“The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden,” 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Online

9/11 Memorial & Museum
@Sept11Memorial
·
Sep 17
This Weds, Sept 22 at 2 pm, bestselling author @peterbergencnn
discusses “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden,” his new biography of the al-Qaeda founder and 9/11 mastermind. Watch our live, online public program at http://911memorial.org/watch. cc: @simonschuster

He’s on the FBI’s most-wanted list and is now a key member of the Taliban’s new government, CNN.com

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.”

(CNN)Nothing says you are renouncing al Qaeda quite like appointing a member of al Qaeda to a top cabinet position in your new government.

The Taliban on Tuesday appointed Sirajuddin Haqqani to be Afghanistan’s acting interior minister, a job analogous to running the United States Department of Homeland Security, with the FBI thrown in for good measure.

The United Nations in a report issued in June noted that Haqqani “is a member of the wider Al-Qaida leadership, but not of the Al-Qaida core leadership.” (In 2011, Haqqani gave a rare interview to the BBC and was asked whether he had links to al Qaeda. He dodged the question and without elaboration referred the interviewer to the Taliban’s stated policy on the issue.)

The appointment Tuesday makes Minister Haqqani the first member of al Qaeda to be elevated to a cabinet position anywhere in the world.

He is also on the FBI’s most-wanted list. The Bureau has a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest, while the US State Department is offering up to $10 million. The only terrorist with a higher price on his head is al Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

Sirajuddin Haqqani’s appointment underlines just how hard-line the new Taliban government is going to be.

The Taliban cabinet includes other members of the Haqqani family, such as Siraj’s uncle Khalil, the minister of refugees. He was previously in charge of security in Kabul, a grim irony since it was the Haqqanis who carried out many of the mass-casualty terrorist attacks in that city, killing untold numbers of civilians.

The State Department says on its website that Khalil Haqqani “acted on behalf of al-Qaida and has been linked to al-Qaida terrorist operations.” It is offering a $5 million bounty for him.

The US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) notes that “the Haqqani Network is responsible for some of the most high-profile attacks of the Afghan War including the June 2011 assault on the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel.” That same year, according to NCTC, “the Haqqanis participated in a day-long assault on major targets in Kabul, including the US Embassy.”

Another Taliban cabinet pick is Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokeswoman for the Taliban, who is now the deputy minister for information and culture. Last month, Mujahid told NBC News that there was no proof that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the 9/11 attacks, a gobsmacking lie.

Taliban leaders must be having a good laugh at all the officials in the Biden administration who keep asserting that the US has “leverage” over them.

The wishful thing about a kinder, gentler Taliban 2.0 is a bipartisan failure. The Taliban played Donald Trump’s administration like a Stradivarius. Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the chief US negotiator with the Taliban, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, negotiated — to use a Trumpian construction — the worst deal ever.

Those negotiations began in 2018 and got the Taliban everything they wanted: A total US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the release of 5,000 Taliban from Afghan prisons, a number of whom promptly returned to the battlefield, Afghan officials said last month.

Meanwhile, the US couldn’t negotiate the release of the one American hostage being held by the Haqqanis. Mark Frerichs, a contractor who had worked for a decade in Afghanistan, was kidnapped in January 2020. He remains held captive by the Haqqanis; an astonishing failure of US diplomacy given the release of those thousands of Taliban prisoners that the Americans facilitated to show “good faith” during the failed “peace” negotiations.

As part of that peace agreement, the Taliban was supposed to separate from al Qaeda. We see how well that worked out!
And the Taliban were also supposed to negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government, which never happened.
Students of diplomatic and military history will be studying the Trump deal with the Taliban for decades to come. It is an object lesson about how one side can win decisively at the negotiating table what it never could on the battlefield.

In recent months, Biden claimed he felt bound by Trump’s agreement with the Taliban, even though the Taliban weren’t honoring the agreement in any way. As a result of Biden’s abrupt and total withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger militarily than they were before the 9/11 attacks, partly because of the American weaponry they now possess.

The American journalist David Rohde was kidnapped by Haqqani’s network in 2008 and held for seven months before he escaped. Rohde emailed me after the announcement of Siraj Haqqani’s appointment to his new post, saying: “This is a sad day for Afghans. The leader of a criminal organization that terrorized civilians with car bombings and assassinations is now the country’s chief law enforcement officer.”

Another American, Caitlan Coleman, was held hostage by the Haqqanis from 2012 to 2017. She said in an email, “It seems that justice and accountability for the crimes of the Haqqani Network remain further away than ever.”

In February 2020, Sirajuddin Haqqani promised, in an op-ed in The New York Times, that the Taliban would respect women’s rights, including “the right to education” and “the right to work.”

At the time he was the deputy leader of the Taliban, which controlled none of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals. Now, Haqqani is in charge of security for the entire country.

It will be interesting to see if Haqqani follows through on the promises he made in The Times. I have a strong suspicion he will not, and the Times op-ed will end up as just one more example of how the Taliban so brilliantly and repeatedly hoodwinked their adversaries in the United States.

Osama bin Laden changed history on 9/11, but not in the ways he expected, CNN.com

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden,” from which this essay is adapted. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.”

(CNN)Who could have predicted that in the two decades following the 9/11 attacks, the United States would wage various kinds of military operations in seven Muslim countries — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — at the cost of at least $6 trillion and more than 7,000 American lives?

In addition, tens of thousands of soldiers from countries allied to the United States died, as did hundreds of thousands of ordinary Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Syrians and Yemenis who were also killed during the so-called “war on terror.”

All of this carnage was traceable back to Osama bin Laden’s decision to launch the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Qaeda’s leader is one of the few people of whom it can truly be said that he changed the course of history. Just as an account of Nazism would be nonsensical without reference to the persona and worldview of Adolf Hitler, or a history of France after the revolution of 1789 would make no sense without an understanding of the goals and personality of Napoleon Bonaparte, so too our understanding of al-Qaeda and the ideology and violence it spawned would be incoherent without reference to bin Laden.

This is an unapologetically old-school view of how history is actually made, which posits certain individuals are able to ride the tide of human events and shape them in new and unexpected ways.

Of course, that is not to deny the importance of circumstance. Hitler could not have become Hitler without two hugely significant events: Germany’s defeat in World War I and the Great Depression. Nor could Napoleon have become Napoleon without the opportunities presented to him by the chaos of post-revolutionary France.

But it’s impossible to understand World War II and the Holocaust without understanding Hitler’s ambitions and ideology, just as it’s impossible to understand why the largest army hitherto assembled in Europe marched into Moscow in September 1812 just weeks before the onset of the brutal Russian winter without understanding the vast ambitions of Napoleon.

A time of ferment

Bin Laden also came of age at a time of important historical changes. As a young man, he lived through a period of great ideological ferment in the Muslim world. During the 1970s, the early promises of socialism and Arab nationalism had delivered little in the way of prosperity or peace in the Middle East, and a new interest in religion gripped the region, a period of Islamic awakening that peaked in 1979 — the first year of a new century on the Muslim calendar — with three seismic events.

