I am not talking here about the much-discussed point that al Qaeda does not seem to actually be present in any significant way in Afghanistan. The argument here rests on claims that the goal is to prevent al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan and that al Qaeda is so deeply interwoven with the various Talibans as to make the distinction meaningless. Both arguments are problematic -– but since both have been discussed elsewhere at some length, I won’t dwell on them.

I am more concerned with an issue more in the areas where I focus: the relationship between al Qaeda Central and the broader network of affiliated movements (AQAM, in the lingo) and like-minded individuals (which me might call AQN, the al Qaeda Network). A key part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been a very successful reorientation of America’s relationship with the Muslim world, downplaying al Qaeda and refusing to allow that extremist fringe to hijack or monopolize those vital relationships. But the new focus on al Qaeda in the AfPak strategy threatens to reverse that vital achievement … and even to revive al Qaeda’s flagging fortunes in the wider Muslim world.

In part, this refects a debate which has been raging for years over the importance of AQC to the wider network of salafi-jihadist groups and individuals. The Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy seems to have taken one side in that debate –- but whether that is because it is correct, or because it is useful to justify an Afghan military strategy chosen for other reasons, is hugely important.

For Bruce Hoffmann and other “Centralists,” al Qaeda Central continues to play an extremely important role in guiding, shaping, arming, and directing the seemingly inchoate network of jihadists. They point to evidence of contacts between the perpetrators of well-known cases and AQC affiliated people in Pakistan or elsewhere. They point to the deluge of AQ propaganda still pouring out of al-Sahab and other jihadist media outlets. On the other side, Marc Sageman and other “bunch of guys” analysts see the threat as primarily one of a very loosely affiliated network of like-minded individuals and organizations who neither need nor want direction from AQC. If AQC was needed as a spark to light the fire, it is no longer needed to keep the fires burning or new fires from breaking out when local conditions come together.

In reality both approaches likely have some degree of merit. AQC does still exist, does put out its propaganda, does try to shape and guide the jihad. But individuals and local organizations carry out their own analysis and planning, explode into action for their own private reasons, seek out and network with other like-minded people without being told to do so. A healthy strategy pays attention to both dimensions.

Clearly, the Obama administration does not intend to ignore the other areas of concern -– countering violent extremism across the spectrum and around the world. But the AfPak strategy puts a tremendous amount of resources into one side of the equation -– al Qaeda Central. This could only be justified if it were the case that AQC is in fact vitally important to the survival and efficacy of the broader jihadist challenge (AQAM and/or the AQN). The case here remains fairly weak, though. Even granted that they try to make a difference, it seems likely that were bin Laden and Zawahiri to be killed or brought to justice -– inshallah –- it is unlikely that this would materially affect the ideologically motivated actions of the pockets of salafi-jihadist mobilization around the world.

And all other things are not equal. The AfPak escalation may well increase the pressure on AQC –- especially if the Pakistanis can be brought more fully on board. But at the same time, it may well galvanize and strengthen the affiliated movements and like-minded individuals around the world. Affiliated movements may benefit from personnel or resources leaving the Afghan theater or Pakistani safe havens, and strengthen the capabilities of insurgencies in Yemen, North Africa, Somalia, Iraq or elsewhere.

And to the extent that the escalation angers Arab and Muslim public opinion, it could create a point of entry into mainstream attitudes which al Qaeda has largely lacked in recent years. It could reinforce the growing notion that Obama is no different from Bush, that the U.S. is waging a war against Islam, that moderation does not pay. This would resonate dangerously with the breakdown of Obama’s efforts to push Israel towards a settlement freeze (especially if the Israeli-Palestinian front collapses into violence comparable to the 2000 al-Aqsa Intifada) or if tensions with Iran spike into military confrontation.

It is therefore absolutely vital that the Obama administration coordinate its AfPak strategy with its wider Middle East foreign policy and with its efforts at strategic public engagement with Arab and Muslim audiences. It needs to be sharply attuned to signs suggesting that its escalation in Afghanistan is restoring the ability of al Qaeda to appeal to the generalized “resistance” discourse which retains great sway with Arab public opinion. If it doesn’t do that, then even a successful campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan against AQC may end up actually strengthening the wider challenge of violent extremism which it is ostensibly meant to defeat.

·        Indian company controls dam on Kabul River, tens of dams control flow of Kashmir water into Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan

Afghan refugees Fawad, 10, left, and Jawed, 12. They have been living rough on the streets of Calais since the destruction of their refugee camp.

The UN’s refugee agency warned today that children as young as three are among the migrants attempting to reach Britain and that the number of unaccompanied refugee children is on the increase.

There is evidence that ever younger children are attempting dangerous journeys around the world, said William Spindler, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).

“There have always been minors, but in the last 18 months or so, we have seen younger children, and more families with small children. Recently we encountered a child of three with its mother,” he said.

The warning came three days after the French government destroyed a makeshift refugee camp known as the “jungle” near Calais, detaining 278 migrants, including 132 children. The Guardian spoke to three Afghan cousins aged 10, 12 and 13 who are now sleeping rough on the streets of Calais.

Apparently travelling alone, they arrived in the city just after the destruction of the camp, having left Afghanistan two and a half months ago. They hoped to find a way into the UK in order to join the father of the two of them, who arrived in the UK via the same route eight years earlier.

Asked who was looking after the three, 10-year-old Fawad pointed to his 13-year-old cousin. “I am,” said Ahmed in good English. His father, a doctor, and his uncle paid around $9,000 (£5,600) to traffickers who smuggled the children across Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy and finally France in cars and lorries, he said.

“It was very hard. We never thought we would see such hardness. We were not sad to arrive but now I am unhappy the jungle has gone and we have no way of getting to England,” he said.

