Tag: Taliban

18 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The CIA issues a compartmented top-secret report, “Further Options Available Against UBL” [Osama bin Laden], outlining covert and military actions that could be taken as a follow-on to the August 1998 cruise missile attacks (that were retaliation for the African embassy bombings).

White House staffers were still arguing for bombing a broad range of sites that would include al Qaeda camps and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan. Beyond air defenses and airfields, the Air Force said there weren’t any easy targets—that is, those which were outside urban areas or whose destruction would have significant effects. And the terrorist camps themselves were spread out and lacked critical facilities. Bomb damage assessments of the August strikes indicated no long-term effect.

According to Age of Sacred Terror (p. 284), national security advisor Sandy Berger was leery of bombing alone, believing that the odds of killing Osama bin Laden were low “and that a failure would make the United States look impotent and its target invincible.”

JCS Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton presented other military options, but his “$2 billion option” as the White House called it, was seen more as passive-aggressive refusal on the part of the Pentagon to engage in combat, piling on logistical and support requirements that turned every option into a major war. Secretary of Defense William Cohen also insisted that any special operations option—even of a small stealthy raid—include a “force protection” package. Ultimately the discussions fizzled into nothing.

12 November 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Corregidor, Philippines

 

Wandering around the globe, oblivious to everything terrorism and Islam going on around him, Bill Clinton lands in the Philippines on a two-day state visit, visiting Corregidor, site of the Japanese victory in the conquest of the American commonwealth in World War II, and of the U.S. Army’s return.

While in the Philippines, what are now believed to be al Qaeda operatives (including Ramzi Yousef) undertake surveillance of the presidential party, preparing for an assassination attempt on Clinton’s life. The 911 Commission says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent $3,000 to Yousef to fund the plot.

According to Triple Cross (p. 163), Yousef and associate Wali Khan Amin Shah applied for visas on November 3 and travel to Manila (Khan would later be captured and tortured by Philippine police and then “rendered” to the United States). Triple Cross claims that Terry Nichols, accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was also in the Philippines at the same time.

Clinton arrived in the country after a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Fahd at King Khalid Military City in Hafr-Al-Batin in the north, near the Iraqi border. “I had been impressed by Fahd’s call, in early 1993, asking me to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims,” Clinton later writes (My Life, p. 627).

It was hardly a humanitarian move on the Saudi part. Bosnia would be one of the first locations outside Afghanistan where radical Islamists and al Qaeda adherents would travel to and carry out jihad, and Osama bin Laden certainly saw the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia as part of the global assault on the Islamic people.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban have their first significant military success, capturing Kandahar in the south. It all happened in November 1994, all the threads gathering, but the global pattern was unseen at the time.

8 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The United States posts a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden in light of his indictment (see November 4).

Diplomatic inquiries are made of the Taliban government in Afghanistan to turn him over. They respond by offering to try bin Laden themselves. After a secret court hearing, and with no U.S. representative present, they find him “innocent” of wrongdoing.

Much has been written about the reasons for Taliban support of bin Laden—that he was bankrolling the regime, or that al Qaeda was helping to fight the normal tribes and alliances resisting Taliban rule and still holding parts of the country. But he didn’t have that much money left after leaving Sudan (and losing much) and al Qaeda wasn’t really engaged in combat. Instead it was a genuine ideological affinity, especially given international condemnation of the Taliban. And Saudi insistence. Perhaps. It was one of only three countries recognizing and supporting the Taliban.

30 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Sandy Berger passes the baton to Condoleezza Rice

 

After the attack on the USS Cole, but absent any “proof” of al Qaeda culpability, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger agrees to a State Department proposal making another approach to the Taliban to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.

U.S. diplomats had already been in touch with Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Jalil and now Berger orders that the U.S. message to the Taliban “be stern and foreboding.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration is also working with the Russian government on new U.N. sanctions against Mullah Omar’s regime.

