The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan

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The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan Page 35

by Hastings, Michael


  It still wasn’t a relationship that everyone in the government was comfortable with, but perceived expediency had clearly won out over any chickenshit moral qualms. “On one side, you have State, DEA, FBI saying, hey, this guy is a smuggler, a criminal, he’s letting drugs in over the border,” a U.S. official in Kabul tells me. “On the other side there’s the CIA and the military, who are saying, this guy is giving us good intel in Panjway or Zabul, or wherever else.” (In fact, by supporting Razzik, Petraeus and the U.S. military were pushing up against American law: A condition in the supplemental bill passed last year to fund the war stated that no U.S. money could go to units where there was “credible” evidence of human rights violations. In the fall of 2011, a journalist for The Atlantic will publish photos of Razzik’s torture victims.)

  To me, Razzik represented just how warped our role in Afghanistan had become. He was getting the Extreme Makeover, Afghan Edition. As in Iraq, insurgents and criminals of yesterday became the heroes and patriots of tomorrow. His military and Special Forces advisor had gone into overdrive to refurbish his image. Another State Department cable suggested offering Razzik an “information operations” team to rehabilitate his image by getting “stories in the international press.” Nine months later, his senior American military advisor told The Washington Post that he was like “Robin Hood,” while Major General Nick Carter endorsed him as “Afghan good enough,” a play off the most condescending and colonial phrase imported from Iraq. (Iraq good enough basically meaning a high-grade level of shit.) In November, his Special Forces mentor gushed to The Wall Street Journal that he was a “folk hero,” bragging about his recent exploits, like when his men accidentally ran a truck into a tree and a suicide bomber popped out, blowing up. As one Afghan contractor told me, “The difference between Abdul Razzik and others in government: When Abdul Razzik sees a Taliban, he kills them. Karzai and the rest are part Talib, part government.”

  Not all of the coverage has been positive, however. Razzik almost didn’t do the interview with me, he told my translator, because he doesn’t feel like his recent portrayals in the press have been fair, blaming the “journalists in Kabul” for biased coverage. (Usually, news stories about Razzik mention that he’s been accused of human rights abuses, graft, and drug smuggling.) In a magazine profile from last year, he was tagged as a drug lord—that story, Razzik says, was because the author was associated with the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. “It’s a democracy, so sometimes the press you get is bad and sometimes it is good,” he says rather diplomatically when I ask about all the accusations. “But I think the press should act responsibly and not spread rumors and suspicions to target a man’s character with no proof.”

  Once we begin to leave Afghanistan, it will be warlords like Abdul Razzik who’ll take over. And if we aren’t engaged in “nation-building,” then it doesn’t really matter what kind of government we leave behind in Kabul, as long as the Afghans let us use their country as a base for killing Al-Qaeda. Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Islamabad, called for just that—balancing a “small but capable Afghan army” with “local militia forces… sometimes disparaged as warlords” to provide “a platform for U.S. lead counterterror operations.” In the end, despite all of the counterinsurgency doctrine’s emphasis on good governance, the desire for stability trumps the fight for human rights. The face of Afghanistan after ten years of America’s war is that of a thirty-four-year-old drug lord.

  Sitting in the office at Razzik’s base, I was reminded of something that Berkazai, the mayor’s media advisor, told me. “The world promised us, America promised us democracy and human rights,” he said. “If America is fighting for that, they should stay. If they are not, if they are going to leave behind militias and warlords, then they should leave now.”

  That would suit Colonel Abdul Razzik just fine. I finished up my interview with him. I posed for a picture with him. I noticed his watch—I showed him mine, a Breitling Super Ocean. He showed me his, a diamond-encrusted black Concord. “Nice watch,” I said, and he returned the compliment. We strolled outside to take a look around his base. He had a parking lot full of Humvees and armored SUVs, all provided by the Americans. He pointed out a fort on top of the small rocky hill behind his headquarters. “That’s an old British castle,” he says. “It’s about ninety years old.” I asked him what his plans for the future were. “It is the happiest time in my life,” he says. “I am the police chief around here, and I am in my own country.”

