U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

67–892 PDF 2011

S. HRG. 112–70 

AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN, AND OTHER EXTREMISTS GROUPS IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 24, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman

BARBARA BOXER, California 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

FRANK G. LOWENSTEIN, Staff Director

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Bergen, Peter, director, National Security Studies Program, New America 

Foundation, Washington, DC .............................................................................. 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 7 

Fair, C. Christine, Ph.D., assistant professor, Center for Peace and Security 

Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC ............................................ 22 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 24 

Kerry, Hon. John F., U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, opening statement ..... 1 

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 3 

Pillar, Paul, Ph.D., director of graduate studies and faculty member, Center 

for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC .... 17 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 19 

(III)

(1) 

AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN, AND OTHER EXTREMISTS GROUPS IN AFGHANISTAN AND 

PAKISTAN 

TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2011 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:06 a.m., in room 

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John F. Kerry 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Kerry, Menendez, Cardin, Shaheen, Udall, and 

Lugar. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN F. KERRY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing will come to order. Good morning. 

I appreciate everybody being here. This is the fifth in a series of 

hearings on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and today we will examine 

perhaps one of the most important aspects of the war, which is the 

enemy: Who are they? What do they think? What are the possibilities of either dividing them or working with some components of 

them? Many, many questions surrounding the various forces that 

are at large in the western part of Pakistan and in Afghanistan 

itself. 

We’re a little bit under the gun today because we have the joint 

session with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. We will have to 

end this hearing punctually in order to get over to the Senate and 

begin that session. So I ask each of the witnesses if you would summarize your testimony. Your complete statements will be placed in 

the record as if read in full, and that’ll give us more time to ask 

questions. 

In order to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and prevent 

Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist sanctuary, we clearly need 

to understand exactly who we’re fighting, what motivates them, 

what binds them together, and, most importantly, what could drive 

them apart. Today we’ll attempt to gain a deeper understanding of 

insurgent and extremists groups that inhabit the region and better 

understand the nature of this conflict. 

Osama bin Laden may have been at the center of it all, but 

his death does not signal the end of terrorism. Al-Qaeda still exists, 

motivated by the same vitriol and warped ideology that has always 

been the organization’s trademark. The Abbottabad raid, however, did send an unmistakable message: The United States is 

2 

committed, capable, and unrelenting in its pursuit of those who 

seek to do us harm. 

The extent of bin Laden’s operational significance will become 

clear when we finish analyzing the material that was removed 

from his compound. But one aspect of his legacy is already apparent. Even after 9/11, he played a central role in motivating disparate groups to unite against the United States and other western 

nations. 

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in Afghanistan 

and Pakistan, where strong connections among extremists groups 

exist at both the organizational and individual levels. Terrorists 

and insurgents work together against coalition forces and to indiscriminately murder innocent civilians, aid workers, civil servants, 

and children. Their motivation, which should offend all faiths, is to 

destabilize the region and to establish a safe haven where they can, 

and plot attacks against the United States and our allies. People 

ask why we are still in Afghanistan. This is the reason. 

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are names well known to Americans. 

But other groups are actively plotting, actively killing, every day. 

The Haqqani network has expanded its reach beyond North 

Waziristan in Pakistan and provides sanctuary to al-Qaeda and the 

Afghan Taliban. The Tehrik-i-Taliban, otherwise known as the 

Pakistani Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi systematically work to 

undermine the Government of Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and 

Jaish-e-Mohammed continue to launch attacks that risk sparking 

war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. 

So I’d like to take 1 minute, if I can, to highlight the threat posed 

by Lashkar-e-Taiba. This group, responsible for the vicious Mumbai 

attacks of 2008, is capable of not only destabilizing the region with 

another attack against India, but through its extensive alumni 

organization and network of training camps throughout Pakistan it 

could threaten the United States homeland. 

We also face threats from individuals seeking to fulfill their own 

personal objectives. Najibullah Zazi, a legal United States resident 

born in Afghanistan, conspired to bomb New York City’s subway 

system in 2009 after he received training in Pakistan. Faisal 

Shahzad, who attempted to detonate a car bomb last year in Time 

Square, was linked to the Pakistan Taliban. 

Unfortunately, these are just two examples of a new generation 

of would-be terrorists who have grown up in the shadow of extremist militancy. These lone wolves are as potentially dangerous as 

any one organization. 

Even though these groups and individuals have overlapping 

interests, fissures do exist among them. They’re separated by 

ideologies, nationalities, and tribal or sectarian backgrounds. Our 

focus now ought to be less on who will succeed bin Laden and more 

on how to exploit those fissures and dismantle the networks that 

he spawned. 

So this is a critical moment in the war in Afghanistan. Our security gains in the south—and they are real—coupled with bin 

Laden’s death, have, at least in my judgment and certainly in the 

judgment of the people I talked with in Afghanistan last weekend, 

have created some political space. So it’s important that we seize 

that opportunity. 

3 

Middle- and low-level Taliban fighters, many of them want to 

come in from the battlefield. We need to work with the Afghan 

Government in order to make sure that those who wish to lay down 

their arms can in fact do so, and as reconcilable elements of the 

insurgency enter into the peace process—and I think it’s possible 

for some of them to do that—we need to ensure that Afghans are 

able to avert both Taliban rule and a return to civil war. That is 

a delicate balancing act. 

Of course, we can’t forget the impact that Pakistan has on the 

future of Afghanistan. I’ve many times said that Pakistan is the 

key to diminishing the insurgency in Afghanistan itself. What happens in Pakistan may do more to determine the rate at which 

American troops can withdraw, the rate at which the Afghan 

troops can stand up, and the degree to which governance can be 

improved in Afghanistan. 

We also need to remember that terrorists and insurgents are continuing to exploit the 1,200-mile porous border that separates the 

two countries. And we will have to work very closely with Pakistan 

in order to deal with the problem of the sanctuaries as purveyors 

of violence in both nations. 

The good news here is that there is common ground between the 

vital national interests of Pakistan and the United States, even at 

the same time as there are some divergent interests. It will take 

adroit and persistent diplomacy to convince the Pakistani military 

leaders that the real threat to their sovereignty comes not from its 

eastern border and not from across the Atlantic, but from violent 

extremists in their own country. 

We obviously have a lot to discuss here today, and to help us do 

this we have Peter Bergen, currently the director of the National 

Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation and an 

expert on al-Qaeda and bin Laden; Dr. Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA and director of graduate studies and faculty member at Georgetown University; and Dr. Christine Fair, also a professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security 

Studies and an expert on extremist groups in South Asia. I thank 

each of you for coming in this morning. 

Senator Lugar. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for calling 

this hearing. I note that it is the fifth in a series of hearings that 

we have had on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I join you in welcoming 

our distinguished witnesses. 

Like the chairman, I remain hopeful that we will soon hear from 

the Defense Department and the State Department in public session about their plans in the region going forward. At this hearing 

we are attempting to define the nature of the terrorist threats that 

confront us in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is important 

because we are devoting enormous resources to these two countries, 

with the primary goal of fighting terrorism. 

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan affect clear United States national security interests. In previous hearings, however, I have 

contended that the resources being spent in Afghanistan are far 

4 

greater than the current threat warrants. The United States has 

almost 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, with another 32,000 deployed in the region to support the mission. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were an estimated 87,000 military contract personnel in Afghanistan at the beginning of this 

year. More than 1,000 civilian personnel are assigned to the United 

States Embassy. 

The United States effort in Afghanistan is costing approximately $120 billion a year. The question before us is whether Afghanistan 

is strategically important enough to justify the lives and massive 

resources that we are spending there, especially given that few terrorists in Afghanistan have global designs or reach. To the extent 

that our purpose is to confront the global terrorist threat, we 

should be refocusing resources on Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, parts 

of North Africa, and other locations. 

Our government should be working on an approach that allows 

us to achieve the most important national security goals in Afghanistan—especially preventing the Taliban from taking over the government and preventing Afghan territory from being used as a terrorist safe haven—at far less expense. 

The Pakistan side of the border has a fundamentally different 

dynamic. Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and 

other terrorist groups maintain a strong presence. There is no 

question that the threat of these groups, combined with worries 

about state collapse, a Pakistani war with India, the safety of the 

Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan’s intersection with other 

states in the region make it a strategically vital country worth the 

cost of engagement. The question is how the United States navigates the contradictions inherent in dealing with the Pakistani 

Government and Pakistani society to ensure that our resources and 

diplomacy advance our objectives efficiently. 

The importance of getting this right is reinforced by the utterances of Osama bin Laden, who called the terrorist acquisition of 

nuclear and chemical weapons ‘‘a religious duty.’’ This effort has 

not died with bin Laden. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have so far 

been unsuccessful in obtaining nuclear material or a nuclear device, experts believe. But many of our top military and intelligence 

officials continue to regard the terrorist acquisition of a nuclear 

weapon as the biggest threat to the United States national security. 

Pakistan’s military leaders have given repeated assurances that 

the country’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal is well-secured. 

But we also know that the A.Q. Khan network was enabled by 

members of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment. Further, if Pakistan 

succumbs to violent extremism or economic collapse, confidence in 

the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and technology could 

erode rapidly. 

This underscores the importance to United States national security of a stable Pakistan and of continued engagement on terrorism 

and nuclear security issues. 

I look forward with you, Mr. Chairman, to the recommendations 

of our expert witnesses today. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks, Senator Lugar. I appreciate it very 

much. 

5 

We will start with Mr. Bergen, then Mr. Pillar, and Ms. Fair. 

Thank you. 

Mr. Bergen. 

STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you, Senator Kerry. Thank you, Senator 

Lugar. 

In my 5 minutes I wanted to focus on the issue of Taliban reconciliation. Senator Kerry talked about the political space that has 

opened up for the possibility of reconciliation. Obviously, the death 

of Osama bin Laden provides an enormous opportunity for the 

Taliban, one which I think if they don’t take suggests that they are 

unlikely to take such an opportunity again. 

As you know, Osama bin Laden swore an oath of allegiance to 

Mullah Omar, a religious oath, calling him ‘‘the commander of the 

faithful.’’ Now, Mullah Omar is now in the position to say: That 

was a personal arrangement; I don’t really need an oath of allegiance from al-Qaeda any more. And let’s see if he takes this opportunity, because I see several problems with the idea of reconciliation and some opportunities. 

The problems, briefly, are: The moderate Taliban has already 

reconciled. You know their names: Mullah Zaeef, Mullah Muttawakil, the Foreign Minister. They’ve had 10 years to reconcile. The 

people who aren’t reconciled are pretty hard core. 

Second, they’ve had 10 years to reject—— 

The CHAIRMAN. How many hard core do you think there are? 

Mr. BERGEN. How many hard-core Taliban? 

The CHAIRMAN. When you say ‘‘hard-core,’’ what are you talking 

about? 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, I mean people who generally believe in the 

idea that Mullah Omar is the leader of all Muslims, that al-Qaeda 

is a good thing. I mean, they’ve had 10 years to reject al-Qaeda. 

As you know, al-Qaeda’s embedded with the Haqqani Network 

right now. 

We’ve also the problem the Taliban is not the Taliban; it’s the 

Talibans. So any negotiation will be several groups. We’ve seen 

that peace deals with the Taliban on the other side of the border 

in Pakistan—a border, by the way, that they don’t recognize— 

they’ve reneged on every peace agreement they’ve been involved in. 

They had a peace agreement in Waziristan in 2005 and in 2006 

and in Swat in 2009. They took those peace agreements as opportunities to essentially regroup and take over more territory. 

We’ve run a controlled experiment on what life under the 

Taliban looks like very recently in Pakistan. In Swat they beheaded policemen, they burned down the girls’ schools, and they 

imposed a reign of terror, and that’s the Taliban that I think is the 

hard core, that hasn’t really changed their spots. 

We also saw, with the arrest of Mullah Baradar last year in 

Pakistan, effectively arguably the No. 2 of the Taliban, that the 

Pakistanis have a veto over these negotiations. So any negotiation 

involves them. And that’s not the end of the world, but it is a factor 

that we need to consider going forward. 

6 

The Northern Alliance also has an effective veto. I mean, Dr. 

Abdullah, who is well known to both the chairman and the ranking 

member, isn’t going to give up everything he’s fought for if there 

are significant territorial concessions or concessions of principle to 

the Taliban. And of course, he is likely to be the next President of 

Afghanistan in 2014. So the Northern Alliance have a veto as well 

as the Pakistanis over these negotiations. 

Hitherto the negotiations that have gone on in Mecca and the 

Maldives have amounted to nothing. I mean, one Afghan official 

joked to me that the reason that people went to the Maldives for 

the negotiations was simply they wanted a vacation. But there was 

nothing really serious coming out of this. 

In the case of Mullah Mansour, the supposed No. 2 in the 

Taliban who turned out to be a Quetta shopkeeper posing as a 

leader of the Taliban, indicates that we know really very little of 

what’s going on inside this movement. So lack of knowledge is not 

helpful when you’re negotiating. 

Finally and most importantly in terms of the problems with negotiating with the Taliban, what do the Taliban really want? Have 

they described what the future of Afghanistan they want, a future 

that involves democracy, that involves elections, that involves 

women going to work, that involves girls being educated, that involves rights for ethnic minorities? I don’t think so. 

These are all very, very big problems. Then let me now turn to 

opportunities, now that I’ve described the problems. The opportunities, of course, are any kinds of negotiations help gather information about the opposition. We can create splits in the movement. 

Hezb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s group, may do a deal. 

They’re the sort of lowest hanging fruit. And once you do a deal 

with one aspect of the insurgency, you create the possibility of further splits. 

Americans are tired of the war. As the chairman alluded to and 

as Senator Lugar alluded to, the Taliban have taken a lot of hits 

in southern Afghanistan. In any negotiation, the recognition of a 

mutually hurting stalemate is sort of a sine qua non. 

The founding of the High Peace Council, yes, it has problems, but 

it’s brought into the tent a number of spoilers from the Northern 

Alliance so that they’re involved in a potential deal is a good thing. 

Recent reports in the Washington Post and Der Spiegel that negotiations are proceeding in Germany, third party sponsors of negotiations might include Turkey and Qatar, these are good things. 

Finally, most importantly on the opportunities, three-quarters of 

Afghans favor a political solution, and this is very important. So 

the political context is there. That number goes up to 94 percent 

in Kandahar, so an overwhelming number of Afghans want 

negotiations. 

Finally on a personal note, I’ve been visiting Afghanistan since 

the civil war in 1993 and I spent a fair amount of time under the 

Taliban and have a pretty good sense of what life was actually like 

there. I think it’s going to be quite hard for this group. I think 

there’s a classic problem in intelligence circles called mirror imaging, which you’re both familiar with, which is the idea that other 

people will behave like us. In fact, the hard core of the Taliban are 

religious fanatics. When Mullah Omar awarded himself the title of 

7 

‘‘commander of the faithful,’’ he’s not just the commander of the 

Taliban; he’s the commander of all Muslims. And the history of 

negotiations with religious fanatics, particularly ones with delusions of grandeur, is not encouraging. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN

Senator Kerry, Senator Lugar, and other members of the committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today. 

My testimony will attempt to answer nine questions: 

1. Why should the United States continue to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan almost a decade after 9/11 and now that Osama bin Laden is dead? 

2. Is progress being made in Afghanistan, both generally and against the Taliban? 

3. What effect might the killing of bin Laden have on near- and long-term U.S. 

global security interests, and on core al-Qaeda’s goals and capabilities? 

4. What is the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda? 

5. How might that relationship be changed by the death of bin Laden? 

6. What are the impediments to ‘‘reconciliation’’ with the Taliban leadership? 

7. Given those impediments, why try and negotiate with the Taliban and are 

there reasons to think those negotiations might eventually work? 

8. Might the Haqqani or Hezb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) factions of the 

Taliban be willing to consider a settlement? 

9. There is an agglomeration of extremist groups operating in the lawless region 

near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, including the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, 

and other affiliated and sectarian groups. How should policymakers prioritize which 

of these to work against? 

* * * * * * * 

1. Why should the United States continue to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan almost a decade after 9/11 and now that Osama bin Laden is dead? 

President Obama has publicly defined the task in Afghanistan rather narrowly, 

as preventing the return of al-Qaeda to the country; in short, a countersanctuary 

strategy.1 Part of the reason for this relatively narrow public description of the 

Afghan strategy is, of course, political: there aren’t many Americans who would 

countenance the return of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

But there are other reasons the United States remains in Afghanistan even if 

they don’t have the political heft that invoking the threat from al-Qaeda does. First, 

conceding the return of the Taliban to power in part or the whole of Afghanistan 

would be a foreign policy reversal for the United States. Second, when the United 

States overthrows a government it has a moral obligation not to exit without setting 

the conditions for a slightly more stable and prosperous country. Third, when the 

Taliban were in power in Afghanistan they played host not just to al-Qaeda, but 

also to many other Islamist terrorist and insurgent groups from around the globe. 

Fourth, some kind of regional settlement in South Asia that encompasses Afghanistan will likely lower the risks of war between the nuclear-armed states of Pakistan 

and India. Fifth, and this is hard for many foreign policy ‘‘realists’’ to grasp: the 

Taliban are the Taliban. When they were in power in Afghanistan, their regime was 

characterized by its large-scale massacres of the Shia,2 its incarceration of half the 

population in their homes, and a country that became the world capital of jihadist 

terrorism. 

Evidence for what the Taliban are likely to do should they return to power in 

Afghanistan in some shape or form is provided by a controlled experiment on this 

question that has gone on over the past several years in Pakistan. In the onetime 

Pakistani tourist destination of Swat between 2008 and 2009 the Taliban imposed 

a reign of terror, beheading policemen whose bodies were left to rot in public, burning down girls’ schools, and administering public lashings to women for supposed 

infractions such as adultery.3 It was a formula that they had already followed for 

several years in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the home base of the Pakistani branch 

of the Taliban. 

And the Taliban haven’t changed their spots in Afghanistan either. According to 

a United Nation report released in March, of the some 2,800 civilian casualties of 

the war in 2010, three-quarters were caused by the Taliban.4 The massacre at the 

Kabul Bank branch in the eastern city of Jalalabad earlier this year was emblematic of this trend. Footage of the February 19 attack was captured by the bank’s 

security cameras and shows a Taliban fighter ordering Afghan civilians to enter a 

room and then firing on them. At least 40 people, mostly civilians, were killed in 

8 

the assault.5 And for those who think that the Taliban have lightened up on one 

of their signature policies—preventing girls from being educated—consider that a 

concerted campaign of chemical weapon attacks has taken place against around a 

dozen girls schools across Afghanistan since the spring of 2009. Afghan girls have 

been poisoned with organophosphates, a nerve agent used in insecticides, in schools 

in Balkh and Kunduz in the north, and in Kabul, Ghazni, Kapisa, and Parwan in 

central Afghanistan. Those attacks have sickened and hospitalized hundreds.6

The recent evidence from Pakistan and Afghanistan shows that the notion that 

should the Taliban come back to power in parts of Afghanistan that they will suddenly morph into some kind of Pashtun version of the Rotary Club is a delusion. 

Despite this, earlier this year, George W. Bush’s Ambassador to India, Robert 

Blackwill, writing in Foreign Affairs, made the argument that a modus vivendi 

could and should be reached with the Taliban: ‘‘Washington should accept that the 

Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south and east’’ and therefore 

the United States should accept that the de facto partition of Afghanistan is ‘‘the 

best alternative to strategic defeat.’’ 7 It’s strange that a diplomat who had spent 

years in South Asia was advocating partition in a part of the world where it is well 

known that the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan caused 1 million civilian 

deaths.8 And not even the Taliban are calling for the partition of Afghanistan, which 

is an older nation than the United States. (The first Afghan state was founded in 

1747). 

The Blackwill plan was the most extreme expression of a now-common sentiment 

amongst the American foreign policy establishment: Let’s just get it over with in 

Afghanistan, which is predicated on the belief (hope, really) that the Taliban are 

jus’ sum’ plain’ ol’ country folks who may not have the best manners in Central 

Asia, but nonetheless are men we can and should do business with because they 

represent our best exit strategy from the Afghan morass. 

American liberals, who were vocal in their opposition to Taliban when they imposed a theocratic reign of terror on Afghanistan before 9/11, have been strikingly 

silent on the issue of what a return to power of the Taliban in some shape or form 

in Afghanistan would mean for the rights of women and ethnic minorities. 

For those who say that Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country and that 

therefore the Taliban’s social policies just aren’t that unusual, it’s helpful to note 

that when the Taliban were in power there were 1 million kids in school and almost 

none of them were girls, while today there are 7 million kids in school and 37 percent are females.9

2. Is progress being made in Afghanistan, both generally and against the Taliban? 

In addition to the sevenfold increase in the number of kids in school, positive developments in Afghanistan over the past several years have included the following: 

GDP growth was a robust 22 percent between 2009 and 2010; 10 access to some form 

of basic health care was available to around 9 percent of the population a decade 

ago and is now accessible to 85 percent; 11 the phone system barely existed before 

the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, now one in three Afghans has a cell phone; 12

the Taliban had banned almost all forms of media other than their own ‘‘Voice of 

Sharia’’ radio network, while there are now ‘‘scores of radio stations, dozens of TV 

stations and some 100 active press titles,’’ according to the BBC; 13 around 6 million 

Afghan refugees have returned home since the fall of the Taliban; and so crowded 

with cars and people has Kabul become that the city’s epic pollution is now killing 

more Afghans than are dying in the war.14

Because of all the tangible ways that their lives are getting better 59 percent of 

Afghans say their country is going in the right direction.15 By comparison, that metric is exactly reversed in the United States. In a New York Times poll released in 

April, 70 percent of Americans said their country is going in the wrong direction.16

The positive feelings a majority of Afghans have about the way things are going 

help account for the surprisingly high marks that they continue to give the U.S. 

military after nearly a decade of occupation, which scored a 68-percent favorable 

rating among Afghans in a BBC/ABC poll released in December.17 (In Iraq at the 

height of the war in 2007 BBC/ABC found that only 22 percent of Iraqis voiced support for the U.S. military presence in their country.) 18

Afghans’ faith in their future can be explained by the fact that they know that, 

despite all the problems that they face today—the corruption of the central government and the police and the resurgence of the Taliban—their lives are far better 

now than during the brutal Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the devastating civil war 

of the early 1990s, and the theocratic rule of the Taliban that followed. 