First was the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, which showed the world that a US-backed dictator could be toppled by religious revolutionaries.

Second was the armed takeover of Islam’s holy of holies, the mosque in Mecca, by Sunni militants. The assault on Mecca pushed the Saudi royal family to take a more conservative religious line at home and to finance the export of conservative Wahhabi clerics and mosques around the Muslim world (in part also to combat the rise of the new militant Shia regime in Iran).

Finally, the “infidel” Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan precipitated a global movement of Muslims who traveled to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to help combat the Soviets. It was a thrilling time to be a deeply committed Muslim, as the 22-year-old bin Laden already was.
In 1987, bin Laden set up a base — “Al Qaeda” in Arabic- — in Jaji in eastern Afghanistan, where he and a small group of followers fought the Soviets. From that base was forged a new group, al-Qaeda, and also a new doctrine of globalized jihadist terrorism, culminating in the 9/11 attacks, which reshaped the greater Middle East and also the United States itself in unexpected ways.

Bin Laden pushed forward with the 9/11 attacks despite internal opposition within al-Qaeda. In July 2001, Saif al-Adel, a senior al-Qaeda military commander, and Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, the group’s religious adviser, told bin Laden they opposed attacking the United States because they feared the likely American response and were worried the operation would anger the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were then hosting them in the country.

Abu Hafs the Mauritanian was also concerned killing American civilians could not be justified on religious grounds.
However, bin Laden ruled over al-Qaeda like a medieval monarch, and leaders of the group who were skeptical about the looming attacks in the United States were forced to go along with them.

The strategy

Bin Laden had a strategy for the 9/11 attacks that went beyond simply murdering as many American civilians as possible. He firmly believed the attacks would result in the withdrawal of American forces from the entire Middle East, which would then lead to the collapse of the US-supported Arab regimes that bin Laden despised.
It was a strategy that made little sense, as the United States would surely follow its own interests and was hardly likely to abandon its substantial role in the Middle East. But bin Laden truly believed that the US was weak, just as the former Soviet Union had been, and could only absorb a few blows.

He drew inspiration from other terrorist groups that had successfully attacked American targets, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, which had bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American Marines, sailors and soldiers. Within a few months of the attack, the United States pulled out all of its troops from Lebanon. The Marine barracks bombing was very much on bin Laden’s mind as he plotted attacks he believed would result in the United States removing its troops from its bases in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the most profound change in the United States brought about by the 9/11 attacks was to greatly expand the military power of the US presidency. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed days after the 9/11 attacks, allowed President George W. Bush to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

This authorization sanctioned “forever wars” that lasted for two decades after 9/11. Three presidents as different from each other as presidents Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump used the same authorization to carry out hundreds of drone strikes against groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab and the Pakistani Taliban. Few of these strikes had any connection to the perpetrators of 9/11.

The AUMF was also used to justify various types of US military operations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. And, of course, 9/11 fueled the flawed rationale for Bush to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003.

This result was exactly the opposite of bin Laden’s aim with the 9/11 attacks, which was to push the United States out of the greater Middle East, so its client regimes in the region would fall. Instead, new American bases proliferated throughout the region — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda lost the best base it ever had in Afghanistan. Rather than ending American influence in the Muslim world, the 9/11 attacks greatly amplified it.

Bin Laden later put a post-facto gloss on the strategic failure of 9/11 by dressing it up as a great success and claiming the attacks were a fiendishly clever plot to embroil the US in costly wars in the Middle East. Three years after 9/11, bin Laden released a videotape in which he asserted, “We are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

There was no evidence it was really bin Laden’s plan in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, although it is true the investment of American blood and treasure in the wars in the greater Middle East likely weakened the United States.
Impact on American politics,

Bin Laden’s 9/11 attacks also had unpredictable, long-term effects on US politics. Real estate impresario Donald Trump launched his political career with the lie that President Barack Obama wasn’t an American and was secretly a Muslim. This lie was especially potent in the context of 9/11, one of the hinge events of American history that touched off a surge of anti-Muslim prejudice. During his presidential campaign, Trump often claimed he had seen “thousands” of Arabs cheering the 9/11 attacks from their rooftops in New Jersey. This was false, but it played well with Trump’s base.

Trump’s presidential campaign also took place during a wave of mass casualty jihadist terrorist attacks in the West. On November 13, 2015, ISIS terrorists killed 130 people in Paris. Within seven months of the Paris attacks, ISIS-inspired terrorists killed 14 people at an office in San Bernardino, California, and 49 people at an Orlando nightclub. As a result, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, just over half of Americans said they were “very” or “somewhat” worried they, or a member of their family, would be victims of terrorism. This was the largest number to feel this way since just after 9/11.

Sensing a real political opportunity, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration to the States and asserted that many Muslims have “great hatred towards Americans.” Polling in early 2016 showed half of all Americans supported banning Muslims traveling to the United States. Other polls showed terrorism as a top-two issue for Americans, with Trump holding a slight advantage over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, on the issue.
For al-Qaeda, 9/11 was a great tactical victory. The group inflicted more direct damage on the United States in one morning than the Soviet Union had during the Cold War. But ultimately, it was a strategic failure for the organization, just as Pearl Harbor was for Imperial Japan. A longtime associate of bin Laden’s estimated as a result of the US campaign against al-Qaeda after 9/11, 1,600 of the 1,900 Arab fighters then living in Afghanistan were killed or captured. And almost a decade after 9/11, bin Laden himself was killed by US Navy SEALs raiding his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But now al-Qaeda has been given a new lease on life by President Joe Biden’s ill-considered and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and the speedy takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.

To gauge the true intentions of the Taliban going forward, you only have to look at one of their key cabinet appointments earlier this week, Sirajuddin Haqqani as the acting Minster of Interior. The UN says Haqqani is part of the leadership of al-Qaeda.

For the first time in history, a member of al-Qaeda is now a senior cabinet official in the government of a country. Despite all of his strategic missteps, bin Laden would have been thrilled to see this happening around the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

September 13 & 14, Future Security Forum, New America/Arizona State University

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Future Security Forum 2021

20×20: Redefining National Security for 2040

Monday, September 13th &

Tuesday, September 14th, 2021

New America and Arizona State University are pleased to invite you to the 2021 Future Security Forum, which will be held online September 13-14, 2021. This year’s Forum marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Forum sessions will reflect on the past 20 years of U.S. security policy, and chart the next 20 years of national and international security trends.

The Forum is the premier annual event of New America and Arizona State University’s Future Security project—a research, education, and policy partnership that develops new paradigms for understanding and addressing new and emerging global challenges. Forum sessions will discuss the security situation in Afghanistan, diversity in the security policy community, the future of special operations forces, the global outlook on COVID-19, and more.

Co-sponsors for the 2021 Future Security Forum are Joint Special Operations University and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.

Schedule

Schedule subject to change.

