My Share of the Task

by General Stanley McChrystal

  target a Special Groups leader: Multi-National Force—Iraq, “Coalition Forces Target Special Groups Leader, 49 Criminals Killed” (press release), October 21, 2007.

  kidnapping and death squads: Paul von Zielbauer, “Iraqi Journalist Reported Missing After Driver’s Body Found,” New York Times, October 23, 2007.

  an IED as they withdrew: That the teams were under fire while clearing buildings and were hit by an IED on departure comes from my own recollection as well as interviews. These details are confirmed in Multi-National Force–Iraq, “Coalition Forces Target Special Groups.”

  killed teenagers and children: “U.S. Raid of Baghdad’s Sadr City Kills 49,” USA Today, October 21, 2007.

  fewer Americans were dying: The specific metrics I cite are from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, “Iraq Coalition Casualties: Fatalities by Year and Month,” iCasualties website, 2009.

  helicopter was flying near Baghdad: UK Ministry of Defense, “Two UK Military Personnel Killed in Puma Helicopter Crash” (press release), November 21, 2007.

  same thing eight weeks earlier: The previous attempt occurred at roughly 3:30 A.M. on Monday, March 3, 2008. Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Forces Fire Missiles into Somalia at a Kenyan,” New York Times, March 4, 2008.

  shot in the back: Ben Dowell, “Journalist Shot Dead in Somalia Was in High-Risk Area, Says BBC Safety Head,” Guardian, November 25, 2008.

  split from the Islamic Courts Union: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror (John Wiley and Sons, 2011), 149–50.

  striking beyond its borders: “After Somalia we will proceed to Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a now-dead Al Shabab intelligence chief declared in November 2009. Gartenstein-Ross, Bin Laden’s Legacy, 150.

  CHAPTER 16: THE TICKING CLOCK

  vacationing in Europe: Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–89 (Oxford University Press, 2011), 31.

  wash away the excesses: As Afghanistan scholar David Edwards notes, while the violence and eccentricities of the warlords gave them a degree of celebrity, the Taliban adeptly portrayed themselves very differently: “An additional point in the Taliban’s favor was the relative invisibility of their leadership. . . . One can only speculate on the motivation behind this strategy, but it seems reasonable to conclude that it might be related to the people’s disillusionment with the all-too-visible leaders of the established religious parties who did so much to divide the country. In this sense, the Taliban in their first period seemed to represent something like an anticharismatic movement; the emphasis was . . . the movement itself.” David B. Edwards, Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (University of California Press, 2002), 294.

  an insurgency soon gestated: A description of the Taliban’s reinfiltration between 2002 and 2006 can be found in chapter 4 of Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 97–145.

  waged blanket assassination campaigns: Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 102.

  whom we paid handsomely: Ahmed Rashid, “How Obama Lost Karzai,” Foreign Policy (March/April 2011).

  swift courts: Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 111.

  “shadow governors”: International Security Assistance Force (Major General Michael T. Flynn), “State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives (Unclassified),” December 22, 2009.

  More Americans: Michael O’Halon and Ian S. Livingston, “Afghanistan Index,” Brookings Institution, March 31, 2012, 11.

  more Afghan civilians: “Afghanistan: Annual Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2008,” United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, January 2009, 7.

  four times as many: In 2007, insurgents laid 2,700 IEDs. In 2008, that number rose to 4,169. ISAF (Flynn), “State of the Insurgency,” 2009.

  requested additional forces: On September 22, the New York Times reported: “Last week, Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said he needed as many as 15,000 combat and support troops beyond the 8,000 additional troops that Mr. Bush had recently approved for deployment early next year. The general’s announcement came after he sent his request to the Pentagon; it has not yet been acted on.” Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Bush Administration Reviews Its Afghanistan Policy, Exposing Points of Contention,” New York Times, September 22, 2008.

  by 50 percent: The New York Times estimates there were 36,600 troops in Afghanistan that month. Hannah Fairfield et al., “Troop Levels in Afghanistan Since 2001,” New York Times, October 1, 2009.

  “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat”: “White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” White House website, March 2009, 2.

