Milt Bearden, a retired 30-year CIA veteran who served as senior manager for clandestine operations, writes: “The [Bush] administration’s claims of having ‘saved thousands of Americans’ can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered—not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. All the public gets is repeated references to Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002), the Lackawanna Six (see April-August 2001), the Liberty Seven (see June 23, 2006), and the Library Tower operation in Los Angeles (see October 2001-February 2002). If those slapstick episodes are the true character of the threat, then maybe we’ll be okay after all. When challenged on the lack of a game-changing example of a derailed operation, administration officials usually say that the need to protect sources and methods prevents revealing just how enhanced interrogation techniques have saved so many thousands of Americans. But it is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.” Bearden suggests that the CIA might have been permanently “broken” by its use of torture, and that some US officials will likely face the threat of being arrested overseas on torture charges for years to come. [Washington Independent, 7/1/2008]
July 7, 2008: Suicide Bombing on Indian Embassy in Kabul Kills 54; Afghan and Indian Governments Blame ISI and Taliban
A suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills 54 people and injures 140 others. The main target appears to be a diplomatic convoy that had just entered the embassy gate, directly followed by the suicide truck. Among the dead are two senior Indian diplomats, including the military attaché, Brigadier Ravi Mehta. Many of those killed are people standing in line waiting for visas. [London Times, 8/3/2008] The Indian government received at least one warning about an attack on the embassy, and it took extra security precautions that helped reduce the loss of lives (see July 1, 2008). The Afghan interior ministry quickly asserts that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, helped the Taliban with the attack. A presidential spokesman states at a news conference, “The sophistication of this attack and the kind of material that was used in it, the specific targeting, everything has the hallmarks of a particular intelligence agency that has conducted similar terrorist acts inside Afghanistan in the past.” The Afghan government has asserted that the ISI is responsible for other attacks in Afghanistan, including an attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai in late April 2008 (see April 27, 2008). The Indian government also quickly blames the ISI and the Taliban. [Financial Times, 7/8/2008; Taipei Times, 7/9/2008] The Taliban deny involvement in the attack, but the New York Times notes that the Taliban usually deny involvement in attacks with a large number of civilian casualties. [New York Times, 7/8/2008] Less than a month later, US intelligence will accuse the ISI of helping a Taliban-linked militant network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani to plan the bombing (see August 1, 2008). President Bush will even directly threaten Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani with serious consequences if another attack is linked to the ISI (see July 28, 2008).
July 14, 2008: Pakistani Taliban Impose Strict Islamic Law in Tribal Region of Mohmand
Tehrik-i-Taliban, a group of Pakistani militants linked to the Taliban, declares the imposition of Sharia law (strict Islamic judicial code) in the Mohmand tribal area in Pakistan. Islamic courts have been established in the four regions of Mohmand, and the group has established similar courts already in the adjacent region of Bajaur. [Dawn (Karachi), 7/15/2008]
July 17, 2008: Alleged Female Al-Qaeda Sleeper Agent Arrested in Afghanistan
Aafia Siddiqui, a female Pakistani neuroscientist and alleged al-Qaeda operative, is arrested by Afghan police in the town of Ghazni, Afghanistan. Police reportedly also find bomb-making instructions, substances in bottles and jars, and papers describing US landmarks. There are conflicting accounts about what happens next:
US Government’s Version – The next day, a group of US agents come to visit her, but she is being held unsecured in a room, hiding behind a curtain. One of the US agents puts his rifle down. She allegedly picks up the rifle to shoot at the group. She shoots twice and misses, while a US agent shoots back and hits her at least once. [CNN, 8/4/2008; Reuters, 8/5/2008]
Afghan Police Version – According to Reuters, “Afghan police in Ghazni however, [tell] a different story.” They claim that they find Siddiqui in Ghazni after reports of her behaving suspiciously. They find maps of the town, including one of the governor’s house, and arrest her and a teenage boy. US troops then request that she be handed over to them, but Afghan police refuse, according to a senior police officer there. US soldiers then disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approaches the US soldiers complaining of mistreatment by the police. The US soldiers, under the impression that she could have explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shoot her and take her away. The boy remains in Afghan police custody. [Reuters, 8/5/2008]
