by David Loyn
The main north-south route linking Kabul to Kandahar goes through Wardak, but once off the road, it feels much farther from the capital than just the one-hour drive, remote from modern civilization and vulnerable to exploitation by the Taliban. The dense valleys and apple orchards have for many years been a launchpad for attacks on Kabul. That made it an obvious focus of U.S. operations. Only one man, an Afghan interpreter, was convicted for the killings in Nerkh District in the winter of 2012. And while the official inquiry findings have never been made public, investigative reporter Matthieu Aikins uncovered shocking material suggesting a U.S. Green Beret unit went rogue after a popular NCO was shot and wounded. They are alleged to have rounded up Afghan farmers at random, killing some in the fields and torturing and killing others back at their base. The Green Berets knew there was political pressure against their operations. One thanked their Afghan interpreters, including the one ultimately convicted, in a Facebook post. “We fucked up the bad guys so bad nonstop for 7+ months that they did everything they could to get us out of Wardak Province.”9 Aikins reported that after Karzai succeeded in getting the Special Forces pulled out at the end of March, villagers found ten bodies in separate shallow graves, wrapped in U.S. body bags. Most were unrecognizable, but one of the missing men was positively identified,10 and through pieces of clothing, others too were given names.
By the time Dunford was facing Karzai on the Wardak issue two weeks into his Kabul command, the president had already made another move against air strikes, banning his forces from calling for air support in populated areas. Dunford agreed to withdraw the Special Forces from Wardak.
No relationship mattered more than with President Karzai. Dunford donned a marine dress uniform every time he went to the Arg—a shirt, necktie, and green jacket with a high belt, pressed trousers, and polished shoes, not combat boots and khakis. The first time he went in, Karzai said, “I haven’t seen this uniform. What is this uniform?” Dunford answered that he was treating Karzai “in terms of professional courtesy exactly the same way that I treated my own president.” He would change into the uniform for every trip to the Arg, sometimes more than once in a day. “I wanted him to know that I respected him; I wanted him to know that I understood Afghan sovereignty.”
Karzai’s tone had not changed. Sometimes he would take thirty minutes at the beginning of a meeting to complain about America’s failings. Dunford would soak it up, looking for the shared space in the Venn diagram where would be common ground for dialogue. “I do believe that during a very difficult time, we were successful. If you step back at ten thousand feet, the relationship with President Karzai was effective enough for us to continue to move forward.” But the meetings were not conducted from a height; they were punishing face-to-face encounters in what Dunford saw as an “eighty-twenty” relationship, where he had to go 80 percent of the way all the time. Jim Cunningham was U.S. ambassador for the whole of Dunford’s command, having served as deputy for a year previously. He had a similar low-key approach as Dunford, patient and determined, allowing his deep frustration to come out just once, a week before he left in 2014, following another intemperate speech by Karzai. Cunningham told the media the Afghan president was “ungracious” and that he “dishonored America’s war dead.”11
Dunford and Cunningham were working through the complexities of the bilateral security agreement (BSA) that would determine the status of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the end of combat in 2014. Without it, all troops would have to leave, and failure to agree sat like a boulder in the way of progress in any other areas. The BSA was the substance of the future relationship, building on the principle agreed in the partnership deal—the one signed at midnight in Kabul ahead of the Chicago NATO summit in May 2012. What the American negotiators did not know was that Karzai had already made up his mind never to sign the BSA—a decision founded in his misunderstanding of the scope of the 2012 partnership agreement.
Three weeks after the partnership deal was signed, Pakistan began their seasonal routine harassment across the border, lobbing artillery rounds at random into Afghan villages. It is remarkable that this goes on with no international opposition; every year, it kills and injures people living in the remote mountainous region. America’s failure to stop it fed into Karzai’s sense that their agenda was really at one with Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. In 2012, this was confirmed in his mind. The partnership agreement did not commit America to defend Afghanistan from attack, but Karzai interpreted it as a mutual security pact, and demanded that the U.S. forces act to stop the shelling. That was the first stage toward his decision not to sign the BSA.
In what turned out to be Karzai’s last trip to Washington as president, despite red-carpet treatment across the city and an honor guard at the Pentagon, it was while meeting Obama that Karzai finally made up his mind not to sign the deal. It seemed to him that as well as requesting the right for future U.S. bases, Obama was suggesting that he allow Pakistan more influence in Afghanistan. Karzai replied, “I give you bases, and I give Pakistan my sovereignty. What’s in it for us?”12
Karzai did not make his decision public until a Loya Jirga ten months later, which he called to consult the Afghan people. If they agreed he should sign, this would have been the perfect cover for him. He knew the gibes made by the Taliban that he was just another Shah Shuja, the “puppet” king put on the Afghan throne by British troops in 1838.13 Dunford sat impassively in his dress uniform with Cunningham in the front row of the diplomatic corps in the Loya Jirga tent as Karzai laid out the benefits for Afghanistan of the BSA in a speech that, for 95 percent of the time, was positive. But in his closing words, based on his distorted view of the partnership agreement and memories of Obama’s demands on his last trip to Washington, he said he would not sign, sticking to this even though the Loya Jirga agreed that he should.
