“Hold!” he yelled, leaning back on the windshield. He hopped back into the front seat.
In the gunner’s turret above, Sonny spotted muzzle flashes from a nearby qalat and returned fire with the M240, pumping out twelve hundred rounds as they drove back and forth under fire. The two vehicles executed a complex figure eight maneuver designed to confuse the insurgents while mounting an aggressive counterattack. Gunning from the second vehicle, Miah shot back with the .50-caliber machine gun at Taliban fighters he saw firing from a mound of dirt. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded about forty yards away, its shell casing flying into the air. After only about fifteen minutes, they had suppressed the ambush. They were getting good.
That evening, Jim reviewed the combat action in detail as usual and invited critiques from his men. But his main message, driven home by his deepening ties with the Safi and Mushwani leaders, was that the tribes held the only key to victory. He knew it, and the Taliban knew it.
“Men, we are getting closer to the tipping point,” Jim said. “I feel it’s right there. The big fight is coming. In a few weeks, we will be the biggest target for the insurgents in all of Konar. When they figure out we are winning over the Mohmands, the Safis, the Mushwanis, they will fight us with everything they have. “And when that happens, remember,” he said. “Jung de meweey de taskeemawalo zai naday—war is not passing out candy.”
High in the valleys, Jim knew, the Taliban were talking, planning their next moves. As he prepared to expand to more tribes and deal with the Taliban reaction, he badly needed a right-hand man on his team. In his mind, there was one choice for the job: his trusted Special Forces comrade, medic, and gunner, Dan McKone.
CHAPTER 24
ONE MUGGY MORNING IN early July 2011, Capt. Dan McKone hugged his ten-year-old son, Sean, and boarded a military transport plane in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on orders for Afghanistan. Going to war for Dan was by then routine—it was his sixth combat tour since he first deployed with Jim as a staff sergeant on Special Forces ODA 316 in 2003. But as Dan joined the single file of uniformed soldiers walking up a metal ramp into the aircraft’s dim belly, he was surprised at how strongly he felt the tug of home.
Dan knew that Sean, his only child, was growing up fast and needed his father more than ever. But when Jim asked Dan to join his tribal engagement team in Mangwel, Dan didn’t hesitate. Unlikely best friends, as opposite as night and day, the two men had spent years earning each other’s trust. Now Jim needed a second-in-command who would never be a yes-man. Dan was it. He agreed to go.
But when Dan arrived at the headquarters of the CJSOTF-A at the U.S. military base in Bagram, he hit a brick wall in the form of its new commander, Col. Mark Schwartz.
“Why does Major Gant assume you are going to work with him?” one of Schwartz’s deputies quizzed Dan after summoning him to a meeting at the CJSOTF-A headquarters at Camp Vance.
“I was requested for Mangwel,” Dan protested.
Regardless, Schwartz decided to relegate Dan to a desk in a cubicle at headquarters. Dan was stuck.
Schwartz was part of an entirely new chain of command that took charge in Afghanistan during the spring and summer of 2011 and seriously undermined Jim and his mission. Petraeus, Campbell, Miller, Bolduc, Lovelace, and Pelleriti—strong supporters of Jim and his tribal inroads—had all now departed. Jim stayed on, having volunteered for an exceptionally long deployment of two years in Afghanistan.
Schwartz, who replaced Bolduc as head of CJSOTF-A, was no fan of Jim’s. He was the same Schwartz who, in late 2009, as operations chief for the CFSOCC-A, had tried to confine Jim to a staff job in Kabul. He had written Jim a blunt email saying there was no intent to place him on a special team conducting tribal engagement. Upon his return to Afghanistan, however, Schwartz found Jim in Konar doing exactly that—with Petraeus’s blessing. Schwartz went to visit Jim in Mangwel and acknowledged the success he was having. But he was threatened by Jim’s relationship with Petraeus and other senior officers, and wanted to rein Jim in. Back at his headquarters in Bagram, Schwartz made his wariness of the junior officer known.