She is extradited to the US a couple of weeks later, where she is due to stand trial for attempting to murder the US agents. Siddiqui had lived and studied in the US for many years. She was in Pakistan in March 2003 when it was announced that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had been arrested. She disappeared several days later (see Late September 2001-March 2003). The FBI issued an alert for her arrest, alleging that she had been an al-Qaeda sleeper agent in the US. There has been speculation that she had been secretly arrested by the US or Pakistan, and what happened to her since 2003 still remains a mystery. [CNN, 8/4/2008]
July 25, 2008: Al-Qaeda Linked Suicide Bombing in Yemen Kills Four
A suicide bomber named Ahmed al-Mashjari crashes a van full of explosives into a government security headquarters in the eastern province of Hadramaut in Yemen. Four are killed, including a Yemeni soldier. The al-Qaeda affiliate Soldiers of Yemen Brigades takes credit for the bombing, calling al-Mashjari a “heroic martyr.” The Yemeni government is said to have a tacit agreement whereby al-Qaeda operatives are left alone and in return they do not attack targets within Yemen. But Nadia al-Sakkaf, editor of the Yemen Times, says: “There was a deal [with the jihadis] but it’s not working any more. Now there are just fanatics who want to be hired by al-Qaeda, people who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan and have no skills, who are not integrated into society and have no education. They are brainwashed. Jihad is all they know.” [Yemen News Agency, 7/27/2008; Guardian, 7/30/2008]
July 28, 2008: President Bush Privately Accuses ISI of Helping Islamist Militants; Issues Ultimatum
Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, visits the US and meets with President George Bush in Washington, D.C. Bush privately confronts Gillani with evidence that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, has been helping the Taliban and al-Qaeda. US intelligence has long suspected that Pakistan has been playing a “double game,” accepting over a billion dollars of US aid per year meant to help finance Pakistan’s fight with Islamic militants, but at the same time training and funding those militants, who often go on to fight US soldiers in Afghanistan. The London Times reports that Gillani “was left in no doubt that the Bush administration had lost patience with the ISI’s alleged double game.” Bush allegedly warned that if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere were traced back to Pakistan, the US would take “serious action.” The key evidence is that US intelligence claims to have intercepted communications showing that the ISI helped plan a militant attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, earlier in the month (see July 7, 2008). US officials will leak this story of ISI involvement to the New York Times several days after Bush’s meeting with Gillani (see August 1, 2008). Gillani also meets with CIA Director Michael Hayden, who confronts him with a dossier on ISI support for the Taliban. Pakistanis officials will claim they were shocked at the “grilling” they received. One Pakistani official who came to the US with Gillani will say, “They were very hot on the ISI. Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away’.” When the story of Bush’s confrontation with Gillani is leaked to the press, Pakistani officials categorically deny any link between the ISI and militants in Afghanistan. But senior British intelligence and government officials have also told the Pakistanis in recent days that they are convinced the ISI was involved in the embassy bombing. This is believed to be the first time the US has openly confronted Pakistan since a warning given several days after 9/11 (see September 13-15, 2001). The US is said to be particularly concerned with the ISI’s links to Jalaluddin Haqqani, who runs a militant network that the US believes was involved in the bombing. And the US is worries about links between the ISI and Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based militant group that is said to have been behind a recent attack against US forces in Afghanistan that killed nine. [London Times, 8/3/2008]
July 28, 2008: US Drone Strike Kills Al-Qaeda Leader Midhat Mursi in Pakistan’s Tribal Region
A US drone strike kills al-Qaeda leader Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri). He is one of six people killed in the strike on a compound in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal region. Mursi, an Egyptian, was considered a poisons and explosives expert, and was accused of training the suicide bombers in the 2000 USS Cole bombing. He also is believed to have run the Darunta training camp in eastern Afghanistan until it was abandoned during the US invasion in late 2001. The US had put a $5 million bounty on him. A statement by al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid posted on the Internet about a week later will confirm his death. [Associated Press, 8/3/2008]
