Post 9/11 Musharraf’s Military Strategy was based on self-preservation

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Post 9/11 Musharraf’s Military Strategy was based on self-preservation

September 17, 2010 in Pakistan


There is much criticism of the government of Pakistan’s actions in 2001–in the wake of 7 non-negotiable stern demands. Various political parties have excoriated Mr. Musharraf for unconditionally accepting the seven demands of the US. Of course the demands came with the famous Richard Armitage threat which told the Pakistanis “we will bomb you to the stone ages”.

Analysts agree that President Musharraf did the right thing–he accepted the demand and negotiated in the implementation. Many in the US accuse him of duplicity and the think tanks accuse him of of not implementing the demands.

The US media certainly did not like him–because he did not toe the US line completely, and did not want to attack WANA and Swat. After his departure the US needed a more compliant president who who would carry out the actions in letter and spirit. There has been an exponential increase in the number of drone bombings since the departure of Mr. Musharraf, and the economy has taken a course for the worse.

History will judge Mr. Mushrraf in a different light.

Classified document reveals Musharraf tried to convince Bush administration to negotiate with Taliban
Wendy Chamberlin, “bluntly” told Musharraf on September 13, 2001 that there was “absolutely no inclination in Washington to enter into a dialogue with the Taliban
“I implore you,” Ahmad told the ambassador, “not to act in anger. Real victory will come in negotiations. Mullah Omar himself is frightened. That much was clear in his last meeting.”
The ISI chief told the ambassador that America’s strategic objectives of getting Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda would best be accomplished by coercing the Taliban to do it themselves. “It is better for the Afghans to do it.
‘Mushrraf accepted 7 US demands in 24 hours after 9/11’
However, events thereafter showed that such an acceptance was just a “tactical move” by Musharraf as for all practical purposes, there was not much change in the policies of his government
LAHORE: As the US prepared to invade Afghanistan in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) wanted America to enter into a dialogue with the Taliban, but the Bush administration “bluntly” told former president Pervez Musharraf that it had no inclination to do so.

According to classified documents released by the National Security Archive of the George Washington University, two days after al Qaeda unleashed terror on the US, its envoy to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, “bluntly” told Musharraf on September 13, 2001 that there was “absolutely no inclination in Washington to enter into a dialogue with the Taliban, which controlled Afghanistan at that time”. “The time for dialogue was finished as of September 11,” she told Musharraf, the documents said. However, Pakistan, as the Taliban’s primary sponsor, disagreed.

The documents also said Musharraf, who was facing heat from the US because of his support for the Taliban regime, accepted “unconditionally” in 24 hours all seven demands made by the US such as stopping al Qaeda at the border, providing the US with blanket landing rights to conduct operations and territorial and naval access and help in “destroying Osama Bin Laden”.

However, events thereafter showed that such an acceptance was just a “tactical move” by Musharraf as for all practical purposes, there was not much change in the policies of his government, the documents said.

The then ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad also told Wendy Chamberlin “not to act in anger”. “Real victory will come in negotiations… if the Taliban are eliminated… Afghanistan will revert to warlordism,” the documents quoted Ahmad as saying.

The then ISI chief wanted the US to give Pakistan some time as he was headed for another trip to Afghanistan on September 25, 2001 to meet the top Taliban leadership in this regard. Mahmoud Ahmad returned to Afghanistan to make a last-minute plea to the Taliban. Ahmad told Chamberlin “his mission was taking place in parallel with US-Pakistani military planning” and that in his estimation, “a negotiated solution would be preferable to military action”.

“I implore you,” Ahmad told the ambassador, “not to act in anger. Real victory will come in negotiations. Mullah Omar himself is frightened. That much was clear in his last meeting.”

The ISI chief told the ambassador that America’s strategic objectives of getting Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda would best be accomplished by coercing the Taliban to do it themselves. “It is better for the Afghans to do it. We could avoid the fallout,” Ahmad told the ambassador. Nevertheless, he promised full Pakistani support for US activities, including military action.

“We will not flinch from a military effort. Pakistan stands behind you,” the documents said. Chamberlin insisted that while Washington “appreciated his objectives” to negotiate to get Bin Laden, Mullah Omar “had so far refused to meet even one US demand”.

The ambassador told Ahmad that his trip “could not delay military planning”.

The secret documents reveal that seven US demands were delivered to Ahmad by then deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Within 24 hours, Musharraf accepted “those requests without conditions”.

While Pakistan denied that it was a safe haven for anti-American forces, a State Department-issued paper for former vice president Dick Cheney claimed “some Taliban leaders operate with relative impunity in some Pakistani cities, and may still enjoy support from the lower echelons of the ISI”.

Armitage met with Ahmad on September 13, 2001 and told him that the US was looking for full cooperation and partnership from Pakistan, indicating that the decision whether or not to fully comply with US demands would be “a difficult choice for Pakistan”.

Armitage carefully presented Ahmad with the following specific requests for immediate action and asked that he present them to Musharraf for approval.

The demands were:

1) To stop al Qaeda at the border,

2) Provide the US with blanket landing rights to conduct operations;

3) Provide territorial and naval access,

4) Provide intelligence;

5) Publicly condemn terrorist attacks,

6) Cut off recruits and supplies to the Taliban,

7) and break diplomatic relations with the Taliban and help the US destroy Osama Bin Ladin.

