Bush At War Part 22

The ma.s.sive violence the U.S. could bring was finally being coordinated.

Well after lunch, Army Lieutenant Colonel Tony Crawford, an intelligence specialist and executive a.s.sistant to Rice, walked into her corner West Wing office.

"Mazar has fallen," he said. "We're getting reports that Mazar has fallen."

"What does that mean?" Rice asked skeptically. "Are they in the center of the city? What does 'Mazar has fallen' mean?" Crawford said he would go find out what it meant. He was back shortly to report that Dostum's troops were indeed in the center of the city. The locals were throwing off their Taliban clothing. They were celebrating, sheep were being sacrificed. Women were waving, cheering and clapping.

What does the national security adviser do in such a situation? She turned on CNN, which confirmed the reports, and called Rumsfeld to tell him the news.

"Well," he replied, "we'll see."

His view was that first reports are almost always wrong, and this sounded like one that was. Maybe it fell today, and maybe it won't have fallen tomorrow.

Rice walked down to tell the president. He had already heard. "That's good," he said, controlling his enthusiasm.

She noticed that he didn't get out a cigar to chew - a standard sign of genuine celebration.

Bush recalled eight months later, "The thing I do remember is the mating up of the such-and-such Northern Alliance guy and so-and-so and they're heading up the valley whatever it was."

But at the time Bush asked Rice, "Well, what next?"

AT 4:05 THAT afternoon the president welcomed Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, a Princeton-educated economist and businessman, for a private meeting. "We have to show solidarity to get rid of the terrorists in Afghanistan," Saud told him.

"I think Osama bin Laden hates you more than he hates me," Bush said.

"It's an honor to be hated by someone like him," the prince replied. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The Saudis believed that bin Laden specifically chose Saudi hijackers to cause a schism between the U.S. and themselves.

"We will not do anything to damage the U.S. economy," Saud said. The Saudis supplied about 8 percent of the oil consumed daily in the U.S. They could cut production and drive prices sky high.

On Sat.u.r.day, Bush flew to New York City for a morning address to the United Nations General a.s.sembly and called for the creation of a Palestinian state.

At the Waldorf Towers suite, the traditional lodging for presidents, Bush had his first meeting with Pakistani President Musharraf.

"You're in an extraordinarily difficult position," Bush said, "but you made the right choice."

"We are with you," the Pakistani leader said. "We will take as much time as it takes."

"I want it to end early," Bush said. He was playing to one of Musharraf's major concerns. "It's important to find the enemy and use every resource." But he added a new dimension. He had become fascinated with the ability of the National Security Agency to intercept phone calls and other communications worldwide. If they got the key phone calls, future terrorism might be stopped, certainly curtailed. Bush summarized his strategy: "Listen to every phone call and close them down and protect the innocents."

Musharraf said that despite the evidence and the concerns, he did not think bin Laden and al Qaeda had nuclear devices. He was worried that the Northern Alliance, a bunch of tribal thugs, would take over Afghanistan.

"I fully understand your concern about the Northern Alliance," Bush said.

Musharraf said his deep fear was that the United States would in the end abandon Pakistan, and that other interests would crowd out the war on terrorism.

Bush fixed his gaze. "Tell the Pakistani people that the president of the United States looked you in the eye and told you we wouldn't do that."

Musharraf brought up an article in The New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, alleging that the Pentagon, with the help of an Israeli special operations unit, had contingency plans to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons should the country become unstable.

"Seymour Hersh is a liar," Bush replied.

After 6 P.M. that evening, Bush and Musharraf went to the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria to make statements and answer a few questions from reporters.

What about the Northern Alliance taking Kabul? "We will encourage our friends to head south, across the Shamali Plains, but not into the city of Kabul," Bush said.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, at the NSC meeting, Hank described the movement on the ground with a map. "In the north, Taliban forces are now trapped in Konduz, but they are continuing to fight. We've advised the Russians. They are going to deploy forces on the Tajik border to interdict the Taliban if they seek to go into Tajikistan." Tens of thousands of Russian troops were secretly coming to a.s.sist. Bush was delighted. Putin was going to visit the United States the next day.

"In Bamiyan, there's a combined Special Forces team with Khalili," Hank said. "Khalili has occupied Bamiyan. He's moving to Wardak, and then he's going to go to Kabul. Ismail Khan has taken Herat."

The real surprise was Kabul, Hank said. Some 10,000 to 12,000 troops were moving in groups of 500 on the capital. The resistance was light. "It's a risk that the Taliban will sh.e.l.l Kabul from a ridge to the south."

"That's a good target for our air strikes," the president said. He realized such air strikes might be turning the tide, that the earth was starting to move.

One Pashtun commander with 4,000 fighters had joined the Northern Alliance leader Fahim to march on Kabul. "He's going to drive south. He's going to pick up some Pashtun commanders and move south of Kabul," Hank said. "Ismail Khan is prepared to go down the ring road to Kandahar.