Monday, September 13, 2021

Day One

12:30 PM EDT

Welcome Remarks

Anne-Marie Slaughter, DPhil, CEO, New America; former Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State
James O’Brien, Senior Vice President of University Affairs and Chief of Staff to President Michael Crow, Arizona State University

12:45 PM EDT

Redefining National Security Over the Next 20 Years

Heather Hurlburt, Director, New Models of Policy Change, New America
Alexandra Stark, PhD, Senior Researcher, Political Reform Program, New America

1:00 PM EDT

What is the Future of Conflict in Space?

General John W. “Jay” Raymond, Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force

Moderated by: Peter Warren Singer, PhD, Strategist & Senior Fellow, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

1:45 PM EDT

What is the Future of Intelligence?

Neil Wiley, Former Principal Executive, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at ODNI; former Director for Analysis, Defense Intelligence Agency

Professor Sir David Omand, Visiting Professor, King’s College London; Former Director, U.K. Government Communications Headquarters

Genevieve Lester, PhD, De Serio Chair of Strategic Intelligence, U.S. Army War College

Moderated by: Carol V. Evans, PhD, Director, Strategic Studies Institute and the USAWC Press, U.S. Army War College

2:30 PM EDT

Break

2:45 PM EDT

What Should Special Operations Forces Look Like by 2040?

Command Chief Master Sergeant Greg A. Smith, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Senior Enlisted Leader

LTC Katie B. Crombe, J5 Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT)

Maj. Akhil R. Iyer, Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC)
CPT Shaye L. Haver, Aide-de-Camp to the Commander Joint Task Force – National Capital Region & Military District of Washington

Moderated by: Col. (ret) Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III, PhD, President, Joint Special Operations University; Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

3:30 PM EDT

Artificial Intelligence: What are the Implications for International Humanitarian Law?

Jonathan Horowitz, Legal Advisor, International Committee of the Red Cross
Candace Rondeaux, Director, Future Frontlines, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

3:45 PM EDT

Diversity in Security Policymaking: A Progress Report

Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, U.S. Department of State

Bishop Garrison, Senior Adviser to the Secretary of Defense for Human Capital, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Commander (ret) Theodore Johnson, LPD, 2017 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fellow, New America; Director, Fellows Program, Brennan Center for Justice; Former Speechwriter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Moderated by: Heather Hurlburt, Director, New Models of Policy Change, New America

4:30 PM EDT

UFOs Identified by the U.S. Military: What Do They Mean?

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, 2017 National Fellow, New America; Staff Writer, The New Yorker

4:45 PM EDT

Day 1 Concludes

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Day Two

12:30 PM EDT

Welcome Remarks

Paul Butler, President and Chief Transformation Officer, New America

Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, Dean of Social Sciences, Arizona State University

12:45 PM EDT

U.S. Leaves Afghanistan: What Next?

Ambassador Roya Rahmani, former Afghan Ambassador to the United States; non-resident Senior Fellow, New America
Fatima Gailani, President, Afghan Red Crescent Society
Col. (ret) Ioannis “Gianni” Koskinas, Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America
Shamila Chaudhary, Senior South Asia Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Former Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan, U.S. National Security Council

Moderated by: Candace Rondeaux, Director, Future Frontlines, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

1:45 PM EDT

Break

2:00 PM EDT

The Future of COVID-19

Leana Wen, MD, former Health Commissioner, City of Baltimore ; Medical Analyst, CNN ; Contributing Columnist, Washington Post; author of Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health

Moderated by: Emily Schneider, Co-Editor, New America/ASU Coronavirus Daily Brief

2:15 PM EDT

What Does Terrorism Look Like 20 years From Now?

Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice, University of Michigan; Non-Resident Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Former Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council

Rebecca Ulam Weiner, Assistant Commissioner for Intelligence Analysis, NYPD Intelligence Bureau

Moderated by: Karen Greenberg, PhD, Director, Center on National Security, Fordham University School of Law

2:45 PM EDT

What is the Future of Climate Security?

Honorable Sharon Burke, President, Ecospherics; Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America

3:00 PM EDT

What Should be the Future of U.S. Policy in Latin America?

Moderated by: Isabel Migoya, Stakeholder Manager, U.S.-Mexico Foundation; Future Tense Research Fellow, New America

Jorge Castañeda Gutman, PhD, former Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs author of America Through Foreign Eyes; former Bernard Schwartz Fellow, New America

3:20 PM EDT

How Should Congress Shape the Future of National Security?

Moderated by: Ryan Shaw, PhD, Managing Director of Strategic Initiatives and Senior University Advisor, Arizona State University
Senator Mark Kelly, U.S. Senator, Arizona

3:40 PM EDT

DAY 2 CONCLUDES

Speakers

Speakers subject to change.

Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley

Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, U.S. Department of State

Javed Ali

Associate Professor of Practice, University of Michigan; Non-Resident Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Former Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council

Peter Bergen

Vice President, Global Studies & Fellows, New America;

Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

Honorable

Sharon Burke

President, Ecospherics;

Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America

Paul E. Butler

President and Chief Transformation Officer, New America

Jorge Castañeda Gutman, PhD

Former Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs author of America Through Foreign Eyes; former Bernard Schwartz Fellow, New America

Shamila Chaudhary

Senior South Asia Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Former Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan, U.S. National Security Council

LTC Katie Crombe

J5 Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT)

Carol V. Evans, PhD

Director, Strategic Studies Institute and the USAWC Press, U.S. Army War College

Fatima Gailani

President, Afghan Red Crescent Society

Bishop Garrison

Senior Adviser to the Secretary of Defense for Human Capital, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Karen Greenberg, PhD

Director, Center on National Security, Fordham University School of Law

Captain Shaye Lynne Haver

Aide-de-Camp to the Commander Joint Task Force – National Capital Region & Military District of Washington

Jonathan Horowitz

Legal Advisor, International Committee of the Red Cross

Heather Hurlburt

Director, New Models of Policy Change, New America

Major Akhil R. Iyer

Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC)

Commander (ret) Theodore Johnson, DLP

2017 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fellow, New America; Director, Fellows Program, Brennan Center for Justice; Former Speechwriter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Senator

Mark Kelly

U.S. Senator, Arizona

Col. (ret) Ioannis “Gianni” Koskinas

Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America

Genevieve Lester, PHD

De Serio Chair of Strategic Intelligence, U.S. Army War College

Gideon Lewis-Kraus

2017 National Fellow, New America; Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Dean of Social Sciences, Arizona State University

Isabel Migoya

Stakeholder Manager, U.S.-Mexico Foundation; Future Tense Research Fellow, New America

James O’Brien,

Senior Vice President of University Affairs and Chief of Staff to President Michael
Crow, Arizona State University

Professor Sir David Omand GCB

Visiting Professor, King’s College London; Former Director, U.K. Government Communications Headquarters

AmbASSADOR

Roya RahmanI

Former Afghan Ambassador to the United States; non-resident Senior Fellow, New America

General John W. “Jay” Raymond

Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force

Candace Rondeaux

Director, Future Frontlines, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