This past fall U.S. military officials publicly asserted that many Taliban safe 

havens in Helmand and in Kandahar had been eliminated.19 This is not only the 

assessment of the Pentagon, but the judgment of the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), a think tank that has done field work in southern 

9 

Afghanistan for many years and has long been critical of Western policies there. 

ICOS issued a report in February observing, ‘‘NATO and Afghan forces now control 

a greater number of districts in Helmand and Kandahar than before,’’ including key 

Taliban strongholds such as Marjah in Helmand and Arghandab in Kandahar.20

General David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that 

in one recent 3-month period 360 insurgent leaders were killed or captured.21

According to a wide range of observers, as a result the average age of Taliban commanders has dropped from 35 to 25 in the past year.22 Some U.S. military officials 

believe this is a good thing, as the younger commanders are ‘‘less ideological,’’ while 

Thomas Ruttig, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Taliban, says that the 

reverse is the case: the younger Taliban are more rigid ideologically.23

The sharply stepped up military campaign against the Taliban has caused some 

hand-wringing that Petraeus isn’t following counterinsurgency precepts, which have 

been grossly caricatured as winning ‘‘hearts and minds’’ (see ‘‘Three Cups of Tea’’), 

as if counterinsurgency is some kind of advertising campaign to win loyalties. In reality, counterinsurgency is a set of commonsense precepts about how to avoid the 

kind of ham-handed tactics and repressive measures that will turn the bulk of the 

population against you, while simultaneously also applying well-calibrated doses of 

violence to defeat insurgents. 

Another common critique of the stepped-up campaign against Taliban commanders is that the United States should not be killing those commanders at the 

same time it is saying that we should talk with them. This critique bears little relation to the history of the last two decades of Afghan warfare, in which all sides have 

constantly fought and talked with each other simultaneously. Indeed, the Karzai 

government has had substantive contacts with elements of the Taliban since as 

early as 2003, according to a former Afghan national security official familiar with 

those discussions. 

An additional approach putting pressure on the Taliban are what the U.S. military terms Village Stability Operations, in which small teams of American Special 

Forces live permanently ‘‘among the population’’ in remote areas of provinces such 

as Uruzgan and Zabul where the insurgents once had unfettered freedom of movement. There the U.S. Special Forces are helping to train local community militiamen known as Afghan Local Police (ALP). The Government of Afghanistan has technically authorized 10,000 of them, but American officers believe that the numbers 

will rise to something more like 24,000.24 One says, ‘‘ALP is the development that 

the Taliban most fear, we see it in the intelligence.’’ 

When Petraeus first arrived as the commander in Afghanistan last summer setting up the ALP was his first big fight with Karzai, who was concerned quite reasonably that arming tribal militias might replicate some of the warlordism that has 

plagued Afghanistan since the early 1990s. Karzai agreed to the program in July, 

and there are a number of measures in place that make it avoid some of the obvious 

pitfalls of setting up even more armed Afghan groups.25 The program is not administered by the U.S. military but the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which keeps tabs 

on it through district police chiefs who are responsible for issuing guns to the community policemen. Candidates for the local police are selected by the local village 

shura (council), while everyone admitted to the program has to submit to biometric 

scans. 

3. What effect will the killing of Osama bin Laden have on near- and long-term 

U.S. global security interests, and on core al-Qaeda’s goals and capabilities? 

After the fall of the Taliban, bin Laden didn’t, of course, continue to exert dayto-day control over al-Qaeda, but statements from him have always been the most 

reliable guide to the future actions of jihadist movements around the world, and this 

remained the case even while he was on the run. In the past decade bin Laden 

issued more than 30 video- and audiotapes.26 Those messages reached untold millions worldwide via television, the Internet, and newspapers. The tapes not only instructed al-Qaeda’s followers to continue to kill Westerners and Jews; some also carried specific instructions that militant cells then acted on. In 2003, bin Laden called 

for attacks against members of the coalition in Iraq; subsequently terrorists bombed 

commuters on their way to work in Madrid and London. Bin Laden also called for 

attacks on the Pakistani state in 2007, which is one of the reasons that Pakistan 

had more than 50 suicide attacks that year. 27 In March 2008 bin Laden denounced 

the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, which 

he said would soon be avenged. Three months later, an al-Qaeda suicide attacker 

bombed the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six. 

Materials recovered from the Abbottabad compound in northern Pakistan where 

bin Laden was killed paint a picture of a leader deeply involved in tactical, operational, and strategic planning for al-Qaeda, and in communication with other leaders of the group and even the organization’s affiliates overseas.28

10 

Bin Laden exercised near-total control over al-Qaeda, whose members had to 

swear a religious oath personally to bin Laden, so ensuring blind loyalty to him. 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, outlined 

the dictatorial powers that bin Laden exercised over his organization: ‘‘If the Shura 

council at al-Qaeda, the highest authority in the organization, had a majority of 98 

percent on a resolution and it is opposed by bin Laden, he has the right to cancel 

the resolution.’’ 29 Bin Laden’s son Omar recalls that the men who worked for 

al-Qaeda had a habit of requesting permission before they spoke with their leader, 

saying, ‘‘Dear prince: May I speak?’’ 30

The death of bin Laden eliminates the founder of al-Qaeda, which has only enjoyed one leader since its founding in 1988, and it also eliminates the one man who 

provided broad, unquestioned strategic goals to the wider jihadist movement. 

Around the world, those who joined al-Qaeda in the past two decades have sworn 

baya, a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden, rather than to the organization 

itself, in the same way that Nazi party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler, 

rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whoever the new 

leader of al-Qaeda is going to be. 

Of course, even as the al-Qaeda organization withers there are pretenders to bin 

Laden’s throne. The first is the dour Egyptian surgeon, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is 

the deputy leader of al-Qaeda, and therefore technically bin Laden’s successor. But 

Zawahiri is not regarded as a natural leader. and even among his fellow Egyptian 

militants Zawahiri is seen as a divisive force and so he is unlikely to be able to step 

into the role of the paramount leader of al-Qaeda and of the global jihadist movement that was occupied by bin Laden.31 There is scant evidence that Zawahiri has 

the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that 

was accorded to bin Laden by members of al-Qaeda. 

Another possible leader of al-Qaeda is Saif al-Adel, also an Egyptian, who has 

played a role as a military commander of the terrorist group, and since 9/11 has 

spent many years living in Iran under some form of house arrest. Adel has been 

appointed the ‘‘caretaker’’ leader of the terrorist organization, according to Noman 

Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant organization that was once aligned with al-Qaeda, but in recent years has renounced 

al-Qaeda’s ideology.32

Benotman, who has known the leaders of al-Qaeda for more than two decades and 

has long been a reliable source of information about the inner workings of the terrorist group, says that based on his personal communications with militants and 

discussions on jihadist forums, Adel has emerged as the interim leader of al-Qaeda 

as it reels from the death of its founder and eventually transitions, presumably, to 

the uncharismatic Zawahiri. 

A wild card is that one of bin Laden’s dozen or so sons—endowed with an iconic 

family name—could eventually rise to take over the terrorist group. Already Saad 

bin Laden, one of the oldest sons, has played a middle management role in alQaeda.33

One of the key issues that any future leader of al-Qaeda has to reckon with now 

is dealing with the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that 

were recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was 

killed. That information is likely to prove damaging to al-Qaeda operations. 

Jihadist terrorism will not, of course, disappear because of the death of bin Laden. 

Indeed, the Pakistan Taliban have already mounted attacks in Pakistan that they 

said were revenge for bin Laden’s death,34 but it is hard to imagine two more final 

endings to the ‘‘War on Terror’’ than the popular revolts against the authoritarian 

regimes in the Middle East and the death of bin Laden. No one in the streets of 

Cairo or Benghazi carried placards of bin Laden’s face, and very few demanded the 

imposition of Taliban-like rule, al-Qaeda’s preferred end state for the countries in 

the region. 

If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda’s ideology, the death 

of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization. 

4. What is the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda? 

There is plenty of evidence for the continuing cozy relationship between al-Qaeda 

and important factions of the Taliban: For much of the past decade al-Qaeda has 

been harbored largely by the Haqqani network, the ferocious Taliban militia based 

in Pakistan’s tribal regions. According to a July 2009 WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. 

consulate in Peshawar, which abuts the Pakistani tribal regions, Jalaluddin 

Haqqani, the veteran jihadi commander who has been the longtime head of the 

Haqqani network, is ‘‘considered to have a close relationship’’ with Mullah Omar. 

Haqqani’s relationship with bin Laden stretches back to the mid-1980s, according 

to the Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail who worked with bin Laden doing this 

time period. Another Palestinian journalist, Abdel Bari Atwan, who spent days 

11 

interviewing bin Laden in 1996, points out that bin Laden did Mullah Omar a big 

favor when he introduced the Taliban leader to his old buddy Jalaluddin Haqqani, 

who later rose to become arguably the Taliban’s most feared military commander.35

Cooperation between the Taliban and al-Qaeda can be seen in the suicide bombing 

that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in the American base at Khost in eastern Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. The suicide bomber, Humam Khalil AbuMulal al-Balawi, was a Jordanian doctor recruited by al-Qaeda.36 Two months after 

Balawi’s suicide attack al-Qaeda’s video production arm released an interview with 

him videotaped some time before he died in which he laid out how he planned to 

attack the group of Agency officials using a bomb made from C–4.37 In another 

prerecorded video, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, appeared 

alongside Balawi saying the attack was revenge for U.S. drone strikes directed at 

the Taliban.38

The Taliban began to reemerge as a serious threat in Afghanistan in 2006, 

launching a serious campaign of suicide bombers and IED attacks. Sami Yousafzai, 

a leading reporter on the Taliban, has documented that they were taught these 

techniques by Arab jihadists. That same year Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah 

explained his links to al-Qaeda. ‘‘Osama bin Laden, thank God, is alive and in good 

health,’’ he told CBS. ‘‘We are in contact with his top aides and sharing plans and 

operations with each other.’’ 39 Three years later, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, one of 

al-Qaeda’s founders, described his group’s rapport with the Taliban during an interview, ‘‘We are on a good and strong relationship with them,’’ he said, ‘‘and we frequently meet them.’’ 

U.S. officials such as CIA director Leon Panetta have publicly said that there are 

only a few dozen members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.40 In addition, U.S. officials 

point to other ‘‘foreign fighters’’ operating in Afghanistan in particular in the east 

and to some degree in the north of the county; for instance, Uzbeks affiliated with 

the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is deemed a terrorist group by the U.S. 

Government.41

A briefing slide prepared by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which 

leaked out in January 2010, showed a map of insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan in which the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was shown to have a presence 

in five provinces in northern and southern Afghanistan. The leaked DIA briefing asserts that al-Qaeda ‘‘provides facilitation, training, and some funding’’ to the Taliban 

in Afghanistan, while the Taliban also maintain a ‘‘mutually supportive relationship’’ with Chechen and Central Asian fighters.42

On April 26 NATO officials announced that the Saudi al-Qaeda leader, Abu Hafs 

al-Najdi, had been killed in an airstrike in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan. The NATO announcement noted that Najdi was one of 25 al-Qaeda leaders 

and fighters who had been killed in the past month.43 This suggests that there are 

still a small but not insignificant number of al-Qaeda militants as well as other foreign fighters who continue to operate in Afghanistan. 

A nuanced account of the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship is provided by Anne 

Stenersen, a research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. In 

a paper for the New America Foundation last year she pointed out that al-Qaeda 

functions mostly in the east of Afghanistan because of its longstanding ties to the 

Taliban Haqqani Network that is prevalent in this region, while al-Qaeda and the 

Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan have diverged strategically in the past decade.44 Some of this is an accident of geography; when al-Qaeda leaders fled Tora 

Bora in eastern Afghanistan after the fall from power of the Taliban during the winter of 2001 they moved into the adjoining tribal regions of Pakistan, many hundreds 

of miles from the Quetta Shura’s base in southwestern Pakistan, and into the welcoming arms of the Haqqani network. In short, al-Qaeda is embedded with the 

Haqqani Taliban, but not with the Mullah Omar Taliban. 

5. How might the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda be changed by 

the death of bin Laden? 

Now that bin Laden is dead, there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al-Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 

attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amı ̄r al-Mu’minı ̄n, ‘‘The Commander of the Faithful,’’ a rarely invoked religious title that 

dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed. 

Mullah Omar could now communicate to his followers that the new leader of 

al-Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to him as ‘‘The Commander 

of the Faithful.’’ This would be an important step for the Taliban to satisfy a key 

condition of peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan Governments; that they reject 

al-Qaeda, something that hitherto the Taliban has not done. If Mullah Omar does 

not take advantage of this opening in the near future, it is hard to imagine that 

he ever will. 

12 

6. What are the impediments to ‘‘reconciliation’’ with the Taliban’s leadership? 

There are nine significant problems. 

First, who is there exactly to negotiate with in the Taliban? It’s been a decade 

since their fall from power and the ‘‘moderate’’ Taliban who wanted to reconcile with 

the Afghan Government have already done so. They are the same group of Taliban 

who are constantly trotted out in any discussion of a putative Taliban deal: Mullah 

Zaeef, their former Ambassador to Pakistan; Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, their Foreign Minister; and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who was the Taliban representative in 

the United States before 9/11. This group was generally opposed to bin Laden well 

before he attacked the United States. Bin Laden told intimates that his biggest enemies in the world were the United States and the Taliban Foreign Ministry, which 

was trying to put the kibosh on his anti-Western antics in Afghanistan. And today 

the ‘‘moderate’’ already-reconciled Taliban don’t represent the Taliban on the battlefield because they haven’t been part of the movement for the past decade. 

The key Taliban figure is still their leader, Mullah Omar, a.k.a., ‘‘The Commander 

of the Faithful.’’ The title indicates that Mullah Omar is not just the leader of the 

Taliban, but also of all Muslims, suggesting that Mullah Omar is not only a religious fanatic, but also a fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur.45 Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go 

well. Almost every country in the world—including the Taliban leader’s quasipatron, Pakistan—pleaded with Mullah Omar in the spring of 2001 not to blow up 

the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s greatest cultural patrimony. But he 

did so anyway. After 9/11, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose his entire regime on 

the point of principle that he would not give up bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And he did. 

Since his regime fell, Mullah Omar has also shown no appetite for negotiation or 

compromise. He is joined in this attitude by some senior members of his movement, 

such as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan, who said 

in January, ‘‘neither has there been any peace talk nor has any of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) shown any inclination toward it.’’ 46

Second, the Taliban has had 10 years to reject bin Laden and all his works, and 

they haven’t done so. For this reason, Saudi Arabia, which has hosted ‘‘talks about 

talks’’ in Mecca between Afghan Government officials and some Taliban representatives,47 has soured on the process. For the Saudi Government, which is squarely in 

al-Qaeda’s gun sights, a public repudiation of al-Qaeda by the Taliban is a nonnegotiable demand. And it hasn’t happened. 

Third, ‘‘the Taliban’’ is really many Talibans, and so a deal with one insurgent 

group doesn’t mean the end of the insurgency writ large. It’s not clear that even 

Mullah Omar can deliver all of the Taliban that he nominally controls in southern 

Afghanistan, because they are often fissured into purely local groups, many of whom 

are a long way from Taliban headquarters across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. 

As Ambassador Richard Holbrooke commented 3 months before he died, ‘‘There’s no 

Ho Chi Minh. There’s no Slobodan Milosevic. There’s no Palestinian Authority.’’ 48

Instead, there are several leaders of the various wings of the insurgency, from the 

Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan, to the Haqqani Network in the east, as well 

as smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami in the 

northeast. 

Fourth, the history of ‘‘peace’’ deals with the Taliban in Pakistan shows that the 

groups can’t be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani Government and the Taliban 

in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the 

Taliban establishing their brutal ‘‘emirates,’’ regrouping and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.49

Fifth, the arrest in Pakistan last year of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban No. 2 who 

had been negotiating directly with Karzai, shows that the Pakistani military and 

government wants to retain a veto over any significant negotiations going forward.50

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as certainly Pakistan’s legitimate interests in the 

post-American Afghanistan must be recognized, but it also demonstrates that negotiations with the Taliban will not be as straightforward as just having the Afghan 

Government and the insurgents at the negotiating table. 

Sixth, another key player in any negotiations with the Taliban are the former 

leaders of the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance who fought a bitter several-years war with the Taliban and who now occupy prominent positions in 

Afghanistan, for instance, the Minister of the Interior, Bismullah Khan, and Dr. 

Abdullah, Karzai’s main rival for the Presidency in 2009, who is—at least for now— 

the most likely candidate to succeed Karzai in the 2014 Presidential elections. These 

leaders are not going to allow all they fought for to be reversed by a deal with the 

Taliban that gives them significant concessions on territory or principle. Dr. 

Abdullah is withering in his assessment of Karzai’s olive branches to the Taliban 

13 

who Karzai has described as his ‘‘brothers,’’ saying to me that this simply confuses 

‘‘our own soldiers which are fighting’’ the Taliban. 

Seventh, the several meetings over the past 3 years between Afghan officials and 

Taliban representatives to discuss ‘‘reconciliation’’ in Mecca and in the Maldives 

have hitherto produced a big zero. A senior U.S. military officer dismissed these 

talks as ‘‘reconciliation tourism,’’ while an Afghan official joked with me that in 

landlocked Afghanistan, ‘‘Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives for a meeting.’’ 

Eighth, the debacle involving Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour last year 

shows how much of a fog surrounds the whole reconciliation process.51 Mullah 

Mansour was portrayed as one of the most senior of the Taliban leaders who was 

allegedly in direct negotiations with the Karzai government in the fall of 2010. Except it then turned out he wasn’t Mullah Mansour at all, but a Quetta shopkeeper 

who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials so he could pick up what 

a British Government report characterizes as ‘‘significant sums.’’ 52

Finally, and most importantly: what do the Taliban really want? It’s relatively 

easy to discern what they don’t want: international forces in Afghanistan. But other 

than their blanket demand for the rule of sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state 

with elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities? 

Richard Barrett, a British diplomat who heads the United Nations’ group that 

monitors al-Qaeda and the Taliban, pointed out at a conference at the New America 

Foundation last year that ‘‘it’s difficult to deal with an insurgent group, which 

doesn’t actually put forward any real policy.’’ A similar point was made by Mohammad Stanikhzai, the point person in the Afghan Government dealing with the 

Taliban, when I met with him in December, who explained, ‘‘For the governance, 

I don’t think they [the Taliban] have a clear plan.’’ 

7. Given these problems, why try and negotiate with the Taliban, and are there 

reasons to think those negotiations might eventually work? 

Reaching an accommodation with the Taliban is going to be quite difficult, but 

that doesn’t, of course, mean that it isn’t worth trying. Even if peace talks are not 

successful immediately, they can have other helpful effects, such as splitting the facade of Taliban unity. Even simple discussions about the future shape of negotiations can help sow dissension in the Taliban ranks, while if such discussions do 

move forward in even incremental steps more intelligence can be garnered about 

what exactly is going on inside the shadowy Taliban movement. Also, getting the 

Taliban to enter into any negotiations means that they will no longer get to occupy 

the moral high ground of fighting a supposed holy war, but are instead getting their 

hands dirty in more conventional political back-room deals. 

Audrey Cronin of the National Defense University has systematically examined 

how and why terrorist/insurgent groups come to some kind of peace deal and has 

laid out some general principles about what that usually takes, which are worth 

considering in the context of Afghanistan.53 First, there must be recognition on both 

sides that a military stalemate has been reached. (In the early 1980s the American 

academic William Zartman coined the term a ‘‘mutually hurting stalemate’’ to describe the moment when combatants will start considering a peace settlement.) 54

That recognition may now exist to some degree, given that over the past 6 months 

or so the Taliban have taken heavy losses in their heartlands of Kandahar, while 

the U.S. public has increasingly turned against what is already America’s longest 

war. In March, 64 percent of Americans said the war was ‘‘not worth fighting,’’ up 

from 41 percent in 2007.55

An important shift in the Obama administration’s stance on Taliban negotiations 

was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While giving the Richard Holbrooke memorial lecture at the Asia Society in New York on February 18, 

Clinton said that previous American conditions for talks with the Taliban—that 

they lay down their arms, reject al-Qaeda, and embrace the Afghan Constitution— 

were no longer preconditions that the Taliban had to meet before negotiations could 

begin, but were ‘‘necessary outcomes’’ of the final peace process.56 Judging by the 

lack of media attention in the States at the time to this shift, this subtle but important distinction was probably also not well grasped by the Taliban, but it does represent a somewhat more flexible American position about dealing with the Taliban. 

Indeed, U.S. officials are already in some kind of talks with Taliban representatives, 

according to reports in the New Yorker and Washington Post.57

Similarly the Afghan Government has now adopted ‘‘reconciliation’’ as its official 

policy, setting up a ‘‘High Peace Council’’ in the fall to help facilitate those negotiations, a body that is made up, in part, of a number of leaders from the former 

Northern Alliance who are less likely to act as spoilers of a peace process if they 

feel they are a part of it. 

14 

Successful negotiations often require a capable and trusted third-party sponsor. 

This condition seems also to be lacking right now: the Saudis are, at best, lukewarm 

about facilitating talks with the Taliban; the Pakistanis are not really trusted by 

any of the parties in the conflict, even by much of the Taliban, and while the United 

Nations may have some role to play in negotiations, Taliban attacks on U.N. personnel in Afghanistan last year don’t suggest this avenue has much immediate 

promise. (Murmurings about a role for Turkey in facilitating a deal may have some 

potential given that Turkey has an Islamist government and is also a key member 

of NATO.) 

