My Share of the Task

by General Stanley McChrystal

  The corduroy terrain of Zhari was almost a metaphor for these infantrymen’s war. The could see eighteen inches to their left and right, and rarely more then fifty feet to their front or rear. Above, only a slice of sky. Fighting was bloody, and unsatisfying. Rarely was there a hill to take, or a stalwart enemy to take it from. Any progress I could see from a wider view of Afghanistan was impossible to discern from their mud-walled world. War has often been that way. Like leaders before me, I was asking soldiers to believe in something their ground-level perspective denied them. I was asking them to believe in a strategy impossible to guarantee, and in progress that was hard to see, much less prove. They were asked to risk themselves to bring improvements that might take years to arise. Although war is a product and instrument of national policy, that reality feels distant and theoretical to the soldier leaning exhausted against a mud wall. As a commander, I was asking them to believe in me. Whether they did was often hard to judge.

  Later that evening I got two more e-mails, one from Arroyo, and another from Corporal Ingram, the team leader. Both thanked me for patrolling with them that day. I responded, thanking both for all they were doing. I was grateful to Sergeant Arroyo for having the courage to send his initial note to ensure a fellow leader understood the situation on the ground.

  A month later I got another e-mail from Staff Sergeant Arroyo informing me that Mike Ingram had been killed not far from where we’d patrolled. I remembered the young corporal’s quick smile and agile movements through the muddy terrain, and his mature insights on the local population. I traveled back to the outpost in Zhari. I felt like I needed to see and listen to the platoon again. I knew it would be a difficult visit—they would be smarting from a big loss. With us would be a reporter from Rolling Stone who was periodically interacting with our team, to give him an appreciation for the difficulty of the task they faced.

  We met on a hot afternoon, gathering inside the fortified walls of their small compound. The body armor was off. Some quietly sipped water as I spoke, then invited questions. As on so many visits, there were a few standard questions before the queries became blunt and frank. As I expected, they were frustrated. Some were openly bitter over their loss and the seeming impossibility of their mission. Why are we here, Sir? What’s the point? I listened and we talked. I couldn’t solve the platoon’s problems that day, or curtail their mission. The district had to be secured. For many, I lacked the eloquence to assuage their concerns and could only explain the strategy they were a part of. I tried to show them I understood, and cared.

  As we flew back that night I compared in my mind leading these soldiers in this counterinsurgency campaign with my experience in TF 714. There were many similarities. America’s military in 2010 was stunningly professional and the past decade of combat had produced a seasoned force. But there were also differences. In TF 714, most notably in Iraq, although our special operators had fought almost every night, we largely chose the time and place of the fight. When our helicopters landed, our operators normally had the benefit of surprise, the cover of night, and intimate knowledge of whom they would find on their objective. Over time, even as friends were given over to Arlington, we could both see and feel the impact we were having on Zarqawi’s organization. The bulk of fighting in Afghanistan in 2010 yielded no such mental analgesic. Progress couldn’t be measured by direct attrition of a terrorist network. Combat often erupted unexpectedly: A boom and a plume of dust or the crack of bullets from the distance, yelling, rushing to maneuver, return fire, then silence. Then the same thing the next day. And the day after that, until the geysers of dust claimed a friend, or the bullets clipped a mentor. And then back out yet again.

  * * *

  The Kandahar Convention Center was a world apart from the sun-cracked mud trenches of Zhari only a few miles away. But it was here within the whitewashed plaster walls and the low ceiling of its basement meeting room that much of our ability to secure Kandahar rested. In an expansion of the pattern we’d set with Moshtarak, we sought to prepare the ground for securing Kandahar by fully engaging President Karzai and leveraging his influence with Kandahari leaders to solidify their support. Now, on April 4, 2010, some fifteen hundred of them filled the room. I felt out of place in my light green combat uniform in a sea of traditional Afghan clothing: Blacks, grays, dark maroon, and, at one point, a flash of azure as three burkas shuffled through and settled to the ground in a curtsy. I compared it to my small February meeting with Marjah elders; Hamkari, as the effort to secure Kandahar was called, was a whole new, and vastly different, ball game.

  In Marjah, uncontested Taliban control required shaping operations, followed by a dramatic initial seizure, before the lengthy process of erecting a local government could truly begin. Kandahar would need shaping, and this shura was part of that. But operations would involve little drama. Instead, we planned deliberately to increase security-force density and effectiveness in the city, and to clear then hold the strategic environs.

  The distinction between our concept for Kandahar and more traditional military operations was critical. Much as the residents of Marjah had expressed their fear we would destroy their district to liberate it, Kandaharis trembled at the thought of full-force battles. The term “operation” brought anxious looks, and triggered memories of a nasty time in their history. In 1986, the Soviets began the decimation of Kandahar, and nightly the sky would erupt with tracers and flares and fires from aerial assaults and blanket bombing runs. By 1987, they reduced much of the city to ash and rubble, and when they moved inside, they conducted urban patrols with punishing tanks. “Operations” there devastated the city’s population, which dispersed from two hundred thousand down to about twenty-five thousand in less than two years. Through that lens, most Kandaharis I met viewed the Taliban threat as significant but not overwhelming. When asked about it they nodded, “Yes, security must be improved,” but then went on to highlight issues of governance and corruption as equally important. The meeting here was meant to soothe their fears, and gauge their sentiment.