August 1, 2008: US Intelligence Officials Claim ISI Helped Islamic Militants Bomb Indian Embassy in Afghanistan
The New York Times reports that US intelligence agencies have concluded that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, helped plan the July 7, 2008, bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The attack was initially blamed on al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants, and 54 people were killed (see July 7, 2008). It is said US intelligence intercepted communications between ISI officers and militants who took part in the attack. The communications were intercepted before the bombing, but apparently were not specific enough to stop the attack. Anonymous US officials would not specifically tell the Times what kind of assistance the ISI gave the bombers. However, it was noted that the ISI officers involved were not renegades, suggesting their actions could have been authorized by superiors. [New York Times, 8/1/2008] The US also claims to have arrested an ISI officer inside Afghanistan, apparently for a role in the attack, but who this person is and what their role exactly allegedly was remains unclear. India and Pakistan have been traditional enemies, and Pakistan is concerned about India’s influence in Afghanistan. Many Western intelligence officials have long suspected that the ISI gets aid from the US and its allies and then uses this support to help the militants the US is fighting. However, solid proof has been hard to find. However, one British official tells the London Times, “The Indian embassy bombing seems to have finally provided it. This is the smoking gun we’ve all been looking for.” [London Times, 8/3/2008] One State Department official similarly says of the bombing evidence, “It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held. It was sort of this ‘a-ha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.” US officials believe that the embassy bombing was probably carried out by members of a network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who in turn has close alliances with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. US officials also say there is new evidence that ISI officials are increasingly providing militants with details about the US military campaign against them. In some cases, this has allowed militants to avoid US missile strikes in Pakistan. [New York Times, 8/1/2008] Several days before these accusations against the ISI were leaked to the press, British and US officials privately confronted Pakistani officials about the charges. President Bush even directly threatened Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani with serious consequences if another attack were linked to the ISI (see July 28, 2008).
August 1, 2008: Pakistani Official Admits that Some in ISI Still Support Taliban, then Backtracks
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s information minister, admits to journalists that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, still contains pro-Taliban operatives. She says, “We need to identify these people and weed them out.” However, she later changes her statement, claiming that the problems were in the past and there will be no purge. [London Times, 8/3/2008] Her comment comes right as US intelligence accuses the ISI of involvement in a recent bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan (see July 7, 2008 and August 1, 2008).
August 2, 2008: Al-Qaeda Leader Fazul Narrowly Escapes Capture in Kenya
An al-Qaeda leader named Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, (a.k.a. Haroun Fazul), narrowly escapes capture in Kenya. The US government claims that Fazul had important roles in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998) and the 2002 hotel bombing in Mombasa, Kenya (see November 28, 2002). Fazul was indicted for the embassy bombings before 9/11, and there is a $5 million reward for him. On August 2, 2008, Kenyan police raid a house in Malindi, a town on Kenya’s coast. Two passports bearing Fazul’s picture but different names are found, as well as his laptop computer. A Kenyan newspaper reports that a local police officer may have tipped off Fazul about the raid minutes before it took place. A half-eaten meal is discovered in the house, and the television is still on, leading police to believe that he ran out of the house just before they arrived. Three Kenyans are arrested and charged with helping to hide him. He reportedly narrowly escaped a US air strike in Somalia in 2007 (see December 24, 2006-January 2007), as well as a police raid in Kenya in 2003. [CNN, 8/4/2008; East African Standard, 8/5/2008] He will be killed in Somalia in 2011 (see June 10, 2011).
