It has never been confirmed by the American side, but Musharraf has written that the call was followed up by Powell’s deputy Richard Armitage ringing the head of the ISI and telling him ‘that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age’. Pakistan co-operated, and that was that. Except – they hadn’t fully co-operated, and that wasn’t that. Islamabad was forced to act, and did; but not everyone in the Pakistani system was on board. The government banned several militant groups and tried to rein in religious groups it deemed extremist.