  He asked if I needed security for the trip back. I politely declined, thanking him for his time. As we drove back to Kandahar, my translator noticed that we were being followed by two green Ford Rangers, courtesy of Colonel Razzik. He wanted to be sure his guests left safely.

  50 JOE BIDEN IS RIGHT

  DECEMBER 10, 2010, TO JUNE 2011, WASHINGTON, DC, AND KABUL

  On December 10, 2010, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke walks into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office in Foggy Bottom. He turns pale; he puts his hands over his eyes and tells the secretary of state that he’s not feeling right. She picks up the phone and calls an ambulance—she wants him brought to George Washington University Hospital a few blocks away. Holbrooke, being Holbrooke, argues that he’d rather be taken to Sibley Hospital. Hillary wins this battle.

  The doctors diagnose him with a torn aorta. It requires lengthy surgery.

  On December 13, it’s the night of the annual Christmas party at the State Department. About three hundred people gather in the eighth-floor ballroom, most of the foreign emissaries in the city. Clinton takes Holbrooke’s staff of about thirty into a private room and tells them how much his staff means to Holbrooke, calling him “a true fighter.” Obama joins the private gathering, offering his support to Holbrooke’s wife, Kati, and the ambassador’s two sons. Out in the main ballroom, the singer Marvin Hamlisch entertains the crowd with Christmas carols, singing “Deck the Halls” and “Frosty the Snowman,” a surreal moment, officials on Holbrooke’s staff will later recall, listening to the festive tunes while their boss was on life support at the hospital only a few blocks away. Obama gives a speech to the assembled crowd, calling Holbrooke a “titan” of diplomacy.

  Before the president’s speech, Holbrooke’s family leaves for the hospital. Soon after, his son Anthony would take the elevator down to the hospital lobby. He has tears in his eyes. “He’s gone,” he says to a friend. They smoke a cigarette outside. Clinton arrives in the lobby next. She’d rushed over from the ballroom within five minutes after learning of Holbrooke’s death. Along with her assistant, Huma Abedin, and her security detail, they sit, wiped out in the Starbucks connected to the lobby of George Washington Univeristy hospital. Holbrooke’s other close friends start to arrive—senators, journalists, and the dearest members of his staff—trickling in over the next hour. As the mourners gather, Clinton takes command. “We need an Irish wake for Richard,” she tells his family and friends, saying they would plan a tribute for him. But right now, she observes, everybody needs a drink. “Where’s the nearest bar?” she asks.

  Hillary and Holbrooke’s staff go to the Ritz Carleton on M and 22nd. They drink and share stories, an impromptu wake. Hillary consoles his staff members—she was a close friend of Richard’s as well. The crowd begins to split up into smaller groups, with a few friends heading to Holbrooke’s Georgetown apartment to be with the ambassador’s family, where they order Thai food and talk late into the night. It starts to snow outside. His son Antony leaves, and walks back to a member of Holbrooke’s staff’s apartment in Foggy Bottom, where he’s crashing on the couch, a symbol of just how close the ambassador was to the people who both loved him and worked for him.

  The Pakistanis send dozens of flowers, which Holbrooke’s friends joke should be “swept for listening devices.” There’s a gathering in Holbrooke’s wife’s Central Park West apartment in New York City on Friday, December 17, which draws celebrities and political leaders—Bill and Hillary are there, Chelsea C
linton, Al Gore. “You know, if Dad were here today, he’d be pretty proud that you all came out here for him—he loved this sort of stuff, being at the center of attention,” Holbrooke’s other son, David, tells the room. “But he’d also think you’re crazy to be here talking about him when the Heat are in town playing the Knicks right now.”

  On January 14, 2011, there’s a memorial for him at the Kennedy Center. Two presidents speak, Clinton and Obama. His friends notice a distance during Obama’s remarks (“You could tell Obama just didn’t know him,” says one State Department official, comparing Obama’s remarks to Clinton’s), which to them symbolizes something larger: Obama’s failure to embrace and listen to Holbrooke represented a larger failure to get control of the war in Afghanistan.