A peace deal also generally requires strong leadership on both the government 

and insurgent sides to force a settlement. Neither Hamid Karzai nor Mullah Omar 

fit this particular bill. Finally, Cronin explains that the overall political context 

must be favorable to negotiations for a deal to succeed. Here there is some real 

hope: While fewer then one in ten Afghans have a favorable view of the Taliban, 

a large majority is in favor of negotiating with them. Nationally, around three-quarters of Afghans favor talks, while in Kandahar the number goes up to a stratospheric 94 percent.58

All that said, the bottom line on the Taliban reconciliation process is that nothing 

of any real note is currently happening. According to a Western official familiar with 

the record of discussions with the Taliban, the chances of a deal with the Taliban 

similar to the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkans war in the mid-1990s or the 

Good Friday Agreement that ended the IRA campaign against the British Government are ‘‘negligible’’ for the foreseeable future. The official says that Mullah Omar 

needs his council of ulema (religious scholars) to sign off on a peace deal and there 

is ‘‘no sign of this right now.’’ Senior U.S. military officials tell me that it is their 

view that Mullah Omar is living at least some of the time in the southern Pakistani 

megacity of Karachi. 

8. Might the Haqqani or Hezb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) factions of the 

Taliban be willing to consider a settlement? 

This is relatively plausible given that Hezb-e-Islami (Party of Islam) has long 

shown a far greater inclination to engage in conventional politics than the other insurgent groups. Hezb-e-Islami has a more nuanced take than other insurgent groups 

about what its preconditions are for talks with the Afghan Government; while much 

of the Taliban want foreign forces out before real talks can begin, Hezb-e-Islami has 

indicated that talks can begin in parallel with a timetable for withdrawal being 

agreed upon. For the moment, the Haqqanis are probably irreconcilable as they are 

too close to al-Qaeda. 

9. There is an agglomeration of extremist groups operating in the lawless region 

near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, including the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, 

and other affiliated and other sectarian groups. How should policymakers prioritize 

which of these to work against? 

Policymakers should prioritize those South Asian groups that now threaten the 

West. One of bin Laden’s most toxic legacies is that even terrorist groups that don’t 

call themselves ‘‘al-Qaeda’’ have adopted his ideology. According to Spanish prosecutors, the late leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, sent a team of 

would-be suicide bombers to Barcelona to attack the subway system there in January 2008. A Pakistani Taliban spokesman confirmed this in a videotaped interview 

in which he said that those suicide bombers ‘‘were under pledge to Baitullah 

Mehsud’’ and were sent because of the Spanish military presence in Afghanistan. 

In 2009 the Pakistani Taliban trained an American recruit for an attack in New 

York. Faisal Shahzad, who had once worked as a financial analyst in the accounting 

department at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company in Stamford, CT, travelled 

to Pakistan where he received 5 days of bombmaking training from the Taliban in 

the tribal region of Waziristan. Armed with this training and $12,000 in cash, 

Shahzad returned to Connecticut where he purchased a Nissan Pathfinder. He 

placed a bomb in the SUV and detonated it in Times Square on May 1, 2010, around 

6 p.m., when the sidewalks were thick with tourists and theatergoers. The bomb, 

which was designed to act as a fuel-air explosive, luckily was a dud and Shahzad 

was arrested 2 days later as he tried to leave JFK airport for Dubai.59

Also based in the Pakistani tribal regions are a number of other jihadist groups 

allied to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, such as the Islamic Movement of 

Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union that have trained dozens of Germans for 

attacks in Europe. Two Germans and a Turkish resident in Germany, for instance, 

trained in the tribal regions and then planned to bomb the massive U.S. Ramstein 

Airbase in Germany in 2007. Before their arrests, the men had obtained 1,600 

pounds of industrial strength hydrogen peroxide, enough to make a number of large 

bombs.60

15 

The Mumbai attacks of 2008 showed that bin Laden’s ideas about attacking Western and Jewish targets had also spread to Pakistani militant groups such as 

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which had previously focused only on Indian targets. Over 

a 3-day period in late November 2008 LeT carried out multiple attacks in Mumbai 

targeting five-star hotels housing Westerners and a Jewish-American community 

center. The Pakistani- American David Headley played a key role in LeT’s massacre 

in Mumbai, traveling to the Indian financial capital on five extended trips in the 

2 years before the attacks. There Headley made videotapes of the key locations later 

attacked by the 10 LeT gunmen.61

Sometime in 2008, Headley hatched a plan to attack the Danish newspaper 

Jyllands-Posten, which 3 years earlier had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that were deemed to be offensive by many Muslims. In January 2009 

Headley traveled to Copenhagen, where he reconnoitered the Jyllands-Posten newspaper on the pretext that he ran an immigration business that was looking to place 

some advertising in the paper. Following his trip to Denmark, Headley met with 

Ilyas Kashmiri in the Pakistani tribal regions to brief him on his findings. Kashmiri 

ran a terrorist organization, Harakat-ul-Jihad Islami, closely tied to al-Qaeda. 

Headley returned to Chicago in mid-June 2009 and was arrested there 3 months 

later as he was preparing to leave for Pakistan again. He told investigators that 

he was planning to kill the Jyllands-Posten’s cultural editor who had first commissioned the cartoons, as well as the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who had drawn the 

cartoon he found most offensive; the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb concealed in 

his turban.62

One of the more predictable foreign policy challenges of the next years is a 

‘‘Mumbai II’’: a large-scale attack on a major Indian city by a Pakistani militant 

group that kills hundreds. The Indian Government showed considerable restraint in 

its reaction to the provocation of the Mumbai attacks in 2008. Another such attack, 

however, would likely produce considerable political pressure on the Indian Government to ‘‘do something.’’ That something would likely involve incursions over the 

border to eliminate the training camps of Pakistani militant groups with histories 

of attacking India. That could lead in turn to a full-blown war for the fourth time 

since 1947 between India and Pakistan. Such a war would involve the possibility 

of a nuclear exchange and the certainty that Pakistan would move substantial resources to its eastern border and away from fighting the Taliban on its western border, relieving pressure on all the militant groups based there, including al-Qaeda. 

The Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Jihad Islami, the Islamic 

Jihad Union and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are all based or have a significant presence in Pakistan’s tribal regions and have track records of trying to attack Western and/or American targets and should therefore all be considered 

threats to American interests. 

———————— 

References 

1 Barack Obama, ‘‘Remarks by the President on a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan,’’ Washington, DC, March 27, 2009, (http://www.whitehouse.gov/thelpressloffice/Remarks-by-the-President-on-a-New-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/). 2 Barbara Crossette, ‘‘Rights Group Tells of Taliban Massacres,’’ New York Times, February 

19, 2001, (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/world/rights-group-tells-of-taliban-massacres. 

html). 3 Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, ‘‘Truce in Pakistan May Not Mean Peace, Just Leeway 

for Taliban,’’ New York Times, March 5, 2009, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/world/asia/ 

06swat.html). 4 United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, ‘‘Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Annual Report 2010,’’ March 2011, Kabul,Afghanistan. (http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human%20rights/March%20PoC%20Annual%20Report%20Final.pdf). 5Matthew Green and Fazel Reshad, ‘‘Gunmen Storm Afghan Bank,’’ Financial Times, February 20, 2011, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1745ec92-3c29-11e0-b073-00144feabdc0.html). 6MSNBC.com, ‘‘Afghan Schoolgirls Poisoned by Taliban?’’ April 25, 2010, (http:// 

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36766873/ns/worldlnews-southlandlcentrallasia/t/afghan-schoolgirls-poisoned-taliban/); Rod Nordland, ‘‘Poison Gas Targeted Afghan Girls’ Schools,’’ New York 

Times, September 1, 2010, (http://articles.boston.com/2010-09-01/news/29333377l1lpoison-gasafghan-girls-new-cases). 7 Robert Blackwill, ‘‘Plan B in Afghanistan,’’ Foreign Affairs, January/February 2011, (http:// 

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67026/robert-d-blackwill/plan-b-in-afghanistan). 8 Crispin Bates, ‘‘The Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies,’’ BBC News, March 3, 2011, 

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/partition1947l01.shtml). 9Morten Sisgaard (ed), ‘‘On the Road to Resilience: Capacity Development With the Ministry 

of Education in Afghanistan,’’ United Nations, 2011, (http://www.iiep.unesco.org/fileadmin/ 

userlupload/InfolServiceslPublications/pdf/2011/AfghanistanlResilience.pdf). 10World Bank, ‘‘Growth in Afghanistan,’’ (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/ 

COUNTRIES/ SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSARREGTOPMACECOGRO/0,,content MDK:20592478∼ menuPK:579404∼pagePK:34004173∼piPK:34003707∼theSitePK:579398,00.html). 

16 

11 USAID, ‘‘Afghanistan,’’ (http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia/countries/afghanistan/). 12 International Telecommunications Union, ‘‘Mobile Cellular Subscriptions,’’ (http://www.itu. 

int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/material/excel/MobileCellularSubscriptions00-09.xls). 13 BBC News, ‘‘Afghanistan Media Profile,’’ December 16, 2010, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ 

world-south-asia-12013942). 14 Ben Farmer, ‘‘Kabul To Move to Five Day Week,’’ Daily Telegraph, December 1, 2010, 

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8174072/Kabul-to-move-to-fiveday-week.html). 15 BBC, October 29–November 13, 2010, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/06l12l 10lafghanpoll.pdf). 16 CBS News/New York Times Poll, April 15–20, 2011, (http://www.pollingreport.com/right. 

htm). 17 BBC 2010 op. cit. 18 BBC, February 25–March 5, 2007, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/19l03l 07liraqpollnew.pdf). 19 International Security Assistance Force, ‘‘Afghan-Led Force Clears Enemy Safe Haven in 

Kandahar,’’ September 17, 2010, (http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/afghan-led-forceclears-enemy-safe-haven-in-kandahar.html) for example. 20 International Council on Security and Development, ‘‘Afghanistan Transition: Dangers of a 

Summer Drawdown,’’ February 2011, (http://www.icosgroup.net/static/reports/afghanistanl dangersldrawdown.pdf). 21David Petraeus, Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 15, 2011, 

(http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Transcript/Petraeus%2003-15-11.pdf). 22 Con Coughlin, ‘‘Karzai Must Tell Us Which Side He’s on in Afghanistan,’’ Daily Telegraph, 

November 18, 2010, (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/concoughlin/8144423/ 

Karzai-must-tell-us-which-side-hes-on-in-Afghanistan.html). 23Thomas Ruttig, forthcoming, New America Foundation, May 2011. 24David Cloud, ‘‘Officials Aim To Establish Local Afghan Police Force by March,’’ Los Angeles 

Times, October 19, 2010, (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/19/world/la-fg-village-police20101020). 25Karen DeYoung and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘‘Afghan President Karzai Approves Plan for 

Local Defense Forces,’’ Washington Post, July 15, 2010, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ 

content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071406007.html). 26 IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor that tracks jihadist publications, says bin Laden 

released 33 tapes in the eight years between 9/11 and January 2010. IntelCenter Breakout of 

as-Sahab audio/video, 2002-26 February 2010. E-mail from Ben Venzke, February 26, 2010. 27 ‘‘Istanbul Rocked by Double Bombing,’’ BBC News, November 20, 2003, (http:// 

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3222608.stm); Craig Whitlock and Susan Glasser, ‘‘On Tape, bin 

Laden Tries New Approach,’’ Washington Post, December 17, 2004. (http:// 

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3927-2004Dec16.html);’’ Joel Roberts, ‘‘Al Qaeda 

Threatens More Oil Attacks,’’ CBS News, February 25, 2006, (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/ 

2006/02/27/world/main1346541lpage2.shtml); ‘‘Bin Laden Tape Encourages Pakistanis To 

Rebel,’’ Associated Press, September 20, 2007, (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-20- 

al-Qaeda-videolN.htm). 28Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, ‘‘Data Show bin Laden Plots,’’ New York Times, May 5, 

2011, (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06intel.html). 29Substitution for the testimony of KSM, trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, (http:// 

en.wikisource.org/wiki/SubstitutionlforlthelTestimonyloflKSM). 30 Jean Sasson and Omar and Najwa bin Laden, ‘‘Growing Up Bin Laden’’ (St. Martin’s Press: 

New York, NY, 2009), p. 161 and 213. 31 Jamal Ismail, interview by author, July 29, 2004, Islamabad, Pakistan. 32Peter Bergen, ‘‘Egyptian Saif al-Adel Now Acting Leader of al-Qaeda,’’ CNN.com, May 17, 

2011, (http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-17/world/mideast.al.qaeda.appointeel1lal-adel-al-qaedalibyan-islamic-fighting-group?ls=PM:WORLD). 33Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, ‘‘Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in al-Qaeda,’’ Washington 

Post, October 14, 2003, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/ 

AR2007082000980.html). 34 Reza Sayah, ‘‘Blasts Kill at Least 70 in Northwest Pakistan,’’ CNN.com, May 12, 2011, 

(http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-12/world/pakistan.explosionsl1ldrone-strikes-north-waziristanmilitants?ls=PM:WORLD). 35 Abdel Bari Atwan, interview by author, London, U.K., June 2005. 36 Richard Oppel, Mark Mazzetti, and Souad Mekhennet, ‘‘Attacker in Afghanistan Was a 

Double Agent,’’ New York Times, January 4, 2010, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/ 

asia/05cia.html). 37 ‘‘An interview with the Shaheed Abu Dujaanah al Khorshani (Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal alBalawi),’’ February 28, 2010, NEFA Foundation. 38Stephen Farrell, ‘‘Video Links Taliban to CIA Attack,’’ New York Times, January 9, 2010. 

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/world/middleeast/10balawi.html). 39Melissa McNamara, ‘‘Taliban leader Vows To Force U.S. Out,’’ CBS News, December 29, 

2006, (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/29/eveningnews/main2313745.shtml). 40 Jake Tapper, ‘‘CIA: At Most, 50-100 Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,’’ June 27, 2010, (http:// 

blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/06/cia-at-most-50100-al-qaeda-in-afghanistan.html). 41State Department, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, May 19, 2011, (http://www.state.gov/s/ 

ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm). 42MG Michael Flynn, ‘‘State of the Insurgency,’’ December 22, 2009, (http://www.wired.com/ 

imageslblogs/dangerroom/2010/01/isaf-state-of-the-insurgency-231000-dec.ppt). 43Matthew Cole, ‘‘Top al-Qaeda Commander Killed in Afghanistan,’’ ABC, April 26, 2011, 

(http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-al-qaeda-commander-killed-afghanistan/story?id=13459489). 

17 

44 Anne Stenersen, ‘‘Al-Qaeda’s Allies,’’ New America Foundation, April 19, 2010, (http:// 

newamerica.net/publications/policy/allqaedalslallies). 45Lawrence Wright, ‘‘The Looming Tower’’ (Random House: New York, NY, 2006), 256. 46 ‘‘Interview With the Commander in Charge of Eastern Afghanistan, the Respected 

Mawlawee Abdul Kabir,’’ January 21, 2011, Al-Qimmah.net, accessed May 23, 2011. 47Steve Coll, ‘‘U.S.-Taliban Talks,’’ New Yorker, February 28, 2011, (http://www.new 

yorker.com/talk/comment/2011/02/28/110228tacoltalklcoll). 48 Joe Sterling, ‘‘Richard Holbrooke, Noted Diplomat, is Dead at 69,’’ CNN.com, December 13, 

2010, (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-11/us/richard.holbrooke.obitl1lrichard-c-holbrooke-diplomat-bosnian-war/4?ls=PM:US). 49Mansur Khan Mahsud, ‘‘The Battle for Pakistan: Militancy and Conflict in South 

Waziristan,’’ New America Foundation, April 19, 2010, (http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/ 

publications/policy/thelbattlelforlpakistanlsouthlwaziristan). 50Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins, ‘‘Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander,’’ 

New York Times, February 15, 2010, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/asia/16intel. 

html). 51Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall, ‘‘Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor,’’ New 

York Times, November 22, 2010, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23kabul.html). 52 United Kingom, House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘‘The U.K.’s Foreign Policy 

Approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan,’’ March 2, 2011, (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/ 

pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmfaff/514/514.pdf). 53 Audrey Cronin, ‘‘How Terrorism Ends’’ (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2009). 54William Zartman, ‘‘Ripening Conflict, Ripe Moment, Formula, and Mediation,’’ in D. 

BenDahmane and J. McDonald, eds., ‘‘Perspectives on Negotiation,’’ 1986. 55Washington Post-ABC News Poll, March 10–13, 2011, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/politics/polls/postpolll03142011.html). 56 Alissa Rubin, ‘‘Pressure Mounts on all Parties in the Afghan War To Begin Talks,’’ New 

York Times, March 17, 2011, (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EED7113EF 

934A25750C0A9679D8B63). 57 Coll op. cit.; Karen DeYoung, ‘‘U.S. Speeds Up Direct Talks With Taliban,’’ Washington 

Post, May 16, 2011, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-speeds-up-directtalks-with-taliban/2011/05/16/AFh1AE5Glstory.html). 58 BBC, December 2010, op. cit.; Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Jon Cohen, ‘‘Afghan Poll Shows 

Falling Confidence in U.S. Efforts To Secure Country,’’ Washington Post, December 6, 2010, 

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/06/AR2010120601788.html). 59 Benjamin Weiser and Colin Moynihan, ‘‘Guilty Plea in Times Square Bomb Plot,’’ New York 

Times, June 21, 2010, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/nyregion/22terror.html). 60 ‘‘Four Jailed Over Plot To Attack U.S. Bases,’’ Associated Press, March 4, 2010, (http:// 

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35702791/ns/worldlnews-europe/t/four-jailed-over-plot-attack-us-bases/). 61 USA v. David Coleman Headley, U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois Eastern 

Division, Case No. 09 CR 830. 62Sebastian Rotella, ‘‘Pakistan’s Terror Connections,’’ ProPublica, (http://www.propublica.org/ 

topic/mumbai-terror-attacks/). 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Pillar. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL PILLAR, PH.D., DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND FACULTY MEMBER, CENTER FOR PEACE 

AND SECURITY STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. PILLAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Afghanistan-Pakistan region has understandably been linked in American minds 

with extremism and terrorism for quite some time, but this link is 

not based on the inherent qualities of the region or the conflicts 

that bedevil it. There is no intrinsic connection between Afghanistan and international terrorism. In fact, Afghan nationals have 

been conspicuously rare in the ranks of international terrorists. 

Najibullah Zazi, whom you mentioned in your opening statement, 

Mr. Chairman, is a rare exception, but even he left Afghanistan at 

age 7 and lived in the United States since he was 14. 

What we know today as the Afghan Taliban constitute a highly 

insular, inward-looking group that is concerned overwhelmingly 

with the political and social order of Afghanistan; the leadership, 

that is, is so concerned. It concerns itself with the United States 

insofar as the United States interferes with its plans for that political and social order. The motives of the rank and file who have 

taken up arms under the Taliban label are at least as locally 

18 

focused as those of the leadership, and probably hardly any of them 

have any perspectives that reach beyond Afghanistan’s borders. 

The key point, in other words, is that the Afghan Taliban are not 

an international terrorist group. The connection between Afghan 

Taliban and al-Qaeda is an aspect largely of 1990s-era history. 

Back then, before 9/11, bin Laden provided material and manpower 

assistance to the Taliban as it waged a civil war against the Northern Alliance, and of course the Taliban provided hospitality to bin 

Laden in return. It was largely a marriage of convenience, even 

though they both had radical, although by no means identical, 

ideologies. 

As for any prospect of the Taliban and al-Qaeda reestablishing 

anything like that marriage that they had back in the 1990s, 

Taliban leaders are acutely aware that the biggest setback their 

movement ever suffered, their being swept from power in the opening weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom, was a direct result of 

an operation conducted by al-Qaeda. They have no incentive to do 

anything to facilitate a repeat of that experience. 

Besides, both the Taliban and al-Qaeda are well aware of the fact 

that the standards for the use of military force, United States military force, in Afghanistan have changed drastically since pre-9/11 

days. Unlike back then, the establishment of anything remotely resembling al-Qaeda’s earlier presence in Afghanistan would become 

a target for unrestricted use of United States air power, and that 

would be true whether or not the United States was conducting a 

counterinsurgency on the ground. 

I agree with Peter that bin Laden’s death does affect the calculations of the Taliban’s leadership, mainly for the reasons that Peter 

mentioned: that the previous gratitude of Mullah Omar and the 

Taliban leadership was more to bin Laden personally than to the 

al-Qaeda group. I would just add that probably also entering the 

Taliban leaders’ calculations are the implication of the raid against 

bin Laden for what the United States is able and willing to do to 

hit targets important to it, even targets nestled deep inside Pakistan. And it can’t have escaped the Taliban leaders’ notice with 

regard to what that means for what we might do in Quetta or 

elsewhere. 

Finally, a word about what the successful U.S. operation against 

bin Laden indicates regarding the role of U.S. military forces in 

counterterrorism, including what this means for collecting the necessary intelligence. The raid at Abbottabad deep inside Pakistan 

illustrated that United States military boots on the ground are not 

necessary for even the precise type of intelligence required for such 

an operation. The same point’s been, of course, repeatedly demonstrated by the drone strikes in the Northwest. 

Collection of intelligence is certainly an important part of 

counterinsurgency, but it is almost all intelligence pertinent to the 

counterinsurgency itself, rather than intelligence relating to terrorism that would hit the United States elsewhere. The intelligence 

work that reportedly underlay the successful operation was typical 

of the work aimed at terrorist targets. It involved piecing together 

fragments of information from a variety of technical and human 

sources and following up leads through intelligence and law enforcement resources. 

19 

Interrogation of captured detainees is often part of that mix, but 

the most important detainees, such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid 

Sheikh Mohammed, have been captured, not on a battlefield in the 

course of an insurgency, but instead as the result of themselves 

having been the targets of this kind of painstaking multisource 

intelligence work. 

Clearly, the raid demonstrated the usefulness of nearby military 

assets, but those are not the large forces involved in a counterinsurgency. Rather, they involve drone bases, bases for launching 

the kind of raid that took place at Abbottabad, and that is something far different. 

Thank you and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Pillar follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL R. PILLAR

South Asia, and more particularly the portion of it encompassing Afghanistan and 

Pakistan, has come to be associated strongly with extremism and terrorism. That 

association is understandable, given the connection of the area with one of the most 

traumatic events in U.S. history. The lines of contention in the region are complex, 

however. Different dimensions of conflict there, such as between moderation and extremism, or what may pose a terrorist threat to the United States and what does 

not, do not coincide with each other. 

