Subcontracting the hunt for bin Laden

The twisted relationship between the Bush administration and Pakistan's military regime, driven by a mutual desire for survival, is undermining the war on terror.

By Husain Haqqani

Aug 17, 2004 | The day after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced a new orange alert, the New York Times reported that the information leading to the alert came from the arrest in Lahore, Pakistan, three weeks earlier of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer wizard linked to al-Qaida. It was later revealed that since his arrest Khan had been working as a double agent for the Pakistanis and the Americans, passing on al-Qaida leaders' messages to its operatives and helping uncover members of the global terrorist network. Khan's identification in the New York Times ended his usefulness in ferreting out terrorists -- a tragic loss in the war on terror.

Reporters initially fingered American officials for leaking Khan's name. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice all but acknowledged the administration's mistake in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The matter was then written off as another blunder caused by the fog of war.

But in fact, U.S. officials did not leak Khan's name. The first leak of Khan's name, according to well-informed, reliable sources in the region who spoke on condition of anonymity, came from Pakistani officials in Islamabad -- who perhaps were motivated by eagerness to show off their success in arresting al-Qaida figures or, more ominously, by a desire to sabotage the penetration of al-Qaida that Khan's arrest had made possible. A second Pakistani leak to Reuters, blaming the Americans as the source of the leak, served to absolve the Pakistanis of any responsibility in breaking up new al-Qaida cells -- an important move domestically.

The Bush administration was hardly in a position to haul Gen. Pervez Musharraf's regime over the coals for this disaster. The United States and Pakistan have a twisted relationship in the hunt for al-Qaida. Although it is ostensibly driven by the mutual desire for security, there is clearly a political element to the relationship related to the survival of both the Bush and the Musharraf governments.

Few people likely paid attention last week when former President Clinton accused the Bush administration of contracting out U.S. security and the hunt for Osama bin Laden to Pakistan in its zeal to wage war in Iraq. In an interview with Canadian television, Clinton asked, "Why did we put our No. 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis, with us playing the supporting role, and put all our military resources into Iraq -- which was I think at best our No. 5 security threat?" Clinton also observed, "We will never know if we could have gotten him [bin Laden] because we didn't make it a priority."

One consequence of the decision to subcontract the hunt for members of al-Qaida to Pakistan is that the terrorists appear to be regrouping. The Washington Post, quoting senior U.S. and Pakistani officials, reported "new evidence" on Aug. 14 that suggests "that Al-Qaeda is battered but not beaten, and that a motley collection of old hands and recent recruits has formed a nucleus in Pakistan that is pushing forward with plans for attacks in the United States."

Despite Pakistan's past role in propping up the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Bush administration -- in one of its least transparent foreign alliances -- continues to rely on Pakistani military and intelligence services to deliver bin Laden. Since much of the give-and-take in this relationship is covert, it is unclear exactly what is or is not taking place.

The Bush administration has defended Musharraf against charges by political and media critics that Pakistan is not doing enough in the global war against terrorism. It has consistently and conveniently ignored Pakistan's lack of democracy under Musharraf, at a time when the administration claims to be promoting democracy in other parts of the Islamic world. Pakistan even managed to get a free pass on its role in transferring nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. The White House undoubtedly is not keen to criticize this important subcontractor in the expectation that it will deliver politically where it counts -- in the war against al-Qaida.

Musharraf's military regime, too, seems eager, as the U.S. election season heats up, to claim credit for its "cooperation" in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. Usually reticent Pakistani officials, especially Interior Minister Faisal Hayat, have been unusually forthcoming about recent successes in arresting al-Qaida-linked terrorist suspects, including some Pakistani nationals. Hayat was even willing to hold a late-night press briefing, just hours before Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was to formally accept his party's nomination at the Democratic Convention in Boston, to announce the arrest of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the man wanted for the 1998 terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Musharraf regime's current acknowledgment of al-Qaida's presence in Pakistan is quite contrary to its earlier approach, which was to deny any links between Pakistani Islamist militants and the global terrorist network. In a July 7, 2002, article in London's Financial Times, I wrote: "During the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance, militants from all over the Muslim world passed through Pakistan to participate in the Afghan Jihad. They were, at the time, supported by the intelligence services of the west as well as Islamic nations. Some of them created covert networks within Pakistan, taking advantage of poor law enforcement and the state's sympathetic attitude towards pan-Islamic militancy. Now that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been uprooted from Afghanistan, they are using their former transit station as a temporary staging ground for terrorist operations."

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