After Bin Laden, U.S. Reassesses Afghan Strategy

 

Two influential senators — John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana — suggested Tuesday that it was time to rethink the Afghanistan war effort, forecasting the beginning of what promises to be a fierce debate about how quickly the United States should begin pulling troops out of the country.

“We should be working toward the smallest footprint necessary, a presence that puts Afghans in charge and presses them to step up to that task,” Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing. “Make no mistake, it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lugar, the committee’s senior Republican, said they remained opposed to a precipitous withdrawal.

Still, “the broad scope of our activities suggests that we are trying to remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan — but that ambitious goal is beyond our power,” Mr. Lugar said. “A reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was needed before our troops took out Bin Laden.”

Inside the Pentagon, however, officials make the case that rather than using Bin Laden’s death as a justification for withdrawal, the United States should continue the current strategy in Afghanistan to secure additional gains and to further pressure the Taliban to come to the bargaining table for negotiations on political reconciliation.

And in Congress, a debate is getting under way over the underlying authority used by two successive administrations to wage the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.

The House Armed Services Committee is expected to take up a defense authorization bill on Wednesday that includes a new authorization for the government to use military force in the war on terrorism. The provision has set off an argument over whether it is a mere update — or a sweeping, open-ended expansion — of the power Congress granted to the executive branch in 2001.

The new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda was unveiled by the committee chairman, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California. The committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on amendments to the bill.

The provision states that Congress “affirms” that “the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces,” and that the president is authorized to use military force — including detention without trial — of members and substantial supporters of those forces.

That language, which would codify into federal law a definition of the enemy that the Obama administration has adopted in defending against lawsuits filed by Guantánamo Bay detainees, would supplant the existing military force authorization that Congress passed overwhelmingly on Sept. 14, 2001. It instead named the enemy as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Critics of Mr. McKeon’s provision have reacted with alarm to what they see as an effort to entrench in a federal statute unambiguous authority for the executive branch to wage war against terrorists who are deemed associates of Al Qaeda but who lack a clear tie to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a joint letter to Congress, about two dozen groups — including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — contended that the proposal amounted to an open-ended grant of authority to the executive branch, legitimizing an unending war from Yemen to Somalia and beyond.

“This monumental legislation — with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the president — could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries” and “without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved,” the letter warned.

Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

U.S. Still Waits for Access to Bin Laden Widows

Pakistan has not yet allowed American investigators access to the widows, nor shared their own interrogation report, a Pakistani security official said Tuesday. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the rules of his organization.

The Obama administration demanded access to the women, who appear to have been in hiding with Bin Laden for years, and an American official said that Pakistan had promised to comply.

Yet the women may not prove to be the mine of information that some suppose because they led such cloistered lives, officials and analysts say. In line with the strict code of Islam followed by Bin Laden, they never met men outside their immediate family and were not informed by Bin Laden of any of his business or operational dealings.

The widows, along with the Pakistani wife of Bin Laden’s trusted courier, and a number of children detained at the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad remain in the hands of the Pakistani security forces, who have controlled the flow of information about them.

There are conflicting reports as to how many there are and who they are. Initial reports indicated that 12 women and children were in the compound; it now appears that there were as many as 17.

Some information given by intelligence officials appears intended to cast doubt on the account of the raid as presented by American officials; none has been independently verified.

Pakistani security officials, asking to remain anonymous, say that along with the widows — two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — there were 13 children, 8 of them related to Bin Laden.

The fourth woman, a Pakistani who was wounded in the raid, indicated to officials who first arrived at the compound that her husband had been killed, said Asad Munir, a retired brigadier and former intelligence service official. Her husband appears to have been Arshad Khan, Bin Laden’s trusted courier, who owned the compound and protected him for more than five years.

Bin Laden’s widows have been identified as Um Hamza, or Mother of Hamza, whose real name is Khairiah Sabar, and is from Jidda in Saudi Arabia; Um Khalid, or Mother of Khalid, whose name is Siham, and is from Medina in Saudi Arabia; and the youngest, a Yemeni, Amal al-Saddah, 29. Her passport names her as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah.

Bin Laden’s daughter with Ms. Saddah, Safia, who is 12 or 13 years old, is also reported to have been present and even to have witnessed the shooting of her father. Officials have also said that there is a 5-year-old son of Bin Laden and that four of the children are his grandchildren by a daughter killed in an airstrike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

One of his sons was killed in the raid, but reports have named him variously as Hamza or Khalid, both of whom were born in the same year from different wives and would be 22 years old.

Bin Laden has been married five times, according to a book, “Growing Up bin Laden,” written by his fourth son, Omar bin Laden, in collaboration with the American author Jean Sasson and his mother, Najwa bin Laden, Bin Laden’s first wife and cousin.