THE AFPAK REGION AND TERRORISM

The connection of this region with militant Islamist terrorism is rooted in the insurgency against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. That insurgency became 

the biggest and most prominent jihad, attracting militant Muslims from many different countries. Although the anti-U.S. terrorist group we came to know as 

al-Qaeda did not develop as such until the late 1990s, its connection with Afghanistan and South Asia is based on the earlier effort against the Soviets. When Osama 

bin Laden left Sudan to take up residence in Afghanistan in 1996, he was returning 

to the scene of his earlier contribution, which was chiefly logistical, in helping the 

Afghan insurgents to defeat the Red Army. 

There is no intrinsic connection between Afghanistan and international terrorism. 

In fact, Afghan nationals are conspicuously absent from the ranks of international 

terrorists. A rare exception was Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested in 2009 for allegedly plotting to bomb the New York City transit system. But even Zazi had left 

Afghanistan with his family for Pakistan when he was 7 years old, and he had lived 

in the United States since he was 14. 

Pakistan has developed its own connections with international terrorism. This has 

included groups, most notably Lashkar-e-Taiba, with some capability to operate far 

afield. But the primary focus is still within South Asia, and specifically on the Kashmir dispute and other aspects of confrontation with India. 

In short, the link between this region and international terrorism is not based on 

inherent qualities of the region or of the conflicts that bedevil it. Instead it is more 

of a historical accident related to an attempt by the Soviet Union to quell an insurgency in a bordering state, with the link greatly enhanced in American minds by 

the residence in Afghanistan—10 years and more ago—of people associated with the 

9/11 terrorist attack. 

Current violence in Afghanistan is a continuation of an Afghan civil war that 

began after a coup by Marxist-Leninists in 1978 and, although the lineup of protagonists has changed from time to time, has never really stopped. After the departure 

of the Soviets in 1989, the fall of the pro-Soviet Najibullah regime in 1992, and internecine fighting among the warlords who had pursued the insurgency, a new 

movement known as the Taliban—benefiting from Pakistani backing and the support of an Afghan public disgusted by the warlords’ violent squabble—asserted control by the mid-1990s over all but the northern tier of the country. The civil war 

continued as a fight between the Taliban and a mostly non-Pashtun collection of militias known as the Northern Alliance. The intervention in late 2001 of a U.S.-led 

coalition, in what we call Operation Enduring Freedom, was a tipping of the balance 

in this civil war. It was enough of a tip for the Northern Alliance to overrun Kabul 

and to drive the Taliban from power. 

The current phase of the Afghan civil war, although commonly seen as a fight 

between the internationally backed government of Hamid Karzai and a terroristVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:44 Aug 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\052411-V.TXT
20 

associated Afghan Taliban, is a far more complicated affair with multiple dimensions. The ethnic element is a large part of the conflict, with the Taliban largely 

Pashtun and other ethnic groups having a major role in the government forces. 

Other relevant divides are between Sunni and Shia and between rural interests and 

the urban elite. 

THE AFGHAN TALIBAN

The Afghan Taliban constitute a highly insular, inward-looking movement whose 

leadership is concerned overwhelmingly with the political and social order of 

Afghanistan. It concerns itself with the United States only insofar as the United 

States interferes with its plans for that political and social order. It is a loosely organized movement in which the leadership group known as the Quetta Shura, led 

by Mullah Omar, is the most important but not the sole point of decisionmaking. 

The motives of the rank and file who have taken up arms under the Taliban label 

are diverse and at least as locally focused as those of the leadership. Those motives 

include assorted grievances such as ones associated with collateral damage from 

military operations and resentment over what is seen as foreign military occupation. 

Probably few of the rank and file are driven primarily by a religiously based desire 

to remake the Afghan political order, and hardly any of them have perspectives that 

reach beyond Afghanistan’s borders. 

The Afghan Taliban are not an international terrorist group. They have not conducted terrorist operations outside Afghanistan. There is nothing in their record or 

their objectives that suggests that they will. 

THE TALIBAN AND AL-QAEDA

The connection between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda is an aspect of 1990sera history. As the Taliban leaders were in the midst of their war against the 

Northern Alliance, and bin Laden was establishing a new home for himself and his 

followers after leaving Sudan, each side had something to offer the other. Bin Laden 

provided resources and manpower to the Taliban’s prosecution of the civil war. The 

Taliban provided bin Laden hospitality. Although the two sides both had radical 

(though hardly identical) Islamist ideologies, the relationship was largely a marriage 

of convenience, and not without frictions. 

The basis for the marriage is largely gone. The Taliban cannot provide the hospitality they did when they were the government of three-fourths of Afghanistan. Bin 

Laden (before his death) and what is left of his organization within the region can 

provide little material support. As U.S. officials have repeatedly observed, there is 

minimal al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, with personnel numbering only in the 

scores. Any prospect for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to reestablish anything like the relationship they had in the years prior to 9/11 is severely constrained by the changes 

(some of them irreversible) that have since taken place in all of the parties concerned: the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the United States. Taliban leaders are acutely 

aware that the biggest setback their movement has ever suffered—their being swept 

from power in the opening weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom—was a direct response to an al-Qaeda operation. They have no incentive to do anything that would 

facilitate a repeat of that experience. Al-Qaeda leaders are also unlikely to perceive 

an advantage in having more of a presence on the northwest side of the Durand 

Line than they already do on the southeast side of it. This is especially so because 

the Taliban and al-Qaeda alike know that the standards for use of U.S. military 

force in Afghanistan have changed drastically since pre-9/11 days. Unlike back then, 

the reestablishment of anything remotely resembling al-Qaeda’s earlier presence in 

Afghanistan would become a target for unrestricted use of U.S. air power. This 

would be true whether or not the United States was still waging a counterinsurgency on the ground in Afghanistan. And such use of force would be far greater 

than the still major restrictions on anything the United States can do militarily in 

Pakistan. 

THE AFPAK THEATER AND TERRORIST THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES

Bin Laden never intended whatever organization he controlled to be the entire 

story as far as jihadist terrorism is concerned. The very name of his group— 

al-Qaeda, or ‘‘The Base’’—implies that it would instead be a foundation or starting 

point from which bigger things would grow. This in fact is what happened. The overall violent jihadist movement to which the name ‘‘al-Qaeda’’ is customarily but 

loosely applied now goes well beyond anything bin Laden controlled or that his surviving associates in South Asia have been directing. Bin Laden’s role in recent years 

was far more as a source of inspiration, ideology, and ideas (including operational 

21 

ideas) than command and control. This role was confirmed by what has so far become publicly known about the material seized in the raid at Abbottabad. 

Most of the initiative, planning, and preparations for terrorist operations under 

the al-Qaeda label in recent years has come from outside South Asia. Some of it 

has come from formally named affiliates—most notably, though not exclusively, 

from the Yemen-based group calling itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Some 

has come from less formally affiliated groups and individuals, including during the 

past few years several individuals in the United States. Even though ‘‘links’’ are 

sometimes traced back to South Asia, the initiative is largely coming from the 

periphery. 

This pattern implies that the situation on the ground in the AfPak region is not 

one of the more important factors determining the degree of terrorist threat to 

Americans. To the extent that control of a piece of real estate matters, whether that 

real estate is in Afghanistan is hardly critical. Other places, such as Yemen, are 

available. This is in addition to the question of how much the control of any piece 

of real estate affects terrorist threats. A lesson from terrorist operations in recent 

years—including 9/11, most of the preparations for which took place well away from 

South Asia, including in Western cities—is that the effect is less than that of many 

other factors shaping terrorist threats, and that virtual space is more important 

than physical space in planning and coordinating terrorist operations. The point is 

not that terrorist groups will not use physical space when they have it—they do— 

but that it is not one of the more important determinants of how capable they are 

and how much of a threat they pose. 

IMPACT OF BIN LADEN’S DEATH

The demise of bin Laden ends a period of well over a decade in which this most 

wanted of men was able in effect to thumb his nose at the United States and the 

West merely by staying at large and alive for so long. As such, his removal has dealt 

a psychological blow to his followers. Revelation of some of the circumstances in 

which he had been living and operating (or not operating) may also help to lower 

somewhat his standing even in death. For reasons mentioned earlier, the overall impact of bin Laden’s death on the terrorist threat facing the United States is not as 

great as the enormous reaction to this event would suggest. The national catharsis 

that the killing of bin Laden involved is understandable, however, and undoubtedly 

affects the political environment in which further decisions within the United States 

about the AfPak theater will be taken. 

Bin Laden’s departure will affect decisions within South Asia as well, and particularly the Taliban leadership’s calculations regarding al-Qaeda and negotiations to 

resolve the conflict in Afghanistan. Any sense of debt among Mullah Omar and the 

Taliban leaders, dating back to the assistance that bin Laden gave them in the 

1990s, was more to bin Laden personally than to his group. With bin Laden gone, 

the Afghan Taliban probably feel freer than before to renounce any prospect of future ties with what is left of al-Qaeda. For the Taliban leaders, al-Qaeda now means 

to them less a former ally in past phases of the civil war and more a source of potential trouble, with shades of the enormous trouble that al-Qaeda caused the 

Taliban in 2001. 

Probably also entering the Taliban leaders’ calculations are the implications of the 

raid against bin Laden for what the United States is able and willing to do to hit 

targets important to it, even targets nestled deep inside Pakistan. What the United 

States did at Abbottabad could be done as well at Quetta or elsewhere. This fact 

may also incline the Taliban leaders more toward negotiations because of reduced 

confidence in their own security during an indefinite continuation of the conflict. 

Factoring in the Pakistani military’s likely thinking—following the embarrassment 

of Abbottabad, any reduced leverage of Pakistan against the United States, and 

what this may mean regarding future hospitality in Pakistan—would make the 

Taliban leaders even less sure of being able to wage their insurgency indefinitely 

from havens beyond the Durand Line. In brief, the net effect of bin Laen’s death 

has probably been to improve the opportunities for negotiations to wind down the 

war in Afghanistan. 

MILITARY FORCES AND COUNTERTERRORISM

The successful U.S. operation against bin Laden sheds additional light on the role 

of U.S. military forces in counterterrorism, including with regard to the collection 

of necessary intelligence. Military force is one of several tools that can be used for 

counterterrorism, intelligence being another one. It can be used in several specific 

ways for counterterrorist purposes, ranging from the elimination of a terrorist 

leader, as was the case with the bin Laden operation, to striking back at a state 

22 

that has perpetrated a terrorist act. And of course, the United States maintains and 

uses military forces for many other functions besides counterterrorism. Today in 

Afghanistan—although Operation Enduring Freedom began as a direct and justified 

response to a terrorist act—U.S. military forces and their coalition partners are performing some of those other functions, which involve trying to stabilize the Afghan 

state and waging a counterinsurgency that is part of the current phase of the 

Afghan civil war. 

The raid at Abbottabad, deep inside Pakistan, illustrated that U.S. military boots 

on the ground are not necessary for even the precise type of intelligence required 

for such an operation. The same point has been repeatedly demonstrated by the 

strikes against other terrorist targets with missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over northwest Pakistan. There is no reason to suppose that the forces involved in waging a counterinsurgency, which are large in number and focused on 

securing territory and defeating insurgents, will be a significant factor in collecting 

intelligence on international terrorism. It is not as if insurgents who are observed 

or captured on the battlefield are, when they are not waging a guerrilla war, involved in hatching international terrorist plots or even have access to those who do. 

Collection of intelligence is certainly an important part of counterinsurgency, but it 

is almost all intelligence pertinent to the counterinsurgency itself, not intelligence 

having to do with the sort of terrorism that might otherwise threaten Americans. 

The intelligence work that reportedly underlay the successful operation against 

bin Laden was typical of the work aimed at terrorist targets, although obviously the 

very high priority of this particular target meant that disproportionate time, effort, 

and resources were devoted to it. The work entails the exploitation of fragmentary 

reporting from a variety of technical and human sources. It also entails painstaking 

following up of leads through intelligence and law enforcement resources. Interrogation of detainees sometimes contributes to the mix, although the most important detainees, such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have been captured 

not on a battlefield in the midst of an insurgency but instead as the result of themselves having been the targets of the same kind of painstaking, multisource intelligence work. 

The raid at Abbottabad points to the value of nearby military assets, but they are 

assets of a very specialized sort. They include staging areas or bases for the operation of drones or the launching of raids. They include highly skilled forces specially 

trained to accomplish the sort of task the SEALs did at bin Laden’s compound. 

These are assets far different in size from a counterinsurgency force charged with 

securing large amounts of territory. 

A final consideration to remember in any discussion of the use of military force 

in counterterrorism is how such use may affect broader perceptions and emotions 

that in turn affect the propensity of some individuals to resort to terrorism, including anti-U.S. terrorism. The effects include resentment and anger in the areas immediately affected, particularly over unavoidable collateral damage to civilians and 

their property. We have seen much of this in the war in Afghanistan, and it has 

been reflected in the increased numbers of those willing to take up arms under the 

banner of the Taliban. The effects also include lending credibility to the fraudulent, 

but unfortunately influential, extremist narrative according to which the United 

States is determined to kill Muslims, occupy their lands, and plunder their 

resources. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Pillar. 

Dr. Fair. 

STATEMENT OF C. CHRISTINE FAIR, PH.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, CENTER FOR PEACE AND SECURITY STUDIES, 

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. FAIR. Thank you, Senator Kerry, Senator Lugar, and esteemed colleagues, for the opportunity to discuss Pakistan’s militant landscape, with particular focus upon Lashkar-e-Taiba as I 

was requested to do. 

As you know, Pakistan has raised and nurtured a number of militant groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba being just one, to operate in India 

and in Afghanistan. These are distinct from the Pakistani Taliban, 

which has been ravaging the state, although part of the Pakistan 

Taliban does draw personnel from rebel erstwhile proxies. Rather 

23 

than speaking of militants generally, I have focused upon the differences across these groups, to understand why Pakistan will not 

abandon Lashkar-e-Taiba in particular. 

To state at the outset, none of the groups that I will discuss will 

be significantly and adversely affected by Osama bin Laden’s demise. When we disaggregate this complex militant market, we see 

that these Islamist militant groups differ significantly in their 

theological orientations and this, as I’m going to argue, is important. 

Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere is Wahhabi. The Afghan 

Taliban are Deobandi. The Kashmiri groups actually draw from a 

number of traditions, including Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which is 

Jamaat-e-Islami; a number of Deobandi groups, such as Jaish-eMohammed, Hargatho Jihad Islami and so forth, and Lashkar-eTaiba, which is Ahl-e-Hadith in its orientation. In addition, there 

are sectarian groups. This is almost exclusively Deobandi—who are 

targeting Shia in Pakistan. They include the Besa Bey Pakistan 

and Lashkar-e-Jhungvi. 

In addition, these groups kill other Sunni Muslims, such as Sufis 

or Barelvis. They also attack Ahmediyyas and non-Muslims. Then 

finally, there is the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, or the Pakistani 

Taliban. They are also Deobandi. The Pakistan-based Deobandi 

groups, such as Lashkar-e-Jhungvi, are important components of 

this organization. It’s important to note that they are not the same 

as the Afghan Taliban, although at the level of specific commanders there is some overlap. 

There are a number of refinements to this gross aggregation, 

which I provide in my written statement, and I have a table summarizing the same. 

To understand LeT’s utility to Pakistan, we need to understand 

how it differs from these other groups. First, all of the groups that 

have split and rebeled under the banner of the Pakistan Taliban 

are Deobandi. These groups are the closest to al-Qaeda. Lashkare-Taiba is not Deobandi. It has remained loyal to the state. It has 

never attacked Pakistani targets or any international entities within the state. It exclusively operates outside of Pakistan. 

Finally, whereas the state has taken on some militant groups in 

Pakistan, that is to say part of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda, 

it has only marginally and cosmetically acted against Lashkar-eTaiba. And I have detailed the various ways in which the state continues to support Lashkar-e-Taiba in my written statement. 

In contrast to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, these Deobandi groups will 

kill anyone that they deem to be at odds with them and their interpretation of Islam. As I explain in my written statement, there is 

a specific theological term for this and these individuals are called 

munafiqin. It sounds technical, but it’s important. 

Understanding this antimunafiqin violence perpetrated by the 

Deobandi groups is critical to understanding why Pakistan will not 

abandon Lashkar-e-Taiba. Per the group’s manifesto, which I have 

analyzed and translated from the Urdu, Lashkar-e-Taiba is nonsectarian and it is committed to Pakistan’s integrity. It denounces 

killing Pakistanis of different confessions and it argues that jihadis 

should focus on the external enemies, or kafirs; i.e., us, India, and 

so forth. 

24 

Lashkar-e-Taiba draws most of its recruits from Deobandis and 

other sectarian groups. This allows them to indoctrinate them into 

this world view, and since it deploys relatively few people to Kashmir this is an important part of its domestic outreach mission. 

Plus, Lashkar-e-Taiba will become more important to the Pakistani 

state as its internal security continues to degrade at the hands of 

these Deobandi groups. 

What then are the options for the United States? Containing 

Pakistan is not feasible and attempting to do so isn’t desirable. 

Pakistan simply has too many asymmetric retaliatory options. The 

United States instead should work to contain the threats of these 

Pakistani groups, and I lay out a number of proposals in my written statement. Mostly they focus on Immigration, Treasury, working with the U.N. and other partners on intelligence operations, 

law enforcement, and drawing across the different combatant commands where LeT operates, such as EUCOM, CENTCOM, and 

PACOM. 

The goals of this should be to deny these groups freedom of operation in the United States and elsewhere. Admittedly, this will be 

difficult to do as long as the United States retains a large COIN 

footprint in Afghanistan. It will be nearly impossible to do if the 

United States pulls out of Pakistan. 

Finally, because the Pakistani and other diaspora communities 

as well as converts to Islam remain an important source of financial support to LeT and other groups, as well as recruits for international operations, the United States and others must forge sensitive policies that consider the diaspora as an important source of 

insecurity while ensuring that innocent persons are not singled out 

without cause. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Fair follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF C. CHRISTINE FAIR

INTRODUCTION

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is the most lethal terrorist group operating in and from 

South Asia. LeT was founded in 1989 in Afghanistan with help from Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, the Inter-services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Since 

1990 it began operations in India. Until Thanksgiving weekend in November 2008, 

U.S. policymakers tended to dismiss LeT as India’s problem—hardly that of the 

United States. However, on that weekend, LeT made its debut as an international 

terrorist organization when it launched a multisite siege of India’s port city of 

Mumbai that lasted some 4 days. The attack, which claimed 166 lives—including 

several Americans and Israelis—was reported without halt on global media. It was 

the first time LeT had targeted non-Indian civilians. However, the group had been 

attacking U.S. troops and its international and Afghan allies in Afghanistan since 

2004.1 Revelations that David Headley Coleman (nee Daood Gilani), an American 

citizen of Pakistani origin, facilitated the attack has galvanized renewed fears about 

American homegrown terrorism and the ability of LeT to attack the American homeland.2 Headley’s ties to an al-Qaeda leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, have furthered speculation about LeT’s ties to al-Qaeda.3 Rightly or wrongly, some American officials believe it is only a matter of when LeT will strike a devastating attack on U.S. soil, 

rather than if.4

Scholars of South Asian security and media analysts explain Pakistan’s reliance 

upon LeT—and a raft of other groups—as a response to its enduring rivalry with 

India over the disputed territory of Kashmir specifically and deep neuralgic fears 

about Indian intentions toward Pakistan more generally.5 Lacking military, diplomatic, or political options to resolve its security competition with India, Pakistan 

has developed a series of proxies that operate in India and Afghanistan, with presumably plausible deniability. Pakistan’s activities and use of militants in AfghaniVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:44 Aug 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\052411-V.TXT
25 

stan stems directly from Pakistan’s fears about India and a desire to prevent it from 

developing influence and deepening its capabilities of fomenting insurgency along 

the border I Pakistan (e.g., in Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, 

and Khyber Pakhtunkha). 

This widely held explanation for Pakistan’s reliance upon LeT among other 

Islamist militants results in policy recommendations that stress resolution of the enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan as a necessary if insufficient condition 

for Pakistan to strategically abandon its Islamist proxies. Inevitably, calls are made 

for international intervention to encourage both sides to reach some accommodation.6 Moreover, this has led to specific arguments that Afghanistan will be 

stabilized only when the status of Kashmir is resolved as this alone will permit 

Pakistan to relax its aggressive efforts to manage efforts there with Islamist proxies, including the Afghan Taliban, the Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin 

Hekmatyar networks, LeT among others.7

I argue in this testimony that this conventional understanding of Pakistan’s reliance upon militancy, framed within the logic Pakistan’s external security preoccupations, is dangerously incomplete as it excludes the domestic politics of militant 

groups and the support they enjoy from the state. I propose that LeT plays an extremely important domestic role countering the other militants that are increasingly 

attacking the state and that this domestic role of LeT has increased since 2002 as 

the other groups began attacking the Pakistani state and its citizens. Equally important, my argumentation—if valid—suggests that the death of Bin Laden will 

have little or no mitigating impact upon LeT or other groups operating in the region. This is true in part because, in the view of this analyst, the evidence for LeT’s 

tight ties with al-Qaeda is not robust. 

My primary evidentiary bases for these claims are also new: namely, a review of 

LeT’s manifesto Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain (Why We Are Waging Jihad) as 

well as a database of some 708 LeT ‘‘martyr’’ biographies. This database is derived 

from LeT’s extensive book and magazine publication and has been compiled in 

conjunction with West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, where the author is 

overseeing this effort while Nadia Shoeb is the lead analyst of these shaheed biographies. 

The implications of my argument is that a resolution of the Indo-Pakistan dispute—howsoever improbable in the first instance—will not be sufficient to motivate 

Pakistan to strategically abandon LeT. Moreover, Pakistan’s reliance upon LeT will 

deepen as Pakistan’s internal security situation further deteriorates. Lamentably, 

there is little that the United States can do to affect this reality and must prepare 

risk mitigation strategies and, perversely, attempt to deepen engagement with Pakistan as this is the only way of ensuring maximal visibility and exerting maximal 

influence, even if those opportunities are limited. 

