I had been listening for years to the same expressions of hatred, the same blame game that seemed to stretch from Pakistan to Iraq to Lebanon and Jordan. In fact, during my recent trip to Quetta, I’d met a group of Taliban fighters who told me they hated America because of its occupation of Afghanistan and its penchant for drone strikes in the Pakistani borderlands, especially places such as Waziristan.
“What would the Americans do if we went to the United States and told them how to live, or how not to?” one of the fighters had fulminated.
I reminded him that the United States invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.
“So, what, did Afghanistan attack the United States?”
“People who were trained in camps in Afghanistan did,” I answered. “And the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.”
The men looked at me angrily and said something in Pashto that I couldn’t understand. “Mullah Omar was very clear,” one of the men told me. “He said, ‘Show us the evidence that bin Laden was behind it; as long as there is no evidence, he will be a protected guest.’ That’s how our customs are.”
I was about to challenge them further, but I sensed the spirit of the meeting had changed. While at first they had smiled a bit, their faces now looked stern. “If you were American, we would kidnap you,” one finally said.
This time I didn’t feel like backing off. “Why do you want to kill Americans?” I asked Khan.
He seemed surprised. “Because they are killing us with these drones. They killed some of my family members,” he said, “and they had nothing to do with the Taliban.” He told me he had lost his son and his brother in a drone strike that had also destroyed his house.
I knew, of course, that the United States was using drones to fight militancy in Waziristan and other areas in Pakistan. The CIA had been attacking the Pakistani border region with drones since 2004, hoping to kill Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters hiding there. But the bombs did not always hit their intended targets. It was horrible that innocent people were killed, and yet I felt I needed to somehow defend my American friends. I had editors and colleagues of all faiths who had supported me, even when they’d felt the sting of jihadi violence against their friends and in their own cities.
“Most Americans are not bad. They don’t even know what happened to you and your family,” I told him. “You cannot hold them all responsible for the actions of their government.”
He disagreed. Americans surely knew that their government was killing “innocent people” like his relatives. I asked if he or his son or brother had ever belonged to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or other militant groups. He said they hadn’t and that many other innocents had been killed in drone strikes as well.
“This is the reason why many more people will now join the Taliban,” he went on. “Because the Americans kill us. We have no choice but to fight back.”
“Still, believe me, the majority of Americans don’t know about what you are saying. Joining terrorist organizations is not a solution,” I told him.
“You call them terrorists. What America is doing to us is terrorism as well! But Muslim lives don’t matter to the West.”
These were well-worn accusations, but I knew the reality was more complicated. I wanted him to know how many people in the United States were fighting injustice and had worked to help Khaled el-Masri and others who’d been treated unfairly. “I’m sure if people knew about what happened to your family and others, they would try to help,” I told him.
“How would they help?” He looked as if he didn’t believe a word I was saying.
I told him about the el-Masri case and how the New York Times, an American newspaper, had been the first to tell his story. Moreover, the editors had allowed me, a Muslim woman, to tell it, even though there’d been plenty of risks involved if I got it wrong. I told him about the reporting that other American papers, such as the Washington Post, had done on torture by the U.S. intelligence services and how many American lawyers had offered to help torture victims pro bono.
He listened carefully. “What is pro bono?”
I told him there were many lawyers who worked on such cases for no money because they objected to human rights violations. “I’m sure there are many lawyers in the United States who would help if they knew about how many civilians were killed in drone strikes,” I told him. “Most Americans respect the rule of law.”
He said he had to leave for his next meeting. I feared that he still believed fighting was the only choice. I wondered how we would ever break this cycle.
Weeks later, back in Germany, I came home from the gym one day and found my sister Hannan, with whom I share an apartment, watching the news. I’m not sure whether it was CNN or the BBC, but I remember what she said when I walked in: “You’re just in time. They’re about to interview someone who wants to sue the CIA for drone strikes in Waziristan.”
I went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water, then hurried back to catch the interview. I swallowed a gulp of water, but when I saw the face of the man suing the CIA, I spit it all out.
“What’s wrong?” Hannan asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I know that guy. I met him some weeks ago in Islamabad.”
The TV reporter said that a Pakistani man named Kareem Khan had a list of all the innocents killed in U.S. drone strikes and that he planned to sue the U.S. government and the CIA.
“Didn’t he tell you about his plans to sue?” my sister asked.
“No. I don’t think he had any idea himself.”
I called a colleague in the Times Washington bureau and told him about the conversation I’d had with Khan in Islamabad.
He burst out laughing. “It’s very nice that you wanted to defend the people in the United States and our justice system,” he said. He added that it was Khan’s right to sue and that we should keep watching the story.
A couple of weeks after this, Khan’s Pakistani lawyer filed a complaint that included the name of the CIA station chief in Pakistan. This was a jaw-dropping development, and it turned Khan’s accusations into a major international incident. In a place like Pakistan, where the drone campaign had fueled anti-American sentiment, revealing the name of the CIA station chief put his life at risk. He was immediately withdrawn from the country. We soon learned that U.S. officials were blaming Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for Khan’s lawsuit.
Some weeks later, when I was in Pakistan on another reporting trip, I requested a meeting with Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI. The agency’s spokesman, Zafar Iqbal, always attended such meetings and took notes on the conversation. Journalists called Zafar “Mr. Ponytail” because he had one, making him a rarity among clean-cut Pakistani security men.
When I arrived at the ISI’s offices, I greeted both men and observed that General Pasha looked very tired.
“General, how are things?” I asked.
“Well, if we speak about our relationship with the United States, it is very bad. Actually, I can’t remember when it had been as bad as it is now.”
“Really? Why?”