His parents had sent him and his cousins on the hazardous journey because their lives were in danger in Afghanistan. “The situation is very bad, the Taliban is very bad. They [use 14-year-olds] for the battle against America. Every day it is a bomb, everywhere you see a fire.” Jawed, 12, speaking through his cousin, said: “People were after me. People try to kidnap sons of a rich person and I had to escape.”

Since they arrived in the city they have slept under a bridge, and on the balcony of an empty house. “It rained and we were so cold,” said Ahmed.

Under national and international law, authorities have an obligation to provide for children, and the previous night a man they believed was a plain-clothes police officer had asked the boys if they were on their own. Discovering they were, he told them to stay there, and he would come back to take them to a safe place. As soon as he had left, they ran to a new hiding place. “Maybe he want to help us. But we have fright. The police are not trusted. Never to trust,” Ahmed said.

The sight of children in the port city is not uncommon, said Valerie Brunier, a resident who lives in the suburb of Fréthun, where trains leave daily to London. “Sometimes we’d be having a barbecue on a Sunday and a child asked for food, or for something to drink,” she said. “We’ve seen them washing themselves with the garden hose. It is very sad … We do what we can but we can’t really do anything.”

An aid group which provides daily hot meal to refugees in Calais – and has been helping refugees stranded there since the closure of the nearby Red Cross-run Sangatte camp in 2002 – said there had been a noticeable fall in the age of children the charity helped.

“More and more are very young,” said Sylvie Copyans, of the Association Salam. “Before there were minors, but now they are nearly babies. This life is difficult enough for adults, for children it is impossible.”

Copyans, who the refugees call Mami Gulsaname (which translates as little love flower), said the closure of the “jungle”, hailed by the French government as a victory against people traffickers, may have the opposite effect. “In the jungle they had a roof over their heads, they had water, they had friends. Now they have nothing. It is putting them in the hands of the traffickers.”

The UNHCR believes that many of the minors who were taken to “specialised residences” after the raid on the jungle may have already left.

“We have met children who ate a hot meal and left immediately. We do not expect many will stay, they go back to the groups where they feel safe – with other Afghans,” said Spindler.

Very young children are rare among Afghan refugees, who include virtually no women, but the UN has noticed an increase in the overall number of unaccompanied children, from Afghanistan and other countries, he said.

“Young men and boys from Afghanistan are on the move, some escaping recruitment from the Taliban, others who want to get money to send to their families,” Spindler said.

Requests for asylum by unaccompanied Afghan children suggest that there are thousands crossing Europe. According to the UNHCR, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany saw the largest increase in unaccompanied minors. In those countries 3,090 Afghan children requested asylum last year, compared with 1,489 in 2007.

According to Home Office statistics, 4,285 accompanied children requested asylum in the UK in 2008, 1,800 from Afghanistan, up from 1,170 in 2007. In the first quarter of 2009, of the 710 children applying for asylum, 375 were from Afghanistan.

When the Guardian asked Ahmed how he hoped to get to the UK, he looked downcast. “Some peoples are get under the [lorry] and I can’t do it because I am 13 years old,” he said. “Now I am thinking, what to do? What am I doing there? I can’t go back to Afghanistan because there is many problems for me, my life will be full of danger. I can’t leave here. If I spend 10 more days here I become mad. There is no solution for me.”

By Farhat Taj:

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human

There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run away from Waziristan. They want al Qaeda along with the Taliban burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only ‘cure’ for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly administer them the ‘cure’ until their existence is annihilated from the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US the following in my column.

One, your new drone attack strategy is brilliant, i.e. one attack closely followed by another. After the first attack the terrorists cordon off the area and none but the terrorists are allowed on the spot. Another attack at that point kills so many of them. Excellent! Keep it up!

Your drone technology has the full capacity to encircle and eliminate al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan. If you fail to do so and al Qaeda manages to run away to Yemen or any other place, it could only happen in two cases: either you are highly incompetent people or you have ulterior motives.

The people who have established one of the world’s most vibrant democracies and have taken science and technology to a new zenith cannot be highly incompetent. Now the only possibility is that you have ulterior motives, which could facilitate al Qaeda’s escape from Waziristan.

In a sense the ISI of Pakistan and the CIA of the US share a sinister reputation: both use fanatic Islamists to promote strategic goals. The Taliban are the strategic assets of the ISI and al Qaeda of the CIA. Terrorised people in FATA believe that the ISI would never eliminate the Taliban for the sake of strategic depth in Afghanistan and countless people across the Muslim world believe that al Qaeda is a CIA invention to trigger chaos in Muslim lands and hence create excuses for the US to control natural resources such as oil and gas in those lands. There is also a perception in FATA and the rest of Pakistan that the US is especially going soft on Islamists from the restive Muslim areas of China. Those Islamists would be used to destabilise China, the emerging rival to the US in world politics.

Here in Waziristan the US has a good opportunity to prove to the Muslim world that it is indeed serious in eliminating al Qaeda. The escape of al Qaeda from Waziristan to Yemen or any other Muslim country would communicate the message that the US is an imperial power that just ‘relocates’ its strategic assets from one Muslim society to another only to destabilise them and hence paves the way for US military intervention in those areas.

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human. They will keep coming back to strike at civilisations — Islamic, Western, Confucian or Indian. The sooner the world gets rid of them the better.

This was the view of the people of Waziristan. I would now draw the attention of the US to the Peshawar Declaration, a joint statement of political parties, civil society organisations, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, labourers and intellectuals, following a conference on December 12-13, 2009, in Peshawar. The declaration notes that if the people of the war-affected areas are satisfied with any counter-militancy strategy; it is drone attacks that they support the most. Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s Ababeels — the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba. Which other Muslim society has likened anything from the US military with a Quranic symbol? Only the Pakhtuns did that so publicly in this time of rising anti-Americanism across the Muslim world! What more does the US want from a Muslim society? Now please go ahead and do the needful as indicated by the people of Waziristan.

