88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  Hamid conducted these meetings entirely in the open. He knew from listening to internal Taliban radio broadcasts that the authorities in Kandahar had become aware of his presence within three days of his arrival in Uruzgan, but they could do nothing about it at first. In fact, the deputy chief of the Uruzgan Provincial Council, a Taliban member, met with Karzai and offered to turn Tarin Kowt over to him. Hamid declined, saying he would only take the town when he could defend it. A couple of days later the same official reported that Mullah Omar had complained to the governor about Karzai, citing reports that the opposition leader was circulating freely. The governor explained that he lacked the forces to arrest the man, and feared the reaction of the local tribes if he should attempt it.

  In late October, word came that a large Taliban force—the same one reported by our sources—was moving northward from Kandahar to find Karzai and arrest him. In Pashtun culture, failure to defend a guest is deemed a shameful breach of honor. Fearing that they could not protect him, the local elders asked that Karzai move to a more defensible area, promising to provide him with an armed escort. Hamid’s core group of fifteen armed supporters was soon joined by perhaps thirty-five others; they walked eight hours up into the mountains. The newest volunteers had not been aware of the plan, and had left their homes without food, sleeping gear, or proper clothing.

  They camped on a high plateau north of Dera Juy, flanked on the western and eastern sides by ridges that dropped off into steep, rocky, easily defensible slopes. Local farmers provided them with food. Another thirty volunteers arrived the following day. When the first weapons drop came on October 30, Hamid had about 120 fighters—considerably fewer, Jeff and I noted, than he had advertised to us at the time. The weapons, he said, were first-rate, fully assembled and ready for use. In addition to the light arms, he handed out ten PKM light machine guns and eight RPG launchers.

  In addition to comestibles, local villagers were regularly providing Karzai’s band with news about developments and Taliban movements in the area. On November 1, they reported that 200 “strangers” were making their way up the valley. Karzai had his men set up a checkpost on the main road below them, where they soon captured two Taliban fighters from Helmand. The two told them that a considerable force of Pakistanis and ragtag Afghans had parked their trucks farther down the valley, and were making their way on foot up the steep terrain from several different directions toward Karzai’s position.

  Hamid rushed to set up a defensive perimeter near his main camp along the western ridge, but before he could do so began taking fire, forcing him and his men to withdraw to a separate area where they had additional ammunition stores. Fortunately, they had managed to bring several of the PKMs with them as they fled. From the new position, they could both defend themselves and supply the fighters who remained along the western ridge. The latter were under sharp attack, particularly at the far northern and southern ends of their defensive position. “Mohamed Alwahhab,” one of Karzai’s commanders whom he did not know, kept up a tenacious defense at the northern end, but Karzai’s men were driven back from the south. These joined Karzai, and the combined force abandoned the ammunition storage area, regrouped on higher ground, and then counterattacked, driving the Taliban back.

  Hamid could listen to the Taliban communications on a captured radio. One of their commanders was trapped behind a large boulder as he took concentrated PKM fire from above. Someone ordered him to renew the attack, saying they were under direct orders from Mullah Omar.

  “I don’t care if the orders come from my father,” the man had shouted back. “If I try to move, they will shoot my head off!”

  The fighting continued until 2:00 PM on November 2, when the Taliban and Pakistanis broke contact and moved off. The PKMs, he said, had been decisive. Without them, they would surely have been overrun. The Pakistanis were particularly good fighters, and cruel: they had badly abused one of Karzai’s wounded.

  Hamid and most of his men had survived, but had no more water, and were very unsure of their position. They could not communicate with the men defending the eastern ridge, which was some way off. Hamid could see armed men through his binoculars, but could not be sure if they were his. If not, he would be in an untenable position. They held a jirga to decide what they should do; the consensus was that Hamid should arrange for himself and his senior commanders to be evacuated by the Americans, and then return with greater assistance, while the rest of the force dispersed for the time being.

