'America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects'

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, was an uneventful day in Pakistan, at least while the sun was high. That evening I was in Karachi, inspecting work at the beautiful gardens of the mausoleum of our founder Quaide-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. I was happy to be in the city I love.

Little did I know that we were about to be thrust into the front line of yet another war, a war against shadows.

My military secretary came up to me and whispered: an aircraft had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. At first, I dismissed the news report as an accident involving what I thought must have been a light private aircraft. But at the back of my mind there was the nagging thought that this had to be a most peculiar accident. Either the pilot had to be utterly inept to have hit such a tall building, or the plane had to be so totally out of control that it couldn’t be prevented from hitting the tower.

When I returned home, I went directly into a meeting with Karachi’s corps commander. We were deep in discussion when my military secretary slipped into the room and started fiddling with the television set.

I could not believe what I saw. Smoke was billowing out of both towers of the World Trade Centre. People were jumping out of windows. There was sheer panic, utter chaos. Two fuel-laden Boeings full of passengers had been hijacked and deliberately crashed into the twin towers. This could hardly be an accident — it had to be a deliberate, brazen act of terrorism. Two other aircraft had also been hijacked — one had hit the Pentagon; another had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania. Commentators at the time said that second one had been heading for the White House. This was war.

The enormity of the event was palpable. The world’s most powerful country had been attacked on its own soil, with its own aircraft used as missiles. This was a great tragedy, and a great blow to the ego of the superpower. America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear. If the perpetrator turned out to be al-Qaeda, then that wounded bear would come charging straight toward us.

Al-Qaeda was based in neighbouring Afghanistan under the protection of those international pariahs, the Taleban. Not only that: we were the only country maintaining diplomatic relations with the Taleban and their leader, Mullah Omar. September 11 marked an irrevocable turn from the past into an unknown future. The world would never be the same.

I went to the Governor House. The foreign office advised me to give a statement. I wrote one quickly and said on national television that we condemned this vile act, that we were against all forms of terrorism and stood with America at this appalling time. The next morning I was chairing an important meeting at the Governor’s House when my military secretary told me that the US secretary of state, General Colin Powell, was on the phone. I said I would call back later, but he insisted that I come out of the meeting. Powell was quite candid: “You are either with us or against us.”

I took this as a blatant ultimatum. However, contrary to some reports, that conversation did not get into specifics. I told him that we were with the United States against terrorism, having suffered from it for years, and would fight along with his country against it.

When I was back in Islamabad the next day, our director-general of Inter Services Intelligence, who happened to be in Washington, told me on the phone about his meeting with the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage added to what Colin Powell had said to me and told the director-general not only that we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age.

This was a shockingly barefaced threat, but it was obvious that the United States had decided to hit back, and hit back hard.