Zardari: We Underestimated Taliban Threat

This story was first published on Feb. 15, 2009. It was updated on May 29, 2009.

Of all the challenges facing President Obama, none is more difficult to solve than the basket case that is Pakistan. The Muslim nation - whose support is critical to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan - is not only broke and on tenterhooks with its arch enemy India, it is now at war with Muslim extremists inside the country who are trying to destroy the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

As 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft first reported in February, the growing insurgency run by the Taliban and al Qaeda is threatening the stability of a key U.S. ally that is believed to have as many as a hundred nuclear weapons.

Also, read 60 Minutes producer Draggan Mihailovich's account of traveling into Taliban territory.

But the biggest threat facing Pakistan today comes from within, from its lawless tribal territories on the western frontier, where the Taliban and al Qaeda were allowed to regroup and carry out attacks against U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan, and now against the Pakistani government.

During the past year, Islamic extremists have launched more than 600 terrorist attacks inside the country, killing more than 2,000 people. One suicide bombing last September, at the Marriott Hotel in the capital of Islamabad, killed 60 people just minutes away from the presidential offices, now occupied by a very unlikely leader, Asif Ali Zardari.

Asked how important it is to stop extremism, President Zardari told Kroft, "It's important enough. I lost my wife to it. My children's mother, the most populist leader of Pakistan. It's important to stop them and make sure that it doesn't happen again and they don't take over our way of life. That's what they want to do."

Zardari's late wife was Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to be leading the country. But the former prime minister was assassinated, most likely by the Pakistani Taliban, after returning from exile 17 months ago. Until then, Zardari had spent more time in prison on corruption charges than he had in government service.

But parliament elected him president last fall, and he has spent much of his time dealing with the Taliban insurgency that has spread across the countryside. "They do have a presence in huge amounts of land in our side. Yes, that is the fact," Zardari acknowledged.

North of the capital, in an area known as Swat, the Taliban have seized control, terrorizing villages and imposing Islamic law. Beheadings are common, signs in the market place read "no women allowed," and a few months ago the Taliban blew up five girls schools.

"Right now, you have a situation in the Swat area. It's only three hours from Islamabad where the Taliban is very strong there," Kroft remarked. "How did that happen?"

"It's been happening over time. And it's happened out of denial. Everybody was in denial that they're weak and they won't be able to take over. That, they won't be able to give us a challenge. And our forces weren't increased. And therefore we have weaknesses. And they are taking advantage of that weakness," Zardari explained.

For years, the Taliban were permitted to operate openly in the border regions of Pakistan. Their leaders even held news conferences. The government was unwilling to take them on politically or militarily. Now Pakistan is facing a monster it helped create, and has been forced to act. It's deployed 120,000 troops to clear the Taliban from their sanctuaries.

60 Minutes went with them to one of the most dangerous places in the world, the border area adjacent to Afghanistan's Kunar province, the Princeton of international terrorism, where many believe al Qaeda's top leadership is being hosted by the Taliban.

We landed in a place called Bajaur, a district in the tribal territories that sits astride a major Taliban infiltration route and the scene of the Pakistani military's biggest offensive ever against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Gen. Tariq Khan is the commander of Pakistan's forces in the tribal territories.

"We considered Bajaur to be the center of gravity, from where the militants had access to Afghanistan," Khan told Kroft.

Asked what the fighting was like there, the general said, "We had to fight compound to compound. And every inch, we had to take a hit."

Khan told Kroft he was surprised by the enemy's numbers and their intensity. "The kind of tenacity. The need to hold onto ground. There were no surrenders. As much as people willing to die."

It took the Pakistani military five months of heavy fighting to gain a fragile foothold over an area about half the size of Rhode Island. When 60 Minutes was there in January, there was still sporadic sniper fire as the frontier corps cleared out the last pockets of resistance.

They took us to a former Taliban command post less than ten miles from the Afghanistan border to show us what they had been up against. Inside the mud walls and beneath the compound was an intricate set of tunnels.

"These tunnels are linked for more than one mile," one soldier told Kroft.

The tunnels in the area not only were connected to underground rooms, but to other compounds, and were deep enough to withstand artillery fire. The tunnels took years to build, an indication of how long the Taliban were allowed to flourish in Bajaur.

"Do you think it was a mistake not going up against the Taliban earlier?" Kroft asked Gen. Khan.

"I think we should have nipped the evil in the bud. Much earlier. We dilly dallied, we hoped that it would go away," Khan acknowledged. "It didn't work."

And he acknowledged that the Taliban is their enemy now. "They have to be dismantled. They have to be destroyed."

