Before 9/11, US knew Bin Laden was a threat. India-Pakistan tensions were the bigger worry
9/11 has been one of the most horrifying incidents of terrorism to happen on American soil. It claimed 2,977 victims not even accounting for the collective trauma it resulted in.By the time four hijacked planes tore through the American skies, Washington had already spent years watching the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.The problem, as the 9/11 Commission Report makes clear that, in South Asia, American attention was repeatedly pulled towards another crisis.
India and Pakistan
The Commission report makes it a point to highlight that: “In the State Department, concerns about India-Pakistan tensions often crowded out attention to Afghanistan or Bin Ladin. Aware of instability and growing Islamic extremism in Pakistan, State Department officials worried most about an arms race and possible war between Pakistan and India.”Washington knew Pakistan was unstable and it also knew that Islamist extremism was growing there. They also had information that Pakistan supported the Taliban and were aware of Bin Laden operating from within Afghanistan.But the possibility of an arms race, and eventually war, between two nuclear-armed neighbours kept competing for the top spot on the American agenda.After India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, that competition became even harder to ignore. The Commission says the dangers of an arms race and possible war became “daily first-order concerns” for State Department officials.Bin Laden was meanwhile building something else.In February 1998, he publicly declared that killing Americans was an individual duty for Muslims who could do so. Three months later, in an interview with ABC, he warned that if what he described as American “injustice” continued, the battle would eventually move to American soil. The Commission notes that plans to attack the United States had been developing with “unwavering single-mindedness” throughout the 1990s.
The problem next door
For the United States, getting to Bin Laden meant dealing with Pakistan. The report also acknowledges that Bin Laden was well-known and a senior figure among Islamist extremists, especially those in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Yet he was just one of the barons of terrorism, not its face, till now.
Osama bin Laden (File photo)
Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan, but the 9/11 Commission describes Pakistan as the country that held the key to his ability to use Afghanistan as a base for his campaign against the United States. Pakistan’s military establishment was deeply preoccupied with its rivalry with India, particularly over Kashmir.That rivalry shaped Islamabad’s calculations in Afghanistan.The Commission says Pakistani rulers saw the Taliban as potentially useful: they could impose order in Afghanistan and give Pakistan what its military planners called “strategic depth” against India. Pakistani intelligence officers probably knew in advance that Bin Laden was coming back to Afghanistan and may have facilitated his journey. The report also says Pakistani intelligence reportedly introduced him to Taliban leaders, partly in the hope that his camps could be made available for training Kashmiri militants.Bin Laden did not need Pakistan to be interested in his global jihad. He needed Pakistan’s geopolitical calculations to create an environment in which he could operate.The United States understood this tension, but struggled to act on it.
When terrorism became a secondary problem
In the summer before the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the State Department was heavily focused on rising tensions between India and Pakistan. The Commission says this meant Washington did not aggressively challenge Pakistan over Afghanistan and Bin Laden.At the same time, American counterterrorism officials were pushing in the opposite direction.The State Department’s acting counterterrorism coordinator advised Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism. His argument was that, despite assurances from Pakistan’s leadership, its military intelligence service continued activities supporting international terrorism, including attacks on civilian targets in Kashmir.But the South Asia bureau opposed the recommendation.Its concern was that such a move would further damage an already sensitive relationship with Pakistan, particularly after the May 1998 nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan. Albright rejected the recommendation on August 5, 1998.Two days later, al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.In 1997, an NSC policy review had already concluded that Washington needed to pay greater attention not only to India but also to Pakistan and Afghanistan. One diplomat told the Commission that the United States effectively had “no policy” towards Afghanistan at the time.But soon after that came the nuclear tests and then the Kargil war.In May 1999, Pakistani troops infiltrated the Kargil sector of Kashmir, triggering a limited war with India. The Commission records Bruce Riedel, the NSC official responsible for Pakistan, describing Islamabad as behaving like a rogue state in two areas: backing Taliban/Bin Laden terrorism and provoking war with India.The irony was that the two problems were not actually separate.Pakistan’s rivalry with India helped shape its policy towards militant groups. Those militant networks operated in an ecosystem that also sheltered the Taliban. And the Taliban provided Bin Laden with the Afghan sanctuary from which al-Qaeda could develop its war against the United States.
Washington knew about Bin Laden
Washington was not oblivious to the threat Bin Laden posed. The CIA was actively developing plans to capture him. The Justice Department was moving towards indicting him. In April 1998, US Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson travelled to Afghanistan and asked the Taliban to expel him after Bin Laden’s public call for Americans to be killed.The Taliban said they did not know where he was and insisted that he was not a threat to the United States.Counterterrorism officials wanted Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban. President Bill Clinton discussed Bin Laden with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Later, Clinton raised the issue directly with Gen Pervez Musharraf during his March 2000 visit to Pakistan and urged him to help capture Bin Laden.By then, however, the diplomatic problem had become deeply entrenched.Pakistan was simultaneously a potential partner against terrorism, a nuclear-armed rival of India, a supporter of the Taliban and a country whose military and intelligence establishment had relationships with militant groups.Washington needed Islamabad and that dependence limited how hard Washington was willing to push.Bin Laden became just one problem among several, in a region where another problem carried the possibility of nuclear war.The Commission’s own summary of this period is telling: while the CIA and Justice Department pursued Bin Ladin, the State Department was concentrating more heavily on easing Indo-Pakistani nuclear tensions, ending the Afghan civil war and dealing with the Taliban’s human-rights record than on driving Bin Laden out.By the time America fully understood the threat Bin Laden posed, 19 men had boarded four aircraft.
