88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  “You call yourself commander? You’re no commander—you are a coward. You are not even a man; you are a woman! You are a disgrace to your tribe!”

  He went on in this vein for some time, and these were the more polite words he used. In fact, the impact of what he said actually suffers in translation from the Dari. I winced as he recounted it. To any self-respecting Pashtun, these were fighting words, cause for an all-out blood feud. But the old commander had just sat there, head down, and taken it. He simply did not want to risk ending up like Najibullah, the former Communist president of Afghanistan, who had been castrated, dragged behind a vehicle, and hanged in public when captured by the Taliban.

  Given our lack of progress with others, Greg had been under all the more pressure to get Hamid back inside Afghanistan. Still, plans kept changing. On September 30, Karzai told Greg he had hit on a plan to go to Ghor Province in the west. There he could receive assistance from Isma’il Khan, the Northern Alliance commander whose base of strength was in Herat. He would then make his way east and south to his tribal area. This plan, too, fell through.

  Sometime during this period I had received a direct call from Hank. He underscored the importance of getting CIA teams formed on the Jawbreaker model matched up with cooperating Afghans in the south. I told him I couldn’t agree more, that he could see from the cable traffic we were pressing every likely candidate we could find. We had particularly high hopes for Karzai, I said, but in the end, as stipulated in the war plan, success would depend on the willingness of Afghans to confront the Taliban. I was confident that southern anti-Taliban leaders would emerge, but in the meantime I would not make promises I didn’t know I could keep. To that point, neither of us had told the other anything he didn’t already know.

  Then Hank suddenly went off in a new direction. Did I think Karzai would be willing to work closely with Isma’il Khan if the latter were able to move forces down from Herat? This was entirely speculative, as the old Herati commander had not yet returned to his base of support. I replied blandly that Khan would not be able to operate very effectively outside his traditional tribal area, but that certainly he and Karzai got on well; Hamid had even briefly considered trying to stage from Khan’s area. Hank was noodling something, but I had no idea what—that would become clearer later on.

  On October 1, looking ahead to what we hoped would be the imminent arrival of Karzai in Afghanistan, we had sent a cable providing our initial thoughts on when and how an American team should be dispatched to join him. Although CIA had taken the lead in the north with Jawbreaker and only been joined by Special Forces later, we believed that we should have Special Forces with us at the outset in the south, where we would be operating behind enemy lines. The ability of professional military operators to provide laser guidance to aircraft flying in close combat support would be critical, as would our ability to extract a team that suddenly found itself in extremis. We should only contemplate bringing Americans in to join Karzai, we said, when he had rallied a sufficient number of fighters to hold territory and defend a landing zone. Our thinking was very much influenced by Greg, but the truth was we were all making it up as we went along.

  Now that Karzai had at last returned to his homeland, we would have to see what he could do, before doing very much ourselves. That was the plan I had advocated initially, and I saw no reason to change it. The American war against the Taliban, I remained convinced, would have to be an Afghan war, albeit American-supported, if the Americans were to have a hope of ultimate success.

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  NO RETURN

  OCTOBER 10, 2001

  I CALLED JALIL AT 10:00 AM. “Where is the Commander?” I asked.

  “Mullah Sa’eb will call you in one hour,” he replied. In the two days since the start of our air attacks, the Taliban gadfly had been doing what he did best. As the leadership could not convene as a group, he was visiting them individually, trying to see if there were any common sentiments he could exploit. In addition to Osmani, he had called on Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, the influential minister of aviation, and the governors of Kandahar and Herat. It seemed that he was probably trying to put together a coalition to convince Omar to change course. “If I can sit with my friends . . . We can consult . . . Maybe they will decide something,” he said. He didn’t sound hopeful.

  At eleven fifteen, Osmani called. “Our situation is very good,” he said. “The people are standing against your bombing. But the people of America will also be hurt.”

  “We are avoiding innocent people,” I said. “We are only harming those who harm us, and those who protect them.”

  “No, innocent people have been martyred. You are responsible.”

  Several times, I tried to raise our past conversations, to discuss what we might do together to change the situation. Each time he rebuffed me.

  “You are not going to get anything by force,” he said. “We can’t do anything while your attacks continue. If they stop, then we will talk. I am very busy. In two days we will talk again.”

  It was the last time we spoke.

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  SON OF THE LION

  MID-OCTOBER 2001

  THE FIRST THINGS YOU noticed were the feet. They were gigantic. From my current posture, sprawled on a stone floor, Haji Gul Agha Shirzai’s feet dominated my field of view as he paced maniacally across the wide sitting room in a billowing white shalwar khameez. Next to me, sitting cross-legged, was Gul Agha’s American-educated uncle, Engineer Pashtun. Perched close by on the divan and leaning forward intently were “Mark,” whom I had assigned as Gul Agha’s CIA contact, and “Greg R,” a young Special Forces Army captain, who had been sent to aid us with our military planning. A large map of southeastern Afghanistan was spread before us, on which the Engineer was making very precise markings.

