September 11th saw a raft of CIA documents released. How do you fight a terrorist while supporting the regime that shelters him? A CIA briefing from June 2000 captures the contradiction with remarkable economy: Pakistan was disrupting bin Laden’s network; the Taliban was complaining that Islamabad had not delivered promised ammunition. Two-faced is an understatement.
That passage sits inside the 101-page collection of 71 intelligence products released on 11 September 2026, the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11. Read together, they reveal a dangerous game played by Pakistan and America.
The connections were already explicit. A February 1998 briefing named Pakistan-based Harakat ul-Ansar among the groups whose leaders signed bin Laden’s call for attacks on American interests and civilians. That September, another reported that the Kashmiri militant group Harakat ul-Mujahedin was coordinating with him to attack American, British and French interests. I know from when I worked in the US Congress and we lobbied the White House and the State Department to declare Pakistan a terrorist State that they ignored it. That was less than a decade before 9/11 and some 15 odd years before Bin Laden was found in his home in Pakistan by US forces.
For an Indian reader this is especially infuriating; it is not a Western only issue. The suggestion that militancy associated with Kashmir could be contained within a regional dispute looks particularly threadbare when the same organisation appears in intelligence about attacks on Western interests. I know from when I was invited by the UK Foreign Office after 9/11 to join a internal think tank on incorporating ethnic minorities in foreign policy formulation that there just appeared to be a belief pre-9/11 that India's problems with terrorism are not the West's problems.
Then came the ammunition complaint. In a document recording pressure on al-Qaeda, the Taliban appeared as a disappointed prospective recipient of Pakistani military supplies.
Why did Taliban support matter? A March 2001 assessment explained its dependence on bin Laden’s money, supplies and experienced Arab fighters in the war against the Northern Alliance. His protection served military interests as well as ideological sympathies. Supporting his hosts helped sustain the conditions in which his organisation operated.
This fits an established finding. The 9/11 Commission identified Pakistan’s military intelligence service as the Taliban’s principal patron. It also recorded American reluctance to apply stronger pressure, given fears about destabilising a nuclear-armed country. Washington understood the dilemma and repeatedly accommodated it. Pakistan cries over and over again, 'we are nuclear' - you have to help us America.
These redacted assessments do not establish that Pakistan’s government planned 9/11. Nor do they resolve who knew about bin Laden’s eventual refuge in Abbottabad, where American forces killed him in 2011.
The CIA itself recorded that mainstream Muslims rejected bin Laden’s fatwas. Collective blame would reproduce the intellectual dishonesty this history demands we confront.
The lesson for Britain and America is to judge counterterrorism partners by whether they dismantle the networks, financing and sanctuaries that sustain violence. Arrests deserve credit. Continued support for a terrorist’s protectors deserves scrutiny. An ally’s usefulness must never become a permanent exemption from accountability. America continues to play the same game with Pakistan.