The remainder of this testimony is organized as follows. First, I provide an overview of the militant landscape in Pakistan, drawing particular attention to the way 

in LeT differs. These differences are important to understanding the group, Pakistan’s sustained support for it and the threat it poses to the region and beyond.8

Second, I provide a brief history of LeT. Next, I present new evidence for understanding the organization from the point of view of domestic politics within Pakistan 

itself. Finally, I conclude this essay with an overview of the implications of my arguments for Pakistan’s continued reliance upon LeT and for U.S. policy. 

DISAGREGRATING PAKISTAN’S MILITANT MARKET 9

There are several kinds of militant groups operating in and from Pakistan. Drawing from the vast descriptive literature of Pakistan’s militant group, the militant milieu can be—and should be—meaningfully disaggregated across several dimensions, 

beginning with their sectarian background (e.g., Ahl-e-Hadith, Deoband, Jamaat 

Islami, etc).10 They can also be distinguished by their theatres of operation (e.g., 

Afghanistan, India, Pakistan), by the makeup of their cadres (e.g., Arab, Central 

Asia, Pakistani, and ethnic groups thereof), and by their objectives (e.g., overthrow 

of the Pakistan Government, seize Kashmir, support the Afghan Taliban, etc.) 

among other characteristics. Employing these characteristics, the following clusters 

of Islamist militant groups can be discerned (summarized in Figure 1): 

• Al-Qaeda (in Pakistan): Al-Qaeda operatives who are based in Pakistan are 

largely non-Pakistani. However, they work with and through networks of supportive Pakistani militant groups. The strongest ties are with the Deobandi 

groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, JM, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), etc. From 

sanctuaries in the tribal areas and from key Pakistani cities, al-Qaeda has 

facilitated attacks within Pakistan and has planned international attacks.11

26 

• Afghan Taliban: While the Afghan Taliban operate in Afghanistan, they enjoy 

sanctuary in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK, formerly known as 

the Northwest Frontier Province), and key cities in the Pakistani heartland 

(e.g., Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta). The Afghan Taliban emerged from Deobandi 

madaris (p. madrassah) in Pakistan and retain their nearly exclusive ethnic 

Pasthun and Deobandi sectarian orientation.12

• ‘‘Kashmiri groups’’: Several groups proclaim to focus upon Kashmir. These include the Jamaat-e-Islami-based HM and related splinter groups; several 

Deobandi groups (JM, JUJI, LeJ, etc.); and the Ahl-e-Hadith group LeT, which 

was renamed Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) in December 2001. With the notable exception of HM, most of these groups claim few ethnic Kashmiris among their 

cadres and most came into being as surrogates of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, 

the Inter-services Intelligence Directory (ISO. Ironically, while they are called 

‘‘Kashmir groups,’’ many of these groups now operate well beyond Kashmir 

when possible. 

• ‘‘Sectarian groups’’: While in the past, notable anti-Sunni Shia groups existed 

with support from Iran, sectarian groups today are mostly Sunni who violently 

target Shia. Those Sunni groups targeting Shia are almost always Deobandi 

(Sipah-e-Sahaba-ePakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ)). In addition, there 

is considerable intra-Sunni violence with Deobandis targeting Barelvis (a heterodox Sufi order) as well Ahmediyyas, who are considered non-Muslim in Pakistan and elsewhere.13

• The Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP, Pakistan Taliban). Groups self-nominating as the ‘‘Pakistani Taliban’’ appeared in Waziristan as early as 2004 

under the leadership of Waziristan-based, Deobandi militants who fought with 

the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and earlier in the anti-Soviet jihad. By late 

2007, several militant commanders organized under the leadership of South 

Waziristan-based Baitullah Mehsood under the moniker ‘‘Tehreek-e-Taliban-ePakistan.’’ Baitullah Mehsood was killed in a U.S. drone strike in August 2009. 

After considerable speculation about the TTP’s fate, it reemerged under the vehemently sectarian Hakirnullah Mehsood. After a brief interlude from violence, 

the TTP has sustained a bloody campaign of suicide bombings that precipitated 

Pakistani military activities against their redoubt in South Waziristan. The 

TTP sustained retaliatory suicide bombings to punish the state for launching 

that campaign.14 While the TTP is widely seen largely as a Pashtun insurgency, 

the Punjab-based groups like SSP/LeJ and other Deobandi groups are important 

components of this organization. 

27 

There are a number of refinements to this gross disaggregation. First, Deobandi 

groups have overlapping membership with each other and with the Deobandi 

Islamist political party, Jamiate-Ulema Islami (JUT). Thus, a member of JM may 

also be a member of LeJ or even an officeholder at some level with the JUI. Second, 

Deobandi groups have in recent years begun operating against the Pakistani state 

following Pakistan’s participation in the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. JM and 

LeJ for instance have collaborated with the TTP by providing suicide bombers and 

logistical support, allowing the TTP to conduct attacks throughout Pakistan, far beyond the TTP’s territorial remit.15 Both LeT and several Deobandi militant groups 

have also been operating in Afghanistan against U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces.16

In contrast, other Kashrniri groups are operating under the influence of the Islamist 

political party Jamaat-e-Islami, such as al-Badr and HM, which tend to be comprised of ethnic Kashmiris and have retained their operational focus upon Kashmir. 

Pakistan has been a victim of sectarian violence by anti-Shia and previously by 

anti-Sunni militias since the late 1970s. However, the current insurgency confronted 

by Pakistan is different from those older internal security threats. As is well-known, 

then President and General Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S.-led global war by supVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:44 Aug 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\052411-V.TXT fair1.eps
28 

porting Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) 17 in September of 2001.18 In December 

2001, JM attacked the Indian Parliament. India held Pakistan directly responsible 

for the actions of its proxies and commenced the largest military buildup since the 

1971 war. After intense diplomatic intervention by Washington, war was averted 

but the military buildup remained on both sides of the border until October 2002. 

Tensions again flared when LeT attacked the wives and children of Indian army 

personnel in Kaluchak in May 2002. The United States again intervened to prevent 

war. The compound crisis that spanned December 2001 through October 2002 imposed severe costs upon U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as Pakistan moved 

its forces from the west to the east. Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives easily fled into 

Pakistan’s tribal areas with Pakistani forces redeployed to the east.19

Washington compelled President Musharraf to adopt a ‘‘moderated jihad policy’’ 

according to which he agreed to minimize the infiltration of Pakistani militants into 

Pakistan.20 Tensions between the Pakistani Government and its suite of militant 

proxies had already come into focus when Musharraf abandoned the Taliban (howsoever briefly) and cooperated with the United States in the ‘‘Global War on Terror.′′ 

Many militant groups rejected their patron’s decision and rebelled. In late 2001/ 

early 2002, JM split into a faction that remained loyal to the state under its founder 

Masood Azhar and those that actively began a suicide campaign against the state, 

including against President Musharraf, the Karachi Corps Commander and several 

civilian leaders.21 Since then, Pakistan’s Deobandi groups continue to factionalize 

and target Pakistani military installations and personnel, political leadership and 

civilians alike. 

It is extremely important to note that the groups that split and rebelled are all 

Deobandi. In contrast, LeT remained loyal to the state and began reorganizing in 

December 2001, days prior to the U.S. designation of LeT as a Foreign Terrorist 

Organization. American and Pakistani analysts alike believe that the ISI alerted 

LeT to this impending designation. This advance warning allowed LeT to transfer 

all of his financial assets to accounts under the new name of JuD.22 LeT’s leader, 

Hafiz Saeed, declared there would be two organizations: the militant component 

would be commanded by Maulana Rehman Lakhvi and a larger umbrella organization became known as JuD, into which LeT transferred most of its personnel. Moreover, LeT’s old offices and buildings were simply rebadged as JuD facilities. The militant cells of the organization uses JuD’s facilities for its activities and shares phone 

numbers, personnel, bank accounts, and offices. Thus for all practical purposes the 

organizations are really one: JuD.23 With this structure, which I will elaborate 

below, the organization has been able to retain its stock of cadres while also expanding its recruitment base through its social service provision. Equally important, JuD 

would be able to propagate LeT/JuD’s unique doctrine and philosophy described 

below. 

Thus the LeT differs from the other militant groups in several important ways. 

First, the LeT has never targeted the Pakistani state or any target (international 

or otherwise) within Pakistan. It exclusively operates outside of Pakistan. This is 

further evidence of the tight linkages between LeT and the Pakistani security establishment. Arguably, further evidence yet of LeT’s ongoing ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency is the simple fact that while several LeT cells and operatives have 

been based in the United States, the organization has never conspired to attack the 

U.S. homeland. This is true despite operating against Americans in Afghanistan as 

well as in the 2008 Mumbai attack. The ISI likely understands that this would be 

a serious redline which would provoke unrelenting retaliation. Indeed, U.S. legislation such as the ‘‘Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement 

(PEACE) Act of 2009’’ (generally known as Kerry-Lugar-Berman) specifically focuses 

upon LeT by name. While the U.S. homeland has been vulnerable to LeT attacks, 

such an attack would be unlikely without an explicit nod from the ISI.24

Second, unlike all of the aforementioned groups, the LeT has never experienced 

an exogenous leadership split of any consequence since its founding years. The organization has at various times reorganized, as described elsewhere in this essay. But 

this is not the same as leadership quarrels that has resulted in disgruntled factions 

in opposition to each other. In fact, the ISI often engineers or foments dissent 

among the other Deobandi and JI-backed militant groups to retain some control 

over them and to limit their ability to develop independently of the state. The LeT 

is the only group that the ISI has kept intact without significant cleavages at the 

apex body of decisionsmakers. (As with all organizations, some discord has been observed among local commanders.) 

Finally, whereas the state has taken on several of the Deobandi groups and 

al-Qaeda through inept and not always efficacious military operations, it has taken 

only marginal and cosmetic steps in the wake of the Mumbai 2008 attacks.25 The 

Pakistan Government has refused to ban JuD. After several groups were banned in 

29 

2002 (including LeT), all of them regrouped under other names with their financial 

assets largely intact.26 After the U.S. Ambassador complained that the bans had no 

consequence upon these groups, the Pakistan Government banned the reformed 

groups in 2003. As before, the groups reformed without loss of operational capabilities. JuD was the only group that was not banned at that time. This enabled JuD 

to continue to expand its overt as well as covert actions with preferential state 

treatment.27 In the wake of Mumbai, Pakistan promised to ban JuD after the U.N. 

Security Council proscribed the organization and identified its leadership as terrorist in early 2009.28 However, Pakistan never honored this commitment. While 

some of its leadership is in jail to appease Washington after Mumbai, they continue 

to meet their associates and plan operations. JuD convenes high-profile demonstrations including recent mobilization around Pakistan’s abrogated sovereignty with 

the bin Laden raid and assignation, the fate of Raymond Davis (the CIA contractor 

who killed two ISI operatives during an altercation) 29 and to show support for Pakistan’s blasphemy law and even to demonstrate support for the killer of the Punjab 

Governor, Salmon Tasseer, who wanted to reform the blasphemy law. The LeT/JuD 

continues its domestic social work and relief activities increasingly within the eyes 

of the Pakistani public. Frighteningly, JuD—and other Islamist organizations—have 

taken the lead in shaping public opinion about these events which necessarily center 

on loathing of the United States and calls for the government and military to sever 

ties across the board. This is an easy sell to Pakistan’s increasingly anti-American 

public.30

LASHKAR-E-TAIBA AND JAMAAT UD DAWA: A BRIEF HISTORY 31

The LeT originally emerged as the military wing of the Markaz Daawat ul Irshad 

(MDI), headquartered in Muridke near the Punjabi city of Lahore. MDI was founded 

in 1986 by two Pakistani Engineering professors, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and 

Zafar Iqbal with the assistance of the ISI.32 Abdullah Azzam, a close of associate 

of bin Laden who was affiliated with the Islamic University of Islamabad and the 

Maktab ul Khadamat (Bureau of Services for Arab mujahedeen, which was the precursor to al-Qaeda), also provided assistance. He was killed in Peshawar 2 years 

after the MDI was founded. MDI, along with numerous other militant groups, was 

involved in supporting the mujahidin in Afghanistan from 1986 onward, and established militant training camps for this purpose. One camp was known as Muaskare-Taiba in Paktia and a second known as Muaskar-e-Aqsa in the Kunar province 

of Afghanistan.33 (Kunar is known to be home to numerous Ahl-e-Hadith adherents 

in Afghanistan, which overall has few followers in that country. For this reason, 

Kunar has been an attractive safe haven for Arabs in Afghanistan.) Pakistan-based 

analysts note that MDI/LeT’s training camps were always separate from those of 

the Taliban, which hosted Deobandi militant groups such as HUJI and HuM. This 

has led some analysts to contend that LeT has not had the sustained and organic 

connections to al-Qaeda as enjoyed by the Deobandi groups, many of which became 

‘‘out sourcers’’ for al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan.34

In 1993, MDI divided its activities into two related but separate organizations: 

MDI proper continued the mission of proselytization and education while LeT 

emerged as the militant wing. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, LeT/ 

MDI shifted focus to Indian-administered Kashmir. It staged its first commandostyle attack in Kashmir in 1990. The organization has spawned a vast training infrastructure throughout the country to support its dual mission of training militants 

and converting Pakistanis to the Ahl-e-Hadith interpretative tradition. For much of 

the 1990s (with few exceptions), LeT operations were restricted to Indian administered Kashmir. 

LeT’s 200-acre headquarters is in Muridke (Punjab) located some 30 kilometers 

from Lahore.35 However, the organization maintains offices in most of the major cities throughout Pakistan. (See Figure 2, which shows a business card of Yayha 

Mujahid, LeT’s spokesperson, with office locations throughout Pakistan.) These offices undertake recruitment as well as funds collection. In addition to overt offices 

open to the public, JuD/LeT maintains covert training camps throughout Pakistan.36

Hafez Saeed is the Amir (supreme commander) of the organization.37 As noted 

above, since December 2001, the organization essentially exists as JuD within Pakistan while LeT is nominally the organization that operates outside of Pakistan although this distinction is insignificant. In this essay, I use JuD and LeT interchangeably because this was reorganization by the organization itself rather than 

a split.38 Operations tend to be conducted with a relatively small unit of few than 

a dozen.39

30 

Figure 2. Business Card of Mr. Yayha Mujahid (c. 2004) 

Source: Mr. Yayha Mujahid gave this card to the author in 2004. 

Recruits typically come from cities in central and southern Punjab (e.g., 

Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Bahawalpur, Vehari, Khaneval, Kasur), reflecting the 

Punjabi nature of the group and the fact that its main infrastructure is in the Punjab. In addition, some come from Afghanistan and Pashtun areas in Pakistan.40

There is no publically available—much less accurate—accounting of the organization’s end-strength. But the State Department estimates that it has ‘‘several thousand’’ members in Pakistan Administered Kashmir, Pakistan, in the southern 

Jammu and Kashmir and Doda regions (in Indian Administered Kashmir), and in 

the Kashmir Valley.41 In contrast, the Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal estimates that, with some fluctuation, it has more than 750 cadres in Jammu and 

Kashmir, which comprise the overwhelming bulk of the foreign militants in the 

Kashmir valley.42

A perusal of LeT literature demonstrates a commitment to targeting Indian Hindus, Jews, and other Kafirs outside of Pakistan.43 LeT has a hallmark modus operandi, which has often been misconstrued as simply ‘‘suicide operations.’’ In fact, the 

LeT does not do suicide operations, per se, in which the goal of the attacker is to 

die during the execution of the attack. Rather, LeT’s ‘‘fidayeen missions are more 

akin to high-risk missions in which well-trained commandos engage in fierce combat 

during which death is preferable to capture. While martyrdom is in some sense the 

ultimate objective of LeT operatives, the LeT selects missions where there is a possibility, however slim, of living to kill more enemy operatives. The goal of LeT commandos therefore is not merely to commit suicide attacks; rather, they seek to kill 

as many as possible until they ultimately succumb to enemy operations, barring 

their ability to survive enemy engagement.44

Consonant with the rigor of a typical LeT mission, LeT recruits do not predominantly draw from Pakistan’s madaris (pl. of madrassah) as is commonly asserted. 

Rather, LeT recruits are generally in their late teens or early twenties and tend to 

be better educated than Pakistanis on average, or even than other militant groups 

such as the Deobandi SSP or JM. A majority of LeT recruits have completed secondary school with good grades and some have even attended college. This reflects 

both the background of LeT’s founding fathers who were engineering professors and 

MDI commitment to technical and other education. This stands in sharp contrast 

to the madrassah-based networks of many of the Deobandi groups including the 

Afghan Taliban.45 The fraction of madrassah-educated LeT operatives is believed to 

be as low as 10 percent.46 LeT also actively targets women both to expand their recruitment base of males, and reportedly, to recruit women for militant operations.47

Since the late 1990’s, LeT has continued to develop its operational reach into 

India. This has involved recruiting Indian citizens and increasingly entails developing an indigenous Indian franchise, the Indian Mujahedeen.48

31 

DOMESTIC POLITICS OF LASHKAR-E-TAIB: AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION

As noted above, the groups that have reorganized and begun targeting the state 

are all Deobandi. LeT is not Deobandi. This theological distinction is exceedingly important if underappreciated. First, these Deobandi groups are intimately sectarian. 

They have long supported the targeting of Pakistan’s Shia and Ahmediyyas. 

(Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared the Ahmediyyas to be non-Muslim in 1974 to placate 

Islamist opposition groups who demanded this.) These Deobandi groups also began 

attacking Sufi shrines in Pakistan in recent years. The most recent such attack occurred in April 2011 when suicide bombers assaulted a shrine dedicated to a saint, 

Sakhi Sarvar, in Dera Ghazi Khan.49 Previously, they attacked extremely important 

a shrine in Lahore, Data Darbar, on July 1, 2010.50 These Sufi shrines follow the 

Barelvi school of Islam in Pakistan. Barelvi adherents believe in mysticism, revere 

saints and shrines, and frequent shrines where the saint’s descendent spiritual 

guide may intercede on behalf of these worshipers. Many, if not most, Pakistanis 

are believed to be Barelvi although there are no data on this question. Pakistanis 

generally hold these shrines in high esteem as these Sufi saints brought Islam to 

South Asia. However, Deobandi loath and denounce these mystical practices and beliefs as un-Islamic accretions derived from Hinduism. Deobandis also encourage attacks against Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities, such as Christians. 

In short, Barelvis, Shia, and Ahmediyyas all espouse religious practices that 

Deobandis find anathema because they practice what Deobandis deem munafiqit, or 

acting to spread disunity. (The term munafiqit is sometimes translated as a hypocrite in English, implying that they are not truthful to themselves or others.) Perpetrator of munafiqit are called munafiq (plural is munafiqin). Deobandi militant 

groups, which include the Pakistan Taliban and its constituent members from JM, 

SSP, and LeJ among others, have come to conclude that anyone who does not 

espouse their beliefs is munafiq. This includes Pakistani security personnel as well 

civilian leadership and individuals who oppose these groups and their sanguinary 

agenda. Under these pretexts, Deobandi groups have launched a sustained campaign of violence that first began in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas 

(FATA), and then expanded into the settled parts of the frontier in KhyberPakhtunkhwa and well into the Punjab. 

The results of this Deobandi campaign have been lethal. Using data that are 

available from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, between January 1, 

2004 (when the database begins) and December 31, 2010 (the last date available), 

there have been over 3,517 attacks by Islamist militant groups the vast majority 

of which are Deobandi. These attacks have claimed more than 25,116 victims among 

whom 24,796 were injured but survived. These attacks expanded precipitously after 

2006 when the Pakistani state began engaging in vigorous antiterrorism efforts 

against these groups. (Yearly breakdowns of incidents and victims are available in 

Figure 3.) 

Figure 3. Islamist Terrorist Attacks and Victims: January 1, 2004–December 31, 2010 

Source: Worldwide Incident Tracking System, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. 

Data accessed April 24, 2011. Like all datasets on violence, this too is not a comprehensive database. Thus one should not look at any one year, rather the trend over several years. Available 

at https://wits.nctc.gov. 

Understanding this anti-Munafiqin violence perpetrated by these Deobandi groups 

is critical to understanding the domestic utility of LeT. (A photo of Pakistan Taliban 

32 

graffiti denouncing munafiqit in a TTP redoubt in South Waziristan is available in 

Figure 4.) 

Figure 4. Anti-Munafiqat graffiti from the Pakistan Taliban in South Waziristan 

Source: Author photograph from a Pakistan Taliban hideout captured by the Pakistan army 

in the Makeen Valley in South Waziristan, July 2011. This Pashto caption translates as ‘‘Don’t 

indulge in munafiqat (hypocrisy) or you will be debased.’’ This inscription is believed to be written in blood by the Pakistan army, but the author cannot confirm this claim. 

In stark contrast, LeT does not fight in Pakistan and does not target Pakistanis. 

In its manifesto ‘‘Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain?’’ (Why Are We Waging Jihad), 

the author details why it is that LeT ‘‘Does not wage jihad in Pakistan instead of 

Kashmir’’ and other venues in the Muslim world where Muslims are oppressed.51

This section above all other sections explains the domestic importance of the organization. In contrast to the Deobandi groups which savage the state and its citizens, 

this LeT manifesto reveals LeT’s fundamental non-sectarian nature and robust commitment to the integrity of the Pakistani state and its diverse polity. 

The manifesto forthrightly addresses this fundamental accusation waged against 

the government by the Deobandis. This critique has particular salience in the post2001 era when the Government of Pakistan began collaborating with the United 

States and the subsequent emergent of a domestic insurgency. The author explains 

LeT’s logic by arguing that while the state is indeed guilty of these things, Pakistanis who are Muslim are all brothers irrespective of the sectarian commitments.52

The author says that Barelvis, Sufis or Shia not be attacked.53 Equally important, 

this document argues against the Deobandi position that these persons are 

Munafiqin worthy of death in the first place. 