The overpowered people of Waziristan are angry. They believe no one in their entire history has inflicted so much insult on them as al Qaeda. In our native land, they say, al Qaeda has killed so many of us. Anyone in the world who has gone mad in the name of religion has come to occupy our land. They are Arabs, Central Asians, Caucasians and Africans. They are people with black, brown, blue and green eyes. They are brown, black and white. They all have chosen our land for their sinister designs against all civilisations. No self-respecting people, they argue, can accept this situation.

The ball is now in the US’s court. Their action or inaction against the terrorists in Waziristan would either confirm their image in the Muslim world as an imperial power destabilising Muslim societies in the name of the war on terror or would challenge that image, at least in FATA and the NWFP, the Muslim society on the frontline of the war on terror. The people of Waziristan hope the US challenges that image through the elimination of all terrorists — al Qaeda or the Taliban — in Waziristan.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.co

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon.

The threat of a US failure in Afghanistan is becoming all too real with recent reports of a fraudulent election and a controversial German air strike. At the heart of the problem, however, are disputes within the US defense establishment about waging the war. A recent article published in Joint Force Quarterly by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent shock waves through the media and the defense establishment. Mullen argued that US policy was failing in Afghanistan because the US was not getting its message across and lacked credibility. He was seen as “blasting” the US military – a military of which he himself is in charge.

So why did he go to the press with his complaints when he could change the “strategic communication” policy he derides? It turns out that his failure to implement the policy he recommends is but the tip of the iceberg of the contradictory condemnation of US policy.

Mullen stressed that “there is no doubt that Abu Ghraib was a stain on our national character, and it reminded us yet again of the power of our actions. The incidents there likely inspired many young men and women to fight against us.” He apparently forgot, like many have, that the main inspiration for Islamism and al-Qaida is not Iraq, that the Iraq war came after 9/11 and that al-Qaida’s extremism cannot always be traced to US actions. Any inspiration for young men to fight against the US emanating from Abu Ghraib was only on top of a wellspring that had provided young men to “fight against us” for years.

MULLEN ACKNOWLEDGED that “communication is a very big issue for all of us because the enemy is not constrained by the truth; I mean, it’s much easier to get your word out first when you can lie about it.” However, according to Mullen, foremost among the problems with the American message is that US actions do not dovetail with US statements. According to Mullen this was best illustrated by the deaths of civilians; “when they [civilian casualties] do occur, we have got to recognize it right up front and try to rapidly make amends, and we need to do so in a very public way.”

He condemned the US for not delivering on its “promises.” He claimed that the US shouldn’t rely on opinion polls; “we shouldn’t care if people don’t like us. That isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.” But he also seemed to be enslaved to the idea that America must change the “narrative” that the local Muslim community receives: “Only through a shared appreciation of the people’s culture, needs and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative.” But it appears to be the Mullen narrative that is most problematic.

For instance The New York Times pointed out that on a recent visit to Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, US President Barack Obama’s special envoy, was informed that America was “despised” because it was seen as obsessed with finding Osama bin Laden. Mullen would have the US “listen” to the Pakistanis who despise the US for a policy they themselves helped begat through their own support of Islamism and Bin Laden. Perhaps rather than listening to the Pakistanis, the US should encourage the government of Pakistan to change the narrative of victimization that it feeds to its people?

MULLEN LIKES to stress US efforts to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II as examples of success, arguing that they should be models for US work in the Muslim world. He claimed that only through “a shared appreciation of the people’s culture, needs and hopes for the future can we hope to supplant the extremist narrative.” But did the US appreciate the German culture that produced Nazism in order to pacify Germany after the war? Did the US worry that civilian casualties would turn local Germans and Japanese against its policy? Hardly. Many more German and Japanese civilians died in the last months of the war than in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The US didn’t worry about delivering on its “promises” after World War II because it didn’t feel it owed the Germans and Japanese anything. The US did very little listening to the Germans and Japanese because listening to the Nazi narrative or the Japanese imperialist narrative would have perpetuated the problems that led to the war.

Instead the US used overwhelming force and power to supplant the local narrative completely. Resistance brought more force.

Mullen wrote that the Muslim world “is a subtle world we don’t fully – and don’t always attempt to – understand.” The German and Japanese world was full of subtleties as well in 1945, and the US didn’t send German and Japanese experts to learn more about that world. In fact the Marshall Plan, which Mullen lauds, did not have a component of cultural understanding or “listening” to it.

Mullen’s outburst in JFQ is full of hypocrisy, contradictions and misreading of history, both the history of World War II, its aftermath and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would do well to study that history and implement policies based on it, rather than trying to gain attention by joining the critics.

“I don’t see that as on the table,” he said. “I don’t think that there is anyone up here who is talking about that.”

Kerry spoke at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing — the third in a series he has called on Afghanistan — that probed what the impact of additional troops would be on stability in Pakistan, a fragile, nuclear-armed neighbor.

Maleeha Lodhi, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said an increase in US combat troops in Afghanistan could lead to an increase in suicide attacks, militant groups, and support for extremism in Pakistan.

“A further military escalation in Afghanistan is unlikely to succeed,” she said.

Lodhi, Milt Bearden, who served as the CIA station chief in Pakistan during the 1980s, and Steve Coll of the New America Foundation, said the Obama administration should put the emphasis on brokering a political solution to the fighting.

“I think we are going to have to start understanding who they are and deal with them,” Bearden said. “There will always be enough Pashtuns to meet our troops in the field.”

Kerry’s opening statement is below.

As the Globe reported Wednesday, Kerry is trying to carve out a significant role on US policy in Afghanistan as Obama comes up with a new strategy and decides whether to approve a military request for more reinforcements.

