In the Line of Fire

All world leaders should take their cue from Pakistan’s self-appointed president, General Pervez Musharraf, and publish their memoirs while still in office. It is good to know what is really going on. Last week he went to America, partly to meet with President Bush,and partly to hawk his book, In the Line of Fire, on the talk shows.

According to the published extracts, Musharraf has done some kissing and telling. He describes how the U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan immediately post-September 11th if his Islamic government did not cooperate in the "War on Terror" (“Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age!” exclaimed then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage). He spills various classified beans about shipping centrifuges to North Korea, and how his country’s nuclear deterrent was not even operational when they threatened India in 1999.

One of the most interesting nuggets involves Pakistan’s sale of hundreds of stray Arabs to the Americans, for shipment to Bagram Airforce Base and on to Guantánamo Bay. Many of my clients in Cuba insist that, far from being captured on the battlefield of Afghanistan, they were grabbed in Pakistan and flogged to the Americans like slaves at auction. Predictably enough, for five years the Bush Administration has remained very silent on the issue, but Musharraf’s book sheds new light.

“Many members of al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into Pakistan,” Musharraf writes. “We have played cat and mouse with them. … We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the Government of Pakistan.”

As is so often true, his revelations have set people to arguing, and more truths came tumbling out. Rather than denying or condemning the bounty programme, the U.S. Department of Justice complained about who received the loot. “We didn't know about this,” said a DOJ official. “It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments.”

Musharraf backed down, agreeing that the money was given directly to individuals rather than the government. That makes it okay to sell Arabs then.

The payment of bounties helps us to understand why so many innocent prisoners ended up in Guantánamo Bay. Musharraf writes that ‘millions’ were paid for 369 prisoners -- the minimum rate was apparently $5,000. This may not sound a lot, but in Pakistan the per capita income is $720, so it represents seven years’ salary. That would be the equivalent of $207,000 in Britain, enough to tempt anyone to shop an unwanted Arab to the Americans, gift-wrapped with a story that he was up to no good in Afghanistan.

At the start of his interrogation, the prisoner would deny he had anything to do with the fighting, but his captors would expect no less of him. In pursuit of value for money spent, the American authorities would then get to work. Donald Rumsfeld had authorized his ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, and after a few days of ‘mild non-injurious physical contact’ (e.g., waterboarding) and ‘exploiting individual phobias’ (setting on the dogs), the prisoner would inevitably confess to whatever was asked of him – generally, to confirm the story fabricated by the Pakistani bounty hunter. The U.S. agents felt that they were only extracting the truth, and this ‘truth’ was worth a ticket to Cuba, where his coerced confession would also earn him the label ‘enemy combatant’ at a military tribunal. Now he cannot even challenge his status in court, because last week the Bush Administration rushed a new law through congress eviscerating habeas corpus.

Musharraf may be modestly underestimating his role in all this: The U.S. suggests that Pakistan has turned over almost twice as many supposed terrorists as Musharraf admits to – more than 600. The higher number tallies with recent official figures showing that only five percent of Guantánamo prisoners were captured by U.S. forces. The rest were turned over (sold) by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In all likelihood, General Musharraf is not too concerned where all those bounty dollars went, since he was reportedly paid an advance of over one million dollars by his publishers, Simon & Schuster. Apparently, he purloined his title from the 1993 film In the Line of Fire, starring Clint Eastwood as a hard nosed policeman on the trail of John Malkovich, a would-be presidential assassin. Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts himself, including two on the same bridge in Rawalpindi in 2003. Interviewing the General on his TV show last week, American comedian Jon Stewart suggested he find a new way to work.

One lesson of Musharraf’s book is that the disastrous American bounty programme should come In the Line of Fire. If you go into the market place to buy everything that glitters, you will end up with very little gold, but a whole lot of iron pyrites.

This article also appeared in the New Statesman.