In contrast, the manifesto’s author argues that Kafirs outside of Pakistan (Hindus, Jews, Christians, atheists, etc.) are at war with Muslims and should be attacked.54 The author urges all Muslims to fight the Kafirs lest Pakistanis turn on 

each other, as indeed they have in ample measure. 

In this manifesto lie the domestic politics of LeT and its state support. It is the 

only organization that actively challenges the Deobandi orthodoxy that has imperiled the domestic security of the state. It is the only militant organization that enunciates the legitimate targets of jihad and the utility of external jihad to the state 

in a way that the common Pakistani can understand. Thus, LeT’s doctrine works 

to secure the integrity of the Pakistani state domestically even while it complicates 

Pakistan’s external relations with India, the United States and others. 

33 

This orientation is more important than it may seem at first blush. Drawing from 

previous and current work, LeT does not primarily recruit from adherents of the 

theological tradition to which it derives: Ahl-e-Hadith for two reasons.55 First, because many of religious scholars (ulema) of Ahl-e-Hadith have rejected violent jihad, 

LeT has split from its sectarian roots. Given its differences of opinion with the Ahle-Hadith ulema, it should not expect many recruits from Ahl-e-Hadith adherents.56

Another reason is that overall in Pakistan, the Ahl-eHadith community is quite 

small, perhaps less than 10 percent of Pakistan’s population of 180 million.57 In 

fact, LeT overwhelmingly recruits Deobandis and Barelvis. In Daur-e-Aam (the 

basic training) recruits are undergo rigorous religious indoctrination. This is an important opportunity to attract those who have a taste for violence to a pro-state militant organization rather than a Deobandi group which may target the state. It also 

provides LeT the opportunity to dissuade Deobandis (or others) who believe in attacking Pakistanis be they civilian leaders, security forces or citizens. 

Pakistan’s support of LeT/JuD’s expansion into providing social services after 

2002 also makes sense. By 2004 JuD was expanding schools (not madrassahs), clinics and other social services throughout Pakistan.58 In 2004, LeT/JuD raised enormous funds and relief supplies for the victims of the 2004/2005 Asian Tsunami, it 

provided a variety of relief and medical assistance in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, 

and provided social services to internally displaced persons who fled military offensive in Swat in 2009 as well as the victims of the 2010 monsoon-related super flood. 

Granted, the organization was not at the forefront of relief as the media reported. 

It is likely that Pakistan’s media sensationalized LeT’s contribution deliberately to 

foster popular support for the organization. This is entirely possible as many journalists are explicitly on the ISI’s payroll and routinely plant stories on behalf of the 

ISI or characterize a story to suit the ISI’s interests.59

Pakistan has sustained serious criticism for refusing to crack down on the organization and indeed permit it to sustain an extremely public profile. (Evidence of the 

organization’s intent to inflame the United States and other international observers 

is manifested in its various banners in (often broken) English. Few Pakistanis can 

read English and thus is likely intended to ensure that American and others can 

see understand their claims.) However, when one appreciates the domestic importance of LeT in dampening internal insecurity, the state has an enormous incentive 

to encourage and facilitate this expansion of JuD throughout Pakistan. By bolstering the organization’s domestic legitimacy, JuD becomes an ever-more effective 

organization in countering the competitive dangerous beliefs of the Deobandi 

groups. Pakistan’s support of the organization has taken unusual turns. After the 

Mumbai attack of 2008, the Punjab provincial government began managing the organization’s substantial assets in the Punjab and has even placed many LeT/JuD 

workers employed in various purported charitable activities on its official payroll. 

In addition, the Punjab government has even made substantial grants to the organization.60

When we appreciate the important domestic role that LeT/JuD plays in helping 

to counter the Deobandi violence that has ravaged Pakistan, it logically follows that 

this organization will become more important as Pakistan’s domestic security situation degrades. This suggests that no matter what happens vis-a-vis India, Pakistan 

is unlikely to put down this organization as long as it serves this important domestic political role. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

Implications of this evidence for LeT: It ’s not going away 

The implications of my argument and new evidence are important and suggest 

strongly that international intervention to resolve Pakistan’s outstanding dispute 

with India is unlikely to be a sufficient condition for Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon LeT/JuD. This is true despite the increasing threat the organization 

poses to international security and despite the fact that Pakistan will be held accountable for attacks perpetrated by the group. This is true despite the fact that 

an LeT/JuD attack in India may be one of the quickest route to an outright conflict 

with India. Needless to say an attack by the LeT/JuD on American soil would be 

a catastrophic game changer. While Pakistan’s reliance upon LeT may be a risky 

proposition, JuD/LeT appears to have an enormous role in securing Pakistan’s interests externally. Equally and perhaps more importantly, LeT secures a more primal 

state interest: internal cohesion and survivability of the state. 

Can Pakistan Abandon Militancy as a Strategic Tool? Not Likely 

Similarly, prospects are slim that Pakistan will be able to reverse course with its 

proxies who have turned against the state with devastating violence. This is in part 

34 

because part of the Pakistan Taliban have important overlaps with groups which 

Pakistan still considers to be assets: namely, groups like JM who retain an interest 

in targeting India rather than Pakistan. Moreover, as the army’s various attempted 

peace deals demonstrate, there remains a latent hope that these groups can be rehabilitated and realign with Pakistan’s foreign interests. Pakistan’s likely inability to 

counter the domestic threat comprehensively is also due in part due to Pakistan’s 

shortcomings in countering those groups and individual commanders that they have 

taken on as enemies of the state. These shortcomings are evidenced in the armed 

forces, intelligence agencies, police and other law enforcement entities, Pakistan’s 

legal statutes, and other entities within Pakistan’s rule of law system such as the 

judiciary. 

It is important to understand that no state will act against its own self interests. 

Given that Pakistan is unlikely to be induced to abandon its reliance upon militancy 

under its nuclear umbrella for both external and internal reasons, the international 

community—including the United States—should abandon its Panglossian optimism 

that additional foreign assistance or security assistance will shift Pakistan’s strategic calculus away from using LeT or other militants to service its internal and external goals. For Pakistan, LeT is an existential asset in the same way that it is 

an existential enemy for countries like India and even the United States. This suggests an urgent need to conceptualize and implement a robust threat containment 

strategy. 

Mitigating the Threats? Limited But Important to Keep Trying 

Containing Pakistan per se is not feasible nor is attempting to do so even desirable. Pakistan simply has many asymmetric options which the United States should 

consider heavily. Any serious consideration of options to contain Pakistan must be 

gamed, regamed and multiple levels of contingency plans must be formulated. This 

is an option that is fraught with danger and should be considered only as a last 

resort. 

However, there are means of containing the threats that Pakistan pose even if 

containing the country is impossible. The United States, India, the United Kingdom 

and other states victimized by LeT and similar groups should forge closer cooperation on intelligence and counterterrorism initiatives to interdict planned attacks and 

to identify and prosecute individuals after the fact. Such prosecutions will likely 

present evidence that will incriminate others who remain active in the organization, 

contributing to further efforts to downgrade their efficacy.61 Greater contacts must 

be forged with Immigration, Treasury, and other government agencies in those 

states in North America, Europe, the Middle East, South and South East Asia that 

LeT/JuD uses for logistical purposes, movement of recruits into and out of Pakistan, 

transfers of funds, and other materials to sustain operations. The goal of these engagements is to deny Pakistani militant groups freedom of movement of all assets 

and disrupting potential cells and plots. 

Because the Pakistani diaspora communities and converts to Islam remain important sources of financial support to LeT/JuD and recruits for operations,62 the 

United States and other governments will have to forge sensitive policies that consider the diaspora as an important source of insecurity while ensuring that innocent 

persons are not singled out without cause. This has been and will remain a delicate 

and fraught public policy issue.63 How can governments forthrightly concede these 

threats without alienating Muslims at home, who are important sources of information that have helped deter potential attacks and catch those who have successfully 

executed attacks? However, Pakistan’s refusal to shut down militant training camps 

in Pakistan leave few options to states seeking to protect their citizenry and their 

allies from attacks by Pakistan-based groups or by individuals who have trained 

with such groups in Pakistan. 

National and multilateral institutions (e.g., the U.S. Department of Treasury, the 

United Nations Security Council, the European Union) should work to target specific individuals within the militant organizations in question, as well as individuals 

within the Pakistani state found to be supporting these groups. Admittedly, the latter may be awkward. In the case of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), this may 

mean working to forge coalitions with Pakistan’s key supporter on the UNSC: 

China. More generally, the United States will have to reach out to Pakistan’s 

friends—as well as foes—to forge a consensus on the best way to help Pakistan help 

itself. Indeed Washington will need to develop broad-based engagement strategy of 

all countries relevant to Pakistan (e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China) to help 

forge a parallel if not convergent threat perception of Pakistan and develop policies 

to best address them. 

Finally, while I understand that the United States is facing a severe budgetary 

crisis and while I understand that there is a long-simmering interest in ‘‘cutting off’’ 

35 

Pakistan, these urges must be tempered. While it is true that financial and military 

assistance is not ever going to be adequate to alter Pakistan’s threat perceptions 

and that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies will seek to circumscribe U.S. 

engagement, the United States should make every effort to intensify and expand engagement after the demise of bin Laden. U.S. interests endure well beyond his 

death whether securing resupply of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, securing 

maximal visibility into and influence in Pakistan’s oversight of its nuclear weapons, 

and of course the myriad militant groups operating in and from Pakistan. 

Impact of bin Laden’s Death on Pakistan’s Militant Landscape: Likely Little or None 

Bin Laden’s death does not dampen the domestic or external utility of LeT. His 

death will not temper the vicious violence of the Pakistan Taliban and their relentless attacks upon the Pakistan state. It may even encourage ever-more sophisticated 

violence from the TTP, which has ties to al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network. 

(Haqqani has long been close to bin Laden.) And of course bin Laden’s death does 

not affect enduring and long-term U.S. concerns about nuclear proliferation, security 

of peace-time positioning of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, mobilization during a crisis 

with India, command and control arrangement, much less the steepness of the escalation latter of an actual crisis with India among other salient concerns. 

Staying the Course and Seeking New Opportunities 

Despite all impulses to the contrary, the United States needs to stay the course 

and continue to invest in civilian institutions. The United States must make every 

effort—where possible—to invest in civilian-led security governance, provide technical and other support to empower Pakistan’s Parliament to incrementally increase 

its ability to exert oversight of Pakistan’s defense and intelligence agencies. While 

a genuinely civilian-led Pakistan seems an impossible dream, any progress—howsoever slim—will be important. Finding ways of providing meaningful support to 

Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies and judicial system remains a critical set of 

activities. Admittedly, access will be tough through the U.S. mission. Provincial 

assemblies also need technical skill training and other professional development. 

Perhaps U.N.D.P. (United Nations Development Program) is the best route for such 

activities such as strengthening Pakistan’s judicial system and national and provincial assembly. 

Devolution may present new opportunities for engagement as each province may 

have specific needs and depending upon the program may be more receptive. Provincial planning councils and ministries offer new opportunities even if negotiating 

what devolution means will remain a medium-term challenge. 

Needless to say, the ways in which the United States does aid programming is 

and has been deeply problematic for institutional and other reasons. USAID does 

not require Pakistani matching grants. Thus any allocation from USAID for development displaces the same amount in Pakistan’s budget. This allows Pakistan to 

be insouciant about the program as the appropriate organization has no incentive 

to care: Pakistan’s money is not on the line. While a detailed exposition of this concept is beyond the scope of this testimony; USAID’s chronic inability to deliver value 

needs to be reevaluated. In fact, perhaps the bin Laden event and the emerging rift 

with Pakistan may occasion an opportunity to reoptimize Kerry-Lugar-Berman. 

Such a concept of aid will allow Washington to do more with less and will avoid 

the costly and unproductive expenditures on programs for which there is no financial or organizational buy-in. 

Finally, while it seems dismaying that the U.S. investment in Pakistan has not 

yielded hoped for security payoffs, this pessimism is not entirely justifiable. Had it 

not been for the investments thus far, the United States would not have been in 

the position to have the assets required to identify and neutralize bin Laden as well 

as a host of other al-Qaeda operatives. And, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates 

has recently claimed, he has seen evidence that high-level Pakistani officials did not 

know about bin Laden’s whereabouts. The lamentable truth is that even if they had, 

the United States would make a catastrophic error in judgment in walking away 

as it will forfeit any opportunities to develop needed information on key concerns 

and it will forgo any opportunity—even if limited—in helping to power civilian institutions in Pakistan. 

All of these options seem inordinately difficult given the political priorities of the 

United States and other critical countries; however, other more feasible options simply do not appear to be available. 

———————— 

References 

1 Author experience in Afghanistan between June and October 2007 as a political officer to 

the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. 

36 

2 U.S. Department of Justice, ‘‘Chicago Resident David Coleman Headley Pleads Guilty To 

Role In India and Denmark Terrorism Conspiracies,’’ March 18, 2001, available at (http:// 

www.justice.gov/usao/iln/pri/chicago/2010/prO318l01.pdf). 3 Carrie Johnson, ‘‘U.S. Citizen David Coleman Headley Admits Role in Mumbai Attacks,’’ 

Washington Post, March 19, 2010. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/ 

03/18/AR2010031805407.html) 4See discussion in Bruce Riedel, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of 

Global Jihad (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2011), pp. 106–118. 5T.V. Paul, ‘‘Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,’’ in T.V. Paul Ed. ‘‘The IndiaPakistan Conflict’’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 3–24. 6See discussion between Paul Kapur and Sumit Ganguly in S. Paul Kapur, ‘‘Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia,’’ International Security 33, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 71–94 and Sumit 

Ganguly, ‘‘Nuclear Stability in South Asia,’’ International Security 33, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 45–70. 

For a critical discussion of the security of nuclear weapons and command and control arrangements over the same, see Christopher Clary, ‘‘Thinking About Pakistan’s Nuclear Security in 

Peacetime, Crisis and War,’’ IDSA Occasional Paper No. 12 (New Delhi: IDSA, 2010); Sumit 

Ganguly, S. Paul Kapur, ‘‘India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South 

Asia’’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 7 Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, ‘‘From Great Game to Grand Bargain,’’ Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2008. Available (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64604/barnettr-rubin-and-ahmed-rashid/from-great-game-to-grand-bargain). 8For an extensive review, see C. Christine Fair, ‘‘The Militant Challenge in Pakistan,’’ Asia 

Policy 11 (January 2011): 105–37. 9 C. Christine Fair, ‘‘The Militant Challenge in Pakistan,’’ Asia Policy 11 (January 2011): 105– 

37. 10This taxonomy is deduced from author fieldwork in Pakistan from 2002 to 2011. See C. 

Christine Fair, ‘‘Who Are Pakistan’s Militants and Their Families?’’ Terrorism and Political Violence 20 (2008): 49–65. See also, inter alia, Arif Jamal, ‘‘Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad 

in Kashmir’’ (Hoboken: Melville House, 2009); Muhammad Amir Ranan (trans. Saba Ansari) 

‘‘The A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan’’ (Lahore: Mashal, 2004); See Amir Mir, ‘‘The 

True Face of Jehadis’’ (Lahore: Mashal Books, 2004), Amir Mir, ‘‘The Fluttering Flag of Jehad’’ 

(Lahore: Mashal Books, 2008). For an excellent synthesis of the sprawling Pakistani literature 

on the varied militant groups based in and from the country, see Nicholas Howenstein, ‘‘The 

Jihadi Terrain in Pakistan: An Introduction to the Sunni Jihadi Groups in Pakistan and Kashmir,’’ Pakistan Studies Research Unit, Bradford University, February 2008. http:// 

www.humansecuritygateway.info/documents/PSRUlJihadiTerrainlPakistan.pdf; Jane’s World 

Insurgency and Terrorism, ‘‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),’’ July 1, 2009. wjit.james.com (by 

subscription only); Manzair Zaidi, ‘‘Pakistan’s Taliban Warlord: A Profile of Baitullah Meshud,’’ 

The Long War Journal, September 30, 2008. www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/9/pakistansltalibanlwa.php; Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, ‘‘Pakistan’s Most wanted: 

Baitullah Mehsud,’’ February 8. 2009. www4.janes.com (available to subscribers only); 

Rahimullah Yusefzai, ‘‘Profile: Nek Mohammed,’’ BBC News Online, June 18, 2004. 

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/southlasia/3819871; Hassan Abbas, ‘‘A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan,’’ CTC Sentinel 1 (2008): 1l4; Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency, ‘‘Tribal Tribulations: The 

Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan,’’ January 13, 2009. www.janes.com (available to subscribers 

only). 11See comments made by National Intelligence Director John Negroponte cited in ‘‘Al-Qaeda 

‘rebuilding’ in Pakistan,’’ BBC News Online, January 12, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ 

southlasia/6254375.stm; K. Alan Kronstadt, U.S.-Pakistan Relations (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 2008). http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/115888.pdf. 12See, inter alia, Senator Carl Levin, ‘‘Opening Statement of Senator Carl Levin, Senate 

Armed Services Committee Hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan,’’ February 26, 2009. http:// 

levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=308740; Ian Katz, ‘‘Gates Says Militant Sanctuaries 

Pose Biggest Afghanistan Threat,’’ Bloomberg News, March 1, 2009. http://www.bloomberg.com/ 

apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aehmlRXgKi2o&refer=home; Barnett R. Rubin. ‘‘Saving Afghanistan,’’ Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay 

86105-p0/barnett-r-rubin/saving-afghanistan.html. 13 Vali R. Nasr, ‘‘International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998,’’ Comparative Politics 32 (2000): 170–91; International Crisis 

Group. ‘‘The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan: Crisis Group Asia Report No. 95’’ (Brussels, 

Islamabad; International Crisis Group, 2005), 12, 19–20. Also see A.H. Sorbo, ‘‘Paradise Lost,’’ 

The Herald, June 1988, p. 31; Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘‘Sectarianism in Pakistan: The 

Radicalization of Shi’i and Sunni Identities,’’ Modern Asian Studies 32 (1998):689–716. 14Declan Walsh, ‘‘Pakistan Sends 30,000 Troops for All-Out Assault on Taliban,’’ The Guardian, October 17, 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/17/pakistan-sends-troopsagainst-taliban. 15 Author fieldwork in Pakistan in February and April 2009. 16See C. Christine Fair, ‘‘Antecedents and Implications of the November 2008 Lashkar-eTaiba Attack Upon Mumbai,’’ testimony presented before the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection on March 11, 

2009. 17OEF was the military operation that commenced on October 7, 2001, in response to the 9/ 

11 attacks. Pakistan provided. 18 C. Christine Fair, ‘‘The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Pakistan and India’’ 

(Santa Monica: RAND, 2004). 19 Imtiaz Gul, ‘‘The Al Qaeda Connection: The Taliban and Terror in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas’’ 

(London: Penguin, 2009). 

37 

20 C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk. ‘‘Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security 

Assistance’’ (Washington DC: USIP, 2006). 21Mir, ‘‘The True Face of Jehadis’’; Mir, ‘‘The Fluttering Flag of Jehad’’; Howenstein, ‘‘The 

Jihadi Terrain in Pakistan.’’ 22See ‘‘U.S. Embassy Cables: Lashkar-e-Taiba Terrorists Raise Funds in Saudi Arabia,’’ 

guardian.co.uk, December 5, 2010, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassycables-documents/220186. 23See ‘‘U.S. Embassy Cables: Lashkar-e-Taiba Terrorists Raise Funds in Saudi Arabia,’’ 

guardian.co.uk, December 5, 2010, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassycables-documents/220186. 24 Recent evidence provided by David Coleman Headley during his trial for his participation in the Mumbai attacks of 2008, he claimed direct ISI involvement in his management. 