Daniel Rothenberg, PHD

Co-Director, Center on the Future of War; Professor of Practice, School of Politics and Global Studies,

Arizona State University

Emily Schneider

Co-Editor, New America/ASU Coronavirus Daily Brief

Professor

Ryan Shaw

Managing Director of Strategic Initiatives and Senior University Advisor, Arizona State University

Peter Warren Singer, PHD

Strategist & Senior Fellow, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University

Anne-Marie Slaughter, DPhil

CEO, New America;

former Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State

Command Chief Master Sergeant Greg A. Smith

Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Senior Enlisted Leader

Alexandra Stark, PHD

Senior Researcher, Political Reform Program, New America

Rebecca ULAM Weiner

Assistant Commissioner for Intelligence Analysis, NYPD Intelligence Bureau

Leana Wen, MD

Former Health Commissioner, City of Baltimore; Medical Analyst, CNN ; Contributing Columnist, Washington Post; author of Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health

Neil Wiley

Former Principal Executive, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at ODNI; former Director for Analysis, Defense Intelligence Agency

Col. (ret) Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III, PhD

President, Joint Special Operations University; Senior Fellow, International Security Program, New America; Professor of Practice,

Florida International University :”Twenty Years After 9/11″ online

Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy

The Gordon Institute hosts numerous events that bring together leading thinkers, scholars, community members, and students to discuss the most pressing topics in national security and public policy.

We host various signature events such as the Hemispheric Security Conference, the National Security Studies Summer Institute, and the NICE Conference while also creating programming that addresses emerging trends and topics.
Twenty Years After 9/11

Join us on Wednesday, September 8th for Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy

Join us on Wednesday, September 8th for “Twenty Years After 9/11,” an in-depth look at U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East. This virtual event will include a discussion amongst experts on U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East as well as a conversation with journalist Peter Bergen on his latest book, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.”

Register for free an in-depth look at U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East. This virtual event will include a discussion amongst experts on U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East as well as a conversation with journalist Peter Bergen on his latest book, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.”

The leader of the anti-Taliban resistance speaks out, CNN.com

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)Many headlines over the past day have trumpeted the notion that the Afghan War is over. Yes, it’s true the American troops are gone, but the country’s decadeslong civil war continues. In fact, the war is entering a new phase in which the Taliban control almost all the country, but resistance to them is beginning to form.

That resistance is led by Ahmad Massoud, 32, a graduate of Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point, who is the son of the legendary Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. The elder Massoud was instrumental in forcing the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and he led the resistance to the Taliban the last time that they controlled much of Afghanistan, before the 9/11 attacks.

Massoud was killed in Afghanistan by assassins dispatched by Osama bin Laden two days before 9/11, which was effectively al Qaeda’s curtain-raiser for the attacks on New York and Washington that followed.

In an interview, the younger Massoud said his forces are fighting “intolerance and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them” and that Afghanistan needs a government that represents the nation’s many ethnic groups. Massoud is gathering anti-Taliban forces in the Panjshir Valley, a mountainous, inaccessible region north of Kabul where his father is buried. On Monday the Taliban fought Massoud’s forces in the Panjshir; seven Taliban were reported killed, according to Reuters.

We conducted this interview over email, through an intermediary.

Bergen: Why are you resisting the Taliban?

Massoud: Unfortunately, the Taliban have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country. We are resisting dominance, intolerance, and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them. The Taliban will only be accepted if they form an inclusive government with all ethnic groups in the country. Afghanistan is a country made up of ethnic minorities and no one constitutes a majority. It is a multicultural state instead of a nation-state. For this reason, they cannot be allowed to rule the country, and if they have this position, we will resist them. Only in a decentralized state where power is equally distributed between the different ethnic and sectarian groups, can we coexist peacefully. In addition, we believe that democracy, the rights, and freedom of all citizens regardless of race and gender should be preserved.
Bergen: Who is in your force? How many men? What kind of weapons?

Massoud: Our forces are made up of local resistance forces from the Panjshir, local resistance forces from other provinces and the remnants of the former Afghan Army. We have a sufficient amount of equipment at the moment, but we will need assistance to sustain our resistance in the long term.

Bergen: Your father held off nine Soviet offensives and also the Taliban: Are you continuing his legacy?

Massoud: We are trying our best to follow my father’s path and to continue his legacy. We are determined to defend our people and region until our last breath, and just as my father fought bravely against the Soviet aggressors and international terrorism, I am resolved to emulate him as much as possible and fight for independence, freedom, democracy, and other values he cherished.

Bergen: What are the Taliban weaknesses, militarily?

Massoud: The Taliban are not as strong as many believe they are. The reason why they took the country was the weakness of the government and the leadership of the Afghan military. Unfortunately, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani purged the army of generals and officers who knew how to fight the Taliban and who had the will and motivation to fight the enemy. The leadership of the country was another problem. Ashraf Ghani lacked legitimacy, and the masses grew apart from his government in the recent years. Ghani and his national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib’s interference in the decision-making process of the Afghan military also weakened the armed forces. They are two individuals who lacked any military training or experience, yet it was they that made the final decisions on war plans.

Bergen: Are you still trying to negotiate with the Taliban?

Massoud: We are always in favor of negotiations, and my father also tried negotiations and peace before resistance. However, just as my father’s attempts were not met with sincerity and seriousness, my dialogue with the Taliban so far hasn’t resulted in anything tangible. I am not negotiating to be part of the government or to secure a few positions. I am negotiating to see if a political settlement can be achieved that can establish social justice, guarantee equality, rights, and freedom for all and preserve democracy. If the Taliban do not make concessions and continue to believe they can dominate the country, then we will also resist. The last time they pursued dominance, they were faced with five years of resistance.
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Bergen: You studied war studies at King’s College London, and attended Sandhurst. Did this prepare you for fighting the Taliban?

Massoud: Yes, my time at Sandhurst trained me to fight and plan battles. However, my time at King’s College learning War Studies taught me how to avoid war and how to pursue peace as best as I can to avoid bloodshed. But negotiations have their limits and as Clausewitz points out, War is the continuation of politics, and if we face aggression we will be forced to fight and launch resistance to defend our land, people, and values.

Why Biden’s views on the Afghan terror attack make no sense, CNN.com

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.”

(CNN)President Joe Biden has instigated a crisis in Afghanistan that could leave American citizens, as well as many Afghans who helped the United States, trapped there — tarnishing the Biden administration and potentially recalling the Iranian hostage stand-off that dramatically weakened the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

On one side are the hundreds of American citizens who remain in Afghanistan. The International Rescue Committee estimated earlier this month that 300,000 Afghans have worked with the US in some capacity, while the New York Times reported on Wednesday that an estimated 250,000 Afghans who worked with the US remain in Afghanistan.

On the other side are the terrorists who launched the attack Thursday at Kabul airport, killing 13 US service members and at least 170 others.

The Biden administration’s self-imposed August 31 deadline has now become a “red line” for the Taliban. At the same time Kabul airport is clearly very unsafe.