Kerry has also weighed in on Pakistan. Thursday, the House gave final approval to a bill that he championed in the Senate that would give Pakistan $1.5 billion in aid a year over the next five years focused on democratic, economic, and social development programs. Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

Kerry issued a statement congratulating the House on its vote. “The final version of the bill is the product of several months of intense consultation and compromise between the Chambers, and I am delighted that we were able to forge this landmark piece of legislation on a bipartisan, bicameral basis,” he said. “This bill reaffirms the depth of America’s long-term commitment to the people and Government of Pakistan. By tripling past years’ level of non-military aid to $1.5 billion a year for fiscal years 2010 to 2014, we demonstrate our steadfast support for Pakistani efforts to combat violent extremism, defeat al-Qaeda and solidify democratic government.”

Very roughly summarised, this 21st century version of the domino theory suggests that a victory for Islamist militants in Afghanistan would so embolden them that they might then overrun Pakistan – a far more dangerous proposition given its nuclear weapons.

A slightly different but related argument is that the United States needs to show resolve in Afghanistan to convince Pakistan of its commitment to the region and encourage the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency to turn against Islamist militants it once cultivated as ”strategic assets” to be used against its much bigger neighbour India.

“Many in Pakistan have always believed the Americans are not really serious about Afghanistan. They recall that the U.S. supported Pakistan and the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s only to abandon both once the Soviets left,” writes Bruce Riedel at Brookings in a follow-up to this weekend’s attack on the Pakistan Army headquarters.

If President Barack Obama ”shows resolve in Afghanistan, Pakistanis won’t love us, but they will believe we are serious and determined to stay until a stable Afghanistan and Pakistan emerges,” he writes. “If it appears the United States cannot make up its mind about what to do, then Pakistanis will say I told you so and make their own accommodations.” 

Yet the assault on army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi raises several questions both about the domino theory and argument about the United States needing to show resolve in Afghanistan.

First, does the Pakistan Army still need to be convinced of the dangers from Islamist militants after its commandos, as the Daily Telegraph put it, “were forced to storm their own headquarters” to release hostages seized in an attack on the most powerful institution in the country?

Second, the attack - which in turn raised jitters about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons - appeared to have nothing to do with the main Afghan Taliban group fighting western forces in Afghanistan – the so-called Quetta shura led by Mullah Omar, which according to Washington is based in  Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.   

As discussed in this post and in this analysis, the gunmen involved in the Rawalpindi raid came from a nexus of militant groups linking up the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), based in South Waziristan in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and organisations which have taken deep root in the country’s heartland Punjab province – including sectarian groups and those originally set up to fight India in Kashmir.

The Guardian quotes Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas as saying that five of the attackers came from Punjab while the other five were from South Waziristan. The ringleader, he said, was a Punjabi, while the operation was ordered from South Waziristan. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but said it was carried out by its Punjab unit.

So if the threat to Pakistan comes not from the Afghan Taliban but from the Pakistani Taliban and the many militant organisations based in Punjab, can you still cite the need to stabilise Pakistan as a justification for sending more troops to Afghanistan?

There may be other arguments for sending more troops to Afghanistan, among them to prevent it again becoming a base for al Qaeda. As Reuters correspondent William Maclean writes here, analysts are still divided on whether the Afghan Taliban can be prised away from al Qaeda.

Pakistan’s former ambassador to Kabul argues in this interview with India’s Business Standard that they can. “First of all, we have to understand that the Taliban and the al Qaeda have totally different targets; and also that the Afghan Taliban are different from the Pakistan Taliban and there is evidence of this,” he says. ”We can do business with the Taliban and in order to bring back some normalcy in Afghanistan, the Taliban and the U.S. will have to do business. But we need to have some benchmarks for the conduct of the Taliban government before we do that.”

And in this article in the Washington Post, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, suggests looking anew at the Afghan Taliban.

“Change the media theme from attacking the Taliban and calling them the terrorists to concentrating on al Qaeda and ‘foreign terrorists’,” he writes. ”By removing the stigma of terrorism from the Taliban, you can pursue meaningful negotiations with them. Mohammad Omar has never enjoyed the full support of Pashtuns. He is a lowly figure in tribal terms, and he is blamed by many of them for the calamity that has befallen Afghanistan. Reaching out to tribal leaders is what will move negotiations.”

Those are big questions about Afghanistan, but are they the same questions as those now being asked about Pakistan? Or is it time to start looking at the two countries separately again, albeit within a broad regional context that acknowledges the very complex links between different Islamist militant groups?

The ”AfPak” label has never been popular in the region itself. Is it time to ditch it?

Yet all hell broke on Afghanistan and now Pakistan is being punished for its uncommitted crimes and US blunders. It may be recalled that when the US and its allies decided to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 on a flimsy excuse of getting hold of Osama bin Laden and disrupting and dismantling Al-Qaeda to avenge terrorist attacks allegedly masterminded by Osama, in that timeframe Al-Qaeda was an unknown entity. If nabbing or killing blue-eyed boy of CIA Osama and his 2-3000 ill-organised and ill-equipped henchmen from different countries was the real purpose, there was absolutely no reason for carrying out grand mobilisation and invading Afghanistan where he was based.

Either dialogue together with coercive diplomacy should have been carried out for another month or so, or some proof of his involvement furnished to Mullah Omar as asked by him to justify handing over his guest, or his rational suggestion of putting Osama on trial in a neutral country heeded to. In case these efforts failed, the US should have then carried out a combined covert cum commando operation backed up with well-coordinated intelligence backup support to round them up. Drones or cruise missiles could have been used to for the purpose.

However, the US tried to kill a fly with a huge hammer, which still managed to fly away. The real purpose of invasion was not Osama but to topple Taliban regime that had disagreed with unjust terms and conditions of US oil and gas tycoons wanting to pipe down energy resources from Central Asia to European and US markets via Afghanistan and Pakistan. Eager to give practical shape to its New World Order, the US wanted to convert Afghanistan into a permanent military base wherefrom it could monitor regional countries of its interest.

