Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  CALEB WAS DISCHARGED in early January. He became an outpatient at the US Army’s Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Sam Houston and was assigned an apartment off base. He learned to wheel himself around while anxiously waiting for the first prosthetic fitting on his right leg. Doctors told him it was best to start the process before the wound had fully healed so the prosthesis could conform to the shape of the socket. The healing of the left leg was far behind after a skin graft had failed. It required more surgery.

  He also became an outpatient at the Center for the Intrepid, a state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility set up at Fort Sam Houston in 2007 for the most seriously wounded patients and staffed by military officers. Established with donor money to improve care for a generation of soldiers that had survived the long-running wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was viewed as one of the most advanced centers of its kind in the world. As a result of innovations in battlefield medicine that helped stop catastrophic blood loss after an injury, soldiers now survived wounds that would have previously been mortal. Just a few years earlier, Caleb likely would have died from the damage his body had sustained in the blast. But improved tourniquets, first aid training, and “golden hour” medical care had allowed him to survive.

  During rehab, he realized that the scale of his injuries was minor compared to that of other patients. He saw triple, even quadruple, amputees, as well as soldiers that were horrendously disfigured by burns over 90 percent of their bodies. Some were paralyzed and would never leave their wheelchairs. One of the most inspiring patients was a jovial twenty-year-old artilleryman called Muzzy, who’d lost his sight and both legs above the knee when a round exploded in the chamber of his weapon. Not only did he have to learn to walk again; he had to do it blind.

  Ashley struggled to keep her job. Even though the Family and Medical Leave Act gave her twenty-six weeks off to care for a combat-wounded relative, her office insisted they were only required to allow her twelve weeks off. Fortunately, she was able to rectify the paperwork before they fired her. She needed the money to keep up with the family’s mortgage payments and other bills.

  At the end of January, Caleb tried on his first leg. It had no joints and felt heavy and unstable at the end of his stump. But when he grasped the parallel bars in the lab and stood up for the first time in nearly two months, he felt a swell of excitement as blood rushed through his upright body, causing an unfamiliar, tingling sensation.

  He hopped to the end of the bars and back. It felt incredible. Then his stump started to throb under the pressure of the prosthetic leg. It was almost like being injured again. He reached his chair and collapsed into it, exhausted and exhilarated.

  IN EARLY FEBRUARY, Caleb’s squad leader at the Warrior Transition Battalion called to say that the three-star general in command at Fort Sam Houston had requested a breakfast with all the wounded warriors, and Caleb had been selected to attend. The date was set for the morning after Mick’s funeral service at Arlington.

  Caleb didn’t want to have breakfast with any general. Even completing the smallest tasks took huge effort. He still struggled every day just to get himself washed and dressed. He requested to be exempt from the breakfast on the basis that he would be tired after attending his teammate’s funeral the night before. The request was denied.

  The dress code for the breakfast with the general was the army combat uniform. The battalion authorized Caleb to wear his physical fitness uniform, used during exercise, which was more comfortable. He didn’t have one, so Ashley had to borrow a set for the event. All his stuff was still in Afghanistan.

  On March 7, 2016, two months after Mick’s death, Alexandra appeared in front of the country at her husband’s burial service. Her long red hair was tied back, and she tearfully clutched her baby in one arm and a folded American flag in the other as she watched the pallbearers lower her husband into the ground. Mick had been posthumously awarded the Silver Star Medal.

  Caleb watched from his wheelchair, thinking how easily it could have been him. He felt both responsible and at the same time remote from the ceremony. His emotions weren’t as raw as they were supposed to be in those circumstances. I should be feeling worse than this, he thought. He needed to get off the drugs.

  At breakfast the next day, Caleb was conscious that he was the only one in attendance who was missing both legs. The staff made a big production of hosting the soldiers as servers brought them food and cameras flashed around them. Feeling like a show horse, Caleb was utterly humiliated as he dutifully performed while nodding and smiling. He was expected to show gratitude for the invitation, as though his injury was an inconvenience to everyone else.

  When the three-star general asked Purple Heart recipients to comment on their medical care, Caleb didn’t hesitate to express his honest opinion. While he was being treated at the privately funded Center for the Intrepid, he was required to continue with appointments at the army’s Warrior Training Battalion. As a result, he had two primary care providers, two physical therapists, two occupational therapists, and so on, all of whom provided overlapping care.

  He told the general that the duplication of appointments was a waste of resources and a drain on his energy, which he needed to preserve to focus on the challenge of learning to walk again. The general, dismissive, told Caleb that the battalion didn’t really take up much time.

  “I want to say a few words about uniforms and standards here at the battalion,” the general said, beginning a lecture on the importance of regulations. “We will be doing rounds in civilian clothes to check on the battalion.”

  The lecture seemed to be a personal slight toward Caleb as a soldier. He was the only one at the breakfast wearing shorts and a T-shirt. It was hard to conceive how the general could have nothing more important to do than go around enforcing dress code with the war wounded. After the breakfast, the battalion’s leadership formally complained to Caleb’s Special Operations advocate about him wearing a physical fitness uniform at the event. They told the advocate that Caleb was supposed to have worn his combat uniform.