  One corner of the basement had a platform about twelve inches high that had been furnished with flowers and lined by several large wooden chairs. Beneath a large photograph of President Karzai, Mark Sedwill and I were in two of the chairs. We sat self-consciously, fearful of looking like feudal lords above the sea of Kandaharis. A podium rested on the edge of the platform closest to the assembled audience. The crowd was like earlier shuras I’d attended, but larger. Rows of impressive looking elders sat cross-legged on carpets laid for the occasion, and I could see them craning their bodies to see around the television cameras interspersed throughout the hall. Despite the hall’s size, the overflow gave the gathering an unexpected feeling of intimacy.

  When Karzai walked in, people stood and applauded. Had “Happy Days Are Here Again” erupted from a waiting band it would have felt like an old-fashioned campaign rally. Someone in the audience threw flowers, and the president took his seat on the stage. As he did, Dr. Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, rose to welcome everyone. Wesa was a soft-spoken man who had grown up in Kandahar. An accomplished academic who helped found Kandahar University in 1991, serving as its first president, Wesa had returned to Afghanistan after fourteen years abroad, most recently living in British Columbia, Canada. Governor since 2008, he and Nick Carter had done extensive work to “shape the environment” in the preceding weeks.

  Wesa was representative of a group of highly educated, honest, and patriotic Afghans I’d met who accepted leadership positions in the years after 2001. Talented but often outclassed in the bare-knuckle power struggles of places like Kandahar, most found themselves unable to wrest real control from local personalities. In Wesa’s case, that personality was a quiet man with an almost obsequious manner. Ironically, as Wesa spoke that day I could watch his nemesis moving around at the very back of the crowd—far from any position of overt prestige or influence. Yet Ahmed Wali Karzai—the president’s f
orty-nine-year-old brother, leader of the Popalzai tribe and chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council—was the essential power broker for Kandahar.

  After Wesa’s remarks, President Karzai moved to the podium, and asked the camera crews to move. He wanted a better view of the people, he said, though I suspect he really wanted them to have an unobstructed view of him. He was glad to be face-to-face with them, Karzai said, including his sisters, and began his remarks. I sat and listened, with simultaneous translation of his words coming into the earpieces Mark and I wore.

  The shura came after a difficult week between Karzai and the United States. Still sensitive from his belief that the international community had unfairly accused and then undermined him during the lengthy election process and its contentious aftermath, Karzai had made recent remarks that brought new controversy. He’d reportedly told a group of Afghans that if pushed too far by the United States, he would join the Taliban. His words became public a mere month before a planned visit for him to the United States, and the White House indicated his remarks put that trip in jeopardy.

  I knew that in the claustrophobic palace, bad advisers could goad President Karzai during moments of fatigue and sadness, leading him to say things he did not really feel. But I was bothered by his comments. They were dispiriting to my soldiers fighting to sustain his government. I questioned whether I was too respectful of him and his position, whether I’d gone native. Shouldn’t I take a harder line? But in the hall-of-mirrors politics of Kabul, I looked to his actions, not his words. Western observers, and many Afghans, had a menu of items they wanted Karzai to address. For most, corruption was at the top. That was clearly important for our campaign. But as I looked at the rest of my menu for the past ten months, there was room for satisfaction. President Karzai wanted night raids to stop, and yet we’d quadrupled the number of precision strike teams and raids, even taking the president for his first-ever visit to TF 714’s in-country headquarters. Through an evening of detailed briefs, he saw the precision that marked each operation, and the direct involvement of Afghan officers that ensured effective collaboration. And although I knew he was deeply skeptical of our logic for bringing more foreign forces to his country, he’d agreed to support my recommendation to add forty thousand. He visited multiple locations like Marjah, and moved closer, albeit haltingly, to his role as commander-in-chief of a nation at war. It was maddeningly incomplete, but he’d made some tough concessions for a partnership that was badly stressed by missteps on both sides. One reason he did so, I felt, was the relationship we’d built.

  That April morning in Kandahar, President Karzai insisted I be inside the shura room. He sat me close to him, and at one point told the crowd of his close partnership with Mark Sedwill and me. It was an interesting move on his part. On the surface our presence provided a clear signal of NATO and U.S. support, and could also indicate ISAF endorsed anything he said. For me, there were clear risks in that, particularly after the previous week. But there were risks for him as well. Mark and I were visible symbols of Karzai’s continued dependence on foreign support, and of Afghanistan’s still incomplete sovereignty. Regardless of what he said, I represented much of what frustrated ordinary Afghans about their situation. In the end, I thought he put us on the stage less out of shrewd calculation than intuition. At his core, Hamid Karzai was a man of strong emotions and loyalties. Rubbed raw, sometimes to cynicism, by long years of politics, he was slow to trust but committed to relationships.