At no stage of the operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ invading forces put their boots on ground. The battle was fought and won using the aerial platform. Massive air and missile power was used to devastate Afghanistan. Ground fighting was done by Northern Alliance forces duly backed by intense artillery, rocket and tank fire and carpet bombing. US-UK ground troops joined in once the Taliban decided to abdicate under a planned strategy and moved into hideouts in Tora Bora. Having learnt that the entire Al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership including Osama had taken shelter in caves and tunnels of Tora Bora mountain range, the US military should have gone all out to nab them or as a minimum isolated them through encirclement and tightened the noose around them to prevent their escape and then a combing operation launched. Afghan-Pakistan border should have been effectively sealed rather than relying on ill-trained Frontier Corps (FC) of Pakistan to undertake this dirty work from its end of the border. The much trumped up RDF, ready to move into any troubled spot on short notice should have been called in considering the stakes involved. No such thing was done since US higher ups showed disinterest when they were informed about Osama’s presence in Tora Bora.

Instead of carrying out a search and sweep ground operation against Tora Bora, the US military took the easy route of ceaseless pounding from air hoping that the inmates would be smoked out and surrender would become inevitable. Taking advantage of the smoke screen created as a result of reckless bombing and inhibition of allied forces, the whole lot including Osama and Mulla Omar slipped out. Not a single Al-Qaeda or Taliban leader could be arrested. It was a huge intelligence and military failure but the matter was hushed up. There is a school of thought which is of the view that the US military in order to get rid of the menace, deliberately allowed Osama and others to escape to Pakistan to justify continued occupation of Afghanistan and to subsequently put the bridle around Pakistan. Once he escaped, he was made into a Frankenstein monster that vanished into thin air. Ever since Osama escaped from Afghanistan on 16 December 2001, the US officials are indulging in meaningless conjectures. At no stage they admitted their failure to nab him dead or alive. The US Senate has come out with an unconvincing explanation that former Defence Secretary Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements when Osama was within grasping reach. He supposedly took the plea that induction of extra forces would trigger a backlash of local population against US military. It is a childish and lame excuse to cover up an oversight for which the US and Pakistan are paying dearly. It wants to put across that the US military had the capability but was denied.

Having miserably failed to perform its primary task, the US was left with no choice but to cover up its embarrassment by pressurising Pakistan to do what it could not do. Had Pakistan not helped in arresting over 600 Al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives including some high profile leaders, US scorecard would have been blank. Instead of appreciating its efforts and sacrifices it rendered, the US started mistrusting Pakistan Army and the ISI and started to indulge in immoral blame game alleging that it was soft towards Afghan Taliban. India and Israel were instrumental in poisoning the minds of the US. These cheap tactics were employed to hide their failures and conceal launching of covert operations against Pakistan for the fulfilment of its multiple objectives.

Endless sensational stories about whereabouts of Osama and his exploits were fed to the media to keep him alive and to keep American public distracted and placated. The more he was demonised in the western world more he got popular in the Muslim world and attained the status of a hero. The US deployed every resource at its disposal to get him. A worldwide massive manhunt backed by high-tech electronic and satellite means was launched and the earth combed from one end to the other. All mobile and line phones, internet, foot and vehicular movements were monitored and houses pierced through geo-stationery satellites but he remained untraced. Agencies of other developed countries as well as RAW and Mossad took part in search operations. Having scanned all nooks and corners of the world, the US finally came to the conclusion in 2008 that Osama and other top leaders of Al-Qaeda were hiding either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan or somewhere along Pak-Afghan border belt. Latter assumption was considered more plausible. Services of reputed Scotland Yard were hired, head money raised to $50 million and network of informers engaged to track down most wanted man. It was also reported that Osama was suffering from acute kidneys problem and required frequent dialysis. Reports of his death were also circulated.

When all efforts failed and feelings of impotent rage intensified, they found some solace in making Pakistan a convenient scapegoat. Osama was initially plonked on the top of K-2 and then somewhere in FATA closer to Afghan border. Under this plea, the US military became aggressive and repeatedly expressed its desire to move into FATA to stalk the most prized prey. The US then modified its stance and stated that FATA was the most dangerous place on earth which was a breeding ground for terrorists and suicide bombers and a launching pad for cross border terrorism into Afghanistan. A little later the story was made juicier by declaring FATA as the main base of Al-Qaeda and from where possible attack on US homeland could emanate. A raid by marines was launched in a village in Angoor Adda in September 2008. But for firm stand taken by Gen Kayani, such attacks would have become a routine matter. In search for Osama and other top leaders of Al-Qaeda, CIA accelerated drone attacks in 2009 against suspected targets.

Hilary Clinton on her last visit to Pakistan blurted out that Osama and other senior Al-Qaeda leaders were present in FATA since 2002 and it was incomprehensible that Pakistan leadership didn’t know about it. Gordon Brown substantiated this claim and now Obama has stated without mincing his words that Al-Qaeda is present in Pakistan from where 9/11 attacks were planned and planning for another attack is in the offing. This conclusion was probably drawn from the passport of Pakistan born German national Bhaaji recovered from South Waziristan during Rah-e-Nijat. Western journalists and Dawn TV channel got so excited that they forgot about the operation and focussed their questions on this aspect only to rope in Pakistan in 9/11. What it amounts to is that the US and Britain suspect that Pakistan is sheltering Osama and is linked with Al-Qaeda as well as with Afghan Taliban.

The fact of the matter is that knowing his medical condition, it is humanly not possible for Osama to remain in hiding for eight years in treacherous terrain and that too in FATA that had come under the complete influence of CIA and FBI in 2002. The duo reigned supreme till as late as 2007. The two agencies had established their own outposts and worked towards eliminating all pro-government Maliks, elders and notables, dismantling jirga and political agent system, eroding the authority of police, Khasadars and FC and paving the way for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to emerge as the strongest force in the entire tribal belt. ISI was virtually pushed into the background so that covert operations could proceed unhindered and unobserved. The TTP was funded, trained and equipped with sophisticated weapons and equipment to pose formidable challenge to Pakistan Army. Tons of armaments with Indian markings hidden in huge tunnels and caves that have been unearthed from Swat and South Waziristan are mind boggling.

