Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  Five weeks later, I looked Hamid Karzai in the eye for the first time. Forty-four years old with sharp features and a salt-and-pepper beard, Karzai cut a distinctive figure. He wore a shimmering green cape over his gray tunic, along with a pointed cap made of goatskin that was traditional in his southern Afghan tribe.

  “Mr. Chairman, welcome to America,” I said, “and welcome to the Oval Office.” I experienced some fascinating moments in that office over the years. Opening the door for the leader of a free Afghanistan four months after 9/11 ranks among them.

  In the Oval Office with Hamid Karzai. White House/Eric Draper

  “On behalf of me and my people, thank you, Mr. President,” Karzai said. “The United States liberated Afghanistan from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. And now you have liberated us again from the Taliban and al Qaeda.

  “We are independent and we will stand on our own two feet,” he said, “but we need your help. The most common question I hear from my ministers and others in Afghanistan is whether the United States will continue to work with us.”

  I assured Karzai that he could count on America as a partner, and that we would not abandon his country again. We talked about the hunt for the remaining Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, the need to train an Afghan army and police force, and the importance of constructing roads, health clinics, and schools.

  The next night, I saw Karzai again, in the House of Representatives for my State of the Union address. Laura sat next to him. One row back was Karzai’s vice chairman—and Afghanistan’s new minister of women’s affairs—Dr. Sima Samar.

  Karzai’s immediate task was to show that life would improve with the Taliban gone. To support him, I sent Zalmay Khalilzad, a talented Afghan American on the National Security Council staff, to serve as my special envoy and, later, as American ambassador. Zal and Karzai used hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid to build infrastructure, train teachers, print textbooks, and extend electricity and clean water to Afghanistan’s rural population. One program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, helped more than three million Afghan children return to school. That was three times the number who had attended under the Taliban. About a million of the new students were girls.

  From the beginning, we sought to bring as many nations as possible into the rebuilding effort. A multilateral approach would defray the financial burden and invest nations around the world in the ideological struggle against extremists. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan hosted an international donors’ conference in January 2002. The Tokyo meeting yielded $4.5 billion in pledges. America and several key allies decided to divvy up responsibility for helping to build Afghan civil society. We took the lead in training a new Afghan National Army. Germany focused on training the national police. Great Britain adopted a counternarcotics mission. Italy worked to reform the justice system. Japan launched an initiative to disarm and demobilize warlords and their militias.

  Basic security was a necessary precondition for political and economic gains. So as part of the Bonn process, we supported the creation of an International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF, under the auspices of the United Nations. In the fall of 2002, NATO agreed to take command of ISAF, which contained nearly five thousand troops from twenty-two countries. We also had eight thousand American troops under the command of Tommy Franks training the Afghan security forces and conducting operations against the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

  At the time, thirteen thousand troops seemed like the right amount. We had routed the Taliban with far fewer, and it seemed that the enemy was on the run. I agreed with our military leaders that we did not need a larger presence. We were all wary of repeating the experience of the Soviets and the British, who ended up looking like occupiers.

  This strategy worked well at first. But in retrospect, our rapid success with low troop levels created false comfort, and our desire to maintain a light military footprint left us short of the resources we needed. It would take several years for these shortcomings to become clear.

  In June 2002, Afghans gathered for a second loya jirga to select a transitional government. This time security was good enough to host the conference in Kabul. The delegates chose Karzai to head the new government, and he appointed cabinet ministers from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds. I made it a priority to check in regularly with Karzai. I knew he had a daunting task, and I wanted to lift his spirits and assure him of our commitment. I offered advice and made requests, but I was careful not to give him orders. The best way to help him grow as a leader was to treat him like one.

  The young government made progress. In September 2003, President Karzai told me that pay for the average Afghan had increased from one dollar to three dollars a day—a major improvement, but also a reminder of how primitive the country remained. The government’s biggest accomplishment was drafting a new constitution, which was ratified by a third loya jirga in January 2004. A country that three years earlier had forced women to paint the windows of their homes black now protected basic rights such as freedom of speech and assembly. The constitution established an independent judiciary and bicameral legislature, and it mandated that women account for 25 percent of the House of the People.

  The next step was to hold the first free presidential election in Afghanistan’s history, which was scheduled for October 9, 2004. The Taliban and al Qaeda pledged to kill voters, candidates, and election officials. U.S., NATO, and UN officials helped train election workers and secure voting stations. I hoped the Afghan people would express their desire for liberty at the polls. In truth, nobody knew what to expect.

  When dawn broke, the world witnessed an amazing sight. Across the country, Afghans had lined up overnight, eager to vote. At the front of the line outside the first polling station to open was a nineteen-year-old girl. “I cannot explain my feelings, just how happy I am,” she said. “I would never have thought I would be able to vote in this election.”

  Across the country, turnout exceeded eight million, nearly 80 percent of the voting-age population. Every major ethnic and religious group participated, as did millions of women. The polls stayed open two extra hours to accommodate the huge crowds.