  Pashtun had prepared carefully for this briefing. He set forth his campaign plan in crisp military fashion, describing complicated feints, lines of attack, and blocking actions. According to Pashtun, their fellow Barakzai tribesmen across the line in Afghanistan had provided them with considerable intelligence concerning fixed Taliban positions, troop strengths, and armament throughout the area extending from Spin Boldak on the main Quetta-to-Kandahar highway, north for 100 miles or so along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, and west to Kandahar City.

  War, I knew, had been the family business for many years. Gul Agha’s father, Haji Abdul Latif, though a humble teashop owner in his late sixties at the outset of the Soviet occupation, had taken up arms against the foreigners and fought them throughout the decade of the 1980s. He was by far the most successful and revered commander in the southern region, popularly referred to as the “Lion of Kandahar.” Gul Agha, his eldest son, had been his principal subcommander. When Abdul Latif died in August 1989—thought to have been poisoned by his enemies—his son took the honorific “Shirzai—Son of the Lion.” It was how he preferred to be addressed, and how he referred to himself. No sooner had he greeted me in his home than Shirzai pulled out a large pile of photographs. With Engineer Pashtun translating, he provided me with a sort of rough photo journal of the war against the Soviets in the south. Many of the pictures were of a broadly smiling Gul Agha, surrounded by his brothers and his clansmen, posed in front of various pieces of wrecked or captured Soviet equipment.

  After the collapse of the Communist government in 1991, Gul Agha rose to become Governor of Kandahar from 1992 to 1994. He had the dubious distinction of being the first provincial governor ousted by the Taliban. Fleeing to Pakistan with his closest kinsmen, he had quietly nursed his grudges in Quetta, waiting for the opportunity to return. Now, it seemed, his moment had come.

  As Pashtun continued with his briefing, he indicated where Shirzai’s main force proposed to cross the Afghan frontier. From there, he said, Shirzai would immediately divide his force, sending one unit south to block any Taliban advance from Spin Boldak. The remaining fighters he would subdivide ag
ain, independently striking fixed Taliban positions farther north before reunifying them for a direct assault on Kandahar. It struck me as a plan worthy of Stonewall Jackson or George S. Patton, but it hardly conformed to my notion of Afghan warfare, or of the likely capabilities of Gul Agha’s fighters. Pointing to a large Taliban unit equipped with tanks which appeared to have been left intact to his rear, I inquired how Shirzai would propose to deal with it.

  Pashtun responded without a moment’s hesitation. “Oh, your air force will take care of those.” I glanced up at Greg and Mark.

  “If you are expecting help from the U.S. Air Force, I would suggest you coordinate with these young men very carefully.”

  Throughout the Engineer’s exposition, Gul Agha was hardly even an observer. He would try to sit quietly as Pashtun explained the plan in English, which he could follow only with difficulty. Every few seconds, he would leap to his feet, and recommence his rapid pacing. He would pull at his hair, cover his head with his hands, and cry out in Pashtu.

  “Oh, oh! I can’t stand it! I can’t eat! I can’t sleep!”

  Engineer Pashtun looked at me. “He’s been like this ever since the bombing started. He’s been waiting for this for many years.” As the Engineer went on to explain, Shirzai was determined that this opportunity would not pass him by. In the preceding weeks, he had been gathering together trucks, tents, and medical supplies, staging them in different compounds around the Quetta area so as not to attract too much local attention. Weapons were more difficult to come by in bulk, but he had assigned various family members to make limited purchases around the area, again so as not to invite undue scrutiny. Couriers had been sent to various Barakzai clans across the border to begin mobilizing their support. It was obvious to me that these were people who understood the process and logistics of a military campaign.

  I also knew Langley would not be enthusiastic about Gul Agha. His time as governor in Kandahar had not exactly left him covered in glory. While there was little direct evidence of serious personal misdeeds, he had clearly been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to control the excesses of others. But there were few good alternatives. As the American bombing campaign moved forward, and as pressure increased on CIA to come up with a revolt in the south, Pashtun warlords and tribal leaders were not lining up to declare war on the Taliban. Here was a man, whatever his limitations, who had the political standing, the tribal pedigree, and the military experience to lead an uprising in the Taliban homeland. Unlike Hamid Karzai, he had been a successful field commander during the anti-Soviet jihad. And if there were any questions about his motivation, they had been erased, at least in my mind, that night. The only question was: Did he have the capability to follow through? There was only one way to find out, and no alternative but to try.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  “AS FLIES TO WANTON BOYS . . .”

  MID-OCTOBER 2001

  WITHIN A COUPLE OF weeks of the twin intelligence breakthroughs on the Shelter Now International detainees and the General Intelligence prison where they were being held, Marco reported that JSOC was well along in its planning to take down the site and secure the prisoners. Once there, I had no doubt that JSOC could successfully assault the facility and rescue the detainees. That left serious questions about how they would get to and from the place. Attacking the prison by helicopter was out of the question, they decided: it would make too much noise in a dense urban area and provide too much advance warning of their approach. Instead, they would land an aircraft in a stretch of desert, disgorge vehicles, and drive into the city to approach the prison on the ground. Once secured, they would then drive the detainees to an assembly point in a field just outside of town where helos could briefly touch down. The JSOC operators wanted to leave as little to chance as possible: Concerned about minefields and Taliban checkpoints, they wanted moving imagery of every foot of the driving route. We arranged to procure a nondescript vehicle so that JSOC could outfit it with videocameras which could operate through the headlights, and came up with a pretext for a source to drive the intended route at night, unaware that he was on a filming expedition. By late October, we were getting close. We might have a realistic opportunity, we thought, in a matter of days.