  “take the lead”: Ibid.

  “I knew wherever I was”: William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990), 428.

  “In Afghanistan, despite impressive progress”: “Hearing to consider the nominations of Admiral James G. Stavridis, USN for reappointment to the grade of Admiral and to be Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Lieutenant General Douglas M. Fraser, USAF to be General and Commander, U.S. Southern Command; and Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal, USA to be General and Commander, International Security Assistance Forces, Afghanistan,” Senate Armed Services Committee, June 2, 2009, 10.

  “we must succeed”: Ibid.

  killed the vast majority: According to the U.N., 2,118 Afghan civilians died from conflict in 2008, up from 1,523 in 2007. Of those killed in 2008, 55 percent were killed by the Taliban or their sympathizers and 39 percent by pro-government elements. “Report on the Protection of Civilians (2008),” UNAMA, January 2009, 14.

  the gunfight subsided: U.S. Central Command, “USCENTCOM Unclassified Executive Summary: U.S. Central Command Investigation into Civilian Casualties in Farah Province, Afghanistan on 4 May 2009,” June 18, 2009, 6. CENTCOM estimated the strikes killed seventy-eight Taliban (ibid., 11).

  to evacuate two wounded: Ibid., 7.

  8,500 pounds of bombs: Ibid., 8 (notes 7 and 9), 9 (note 10).

  nearly 140 Afghan civilians: Reuters, “U.S. Strikes Killed 140 Villagers: Afghan Probe,” May 16, 2009.

  estimated roughly 90: “Balabolook Incident” (press release), Afghan Independent Human Rights Coalition, May 26, 2009, 2. This report further stated that no evidence was advanced by the Afghan government for the figure of 140 casualties. The CENTCOM report acknowledged the AIHRC’s work: “[T]he [CENTCOM] investigative team notes that the report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission . . . represents a balanced, thorough investigation into the incident, citing as many as 86 civilian casualties” (U.S. Central Command, “USCENTCOM Unclassified Executive Summary,” 11.) However, the CENTCOM report’s own estimate of civilian casualties from the incident was considerably lower, approximately twenty-six (ibid.) The above Reuters article reported that the Afghan government produced a list of names to substantiate its claim of 140 casualties, but that list’s authenticity was questionable, according to the U.S. military (Reuters, “U.S. Strikes Killed 140”).

  in front of the governor’s house: Patrick Cockburn, “Afghans Riot over Air-Strike Atrocity,” Independent, May 8, 2009.

  “Death to the government”: Ibid.

  “Our willingness to operate”: “Hearing” (June 2, 2009), Senate Armed Services Committee, 11.

  “The better part of one’s life”: Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joseph Gillespie, July 13, 1849, in Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1832–1858 (Literary Classics of the United States, 1989), 239.

  eighteen to twenty-four months: In my Senate confirmation testimony on June 2, I said, “I believe that we need to start making progress within about the next nineteen to twenty-four months to know” how long the c
ampaign would take. “Hearing” (June 2, 2009), Senate Armed Services Committee, 17.

  “All you have to do is win”: Notes taken by my aide, who was present in the meeting.

  “decided within a year”: Jeff Eggers, “Patience Is Paramount but Time Is of the Essence” (memorandum), June 5, 2009.

  CHAPTER 17: UNDERSTAND

  “And in one single blinding flash . . . ”: Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy, (Stackpole, 1994), 292–94. Fall added, while observing the short, saluting master sergeant, “Something very warm welled up in me. I felt like running over to the little Cambodian who had fought all his life for my country, and apologizing to him for my countrymen here who didn’t care about him, and for my countrymen in France who didn’t even care about their countrymen fighting in Indochina . . .”

  forty-two different nations contributed troops: These numbers come from International Security Assistance Force, “International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Army Strength and Laydown,” June 15, 2009, ISAF website, 1–2. Within a year, the coalition would grow to have troops from forty-six nations.

