No one has followed the Taleban and al-Qa’eda more closely than Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations monitoring mission. He tells Christina Lamb why Obama’s reinforcements won’t scare the fundamentalists away
It’s known as the ‘kill list’. The world’s biggest directory of bad guys — the 1267, as it is officially called after the United Nations resolution which voted it into force — has long been essential kit for Special Forces scouring Afghanistan and the tribal badlands of Pakistan for al-Qa’eda and Taleban. From Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar down, finding or eliminating these baddies will be crucial to the success of President Barack Obama’s much awaited Get Out of Afghanistan strategy.
But there’s one big problem. There are no wanted posters like in cowboy movies or even a deck of cards like that used in Iraq featuring Saddam and his henchmen. Many of the people on the 1267 have no photograph, no address and often only one name. Those who do have pictures are barely distinguishable bearded men in turbans.
The man in charge of the list is former British secret agent Richard Barrett. The head of the UN Commission Monitoring the Taleban and al-Qa’eda, he sits in an office in New York with a large world map on the wall. Disappointingly, it has no big red cross marked Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar. ‘No, I don’t have it bristling with black pins for bad guys,’ he laughs. ‘I wish I knew where they are.’
He admits that after eight years of international forces fighting in Afghanistan and despite the efforts of the world’s most sophisticated satellite technology, fewer than one fifth of the men named have been found. Of the 508 names on the list, he estimates that about 30 are dead, 50 are imprisoned in Guantanamo and elsewhere and the rest are still at large.
On Tuesday night, after 94 days of deliberation and nine war councils, Obama finally came down on the side of the generals to send more troops, if not quite as many as they wanted. The clinching argument was that the Taleban must be defeated in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qa’eda from re-establishing a base that could be used to plot attacks against Americans or other Western nations.
But is this true? There is probably nobody alive who has followed the two groups more closely than Barrett.
And what he has seen is that eight years of fighting, at the cost of more than 1,000 soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars, have succeeded only in pushing al-Qa’eda 80 miles south over the border — while sending in more troops has increased Taleban activity. ‘Why would you keep walking into a minefield?’ he asks, when questioned about the wisdom of sending more troops to Afghanistan. ‘Surely as soon as you realised you’d retrace your steps. But then if you do that you’re just proving everyone right — that we always just walk away.’
In his slightly crumpled grey suit, Barrett might blend in with all the other suits in the UN headquarters, but before assuming this role he was head of overseas counter-terrorism for SIS. On 11 September 2001 he was in the Maritime Alps preparing to climb a glacier when a friend arrived to tell him of the attacks. He immediately packed and headed for Lyons where he caught the next plane to London, fearing it would be the next target.
‘We had been focusing almost exclusively on al-Qa’eda for some time but were under-resourced,’ he recalls. ‘There was a lot of action but of course we missed the big one.’
He took over as co-ordinator of the UN Commission Monitoring Taleban and al-Qa’eda in 2004, inheriting the list. Compiled on the basis of submissions by member states rather than on criminal evidence, it contains 255 al-Qa’eda and 142 Taleban names. The remainder are groups or entities linked to al-Qa’eda, such as the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-i-Toiba, responsible for the Mumbai massacre, and the Afghan warlords Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Jalaluddin’s son Siraj.
The sanctions for all those named are an assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. But the real threat is more deadly.
‘In Afghanistan it has the reputation of being a death list,’ says Barrett. ‘From a UN point of view, we don’t agree with extrajudicial killing, but we know most are killed by international forces if found.’
While around ten names are added to the al-Qa’eda list each year, astonishingly only one has been added to the Taleban list since 2002, despite the exponential increase in their activity. Partly this reflects how little is known about the individuals within the movement; partly it is the problem of getting all member states on the UN Security Council to agree additions. ‘It’s a great shame,’ he says. ‘It’s very slow.’
The most likely sources of information are Pakistan and Afghan authorities. But Pakistan is ambivalent, to say the least, about the Taleban. The Afghan government is reluctant for more names to be added, because once individuals are on the list it is difficult to start reconciliation with them, since only the UN Security Council can take them off again. And so far it hasn’t agreed to remove anyone.
To help track down those named on the list, Barrett has a group of eight experts, along with another ten support staff working with intelligence services from all around the world.
In Afghanistan, stories abound of American soldiers picking up the wrong people, which he says had been disastrous for attempts to enlist local help. ‘Then you’ve annoyed the whole tribe, and we need their co-operation,’ he says. He also admits the sanctions have little effect on Taleban. ‘Travel sanctions are not really a big deal for a Taleban commander living in a cave in Kunar.’
For this reason he would like to see key drug producers and dealers who help finance the movement added to the list. ‘They have accounts and villas abroad and are much more vulnerable to sanctions.’