That means that some Americans and a far larger number of Afghans will be left in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
After August 31, some of those Americans and Afghans who have helped the US may try to evacuate via land to neighboring countries such as Pakistan. They would have to travel through considerable swaths of Taliban-controlled territory, or through Afghan provinces such as Nangarhar on the Afghan-Pakistan border where ISIS has maintained a presence for many years.

After the airport attack Biden spoke at the White House and continued to defend his withdrawal decision with a remix of specious arguments that he has made before.

First, that al Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan, while a recent UN report says the group has a presence in some 15 of 34 Afghan provinces.

Second, that Afghanistan has never been a united country, despite the fact that Afghanistan united as a country in 1747, before the US existed.

Third, Biden again hung his withdrawal decision on the agreement that former President Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban, even though the group didn’t reject al-Qaeda, a key point in that agreement. Indeed, the UN issued a report in June that al-Qaeda and the Taliban “remain close, based on ideological alignment, relationships forged through common struggle and intermarriage.”

Note that Biden has had no compunction in jettisoning other Trump-legacy policies, such as re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement and rejoining the World Health Organization.

And Biden again claimed Thursday that if he hadn’t gone through with the withdrawal he would have had to authorize a large US war-fighting force, when in fact the relatively small number of 3,500 US soldiers and 7,000 allied, mostly NATO, troops in the country were helping to maintain a fragile status quo in which the elected Afghan government remained in power.

Biden also pointed to other purportedly pressing terror threats in other countries as a rationale for the withdrawal. This was just after ISIS-K carried out what the Pentagon described as a “complex” attack at Kabul airport that left many dozens dead.

On Friday a US drone strike killed an ISIS-K planner and another ISIS-K member, who, a US defense official told CNN, were believed to be “associated with potential future attacks at the airport.” Biden was briefed on Friday that another terrorist attack at the airport was “likely.”

Is there a greater terrorist threat today than Afghanistan? The UN says thousands of “foreign fighters” have poured into Afghanistan in the past months, energized by the Taliban’s victories, to join jihadist groups such as al Qaeda.
Just when you think that Biden’s unforced error of unilaterally and incompetently withdrawing from Afghanistan couldn’t get any worse, it does.

Thousands of American University of Afghanistan students and graduates were left behind, CNN.com

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 12:37 PM ET, Tue August 31, 2021

(CNN)For the past 15 years, Leslie Schweitzer has helped support the American University of Afghanistan, from literally the ground up. As a board member of the university and chair of the Friends of American University of Afghanistan, she spent much of the past week with the president of the university, Ian Bickford, and other members of the board in Doha, Qatar, assisting with the effort to evacuate around 4,000 students, faculty, Afghan national staff and their families, as well as alumni — namely, all of those who had been involved with the American University of Afghanistan over the past decade and a half.

Now Schweitzer is watching as the university’s campus is taken over by the Taliban, and she fears for the many students left behind. And she has good reason to fear: In August 2016, Taliban gunmen assaulted the university killing at least a dozen students and staff.

During the past two weeks Schweitzer says both the Taliban and the US government in different ways hindered the evacuation effort. (Disclosure: In May, I took part in a planning meeting with Schweitzer and other leaders of the American University of Afghanistan in which they discussed what to do if the Taliban did take over).

The following discussion took place on Monday and has been edited for clarity and length.\

SCHWEITZER: Our evacuation efforts have not been as successful as we wanted, primarily because of several logistical and policy constraints, not to mention the volume of people we needed to evacuate in the middle of one of the largest airlifts in history. We did the best we could under the circumstances. We had a total of 4,000 people that we needed to get out of Afghanistan. We started by prioritizing our students and, obviously, our expats, which we were able to get out. But we’ve only been able to get about 50 students out and then we have another, 50 to 75 students who were able to escape on their own.

BERGEN: On Sunday, a large group of your students tried to leave from Kabul airport but couldn’t. What happened?

SCHWEITZER: We had a sophisticated method of communicating with the whole American University of Afghanistan community. We knew how to reach them via email or phone, and we were prepared at any moment if we received any positive indication that we could move them in large numbers.

On Sunday we contacted our students. There were 200-and-some-odd people on buses going to the Kabul airport. They were picked up at various locations around Kabul. They were not in a safe house. But we found out at about the same time that the American University of Afghanistan was not considered a priority by the US government, and we didn’t fit the qualifications, evidently, of being at risk.

I understand totally that American citizens, green card holders, and those who helped the US military should be prioritized. However, our university people are very much at risk, yet we failed to be in that category according to the US government. We have had to depend on private assistance and on the Qatar government over the past two weeks to get our students out. Now I don’t know what we do next.

BERGEN: Why were your students not considered to be at-risk?

SCHWEITZER: That’s the question I’ve been asking now because the US government has been our major funder over the last 15 years, along with private donations. We have instilled in these students all the basic tenets of an American education: critical thinking, transparency, freedom of speech, tolerance. Our students love America because they knew that the United States was giving them this opportunity to get a world-class education.

Our university has the highest percentage of Fulbright Scholars of any university in the world — 11% of our graduates. There are many recent Fulbright awardees who are now in hiding in Afghanistan and can’t get to their university destinations throughout the US, which is a tragedy.

What happens when you have an extraordinary world-class university in a country such as Afghanistan is that students and families are extremely proud. So, the students are well known in their neighborhoods and villages. Now they are in a serious risk category. I had one student in Kabul tell me that fully armed Taliban fighters banged on her door, saying they would kill her if they could find her. Many of our students have burned their IDs and destroyed any association with the university — the university that they were very, very proud of.

Even though the US government has funded 70% of the university, very little assistance has been received since the Taliban takeover. USAID has helped us put all 4,000 of our AUAF family on the P1 Visa list, but we have not been prioritized on the “high risk” list. The lack of any system to get people through the gates at the Kabul airport and the fact that the Taliban have been in control has been a major deterrent.

Our difficulty wasn’t finding planes; there were plenty of planes. Our difficulty was getting through the Taliban checkpoints. Gates at the airport would close intermittently, and there were masses of people surrounding the airport. We had to evaluate the situation always with balancing the safety of our people against the possibility of success; success defined always as getting everyone safely through the gates into the military section of the airport.

When it came to our Afghan students, the Taliban manning the gates at the airport would make the decisions as to who would be allowed in. Often our students would be forced to wait, with no explanation, knowing full well that their future depended upon the decision of the Taliban. Can you imagine being so close and then depending on a Taliban operative to make the decision — a decision of possibly life or death.

BERGEN: You have roughly 3,900 students, alumni and Afghan staff who are still stuck. What does the future look like for them? Some have P1 or P2 visas for the United States?
SCHWEITZER: They are listed as being qualified for those visas.

BERGEN: What does that mean in practice?

SCHWEITZER: That means that they need to be in another country where the visa process will start to take place, and they might be there for a year to two years until they’re granted these visas. Our goal is to get them to one of our focal points, such as Qatar, and other locations where we can keep our students together so that they can maintain a sense of community. They need each other. They have lost everything but their determination to get an education.