In another paper dated September 14, 2001, the ambassador in her message to the then secretary of state, said that Musharraf had accepted all US conditions. “Gen Musharraf accepts the seven actions we are asking of the Pakistani government to support our efforts against international terrorism. His top military commander concurs. Musharraf discussed implementation details remaining to be worked out regarding the points and invited us to send an interagency team to address them,” the US ambassador wrote.

“In a 90-minute meeting on September 14, Musharraf said he had studied the points and discussed them in an all-day meeting with his corps commanders and other ranking military officers. He (Musharraf) said he accepted the points without conditions and that his military leadership concurred,” the documents said. Staff Report

Rethinking Afghanistan and Newsbloggers adds:

George Washington University has unveiled a series of previously unseen documents relating to the beginnings of the war in Afghanistan. War was always and entirely the only option on the table.

As current U.S. strategy increasingly pursues policies to reconcile or “flip” the Taliban, the document collection released today reveals Washington’s refusal to negotiate with Taliban leadership directly after 9/11. On September 13, 2001, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin “bluntly” told Pakistani President Musharraf that there was “absolutely no inclination in Washington to enter into a dialogue with the Taliban. The time for dialog was finished as of September 11.”

Spencer Ackerman notes just how gung-ho the administration was:

The first document today is a State Department cable from September 13, 2001, recounting a conversation between Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, and the chief of Pakistan’s intelligence service, Mahmud Ahmed. It’s no secret that in the days after 9/11, Pakistan opted to side with the U.S. in the imminent war on al-Qaeda, with Armitage playing diplomatic go-between. But the details of how Pakistan reached its decision have never been disclosed.

Basically, Armitage very bluntly told Mahmud (as the cable calls him) how things were going to play out. Pakistan would end “all logistical support for bin Ladin.” (Alas, the cable does not expand on what “logistical support” Pakistan actually provided the terrorist network.) It would provide “blanket overflight and landing rights” for U.S. intelligence and military operations. Islamabad would even secure “as needed territorial access” for U.S. “military intelligence and all other personnel” (read: CIA). While the American people would hear much in the following decade about the need to keep U.S. boots off of Pakistani soil, Armitage’s demands show no great concern for Pakistani sovereignty. “Americans were responding to Tuesday’s attacks with unyielding anger,” the cable reads, and so Pakistan needed to make clear which side it was on.

That must have been about the time Armitage was telling the Pakistanis that they’d be bombed “back to the Stone Age” if they didn’t co-operate.

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Despite this, the Bush administration still got clear warnings from the Pakistani ISI that war would be a disaster. In a document dated 24th September 2001, Wendy Chamberlin, then US Ambassador to Pakistan, was told by ISI chief Mahmud Ahmed that he felt a breakthrough with the Taliban was near and that they might well hand over Osama bin Laden and others in return for not being invaded. He told Chamberlin that “a negotiated settlement would be preferable to military action”:

Remarkably prescient of the ISI head – imagine if we’d taken his advice – but then again as CNAS blogger and analyst Amil Khan a.k.a. Londonistani tweeted today, “I remember every Mideast specialist I knew thinking everyone had taken a reality-free holiday”.

Certainly, the Bush administration hadn’t realised one crucial fact, admitted by Chamberlin years later in 2008:

“”One thing we never understood is that India has always been the major threat for Pakistan,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain, now the president of the Middle East Institute.”

Caught between a threat of nuclear annihilation and the strategic reality that India was their real boogeyman, Pakistan immediately began a double game, as Spencer also notes in his post linked above.

[Another] cable, from November 13, 2002, is a report from Richard Haass, the State Department’s policy-planning director, after meetings in Pakistan with undisclosed official sources, apparently within the Pakistani Army. Haass reported that there were “limits” to Pakistan’s “total support” in the fight against al-Qaeda, which had escaped into the Pakistani tribal areas. The Pakistani Army proclaimed that it was completely aligned with the U.S.’s counterterrorism aims and is now operating in the tribal areas that it previously avoided for political reasons.

But Haass’ source assured him that al-Qaeda could not constitute a safe haven in the Northwest Frontier Province or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. “Al Qaeda presence in the area was limited to transit; it controlled no part of the FATA,” Haass was told. Tribal leaders in the area “could not shelter al-Qaeda for more than a day or two.” The diplomat replied that “We felt the scale of the challenge was far larger than [Name Redacted] believed.” Not to worry, said the Pakistanis: Only “minimal procedural differences” divided the U.S. and Pakistan on the question of crushing al-Qaeda.

… Nine years after 9/11, the U.S. has escalated a drone war into the Pakistani tribal areas to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda in its reconstituted safe havens. It has escalated the Afghanistan war substantially, tripling troop levels since February 2009, in the name of preventing al-Qaeda and its allies from returning to power in Kabul. And it still does not have the unequivocal support of Pakistan for these efforts.

If the Bush administration hadn’t been so gung-ho to reach for the “big stick”, had realised that the threat posed by India was Pakistan’s entire reason for wishing to preserve the Taliban in Afghanistan as a guarantor of Pakistan’s “strategic space”, and would turn back-flips to ensure the regional staus quo, we might have had Bin Laden and the rest in custody from 2001, without an invasion and without the current sorry state of both the Afghan occupation and the regional catfight re-inflamed by that occupation. They never even gave it a try. From our partners at Newshoggers.com By Steve Hynd

Post 9/11 Musharraf’s Military Strategy was based on self-preservation