The purpose was to embroil the Army against a dreadful force and lock the two in an un-winnable war. The TTP was tutored to terrorise the public in FATA through ruthless measures so as to defame Afghan Taliban. Intention was to kill three birds with one stone. Under such circumstances, to expect Osama to leave the companionship of time-tested Afghan Taliban and marry up with unknown and untested Pakistani Taliban with whom Afghan Taliban had not established any association is far-fetched and whimsical. Moreover, the ISI had helped in tracing and arresting hundreds of Al-Qaeda leaders and Musharraf was averse to Osama. There was no reason for Pakistan under Musharraf that had ditched Afghan Taliban and had put all eggs in the basket of USA to shelter Osama. One can at best laugh at the silly fabrication that has no head or tail.

The theory of Al-Qaeda safe havens in FATA has been invented to deflect attention from US failures. Osama has been kept alive to justify continued occupation of Afghanistan. Now that Gen McChrystal’s wish of additional 30,000 troops has been fulfilled, rather than feeling relieved and more confident, he has come under greater pressure and has come out with yet another lame excuse that unless Osama is captured or killed, Al-Qaeda cannot be defeated. He must understand that even if it is hypothetically accepted that he is alive, does he really think that he is in any position to monitor and run the affairs of Al-Qaeda that has become an international organisation and has its tentacles spread far and wide. Al-Qaeda has strong bases in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and North Africa and is linked with all the Islamic movements within Muslim world. Its system of multi-layered leadership, logistics, communication and command and control system remain unexplored. Knowing his nature of disease he contracted many years ago, medically his survival under adverse conditions is next to impossible. Osama card has been revived and being played up with evil intentions. Osama is dead, so stop the crap and stop flogging the dead horse and let his soul rest in peace.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui as a student in a photo provided by her family. Photograph

A Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three is to stand trial in New York for attempted murder. But shadowy questions about her life remain – including her links to al-Qaida and her five ‘lost’ years.

On a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.

Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”.

At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.

The woman was standing there, pointing the officer’s gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting “Get the fuck out of here!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Nobody was hit. As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted “to kill Americans”. Then she passed out.

Whether this extraordinary scene is fiction or reality will soon be decided thousands of miles from Ghazni in a Manhattan courtroom. The woman is Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. The description of the shooting, in July 2008, comes from the prosecution case, which Siddiqui disputes. What isn’t in doubt is that there was an incident, and that she was shot, after which she was helicoptered to Bagram air field where medics cut her open from breastplate to bellybutton, searching for bullets. Medical records show she barely survived. Seventeen days later, still recovering, she was bundled on to an FBI jet and flown to New York where she now faces seven counts of assault and attempted murder. If convicted, the maximum sentence is life in prison.

The prosecution is but the latest twist in one of the most intriguing episodes of America’s “war on terror”. At its heart is the MIT-educated Siddiqui, once declared the world’s most wanted woman. In 2003 she mysteriously vanished for five years, during which time she was variously dubbed the “Mata Hari of al-Qaida” or the “Grey Lady of Bagram”, an iconic victim of American brutality.  

Yet only the narrow circumstances of her capture – did she open fire on the US soldier? – are at issue in the New York court case. Fragile-looking, and often clad in a dark robe and white headscarf, Siddiqui initially pleaded not guilty, insisting she never touched the soldier’s gun. Her lawyers say the prosecution’s dramatic version of the shooting is untrue. Now, after months of pre-trial hearings, she appears bent on scuppering the entire process.

During a typically stormy hearing last Thursday, Siddiqui interrupted the judge, rebuked her own lawyers and made strident appeals to the packed courthouse. “I am boycotting this trial,” she declared. “I am innocent of all the charges and I can prove it, but I will not do it in this court.” Previously she had tried to fire her lawyers due to their Jewish background (she once wrote to the court that Jews are “cruel, ungrateful, back-stabbing” people) and demanded to speak with President Obama for the purpose of “making peace” with the Taliban. This time, though, she was ejected from the courtroom for obstruction. “Take me out. I’m not coming back,” she said defiantly.

The trial, due to start in January, is just one piece of a much larger ^­ puzzle. It is a tale of spies and militants, disappearance and deception, which has played out in the shadowlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001. In search of answers I criss-crossed Pakistan, tracking down Siddiqui’s relatives, retired ministers, shadowy spy types and pamphleteers. The truth was maddeningly elusive. But it all started in Karachi, the sprawling port city on the Arabian Sea where Siddiqui was born 37 years ago.

Her parents were Pakistani strivers – middle-class folk with strong faith in Islam and education. Her father, Mohammad, was an English-trained doctor; her mother, Ismet, befriended the dictator General Zia ul-Haq. Aafia was a smart teenager, and in 1990 followed her older brother to the US. Impressive grades won her admission to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, later, Brandeis University, where she graduated in cognitive neuroscience. In 1995 she married a young Karachi doctor, Amjad Khan; a year later their first child, Ahmed, was born. 

Siddiqui was also an impassioned Muslim activist. In Boston she campaigned for Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya; she was particularly affected by graphic videos of pregnant Bosnian women being killed. She wrote emails, held fundraisers and made forceful speeches at her local mosque. But the charities she worked with had sharp edges. The Nairobi branch of one, Mercy International Relief Agency, was linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in east Africa; three other charities were later banned in the US for their links to al-Qaida.

The September 11 2001 attacks marked a turning point in Siddiqui’s life. In May 2002 the FBI questioned her and her husband about some unusual internet purchases they had made: about $10,000 worth of night-vision goggles, body armour and 45 military-style books including The Anarchist’s Arsenal. (Khan said he bought the equipment for hunting and camping expeditions.) Their marriage started to crumble. A few months later the couple returned to Pakistan and divorced that August, two weeks before the birth of their third child, Suleman.