These are allegations made in court and may not be true. Sebastian Rotella, ‘‘U.S. Prosecutors Indict 4 Pakistanis in Mumbai attacks,’’ The Washington Post, April 26, 2011. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/uslprosecutorslindictl4lpakistanislinl mumbailattacks/2011/04/26/AFaDLhsElstory.html?wprss=rsslhomepage. Moreover, the Director General of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, conceded some that ‘‘rogue’’ elements 

of his organization were likely involved. However, he denied that this operation was ‘‘authorized.’’ Bob Woodward. ‘‘Obama’s Wars’’ (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2010), pp. 46–47. 25 C. Christine Fair and Seth Jones, ‘‘Pakistan’s War Within,’’ Survival, 51, No. 6 (December 

2009–January 2010): 161–188. 26Stephen Phillip Cohen, ‘‘The Jihadist Threat to Pakistan,’’ The Washington Quarterly 26 

(2003): 7–25. 27Stephen Tankel, ‘‘Lashkar-e-Taiba: From 9/11 to Mumbai.’’ Developments in Radicalisation 

and Political Violence, April/May 2009. www.icsr.info. 28 Jay Solomon, ‘‘U.N. Security Council Sanctions Lashkar Members,’’ December 10, 2008. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122895332614496341.html. 29 C. Christine Fair, ‘‘Spy for a Spy: the CIA-ISI Showdown Over Raymond Davis,’’ Af-Pak 

Channel, March 10, 2011, ForeignPolicy.com. 30The Pew Foundation, ‘‘Opinion of the United States,’’ 2010, available at http://pewglobal.org/ 

database/?indicator=l&country=166. 31This section draws in part from C. Christine Fair, ‘‘Antecedents and Implications of the November 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba Attack Upon Mumbai,’’ testimony presented before the House 

Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure 

Protection on March 11, 2009. 32See Sikand, ‘‘The Islamist Militancy in Kashmir: The Case of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’’; Abou 

Zahab, ‘‘I Shall be Waiting at the Door of Paradise’’; Shafqat, ‘‘From Official Islam to 

Islamism.’’7. 33See Yoginder Sikand, ‘‘The Islamist Militancy in Kashmir: The Case of the Lashkar-eTaiba,’’ in The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence, eds. Aparna Rao et al. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007):215–238; Mariam Abou Zahab, 

‘‘I Shall be Waiting at the Door of Paradise: The Pakistani Martyrs of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’’ 

(Army of the Pure), The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of 

Armed Violence, eds. Aparna Rao et al. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007):133–158; Saeed 

Shafqat, ‘‘From Official Islam to Islamism: The Rise of Dawat-ul-Irshad and Lashkar-e-Taiba,’’ 

in Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation, ed. Christophe Jaffrelot (London: Zed Books, 2002), 

pp. 131–147. 34 In 1998, the United States bombed several al-Qaeda/Taliban training camps in retaliation 

for the al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa. Militants of several Pakistani Deobandi 

groups were killed including operatives of HUJI and HuM among others. See Barry Bearak, 

‘‘After The Attacks: In Pakistan; Estimates Of Toll In Afghan Missile Strike Reach As High As 

50,’’ The New York Times, August 23, 1998. Also see Dexter Filkins, ‘‘ ‘All of Us Were Innocent,’ 

Says Survivor of U.S. Attack on Camp,’’ The Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1998. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/24/news/mn-16045. 35 According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the Muridke Markaz (center) is comprised 

of a ‘‘Madrassa (seminary), a hospital, a market, a large residential area for ‘scholars’ and faculty members, a fish farm and agricultural tracts. The LeT also reportedly operates 16 Islamic 

institutions, 135 secondary schools, an ambulance service, mobile clinics, blood banks and several seminaries across Pakistan.’’ See South Asia Terrorism Portal, ‘‘Lashkar-e-Toiba ‘Army of 

the Pure,’ ’’ no date, available at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/terroristloutfits/lashkarleltoiba.htm (last accessed July 25, 2009). 36The author has visited the Lahore office in Char Burji. 37South Asia Terrorism Portal, ‘‘Lashkar-e-Toiba [sic]Army of the Pure.’’ 38For more detailed information about LeT/JuD leadership, see South Asia Terrorism Portal, 

‘‘Lashkar-e-Toiba ‘Army of the Pure.’ ’’ This source suggests the following structure: ‘‘the LeT 

leadership consisted of: Hafiz Mohammed Saeed (Supreme Commander); Zia-Ur-Rehman Lakhvi 

alias Chachaji (Supreme Commander, Kashmir); A. B. Rahman-Ur-Dakhil (Deputy Supreme 

Commander); Abdullah Shehzad alias Abu Anas alias Shamas (Chief Operations Commander, 

Valley); Abdul Hassan alias MY (Central Division Commander); Kari Saif-Ul-Rahman (North 

Division Commander); Kari Saif-Ul-Islam (Deputy Commander); Masood alias Mahmood (Area 

Commander, Sopore); Hyder-e-Krar alias CI (Deputy Commander, Bandipora); Usman Bhai 

alias Saif-Ul-Islam (Deputy Commander, Lolab); Abdul Nawaz (Deputy Commander, Sogam); 

Abu Rafi (Deputy Divisional Commander, Baramulla); Abdul Nawaz (Deputy Commander, 

Handwara); Abu Museb alias Saifulla (Deputy Commander, Budgam).’’ 39For more information about this see, Muhammad Amir Ranan (trans. Saba Ansari) ‘‘The 

A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan’’ (Lahore: Mashal, 2004). 40The author, working with Nadia Shoeb, Arif Jamal and the Combating Terrorism Center, 

is working on a database of LeT ‘‘shaheed’’ biographies obtain from their publications. These 

38 

observations are preliminary and derived from a database of 708 biographies of ‘‘martyrs.’’ Data 

extraction and analysis was done by Nadia Shoeb. 41See U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, ‘‘Chapter 6— 

Terrorist Organizations,’’ in Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, April 30, 2008. http:// 

www.state.gov/s/ct/r1s/crt/2007/103714.htm. Note that many other details in the State Department write up do not accord with knowledgeable sources on the organization. For example, it 

claims that most of the recruits come from madrassahs, which is not confirmed by analysts with 

deep familiarity of the organization who are cited throughout this article. 42South Asia Terrorism Portal, ‘‘Lashkar-e-Toiba ‘Army of the Pure’.’’ 43 Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain (Why We are Waging Jihad) (Lahore: 

Dar-ul-Andulus, 2004). 44 Abou Zahab, ‘‘I Shall be Waiting,’’ p. 138, Nadia Shoeb’s analysis of the LeT database at 

CTC. 45 C. Christine Fair, ‘‘The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan’’ (Washington, DC: USIP, 2008). 46Zahab, ‘‘I Shall be Waiting,’’ p. 140, Shafqat, ‘‘From Official Islam to Islamism,’’ p. 142; 

Nadia Shoeb’s analysis of the LeT database at CTC. 47Farhat Hag, ‘‘Militarism and Motherhood: The Women of the Lashkar-i-Tayyabia in Pakistan,’’ Signs 32 (2007): 1023–1046. 48 C. Christine Fair, ‘‘Students Islamic Movement of India and the Indian Mujahideen: An Assessment,’’ Asia Policy 9 (January 2010): 101–119. 49See Salman Masood and Waqar Gillani, ‘‘Blast at Pakistan Shrine Kills Dozens,’’ The New 

York Times, April 3, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/asia/ 

04pakistan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss. 50 ‘‘Deadly Blasts Hit Sufi Shrine in Lahore,’’ BBC.Com, 2 July, 2011. Available at http:// 

www.bbc.co.uk/news/10483453. 51 Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain, p. 42–45. Author’s translation from the Urdu text. 52 Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain, p. 42. Author’s translation from the Urdu text. 53 Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain, p. 43. Author’s translation from the Urdu text. 54 Hum Kyon Jihad Kar Rahen Hain, p. 6. Author’s translation from the Urdu text. 55 Nadia Shoeb analysis of 708 martyr biographies, unpublished. C. Christine Fair, ‘‘Militant 

Recruitment in Pakistan: Implications for Al-Qa’ida and Other Organizations,’’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27, No. 6 (November/December 2004): pp. 489–504. C. Christine Fair, ‘‘The 

Educated Militants of Pakistan: Implications for Pakistan’s Domestic Security,’’ Contemporary 

South Asia 16, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 93–106. 56 Amir Rana, ‘‘The A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan,’’ pp. 296–301. 57There are no reliable estimates for this. The census does not inquire of such things. Some 

surveys have included questions about confessional beliefs, but respondents may not answer 

such sensitive questions truthfully. C. Christine Fair, Neil Malhotra and Jacob N. Shapiro, 

drawing from a nationally representative survey of 6,000 Pakistanis, report that 8 percent of 

the respondents said that they were Ahl-e-Hadith. Christine Fair, Neil Malhotra and Jacob N. 

Shapiro, ‘‘Islam, Militancy, and Politics in Pakistan: Insights From a National Sample,’’ Terrorism and Political Violence 22, No. 4 (September 2010): pp. 495–521. 58See ‘‘Pakistani Group Under Fire After India Attacks,’’ Associated Press, December 5, 

20008. Available at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/05/ap/world/main4649577.shtml. 59Tahir Andrabi and Jishnu Das, ‘‘In Aid We Trust: Hearts and Minds and the Pakistan 

Earthquake of 2005,’’ World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5440, October 2010. 

Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstractlid=1688196; C. Christine Fair, 

‘‘Not at the Forefront of Flood Relief,’’ ForeignPolicy.com, September 20, 2010. 60 ‘‘Punjab Govt. Gave Rs 82m to JD: Papers,’’ The Dawn, June 16, 2010, available at http:// 

news.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/punjabgovt-gavers82m-to-jd-papers660; ‘‘Punjab Govt. Appoints Administrator for JuD,’’ GeoTv, January 25 2009, available at http://www.geo.tv/1-25-2009/33491.htm. 61This has been the case with the prosecution of LeT operative from Chicago, David Coleman 

Headley. See Rotella, ‘‘U.S. Prosecutors Indict 4 Pakistanis in Mumbai Attacks.’’ 62 Abou Zahab, ‘‘I Shall be Waiting at the Door of Paradise.’’ p. 135. 63The March 2011 U.S. congressional hearing on this topic generated a storm of controversy 

from both liberals and conservatives alike. See David A. Fahrenthold and Michelle Boorstein, 

‘‘Rep. Peter King’s Muslim hearing: Plenty of drama, less substance,’’ The Washington Post, 

March 11, 2011. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/ 

AR2011031002045.html. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Fair. I have to tell 

you, I read your testimony and my head is spinning. 

Dr. FAIR. Sorry about that. 

The CHAIRMAN. No. It’s really fascinating, and it’s incredibly important to understand what our options are. And I was particularly 

struck by your conclusion, that: ‘‘The implications of my argument 

is that a resolution of the Indo-Pakistan dispute, however improbable in the first instance, will not be sufficient to motivate Pakistan 

to strategically abandon LeT.’’ 

39 

Where does that leave us? I mean, my instinct as I listened to 

your explanation was: of these groups let’s not get in the middle 

of that, there’s not a lot we can do about it. 

So are we chasing ghosts in this negotiating process, or are there 

individuals with enough command and control over these various 

groups with whom we could negotiate a political settlement that 

would allow American forces to begin to withdraw from Afghanistan? 

Can each of you tackle that question? And I’d like your reactions 

to Dr. Fair’s description of the multiplicity of the different beliefs 

and components of these groups. Can they be brought together by 

a common interest or are we—and the Pakistanis—just going to 

have to struggle with this to resolve it? 

Mr. BERGEN. Senator Kerry, if we’d had this conversation 4 years 

ago, there are some things that have happened in Pakistan that 

would have been pretty unpredictable. I mean, a major operation 

in southern Waziristan in 2009 going after the Taliban, involving 

30,000 men, several months of air operations, a really serious military operation; also a serious military operation in Swat. They 

weren’t done to American counterinsurgency standards, but they 

were done. 

So the point is the Pakistani state is willing to do certain things 

and, as Chris pointed out, they’re particularly willing to do things 

against organizations that are damaging them. 

I think it’s going to be very, very, very difficult for the Pakistanis 

to abandon the Haqqani Network, although perhaps not impossible. 

At the end of the day—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Is it possible for them to reach some kind of understanding with the Haqqani Network if they bring them into the 

reconciliation process? 

Mr. BERGEN. To me that would be a very rational thing for them 

to do at the end of the day, and they are capable of doing that. And 

that would be an enormous way forward because, while Dr. Pillar 

is correct that the Afghan Taliban doesn’t have much of a relationship with al-Qaeda in the sense that Mullah Omar Taliban, as you 

know, al-Qaeda is being protected by the Haqqani Network. So the 

biggest key to moving forward is getting the Haqqani Network to 

basically change sides, and I don’t think that’s out of the question. 

But if I’m General Kayani, my main concern remains India, and 

as long as he sees India—Afghanistan as a source of Indian 

strength, he may not want to take the Haqqani card off the table. 

It’s not a very good answer to the question, but that’s my answer. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Pillar, would you respond also? 

Dr. PILLAR. Pakistan’s basic interests as they see them are fairly 

constant. But the strategy and tactics—and we’re really talking 

more about strategy and tactics here when we talk about relationships with the groups—are quite changeable. And I think they’re 

changeable under circumstances short of what we’d all like to see, 

which is some kind of resolution of the Kashmir problem and the 

conflict between India and Pakistan. 

If Pakistan can be part of a process in Afghanistan in which they 

see their interests vis-a-vis India and all their concerns about 

Afghanistan being their so-called strategic back yard sufficiently 

satisfied, then I think there is more changeability with regard to 

40 

their relationships with any of these groups, be it the Haqqani 

group or LT or anyone else. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you agree with Dr. Fair’s conclusion that 

even if there were an India-Pakistan rapprochement, resolution of 

that east border issue, that Lashkar-e-Taiba would continue to be 

present in Pakistan? 

Dr. PILLAR. I am somewhat more optimistic than Dr. Fair about 

what the implications would be if we could see substantial progress 

in the Indo-Pakistani equation. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of an endless vicious circle in that groups like LT and other groups have 

their own incentives to disrupt a peace process and a rapprochement between India and Pakistan, and I think that’s the main danger we face as the two sides have tentatively tried to get that process back on track. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Fair, I didn’t give you a chance to answer the 

question I originally asked you. You’ve heard Dr. Pillar suggest 

that perhaps improvements in the India-Pakistan relationship 

would have an impact on Lashkar-e-Taiba. Why do you feel it 

wouldn’t? 

Dr. FAIR. Well, for a number of reasons. One, I’ve really spent 

a lot of time investigating their literature. I also have at the Combating Terrorism Center an 810-size database of Lashkar-e-Taiba 

activists, and I’ve been following this group since 1995. I speak 

Urdu. I spend a lot of time in the region. 

So my assessment—I concede that if Lashkar-e-Taiba only had 

external utility then resolving the Indo-Pakistani security competition would be necessary, probably insufficient, to put that group 

down. But when you understand the domestic politics of the organization, when you understand that Lashkar-e-Taiba is a buffer and 

a bulwark to the Deobandi groups ravaging the state, you realize 

that it also has domestic utility. 

I believe I’m the first analyst to have gone through their materials in this way to discern this domestic utility. So I mean, that’s 

what I bring to the understanding of Lashkar-e-Taiba. 

If you’d like to know some of my thoughts about where that 

leaves us and what the options are, I’m happy to elaborate upon 

that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would indeed. 

Dr. FAIR. Well, the first thing is, not only are the groups themselves a spoiler, but the Pakistan Army is itself a spoiler. If it 

didn’t have the security competition with India, it wouldn’t justify 

its enormous claim to the resources in Pakistan and its central 

claim to being the only institution to protect the place would be 

substantially diminished. So the Pakistan Army is a huge spoiler 

and we have to keep that in mind. 

But we are incredibly constrained. There are potentially opportunities to work with the Pakistanis where we have joint threats— 

al-Qaeda, the Pakistan Taliban—but for a number of reasons over 

the last year they want us out, and so our space to operate with 

them is very, very low. 

In particular, they want us out because their assets—Haqqani, 

Lashkar-e-Taiba—are our enemies, and they know that partly 

we’re there to deal with those threats and they want us out. So 

we’re very constrained. 

41 

I would say even—— 

The CHAIRMAN. When you say they want us out, is that because 

they perceive us as contributing to their problem? 

Dr. FAIR. There are multiple answers to that. First, they know 

we’re there because we want to take out their assets. Would we not 

like to take out Haqqani with a drone? Would we not like to have 

cells going after Lashkar-e-Taiba? They know that’s what we’re up 

to and they don’t want that to happen. 

That being said, their interpretation of why they’re having an insurgency is not proxies gone bad or blowback. They see that they 

have this internal militancy because we have forced them to turn 

against these groups in a moderated jihad strategy, making them 

rebel against the state. So no matter what Kayani says—I’ve spent 

a lot of time with Pakistani military officers, particularly below the 

rank of lieutenant colonel, so you have a different optic—they want 

us out of Afghanistan because when this happens they will see in 

their view that the alignment between the military, the mullah, 

and the militant groups will come back into alignment and those 

groups will go back to business fighting in India and Afghanistan. 

The CHAIRMAN. But if you accept that—and I’m not arguing with 

you; I think that there are clearly divergent interests to some degree. But that actually provides a rationale for why they should 

want to contain Haqqani and bring him into the peace process: it 

would get the United States out of Afghanistan faster. 

Dr. FAIR. So I’m not—I wasn’t asked to speak on the impact of 

reconciliation on Pakistan. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, what about the reality of that? 

Dr. FAIR. But I think—here’s the thing about Pakistan. We talk 

about the Taliban with some kind of historical continuity. That’s 

not a proper approach. We’ve been eliminating a lot of the midlevel commanders and they’re replacing them. 

The Pakistanis know that many of these commanders that have 

come in to fill those empty slots are not only much more international focused—they’re no longer simply focused on Afghanistan. 

They’re much more ideological, and they also hate the ISI. They 

rightly understand that the ISI is trying to use them to project 

Pakistan’s interests. 

So Pakistan actually has a much more sophisticated approach to 

these groups than we perhaps appreciate or we do ourselves. 

They’re trying to deal with the Quetta Shura. They’re putting pressure on their families to get them to tow the line. But they’re really 

trying to find a way of dealing with these commanders that are no 

longer within their ambit. 

So Pakistan has a multipronged strategy of dealing with the 

splintering that’s taken place in the Taliban. And they have the advantage of geography. They have the advantage of language skills 

and longstanding ISI assets that have been working with these 

guys. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, there’s more to follow up on that. But I 

don’t disagree with you that they have a better sense of their own 

interests and strategy than we sometimes give them credit for, and 

that is a reality in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Senator Lugar. 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

42 

Dr. Pillar, I don’t want to oversimplify your analysis, but I just 

want to mention that I made notes that you suggested the Taliban 

will persist in Afghanistan in one form or another, and that the 

Taliban will continue to not want al-Qaeda in Afghanistan because 

their presence induced the United States to come in and remove 

the Taliban from power after the September 11 terrorist attacks. 

But in any event, I believe it is important to note the assertion 

that if the Taliban keep al-Qaeda out and continue to make their 

way in the Government of Afghanistan, they would not constitute 

a strategic threat to the United States. While they may have a miserable existence in Afghanistan, this would not present an external 

threat to us. 

Now, next door, however, with regard to Pakistan, I was just 

simply making notes of the panel’s assertion that it is unlikely the 

United States is going to be able to help reorganize Pakistan into 

a situation that we believe is good for the Pakistanis and good for 

us. All of you, including Dr. Fair, have gone through the crosscurrents of actors that are currently there and are likely to remain. 

We touched briefly on the fact that, as miserable as the situation 

in Pakistan may be for Pakistan itself, India, and maybe its other 

neighbors, the strategic threat this poses to the United States still 

is not always apparent. Now, the exception to this is the point 

made from time to time of the threat this state of affairs poses to 

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons complex. Specifically, should instability 

enable terrorists to gain access, whatever be their nationality, to 

fissile material or other sensitive nuclear assets, this could pose a 

strategic threat to the United States, as their proliferation through 

the Khan network has before. 

Again, I don’t want to oversimplify the problem, but it seems to 

me that I started with the thought that a lot of the debate outside 

of this committee revolves around why we have 100,000 troops in 

Afghanistan, whether or not such a presence should be sustained, 

and why some predict that our presence will continue for a long 

time. 

Is this debate continuing because of humanitarian impulses on 

our part? How do you respond to those in the United States who 

ask: ‘‘What goes on here and why does it continue?’’ 

Dr. PILLAR. Senator Lugar, I agree very much with the perspective that you offered in terms of Pakistan versus Afghanistan. In 

direct response to your question, I think it partly is the humanitarian consideration. There are a lot of questions raised about the 

status of women, about human rights issues. And I think it’s partly 

just because we haven’t found an appropriate off-ramp. 

In my judgment, Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001 was 

a just and appropriate response to the terrorist outrage of 9/11. It 

was a military action aimed directly at the group that did that and 

the movement that at the time was hosting it. We accomplished the 

objective in the opening weeks and months of Operation Enduring 

Freedom of ousting the Taliban from its position of power over 

three-fourths of Afghanistan and rousting Taliban from its thensafe haven. And then we just had a hard time finding the off-ramp. 

I think in these discussions of Afghanistan versus Pakistan and 

much of the discourse in this country we’ve tended to lose sight of 

what is the end and what is the means. I agree with everything 

43 

you said, sir, about the vulnerabilities and concerns in Pakistan, 

particularly with regard to nuclear weapons. But if we were to 

zero-base this problem we would not address it by conducting a 

counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. 

Senator LUGAR. All right, let’s say we were to perceive a proliferation threat posed by an unstable Pakistan and move to address this threat. Is there a way of handling this without tens of 

thousands of boots on the ground? In other words, some have suggested what we ought to be doing is a much more concentrated 

intelligence operation that would touch not only upon Pakistan, but 

also a good number of other situations in the Middle East and 

Africa. Do any of you have a response as to why we should be involved in Pakistan? 

Dr. Fair. 

Dr. FAIR. Well, frankly, if it weren’t for those nuclear weapons 

Pakistan would have been sorted out, with far less complexity. It’s 

under their nuclear umbrella that they use their militant groups 

safely. So this is the crux of the problem. 

I do fear that we misframe the nuclear scenario. So for example, 

if their nuclear establishment could be infiltrated undesirably by 

Islamist elements, others could presumably do so, the Indians, us, 

Mossad. So when it comes to undesirable infiltration, our incentives are quite aligned. 

There are periods when those weapons become much more vulnerable. So during their peacetime deployments the warheads 

aren’t assembled and they’re not mated to the delivery systems, but 

as a conflict with India begins to escalate they begin mating the 

warheads and they begin mating them and forward-deploying them 

with their delivery assets, and that’s when command and control 

becomes really murky. 

So if I were a terrorist and I understand how the Pakistani security establishment deals with nuclear weapons, that’s when I would 

try to do something nefarious. 

The other issue that I am worried about is, just as Aslam Beg 

in the 1980s deliberately chose to proliferate to Iran to undermine 

our security interests, we cannot rule out the possibility that the 

Pakistani state would deliberately do that. Now, I’m not saying it’s 

immensely probable, but things are pretty tough, and Aslam Beg 

certainly did that to undermine us strategically. 

So I would suggest that we think about the nuclear problem in 

a much more wider capacity, and this requires different kinds of 

intelligence. So for example, if there were to be a state transfer 

that again would be another opportunity where nefarious elements 

could interdict them. So this does require us to be on the ground, 

which is why when I hear people talking about pulling out of Pakistan I’m very apprehensive, because we can’t monitor the situation 

without assets in Pakistan. 

Senator LUGAR. Do any of you have any comment on the Pakistanis working with the Chinese recently and the thought of a 

naval base for the Chinese in Pakistan? Is this simply a reaction 

against Osama bin Laden’s killing or do the Pakistanis see this as 

fulfilling their broader interests? 

Yes, Dr. Fair. 

44 

Dr. FAIR. Well, actually the base at Gwadar has been built with 

Chinese assistance, as is well known, and there’s not a lot of speculation about the nature of that port. It’s a deepwater port. 

We also have to understand the context of what China wants. 