"Here's what we've got working in the south. We've got Karzai, he's hooked up with some elders in Uruzgan Province." They were working with individual commanders with very small numbers of fighters, some larger networks, even some tribals near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. For the tribals closer to the Pakistani border, in Khowst and Paktia, Hank said, "We're engaging our Peshawar office to get in contact with them."

Hank said they were trying to accelerate contacts in the south now that the north had begun to move. It was important to keep the balance between north and south so that all elements would have a legitimate claim to partic.i.p.ate in the post-Taliban government.

The deputy interior minister of the Northern Alliance said he had 500 men inside Kabul, reportedly to quell an outbreak of violence. But the hard-core fighters were in the eastern provinces near Tora Bora and the Pakistani border.

It was a stunning turn of events - the Northern Alliance and enough southern commanders were joining together to stabilize Kabul - at least in the short run.

"In Mazar, the Northern Alliance forces are now in control up to the Friendship Bridge," Rumsfeld said. That could open the land resupply route. The Uzbeks, who had closed the bridge in 1996 when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, had said they would not open it until the southern part of it was secure. For the first time now, friendly tribals were right up there on the southern part of the bridge.

"That will open it up to humanitarian a.s.sistance," Rumsfeld said. Potentially millions of tons of food, medical supplies, clothing and other a.s.sistance could flow into Afghanistan.

"The Northern Alliance has taken Taloqan. It is surrendered, there is not much resistance. You've got two teams, 28 people each, on the ground in four vehicles south of Kandahar. They are arresting and interdicting and disrupting and sowing confusions. We are going to send them in for a few days, and then pull them out. It's creating mayhem.

"The CINC wants the Paks to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what's going in and out."

"We need to press Musharraf to do that," the president said.

He did not conceal his astonishment at the shift of events. "It's amazing how fast the situation has changed. It is a stunner, isn't it?"

Everyone agreed. It was almost too good to be true.

They turned to the questions of getting other countries involved, pressing Britain, Jordan, France and Turkey to help.

"What are the prospects of getting one of these guys to go into Mazar?" Rumsfeld asked. "We'd like three or four countries to go in, not the U.N., not NATO, but a unified command. And the purpose would be to ensure that people behave themselves" - mainly Dostum and Attah and those folks - "to hold the airport, and maybe mount a major NATO relief effort by air. It might be some sort of coalition of the willing."

"We need a strategy that may be a model for other cities," Bush said.

"Franks is going to be working all of this out through the liaison missions," Rumsfeld said, referring to the countries that had senior officers at Franks's Tampa headquarters.

"Three additional points: Do we want to take Kabul? The CINC should be involved on questions like that, on whether towns should be taken. We need his voice and his recommendation first." Franks's ideas were suddenly more important.

He added a second point: "We need to all be on the same page. People inside are starved or killed - that's the risk if we keep out.

"Also, if we keep out, it suggests a control that we don't have." Surrounding the city and staying on the outskirts might not be sufficient.

"It's a military operation with respect to Kabul," the president said. He wanted Kabul taken. "Then we need a political structure once it's taken. And Tommy needs to decide how to secure it. Politically, we need to send a signal that the Northern Alliance will not run post-Taliban Afghanistan. Once we secure Kabul, and the commanders have to decide how to do that, Tommy Franks has to decide how to do that, it'll be governed by a broadly representative group, as will the rest of the country.

"We need to have the right distribution of decisions between the military operation and the political control," he said.

THE PRINc.i.p.aLS MET later in the day to discuss Kabul.

Tenet said that Bismullah Khan, one of Fahim's sub-commanders, would be on the outskirts of the city by tomorrow. And Fahim had called the Jawbreaker team for guidance.

Tenet and Franks believed they should stay on the outskirts of the city. "Reporting suggests that the Taliban are leaving the city," Tenet said, "and will try to move south or east. We have not been able to corroborate how much has moved out of the city or moved to the ridgeline south of the city where there is a sh.e.l.ling problem. There are still pockets of Arabs in the city."

"They need airpower tomorrow," Rumsfeld said. "They could be on the outskirts of the city by tomorrow night. Look, our goal is to get the al Qaeda. That's our military goal and our advice to the Northern Alliance should further those goals."

Rumsfeld was trying to offer a corrective to the political talk about the impact of taking Kabul on the governance of Afghanistan. The real question, he was saying, was how will the taking of Kabul affect the mission of pursuing al Qaeda and other bad guys. "Franks wants to apply U.S. airpower and asks them to hold short. To the extent the military flees the city, he intends to go after them."

"I'm concerned about a vacuum in Kabul," Cheney said. "Do we have the luxury of coming to the edge of the city?"

Rumsfeld replied, "We want to get a multilateral force into Kabul soon."

"We want to focus on UBL and al Qaeda," Powell said. "Not sure about the situation in the city. Until we do, we want to focus on al Qaeda and UBL and destroy the Taliban as they head south. We've got to avoid Kabul, which will suck up all our available manpower."

"What's the humanitarian situation?" Rice asked.