  Holbrooke’s replacement is named, Ambassador Marc Grossman. As special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Holbrooke had an odd role, where he had to fight for his own diplomatic turf. He did so by the force of his personality, which poses a problem for Grossman: He’s got a lower profile. It’s a signal, according to State Department officials, that the White House is trying to shut down Holbrooke’s operation, putting an end to the special envoy slot. It’s the White House quietly “strangling” the position that Holbrooke held, says one State Department official.

  It marks the shift to unmake Afghanistan as an issue.

  In January, Vice President Biden travels to Afghanistan and meets with Petraeus. “It’s a little uncomfortable with those two,” says a White House official. “Petraeus views him as the competition.” During one of his meetings, Biden listens to Petraeus’s reports on progress. Biden sees the larger game ahead: The military is making its case for why it needs to stay longer, testing out the arguments they’ll make to avoid the planned drawdown in July 2011. “He could tell they were going to try to stay as long as possible,” says a White House official. At another stop along the trip, an American civilian talked to Biden about a well they were building. “Why do they need a well?” Biden says, sensing “mission creep.”

  Over the next few months, Biden quietly presses the president to change the mission in Afghanistan, to get as far as possible away from the decade-long nation-building commitment that Petraeus wants and to the counterterrorism proposal he’d advocated for two years earlier. White House officials start to make the case: The surge worked, let’s declare victory and go home.

  There’s an increasing confidence within the White House. They help to rehabilitate Stanley McChrystal’s image, appointing him to lead a high-profile initiative supporting military families—no need to have a potential voice criticizing the administration in the upcoming election, either. McChrystal spends his first fall out of the United States military teaching at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The students love him. One morning, as he gets off the train, he bumps into a professor who’s jogging. The professor recognizes him. “General McChrystal,” the professor says. “Don’t call me general. I’m Stan, I got fired,” McChrystal jokes. There is a controversy when a screening of a documentary about Pat Tillman is scheduled to air; the Yale College Democrats back away from endorsing it. He starts up a consulting company, the McChrystal Group. He names Dave Silverman as his cofounder and CEO. He signs up with a speaker’s bureau, and he’s reportedly getting $60,000 a speaking engagement. He gets a slot on the board of JetBlue. He allows another profile of him to be written by a Yale Daily News reporter, giving her full access to his classroom. The profile opens with McChrystal arriving at the classroom an hour and twenty minutes early, now as fully dedicated to his new teaching gig as he was to the missions he commanded in war.

  In February, he gives a speech with Greg Mortenson at Yale. In March, he gives another speech at the prestigious TED conference in Long Beach, California. He talks about leadership and the Middle East. He gets a standing ovation.

  On April 8, the Defense Department investigation into McChrystal and his staff is completed. The investigators didn’t talk to McChrystal or Rolling Stone. The investigation reads comically—no one the investigators spoke to admits to saying what they said, but they also don’t admit to the quotes not having been said. It also contradicts the findings of the earlier Army investigation. “In some instances, we found no witness who acknowledged making or hearing the comments as reported. In other instances, we confirmed that the general substance of the incident at issue occurred, but not in the exact context described in the article,” the report states. McChrystal says he doesn’t remember hearing the “bite me” response (though he laughed when he heard it). Jake McFerren doesn’t admit to saying it. Witnesses deny that McChrystal shared his private interactions with Obama, offering that McChrystal considered the “contents of his discussions [with the president] sacrosanct.” (Though I had witnessed him share the contents of those discussions with his staff, and he’d shared them with me as well.) Charlie Flynn wouldn’t admit to McChrystal having given him the middle finger, though if he had, “it would not have been a failure by GEN McChrystal to treat his executive officer with dignity or respect,” the report says. Dave Silverman wouldn’t admit to calling the French “fucking gay,” though the report concludes “witnesses testified the comment was not directed toward any French official, or toward French government or military.” The report found “insufficient evidence” that they called themselves “Team America.” (Though Dave, Casey, Duncan, and a few others on his staff had called themselves that.) In a section of the report titled “Conduct at Kitty O’Shea’s,” the report concludes: “Our analysis of witness testimony led us to conclude that the behavior of GEN McChrystal and his staff at Kitty O’Shea’s, while celebratory, was not drunken, disorderly, disgraceful, or offensive.”