  PART THREE

  RAMP-UP

  CHAPTER 20

  President Obama Ramps Up the War

  GEN. JOHN CAMPBELL, the top US commander in Afghanistan, lobbied for more troops and authorities until his departure in early 2016. He argued that the near losses of Helmand and Kunduz demonstrated at the very least that the current policy was failing and the survival of the Afghan government was at risk; furthermore, the new Islamic State affiliate in the east was an additional cause for concern. The solution was an open-ended and expanded mission to support the Kabul administration until it could survive on its own. Whether anyone believed that would ever happen was unclear. By the time Campbell stepped down, he had convinced the White House the war was moving in the wrong direction.

  The Obama administration was simultaneously dealing with the fallout of its disastrous effort to end the war in Iraq, which seemed to be a warning sign for US policy in Afghanistan. In Iraq, the unilateral withdrawal of all US forces in 2011 had created the conditions that led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, one of the most successful terrorist groups the world had ever seen. The group’s popularity was blamed on flawed US policies in Iraq that had deposed the nation’s leader, Saddam Hussein, dismantled the ruling Baathist party, and worsened a sectarian rift before pulling troops out.

  At its peak, Islamic State controlled as much as 40 percent of Iraq and a third of Syria, ruling over ten million people in 2014. It also inspired affiliates around the world to pledge allegiance to its leader. One of those affiliate groups was in Afghanistan. Even though the group’s presence was mostly limited to a handful of districts along the border with Pakistan, its brutal methods and attacks were seen by some as evidence that Afghanistan could once again become a safe haven for terrorist organizations if the United States pulled out.

  On the Hill, influential lawmakers like John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committe
e, issued dire warnings about a repeat of the situation the country had left behind in Iraq. In early 2016, he warned that Afghanistan would go the same way if the United States continued with its plan to withdraw.

  “By now, we should have learned from the precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, and the disaster that ensued, that wars do not end because politicians say so,” McCain said in his opening statement at the hearing to consider Lieutenant General John W. Nicholson to lead US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. “As the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, it makes no strategic or military sense to continue the withdrawal of American forces.”

  In Washington, it seemed natural to draw parallels between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the military had often applied a one-size-fits-all approach to the conflicts. In reality, there were important differences, suggesting that comparisons had limited value. Crucially, Afghanistan did not have a history of sectarian war, a factor that contributed to Islamic State’s ascent in Iraq, where the new US-backed administration was led by Shi’ites and the ousted government was mostly Sunni.

  Another important difference was that the Taliban did not practice the Salafi jihadist ideology espoused by al Qaeda and Islamic State. In Afghanistan, the influence of Sufism, a more mystical interpretation of Islam, was widespread, suggesting that the radical ideology of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was unlikely to take hold there. In places where Islamic State pockets had taken root in Afghanistan, they often fought against local Taliban groups for recruits and resources. Al Qaeda had been mostly wiped out, but this did not seem to factor into consideration either.

  IN AFGHANISTAN, the threat posed by Islamic State had long been a source of debate among local and foreign officials. It started with local media reports describing sightings of mysterious new groups whose members wore black and clashed with the Taliban in remote parts of the country. A typical example of this cycle occurred in western Farah province, where one of the first Islamic State affiliates in the country reportedly set up a training camp for foreign fighters in late 2014.

  Farah lay near the border with Iran but hours away from anything, making it difficult to verify the news. It was a desert haven for narcotics traffickers, smugglers, and weapons traders. The buzz and grind of motorbikes was relentless. Women roamed without male chaperones, covering themselves in a single sheet of fabric worn like a cape. News of the training camp made international headlines, but it turned out that the new Islamic State group comprised local Taliban fighters who had quarreled with a commander and set up a rival faction. There was no sign of foreigners at all. But Afghan government officials played up the news in a bid to get US attention, and the stories were picked up and repeated in US-based media, fueling the argument in Washington that terrorist groups were again taking root in Afghanistan.

  As a result, while officials in Washington were painting dire warnings about the emergence of Islamic State in Afghanistan, in Kabul, local and foreign officials were divided over the most basic questions. Did Islamic State or Daesh, the Arabic-language acronym commonly used to identify the group in Afghanistan, have any real connection to the larger group in Iraq and Syria, or did it simply reflect disaffection with the main insurgency led by the Taliban?

  As the debate continued, over the next year, a more resilient affiliate emerged and laid roots along the border with Pakistan, in the same mountain range where US forces had hunted for Osama bin Laden at the start of the war. The eastern affiliate called itself Islamic State Khorasan Province, and it was to become one of the US military’s principal concerns in the years to follow. Its roots could be traced back to a single, prominent cleric: Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, a native of Kot district, in Nangarhar province.

  Dost was among the first to pledge allegiance to Islamic State in Afghanistan and a prime example of the circuitous conflict. A previous Guantánamo detainee, he was arrested in 2001 on charges that included traveling to Afghanistan that summer and previously joining a former anti-Soviet jihadist group1—one of many backed by the United States in the 1980s. He had never been a member of the Taliban or al Qaeda.

