Against All Enemies (43 page)

I had worked with Jim Dobbins since 1981 on issues ranging from basing cruise missiles in Europe to stabilizing Haiti. Dobbins was a career diplomat and expert on military and security issues. He worked on rebuilding Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Bosnia. In 2001, he began similar work on Afghanistan. He was frustrated by the lack of resources and attention given the effort by the Bush administration. As Dobbins has pointed out, in the first two years of the Bosnia and Kosovo rebuilding efforts, funds available totaled $1,390 and $814 per capita. For Afghanistan, the per capita funds assigned were only $52.

Dobbins had worked on creating new national police and security services in several failed states. He hoped to do so in Afghanistan, but the Bush administration seemed uninterested in a serious effort. The goal the Pentagon approved was only a 4,800-man Afghan national army by 2004. Some regional warlords count their strength at ten thousand men under arms. The initial units of the new force were trained by the U.S., but we soon stopped support and supervision. Many of the new recruits departed the force, taking their equipment with them. Meanwhile, Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, was still at large and reorganizing his forces on both sides of the Pakistani border. Despite two years of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, we have not eliminated the Taliban. Afghanistan was supposed to be an example of Rumsfeld's theories that small amounts of special forces and airpower could combine to do what large Army units had been called on to do in the past. Dobbins and others who examined the Afghan security issue closely have no doubt that the United States could have brought true stability to Afghanistan with a larger force, could have made the return of the Taliban and the terrorists virtually impossible. Instead, the larger force was held back for Iraq. Because of a lack of attention and resources, Afghanistan is still a potential sanctuary for terrorists.

T
HE SECOND COUNTRY
in need of significant U.S. help to prevent its fall to al Qaeda–like groups is Pakistan. Pakistan had been tentative and bifurcated before September 11. The military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had provided the Taliban with arms, men, and information. ISID personnel had trained Kashmiri terrorists at al Qaeda camps and worked with al Qaeda–related terrorists to put pressure on India. Pakistani police and security services, on the other hand, had arrested al Qaeda personnel transiting en route to Afghanistan, when given specific information by U.S. authorities. After the attacks on America, and despite the popularity of al Qaeda in parts of Pakistan, General Musharraf courageously pressed his agencies to help the U.S. find any al Qaeda presence in the country. Two of al Qaeda's top operational managers, Khalid Sheik Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, were among those found and arrested in joint Pakistani-American actions. CIA and FBI had determined Khalid Sheik Muhammad's importance in al Qaeda, his leadership in the September 11 operation, only after the attacks in America. Abu Zubayda, however, had been identified as a key target for CIA action after the Millennium threats.

For weeks in 2000, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger's checklist for talking to Tenet had included the question, “Have you found Zubayda in Pakistan yet?” On several occasions in 2000, I would tell Berger to expect a call during the night because CIA was getting close to Zubayda. I never got to make that call. When he was finally arrested in 2002, he reportedly provided his interrogators with useful information. Had CIA snatched him in 2000 as directed, he might have told of his plot with Khalid Sheik Muhammad to stage aircraft attacks in America.

To this day, Usama bin Laden is a popular icon in Pakistan. Mosques and affiliated madrassas schools in Pakistan teach hatred of America and all that is not Islam. Large areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border are still not controlled by the central government and offer sanctuary to the Taliban and al Qaeda. All of this is true about a country that also has nuclear weapons.

More disturbing are reports that some scientists who had worked on Pakistan's nuclear program are also al Qaeda sympathizers and have discussed their expertise with al Qaeda, Libya, Iran, North Korea, and others. Nothing, and certainly not Iraq, can be more important than stopping al Qaeda from getting its hands on a nuclear weapon.

Pakistan is ruled by General Musharraf and the army. Democracy is temporarily suspended, as it has often been in Pakistan's turbulent history. Musharraf now appears to genuinely want to eradicate al Qaeda and the support for its beliefs in Pakistan. To do that, however, he must demonstrate that the government and the economy can deliver for the people of Pakistan. He must create public schools that teach tolerance to replace the madrassas that teach hate. The ideological battle for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis will only be won by the secular modernists if they can be seen to be improving the standard of living for the many poor, uneducated Pakistanis among whom al Qaeda derives much of its support.

Few issues demand attention and resources more than Pakistan. Once an example of an Islamic democracy with a high-tech future, Pakistan could become what bin Laden dreams of: an Islamic nation controlled by radicals, with popular support for fundamentalism and terrorism, armed with nuclear weapons. Such a state could use those nuclear weapons in a war of hatred with neighboring India or it could provide them to terrorists. For now, under General Musharraf, the nuclear weapons are reportedly under tight control. Musharraf, however, needs help to turn the popular attitude in his country from supporting al Qaeda's view of the future to supporting a modern, democratic, peaceful view of the future. Although the U.S. increased assistance to Pakistan in 2001, it is inadequate to make the difference needed, to turn the tide in Pakistan and return it to stability. On a 2003 visit to the United States, General Musharraf complained that the U.S. was offering him military assistance funds which he did not need and not providing the economic development help he desperately required.