  As it turned out, Karzai’s men on the eastern ridge had held their positions; there had been no immediate need to evacuate. It was an inestimable blessing, though, that they had.

  Jeff and I said our goodbyes to Karzai and his elders, and I made my way off for a briefing by Captain Jason Amerine, commander to the ODA that had come down from K2 to accompany Karzai on his return to Uruzgan. He and his people had been studying maps of the Tarin Kowt area, and had come up with what struck me as a rather overcomplicated insertion plan. I wasn’t about to try to tell this young man his business. The military part of this was his responsibility. I figured that so long as the Special Forces could move Karzai and his elders into a defensible position, U.S. airpower would protect them until they could assemble what we all hoped would be a larger fighting force.

  I also took the opportunity to tour the bivouac area where our CIA people would be staged before inserting inside. Spotting Tom, my translator, who was slated to accompany the team, I pulled him aside.

  “Can’t you do something about the food?” I asked. I was mortified that we were providing the elders nothing better than cold beef stew, much as they seemed to relish it. Unsurprisingly, Tom had already established contacts at a decent restaurant in town; proper mutton and rice would soon be delivered to the gate. As we spoke, Tom was putting the finishing touches on some “field-expedient” clothing: he had taken a light military jacket, festooned with multiple mesh pockets but several sizes too large for him, and cut off the sleeves to make a vest. Just then, the bearded, hulking Special Forces trooper occupying the cot closest to Tom’s was inquiring loudly as to the whereabouts of his jacket. We both looked at Tom’s vest. The trooper burst out in incredulous laughter, amused at Tom’s sheer audacity. I could only wonder at the reasons for Tom’s apparent kleptomania. Perhaps he reasoned that as all the goods surrounding them were government-issue, they should properly be the property of all. Perhaps he was a just a romantic Trotskyite at heart. Whatever the case, he would not always find such tolerance in future.

  Before leaving, I had a long chat with Greg and Jimmy. They would be responsible for the Afghan end of this venture, and had little idea what sort of tribal force Karzai would be able to organize when they went inside. We fully expected at that point that Hamid and his American team would be reinserting within three days. We were soon to be disabused. Once out, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to get Karzai back in.

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  ENEMIES WITHOUT, ENEMIES WITHIN

  NOVEMBER 13, 2001

  AS THE TELEVIDEO FLICKERED to life, I could see the accustomed players. At the head of the table, facing directly toward us, was George Tenet. Next to him was Jim Pavitt, the DDO. Down the left side of the table, as we viewed it, were the usual suspects from CTC, including Hank. On the right, opposite them, were my colleagues from the Near East Division, looking sullen and cowed. Among them was Gary Spitzel, the highly capable chief of the South Asia Task Force, whose role in Afghanistan had been thoroughly eclipsed by CTC/SO.

  This conversation promised to be an important one, as Gul Agha’s preparations to reenter Afghanistan were approaching fruition and the conflict between Islamabad Station and CTC/SO was coming to a head. It was considered bad form to raise operational disagreements in front of the director; such issues were expected to be worked out at a lower level. With no checks and balances in the system, however, I was prepared to appeal directly to Tenet for decisions, without mentioning that these issues were
in dispute. If CTC wanted to raise objections at the table, they would be free to do so.

  Traditionally, the geographic divisions, and particularly the Near East and South Asia division, had controlled the bits of turf around the globe in which CTC sought to press its operations. The division’s field officers were the ones conducting these operations, after all, and division management was able to provide guidance and a useful, moderating check on CTC’s at times myopic zeal. In the aftermath of 9/11, those breaks were swept away. The effort to drive al-Qa’ida out of Afghanistan was the preeminent national security challenge before the U.S. government, and Director Tenet was the leader of that effort. He wanted a centralized, streamlined headquarters mechanism to deal with the war, and it was natural that he should find it in the Counterterrorist Center.