BERGEN: But how do they get out now the airport effectively closed?

SCHWEITZER: That’s a good question. Now that the US military are officially out of the country, our hope is that humanitarian efforts will increase. It is extremely hard to tell our university family to just sit tight and wait. Their lives are at risk, as are their families. This is a disaster.

BERGEN: Have the Taliban taken over your campus?

SCHWEITZER: Yes. We have pictures of the Taliban in front of the faculty housing where they had spray-painted messages that we are the enemy — that we were the infidels. We had to burn hard drives and anything that would divulge any information about our students.

BERGEN: How are you feeling about it?
SCHWEITZER: There have been several dark moments through the past two weeks. To see this glorious campus, truly one that looked like any small college campus in the US — full of green space, a soccer field, a basketball court (built for the girls’ basketball team) –now occupied by the Taliban, that was the moment I truly lost my optimism. But all I had to do was think of the courage of our young men and women and my determination once again took over.

People often don’t talk about what America has accomplished in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. Education is at the top of the list. We have an entire generation of young people who have never lived under the Taliban. Our university has empowered both men and women. We’ve given them voices. Now it could be their death because of it. It is imperative that we stand by this incredible investment. This investment in dollars is relatively insignificant — but the investment in empowering Afghan young women and men is priceless.

I visited in Doha a few days ago with seven female students who we were able to evacuate with the help of the Qatar Foundation. It’s amazing, their courage — their courage from Day 1 just to come to the American University of Afghanistan, a co-ed institution with an American-style education. These seven are typical of all students who have left Afghanistan, left their families with little else than a backpack a passport, and some dust from the soil of Afghanistan. But their families said, “You need to pursue your education. It’s not safe for you here, and we support you leaving. Come back and save us.”

Each of these students was anxious to get back to their studies, and they found great camaraderie in being together. It really was just an amazing experience to be with them and see their courage. They left everything behind. And Americans must not leave the others behind.

The woman who was the first to warn about Osama bin Laden, CNN.com

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. This is adapted from his new book, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden,” published by Simon & Schuster on August 3. The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.”

(CNN)Just one week out of the University of Virginia, with a degree in economics and foreign policy, Gina Bennett started working at the State Department as a clerk-typist in June 1988. After a couple of months, Bennett’s boss told her, “Gina, you don’t belong here. I’m going to promote you so you can get a job as an intelligence analyst.”
Today, 33 years later, as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Bennett is a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service working as senior counterterrorism adviser at the National Counterterrorism Center. No one in the US government has tracked al Qaeda and all its many branches and offshoots for as long and with as much distinction as Bennett has.

This didn’t seem predictable when Bennett started at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, one of the smallest US intelligence agencies.

Bennett’s first job was as a “terrorism watch officer,” working eight-hour shifts during which she monitored intelligence and news media to analyze terrorism trends and to respond to attacks when they occurred.

On December 21, 1988, a bomb blew up on Pan Am 103 as it flew over Scotland. The jet crashed, killing a total of 270 people on the plane and on the ground, 35 of whom were students at Syracuse University. Bennett worked with Consular Affairs helping the bereaved families and preparing the State Department’s daily updates about the bombing.

Bennett recalled, “I was really, really changed by Pan Am 103 because so many of the passengers were students who were just a bit younger than me.” Stopping the next terrorist attack became a mission for Bennett. “It’s like being a cop who is chasing a serial killer on a cold case. You just can’t give it up.”
\
The Berlin Wall fell at the end of 1989 and then the Soviet Union collapsed, but Bennett sensed that there was a menacing legacy of the Cold War — the “Afghan Arabs,” who were Arab veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad during the 1980s in Afghanistan. Bennett realized that the Afghan Arabs were returning to their home countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia and she noticed that some were joining armed groups.

Bennett was particularly struck by an attack in November 1991 by a group of militants on Algerian border guards, six of whom were slaughtered like animals, hacked to death with knives and swords. The Algerian terrorists were dressed in Afghan garb and their leader was named Tayeb el Afghani, “Tayeb the Afghan.”

Bennett investigated further and found that thousands of Afghan Arabs had left their home countries to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan during the 1980s, relying on a support network that had funneled men, money and supplies to the Afghan War. By the early 1990s, that network was sending veterans of the Afghan conflict to join militant Islamist groups around the world.

Bennett started writing classified papers about what she was learning. She began hearing about an “Abu Abdullah” guy who was financing some of these Afghan Arabs. Bennett had no idea that she would spend much of the rest of her career focused on this mysterious Abu Abdullah, the nom de guerre of Osama bin Laden.

Bennett researched the bombings of two hotels in Aden, Yemen, in December 1992. They were housing US soldiers on their way to Somalia to participate in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis. Yemeni officials said the attack was financed by an “Osama bin Laden,” who was then living in Sudan.

As Bennett was investigating bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs, she became pregnant with her first child, delivering her son on February 23, 1993. Three days later, a team assembled by one of the Afghan Arabs, Ramzi Yousef, drove a van into the basement of the World Trade Center and detonated a bomb, killing six people. As investigators began looking into Yousef’s group, they found that several of them had traveled to Afghanistan or Pakistan to aid in the war against the communists.

Bennett was holding her new baby boy in the hospital when she received a frantic call about the Trade Center bombing from her boss who was almost shouting, “Your people did this! Your people did this!” Her boss was referring to the Afghan Arabs that Bennett had been tracking for the past couple of years.

At first, Bennett had no idea what her boss was talking about as she was in a great deal of pain from her C-section three days earlier and her painkillers had worn off.

She quickly realized that the Afghan Arabs had spread their holy war, this time to New York City. Sitting on Bennett’s desk at the State Department was a draft of a paper that she had been writing that described a movement of mujahideen, holy warriors, from more than 50 countries who had gained battlefield experience in Afghanistan and were now joining militant organizations in countries such as Algeria, Bosnia, Egypt, Tajikistan, the Philippines and Yemen, and even in unexpected locations like Burma.

The first warning about bin Laden

When Bennett returned from maternity leave to the State Department, she resumed drafting her paper, which she circulated on August 21, 1993.

The classified report, “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” identified “Usama bin Ladin” as a donor who was supporting Islamic militants in “places as diverse as Yemen and the United States.” Bin Laden’s fortune had derived from his family’s construction company, which was one of the largest in the Middle East. According to Bennett’s 1993 analysis, bin Laden’s funding had also enabled hundreds of Afghan Arabs to resettle in Sudan and Yemen.

Bennett’s report was the first time that the US government had produced a warning about the dangers of a global jihadist movement led by the mysterious multimillionaire, Osama bin Laden. And the warning was not issued by the CIA or the FBI, but by a junior intelligence analyst at the State Department.