  Condi gave me the news early in the morning in Missouri, where I’d debated John Kerry the night before. I was pleased with the results, but not surprised. I believe the human desire for freedom is universal. History shows that, when given the chance, people of every race and religion take extraordinary risks for liberty. In one village, a toothless man in a black turban said, “It is like independence day, or freedom day. We are bringing security and peace to this country.”

  When the ballots were tallied, Hamid Karzai became the freely elected president. History has a way of dulling memories. But I will always remember the joy and pride I felt that first election day, when the people of Afghanistan—the land where 9/11 was conceived—cast their ballots for a future of freedom.

  In September 2005, the Afghan people went to the polls again, this time to choose a national legislature. More than 2,700 candidates put their names forward for 249 seats. Nearly 7 million voters turned out, despite Taliban threats and calls for a boycott. The new National Assembly included 68 women and representatives of almost every ethnic group.

  Dick Cheney represented the United States at the assembly’s inaugural session in December 2005. The ceremony opened with an emotional speech from the nation’s former king, ninety-one-year-old Zahir Shah. “I thank God that today I am participating in a ceremony that is a step towards rebuilding Afghanistan after decades of fighting,” he said. “The people of Afghanistan will succeed!”

  I shared his optimism. Four years after the fall of the Taliban, the country had elected a president and a parliament. But I recognized the elections were only a first step. Democracy is a journey that requires a nation to build governing institutions such as courts of law, security forces, an education system, a free press, and a vibrant civil society. Afghanistan had made
some hopeful progress. Some 5 million children, including 1.5 million girls, were back in school. The economy was growing at an average rate of more than 15 percent per year. A much-anticipated new highway from Kabul to Kandahar had been completed. Four million of 7 million refugees had returned home.

  On the surface, it seemed we were making progress. But trouble lurked underneath. In June 2005, a four-man Navy SEAL team operating high in the mountains was ambushed by the Taliban. The team leader, Lieutenant Michael Murphy, moved into an exposed position to call in help for his three fellow wounded SEALs. He stayed on the line long enough to relay his teammates’ location before suffering fatal wounds. When a Special Forces chopper arrived to extract the SEALs, Taliban fighters shot it down. Nineteen Americans were killed, making it the deadliest day of the war in Afghanistan and the worst for the SEALs since World War II. One SEAL, Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell, lived to tell the story in his riveting book, Lone Survivor.

  Two years later, I presented the Medal of Honor to Lieutenant Michael Murphy’s parents in the East Room of the White House. We talked about their son, a talented athlete and honors graduate of Penn State whose one brush with trouble came when he intervened in a schoolyard fight to protect a disabled child. In our meeting before the ceremony, they gave me a gold dog tag with Mike’s name, photo, and rank engraved on it. I put it on under my shirt and wore it during the ceremony.

  Presenting Dan and Maureen Murphy with the Medal of Honor earned by their son, Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy. White House/Joyce Boghosian

  As the military aide read the Medal of Honor citation, I looked into the audience. I saw a group of Navy SEALs in their dress blues. These battle-hardened men had tears streaming down their cheeks. As I later told Daniel and Maureen Murphy, I gained strength from having a reminder of Mike next to my heart.

  The devastating attack on the SEALs was a harbinger of trouble to come. In 2005 and 2006, Taliban militants killed road-building crews, burned down schools, and murdered teachers in provinces near the Pakistan border. In September 2006, a Taliban suicide bomber assassinated the governor of Paktia Province near his office in Gardez. The next day, another suicide bomber struck the governor’s funeral, killing six mourners.

  My CIA and military briefings included increasingly dire reports about Taliban influence. The problem was crystallized by a series of color-coded maps I saw in November 2006. The darker the shading, the more attacks had occurred in that part of Afghanistan. The 2004 map was lightly shaded. The 2005 map had darker areas in the southern and eastern parts of the country. By 2006, the entire southeastern quadrant was black. In just one year, the number of remotely detonated bombs had doubled. The number of armed attacks had tripled. The number of suicide bombings had more than quadrupled.

  It was clear we needed to adjust our strategy. The multilateral approach to rebuilding, hailed by so many in the international community, was failing. There was little coordination between countries, and no one devoted enough resources to the effort. The German initiative to build the national police force had fallen short. The Italian mission to reform the justice system had failed. The British-led counternarcotics campaign showed results in some areas, but drug production had boomed in fertile southern provinces like Helmand. The Afghan National Army that America trained had improved, but in an attempt to keep the Afghan government from taking on an unsustainable expense, we had kept the army too small.

  The multilateral military mission proved a disappointment as well. Every member of NATO had sent troops to Afghanistan. So had more than a dozen other countries. But many parliaments imposed heavy restrictions—known as national caveats—on what their troops were permitted to do. Some were not allowed to patrol at night. Others could not engage in combat. The result was a disorganized and ineffective force, with troops fighting by different rules and many not fighting at all.

