series of cables I had sent to headquarters, some dating back to the previous year; they traced the evolution of my thinking on how we could take the fight to the Taliban. Long passages had been highlighted and annotated in the margins in George’s hand.
In these messages I had laid out the possibilities suggested by our intelligence. In fact, those opportunities had multiplied in the four months since my briefing of President Bush the previous March. Significant areas under Taliban control were starting to become restive, as patience with draconian clerical rule was wearing thin. Mullah Omar’s enforcement of a ban on opium poppy cultivation had not helped him in this regard, denying thousands of Afghan farmers the ability to produce the most lucrative crop available to them.
In particular, there was growing dissatisfaction within the Taliban itself with bin Laden and his Arabs, who had become a veritable state within a state. They did as they liked, and went where they wished, never bothering to inform their hosts, let alone seek their permission. The Arab al-Qa’ida leadership did not trust the Taliban, whom they considered primitives, and made no pretense about it. As bin Laden constantly moved about the country, his bodyguards would never reveal his travel plans in advance to the Taliban security guards who accompanied them everywhere, keeping the Afghans always on the periphery, a mere outer layer of security.
While al-Qa’ida’s financial subventions to the Taliban and the skilled fighters in the Arab 555 Brigade were valued, neither the Arabs themselves nor their money were seen as an unambiguous blessing. Arab fighters serving on the front lines of Afghanistan’s civil war mirrored the arrogance and religious prejudices of bin Laden’s immediate entourage, and the economic dislocations brought about by the Arabs’ money, particularly in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar City, were creating serious problems for leading members of the movement. Senior Taliban officials were being priced out of the prime real estatebeing bought up by bin Laden’s people. Even Mullah Omar himself was leery of the Saudi’s transparent attempts to curry independent favor with governors, commanders, and other senior Taliban officials through his lavish gifts, and sternly warned bin Laden in a letter that all financial assistance to the Taliban should be channeled through him.
Omar, we knew, was not about to break with bin Laden: he shared the Saudi’s messianic vision of global jihad . Mullah Omar’s formal title was Amir ul-Mumineen , “Commander of the Faithful,” and for him this was not just an honorific. Although bin Laden’s relationship with Omar was complicated, he was adept at flattering his Afghan benefactor and playing on his pretensions as a world historical figure. The concerns of Omar’s key lieutenants, however, were closer to home. Many would have been glad to see the Afghan Arabs go. In a Pashtun, a streak of extreme xenophobia is never far from the surface, and among many in the Taliban leadership, their Arab irritation had rubbed that vein raw. Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, “Mullah Osmani”—the Taliban’s Southern Zone commander and the number two in the movement to Omar himself—was particularly opposed to bin Laden’s presence, and had been vocal about it, as our agents were reporting.
My idea was that if we could capitalize, through liberal application of money, on the restiveness of a number of the significant Pashtun tribal leaders with whom my station was in touch, and if we could tie their limited armed insurrections to popular resentment of the Afghan Arabs, we would at least get the serious attention of the Taliban leadership, which might conclude that hosting the Arabs and bin Laden was more trouble than it was worth. I certainly did not think that my tribal rebellion—if we could pull it off—would ever succeed in actually toppling the Taliban outright. My hope was that genuine concern
In these messages I had laid out the possibilities suggested by our intelligence. In fact, those opportunities had multiplied in the four months since my briefing of President Bush the previous March. Significant areas under Taliban control were starting to become restive, as patience with draconian clerical rule was wearing thin. Mullah Omar’s enforcement of a ban on opium poppy cultivation had not helped him in this regard, denying thousands of Afghan farmers the ability to produce the most lucrative crop available to them.
In particular, there was growing dissatisfaction within the Taliban itself with bin Laden and his Arabs, who had become a veritable state within a state. They did as they liked, and went where they wished, never bothering to inform their hosts, let alone seek their permission. The Arab al-Qa’ida leadership did not trust the Taliban, whom they considered primitives, and made no pretense about it. As bin Laden constantly moved about the country, his bodyguards would never reveal his travel plans in advance to the Taliban security guards who accompanied them everywhere, keeping the Afghans always on the periphery, a mere outer layer of security.
While al-Qa’ida’s financial subventions to the Taliban and the skilled fighters in the Arab 555 Brigade were valued, neither the Arabs themselves nor their money were seen as an unambiguous blessing. Arab fighters serving on the front lines of Afghanistan’s civil war mirrored the arrogance and religious prejudices of bin Laden’s immediate entourage, and the economic dislocations brought about by the Arabs’ money, particularly in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar City, were creating serious problems for leading members of the movement. Senior Taliban officials were being priced out of the prime real estatebeing bought up by bin Laden’s people. Even Mullah Omar himself was leery of the Saudi’s transparent attempts to curry independent favor with governors, commanders, and other senior Taliban officials through his lavish gifts, and sternly warned bin Laden in a letter that all financial assistance to the Taliban should be channeled through him.
Omar, we knew, was not about to break with bin Laden: he shared the Saudi’s messianic vision of global jihad . Mullah Omar’s formal title was Amir ul-Mumineen , “Commander of the Faithful,” and for him this was not just an honorific. Although bin Laden’s relationship with Omar was complicated, he was adept at flattering his Afghan benefactor and playing on his pretensions as a world historical figure. The concerns of Omar’s key lieutenants, however, were closer to home. Many would have been glad to see the Afghan Arabs go. In a Pashtun, a streak of extreme xenophobia is never far from the surface, and among many in the Taliban leadership, their Arab irritation had rubbed that vein raw. Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, “Mullah Osmani”—the Taliban’s Southern Zone commander and the number two in the movement to Omar himself—was particularly opposed to bin Laden’s presence, and had been vocal about it, as our agents were reporting.
My idea was that if we could capitalize, through liberal application of money, on the restiveness of a number of the significant Pashtun tribal leaders with whom my station was in touch, and if we could tie their limited armed insurrections to popular resentment of the Afghan Arabs, we would at least get the serious attention of the Taliban leadership, which might conclude that hosting the Arabs and bin Laden was more trouble than it was worth. I certainly did not think that my tribal rebellion—if we could pull it off—would ever succeed in actually toppling the Taliban outright. My hope was that genuine concern
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