In answers to e-mailed questions forwarded by Ms. Sasson, Omar bin Laden said his father kept his wives, and often his children, sequestered in the house.

His mother, Najwa, would sneak into the garden when Osama bin Laden was away, warning the children not to tell their father she had dared step outside the house. The children, too, rarely were permitted to go outside. Omar bin Laden said his saddest memories were of being locked in their home in Jidda and staring out at all the other children who were allowed to play.

Najwa and Omar had long wondered whether Osama bin Laden’s two Saudi wives were with him in hiding, and only from reports of the American assault undertaken by a Navy Seals team did they learn that they were. Omar said he was sad that his half-brother Khalid was killed in the raid, though he said he had little in common with Khalid and had seen him rarely.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Scott Shane from Washington.

After Bin Laden, U.S. Reassesses Afghan Strategy

Two influential senators — John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana — suggested Tuesday that it was time to rethink the Afghanistan war effort, forecasting the beginning of what promises to be a fierce debate about how quickly the United States should begin pulling troops out of the country.

“We should be working toward the smallest footprint necessary, a presence that puts Afghans in charge and presses them to step up to that task,” Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing. “Make no mistake, it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lugar, the committee’s senior Republican, said they remained opposed to a precipitous withdrawal.

Still, “the broad scope of our activities suggests that we are trying to remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan — but that ambitious goal is beyond our power,” Mr. Lugar said. “A reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was needed before our troops took out Bin Laden.”

Inside the Pentagon, however, officials make the case that rather than using Bin Laden’s death as a justification for withdrawal, the United States should continue the current strategy in Afghanistan to secure additional gains and to further pressure the Taliban to come to the bargaining table for negotiations on political reconciliation.

And in Congress, a debate is getting under way over the underlying authority used by two successive administrations to wage the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.

The House Armed Services Committee is expected to take up a defense authorization bill on Wednesday that includes a new authorization for the government to use military force in the war on terrorism. The provision has set off an argument over whether it is a mere update — or a sweeping, open-ended expansion — of the power Congress granted to the executive branch in 2001.

The new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda was unveiled by the committee chairman, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California. The committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on amendments to the bill.

The provision states that Congress “affirms” that “the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces,” and that the president is authorized to use military force — including detention without trial — of members and substantial supporters of those forces.

That language, which would codify into federal law a definition of the enemy that the Obama administration has adopted in defending against lawsuits filed by Guantánamo Bay detainees, would supplant the existing military force authorization that Congress passed overwhelmingly on Sept. 14, 2001. It instead named the enemy as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Critics of Mr. McKeon’s provision have reacted with alarm to what they see as an effort to entrench in a federal statute unambiguous authority for the executive branch to wage war against terrorists who are deemed associates of Al Qaeda but who lack a clear tie to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a joint letter to Congress, about two dozen groups — including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — contended that the proposal amounted to an open-ended grant of authority to the executive branch, legitimizing an unending war from Yemen to Somalia and beyond.

“This monumental legislation — with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the president — could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries” and “without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved,” the letter warned.

Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

Bin Laden Sons Say U.S. Broke International Law

The statement, provided to The New York Times on Tuesday, said the family was asking why Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, “was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world.”

Citing the trials of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, and Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian leader, the statement questioned “the propriety of such assassination where not only international law has been blatantly violated,” but the principles of presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial were ignored.

“We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems,” the statement said, adding that “justice must be seen to be done.”

The statement, prepared at the direction of Omar bin Laden, who had publicly denounced his father’s terrorism, was provided to The Times by Jean Sasson, an American author who helped the younger Mr. Bin Laden write a 2009 memoir, “Growing Up bin Laden.” A shorter, slightly different statement was posted on jihadist Web sites.

Omar bin Laden, 30, lived with his father in Afghanistan until 1999, when he left with his mother, Najwa bin Laden, who co-wrote the memoir. In the book and other public statements, the younger Mr. bin Laden had denounced violence of all kinds, a stance he repeated in the sons’ statement.

“We want to remind the world that?Omar bin Laden, the fourth-born son of our father, always disagreed with our father regarding any violence and always sent messages to our father, that he must change his ways and that no civilians should be attacked under any circumstances,” the statement said. “Despite the difficulty of publicly disagreeing with our father, he never hesitated to condemn any violent attacks made by anyone, and expressed sorrow for the victims of any and all attacks.”

Condemning the shooting of one of the Qaeda leader’s wives during the assault on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the statement added, “As he condemned our father, we now condemn the president of the United States for ordering the execution of unarmed men and women.”

In explaining the killing of Bin Laden, Obama administration officials have cited the principle of national self-defense in international law, noting that Bin Laden had declared war on the United States, killed thousands of Americans and vowed to kill more.

