‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017acts of immorality or publishing anything defamatory against the govern-
ment. In August, eight foreign volunteers, including two American women,
working with the faith-based relief agency Shelter Now International were
arrested and accused of proselytizing. A few days later iam and serve, two
other Protestant agencies, were shut down and their expatriate workers
also expelled.
9/11 and Operation Enduring FreedomBy the autumn of 2001 bin Laden felt he was in a strong enough position
to interfere directly in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. On 9 September two
Tunisian al-Qa‘ida operatives disguised as journalists were granted an
interview with Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud. During their meeting they exploded
a bomb concealed in a video camera, which killed themselves, Mas‘ud and
several of his aides. It was the first, but tragically not the last, instance of
a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. Two days later, on 11 September 2001,
nineteen Arabs, mostly citizens of Saudi Arabia, hijacked four American
passenger planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center
in New York and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, intended
to attack the White House, crashed in a field after its passengers bravely
fought the hijackers. In all more than 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks,
including six Pakistani citizens, and thousands more were injured.
While smoke and flames billowed from the Pentagon, isi and
high-ranking Pakistani officials were meeting with State Department offi-
cials on the other side of the Potomac to discuss a joint operation to capture
bin Laden. As they were hastily evacuated, both Pakistani and American
officials witnessed at first hand the tragic consequences of their flawed
Afghanistan policies. Mullah ‘Omar, too, appears to have had no inkling
of either bin Laden’s plot to assassinate Mas‘ud or his subsequent attack on
American institutions. According to General Mahmud Ahmed, Director
of the isi, who flew to Kandahar a few days later, Mullah ‘Omar was ter -
rified at the prospect of a war with America and he informed u.s. Embassy
officials that the Taliban were in ‘deep introspection’ about what course
of action to take. 6 After a second visit a week or so later, General Ahmed
advised American officials ‘not to act in anger’ and claimed that the threat
of an attack may well convince the Taliban to extradite bin Laden in order
to save their own skins. General Ahmed also warned the State Department
that ‘if the Taliban are eliminated Afghanistan will revert to warlordism’. 7
No one in the u.s. administration was interested in the Taliban’s ‘deep
introspection’, for amid the outrage and political fallout from the attacks