  At Guantánamo, Dost dealt with a Kafkaesque justice system that sometimes served to further radicalize inmates. The military tribunal refused to share the classified evidence against him, but reassured Dost during his hearing that court officials had come with an “open mind.” He was not impressed.

  “If you want to decide on the secret documents that I do not have access to, it is unfair,” Dost told the tribunal, documents later released showed.

  He also protested against the charge of traveling to Afghanistan in August 2001. He explained that he had returned home to check on land and a gem business that belonged to his family.

  “I am an Afghan. It’s not a crime to travel to my country,” Dost told the court.

  Dost resumed his activities as a jihadi scholar after being released in 2005 in Pakistan, where he met a stream of visitors who came to hear about his time at Guantánamo. His guests included international journalists, to whom he spoke about writing poetry in jail.2 Later, he published a book in Pashto called Matí Zawlanē, which roughly translates to “Broken Shackles.”

  Dost publicly joined Islamic State soon after the group emerged in Iraq and Syria; he pledged allegiance in a short video declaration in Arabic that was uploaded to YouTube in mid-2014. From where he resided near the border with Pakistan, he started recruiting for the organization, preaching a radical interpretation of Islam and planting the seeds of the movement in Afghanistan. Few took much notice at the time.

  Support for Islamic State took off in that region after senior members of the Taliban’s branch in Pakistan joined in, breaking away from the main Taliban group after a US drone strike killed its leader and prompted a power struggle over succession. In January 2015, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria formally recognized the group led by the former Pakistani Taliban member Hafiz Sayed Khan as a new affiliate in Afghanistan. The affiliate thus was officially born.

  IN HIS FINAL YEAR in office in 2016, President Obama took several steps to escalate the US role in the Afghan war, among the first of which was signing off on new authorities that allowed the US military to launch offensive operations against the local Islamic State Khorasan Province. The revised rules were a victory for Gen. Campbell, who was on his way out but had lobbied for months to be granted authority to target Islamic State. The US military immediately began planning a major operation in the eastern part of Afghanistan that would target the group’s hideouts along the border.

  A few months later, President Obama authorized a second tranche of decisions that expanded US military operations against the Taliban by granting the new commander, Gen. Nicholson, more troops and assets to help the government fight the insurgent group. The decision to ramp up the war once again was made public in July 2016, in a speech delivered in front of reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where the president was flanked by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

  President Obama cancelled the plan to draw down to fifty-five hundred troops and announced that he would keep force levels steady through the end of his term. The troop cap was set at eighty-four hundred, close to what Gen. Campbell had requested. The president said the decision stemmed from the recognition that the security situation in Afghanistan was precarious and local forces would need support for years to come. Once again, he did not spell out the full scope of the authority he had given SOF, which received more troops and air assets to increase their capacity to support Afghan commandos on the battlefield.

  Fernando Lujan, the Afghanistan director at the National Security Council, wrote much of the policy in the hope that flexibility would deliver additional support to his former Green Beret colleagues on the ground. The policy gave SOF more freedom to accompany Afghan commandos and allowed the United States to support major Afghan army offensives with airstrikes. It also allowed the United States to carry out multiple op
erations in the country at once, a necessary response to the Taliban’s success in launching coordinated attacks in different regions at the same time.

  But there were still limitations on what the US could do, and offensive strikes could only be authorized at a high level. The South Asia director at the National Security Council, Peter Lavoy, said that continued restrictions were intended to force the Afghan government to become more self-reliant. As a result, the new policy delivered some relief to US and Afghan forces on the battlefield, but it was not enough. The Taliban would extend their gains the following year, recapturing Kunduz and threatening half a dozen other major cities in a sign that US support still fell short.

  Footnotes

  1 Dost had been a member of Jamaat ud Dawa il al Quran al Sunnat (JDQ) but claimed to have withdrawn from the group sixteen years earlier. The United States believed that JDQ operated militant training camps and included a militant wing and an assassination wing.

  2 “I would fly on the wings of my imagination,” he told The Guardian reporter Declan Walsh in 2006. “Through my poems I would travel the world, visiting different places. Although I was in a cage, I was really free.”

  CHAPTER 21

  No Good or Bad Men in War

  HUTCH

  HUTCH waited months to hear what punishment would be handed down after the investigation into the bombing of the trauma hospital was passed on to US Central Command for review. Tina, weeks away from giving birth, was in a spiral of anxiety over the possible consequences for her family. Would it be safe for them to stay in their current house? What would happen if they were on a kill list to avenge those lost in the strike? It was a remote but conceivable threat after all that had happened.

  Hutch spent his days at the office, if only to get out of the house and keep up a sense of routine. He exchanged emails with his bosses, assuring everyone that he was fine. The bitterness that had spread among the members of his group was hard to contain. The teams that had participated in the Kunduz operation felt they were being punished for surviving. Other soldiers questioned their version of events. Hutch knew that some people thought he was a monster and deserved to go to jail, and he tried to reconcile himself with that.