On Christmas Day 2002 Siddiqui left her three children with her mother in Pakistan and returned to the US, ostensibly to apply for academic jobs. During the 10-day trip, however, Siddiqui did something controversial: she opened a post box in the name of Majid Khan, an alleged al-Qaida operative accused of plotting to blow up petrol stations in the Baltimore area. The post box, prosecutors later said, was to facilitate his entry into the US.

Six months after her divorce, she married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, at a small ceremony near Karachi. Siddiqui’s family denies the wedding took place, but it has been confirmed by Pakistani and US intelligence, al-Baluchi’s relatives and, according to FBI interview reports recently filed in court, Siddiqui herself. At any rate, it was a short-lived honeymoon.

In March 2003 the FBI issued a global alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Amjad Khan. Then, a few weeks later, she vanished. According to her family, she climbed into a taxi with her three children – six-year-old Ahmed, four-year-old Mariam and six-month old Suleman – and headed for Karachi airport. They never made it. (Khan, on the other hand, was interviewed by the FBI in Pakistan, and subsequently released.)

Initially it was presumed that Siddiqui had been picked up by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) spy agency at the behest of the CIA. The theory seemed to be confirmed by American media reports that Siddiqui’s name had been given up by Mohammed, the 9/11 instigator, who was captured three weeks earlier. (If so, Mohammed was probably speaking under duress – the CIA waterboarded him 183 times that month.)

There are several accounts of what happened next. According to the US government, Siddiqui was at large, plotting mayhem on behalf of Osama bin Laden. In May 2004 the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, listed her among the seven “most wanted” al-Qaida fugitives. “Armed and dangerous,” he said, describing the Karachi woman as a terrorist “facilitator” who was willing to use her education against America. “Al-Qaida Mom” ran the headline in the New York Post.

But Siddiqui’s family and supporters tell a different story. Instead of plotting attacks, they say, Siddiqui spent the missing five years at the dreaded Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where she suffered unspeakable horrors. Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist turned Muslim campaigner, insists she is the “Grey Lady of Bagram” – a ghostly female detainee who kept prisoners awake “with her haunting sobs and piercing screams”. In 2005 male prisoners were so agitated by her plight, she says, that they went on hunger strike for six days.

For campaigners such as Ridley, Siddiqui has become emblematic of dark American practices such as abduction, rendition and torture. “Aafia has iconic status in the Muslim world. People are angry with American imperialism and domination,” she told me.

But every major security agency of the US government – army, FBI, CIA – denies having held her. Last year the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, went even further. She stated that Siddiqui was not in US custody “at any time” prior to July 2008. Her language was unusually categoric.

To reconcile these accounts I flew to Siddiqui’s hometown of Karachi. The family lives in a spacious house with bougainvillea-draped walls in Gulshan Iqbal, a smart middle-class neighbourhood. Inside I took breakfast with her sister, Fowzia, on a patio overlooking a toy-strewn garden.

As servants brought piles of paratha (fried bread), Fowzia produced photos of a smiling young woman whom she described as the victim of an international conspiracy. The US had been abusing her sister in Bagram, she said, then produced her for trial as part of a gruesome justice pageant. “As far as I’m concerned this trial [in New York] is just a great drama. They write the script as they go. I’ve stopped asking questions,” she said resignedly.

But Fowzia, a Harvard-educated neurologist, was frustratingly short on hard information. She responded to questions about Aafia’s whereabouts between 2003 and 2008 with cryptic cliches. “It’s not that we don’t know. It’s that we don’t want to know,” she said. And she blamed reports of al-Qaida links on a malevolent American press. “Half of them work for the CIA,” she said.

The odd thing, though, was that the person who might unlock the entire mystery was living in the same house. After being captured with his mother in Ghazni last year, 11-year-old Ahmed Siddiqui was flown back to Pakistan on orders from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Since then he has been living with his aunt Fowzia. Yet she has forbidden him from speaking with the press – even with Yvonne Ridley – because, she told me, he was too traumatised.

“You tell him to do something but he just stands there, staring at the TV,” she said, sighing heavily. But surely, I insisted, after 15 months at home the boy must have divulged some clue about the missing years?

Fowzia’s tone hardened. “Ahmed’s not allowed to speak to the press. That was part of the deal when they gave him to us,” she said firmly.

“Who are they?” I asked.

She waved a finger in the air. “The network. Those who brought him here.”

Moments later Fowzia excused herself. The interview was over. As she walked me to the gate, I was struck by another omission: Fowzia had barely mentioned Ahmed’s 11-year-old sister, Mariam, or his seven-year-old brother, Suleman, who are still missing. Amid the hullabaloo about their imprisoned mother, Aafia’s children seemed to be strangely forgotten.

That night I went to see Siddiqui’s ex-husband, Amjad Khan. He ushered me through a deathly quiet house into an upstairs room where we sat cross-legged on the floor. He had a soft face under the curly beard that is worn by devout Muslims. I recounted what Fowzia told me. He sighed and shook his head. “It’s all a smokescreen,” he said. “She’s trying to divert your attention.”

The truth of the matter, he said, was that Siddiqui had never been sent to Bagram. Instead she spent the five years on the run, living clandestinely with her three children, under the watchful eye of Pakistani intelligence. He told me they shifted between Quetta in Baluchistan province, Iran and the Karachi house I had visited earlier that day. It was a striking explanation. When I asked for proof, he started at the beginning.

Their parents, who arranged the marriage, thought them a perfect match. The couple had a lot in common – education, wealth and a love for conservative Islam. They were married over the phone; soon after Khan moved to America. But his new wife was a more fiery character than he wished. “She was so pumped up about jihad,” he said.

Six months into the marriage, Siddiqui demanded the newlyweds move to Bosnia. Khan refused, and grew annoyed at her devotion to activist causes. During a furious argument one night, he told me, he flung a milk bottle at his wife that split her lip.