S
AUDI
A
RABIA IS THE THIRD
of the priority nations. For several years prior to September 11, the United States government provided the Saudis with information about al Qaeda members in the Kingdom. That information seemed to disappear into a black hole. Seldom were we told the results, if any, of investigations into the information we provided. The same was true of U.S. appeals for the Saudis to investigate al Qaeda fund-raising and money laundering in the Kingdom, or the use of Saudi charities and nongovernmental organizations by al Qaeda operatives. There was some greater cooperation after September 11, but discernible and serious Saudi efforts to root out al Qaeda in the Kingdom seemed to start only after al Qaeda staged truck bomb attacks in Riyadh in 2003. Why the lethargy, the reluctance, the denial?

For Americans to understand the Saudi government's attitude over the last few years, it may be easiest to explain by analogy. What might Washington's attitude be if some country alleged that the Opus Dei religious sect of Roman Catholicism were engaged in terrorism around the world and had to be destroyed, its leaders killed or arrested? Without even looking at the evidence offered by the foreign government, some in the government in Washington would say that they agreed with the basic beliefs of Opus Dei. Some in sensitive government jobs might even be members of Opus Dei (as FBI Director Louis Freeh was alleged to be), and thus reluctant to arrest their cobelievers. The analogy is imprecise. Opus Dei is not engaged in terrorism. But it is certainly true that the core al Qaeda beliefs are not very different from those of many leading Saudis, whose Wahhabist version of Islam teaches intolerance of other religions and support for expanding the realm of Islam. As Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques (the Saudi King's official title), the House of Saud has seen itself as both protector of Muslims everywhere and supporter of Wahhabist evangelism everywhere. They did, therefore, use Saudi government funds to support the jihad in Afghanistan. Saudi funds, whether officially governmental or not, almost certainly funded jihadist activities in Bosnia and, as the Russian government has charged, in Chechnya. Saudi government funds established Wahhabist mosques and schools not only in the jihad countries, but in Europe and the United States. Saudi government funds and those of concerned wealthy Saudis flowed to a series of charities and nongovernmental organizations, which in turn provided support for al Qaeda operatives.

Did the Saudi government knowingly provide funding and support for al Qaeda? It is a large and wealthy government not known for transparency or exacting audits. I doubt any Minister or senior member of the royal family supported the attacks on the United States; indeed there is evidence that there were ineffectual efforts to control bin Laden. But it must also be said that Ministers and members of the royal family did knowingly support the global spread of Wahhabist Islam, jihads, and anti-Israeli activities. They ignored anti-American teaching in and around mosques and schools where intolerance was indoctrinated. They replaced a technical, Western-styled curriculum in Saudi schools with a Wahhabist religion-focused education. As long as the royal family and its rule were not the obvious targets, some undoubtedly turned a blind eye to a host of things that made al Qaeda's life easier.

After the truck bomb attacks in Riyadh in 2003, the Saudi security services appear to have been ordered to root out al Qaeda in the Kingdom. Not surprisingly to American counterterrorist experts, the Saudi security services have become involved in gun battles and street chases. They have uncovered large arms caches, not intended for jihad elsewhere or attacks on U.S. facilities in the Kingdom, but almost certainly intended for guerrilla war in Saudi Arabia, a war intended to replace the House of Saud.

The fall of the House of Saud would not come as a shock to many senior American officials who have followed the Middle East for years. Many have long feared, without being able to prove it, that that House and its military and security services are riddled with termites. Stung by the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and its replacement with an anti-American theocracy, many American officials have feared a repeat performance of that tragedy across the Gulf in Saudi Arabia. This fear probably played a role in the thinking of some in the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, who wanted to go to war with Iraq. With Saddam gone, they believed, the U.S. could reduce its dependence on Saudi Arabia, could pull forces out of the Kingdom, and could open up an alternative source of oil.

Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey has talked publicly about the need for a new government in Riyadh. The risk that the United States runs is of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, removing the American “mandate of heaven” from the House of Saud without a plan or any influence about what would happen next. Yet the U.S. military intervention in Iraq has, ironically, further reduced support for both the U.S. and the House of Saud among many of the discontented in the Kingdom. We are securing the wrong country, and making its neighbor more unstable in the process.

The future and stability of Saudi Arabia is of paramount importance to the United States; our policy cannot just be one of reducing our dependence upon it. The American government should be engaging at several levels to develop sources of information about what is really going on inside the Kingdom and to create the means of influencing the nation's future. Instead, President Bush has chosen to deliver a lecture in Washington about the importance of democracy for Arab states. Coming as it did from a President widely hated in the Arab world for his invasion to impose a U.S.-styled democracy in Iraq, the words of the President's lecture did little to stimulate a positive response. Indeed, because the U.S. apparently believes in imposing its ideology through the violence of war, many in the Arab world wonder how the United States can criticize the fundamentalists who also seek to impose their ideology through violence.