JANUARY 2001
I WAS WAITING IMPATIENTLY IN front of Ambassador Milam’s residence, trying to suppress my natural urge to pace: it looks undignified, and I wanted to make an appropriate impression on our arriving guest. Lowland Pakistani winters are mild by most standards, but this night was cold and damp, and I hadn’t bothered with a coat.
Arrangements for the visit had been made by an embassy contact, a Houston-based Afghan-American by the name of “Akbar.” Twenty years in the intelligence business had taught me to be distrustful of Akbar and his ilk; rogue regimes always attract opportunists, operators looking to develop unsavory contacts with an eye for the main chance. Still, whatever one might think of his character, Akbar had shown he could deliver; and the package he was delivering that night was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Jalil Akhund—known widely as “Mullah Jalil.”
Akbar himself was something of a phenomenon. For all that he was a Pashtun, he was the last person you would expect to have effective relations with the Taliban. He was a heavy drinker and a smoker, where no real talib would tolerate either. In a country where beardless men risked being arrested on sight, he remained defiantly smooth-cheeked. True, he had the protection of both Mullah Jalil and his boss, Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil; but in a country run by narrow-minded religious obscurantists and awash in religious police, it was a marvel that he could operate the way he did. His audacity was perhaps his greatest ally: anyone so willing to openly flout the rules must be powerful indeed.
His appeal was simple. He had apparently convinced Jalil and a handful of others that if ever international sanctions could be lifted, he would be the man to bring them the commercial rewards they sought. Thus he was desperate to find some way past the bin Laden roadblock, and he had curried multiple contacts within the U.S. government in hopes of brokering an understanding with the Taliban.
This could hardly be called a clandestine contact. It was being held, after all, in the ambassador’s residence on the high-profile American Embassy compound in Islamabad, surrounded by high walls and guarded by Pakistanis. We had gone to some pains, however, to keep the meeting discreet: Akbar was conveying Mullah Jalil in his own vehicle, rather than an official Taliban car. Where the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, would normally have been expected to participate, he had pointedly not been informed of this meeting. And where all guests normally were screened at the gate, I had made special arrangements to ensure that the passenger in the backseat of Akbar’s rented Toyota Land Cruiser would remain unmolested behind darkened windows. Milam had taken the further precaution of dismissing his staff early for the evening.
The man who emerged from the SUV was no more than five foot seven. He had a round, childlike face, notwithstanding the standard full, untrimmed beard. He was dressed conventionally for a talib, in a dark gray, winter-weight shalwar khameez and sleeveless black vest, which he wore over a thick nut brown woolen sweater. The uniform was completed by the usual rough brown woolen blanket, which he wrapped about him like a cape, and a black Kandahari pugaree, whose long loose end draped down in front of his left shoulder. He wore this turban pushed back on his head, revealing a close-cropped widow’s peak.
A seeming majority of Afghan males of Jalil’s age and background had been shot up in the previous two decades of war, and the deputy foreign minister was no exception: he walked with a pronounced limp, favoring his right leg. It was only after he took his place to the ambassador’s left, with his crossed legs pulled up beneath him on the settee, and began slowly rubbing his aching right ankle, that I noticed two discordant details. On the floor beneath the couch were a pair of black Reeboks in place of the usual sandals, and tucked into his breast pocket was a very expensive Mont Blanc pen—both, no doubt, gifts from the redoubtable Akbar.
When State Department officers hold a ritual discussion with a foreign counterpart in which neither side departs from standard, previously reported positions, they will often describe the contact in shorthand, citing “an exchange along familiar lines.” For the most part, the phrase would have applied here, if the meeting itself had not been so novel. Milam took the lead, laying out the U.S. demand that bin Laden be turned over to American justice. Jalil countered by inviting the U.S. government to present its evidence; if the Taliban found it compelling, he said, it could try bin Laden in its own Islamic courts. Milam explained, in turn, that the procedures in a Taliban court would not meet the requirements of U.S. or international justice. Round and round they went for some time. Akbar translated, though it was clear that Jalil’s understanding of English was sufficient to require only occasional assistance. My presence at such an exchange was unusual, but Milam had felt that Jalil’s willingness to meet outside the usual diplomatic channels suggested a flexibility that I would be in the best position to exploit.
Mullah Jalil, unlike most of the Taliban leadership, had been extensively educated outside of Quranic schools, and I had expected to see in him some signs of genuine sophistication. What I saw in his eyes was a sort of rude cunning. Although his words conformed to Taliban orthodoxy, one had the distinct impression, enhanced by Akbar’s presence, that this was one talib with whom we might be able to deal.
We took a break from discussions, and I escorted both Akbar and Jalil to the front foyer. Akbar, craving a cigarette, dashed outside. As soon as the front door closed behind him, Jalil, who clearly knew my CIA affiliation, turned to me. “We must stay in touch,” he said, inclining his head toward the front door, “but he must not know.” I agreed that Akbar was not to be trusted. But how could we meet? Jalil said that he was staying with Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, and that without Akbar’s help, he could not escape his official entourage to meet alone. I knew he had no secure means to call me from Kandahar: there was no cellular system in Afghanistan, and the few available landlines were run through the Pakistani exchanges at Peshawar and Quetta, specifically designated for official Taliban government use. All, of course, were subject to official Pakistani monitoring.
“If you had a satellite phone,” I asked, “could you call me without anyone knowing?” He could, he said, but it would be difficult and risky to hide the device. If he were seen to have acquired a sat phone solely for his own use, it would generate suspicion. “But if I will bring it for the others to use also, I can speak with you alone.”
“So much the better,” I thought. Yet how to get a sat phone to him in Afghanistan? Akbar represented the only readily apparent means available. But Jalil feared that his Afghan-American friend would avoid providing any means of independent contact that might diminish his own role as intermediary. “Leave that part to me,” I told him, just as Akbar reentered the house.
When at length the evening’s diplomatic discussion ended and the two were sent on their way, I was left to ponder what this unexpected opportunity with Jalil might represent. Depending on his motives, which did not seem entirely altruistic, it could mean an opportunity to recruit Mullah Jalil as a senior “penetration” of the Taliban, and the chance to use him to influence Taliban policy regarding bin Laden covertly; or it might all prove an elaborate effort on the cleric’s part to manipulate me in pursuit of a combination of personal and Taliban ends—hardly inconsistent with Jalil’s apparent character. Yet again, it might represent a combination of both. Whatever the case, this was precisely the sort of game I was eager to play. I was already hard at work trying to develop indirect means of forcing a change in Taliban policy toward bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs. Mullah Jalil might provide a far more direct means of doing so. Before the winter was out, the game would be on in earnest.