Although the combined efforts of 100,000 members of Nato forces now in Afghanistan and the world’s best brains in intelligence may not have found that many on the 1267 list, Barrett believes that the effectiveness of al-Qa’eda has been significantly reduced in the last couple of years.
This is partly because of improved intelligence, particularly better human sources, and also because of targeted attacks by drones on the movement’s leadership in Pakistan’s tribal areas. ‘These have made the leadership very concerned,’ he says. ‘They are pretty cut off at the moment and very, very wary of someone coming into their area.’
He points out that in Britain the threat level was reduced from Critical to Severe in September, in part because of the success of the drones. ‘They are still finding cells in the UK but these are cut off from the leadership in Pakistan,’ he explains. He also believes public opinion in many countries has turned against al-Qa’eda because so many Muslims have also been killed in suicide bombs and because the movement lacks new charismatic leaders.
However, he warns: ‘It’s not just about taking them out and crossing someone off our list — it’s about changing the atmosphere so if you take out one leader, there isn’t always another just behind.’ For, as he notes, ‘It is an ideology which has shown huge flexibility and wide appeal, whether you’re unemployed in Algeria or a subsistence farmer in a tiny valley in Waziristan.’
While Obama argues that Nato troops need to be in Afghanistan to ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qa’eda’, Barrett’s team has tracked very little al-Qa’eda activity in Afghanistan for at least two years. Instead he argues that Pakistan is the key to the future of al-Qa’eda. ‘They have managed to embed in Pakistan and form influential alliances with tribal leaders, and it will be hard to dislodge them.’
‘Al-Qa’eda is Pakistan-centric and the threat to the UK comes mainly from Pakistani-origin men who have been seduced by the al-Qa’eda message. If the Taleban exercised unmolested control over more of Afghanistan than they do already, I do not think al-Qa’eda would leap in behind them and start inviting people over from Leeds to train in explosives. I think al-Qa’eda is hoping that it will be able to consolidate its position on the Pakistan side of the Durand line.’
‘It’s Punjab that is more worrying,’ he continues. ‘They might be getting arms in the tribal areas but the militant groups behind many recent big attacks are Punjabi groups — from the Mumbai massacre to the attacks in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. This is not a lesson to be lost on al-Qa’eda.’
Barrett believes southern Punjab is a fertile recruiting ground for al-Qa’eda and other militant groups. ‘What do people want? They want justice, economic opportunity, education for their children — in Punjab the lack of justice, the feudal system and hopeless lack of schooling make them quite ready if militants come along.’
‘So why are we in Afghanistan?’ he asks. ‘To persuade the Pakistan authorities to crack down on al-Qa’eda? I don’t see the connection between the two things.’
His monitoring has shown that sending more foreign troops has provoked more Taleban activity. ‘The presence of foreign troops has made it easier for the Taleban to recruit foot soldiers and gain support by defining their objectives in a way that has broad appeal to the Afghan and Pakistan population,’ he warns.
‘It’s very hard to see that the cost in lives and money of the Afghan campaign make the streets of Britain or anywhere else safer,’ he adds. ‘Possibly the reverse.’
So while he sympathised with Obama’s dilemma, he is not sure any decision can be the right decision. ‘A few thousand more boots on the ground may just push the fight into more remote areas which are currently quiet because no one is there to challenge the Taleban. I cannot see any number of troops eliminating the Taleban.’
His other concern is that while all the focus is on the so-called Af-Pak region, top decision-makers are taking their eyes off the ball elsewhere in the world, in the same way as the war in Iraq led to the situation in Afghanistan being neglected. Meanwhile terrorists are spreading into new places (Yemen is high on Barrett’s watch list) and using gruesome new methods, such as swallowing explosives to turn themselves into human bombs.
He cites the example of the assassination attempt made on the Saudi prince Mohammad bin Naif. The Saudis have been quite successful in capturing or rehabilitating terrorists, but on 28 August, one of those alleged to have repented — Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri — almost succeeded in killing the prince by blowing himself up during a meeting. One of a list of 85 terrorists wanted by the kingdom, al-Asiri had been flown into Jeddah from Yemen on a royal jet by the prince, who is head of counter-terrorism.
After al-Asiri entered a small room for his audience with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small, improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his body.
‘The prince was very fortunate that the blast went downwards instead of upwards and only hurt his finger,’ says Barrett. ‘But the explosion was so strong it ripped Asiri to shreds and his left arm ended up embedded in the ceiling. He failed to kill the prince but came very close and that will give al-Qa’eda lots of encouragement — he had gone through two security checks with enough explosives to bring down a plane. That should make us all very scared.’
Christina Lamb is the Washington bureau chief of the Sunday Times. Her most recent book is Small Wars Permitting (Harper Press).