  The two Americans’ parents—Dayna Curry’s mother and Heather Mercer’s mom and dad—had arrived in Islamabad to be close by, and to do what they could to support diplomatic and legal efforts to free their daughters and to provide them whatever moral and physical comfort the Taliban would allow. Ambassador Chamberlin hosted them at the residence.

  To our great surprise, we were informed by headquarters that Heather’s father, John Mercer, was a former CIA case officer who had retired under cover. This, of course, was an extremely sensitive piece of information, which might have complicated the detainees’ situation to no end if it were revealed to the Taliban. It was not feasible for us to tell the parents about the clandestine efforts under way. John was a possible exception, and although I wondered slightly at the propriety of providing him with information which would be denied to others, it seemed to me a positive thing for us at least to provide some comfort to the one person we could. With headquarters’ blessing, we made discreet arrangements to get John into our station spaces in mid-October. I spent the better part of an hour with him, and briefed him in general terms, at least, on the efforts we were making, and our growing confidence that we would be able to mount a rescue effort in the coming days.

  I did not mention to him two other potential rescue efforts in which I had little confidence. The first involved the ongoing efforts dating from Gary Schroen’s arrival in the Panjshir to arrange a ransom or bribery deal through Northern Alliance intelligence chief Engineer Aref. Aref worked on a number of such initiatives, perhaps the most promising of which was through the Taliban’s deputy interior minister, Mullah Mohammed Khaksar. Khaksar appeared to be particularly well placed to work a deal for the surreptitious release of prisoners held by the Intelligence Directorate, which he had previously led. I was highly skeptical, though. The SNI detainees had gained a great deal of notoriety; arranging their “quiet” release did not seem likely, particularly as there would inevitably be a dauntingly large number of people who would have to be party to the conspiracy—any one of whom could sabotage the arrangements. Even if they were successfully freed, exfiltrating the detainees from a prison in Kabul across an active fighting front to the Northern Alliance side was going to be dangerous, and could easily have gotten the detainees killed. Nor did I think the connection between Aref and Khaksar particularly significant: Afghans were infamous for talking while fighting—it’s the Afghan way, not unlike what Mullah Jalil was doing with me. We monitored developments closely, ready to intervene if we thought Jawbreaker might be about to allow Northern Alliance intelligence to take what we considered unwarranted risks with the detainees’ lives, but said nothing in the meantime. Negative kibitzing on our part would have been seen as parochial-minded advocacy of our own efforts, and we didn’t want to squander our credibility unnecessarily.

  Far more troubling was a message we received from Berlin. The Germans, we were told, were making arrangements with some cooperating Afghans in Kabul to attempt to free the detainees, and wanted to coordinate with us. A group of what they described as “Pashtun clan members” working at a Kabul hospital had hatched a plan to bribe the guards and free the prisoners. We sent the Germans a series of questions: What was the hospital workers’ tribe? What were their links, tribal or otherwise, with the guards? How many guards were involved? What was the status of their negotiations, and what specific arrangements had been made for a transfer? Once they acquired them, how would they spirit the detainees out of Kabul, and where would they go? The answers were not reassuring. First, much of what the Germans’ Afghan contacts had reported about the prison we knew to be inaccurate. As for the identities and affiliations of the Pashtun hospital workers involved, the Germans only knew that they were from the same clan—did it matter which one?
And as for the plan, the clan members, they said, were prepared to free the detainees “in an Afghan way.” That’s precisely what we were afraid of.

  We shot back immediately: The Germans should be reminded that there were two American lives at stake here, and strongly discouraged from taking any action without consulting fully with us in Islamabad. We had our own intelligence initiatives under way, and needed to be sure we were not working at cross-purposes. We would be pleased to meet with their local representatives or anyone else, but we absolutely had to confer face-to-face with those responsible for this operation.

  A few days later, Dave and I found ourselves looking at a very young visitor from Berlin. Accompanying him was a rather wild-looking middle-aged German. I had heard of this fellow, but had never met him. From the way the young man introduced him, it was unclear whether he was a government employee or some sort of co-optee; I suspected the latter. It would be fair to say that his comments and demeanor did not suggest a high degree of professionalism.

  The young fellow, at least, seemed sensible enough, but was obviously in way over his head. He was dealing with his Afghan contacts at long distance—he did not specify the means of communication—and he obviously knew little about Afghanistan or its culture. The clan members’ plan, such as it was, was to drive a van to the front gate of the Intelligence Directorate at night and attempt to reach a financial deal with the guards for the detainees’ freedom. They would need a significant amount of cash for the purpose. If their attempt at bribery failed, they would simply shoot their way inside, grab the eight detainees, and make good their escape. They would then drive out of the city, avoiding roadblocks and firing on anyone who attempted to stop them.