“Jim is off the reservation! He is out of control,” Schwartz fumed when Jim’s name came up. Others under Schwartz contemptuously referred to Tribe 33 as “Team Gant.”
Schwartz’s subordinate and Jim’s boss at the time was Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, commander of Special Operations Task Force–East. Wilson was in charge of all Special Operations Forces operating in eastern Afghanistan, including Konar, where Jim was based. Wilson had his own nickname for Jim: “the Scarlet Witch.” A Marvel comic book figure, the Scarlet Witch was a mutant who had a wide range of powers but could not always control them. Her hexes and use of “chaos magic” often backfired. Wilson went so far as to introduce Jim to other Army officers as the Scarlet Witch. He would also use the name in a cautionary sense with Jim in conversations.
“Hey, Jim,” Wilson would warn. “Don’t Scarlet Witch me on this!”
Mostly, however, Wilson acted as though Jim did not exist. Knowing how much Schwartz disliked Jim, Wilson avoided mentioning Jim and his team in briefings and reports, and told Jim so.
Meanwhile, both Wilson’s command in Bagram and that of his subordinate in Jalalabad, Maj. Eddie Jimenez, were permeated with a negative attitude toward Jim and his team, according to Sam Schmidt, a civilian intelligence analyst who worked at both commands. Requests Jim made for intelligence support, including against IED threats, were immediately shot down, he said. “It was unprofessional and personal,” said Schmidt, a thirty-three-year-old former Marine intelligence officer who had also deployed to Iraq. Jim asked for specific imagery on IED strikes as well as infrared monitors and security systems that he never received. Schmidt said that, whether intentional or not, the attitude and obstruction heightened risk for Jim and his team. “It could be characterized as wanting him to fail,” he said.
When Wilson found out that Dan had been sidelined in Bagram, he did nothing.
“You have lost this battle,” Wilson advised Jim. “Leave it alone.” He specifically warned Jim against trying to go over his and Schwartz’s heads to get Dan released from Bagram.
Jim faced a tough dilemma.
Dan was the comrade he most needed. Whenever a U.S. general officer visited Mangwel, Jim asked for only one thing: send Dan. He needed Dan for many reasons, especially to allow him to focus more on the big picture. As his influence grew, Jim felt stretched thin, even at times overwhelmed, by demands to spend time with his men, the arbakai, and a growing number of tribal leaders. Dan was a smart, seasoned, former noncommissioned officer who could help lead and direct Jim’s team. He also spoke Pashto and had worked with the Konar tribes.
But Jim knew that if he pulled strings with the generals to try to force Schwartz to send Dan to Mangwel, it would make Schwartz all the more determined to undercut him.
At the same time, he felt he really had no choice, so he pulled strings. Schwartz got a call from a general officer. A few days later, Wilson sent Jim an email summoning him to Bagram Air Field immediately to see Schwartz.
This can’t be good, Jim thought.
The 150-mile trip from Mangwel to Bagram covered some of the most dangerous roads in Afghanistan and was known for insurgent ambushes. But Jim had no choice. He loaded up his vehicles and headed out with his men as ordered.
When he arrived at Schwartz’s headquarters, a modern office building on the sprawling military base, Jim passed down a sterile hallway lined with the framed plaques commemorating Special Operations members killed in action in Afghanistan. Jim never liked such memorials to the fallen—he had seen too many of them grow shabby with neglect. Then he spotted something on a plaque that angered him: Staff Sgt. Chris Falkel—Bronze Star with “V.” Chris, who was Jim’s and Dan’s teammate from ODA 316, had been awarded the Silver Star, not the lesser Bronze Star, for his valor in the Mari Ghar battle in which he was killed in 2005. Jim went to Schwartz’s sergeant major and asked, calmly but firmly,
that the plaque be corrected. Then he headed to Schwartz’s office.
Dan was outside.
Although it had been more than a year since Jim had seen Dan, they both understood that, given the circumstances, they had to greet each other formally, with a handshake and few words.
