. Musharraf responded by declaring a state of emergency, suspending the constitution, removing more judges, and arresting thousands of political opponents.
Pressure mounted on me to cut ties with Musharraf. I worried that throwing him overboard would add to the chaos. I had a series of frank conversations with him in the fall of 2007. “It looks ugly from here. The image here is that you have lawyers being beaten and thrown into jail,” I said. “I am troubled by the fact that there is no apparent way forward.” I strongly suggested one: set a date for free elections, resign from the army, and lift the state of emergency.
Musharraf made each of those commitments, and he kept them. When he scheduled parliamentary elections, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned from exile to compete. She ran on a pro-democracy platform, which made her a target of the extremists. Tragically, she was assassinated on December 27, 2007, at a political rally in Rawalpindi. In February 2008, her followers won the elections soundly. They formed a government, and Musharraf stepped down peacefully. Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower, took his place as president. Pakistan’s democracy had survived the crisis.
Over time, the Pakistani government learned the lesson of the Bhutto assassination. Pakistani forces returned to the fight in the tribal areas—not just against al Qaeda, but against the Taliban and other extremists as well. Yet more than a year had been lost, as Pakistan’s attention was focused on its internal political crisis. The Taliban and other extremists exploited that window of opportunity to increase their tempo of operations in Afghanistan, which drove up the violence and led many Afghans to turn against their government and our coalition. It was essential that we find a way to retake the offensive.
By the middle of 2008, I was tired of reading intelligence reports about extremist sanctuaries in Pakistan. I thought back to a meeting I’d had with Special Forces in Afghanistan in 2006.
“Are you guys getting everything you need?” I asked.
One SEAL raised his hand and said, “No, sir.”
I wondered what his problem might be.
“Mr. President,” he said, “we need permission to go kick some ass inside Pakistan.”
I understood the urgency of the threat and wanted to do something about it. But on this issue, Musharraf’s judgment had been well-founded. When our forces encountered unexpected resistance, they got into a firefight and made international news. “U.S. Commandos Attack Pakistan Sovereignty,” one Pakistani headline said. Islamabad exploded with outrage. Both houses of parliament passed unanimous resolutions condemning our action. No democracy can tolerate violations of its sovereignty.
I looked for other ways to reach into the tribal areas. The Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle, was capable of conducting video surveillance and firing laser-guided bombs. I authorized the intelligence community to turn up the pressure on the extremists. Many of the details of our actions remain classified. But soon after I gave the order, the press started reporting more Predator strikes. Al Qaeda’s number-four man, Khalid al-Habib, turned up dead. So did al Qaeda leaders responsible for propaganda, recruitment, religious affairs, and planning attacks overseas. One of the last reports I received described al Qaeda as “embattled and eroding” in the border region.
We also stepped up our support for Pakistan’s democratic government. We provided money, training, and equipment, and proposed joint counterterrorism operations—all aimed at helping increase Pakistani capabilities. When the financial crisis hit in the fall of 2008, we took steps to make sure Pakistan received the assistance it needed to mitigate the effects of the recession and stay focused on fighting the extremists.
One of my national security team’s last projects was a review of our strategy in Afghanistan. It was led by Doug Lute, a brainy three-star general who coordinated day-to-day execution of our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The report called for a more robust counterinsurgency effort, including more troops and civilian resources in Afghanistan and closer cooperation with Pakistan to go after the extremists. We debated whether to announce our findings publicly in the final weeks of my presidency. Steve Hadley checked with his counterpart in the incoming administration, who preferred that we pass along our report quietly. I decided the new strategy would have a better chance of success if we gave the new team an opportunity to revise it as they saw fit and then adopt it as their own.