  After greeting the crowd, Karzai began a wide-ranging speech. He said the tribes needed to secure the peace, and he castigated them for not sending sons to serve in the National Army. He talked of a peace jirga as a solution. As he spoke, dressed in black, with a black turban, Karzai’s face appeared more dour than usual, almost combative. The crowd appeared cool. Eventually, he broached the topic of Hamkari.

  “These days the foreigners speak of an operation in Kandahar,” he said. “I know you are worried. Are you worried?”

  Shouts came back: Yes!

  “Well, if you are worried, then there won’t be an operation, if you are not happy.”

  Some observers judged the exchange that day indicated Hamkari lacked the support it needed. I had no such reservation. It was how the question had been asked, how the game was played. Karzai had asked the question he knew would elicit genuine concerns—which he wanted us to hear. I was confident that both Karzai and the Kandahari leaders welcomed better security in and around the city. But like Marjah’s elders, they had articulated their conditions. Karzai was placing a marker that we couldn’t ignore. For a leader who’d felt helpless to check eight years of escalating foreign military operations inside Afghanistan, it was a good move. He knew Hamkari had to happen, as did I. But he was forcing us to listen in ways we’d done too rarely in the past.

  * * *

  On Saturday, April 10, 2010, a twenty-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft flown by pilots of the Polish Air Force crashed in a thick fog in western Russia, ironically en route to the Katyn Forest, site of a World War II massacre of Polish military officers by the Soviets. The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, was among the eighty-eight souls lost in the accident.

  Poland was stunned. In addition to the president, a significant contingent of Poland’s most influential leaders were killed, sadly including my friend Franciszek “Franc” Gagor, the chief of the general staff of the Polish Army. Franc and his wife had befriended Annie and me back at the Lisbon Conference in September 2009, and his special warmth and friendship made him a valued comrade. We’d worked through a variety of operational issues associated with the Polish brigade that operated in Ghazni Province, and I’d promised Franc I would visit Warsaw so I could explain in person to the Polish political leadership the ISAF strategy and war in Afghanistan.

  When the accident occurred, I was less than a week from fulfilling my promise to Franc with a stop in Warsaw on a trip to Europe that also included Paris, Berlin, and Prague. In each location, the objective was the same: To meet requests like Franc’s from leaders in the four countries and, as the commander of ISAF, provide insights and address questions first-hand. Each nation was an important member of the ISAF Coalition. After the accident I canceled our visit to Warsaw but felt the remainder of the trip needed to go as planned.

  On April 14, 2010, we flew to Europe, conducting a short visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels and then continuing to Paris, the first stop of the original four. We had an itinerary of office calls, ceremonies, a dinner, and a talk at the Staff College, all of which began as coordinated.

  The same day, seismic activity in Iceland produced an ash cloud that closed most of Europe’s airspace for the next five days. Unable to keep our original schedule, I modified the plan, ultimately canceling our stop in Prague and reaching Berlin by a lengthy bus ride. Our schedule there was similar to that in Paris, and highlighted by laying a wreath with Defense Minister Guttenberg at a memorial service for German soldiers recently killed under my command in Kunduz, Afghanistan. They had been Germany’s first loss in direct combat since World War II, and I very much wanted to demonstrate my respect for their sacrifice.

  In response to official invitations from each nation, I arranged for Annie to join me in Europe, and she participated in all the events that often helped build relationships. We enjoyed the chance to be together, particularly on Friday, April 16, when I took Annie for dinner at a small French restaurant to celebrate our thirty-third wedding anniversary. Mike and Lori Flynn joined us.

  * * *

  Inside a small, bunkered post on a bluff in Surobi District overlooking the Kabul River, they had assembled an honor guard for me to review, each legionnaire selected for his English-language skill. It was April 30, 2010, Camerone Day, a sacred date for the French Foreign Legionnaires assembled in front of me. It commemorated the 1863 stand of sixty-five of their forebears under the legendary Captain Jean Danjou against a force of twelve hundred Mexican ca
valry. Captain Danjou, a Crimean War hero with a wooden left hand, led his men in a determined but ultimately fatal defense, reportedly declaring, “We have munitions, we will fight.”

  For a boy who’d grown up on stories of legionnaires, it was easy to feel the thick spirit that filled this small outpost, home to the parachute battalion that had this corner of the fight. I had come to thank them for their service and their courage. Talking to young soldiers, some already seasoned warriors, who had purposely selected a life of expeditionary service, I thought of their predecessors in Indochina and Algeria. I looked over at two of my aides, one a German officer, another an Afghan. How different wars could be, I thought, but the soldiers seemed the same.