China wants to have access to move its ‘‘dangerous goods’’ in and 

out of and through Pakistan. But it also should be seen in context 

of India’s security competition with Pakistan. I’m not sure if you’re 

aware of the Indian port that’s being built in Iran in Chabahar, 

which is just a few hundred kilometers along the Makran coast of 

Gwadar. So there is an element of this which cues off of the IndoPakistan security competition. 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Senator Cardin. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I 

thank our three witnesses. 

Clearly the United States has a great interest in Pakistan. Dr. 

Fair, I don’t think any of us are suggesting that we ignore Pakistan, but there are mixed signals here that are very, very troubling, and that the United States needs to be able to have alternatives for carrying out its foreign policy in that region. I know 

that that’s part of our strategies. 

Let me sort of underscore this. Pakistan’s critically important for 

many reasons, not the least of which its nuclear capacity and the 

current safe haven for terrorist organizations and the importance 

of staging for us in Afghanistan. But it’s also clear that LT is a terrorist organization. The United States should have a pretty clear 

position as to how we deal with terrorist organizations and we 

should leave no ambiguity. Pakistan has to choose sides on what 

side it is on the war against terror. And they’re giving mixed signals today, not just the bin Laden circumstances. 

But yesterday in Chicago, at the David Headley trial a confessed 

Pakistan-American terrorist testified that ISI and LT coordinated 

with each other and ISI provided assistance to Lashkar, financial, 

military, and moral support. Now, I don’t know how the United 

States can just ignore this. It seems to me that we need to be able 

to confront Pakistan’s support for terrorist organizations. And 

United States taxpayers are providing support to Pakistan today, 

and that’s an issue that will come to the attention of the United 

States Congress. 

So it’s going to hit a crisis point if we cannot get Pakistan to support the war against terror, including terrorist organizations which 

are in their own state. So what are our choices? What do we do 

about that? 

Dr. Fair. 

Dr. FAIR. First of all, we need to take some responsibility. Pakistan has never given us anything but these signals. We dismissed 

Lashkar-e-Taiba for years as India’s threat. Pakistan never turned 

its back on Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan did a u-turn on its u-turn 

with the Taliban very early in the conflict and there were no consequences because we had other preoccupations that did not allow 

us to have the fortitude that we should have had to be more forthright with Pakistan. 

45 

I’ll point out that, to my utter astonishment—I wasn’t astonished; I was disappointed—the Secretary of State certified that 

Pakistan was in compliance with the conditionalities on security 

assistance vis-a-vis Kerry-Lugar-Berman. This was done on March 

18, despite full knowledge that we were engaging in an operation 

to get bin Laden, despite full knowledge that the Pakistani state 

has continued to harbor and assist Lashkar-e-Taiba, among other 

elements. 

So we have to, I think, be honest and self-reflective. Why is it 

that we have been unable to actually enforce what already is in our 

own legislation? The reality is, however, we don’t have a lot of 

options with Lashkar-e-Taiba. We know from the Raymond Davis 

affair it’s very difficult to operate in that terrain. The ISI knows 

what we’re up to and they’re seeking to undermine it. 

I do think we have options to contain it. Let me put something 

somewhat obnoxious on the table. Lashkar-e-Taiba’s largest theater 

of operations for its support is in Pacific Command, where we actually have a lot of assets and we have a lot of partners. We should 

be aggressively targeting Lashkar-e-Taiba’s assets in the Pacific 

Command, in Europe, in North America. They can’t do what they 

do without outside support. 

So while it may sound somewhat disappointing that we don’t 

have more aggressive options, I think we have more options than 

we believe. I think we should also think about targeting specific individuals for which we have evidence that are directly supporting 

Lashkar-e-Taiba, as opposed to taking a broad stroke brush and 

going after the entire organization. I think this requires us to be 

more collaborative with our allies. 

And Pakistan, if we were to go after Lashkar-e-Taiba and their 

network of support in Thailand, what could Pakistan credibly say? 

Shame on you for going after our network in Thailand? 

Senator CARDIN. I want to go against terrorist organizations, 

don’t get me wrong. My question is Pakistan’s complicity here—— 

Dr. FAIR. Well, what are our—— 

Senator CARDIN [continuing]. And the United States, and we’re 

providing aid to Pakistan. We have a pretty strict rule about not 

providing aid that can be filtered off to support terrorist organizations. If ISI and LT really have a close relationship, then there’s 

a real concern as to whether U.S. funds are being used to support 

terrorist organizations. 

Dr. FAIR. But if we didn’t have that engagement, sir, we 

would—— 

Senator CARDIN. I understand we always need to have strategic 

partners. But we have a clear rule on terrorism. 

Dr. FAIR [continuing]. We wouldn’t have been able to have our 

CIA assets in place in Pakistan to, for example, kill Osama bin 

Laden. So there’s no other country like Pakistan, that represents 

such a convergence of severe national security threats that we’re 

really operating in a trade space. I would argue that we are limited 

in Lashkar-e-Taiba—— 

The CHAIRMAN. A trade space? 

Dr. FAIR. In other words, we’re constantly making tradeoffs—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Trading space. 

46 

Dr. FAIR [continuing]. With Pakistan. It’s a unique country. 

There’s no other country—I will add, Iran might be one in the 

future—that operates with militant groups under its Islamic— 

under its nuclear umbrella. 

But we are constantly having to make tradeoffs with Pakistan. 

Our only long-term hope, quite frankly, is that we can continue to 

provide investments that will allow the civilians over the secular 

time period to take control of security governance. We need to be 

at every opportunity helping Pakistan’s parliamentarians, their 

various committees in the Parliament on defense and intelligence, 

to do their job. Our only hope, howsoever slim, that Pakistan will 

reverse course is if the civilians can exert control over security governance, and that means staying in there. 

Senator CARDIN. Is ISI in your view supporting and coordinating 

its activities with LT? 

Dr. FAIR. It certainly is. Pakistan is the arsonist and it’s the fireman. It will help us on groups that it shares the sense that it is 

a threat, but yes, it is my assessment it is continuing to work with 

LeT in a very close way. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Cardin. 

Senator Udall. 

Senator UDALL. Thank you, Chairman Kerry, and thank you for 

holding this hearing. I think it’s been a very, very good discussion 

so far. 

Let me focus in a little bit on a little bit different tack, but the 

trial in Chicago that’s going on. That hasn’t been mentioned yet, 

and obviously the testimony as it comes out I think is going to 

show the ties with the ISI and I think has the potential to once 

again erupt into a problematic situation for United States and Pakistani relations. Could you all talk a little bit about that and where 

you think that’s going? Obviously, you may not know all of the trial 

testimony, but I think a lot of that is out there right now. Any of 

you that want to jump in is fine. 

Dr. PILLAR. Well, obviously when you have a trial with public 

testimony some things are forced into the open that might otherwise have been dealt with behind closed doors. But in response to 

your question, sir, and also Senator Cardin’s issues, I think after 

the raid at Abbottabad the United States has some additional 

leverage over Pakistan. It was a huge embarrassment to the Pakistani military. I think the administration, our administration, 

played it about right in not publicly rubbing the Pakistanis’ nose 

in that bit of dirt. 

I would hope and assume that behind closed doors there are conversations going on that do take the form of confrontation, as Senator Cardin mentioned. So that would be the main point I would 

add, that behind closed doors, out of the public, we take a rather 

tough line and don’t shy away from confrontation. But to publicly 

make an issue of it is not going to advance our cause. 

Senator UDALL. Just to stop you there, I think that’s a lot of 

what Senator Kerry was doing in the last couple of weeks over 

there, my understanding. Go ahead, please. 

Dr. FAIR. One thing about the trial with David Coleman Headley 

taking the stand, we have to also remember that what he says, 

47 

howsoever inflammatory, may not be true. So I’ve been concerned 

about the injudicious reporting of what he said. Obviously, he’s a 

terrorist. He’s unreliable. The basis of the plea bargain was that 

he was going to make these claims. 

That being said, I also believe that the fundamental lineaments 

of his claims are true. But I believe it’s a marginal revelation. We 

already knew the ISI was behind this. 

But I’m going to basically take the point that Senator Kerry 

made, that Lashkar-e-Taiba is so close to the Pakistan ISI and to 

the army that this is a very serious redline for them, and meaningful steps to go after that group along with Haqqani, as long as we 

have this large counterinsurgency footprint that has to be resupplied—I think it’s going to be very difficult to make consensus 

across the interagency process to do something where the Pakistanis would try to inhibit our resupply of those troops. The Northern Distribution Route’s not a viable options. 

So this is one of the numerous reasons why I was a proponent 

of counterterrorism plus, if for no other reason than to diminish 

our dependence on Pakistan, where we have a greater space to be 

much more forceful on this particular issue. But when we are trying to deal with our troops and keep them safe in Afghanistan, I 

think it’s going to be very difficult to stomach the kinds of things 

that we would have to do to get Pakistan to be aggressive on 

Lashkar-e-Taiba. 

Senator UDALL. Peter, do you have any thoughts on this? 

Mr. BERGEN. No. 

Senator UDALL. Thank you, Senator Kerry. I appreciate it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Udall. 

This is really a very complicated set of choices and interactions. 

Dr. Pillar, from your experience within the agency tell us how we 

ought to be looking at the ISI. People sometimes refer to the ‘‘three 

governments’’ in Pakistan, in the following order: the army, the 

ISI, and the civilian government. Would you say the ISI has that 

much independence, and does it have the autonomy and capacity 

to affect things on its own? Or can the army control what the ISI 

does and, if so, what are the options with respect to the ISI and 

these splinter groups that serve their purposes? 

Dr. PILLAR. I don’t think we should talk about the ISI and the 

army as if they were two entities. The ISI is part of the military 

establishment and there has been a fair amount of cross-assignment, if you will, at the top, including chiefs of the general staff 

who have been themselves directors of ISI. 

With regard to the first part of your question, Mr. Chairman, the 

relationship with ISI is perhaps a particularly outstanding example 

of one that we do see elsewhere around the world, of an intelligence and security service that—and this is generally true of the 

more authoritarian governments that we have to deal with—has 

enormous clout. So the service-to-service relationship is not just a 

mundane, let’s exchange information every Tuesday kind of thing, 

but rather one in which we realize and they realize this is an important channel for intergovernmental relations. From our standpoint we are talking to people who really matter. 

So I agree with Christine Fair that having the presence, having 

the relationship, is important for our purposes. It’s always a 

48 

matter, and it’s certainly a matter between us and the ISI, of both 

shared interests and conflicting interests. It is a game, if I may use 

that word, not to trivialize it, in which both sides are trying to get 

as much as they can from the other, realizing that it is partly on 

matters in which our interests are shared, but also on which they 

conflict. 

You can never trust entirely the other side, but you can’t fail to 

do business with them, either. We are highly dependent on liaison 

services in general, particularly on counterterrorism, even though 

there is not a single one that we can say we trust totally. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can the Pakistanis take the actions they need to 

take in order to deal with the Pakistani Taliban, without upsetting 

their relationships with Lashkar-e-Taiba, with Haqqani, and the 

other groups? 

Dr. PILLAR. That’s an example of where our interests do run parallel. Neither we nor the Pakistani establishment wants to see 

those forces become more of a problem than they already are. I 

think the way you handle it is the way in effect we and the Pakistanis have handled it with some of the drone strikes, where we 

have this charade in which we have used some of that capability 

against Pakistani Taliban targets. That’s in our interest, that’s in 

the Pakistani military’s interest as well. But part of the charade 

is they protest and pretend that it was all our business and they 

don’t like it. I’m afraid that’s the kind of game we’ll have to continue to play. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, let me perhaps differ with you slightly on 

that, having conversations with them recently. I think they’re more 

perturbed about those drone strikes than you think, and I think it 

goes beyond being a game, as you call it. I think they are paying 

a high political price for the strikes. I think that, depending on the 

targets, they’re not that thrilled. And I think there’s a lot more 

serious pushback to the drones now than we’ve seen in any recent 

time. 

Dr. PILLAR. I did not mean to minimize the genuine resentment 

that certainly is felt among parts of the population, and that then 

gets transmitted as well through the government. I was only trying 

to make the point that this is another area where the interests are 

partly conflicting and partly shared. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I agree with that. 

Mr. Bergen, what about the capacity for them to move against 

the indigenous insurgency and work hand in hand with us as a 

consequence? To what degree do these splinter groups pull them 

away from that on a constant basis? 

Mr. BERGEN. As you know, sir, the Pakistani Taliban mounted 

a 20-hour attack on the equivalent of their Pentagon in October 

2009. That was all carried live on Pakistani television. Imagine if 

there was a 20-hour attack by a group of terrorists on the Pentagon 

here carried live on CNN. That really got the attention of the 

military. 

There have been also four, by the way, attacks on ISI buildings 

by these militants. So the ISI itself is a target of some of these 

militants. 

So I think that has been an opportunity. As you know, more 

Pakistani soldiers have died fighting these militants than United 

49 

States and NATO soldiers combined. So everything that we said 

today is true—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I think that’s an important thing to put on the 

table here. 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Some 30,000 Pakistani civilians have died at the 

hands of their insurgency and over 5,000 troops have died in the 

Swat Valley and in Waziristan fighting the insurgency. People 

don’t either know about these losses or they discount them as they 

think about the relationship. 

Mr. BERGEN. I couldn’t agree with you more, sir. And as a result 

of which, the Taliban had a sort of religious Robin Hood image 

until several years ago, but support for the Taliban’s suicide bombing and al-Qaeda has cratered. So that’s what makes this a very 

complex picture. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lugar. I know we only have about 10 

minutes before we need to go to the floor. 

Senator LUGAR. I defer to Senator Menendez. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Menendez. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 

all. I’d been catching snippets from my office while meeting with 

constituents, and heard some incredibly thoughtful answers. 

Despite our incredible military presence in Afghanistan, there 

are supposedly only between 50 and 100 or some odd al-Qaeda 

fighters in the country. Nevertheless, General Petraeus has warned 

that if the United States abandons the counterinsurgency approach 

and significantly draws down forces, various international terrorist 

organizations would exploit that opening and flood into Afghanistan. 

Do you believe that to be the case? What is the nature of the 

threat of the Afghan Taliban? Is it a terrorist threat to the United 

States? Is it a threat limited to the potential destabilization of a 

weak Afghan Government? What’s your view of that? 

Mr. BERGEN. I think getting focused on the numbers of al-Qaeda 

is kind of a red herring. On 9/11 there were 200 members of 

al-Qaeda and they inflicted the most devastating terrorist attack in 

history on the United States. 

It’s not just about al-Qaeda. The President, for very obvious political reasons, has defined it thusly, but there are a lot of other reasons we’re there. When the Taliban ran Afghanistan, every Muslim 

insurgent and terrorist group in the world was either headquartered or based there, and that alphabet soup has just migrated 

across a border that they don’t recognize into Pakistan. 

So the idea that somehow the Pakistani Taliban is very different 

from the Afghan Taliban doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me. 

After all, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, lives in 

Pakistan. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of another Taliban 

group, lives in Pakistan. The Haqqani Network, which is the 

Afghan Taliban, so-called, is in Pakistan. 

So I think that General Petraeus and others who have made the 

point are not saying it’s just about the al-Qaeda—it’s about preventing a return to the pre-9/11 Afghanistan, where it was basically a sort of Woodstock for every jihadist group from around the 

globe. And that is a reasonable concern. 

50 

I think that there are just two or three quick other points that 

I want to make. We also have a sort of moral obligation when we 

overthrow somebody else’s government to kind of not leave the 

place, to kind of pick up the pieces. And we’ve already done this 

twice in Afghanistan. We closed our Embassy there in 1989. Into 

the vacuum came the Taliban allied with al-Qaeda. We did it again 

in 2002 because of an ideological opposition to nation-building by 

the Bush administration. There were only 6,000 American soldiers 

in Afghanistan in 2003. That’s the size of the police department in 

Houston, in a country the size of Texas, with a population 10 times 

larger. 

So we’ve run the counterterrorism do-it-light approach. We’ve 

done that already. And it’s not just about al-Qaeda or other groups 

we need to be concerned about. An unstable Afghanistan makes an 

unstable Pakistan. We’ve already discussed why that’s important. 

Finally, the Taliban are the Taliban. You know, these are not a 

bunch of Henry Kissingers in waiting who are going to preside over 

some sort of wonderful settlement in Afghanistan. These are people 

who incarcerated half the population in their houses, who continue 

to poison girls going to school in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who 

have massacred Shias and others, and who imposed a theocratic 

reign of terror on a population. So it’s not just about 65 members 

of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

Dr. FAIR. I would like to offer a dissenting view. I get very frustrated when people say, well, we did counterterrorism early on and 

therefore it didn’t work and therefore it won’t work now. It’s a disingenuous argument, because all of the material conditions between then and now have changed. So if you’re going to evaluate 

counterterrorism in 2002 and counterterrorism today, you need to 

consider all these intervening variables. 

Moreover, we’re not talking about 2,000 people in Afghanistan 

with a counterterrorism-plus footprint. We’re talking about remaining in a position to continue training the Afghan National Security 

Forces. There are 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces, of 

varying degrees of capacity, mostly not that terribly impressive. 

But the idea that the Taliban are going to roll back into Kabul 

under the current conditions I think is somewhat ridiculous. 

I think President Karzai would like us to stay there for the training. I think he’d be happy to let us have access to bases to continue 

gathering intelligence on al-Qaeda. He doesn’t want al-Qaeda 

there, either. 

I also think that the contemporary argument that says that if we 

don’t have a 130,000-person footprint in Afghanistan that our intelligence will decrease—there is no evidence to believe that that’s 

correct. In fact, we could argue equally that when we’re no longer 

engaging in operations that Afghans despise because it hasn’t 

brought them a personal security dividend, maybe our intelligence 

will actually improve. 

So I think that we really need to put into the public debate questions: How tied are they to al-Qaeda? As Dr. Pillar said, we can’t 

rely upon the historical narratives of the 1990s to assume this relationship persists. Things have changed; so have they. Our analysis 

has to change. We have to ask, what is the nature of our intelligence? Is it so great today? Probably not. Might it improve if we 

51 

weren’t alienating the Afghans with this counterinsurgency footprint? Possibly. 

So I’d like to put on the table a very strong dissent from the picture outlined by Mr. Bergen. 

Dr. PILLAR. The Afghan Taliban, as I mentioned before, is not an 

international terrorist group. It’s concerned about events inside 

Afghanistan. It has no support for the whole transnational terrorist 

idea as represented by bin Laden. 

The one other point I want to emphasize follows on Christine’s 

comments about how things have changed and how the 1990s is 

not today. When I was working on counterterrorism in the 1990s 

and we were worried about bin Laden in Afghanistan—and this 

goes back before 9/11, before even the Embassy bombings in 1998; 

we’re talking about the 1997 era—and the Clinton administration 

was wrestling with this, well, we still had the gloves on then. And 

we knew where bin Laden was, but there wasn’t the public support 

for using military force. 

When we had our Embassies bombed in 1998 and President Clinton responded with a cruise missile strike—which seems like a pinprick now, doesn’t it—he was criticized for using excessive military 

force, for trying to divert attention away from domestic political 

matters. Now, clearly, ever since 9/11 the gloves have really come 

off. 

So if there was anything even remotely resembling the kind of 

foreign terrorist presence in Afghanistan that we saw in the 1990s, 

we’d do a lot more than just one cruise missile strike, even if we 

weren’t waging a counterinsurgency on the ground. We would basically bomb the heck out of it, and everyone knows that and the 

Taliban knows that. 

Senator MENENDEZ. These are very thoughtful answers. Listening to Mr. Bergen, I ask, do we have a real partner in Afghanistan 

to meet our goals as you describe them? And at what cost and for 

how long, seems to me to be a really significant question to decide 

where we go at the end of the day. 

Mr. BERGEN. Since our time is short, let me just give you a very 

quick answer to that. Our partner is the Afghan people, not the 

Afghan Government as represented by President Karzai. The most 

common—— 

Senator MENENDEZ. But we don’t get to work directly with the 

Afghan people. We get to work with their elected representatives. 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, Karzai, his time is limited. He’s going to be 

out of office in 2014, and there are people already forming, very 

effective politicians, to challenge him. So the most common polling 

question you can ask is: Is your life getting better? In America only 

30 percent of Americans think their country’s going in the right 

direction. Fifty-nine percent of Afghans think their country’s going 

in the right direction, because they know life is better than it 

was under the Taliban during the civil war, during the Soviet 

occupation. 

So our partnership is with the Afghan people, who know that 

their lives are getting better, can see the advantages of not living 

under the Taliban. And they want us to stay. They were very concerned about us leaving in July of this year and the fact that we 

52 

put December 2014 on the clock is something that they’re very 

happy about. 

Senator MENENDEZ. One last question if I may, Mr. Chairman. 

Now that bin Laden is dead, is al-Zawahiri or anyone else able 

to bring al-Qaeda together? 

Mr. BERGEN. When you joined the Nazi Party, you swore a personal oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, not to Naziism. When Adolf 

Hitler died, Naziism basically died with it. It’s not an exact analogy, but when you joined al-Qaeda you swore a personal oath of allegiance to bin Laden. No one else can fit into his shoes. 

Ayman al-Zawahiri, if he took over, would be great because he 

would drive what remains of the organization into the ground. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, all of you. I’ve been trying to fit this image: Given 

the Taliban attitude about music, I’m trying to work out this Woodstock analogy. [Laughter.] 

But it’s an interesting challenge. 

That said, this is fascinating and tough and complicated, and we 

need to talk more. What I want to do is what we did with another 

panel, which is to ask you if you would make yourselves available 

so we could have some sessions just with the committee to quietly 

dig into these issues. 

But it’s been enormously helpful and I thank all of you. The dissent on the panel is equally helpful. We want you here because you 

do have different points of view about it, and it tests our thinking. 

So we’re very appreciative to all three of you. 

As I said, your full testimonies really are exemplary, each of you. 

Thank you for putting the time into them, and they’re important 

and are now part of the record. And we look forward to following 

up with you in other venues as we go forward in these next weeks 

and months thinking about this. 

It’s a critical issue to the country and it’s not going to go away 

quickly, either. So we’ve got a lot of thinking to do and a lot of 

work to do. 

Thank you very much for being here today. We stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 10:23 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

Æ