  57,600 troops: Hannah Fairfield and Kevin Quealy, “Troop Levels in Afghanistan Since 2001,” New York Times, October 1, 2009.

  nearly fifty years of peace: Thomas Barfield, in his book Afghanistan, argues this to be the case, as he divides Afghanistan’s twentieth century into three periods and notes, “Under the rule of the Musahiban brothers and their sons, the second period from 1929 to 1978 gave Afghanistan its longest interval of peace and internal stability.” Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton University Press, 2010), 169.

  Nearly all his predecessors: Rodric Braithwaite, in his account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, notes that along with keeping the country glued together, independent, and on the track to modernity, the fourth and final task for recent Afghan heads of state was to “remain alive”: “Between 1842 and 1995 seven of them fell victim at an accelerating pace to family feud, palace coup, mob violence, or outside intervention. Between 1878 and 2001, four more were forced into exile. Others prudently abdicated while the going was good” (Afgantsy, 13–14).

  five American ambassadors: These ambassadors were Ryan Crocker, Robert Finn, Zal Khalilzad, Ronald Neumann, and William Wood. In addition, James Dobbins was the special envoy to Afghanistan, the senior civilian and U.S. representative at the Bonn Conference, so it could be said Karzai dealt with six.

  eleven other ISAF commanders: Generals McColl (UK), Zorlu (Turkey), Van Heyst (Germany), Gliemeroth (Germany), Hillier (Canada), Py (France), Erdagi (Turkey), del Vecchio (Italy), Richards (UK), McNeill (USA), and McKiernan (USA) all served as the commander of ISAF.

  “General, aren’t you going to wear”: Interview with Mike Hall.

  “We and the people of Balkh Province”: Atta Noor’s speech was reported by Balkh TV, a news station in Mazar-e-Sharif. The newscast was translated by the BBC’s International Monitoring Service, the source of this English quote. “NATO Commander Meets Northern Afghan Governor,” BBC Monitoring South Asia, June 24, 2009.

  modernity itself: A layer beneath the political power struggles for much of Afghanistan’s twentieth century was a contest between cultural conservatism and advocates of Western-influenced social progress. As a people, Afghans were conflicted over the issue. King Amanullah’s reform-focused reign, from 1919 to 1929, was a source of pride to many Afghans, but ultimately, concern over the by-products of Amanullah’s initiatives led to a conservative backlash that unseated the young king. Popular outcry over a photograph of his young queen in a sleeveless gown while on a visit to Europe is frequently cited to demonstrate the fragility of the march to modernity.

  “fighting Taliban”: These classifications, and the Pashtun transliterations, can be found in Martine van Bijlert, “Unruly Commanders and Violent Power Struggles: Taliban Networks in Uruzgan,” in Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, ed. Antonio Giustozzi (Columbia University Press, 2009), 160.

  twenty fighters: While more entrenched networks, like those centered around Haqqani, Mansour, or Dadullah, were thousands strong, young upstart commanders had more modest goals. The latter case is described in an excellent chapter by Tom Coghlan, “The Taliban in Helmand: An Oral History” in Decoding the New Taliban, 142–44.

  unable to fire the local commanders: The tenuous relationship between the Taliban’s central leadership and local commanders in Uruzgan is detailed in van Bijlert, “Unruly Commanders,” 169–70.

  Outbreaks of insurgency: Most Taliban infiltration followed a general pattern: Sensing fertile soil, the Taliban sent a vanguard element that became a menacing presence around town who met with and co-opted local leaders who were not in power but who stood to gain from a change in the status quo. They then targeted powerful leaders, stirred sentiment, and corralled it into a sprouting resistance.

  varying degrees of success: In parts of Uruzgan, for example, the Taliban’s judges and political officers often had little ability to defy the fighters. Van Bijlert, “Unruly Commanders,” 168.

  one of my civilian advisers reported: Correspondence with Matt Sherman.

  “What is it that we don’t understand?”: My recollection of this meeting was confirmed in an interview with Charlie Flynn.

  shortage of Afghan and ISAF manpower: This shortage of troops had, in General McKiernan’s estimation, made for “a greater reliance on air” power than he would have liked. Robert Burns, “Call for Troops in Afghanistan: Promised Brigade Is Not ‘Sufficient,’” Boston Post, September 17, 2008.