Along with much of Bajour: after the battle, the Pakistani military brought in bulldozers to level the buildings that were still standing, to make sure the Taliban won't return. The people who lived there have been relocated, along with 200,000 others to refugee camps outside Peshawar. And the remnants of the Taliban have also moved.

Some of them moved to Mohmand, the next tribal district to the south. A Pakistani frontier outpost there regularly fires artillery salvos at suspected Taliban enclaves. The Pakistani commanders walked 60 Minutes up a steep hill to point out one of their outposts that was attacked by 600 Taliban soldiers just three nights earlier.

A commander told Kroft it was the biggest they attack that they had ever faced there.

The Pakistanis claim 110 Taliban soldiers were killed that night, with only six losses to their side. "This was most probably a kind of last ditch effort by them," the commander said.

But not everyone is so optimistic. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, spent 30 years as a CIA analyst, and has advised President Obama on the situation in Pakistan.

"This is unprecedented to have this many Pakistani troops there. Unfortunately, almost all of them are not trained in counter-insurgency warfare. They're trying to use the tactics that they would use against the Indian Army, armored warfare, against an enemy that is an unconventional force," Riedel said.

Asked how successful he thinks Pakistan's tactics have been, Riedel told Kroft, "Most of the success has been along the main road. Once you get off the main road, you get into rural villages, there's very little lasting effectiveness."

And it's not just rural villages: the Taliban are now operating on the outskirts of Peshawar, one of Pakistan's largest cities, 40 miles from the Afghanistan border.

They have attacked police stations, military outposts, and destroyed hundreds of NATO vehicles. They have also mounted regular attacks on the convoys that snake their way through the Khyber Pass on the way to Afghanistan to re-supply American troops, which get most of their weapons, ammunition and food, through this critical route.

In December the Pakistani army was forced to close it temporarily, in order to root out the Taliban. But in February the insurgents blew up a key bridge through the pass on the Pakistan side of the border. There are some in Washington who still question the commitment of the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), to wage a war against fellow Muslims and they question how much power President Zardari really has.

"Do you have the support for this campaign against the Taliban? Do you have the full support of the military and the ISI?" Kroft asked the president.

"If that wasn't the case, then Islamabad would have fallen because obviously if the army doesn't do its job, these men are not restricted. They've blown up the Marriott Hotel before. They've attacked us inland before. They would be all around us, wouldn't they?" Zardari replied.

Speaking to Bruce Riedel, Kroft asked, "President Zardari said this is our war now, meaning Pakistan's war. Do you think he means it?"

"He understands it's his war now," Riedel replied. "He has yet to convince most Pakistanis that it's their war. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis see this as America's war, They haven't bought into the notion that this is a threat to them yet."

There is a huge wave of anti-Americanism sweeping across Pakistan right now. Many of its 180 million citizens see the U.S. as an imperial power, like the former Soviet Union, meddling in a part of the world where they believe it has no business. The feelings have been exacerbated by U.S. attacks against high level al Qaeda targets on Pakistan's soil using unmanned predator drones. Some of the attacks have been successful, but dozens if not hundreds of Pakistani bystanders have also been killed.

"If we do that in America, will you accept it? So if you feel it is wrong, we are also human being. We also feel that whatever you are doing, it is inhuman," said Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistani intelligence officer, and an influential Islamic firebrand who spent seven months in prison last year for speaking out against the government.

He is also a friend of Osama bin Laden.

Asked when he last spoke to bin Laden, Khawaja, after a long pause, said, "It's a long time back."

"Where do you think he is?" Kroft asked.

"See, even if I know, I will never tell you so this is a question that shouldn't, you shouldn't ask me this question," Khawaja replied.

"Do you think Zardari will aggressively go after Osama Bin Laden?" Kroft asked.

"I don't think that Zardari has any power," Khawaja said. "Zardari is only a puppet of United States here. He's here only because of United States wanted him to be planted here."

But Zardari told Kroft, "We're not doing anybody a favor. Pakistan, the government of today, we are aware of the fact it's a Taliban try, trying to take over the state of Pakistan. So, we're fighting for the survival of Pakistan. We're not fighting for the survival of anybody else."

The notion that the second largest Muslim country in the world, armed with a hundred nuclear weapons, could fall under the influence of Islamic radicals is a nightmare the United States has been having for a while now, but today it has never been more plausible.

"The possibility of Pakistan being taken over by Islamic jihadists is a real one," Riedel warned. "I think a decade ago most experts would have said it'll never happen. I think today most experts would say it's a possibility. It's become a serious possibility.