While the assembled tribal elders were proud Afghans, wanting foreign forces out, there was a deep nervousness, especially in Afghan cities, that the withdrawal would lead to the return of warlords and civil war, as had followed the Russian withdrawal twenty years before. Karzai’s failure to listen to the Loya Jirga was one of the events that gave Dunford a sleepless night. But he would still try to understand Karzai, telling his team, “Look, this guy has been the president of Afghanistan for twelve years, a country at war. The pressure on him has to be enormous.” As long as he “retained operational flexibility,” he could deal with the moods of the Afghan president.
PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED
A large, thin-skinned modern hall, like a delivery warehouse, was the setting for a piece of political theater in Afghanistan in June 2013—the formal handover of sovereignty of the last provinces to Afghan control. From now on, the ISAF coalition would formally be the “supporting” force right across the country, as the war was supposed to be led by a sovereign nation, who could call on the coalition for air strikes and medical evacuation. Dunford remembered his first visit to Afghanistan, when the marines went to Helmand in 2008. It was “at best an Afghan face on a Marine capability.” There were ten international troops to every Afghan soldier. By 2013, the ratio was three to one the other way.
The practical effect of the final handover was not great—involving a handful of districts, mainly along the eastern frontier, and in Kandahar. But the symbolic impact of a new nation emerging was profound, marked by the modern building, the rows of smart Afghan troops, and the black, red, and green of the Afghan flag now in pride of place ahead of the U.S. and NATO banners. A giant digitally printed image of Afghan soldiers filled the backdrop of the hall as Karzai’s helicopter arrived to herald the playing of the Afghan national anthem by a military band who marched stiffly in, stamping their feet in the approved Afghan drill, wearing ill-fitting, bright red uniforms, and playing energetically, if tunelessly. It was an Afghan event to mark an important moment in the reinvention of the Afghan nation.
But in a stunning piece of political theater of their own, the Taliban rained on the parade
. Out of the blue that morning, Al Jazeera TV went live to a Taliban press conference from Doha, Qatar, announcing the opening of a political office. Given that the Taliban had deliberately kept out of the limelight since they fell from power in 2001—apart from occasional hard-to-get secret interviews by Western reporters, often with spokespeople concealing their identities—the livestreamed event was a revelation. The Taliban broke every condition they had made to the Qatari government to be allowed to open an office. They flew a Taliban flag, and the building had a brass plate outside proclaiming this the government of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”14 Karzai was furious—inevitably the first question from the press at the transition event was about the Taliban, not his historic regaining of sovereignty.15
Dunford was deeply disappointed. “We had spent the previous five months working up to that day, with messaging, optics, implementation, all designed to give us momentum into the summer and into continued transition, and in one fell swoop, we lost what I thought was a critical opportunity. So, candidly, that was one of the darkest times for me in the campaign.”
Dunford had a keen interest in the perception of the campaign and the value of communications, seeing much of the Taliban’s activity as deliberately designed to manage the news agenda. In particular, they exploited the narrative of “abandonment”—that international forces would quickly leave. “Every December,” Dunford said, “we were dealing with a Y2K situation.” The Taliban would promote their inevitable victory, as ISAF looked as if it would “go off the cliff at the end of the year.” A concerted series of attacks on Western civilian targets in Afghanistan in early 2014 were part of this process. They were designed to raise uncertainty in Western capitals as Afghanistan moved toward the election to replace Karzai. “The high-profile attacks were in reinforcement of that overall narrative,” as the attention shifted from taking ground to delivering results from the “psychological effect” of killing Westerners. In early 2014, more international civilians died than ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan.
The first attack of the series was the worst, when twenty-one people, including foreign development workers and elite Afghans, died in an attack on a Lebanese-owned restaurant. The Taverna du Liban was a popular meeting place, with chintz curtains and fake wood paneling, where beer and wine was served discreetly when available. It was close to the British embassy compound, had armed security, and was crowded as always on a Thursday evening, the end of the working week in Kabul. One Taliban suicide bomber detonated his vest at the entrance, and two others entered the restaurant, killing everybody inside. Two of the diners had armed security guards with them, but both were killed, and the restaurant burned to the ground. Apart from two local staff who climbed out through the roof, no one survived. The attack closed down nightlife for Westerners in Kabul for good. Even the longest-open, the Gandamack Lodge, closed its doors.
The attacks went on. In March, a Swedish journalist, Nils Horner, was shot and killed while walking in a street nearby in broad daylight. Horner had come to Kabul to cover the presidential election. A week later, March 20, Afghan New Year’s Eve, five international election monitors were among those killed in an audacious attack on the Serena Hotel, the fourth time it had been targeted. The city’s only modern five-star, it was already statistically the most dangerous place to stay and the only place in Kabul where any foreign journalists had died since 2001, but because of high gates and intense body searches, security experts mistakenly advised companies they should send their staff there. Four teenage Taliban recruits with tiny pistols in their socks evaded the tight security, entering at a busy time as people came for a New Year’s dinner. A popular Kabul journalist, Sardar Ahmad, his wife, and two of their children were among the dead.