  In order to give it greater independence, and in virtue of the fact that it combined elements of both the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Intelligence (Analysis), CTC had from its founding in 1986 been designated as the DCI Counterterrorist Center, placing it under the authority of the director. As a practical matter, though, CTC had always been subordinate to the DDO, the head of the Clandestine Service. But with George Tenet leading the war effort, CTC suddenly became his, in fact as well as in theory. George was too well attuned to what was happening around him not to have at least some idea of the controversies being generated, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to sort out disputes within the Clandestine Service. He just wanted to see things done.

  Weeks before, on October 18, headquarters had evinced scant enthusiasm when we first broached the idea that Gul Agha would enter Afghanistan via the Shin Naray Valley. If there had been any doubts along those lines, they were dispelled by CTC/SO’s cable of October 26, the one which had reviewed potential tribal candidates for direct CIA support, favoring several whose willingness and ability to confront the Taliban we knew to be highly suspect, and pointedly expressing reservations regarding Shirzai. Nonetheless, when I proposed on November 1 that we finance Gul Agha’s purchase of enough additional weapons to equip an entry force of 150 to 200 men, headquarters agreed. They also agreed the same day, reluctantly, to my proposal to seek the ISI’s help in facilitating the movement of an anti-Taliban tribal force across the border. This I had broached, in principle only, with General Ehsan on the night of November 4, the same night I briefed him on our extraction of Karzai. Ehsan was agreeable and did not press for any details of personalities or places, which I had no intention of providing him at that stage in any case. I knew that I could trust Ehsan and General Jafar, but I also knew that the actual facilitation on the ground would inevitably involve lower-ranking members of their organization, any one or combination of whom could well be Taliban sympathizers. I did not want to give the pro-Taliban types the opportunity to sabotage our plans by telling them too much, too far in advance.

  Convinced by our difficulty in arranging arms drops to Karzai that we should avoid reliance on air supply to the extent possible, I had also arranged with General Jafar to procure weapons—a mixture of AKs and RPG-7s—from Pakistan Army stocks, sufficient for 500 fighters whom we hoped would join the initial cross-border party. The weapons were on standby; I intended to use this meeting to get approval to pay for and deliver them.

  Colonel Pete in Karshi Khanabad had continued to play a useful intermediary role for us with the Fifth Special Forces Group. The Special Forces, concerned lest they be caught unawares and then whipsawed by changes in plan as they had been with Karzai, had asked Pete for full background information on Gul Agha, which we were happy to provide. It was becoming obvious to me that the Special Forces were chafing to get more ODAs into the south, and growing frustrated with what they perceived as high-handedness and arbitrariness on the part of CIA Headquarters. Kept informed by “Captain Greg” and a wizened, canny, tobacco-chewing Special Forces enlisted man of almost legendary experience, Chief Warrant Officer (CW3) Poteet, who had also been assigned to our station team, Fifth Group was keen to get into the fight with Shirzai.

  Although General Franks’s formal campaign plan specified at this stage that Special Forces could only operate in Afghanistan on a CIA lead—thus giving the agency effective veto power over whom the Special Forces could join up with in Afghanistan and when—I was pleased to forge independent links with the Green Berets, and to develop them as allies. The wisdom in doing so was reinforced two days later, on November 12, just before the video teleconference, when we received a treacly cable from CTC/SO, earnestly professing their interest in supporting Gul Agha with a CIA/SF team, but making what I regarded as a series of suspicious excuses as to why this might prove difficult in the end. The reasons would shortly become clear.

  Now, however, Tenet opened the videoconference by asking me for an overview of the situation. I began by noting the recent successes of the Northern Alliance, which had taken Mazar-e Sharif and was launching a major attack toward Kabul. I confined my assessment of these events to their likely impact on Taliban strategy and morale, leaving aside the wider political implications. I had long been concerned about the impact among the Pashtuns of a Northern Alliance seizure of Kabul. I feared they would see it as a U.S.-facilitated power grab, which would undermine their support for the anti-Taliban uprising, such as it was, in the south.

