The great disappearing actIn the latest of his online terrorism dispatches, The Observer's Chief Reporter reveals another embarassing failure for the security services. The Americans believe that Abu Al-Haili helped to arrange Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora. So why did British security services allow him to slip the net in Tooting, South London?
Jason Burke
Sunday August 11, 2002American politicians and security officials spent last week squirming as a series of leaks exposes their failings in the run up to September 11th. But their British counterparts have little reason to be smug. In fact they could be accused of a worrying inability to locate key figures who have been linked to Al-Qaeda in Britain. That Abu Qutada, a 17 stone bearded cleric, was able disappear in broad daylight from his house in Acton in a people-carrier along with five family members is well known. But it now appears that British security services have mislaid more than one overweight Islamist.
According to well-placed sources within the Islamist community in the UK Abu Zubair al-Haili - who the Americans believe helped Osama bin Laden escape the American assault on Afghanistan - was living in the UK until shortly before the September 11th attacks. Indeed British security service sources admit that they knew that al-Haili, who weighs more than 18 stone and known as 'The Bear', was living in Tooting, south London. Despite this, they failed to arrest him. And nor did they stop him from sending recruits to the Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
This is unlikely to contribute much to fraying transatlantic relations. According to the Americans Al-Haili, who was captured in Morocco two months ago, was a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure. They say that he was the deputy of Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaeda's chief of operations, who is the one of the most senior of bin Laden's aides to have been arrested so far. Islamist sources, however, dispute the bin Laden link and say, though 'The Bear' had spent time with the bin Laden in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets and came from the same part of Saudi Arabia, the two men were not in fact close.
Either way al-Haili was known as a experienced and successful military commander who had built a reputation as a commander in the Afghan jihad and in Bosnia. It is clear that he spent time in Britain and was known to the authorities. One source within the British Islamist community told The Observer that he had met al-Haili in a restaurant in south London in April 2001, shortly after his questioning by MI5 and an associate recounted how Al-Haili was arrested at Edinburgh airport in March last year after trying to board a plane with a false passport. He was questioned by an Arabic-speaking member of the British security services and then released. He left Britain soon afterwards and, with his family, went on to Pakistan.
American investigators believe that Al-Haili arranged the escape of bin Laden and his key lieutenants from the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanista in mid-November last year. How he escaped from Britain is another question that they might like to investigate.
· Jason Burke, The Observer's Chief Reporter, was writing extensively about Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan long before September 11th. You can read a selection of his reporting on the terrorism crisis, including his fortnightly online terrorism dispatch in Observer Worldview's best of Jason Burke page.
To refresh memories on events in Afghanistan, November 2001, Taliban Timeline:
Nov. 9 Northern Alliance forces, with help of U.S. air support, take cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Taloqan from the Taliban.
Nov. 11 Three international journalists are killed near Taloqan in a Taliban ambush.
Nov. 12 Northern Alliance forces capture Herat and advance toward Kabul.
Nov. 13 Northern Alliance enters Kabul. The Taliban fall back from Kandahar. There are reports of lawlessness from Mazar-i-Sharif.
Nov. 15 The eight foreign aid workers held since August are freed as the Taliban flees Kandahar.
Nov. 21 Taliban commanders in the city of Kunduz plan to meet with Northern Alliance leaders to negotiate a surrender. The Taliban in Kandahar announce they will continue to fight and claim to still control the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Zabol, and part of Ghazni province. The Taliban deny knowing the location of Osama bin Laden.
Nov. 24 The Taliban surrender Kunduz.
Nov. 25 U.S. special forces and air strikes help subdue a prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif. The prison held several hundred Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, many of them foreign, who had surrendered in Kunduz. The uprising lasts three days. A CIA agent, about 30 Northern Alliance soldiers, and more than 500 Taliban prisoners are killed.
Nov. 25 Hundreds of marines land near Kandahar to combat Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. This is the first major incursion of U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan.
Nov. 27 Afghan leaders meet with UN representatives in Bonn, Germany, to work out guidelines for a post-Taliban government. Afghan leaders represent 4 factions: the Northern Alliance; the "Rome Group," representing former Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah; the "Peshawar Group," representing Afghan refugees in Pakistan; and the "Cyprus Group," representing an Iranian-backed group of Afghan exiles.
Nov. 29 U.S. continues airstrikes on Kandahar. Mullah Omar reportedly tells the remaining Taliban forces to "fight to the death." Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance agrees to the presence of international peacekeeping forces.
In The Wall Street Journal / WSJ.com / Opinion Journal, by Tunku Varadarajan, November 28, 2001:
Rescuing the Enemy
Yes, Pakistan evacuated men from Kunduz. Why'd the U.S. let them?
BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Wednesday, November 28, 2001 12:01 a.m. ESTLast Thursday the Indian press carried reports that two helicopters of the Pakistani air force had landed in the heart of Kunduz--an Afghan town then under siege by the Northern Alliance, but still under Taliban control--and "flew out soon after carrying two chopper loads of personnel." These included two brigadiers of the Pakistani army. Two days later, the Indian press again carried reports, based on information supplied by Indian intelligence, that Pakistan's air force had "flown several missions since Sunday to evacuate top Pakistani military commanders."
When I read these stories, I asked myself: What on earth is going on here?
Of course, it occurred to me that the story could have been a bit of misinformation, perhaps a mischievous "feed" to journalists by Indian intelligence officers keen to stir things up against Pakistan. After all, the allegation was a serious one. Pakistan, a much-vaunted U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, stood accused of rescuing fighters who were on the side of the Taliban and al Qaeda, the very groups against which the U.S. is waging war. And what is more, these fighters were not freelance hotheads from Islamic seminaries in Pakistan--though, goodness knows, there's no shortage of those--but actual members of the Pakistani armed forces. In other words, these were men with ranks and commissions, men in line for Pakistani state pensions, disciplined, professional men who would be unlikely so much as to say "boo" to a goose without orders from above.
If these reports were true, I was entirely justified, was I not, in asking, What on earth is going on here?
On Saturday, the same day as the second Indian report, the New York Times ran a story that caught my eye. "Pakistanis Again Said to Evacuate Allies of Taliban," said the headline over a report filed, from a place called Bangi, near Kunduz, by Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall. They told of eyewitness accounts by Northern Alliance soldiers "that Pakistani airplanes had once again flown into the encircled city of Kunduz to evacuate Pakistanis who have been fighting alongside Afghan Taliban forces trapped there." The Times reported that earlier in the week, "alliance officials said they had been told by a Taliban leader in Kunduz that at least three Pakistani Air Force planes had landed in recent days on similar missions."
Yesterday, in a conversation with a highly placed diplomat from the region, I learned enough to be able to assert that all these reports are entirely correct. Pakistani air force helicopters and transport craft did, indeed, ferry out nearly 200 regular men and officers of the Pakistan army--including two brigadiers. A large number of ex-servicemen were also evacuated in this manner. According to the diplomat, "this could not have been done without the specific approval and connivance of the Bush administration." The U.S. controls the skies over Kunduz, and it is unlikely that Pakistani craft would have flown into the zone without attracting U.S. attention.
This affair raises intriguing, and worrying, questions. First: What were these Pakistani soldiers doing in Kunduz? And second, why did the U.S. choose to turn a blind eye to their rescue?
In answer to the first question it should be pointed out that prior to the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, there were thousands of Pakistani troops in that country. Most were spirited out in the days before the bombing began, days in which, one will recall, Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan spent most of his time urging restraint, delays, etc., all as a smokescreen for a complicated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
They couldn't be flown out en masse, for that would have looked ugly, and raised ugly questions about Pakistan's role in the Taliban and al Qaeda networks; instead, they had to be siphoned out overland, as it were, as unobtrusively as possible. Small garrisons were left behind--at Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz--in the belief that the war would end rather differently, and not with the kind of rout that we have seen. Gen. Musharraf, you will also recall, spent much energy, earlier in the campaign, urging the U.S. not to attack the Taliban frontline in the country's north. Why? Because he had troops there, alongside the Taliban, troops he hoped would hold the line for the Pakistan-Taliban axis in any postbellum settlement.
Why did the U.S. let Gen. Musharraf rescue his troops, only days after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had rebuffed the general's pleas for safe passage out of Kunduz for Pakistani fighters trapped there? There are no easy answers, only uncomfortable ones. My guess is that Secretary of State Colin Powell, with whom the Pakistani dictator has developed an unseemly and unctuous rapport, called in all his chips on this one. The evasiveness of U.S. top brass on the subject suggests they are embarrassed over the affair. How could they not be? Weren't the men the Pakistanis rescued the very men this country is at war with? And weren't these some of the very men Mr. Rumsfeld said had only two choices before them at Kunduz, death or surrender?
One day, when the war in Afghanistan is well and truly done, we will get answers to all these questions. In the meantime, what we are beginning to learn is that if one enlists dubious allies, one runs the high risk of treading knee-deep in--how shall I put it?--foul-smelling organic waste matter.
And as allies go, Gen. Musharraf is as dubious as they get.
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Tuesdays.