After 9/11 Aafia insisted on returning to Pakistan, telling her husband that the US government was forcibly converting Muslim children to Christianity. Later that winter she pressed him to go on “jihad” to Afghanistan, where she had arranged for them to work in a hospital in Zabul province. Khan refused, sparking a vicious row. “She went hysterical, beating her hands on my chest, asking for divorce,” he recalled.

After Siddiqui disappeared in March 2003, Khan started to worry for his children – he had never seen his youngest son, Suleman. But he was reassured that they were still in Pakistan through three sources. He hired people to watch her house and they reported her comings and goings. His family was also briefed by ISI officials who said they were following her movements, he said. (Khan named an ISI brigadier whom I later contacted; he declined to speak).

Most strikingly, Khan claimed to have seen his ex-wife with his own eyes. In April 2003, he said, the ISI asked him to identify his ex-wife as she got off a flight from Islamabad, accompanied by her son. Two years later he spotted her again in a Karachi traffic jam. But he never went public with the information. “I wanted to protect her, for the sake of my children,” he said.

Khan’s version of events has enraged his ex-wife’s family. Fowzia has launched a 500m rupees (£360,000) defamation law suit, while regularly attacking him in the press as a wifebeater set on “destroying” her family. “Marrying him was Aafia’s biggest mistake,” she told me. Khan says it is a ploy to silence him in the media and take away his children.

Khan’s explanation is bolstered by the one person who claims to have met the missing neuroscientist between 2003 and 2008 – her uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi. Back in Islamabad, I went to see him.

A sprightly old geologist, Faruqi works from a cramped office filled with coloured rocks and dusty computers. Over tea and biscuits he described a strange encounter with his niece in January 2008, six months before she was captured in Afghanistan.

It started, he said, when a white car carrying a burka-clad woman pulled up outside his gate. Beckoning him to approach, he recognised her by her voice. “Uncle, I am Aafia,” he recalled her saying. But she refused to leave the car and insisted they move to the nearby Taj Mahal restaurant to talk. Amid whispers, her story tumbled out.

Siddiqui told him she had been in both Pakistani and American captivity since 2003, but was vague on the details. “I was in the cells but I don’t know in which country, or which city. They kept shifting me,” she said. Now she had been set free but remained under the thumb of intelligence officials based in Lahore. They had given her a mission: to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan. But, Siddiqui told her uncle, she was afraid and wanted out. She begged him to smuggle her into Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban. “That was her main point,” he recalled. “She said: ‘I will be safe with the Taliban.’”

That night, Siddiqui slept at a nearby guesthouse, and stayed with her uncle the next day. But she refused to remove her burka. Faruqi said he caught a glimpse of her just once, while eating, and thought her nose had been altered. “I asked her, ‘Who did plastic surgery on your face?’ She said, ’nobody’.”

On the third day, Siddiqui vanished again.

Amid the blizzard of allegations about Siddiqui, the most crucial voice is yet to be heard – her own. The trial, due to start in January, has suffered numerous delays. The longest was due to a six-month psychiatric evaluation triggered by defence claims that Siddiqui was “going crazy” – prone to crying fits and hallucinations involving flying infants, dark angels and a dog in her cell. “She’s in total psychic pain,” said her lawyer, Dawn Cardi, claiming that she was unfit to stand trial.

But at the Texas medical centre where the tests took place, Siddiqui refused to co-operate. “I can’t hear you. I’m not listening,” she told one doctor, sitting on the floor with her fingers in her ears. Others reported that she refused to speak with Jews, that she manipulated health workers and perceived herself to “be a martyr rather than a prisoner”. Last July three of four experts determined she was malingering – faking a psychiatric illness to avoid an undesirable outcome. “She is an intelligent and at times manipulative woman who showed goal-directed and rational thinking,” reported Dr Sally Johnson.

Judge Richard Berman ruled that Siddiqui “may have some mental health issues” but was competent to stand trial.

Back in Pakistan Siddiqui has become a cause celebre. Newspapers write unquestioningly about her “torture”, parliament has passed resolutions, placard-waving demonstrators pound the streets and the government is spending $2m on a top-flight defence. High-profile supporters include the former cricketer Imran Khan and the Taliban leader Hakumullah Mehsud who has affectionately described Siddiqui as a “sister in Islam”.

The unquestioning support is a product of public fury at US-orchestrated “disappearances”, of which there have been hundreds in Pakistan, and deep scepticism about the American account of her capture. Few Pakistanis believe a frail 5ft 3in, 40kg woman could disarm an American soldier; fewer still think she would be carrying bomb booklets, chemicals and target lists.

But there are critics, too, albeit silent ones. A Musharraf-era minister with previous oversight of Siddiqui’s case told me it was “full of bullshit and lies”.

Two weeks ago the Obama administration introduced a fresh twist, when it announced that next year (or in 2011) five Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in the same New York courthouse, a few blocks from the World Trade Centre. One of them is Siddiqui’s second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who stands accused of financing the 9/11 attacks.

But while the Guantanamo detainees will be tried for their part in mass terrorism, Siddiqui’s case focuses on a minor controversy – whether she fired a gun at a soldier in an Afghan police station. And so the big questions may not be probed: whether the ISI or CIA abducted Siddiqui in 2003, what she did afterwards, and where her two missing children are now. In fact the framing of the charges raises a new question: if Siddiqui was such a dangerous terrorist five years ago, why is she not being charged as one now? A senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of strict anonymity, offered a tantalising explanation.

In the world of counter-espionage, he said, someone like Siddiqui is an invaluable asset. And so, he speculated, sometime over the last five years she may have been “flipped” – turned against militant sympathisers – by Pakistani or American intelligence. “It’s a very murky world,” he said.

“Maybe the Americans have no charges against her. Maybe they don’t want to compromise their sources of information. Or maybe they don’t want to put that person out in the world again. The thing is, you’ll never really know.”