  Weeks earlier, almost immediately after Gary Schroen’s arrival in the Panjshir Valley at the head of the “Jawbreaker” team, he and I had begun sparring in cable traffic over how to manage our support for the northerners and the ends to which that support should aim. Having compared the situation of the Northern Alliance to that of the Israelis during the First Gulf War of 1990, I felt strongly that a seizure of Kabul by the Tajiks and Uzbeks would make an eventual political settlement with the Pashtuns far more difficult. I had long had great respect for Schroen, an older, Farsi-speaking Near-East Division officer under whom I had previously served, and one with deep knowledge of Afghanistan. Although we disagreed on this and other issues, I fully understood and empathized with his position. With Ahmad Shah Mahsood assassinated, he had to forge a relationship of trust with General Fahim, the new commander of the Northern Alliance, and his key subordinate commanders, and to demonstrate that our professed support for them was genuine. Armies are blunt instruments at best, and Afghan armies perhaps especially so. With the failure of our efforts to overthrow Mullah Omar from within, we would need the Northern Alliance to fix the Taliban forces in place in the north while we organized a revolt against their southern capital, lest those forces re-coalesce in the south. To expect that we could successfully induce the leaders of the Northern Alliance to calibrate their efforts so as to achieve our objectives without achieving theirs was just unrealistic, and an unfair burden to place on Gary. I came to understand that; and in any case, by November 13, this had become a policy issue for Washington to deal with, not us, and a point of contention between Tommy Franks and General Fahim. There was nothing more I could contribute on that score.

  Continuing my briefing for Tenet, I shifted attention to the southwest, where Karim Brahvi had returned to Nimruz. I spoke carefully, knowing that CTC/SO would seize on this development in hopes of reinforcing Brahvi’s Lilliputian efforts at the expense of others. I noted that the ex-governor’s armed return to Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz, had precipitated the flight of the local Taliban—“all half-dozen of them,” I said. I could see Spitzel, the South Asia Task Force chief, burst out in a loud guffaw before he brought a hand to his mouth to suppress it. Tenet and the others continued to gaze ahead, stony-faced.

  I downplayed any predictions of success for Gul Agha, whose forces were already moving, and whose entry into Afghanistan was set for dawn of the following day. We would soon see whether his predictions of support inside were accurate, I said. But if even remotely accurate, we should be prepared immediately to reinforce success. I mentioned the plan under way to provide truckloads of Pakistani weapons to Shirzai’s fighters.

  “Good idea,” said Geor
ge.

  I added that once those fighters had demonstrated willingness to employ their weapons against the Taliban, we should quickly dispatch a joint CIA-SF team to join them, rather than diverting such scarce resources to the distant wasteland of Nimruz. Again, the director agreed. I thought I could detect a bit of fidgeting on the CTC side of the table; but no one raised an objection. I was prepared to take yes for an answer.

  Chapter 25

  * * *

  SALVATION

  NOVEMBER 14, 2001

  THE LONG, RECTANGULAR ROOM was somber. Its occupants clung to the periphery, leaving an open space in the middle. All eyes were focused on a tall, rangy, dark-haired young man. “Jim,” Isfandiar’s case officer, sat next to a credenza along the far wall, on top of which a half-dozen sat phones were spaced at regular intervals. The only sound was Jim’s shallow breathing. He had just been speaking urgently in Dari with a minor warlord, a street thug really, in Gardez, the seat of Paktia Province, 60 miles south of Kabul.

  Our fears over the fate of the eight Shelter Now prisoners had grown steadily over the previous two weeks since the Taliban had abruptly changed their conditions of detention, virtually on the eve of a planned JSOC rescue attempt. Those fears greatly increased as the Northern Alliance finally broke through Taliban lines on the Shomali Plains and made a pell-mell advance on Kabul. We had had a good window on the status of the SNI eight during most of their confinement; but as the Taliban evacuated Kabul in panic, they were suddenly, and entirely, lost to our view. Now, just as suddenly, they had reappeared.