"We don't know," Tenet answered.

"Relief organizations must know," Powell interjected. "We'll pulse and find out."

"Will the Taliban flee the city, or will they make it hard for us?" Rice asked.

No answer was forthcoming.

"I agree we should have a multilateral force ready to go," Powell said. He was going to try to call U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to get him to put more energy into pulling together that multilateral force.

"Well I guess where we are is we're going to hold on the outskirts, see what happens in the city, prepare for a military administration, and then have a broader political structure that will move in," Rice said.

"We're still at war," Rumsfeld reminded them.

"Should U.S. forces go in?" Cheney asked.

"It's being considered," Rumsfeld said.

"We should consider it," Powell said. Such a presence could be stabilizing.

"It'll take a week to put together a multilateral force," Rumsfeld said. He didn't want his forces doing this alone. "If we want to go fast, we have to put in U.S. and U.K. Special Forces."

"It'll be a very infantry-intensive effort," Powell noted.

"The 10th Mountain is in Uzbekistan, right?" Cheney asked. It was an Army division but included only about 1,000 of its troops.

"Yes," Rumsfeld said, "and we also have Marines offsh.o.r.e."

General Myers said, "We could move to Bagram Air Base and then base things in Kabul." The air base was 30 miles north of the capital.

"Well," Rumsfeld said, "we want someone else with U.S. forces." He wanted to avoid what might smack of nation building by U.S. combat troops. "We need to move quickly," he agreed. "We use whatever Franks is comfortable with.

"So we're going to apply our airpower, we're going to allow the Northern Alliance to move toward the outskirts of the town, we'll tell them to hold short of the town." Any Taliban military that try to leave, Rumsfeld said, "We're going to hit them."

"Well," Rice said, "Franks needs to get back to us on what kind of force he wants if we've got to do Kabul."

Both what he might need initially and then later, more permanently, Rumsfeld said.

"If we're going to go to the edge of Kabul," Powell said, "we decide later on all the evidence what to do next. And then we can decide what kind of military force to put in and then what civil administration to replace it."

The princ.i.p.als were groping, attempting to micromanage the situation on the ground from Washington. There might be uncertainty, but that didn't mean they didn't have ideas.

On November 11, the first Special Forces A-team, Triple Nickel, shifted fire to Bagram Air Base and in a short period of time called in 25 air strikes. They counted 2,200 enemy casualties and destruction of 29 tanks and six command posts, freeing up the Alliance to move on Kabul.

THE MORNING NEWS on Monday, November 12, flashed to the White House that American Airlines Flight 587 had crashed outside New York City on Long Island after takeoff. The reaction was, "Oh, my G.o.d! It's happening again." Tunnels and bridges into New York City were shut down at once. All air traffic was banned in a designated sector around New York. American Airlines directed all aircraft into and out of New York to land.

The president called New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "Your character is being tested to the extreme," Bush said, promising all possible a.s.sistance.

It soon became clear that the cause of the crash was mechanical failure, not terrorism.

AT THE NSC meeting Tuesday, November 13, Tenet reported. "Bismullah Khan is outside Kabul. There's disorder within Kabul. He went in to calm it down." Pashtun leader Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf also put 400 to 500 people in the capital. "Their intention is to withdraw once someone comes in to take over the administration of the city."

"We need to manage the publicity here," Bush said. "We need to emphasize the cowardly atrocities that Taliban performed as they left the city."

Powell reported on the efforts to put together a government.

"The key is to show movement," the president said, "that we've got a manageable process that's leading somewhere."

"The U.N. needs to get in fairly early," Powell said.

"But they need to go quickly," Bush reiterated.

Rumsfeld said, "We've got to counsel patience. This is a hard country - what we're trying to put together.

"They're moving from Mazar to Hermez. Several thousand have surrendered in Konduz. There are some bad guys in Bamiyan. Bamiyan is surrounded but not yet taken. In Kandahar, there have been attacks on the airports; we don't know by whom. Herat has fallen. Kabul there are 2,000 Northern Alliance forces as police. Our people are with them. The two Northern Alliance groups in the city are cooperating. ... This guy Sayyaf is ready to go to Jalalabad. We don't really want him in Kabul. He'll be disruptive. We want him to move east."

"Can we use Special Forces to disrupt the Taliban retreat?" the president asked.

"Good question," Rumsfeld said. "Let me ask about that. We're moving people in to Bagram airport, to bulk up to go after al Qaeda to the east."

"The U.S. forces will not stay," the president said. "We don't do police work. We need a core of a coalition of the willing" - adopting Rumsfeld's phrase from several days earlier - "and then pa.s.s on these tasks to others. We've got a job to do with al Qaeda. We need to look at WMD targets.

"There's a fertilizer plant we are worrying about. We need to know better what we're dealing with," he added. The suspicion was that it might be a lab for weapons of ma.s.s destruction.

Next Bush focused on the missing piece in all this. "Can we use our Special Forces to disrupt convoys in the northeast where UBL seems to be moving?" he asked.