“Hey, Dan, great to see you,” Jim said.
“You too, sir,” Dan said. A smirk crossed both their faces. Dan had not called Jim “sir” since they both joined ODA 316 in 2003.
Then they walked into Schwartz’s office and sat down next to each other on a cramped couch, neither of them having any idea what Schwartz would say.
A tall man with a bulbous nose and short-cropped hair, Schwartz sat at a large desk in front of two large computer screens. A 1987 graduate of Idaho State University, Schwartz was a motorcycle buff. At Fort Bragg, he was known as a founding member of a motorcycle club known as the SF Brotherhood. When he took over the 3rd Special Forces Group in 2009, he hung his club vest in his office until one of his enlisted advisors said he should take it down. Schwartz attempted to be intimidating, but Dan and Jim felt he didn’t quite pull it off.
After some small talk, Schwartz turned to his main concern: “executive communications.”
“Jim, I don’t want you having any direct communications with general officers or senators or other senior people without talking with me first,” Schwartz said. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim replied.
“Here is Dan. Move out,” Schwartz said.
That was it.
Dan and Jim got up, saluted, and walked out of Schwartz’s office. They looked at each other.
“What the fuck?” they said at the same time.
Jim was livid that Schwartz had forced him and his men to make the trip to Bagram on bomb-laden roads only to get a lecture on his contacts with generals. Schwartz could easily have called Jim on the phone, sent him an email, or arranged a video conference, and dispatched Dan to Konar by helicopter. But they were both excited that Dan was headed to Mangwel.
“Welcome back to the war. Now get up in the gun!” Jim said, flashing his old gunner a smile. He was overjoyed to have Dan, a warrior and leader, back at his side.
“Fuck it,” Dan said, climbing behind the M240 machine gun. “Let’s go!”
The episode with Dan was emblematic of Schwartz’s tone-deaf leadership. He and his commanders had only a minimal understanding of the environment Jim was working in or what he was trying to achieve. They seemed more concerned with imposing rules than with winning a war.
And Schwartz and Wilson dealt Jim even more serious setbacks. While Jim’s previous command had streamlined operations and given him wide leeway, Schwartz and his subordinates attempted to micromanage tactical details. Jim was required to gain the approval of Wilson’s command before firing his team mortars—a rule he refused to follow because it would have endangered the lives of his men. The command also attempted to dictate the number and type of soldiers and vehicles on patrols, the use of body armor, and the precise wearing of facial hair. Schwartz was not unique among commanders in imposing strict grooming standards. But coupled with his overarching lack of support for Jim, the rules seemed particularly grating.
For example, in a June 2011 memo, Schwartz specified in excruciating detail that beards worn by Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan “will not exceed one inch in length . . . the hair above the lip will be trimmed to the upper lip line exposing the lip. The beard itself will not have a ‘bush like’ appearance but will be kept trimmed. . . . This policy is punitive,” the memo said, warning that if even a single member of the team was found to violate it, the entire team could be deprived of the ability to dress and look like Afghans.
The same memo required that when Special Forces teams wore a “non standard uniform” of Afghan clothing, they must wear body armor underneath it, and ideally carry heavy weapons with them. The rule was inane and completely defeated the purpose of wearing Afghan garb to blend in with the population.
On major issues involving Jim, though, the command was often AWOL—unresponsive at best and at worst obstructive to requests. Overly focused on “kinetic” combat operations, Schwartz and his subordinates shortchanged village-level engagement, according to Special Forces officers with extensive knowledge of their decision making. Most important, Schwartz and Wilson did not approve some of Jim’s key tribal expansion efforts. They refused to allow him to set up arbakai already approved for Khewa District near Mangwel. They also blocked Jim’s efforts to make inroads with Haji Ayub, the newly anointed leader of the powerful Mushwani tribe, whose father had been assassinated. After meeting with Ayub, Jim sent Wilson a detailed memo on the encounter as well as a Mushwani tribal engagement plan. The conventional U.S. Army commander in northern Konar had lost several men from his battalion in recent fighting and was enthusiastic about Jim’s idea of recruiting arbakai to quell insurgent strongholds where the Mushwani held sway. But the night before Jim and his team were to drive north to the district of Naray to meet again with Ayub and the U.S. commander, Wilson ordered Jim not to go. “You are not authorized to go to Naray or to speak with any Afghans about expansion,” Wilson said. Jim’s emails to Wilson seeking an explanation went unanswered. It was a huge missed opportunity. Jim’s frustration over the decision grew as Ayub rose in national prominence in the months to come.