A week later, Bennett published another classified analysis titled, “Saudi Patron to Islamic Extremists,” in which she observed that bin Laden had founded a group called “al-Qa’ida in the 1980s.” This was the first time that anyone in the U.S. government had identified al Qaeda as a threat, the existence of which was then a well-kept secret.
Bennett had spent time liaising with her intelligence counterparts in countries such as Egypt and Yemen to learn as much as she could about bin Laden and his organization.

Bennett named bin Laden as the financier of the bombings of the two hotels in Yemen. She also described how bin Laden had gathered a group of Afghan war veterans in his base in Sudan who were training to fight in new holy wars and he was “financing jihads” around the world from Pakistan to Thailand.

Bennett wanted policymakers and the intelligence community to pay attention to this phenomenon, but she knew it would be difficult.

Bennett knew that what she was describing wasn’t considered “normal” in the world of counterterrorism because this was a case of militants from different countries in a loose alliance operating without the support of any state. Bennett wanted policymakers and the intelligence community to pay attention to this phenomenon, but she knew it would be difficult.

In classified papers, Bennett described bin Laden as a “financier,” as that was the best evidence about him that was then available, but privately she saw him as something more. Bennett was an observant Catholic who understood the power of religious beliefs in someone’s life.

She believed that bin Laden was a visionary who believed God was on his side. He had a model for political change that was based on his experience in Afghanistan where men from dozens of countries had put their different interpretations of Islam aside and had fought in Allah’s name. They had stayed focused on that fight and look at what they had helped achieve: The Soviet Union fell, two years after the Soviet’s disastrous war in Afghanistan had ended in 1989.

Bennett believed that bin Laden mythologized this whole movement, not just his own role in it, and he thought it was a repeatable model, not only in Afghanistan, but around the world.

Under pressure from the Saudi and US governments in mid-May 1996, bin Laden was pushed out of Sudan and relocated to Afghanistan. Two months later, Bennett published another prescient top secret analysis titled, “Usama bin Ladin: Who’s Chasing Whom?” Bennett predicted that bin Laden “would feel comfortable returning to Afghanistan, where he got his start as a patron and mujahid during the war with the former Soviet Union.”

Bennett went on to forecast that bin Laden’s “prolonged stay in Afghanistan where hundreds of Arab mujahidin receive terrorist training and extremist leaders often congregate — could prove more dangerous to US interests in the long run than during his three-year liaison with Khartoum [the capital of Sudan].”

Bennett believed that bin Laden would be a bigger threat now that he was reunited with the birthplace of his own mythology: the battlefields of Afghanistan where he had personally fought the Soviets in the late 1980s.

He had a network of contacts in Pakistan and Afghanistan that he could easily utilize. And he was angry about being forced out of Sudan where he had invested many millions of dollars, an expulsion that he blamed on the Americans.
9/11

During the spring and summer of 2001, the American intelligence community received a series of credible intelligence reports about bin Laden’s plans for attacks on American targets.

On April 20, a report titled “Bin Ladin Planning Multiple Operations” was circulated by the CIA, followed by another report on May 3, “Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack.” And on August 3, the CIA issued a warning titled, “Threat of Impending al-Qaeda Attack to Continue Indefinitely.”

According to Bennett, who was by now working at the CIA and contributing to the warnings about bin Laden’s plans, the fact that some of al Qaeda’s plots had previously failed contributed to a sense among senior American national security officials that the CIA was overplaying the threat. Bennett asked herself, “Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we’re wrong?” It was wearing on Bennett and her colleagues. It was a hard summer.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the oppressive heat of the Washington summer was finally beginning to dissipate; the sky was a cloudless, azure blue and the air crystalline. Gina Bennett and her friend Cindy Storer, both of whom had been on the bin Laden “account” for as long as anyone at the CIA, were carpooling to the agency’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia, which is tucked away behind a screen of trees in a leafy neighborhood of well-appointed mansions.

The whole ride Bennett and Storer were discussing the assassination two days earlier of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. They debated whether this was a gift from bin Laden to the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar, and they kept probing the question: Why go to the trouble of assassinating Massoud, if not for some larger reason?

Bennett, who was three months pregnant with her fourth child and was occasionally suffering morning sickness, was at her desk at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, when she heard a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. She and her colleagues turned on a television and watched the coverage. They saw the second plane fly into the other tower at 9:03 a.m. The attacks from bin Laden they had warned about were upon them.

CIA managers told everyone to evacuate the agency’s headquarters building, but those in the Counterterrorist Center were told they had to remain at their desks; after all, they knew more about al Qaeda than anyone else in the government.

The Counterterrorist Center team split up, with some officials trying to find the passenger manifests of the hijacked planes. Bennett and her team members tried to work out what the next target of the terrorists could be. They were keenly aware that militants linked to al Qaeda had developed a plan six years earlier to fly a plane into CIA headquarters. And there was a hijacked passenger jet hurtling toward Washington, D.C. That plane would crash into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.

Within weeks of 9/11, Bennett was pulled from her job to dig into Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s purported involvement in 9/11. Senior Bush administration officials were convinced that Saddam was involved. However, when Bennett investigated whether there were any substantive links between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda, she concluded that Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda were “mutually hostile,” an analysis she communicated to Bush administration officials.

Yet, President George W. Bush was determined to go to war and the following month US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at the UN Security Council, claiming that Saddam concealed a weapons of mass destruction program and was in league with al Qaeda.

The Iraq War began in March 2003. Seven months later, on November 11, 2003, Bennett and several other intelligence officials briefed President Bush and his war cabinet at a meeting in the White House Situation Room, telling them, “Iraq came along at exactly the right time for al Qaeda,” as it had allowed the group to stage a comeback. Religious extremists from around the Muslim world were now pouring into Iraq.
The Iraq War had saved al Qaeda.

The death of bin Laden

Eight years after the beginning of the Iraq War, bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. A CIA analyst in her mid-20s sent Bennett a message saying, “Hey, it was a really bad day for al Qaeda?”
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Bennett replied, “Well, yeah. It’s a pretty bad day, but it’s definitely not their worst.”
Bennett’s colleague asked, “What are you talking about? Bin Laden is dead.”

Bennet asked her younger colleague about a once infamous terrorist group that had terrorized Germany during the 1970s: “Well, let me ask you this: Have you ever heard of the Baader-Meinhof gang?”

The colleague said, “No.”

Bennett replied, “Well, someday when one officer in CIA’s Counterterrorism Center says to another officer, ‘Have you ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda?’ and they say ‘No’: That’s the worst day.”

General Petraeus: On the Taliban Takeover, CNN.com

General Petraeus: The ‘disheartening and sad’ endgame

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 9:18 AM ET, Wed August 25, 2021

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)General David Petraeus called the Taliban takeover “hugely disheartening and sad” and said that the stage was set for the chaos now unfolding in Afghanistan by the US peace negotiations with the Taliban by the Trump administration in 2018 that excluded the elected Afghan government. Those talks, combined with the total withdrawal of US troops, fatally undermined both the Afghan government and its military.