  Lore grew: Interview with Afghan military officer.

  for years: Amy Waldman, “Afghan Leader Warily Backs U.S. Bombing,” The New York Times, January 2, 2002.

  “I expect leaders at all levels”: Stanley A. McChrystal, “Tactical Directive,” July 6, 2009, 1–2. This as well as other directives are available on the “Official Texts” section of the ISAF website.

  “This directive does not prevent”: Ibid., 2.

  answering e-mails: Interview with Charlie Flynn.

  That summer: While the text was “published” on May 9, 2009, it did not begin leaking out until July, when Al Jazeera obtained a copy. That August, the Taliban posted Pashto and English versions on the Internet. Quotes come from an English translation posted to the Afghan Analysts Network website: Kate Clark, “The Layha: Calling the Taleban to Account: Appendix 1. The Taleban Codes of Conduct in English,” Afghan Analysts Network, June 2011.

  the layha: The official title of the book is “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for the Mujahideen.” In official releases and press statements, the Taliban refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, to portray themselves as a competitor to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan—the sovereign, recognized government.

  “Mujahedin”: Omar quoted in Clark, “Taleban Codes of Conduct,” 23.

  “fiercely” forbidden: Ibid., 22.

  “A brave son of Islam”: This translation comes from Al Jazeera, “Key Quotes from New Taliban book,” Al Jazeera, July 27, 2009. Clark has it translated as, “The Islamic nation’s sacrificing heroes shall not be used against minor and valueless targets” (“The Taleban Codes of Conduct,” 21).

  the entire 1980s: With some rare exceptions, during the 1980s suicide bombing was largely confined to Lebanon, and viewed as a peculiar aspect of that war’s internecine violence.

  following the book’s release: Kate Cark, “The Layha: Calling the Taleban to Account,” Afghan Analysts Network, June 2011, 23.

  polio vaccination programs: Yaroslav Trofimov, “Risky Ally in War on Polio: the Taliban,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2010.

  even in areas like Helmand: Coghlan notes that most estimates for the population who “actively support” the Taliban are “in the range of 10–20 per cent” (Coghlan, “The Taliban in Helma
nd,” 133).

  CHAPTER 18: DESIGN

  “First, tell me”: Notes of ISAF military officer present at June 20, 2009, meeting.

  largest operators: International Security Assistance Force, “3 SCOTS Launch Massive Air Assault into Taliban Stronghold” (press release), June 2, 2009.

  three thousand British, Afghan, Estonian, and Danish troops: Jeffrey Dressler, Securing Helmand: Understanding and Responding to the Enemy (Institute for the Study of War, September 2009), 34.

  Nasim Akhundzada: Biographical details about Mullah Nasim Akhundzada are drawn from Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah, “‘Tribes’ and Warlords in Southern Afghanistan, 1980–2005,” Crisis States Research Center, September 2006, 9–15, and Joel Hafvenstein, Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier (The Lyons Press, 2007), 128–32.

  platform he built overtop the soil: Giustozzi and Ullah, “‘Tribes’ and Warlords,” 9. That Nasim had engaged in this practice was confirmed in correspondence with an intelligence analyst deployed to Helmand, 2009–11.

  a fatwa he issued: Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 129.

  He was on his way: Ibid., 130.

  durable drug cartel: Giustozzi and Ullah, “‘Tribes’ and Warlords,” 12–13.

  checkerboard of roadblocks: Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 131.

  the Karzais: Giustozzi and Ullah, “‘Tribes’ and Warlords,” 12.

  Taliban program took hold: Coghlan, “The Taliban in Helmand,” 124–25.

  Taliban showed themselves unqualified: Ibid., 124.

  mustered networks of aggrieved: Ibid., 125

  posterboy of insurgents’ propaganada: Ibid., 126

  brigade-size task force: The overall task force contained 3,500 personnel, but only 600 infantrymen. Anthony King, “Understanding the Helmand Campaign,” International Affairs (March 2010), 314.

  married two sisters: Giustozzi and Ullah, “‘Tribes’ and Warlords,” 13.