Around the table at army headquarters in Rawalpindi sat the leading officers in Pakistan's armed forces, summoned to the most important meeting of their careers.
Hours after the September 11 attacks Washington had ordered Islamabad to halt unconditionally its long-criticised support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Within days General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's straight-talking military dictator, called together his 12 or 13 most senior officers. Although he expects his generals to speak freely at these meetings they rarely oppose the army chief's decisions.
This time the atmosphere was cold. Gen Musharraf laid out his proposal to support America in the imminent war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. There was, he told them, simply no other choice. Officially the public was told the officers supported Gen Musharraf unanimously. But now it has emerged that four of his most senior generals opposed him outright. The Guardian has learned that the four openly challenged the president's pro-US stance. In military terms it was a stunning display of disloyalty.
According to a source close to the military leadership the most angry among the four that night was Lieutenant General Mehmood Ahmed, the religious hardliner who headed the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) - responsible for internal security and covert operations - and was once Gen Musharraf's closest ally.
Three other lieutenant generals joined his protest: Muzaffar Usmani, a corps commander who was instrumental in orchestrating the coup of October 1999 that brought the army back to power; Jamshaid Gulzar Kiani, commander of the powerful Rawalpindi corps; and Mohammad Aziz Khan, the Kashmir-born Lahore corps commander and a former ISI deputy chief.
Within a month the dissenters were silenced. Gen Ahmed and Gen Usmani were sacked. Gen Kiani lost his corps to become Adjutant-General while Gen Khan was promoted to the theoretically powerful, but largely ceremonial, position of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee.
It was exactly what Washington wanted - firm leadership against the militant wing of the army. Four months ago Gen Musharraf went further - he made his second major policy change, vowing to rid his country of Islamic extremists who for years have relied on clandestine financial and military support from the army. Militants listened to the general scoff at their "half-baked religious minds".
Crackdown
His words shook Pakistan's Islamist network to its core. Within weeks 2,000 militants were rounded up and jailed, including several prominent hardline clerics and militant leaders. Not only did this delight the Bush administration, it also served to calm tensions with India which for years had been complaining about the Pakistan state's secret sponsorship of the extreme Islamist campaign in Kashmir.
Today, all that goodwill is fast disappearing. It is clear the general's promises are not being kept. Most of the militants have been released without charge, among them the heads of groups listed as terrorist organisations by Britain and the US. Pakistan has allowed militants backed by its own intelligence agency to continue their war in Kashmir even though it threatens to plunge India and Pakistan into a devastating conflict.
A Guardian investigation has uncovered evidence that Pakistani militants are still openly raising funds and training young fighters to cross into Kashmir to fight the Indian army. They are closely watched by their Islamist supporters in the ISI. Despite the purges, several hundred in the core of 2,500 ISI officers remain opposed to Gen Musharraf's alliance with America.
It is taking the newly appointed pro-western generals at the top of the intelligence agency longer than expected to root out dissenters. "It's hard to tell who are the renegades and that's what they're trying to do now," said the source close to the military leadership.
In the past week alone fundraisers from Lashkar-e-Taiba working in a district near Mardan, in the North-West Frontier, collected 500kg of wheat in donations for their fighters, according to a senior Lashkar official. Yet this group is listed as a terrorist organisation by Britain and the US and was banned in Gen Musharraf's January speech when all militant fundraising was outlawed.
Every Friday lunchtime, as men gather at the mosques near Mardan for prayers, a Lashkar commander makes an impassioned speech about the fight in Kashmir and openly collects thousands of rupees in donations. "Our fundraising hasn't been affected at all," said the Lashkar official, a pharmacist who now works as one of the group's leading fundraisers. "We are still getting enough from local people and from the Arab world to keep us going."
Lashkar trains thousands of raw recruits every year for the war in Kashmir. "Last year every jihadi organisation was required to send 3,500 mojahedin across the border and that target was met," the official said.
At one religious seminary, or madrassah, near Mardan new recruits start with a 15-day course in religious teaching before a 21-day course in basic military skills. If they pass they move out to secret camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir - known here as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (free Kashmir) - where for three months they learn the tricks of guerrilla war and take classes in suicide attacks, the new weapon of the Kashmir campaign.
The Lashkar official claimed a suicide squad from the group's newest armed wing, Al-Mansoureen, was responsible for last week's attack on an Indian army base near Srinagar which killed 34 people, including soldiers' wives and children.
The ISI has for years helped to direct the militant war in Kashmir, and its officers, militants say, are well aware that the Islamist fighters are still in business. "Training is under way in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and we are not under pressure from any government agency to stop," the Lashkar fundraiser said. "When this training is going on do you think these agencies are not aware? Of course they are."
The Pakistan army consistently denies giving the militants anything more than moral, diplomatic and political support. The reality is quite different. The ISI's Kashmir cell issues money and directions to militant groups.
"Every jihadi has links with ISI," said a military source. "You cannot be a jihadi without having links with the ISI." A select few are in very close contact with ISI officers.
Sympathies
The dilemma for Gen Musharraf is that many of his army officers are still deeply sympathetic to the militants and the Kashmir cause. The Islamist sympathies of many of ISI operatives are all too apparent.
Khalid Khawaja, a retired ISI officer, retains close links with the militants fighting in Kashmir as well as leaders from the defeated Taliban regime. He regards the fight in Kashmir as a legitimate jihad.
In chilling tones he describes Gen Musharraf's policies since September 11 as a threat. "We have done the worst possible thing. We have been responsible for the miseries of our brothers and sisters because we didn't believe in God but we believed in Bush and Blair."
Gen Musharraf insists he is fully in control of the ISI and aware of everything the officers do. "Whatever they are doing now I take total responsibility," he said earlier this month.
His advisers say the government has a diplomatic imperative for supporting the militant campaign in Kashmir: without the militant struggle there would be no pressure on the Indian government over Kashmir, and Pakistan would have little sway at the negotiating table.
Unless Gen Musharraf can offer the Pakistani people a diplomatic success in Kashmir, which now seems well out of his grasp, he has little choice but to keep up the guerrilla war.
But the ISI is playing a dangerous game. Gen Musharraf is left trying to balance his promise to rein in Islamic militancy with his army's belief in the moral justice and diplomatic necessity of the Kashmir war. It is a treacherous dilemma which may yet draw India and Pakistan into an unimaginable nuclear conflict.