  It is the last whitewash of McChrystal’s military career.

  Two days after the report is finished, the White House announces that President Obama appointed McChrystal as an unpaid advisor to military families. Mary Tillman, Pat Tillman’s mother, is outraged. “It’s a slap in the face to all soldiers,” she says of the choice. “He deliberately helped cover up Pat’s death. And he has never adequately apologized to us.” In the following months, McChrystal will sit down and give off-the-record interviews to a number of high-profile journalists. He’ll tell one television pundit that the generals in the Pentagon don’t trust the White House. In another talk, he’ll say that if he were Obama, he’d have fired himself “several times,” while describing Afghanistan as stuck “in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare.” In the fall of 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the war, he tells the Council on Foreign Relations the war is just “a little better than 50 percent” done. General Michael Flynn takes a job in intelligence analysis back at the Pentagon, and gets his third star. His brother Charlie gets a promotion to general, too. Duncan Boothby moves to DC, determined to continue his career. The family of Sergeant Michael Ingram will set up a foundation in his honor called Mikie’s Minutes, which donates calling cards to troops serving in Afghanistan.

  In Afghanistan, both the UN and International Red Cross say that violence is the worst it has been in nine years, and security across the country is deteriorating. A group of highly respected academics and Afghanistan experts publish an open letter to President Obama, saying that negotiating, not an increase in military operations, is the only way out. “We are losing the battle for hearts and minds,” the experts write. “What was supposed to be a population centered strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property.”

  On July 12, Ahmed Wali Karzai is assassinated. Military officials try to put a positive spin on it, saying now a “more constructive local leadership” can take his place. Fifteen days later, Mayor Ghulam Hamidi, who I had interviewed months before in Kandahar, is also killed.

  In Washington, political pressure to get out is building. According to the latest poll, 64 percent of Americans—a record level—don’t think the war is worth fighting. On Capitol Hill, 204 congressmen voted against funding for the war last y
ear, up from 109 in 2010. A host of think tanks express serious doubts: The left-leaning Center for American Progress is calling for an “accelerated withdrawal,” and the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations has concluded that “at best, the margin for U.S. victory is likely to be slim.”

  In late February, President Obama meets with his national security team in the White House room. Hillary is there, Doug Lute is there, Tom Donilon, Bob Gates, Admiral Mullen. The topic of discussion: negotiations with the Taliban. They want to start with secret, high-level talks as quickly as possible. Lute says that the current strategy is no longer tenable. They discuss possible places to negotiate: Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the two biggest contenders. They can’t make the missteps of the past summer, when they were duped into giving millions to a Taliban impostor. It signals a significant change—finally, after years of expensive and fruitless fighting, plans to negotiate. At the meeting, Vice President Joe Biden comes in with about five minutes left, according to sources familiar with the meeting. He’s exuding confidence, White House officials tell me, sure that he’s been proven right by history. The plan Biden had called for a year earlier is the plan that the Pentagon is going to be forced to adopt.

  It only took an additional 711 American lives and 2,777 Afghan lives for the White House to arrive at this conclusion.

  July 2011 is approaching. That’s the date Obama promised to start bringing troops home. In June, he holds a series of meeting with Petraeus. Obama tells Gates and Mullen to warn Petraeus—no leaks this time, no getting fucked by the press. No repeat of the “Seven Days in May dynamic” of 2009, says one national security official to a reporter—a reference to the film about American military generals staging a coup against the president. Petraeus is playing nice. Obama meets with Petraeus three times—he wants options for the drawdown. Petraeus suggests keeping the thirty thousand troops until the end of 2012. Petraeus wants to move the troops to eastern Afghanistan, where the fighting has gotten worse. Obama shuts the door on the plan. He says he’s going to bring ten thousand home by the end of the year, and twenty thousand more home by the end of the summer of 2012. Petraeus’s allies complain to the press, and the next general in charge of the war, General John Allen, will go on the record to say that the president isn’t following the military’s advice. What the president decided, says Allen, “was a more aggressive [drawdown] option than which was presented,” and “was not” what Petraeus had recommended.

 

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