The sons’ statement called on the government of Pakistan to hand over to family members the three wives and a number of children now believed to be in Pakistani custody and asked for a United Nations investigation of the circumstances of their father’s death.

None of Osama bin Laden’s sons other than Omar, who lives in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were named in the statement; Ms. Sasson said she believed it was approved by three other adult sons who have not lived with their father for many years. Before Osama bin Laden fled Afghanistan in 2001, he had at least 11 sons, one of whom was killed in the assault last week, and nine daughters, by Ms. Sasson’s count.

In addition to the statement, Ms. Sasson shared notes on what Omar bin Laden, who declined to be interviewed directly, had told her by telephone in recent days. The notes describe Mr. Bin Laden’s struggle, as he came of age, to understand and eventually reject his father’s embrace of religious violence.

Mr. Bin Laden told Ms. Sasson that the death of his father “has affected this family in much the same way as many other families” that experience such a loss. But he also described a childhood of “upheavals and relocations” that, she said, “caused his mother and siblings great upset and danger.”

Mr. Bin Laden said that by the age of 18, after Al Qaeda had plotted the bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa and two years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he had concluded “that the course of action his father was taking was not for him, irrespective of what his father’s wishes were,” Ms. Sasson said.

Eventually he asked his father’s permission to leave Afghanistan with his mother and younger siblings. He told Ms. Sasson that he “thanks Allah that his father granted his permission for this departure, otherwise the grief the family faces could be even greater.”

U.S. Still Waits for Access to Bin Laden Widows

Pakistan has not yet allowed American investigators access to the widows, nor shared their own interrogation report, a Pakistani security official said Tuesday. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the rules of his organization.

The Obama administration demanded access to the women, who appear to have been in hiding with Bin Laden for years, and an American official said that Pakistan had promised to comply.

Yet the women may not prove to be the mine of information that some suppose because they led such cloistered lives, officials and analysts say. In line with the strict code of Islam followed by Bin Laden, they never met men outside their immediate family and were not informed by Bin Laden of any of his business or operational dealings.

The widows, along with the Pakistani wife of Bin Laden’s trusted courier, and a number of children detained at the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad remain in the hands of the Pakistani security forces, who have controlled the flow of information about them.

There are conflicting reports as to how many there are and who they are. Initial reports indicated that 12 women and children were in the compound; it now appears that there were as many as 17.

Some information given by intelligence officials appears intended to cast doubt on the account of the raid as presented by American officials; none has been independently verified.

Pakistani security officials, asking to remain anonymous, say that along with the widows — two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — there were 13 children, 8 of them related to Bin Laden.

The fourth woman, a Pakistani who was wounded in the raid, indicated to officials who first arrived at the compound that her husband had been killed, said Asad Munir, a retired brigadier and former intelligence service official. Her husband appears to have been Arshad Khan, Bin Laden’s trusted courier, who owned the compound and protected him for more than five years.

Bin Laden’s widows have been identified as Um Hamza, or Mother of Hamza, whose real name is Khairiah Sabar, and is from Jidda in Saudi Arabia; Um Khalid, or Mother of Khalid, whose name is Siham, and is from Medina in Saudi Arabia; and the youngest, a Yemeni, Amal al-Saddah, 29. Her passport names her as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah.

Bin Laden’s daughter with Ms. Saddah, Safia, who is 12 or 13 years old, is also reported to have been present and even to have witnessed the shooting of her father. Officials have also said that there is a 5-year-old son of Bin Laden and that four of the children are his grandchildren by a daughter killed in an airstrike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

One of his sons was killed in the raid, but reports have named him variously as Hamza or Khalid, both of whom were born in the same year from different wives and would be 22 years old.

Bin Laden has been married five times, according to a book, “Growing Up bin Laden,” written by his fourth son, Omar bin Laden, in collaboration with the American author Jean Sasson and his mother, Najwa bin Laden, Bin Laden’s first wife and cousin.

In answers to e-mailed questions forwarded by Ms. Sasson, Omar bin Laden said his father kept his wives, and often his children, sequestered in the house.

His mother, Najwa, would sneak into the garden when Osama bin Laden was away, warning the children not to tell their father she had dared step outside the house. The children, too, rarely were permitted to go outside. Omar bin Laden said his saddest memories were of being locked in their home in Jidda and staring out at all the other children who were allowed to play.

Najwa and Omar had long wondered whether Osama bin Laden’s two Saudi wives were with him in hiding, and only from reports of the American assault undertaken by a Navy Seals team did they learn that they were. Omar said he was sad that his half-brother Khalid was killed in the raid, though he said he had little in common with Khalid and had seen him rarely.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Scott Shane from Washington.