Between 1998 and 9/11, the United States issued a half dozen threats to the Taliban, both about bin Laden and support for al Qaeda, and to protest the treatment of women. None of the warnings had any effect.

2 October 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The CIA readies an operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, secretly training and equipping approximately 60 military commandos supplied by the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) establishment.

The covert action, approved by President Clinton, includes a quid pro quo, that Pakistan would train and prepare the commandos and conduct the operation, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed with Pakistan’s nuclear testing.

The plan is briefed and supposedly ready to go, but it is then aborted because on October 12, Pakistan Army General Pervez Musharraf takes control of the country in a military coup. Most would later say that no ISI-sponsored operation would have been successful given that the organization was filled with Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.

30 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Predator RQ-1 drone

 

The Taliban issue a press statement saying that an unknown aircraft was seen over Kandahar. CIA-operated Predator drones had started flights over Afghanistan on September 7, flying from an airfield in Uzbekistan.

The satellite-equipped, bulbous-nosed RQ-1 Predator (an enhanced version of the CIA’s Gnat-750) was a newer innovation that allowed the drone to fly beyond the line of sight of ground stations controlling the drones. A year after the satellite-version was introduced, the drone made its first combat debut in hostile airspace, flying near-daily reconnaissance missions over former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Kosovo), then flying from an airfield in Albania.

In December 1998, the CIA first proposed a covert action to use an armed Predator to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Director George Tenet thought the program too risky to be approved on his authority alone and he brought it before the NSC for discussion. The Council gave a go-ahead for development of the capability, but the White House decided to retain control over authorizations for any lethal strikes. Predator development continued to move forward. Flights over Afghanistan are only occasional in September 2000 as the testing program to fire a Hellfire missile from the drone moves forward under Air Force aegis in Nevada. Despite the conclusion that the Predator spotted bin Laden in its first flights (see September 28), the 12-flight covert action is terminated before the end of the year. Predators would not return to the skies of Afghanistan until after 9/11.

22 September 1998

Posted on by William Arkin
Mullah Omar: Qandahar centric; controls military and funds; close ties to UBL and ISID; increasingly suspicious of Rabbani's supporters; key supporters—Foreigh Minister, Governor of Herat, Governor of Mazar-e Sharif

 

Three years before 9/11, the Taliban diplomatic envoy is expelled from Saudi Arabia over the refusal of the government in Kandahar to hand over Osama Bin Laden.

After the African embassy bombings in August 1998, Washington sought Saudi Arabia’s help in forging a break between the Taliban and bin Laden, specifically in getting Mullah Omar to eject bin Laden from the country.

Prince Turki bin Faisal (also known as Turki al-Faisal)—head of Saudi intelligence and bin Laden’s earlier sponsor during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—went to Afghanistan to meet with Omar, head of the Taliban. The meeting is the stuff of legend, the powerful Saudi prince being not just rebuffed and insulted, but treated with less than princely dignity, and leaving in a swirl of robes.

When the Taliban ambassador was expelled from Riyadh, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah happened to be in the United States on a visit and met at the White House with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. He reported on the earlier Turki visit to Afghanistan and expressed Saudi frustration with the unorthodox regime. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t formally break off diplomatic relations with the Taliban until September 25, 2001.

14 September 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The United States formally warns the fledgling Taliban regime in Afghanistan (through a diplomatic demarche) that it will hold it responsible for any terrorist attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda—that is, so long as the Taliban continues to provide sanctuary to the group and to Osama bin Laden.

The government in Sudan receives similar warnings.

A month after the twin attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan William Milam meets with Taliban representatives. They tell him that it “against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Ladin [sic] should he be sent to Saudi Arabia.” (911 Commission Report, p. 121) It is neither the first nor the last overtures to the Taliban regime regarding bin Laden. In fact, quite astoundingly, we are still negotiating with them today, despite a 20-year war in Afghanistan.