by Ali K.Chishti
Here’s the unedited version of my interview with a friend who had worked for CIA inside Pakistani tribal areas. An edited version had been published by TFT http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110708&page=8
Art Keller hasworked for the elite group of CIA officers working in Pakistan till 2006-2007with a mission to find and kill the al-Queda chief, Osama Bin Laden. TFT gothold off him and as a regular commentator at TFT pieces, Art Keller now retiredspoke exclusively to us.
Before Art wassent to Pakistan, he over heard a conversation in Langley that, “There isan ongoing pissing match between [the CIA stations in] Kabul andIslamabad,” the desk officer told him. “Kabul says the Pakistanis aredirty from head to toe. Islamabad says the Pakistanis are only partially dirtyand we get something out of working with them.”
I touched downnear the Pak-Afghan border on my job assignment and entered a crappy Pakistanibuilding with crumbling walls next to a military base. We don’t exactly go outin tribal regions knocking doors, we sent out Pashtun spies for snooping, CIAuses tech for listening and watching from skies; they identify the targets anddrone’s kill them and all that using a keyboard”
Were you surprised thatOsama Bin Laden was caught in somewhat urbanized Abbotabad and not, someplaceremote like FATA or Chitral?
It was not surprising that he would be found in Abbottabad. TheISI/army officers who have traditionally support Islamic militants are verystrong in the area; the beautiful hills there have sadly supported a lot ofmilitant camps. If you wanted to hide him in plain site with the help of acouple of ISI sympathizers from Directorate S, Abbottabad is not a bad choiceat all. Bold, but it does have a certain kind of logic. I do have doubtswhether complicity goes all the way up to the top, but it is hard to believe hecould be there without at least a few sympathizers aiding and abetting him.After all, he’s an Arab, not a Pakistani, so he’d draw attention if he tried tomove there and setup housekeeping all on his own.
How do you viewthe point which President Obama makes that Osama Bin Laden had some sort ofsupport network?
I can’t speak to anything about a “support group,” that may havehelped, or who Pakistan may have in custody, but the reaction of Pakistanarresting people who helped take down terrorist Number One, somebody Pakistanhad long promised it wanted as much or more as the US, is what is telling aboutthe whole situation. Shouldn’t they be handing them medals for doing whatPakistan claimed it wanted? Another thing is that the anger both within the PakArmy, and within Pakistan, against the Pak Army, is almost entirely about thefact that they didn’t stop the raid. The shame of Bin Laden being found in anArmy stronghold is a distant second, and demands for investigation as to how hecould have been found in an Army town without some level of ISI or Armycomplicity appear to be fading, much to the relief of those institutions.
I am sure you must have followed, the Raymond Davis Affair inPakistan. What and how do you think, CIA and ISI could co-operate and maintaina ‘good relationship’ ?
The Raymond Davis case didn’t help things, but it is symptomaticof a worsening relationship. Davis was there to look at ISI proxy group LET,which by all accounts wants to expand their overseas operations vastly. Whichis crazy, and everyone knows if that happens, it will bring huge, unavoidableproblems for Pakistan, but I’m still waiting for news that LET is going to bedisbanded. Add to that the kind of repeated event of the US turning overintelligence about locations of bad guys or militant bomb factories, only tohave that information ignored, disparaged, or leaked to the targets, and whenthat has happened, again and again and again, the Pak leaders have more thanonce publicly claimed they simply weren’t passed anything, and that theevacuation of militants from suspect sites shortly after information was passedwas “a coincidence” At the moment, it is clear you have a widening gap that maybe heading towards an insurmountable rift, which is a pity, because the US andPakistan actually need each other quite a bit.
One big problem is the Army and ISI has such a stranglehold onthe media and has controlled the discourse for so long, and hascompelled/allowed compliant Urdu language media outlets to feed such a steadystream of mistruth, spin, hype, and outright bile about the West to the Pakreader that a significant part of the Pak public believes the US was behind9/11, and that we didn’t really get Bin Laden in Abbotabad : EVEN THOUGHAL-QAEDA ITSELF PUBLICLY ADMITTED BOTH! If the US said the sun rose in theEast, that water was wet, or sugar sweet, you’d see angry denials that suchclaims were a plot against Pakistan.
How do you perceive the relationshipbetween the CIA and ISI and the future co-operation between the two agencies?
When I touched down to ourCIA base – ISI was there to protect us and the only time the Americans at thebase went outside was to play volleyball or to unload the helicopter when itarrived with supplies. The ISI men wouldn’t let the CIA men venture anyfarther. It’s too dangerous according to the ISI. Obviously I think that the ISI just wanted to restrict our movements. Infact my suspicion of the ISI shadows was such that I made sure there was alwaysat least one American in the communications room – so it was a joint commandroom.
When in 2005, the NationalDirectorate for Security, the CIA allied Afghan intelligence service recruiteda low level mullah to go into Waziristan to identify Arabs there. His body wasfound without a head. It was a few weeks into his tour, and Keller had flown toIslamabad for a medical examination—he had a lump on his abdomen. From there hewas diverted to another base in the tribal areas, where agents had beentracking a high-level terrorist. The man was an Arab and a senior commander forAl Qaeda.
I wassent to another base inside FATA to locate a top al-Queda commander the CIA andISI were tracking together.We were working with the Pakistanis, and they had aninside guy who was able to watch a compound where they believed this guy wasstaying. The ISI members stationed at this base were cooperative and competent.They were not jerking us around as they do in other bases. I collectedinformation and had two ways to collect information on the target—through theinformant and through “technical means. For two weeks, I sat in the baseand received updates from my ISI colleagues on the whereabouts of the Al Qaedacommander. I retired after that in 2006-2007.
Really, therelationship between the US and gov of Pakistan or the CIA and ISI cannotimprove very much until there is significant dialogue and reform in Pakistan,which currently the ISI is doing their very best to quash, as the death ofSaleem Shahzad and many others proves. Until Pak army generals are trulyaccountable to someone other than their own senior officers, until a civilianleader can remove a leading general and not be subject to a coup, thenPakistan’s runaway Army and ISI is going to continue to try to hang onto theirperqs and prerogatives, and to hell with truth, the civilian economy, or askingthe Pak people if they really wanted to sponsor the political use of militancyas integral part of national policy, which has been going on for the last 30years.
Many fingers have pointed at the CIA for supporting militants against thesoviets, but I don’t think that was the US’ big mistake. The US did make a bigmistake of walking away from Afghanistan after the Soviets were gone andletting it go to hell in a hand basket, but neglect is one thing, and actuallysponsoring, arming and training the Taliban and many others is a wholedifferent kettle of fish. As far as the US sponsoring of the mujahedin of thosedays A. those were the people there and willing to fight the soviets, B. theISI didn’t allow CIA access to the training camps to see the level ofindoctrination, and C. the CIA stopped giving guns and money to militants whenthe Soviets were gone, whereas the ISI continued and expanded the manufacturingof militants.
There is a difference between supporting the enemy of your enemy in a time ofemergency, and making the decision to have a permanent policy of manipulatingreligion to foster militancy. Until the Army admits they’ve done that, they’renot going to allow anyone to ask the question of whether that was actually thebest thing for Pakistan.
Syndicated from: AKC