Petraeus was deeply immersed in the war in Afghanistan, first as the commander of Central Command (CENTCOM) that oversaw the war in Afghanistan until 2010; then as the ground commander leading the war in Afghanistan, and subsequently as the Director of the CIA in 2011, overseeing all of the agency’s operation and intelligence-gathering in Afghanistan until 2012.

The general made his comments in an email exchange with Peter Bergen about the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

BERGEN: Did the peace negotiations with the Taliban over the past three years set the stage for what happened?

PETRAEUS: Yes, at least in part. First, the negotiations announced to the Afghan people and the Taliban that the US really did intend to leave (which also made the job of our negotiators even more difficult than it already was, as we were going to give them what they most wanted, regardless of what they committed to us). Second, we undermined the elected Afghan government, however flawed it may have been, by not insisting on a seat for it at the negotiations we were conducting about the country they actually governed. Third, as part of the eventual agreement, we forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters, many of whom quickly returned to the fight as reinforcements for the Taliban. Fourth, the commitment gave President Biden an additional justification/excuse to do what he wanted to do — leave.

BERGEN: Did Biden need to be bound by the Trump agreement with the Taliban?

PETRAEUS: No, and the Administration clearly has not felt itself bound by many of the other Trump Administration actions with which it has disagreed. In fact, the Biden administration has reversed the Trump withdrawals from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, among many other policy decisions and approaches with which it disagreed. Beyond that, the Administration has also sought to sustain commitments in most other locations where there are Islamist extremists; in fact, President Biden and other members of his Administration know from the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq in late 2011 that one must keep pressure on extremist groups or they will reconstitute and cause new problems as was the case with ISIS in Iraq after our departure, which subsequently caused enormous problems in Iraq and Syria and, to a degree, Europe.

BERGEN: Did the Afghan army fight?

PETRAEUS: Yes, at the outset; however, once it was clear to commanders on the ground that the Afghan Air Force could no longer respond to simultaneous attacks all around the vast country and provide reinforcements, resupply, air medevac, and close air support, local military and political leaders decided it was best to cut a deal rather than fight to the finish. This should not have been a surprise. Afghans have demonstrated over many centuries that they will do what is necessary to survive, and they are very skilled at recognizing which way the wind is blowing and when it is shifting.

BERGEN: What could have been done differently than a unilateral pullout? What US/NATO presence was militarily sustainable? Politically sustainable in the US?

PETRAEUS: Keeping in mind that no US soldier has been killed in combat in Afghanistan in some 18 months, it seemed to me that maintaining approximately 3,500 American men and women in uniform, with a lot of drones, close air support capability, and intelligence fusion assets, was more than sustainable — just as we have chosen to do in recent months in Iraq, Syria, Somalia and elsewhere in Africa, and other locations around the world. That would have been particularly true if our senior leaders had sought to explain why such a commitment was advisable.

BERGEN: The contractors were also pulled out: What effect did that have?

PETRAEUS: The contractors who were withdrawn constituted a critical, irreplaceable capability for maintaining the sophisticated US-provided helicopters and fixed wing aircraft of the Afghan Air Force. When the 18,000 or so contractors pulled out, along with the withdrawal of US forces, the readiness of the Afghan Air Force began to erode, especially as the operational tempo was exceedingly high and unsustainable, with many aircraft returning from missions with battle damage. Yet the Afghan Air Force was the critical element in ensuring that Afghan soldiers on the ground knew that someone had their backs in a tough fight. Without the Afghan Air Force doing what only they could do in the wake of the withdrawal of US air assets, Afghan soldiers knew that no one was coming to their rescue.

BERGEN: Was the Taliban takeover predictable?

PETRAEUS: Yes, once we pulled out our 2500-3500 troops, which necessitated the other NATO countries pulling out 7,000 troops and also the withdrawal of many thousands of contractors, Afghan soldiers realized early on that no one was going to help them.

BERGEN: Some have suggested this was an intelligence failure: Was it?

PETRAEUS: It is impossible to say without knowing what the intel community assessments were that were provided to the national security team along the way. Beyond that, as you noted on CNN last week, there is a longstanding practice of administrations in Washington recasting a failed policy as an intelligence failure. I tend to think that the latter was not the case here.

BERGEN: Ahmad Shah Massoud and Amrullah Saleh are leading the resistance to the Taliban. Any thoughts on how that might go?

PETRAEUS: They are both committed, charismatic, and determined leaders, and Amrullah Saleh is very experienced as well (he was my Afghan counterpart when I was Director of the CIA); they have attracted a number of forces who oppose the Taliban and refused to be part of the deals that were cut at local levels. But the major positive feature of the Panjshir Valley where they are leading the resistance — its inaccessibility and natural defensive terrain — can also be a significant shortcoming, given its lack of connectivity with the outside world, from which it needs to get many goods, commodities, and services, not the least of which is refined fuel products. Without a corridor to the border or some other arrangement to the north, they will be quite vulnerable to just being isolated, especially as the Taliban quite impressively seized many of the provinces in the northeastern part of Afghanistan near the beginning of the campaign, and that makes it difficult for those in the Panjshir to establish a corridor for resupply.

BERGEN: Are the Taliban reformed?

PETRAEUS: No one truly knows. And only time will tell. But we should recognize that the US potentially has considerable influence, given the size of the fiscal hole in which the Taliban will soon find themselves. The Taliban has to be short over $5 billion for their annual budget, and with their reserves around the world and their IMF special drawing rights frozen, they are going to struggle to fund their government, maintain basic services, pay their fighters and government salaries, and import products desperately needed in Afghanistan. It is not inconceivable that the Taliban may find the lights going out in Kabul.

BERGEN: What does this mean for al Qaeda and other jihadist groups? Threats to the US homeland? Or American targets overseas?

PETRAEUS: We have to assume that the Taliban victory will make it easier for al Qaeda and the Islamic State and other extremist groups to establish sanctuaries on Afghan soil — though I know that our intelligence agencies and military forces will do all that is humanly possible to identify, disrupt, degrade, and destroy any such sanctuaries (including virtual sanctuaries in cyberspace, too) well before they can establish a capability that could threaten our homeland or the homelands of our NATO allies.

BERGEN: How does this Taliban victory make you feel?

PETRAEUS: Hearing of the Taliban takeover was hugely disheartening and sad. That was especially so for those of us who worked with Afghans and who had such high hopes. I am sure that also has to be the case for families in the US and coalition countries who had a son or daughter or spouse in uniform give the “last full measure of devotion” serving in Afghanistan. Few individuals were as privileged as I was to observe — and lead — our men and women in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East. In my experience, with rare exceptions, those who volunteered to serve in the military in the wake of the 9/11 attacks performed with very enormous professionalism, determination, innovativeness, and courage. They earned recognition as America’s New Greatest Generation, and we should all be grateful to them for answering our Nation’s call at a time of war, regardless of views about the policies that we executed. Moreover, all who served there should take considerable pride in having provided Afghanistan and the Afghan people some 20 years of relative freedom and opportunity compared to the situation under the Taliban before we ousted that regime in late 2001.