9/11 and Pakistan: The story that Trump has forgotten

The United States is observing the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attack at a time when President Donald Trump has teamed up with Pakistan, the regime that facilitated the attack, and blown up the relationship with India, a country that helped uncover the link between Pakistan and terrorists behind the attack.

Nineteen terrorists hijacked four aeroplanes on September 11, 2001, and crashed a plane into each of the World Trade Center’s towers in New York City, rammed the third plane into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the fourth plane crashed into the fields of Pennsylvania after passengers and crew tried to wrest control from terrorists. A total of 2,977 people were killed that day.

To get an idea about Pakistan’s role in the 9/11 attack, consider these facts: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the attack, was captured living next door to the Pakistani Army headquarters; Osama bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda who ordered the attack, was found living in Pakistan next door to a military academy; and the Pakistani intelligence chief at the time, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmed, paid $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker.

Principal architect of 9/11 and Pakistan

In the late hours of February 28, 2003, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) an address in Rawalpindi and told it to pick a person from there. The fact that the house was barely at a five-minute drive from the Pakistani Army headquarters rattled officers involved in the operation but they went ahead with it anyway — the United States paid Pakistan handsomely for counterterrorism assistance.

There was no time to verify the occupants of the house or consult various stakeholders within the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus. That was intentional as the CIA did not trust the ISI enough to tell it who the target was.

In the early hours of March 1, commandoes raided the house and, after a room-by-room search, found Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11. The house where he lived —next door to the Pakistani Army HQ— was owned by a couple in the Jamaat-e-Islami whose son was a serving army officer.

The commandoes also captured a Saudi accountant. The CIA believed he had managed cash flows for the 9/11 plot.

In their book ‘Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI’, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark note that the accountant’s laptop allegedly contained messages to 9/11 hijackers, including an email address and possibly a phone number for Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, the courier of Osama bin Laden whose pursuit led to the discovery of the compound in Pakistan’s Abbottabad where the Al Qaeda chief lived — and where he was killed in 2011 in a special forces’ raid.

Pakistani cash funded 9/11 hijacking

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-Pakistani jihadist with deep links to the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker. But that’s not all.

The Indian intelligence agencies concluded that Sheikh had made the transfer at the instructions of Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed, the ISI chief at the time.

Later in 2001, Ahmed purportedly sought retirement after being superseded for an appointment, but he was in fact sacked after the US authorities demanded his sacking after learning about his payment to Atta with the help of Indian intelligence, according to The Times of India.

Separately, CNN also reported that Atta “distributed the funds to conspirators in Florida in the weeks before” the attack.

The US intelligence agencies described Sheikh “as a key figure in the funding operation of Al Qaeda”, as per the report.

Later, Sheikh and KSM would join hands to murder American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia bureau chief of Wall Street Journal at the time. Sheikh abducted Pearl and KSM beheaded him.

Pakistan’s support to Al Qaeda’s hosts

Osama bin Laden ordered the 9/11 attack from the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan where his Al Qaeda found a free reign to peddle terrorism the world over. Pakistan was the principal supporter of the Taliban regime (1996-2001) that hosted Bin Laden.

The 9/11 Commission noted that Pakistan never stopped supporting the Taliban despite the group providing sanctuary to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden and the United States asking it to.

“The US government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his organisation and, failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before 9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives and pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban,” the 9/11 Commission’s report said.

Separately, Al-Kuwaiti, the courier of Bin Laden whose pursuit led to the discovery of Al Qaeda’s house in Pakistan, maintained links to Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, an ISI-sponsored jihadist group, which suggests that ISI-supported groups were part of Bin Laden’s support network, according to The New York Times.