The attacks continued through the summer, on guesthouses and offices where foreigners lived and worked. There was even an attack on a provincial office of the International Committee of the Red Cross—the most neutral humanitarian organization, who had good links with the Taliban, one of the very few organizations to stay in Afghanistan throughout the civil war and Taliban years in the 1990s. This attack crossed a line, but it was one that the Taliban, or particularly the allied Haqqani network—the group backed by Pakistan—were prepared to cross.
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES AGAIN
As well as Taliban psychological operations, there was another narrative running against the international community, promoted by Karzai. Friction over civilian casualties began early in Dunford’s period in command when he denied that international forces had caused the deaths of at least seventeen women and children in a remote part of Kunar Province close to the Pakistan border. He did not have the same problems that the earliest ISAF commanders had, of not being sighted on some U.S. elements carrying out offensive operations. “I was never surprised by U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.” He would discuss operations that might involve civilians with special operations commanders involved. “I’d get a detailed brief on the operation and have an opportunity to either modify the operation or cancel the operation if I thought it was high risk.” In the Kunar incident, there had been a fierce firefight. Dunford insisted that any civilian deaths were not caused by air strikes,16 but the Afghan government disagreed, paying compensation to the victims, and the UN took the government side, finding the deaths were caused by “shock-waves from the aerial bombardment.”
Dunford is a Catholic, attending mass at the church in the Italian embassy in Kabul every Sunday during his command, and driven by a moral obligation not to cause the loss of innocent lives. He would frequently tell his team, “When we go to war, we’ve got to bring our values with us.” There were wider reasons, though, why civilian casualties should be avoided, particularly at this stage of the war. As a supporting force of a sovereign power, he knew there was a risk of Karzai limiting the flexibility they needed. “We needed to conduct operations in a way that satisfied the Afghan leadership.” There was also the danger of civilian casualties provoking green-on-blue attacks. Dunford saw every potential tactical action through this framework of its strategic risk to the overall mission, frequently telling both American and other coalition forces, “If we’re taking risk to achieve a tactical end, we’re probably not in the right place.”
Karzai highlighted pictures of the dead children in Kunar and would raise the issue of civilian casualties as loudly as he could publicly and privately, telling The Washington Post that he was “forced to yell,” because he “did not get attention behind closed doors.”17 Dunford tried to put himself in his shoes. “Rightfully, I think, as the president of Afghanistan, he was focused on that.”
But while Karzai had an understandable concern for the loss of Afghan lives at the hands of international troops, he moved into a world where he would believe anything of them. He was now keeping a list of terrorist attacks where he thought the U.S. was colluding with the attackers to worsen instability and weaken him, including the Taverna attack.18 His office, led by his strongly anti-American chief spokesman, Aimal Faizi, began to exaggerate claims against international troops using fake material. Ten days after the Taverna attack, the Arg issued a dossier to reporters, including a video, purporting to show the aftermath of an air strike in Parwan, near Kabul, by U.S. forces, said to have killed fourteen civilians. The dossier contained a video of anguished faces at a funeral, pictures of damaged houses and dead bodies—one a graphic image of a woman missing her face, which Karzai highlighted in an angry meeting with Dunford. Reporters quickly uncovered inconsistencies in the dossier. One image was from a funeral in 2009, another showed two bodies in a burial shroud, previously often used in Pakistan on anti-American websites. Even the governor of Parwan dismissed Karzai’s dossier, saying that anyone who said large numbers of civilians were killed in the incident must be a “supporter of the Taliban.”19
“THIS IS HOW WARS END”
Inevitably in this atmosphere, the U.S. looked to the next government, to be elected in April. But that government took time to emerge.
As if in a portent of the storms to come, April 5, 2014, election day, the skies opened with heavy rain that burst through Kabul’s storm drains, filling the streets with water. It did not stop queues of people forming from early morning to cast their vote; democracy, however flawed, was popular. Karzai had successfully opposed reforms that would have built a transparent register of voters, and despite measures that included inking the forefinger of people who had voted, corruption was widespread. There had been three issues of polling cards in the post-Taliban era, the cards were easy to fake, and any card could be used in any polling station, so some polling stations inevitably ran out of ballot papers. But there was a vigorous campaign with mass rallies and TV debates.
There was little policy difference between the candidates, who were divided instead on ethnic and tribal lines. Historical resistance to the creation of political parties in Afghanistan goes back to wariness of the divisiveness and cruelty of the Communist years, as well as the corruption of the mujahideen, and this has not been challenged by any post-Taliban politician.20 Karzai’s unwillingness to anoint a successor meant that eleven candidates, including his brother and several other Pashtuns, were in the race. With no clear front-runner, the election was always likely to go to a second round, where the contest would be between the last Pashtun standing, and Abdullah Abdullah, running in his second election for the influential Tajik minority—the standard-bearer for the slain Ahmed Shah Massoud.