  Failures in the Afghan government contributed to the problem. While I liked and respected President Karzai, there was too much corruption. Warlords pocketed large amounts of customs revenue that should have gone to Kabul. Others took a cut of the profits from the drug trade. The result was that Afghans lost faith in their government. With nowhere else to turn, many Afghans relied on the Taliban and ruthless extremist commanders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. A CIA report quoted one Afghan as saying, “I don’t care who is in power, as long as they bring security. Security is all that matters.”

  The stakes were too high to let Afghanistan fall back into the hands of the extremists. I decided that America had to take on more of the responsibility, even though we were about to undertake a major new commitment in Iraq as well.

  “Damn it, we can do more than one thing at a time,” I told the national security team. “We cannot lose in Afghanistan.”

  In the fall of 2006, I ordered a troop increase that would boost our force levels from twenty-one thousand to thirty-one thousand over the next two years. I called the 50 percent increase a “silent surge.”** To help the Afghan government extend its reach and effectiveness, we more than doubled funding for reconstruction. We increased the number of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which brought together military personnel and civilian experts to ensure that security gains were translated into meaningful improvements in everyday life. We also increased the size of the Afghan National Army, expanded our counternarcotics effort, improved intelligence efforts along the Pakistan border, and sent civilian experts from the U.S. government to help Afghan ministries strengthen their capacity and reduce corruption.

  I urged our NATO allies to match our commitment by dropping caveats on their troops and adding more forces. Several leaders responded, including Stephen Harper of Canada, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, and Nicolas Sarkozy of France. The British and Canadians fought especially bravely and suffered significant casualties. America was fortunate to have them at our side, and we honor their sacrifice as our own.

  Other leaders told me bluntly that their parliaments would never go along. It was maddening. Afghanistan was supposed to be a war the world had agreed was necessary and just. And yet many countries were sending troops so heavily restricted that our generals complained they just took up space. NATO had turned into a two-tiered alliance, with some countries willing to fight and many not.

  The adjustments in our strategy improved our ability to take on the insurgents. Yet the violence continued. The primary cause of the trouble did not originate in Afghanistan or, as some suggested, in Iraq. It came from Pakistan.

  For most of my presidency, Pakistan was led by President Pervez Musharraf. I admired his decision to side with America after 9/11. He held parliamentary elections in 2002, which his party won, and spoke about “enlightened moderation” as an alternative to Islamic extremism. He took serious risks to battle al Qaeda. Terrorists tried to assassinate him at least four times.

  With Pervez Musharraf. White House/Paul Morse

  In the months after we liberated Afghanistan, I told Musharraf I was troubled by reports of al Qaeda and Taliban forces fleeing into the loosely governed, tribal provinces of Pakistan—an area often compared to the Wild West. “I’d be more than willing to send our Special Forces across the border to clear out the areas,” I said.

  He told me that sending American troops into combat in Pakistan would be viewed as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. A revolt would likely ensue. His government would probably fall. The extremists could take over the country, including its nuclear arsenal.

  In that case, I told him, his soldiers needed to take the lead. For several years, the arrangement worked. Pakistani forces netted hundreds of terrorists, including al Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abu Faraj al Libbi. Musharraf also arrested A.Q. Khan, the revered father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, for selling components from the country’s program on the black market. As Musharraf often reminded me, Pakistani forces paid a high price for taking on the extremists. More than fourteen hundred were killed in the war on terr
or.

  In return for Pakistan’s cooperation, we lifted the sanctions, designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally, and helped fund its counterterrorism operations. We also worked with Congress to provide $3 billion in economic aid and opened our markets to more Pakistani goods and services.

  Over time, it became clear that Musharraf either would not or could not fulfill all his promises. Part of the problem was Pakistan’s obsession with India. In almost every conversation we had, Musharraf accused India of wrongdoing. Four days after 9/11, he told me the Indians were “trying to equate us with terrorists and trying to influence your mind.” As a result, the Pakistani military spent most of its resources preparing for war with India. Its troops were trained to wage a conventional battle with its neighbor, not counterterrorism operations in the tribal areas. The fight against the extremists came second.

  A related problem was that Pakistani forces pursued the Taliban much less aggressively than they pursued al Qaeda. Some in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, retained close ties to Taliban officials. Others wanted an insurance policy in case America abandoned Afghanistan and India tried to gain influence there. Whatever the reason, Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan took refuge in Pakistan’s tribal regions and populated cities like Peshawar and Quetta. In 2005 and 2006, these sanctuaries aided the rise of the insurgency.

  In March 2006, I visited President Musharraf in Islamabad. Our meeting followed a stop in India, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and I signed an agreement clearing the way for nuclear cooperation between our two countries. The deal was the culmination of our efforts to improve relations between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy. I believe India, home to roughly a billion people and an educated middle class, has the potential to be one of America’s closest partners. The nuclear agreement was a historic step because it signaled the country’s new role on the world stage.