ONE LATE SUMMER AFTERNOON soon after Jim brought Dan to Mangwel, a rainstorm struck the village. Many overcast, windy days had come and gone without so much as a drop of rain falling from the sky. But that day, with tremendous thunder and high winds, the rain finally came down in sheets, as if the sky at last gave birth. We all felt relieved. In the Tribe 33 qalat, wind whipped at the tents and gun covers on the trucks. I ran up into one of the guard towers, soaking wet, and looked out at the mountains surrounding the village with misty silhouettes of gray. Then the clouds broke open and a rainbow arced over the wet green fields—the first rainbow I had seen in Afghanistan.
That afternoon as we dried off after the rain, Jim reflected on promises—both those he made and unspoken promises that he believed must be held sacred by those who have the arrogance to send men to war.
Jim had kept his promise to return to Noor Afzhal. And the tribe was keeping its promise to him—as surely as the feisty arbakai manned the towers day in and day out, squabbling or calm, keeping us safe. Jim had kept his promise to protect his men. And his men had shown him great loyalty. He had kept his promise to himself—to strive to win, or at least to leave everything he had on the battlefield.
“I only want three things,” he told me. “I want a battle, a war that means something. I want worthy men who are willing to fight and die. I want good commanders, who will support me with everything they have.”
But by then, he knew, those commanders were gone—replaced in his view by straw men, men without honor.
Jim’s face darkened. “Remember this: whoever does me in will be wearing a U.S. Army uniform, with a Special Forces tab.”
While Jim’s U.S. commanders were failing him, his enemies better understood the impact he was having on the ground. One after another, the Taliban came calling.
CHAPTER 25
NIQ MOHAMMED STOOD OUTSIDE the tall blue metal gate of the Tribe 33 qalat in Mangwel one early September day in 2011, knowing his next step could cost him his life.
The burly thirty-seven-year-old, with a broad black beard, large nose and deep-set eyes, cast a glance at the dozen Afghan elders who had come with him to Mangwel from their contested village cluster of Kawer down the road. They were counting on him.
Niq had been struggling with what to do for six months, since the Taliban executed his friend Gujar. The shifty leader of the tribal police in Kawer was shot four times in the back of the head. The February 2011 incident led to the collapse of the fledgling tribal force in Kawer. As a result, Kawer stayed under the influence of insurgents, while security improved in Mangwel and other nearby communities with arbakai.
A big man with a booming voice, Niq was feared and respected in Kawer. Originally from Shalay valley, his grandfather had moved to Kawer and bought land to farm. His father had fought the Russians, who killed Niq’s brother. In recent years, he had served on the local government shura, or council, and ran the bus station. He was viewed by many as the only man who could lead a new group of tribal police and bring security to the community. There was only one problem: Niq was former Taliban.
Jim had received intelligence reports that indicated Niq had been involved with an insurgent cell that emplaced the roadside bombs and carried out attacks on U.S. troops. Jim had been advised by Noor Afzhal that he must deal with Niq in one of two ways: kill him or put him in charge of the arbakai in Kawer.
Niq, for his part, had heard much about Jim and the security and projects he brought to Mangwel and surrounding villages. He decided to turn against the insurgents and ally with the American. Now he would find out what Jim had decided.
“Zu. Let’s go,” Niq said to the group of elders, his voice loud and hoarse. He rapped his knuckles on the metal gate.
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