Descent Into Chaos

by Ahmed Rashid

  Officials expected 1.8 million children to attend on the first day, but 3.0 million turned up. In Kabul’s 160 schools, girls made up 45 percent of the enrollment, showing the commitment of Afghans toward educating their daughters. ISAF also helped rebuild schools in Kabul. On a blustery March day in a poverty-stricken slum in the southwest of Kabul, I watched hundreds of excited Hazara children milling around the six-foot-tall Edwin Fraser, a sergeant in the British army’s Royal Engineers. The Irishman and his men had rebuilt the local school, cementing broken walls, putting in doors and windows, and painting the walls to ready the school for opening day. When registration began, 2,000 children signed up, a number that soon swelled to 6,500, and headmaster Muzaffar Khan was at his wits’ end. “We will have to operate three shifts but we have only 118 teachers,” he told me.25 What was encouraging that spring as I traveled through the south, where the Taliban had once reigned, was that the Pashtuns were demanding schools for their sons and daughters.

  By 2005, 5.2 million children were attending school in grades one through twelve. Enrollment in higher education had jumped to 31,000, from 4,000 students in 2001. School going became a symbol of the new Afghanistan that could be built if adequate resources were provided. The literacy program was the largest ever undertaken in any Muslim country. If the Bush administration had remained focused on this alone, it would have served as a remarkable beacon for Muslims worldwide, impressing people with American largesse and forcing Muslim governments to take education more seriously. An equally successful program in 2002, despite the lack of funds, was the return of more than two million refugees from Iran and Pakistan out of a total refugee population of five million. In the summer, fifty thousand refugees were returning every week, overwhelming the UN and the government. The tragedy was that due to the absence of investment in agriculture, most refugees returned to the cities rather than to their villages.

  Another success story was the explosive expansion of the media after the Taliban had destroyed all vestiges of it. Within three years 350 publications were registered with the government, 42 radio stations operated around the country, and there were 8 private television channels. Tolo TV, the nation’s favorite channel, ran everything from exposures on corruption and warlordism to Afghan versions of Candid Camera and American Idol. Tolo pushed the limits of what was acceptable and frequently ran into problems with the conservative Supreme Court or the government. Meanwhile, journalists and newspapers faced constant harassment from warlords, corrupt officials, and drug dealers—but they continued to publish. Several journalists were killed, but that did not restrain the enthusiasm and growth of the media or of its hungry audience.

  The most significant economic achievement was the introduction of a new currency in October 2002, replacing the three different currencies still in circulation. The new currency was issued by Da Afghanistan Bank, or the central bank. Its governor, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, fifty, a former professor at an American college, and Noorullah Delawari, sixty-two, a banker from southern California, led the task force with help from the IMF, the UN, and the U.S. military. Some twenty-eight billion new Afghani notes were printed in Germany and Britain, at a cost of $16 million, and then distributed across the country, even though there was no banking system outside Kabul. The new exchange rate—50 new Afghanis to $1, compared to 48,000 Afghanis to $1 of the previous currency used in Kabul—was backed by $220 million in gold parked at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. Eight thousand workers helped in collecting eighteen thousand tons of old currency notes, which were airlifted to Kabul in U.S. Army helicopters, where they were burned and exchanged for new notes. Afghans once again showed that they were one nation acting together and not divided along ethnic lines.

  A success story in 2003 was a national community-based development plan called the National Solidarity Program, set up by Hanif Atmar, the imaginative minister of rural rehabilitation and the World Bank. The program set up committees in 4,000 communities in all 364 districts of the country to decide upon development priorities in their area. They were then allocated small grants of between thirty thousand and sixty thousand dollars to carry out the projects they had voted for. The amount given to each village was based on a rough calculation of each family receiving two hundred dollars. NGOs helped villagers with the decision-making process and in building projects such as digging wells and reservoirs and building bridges and schools. It was the first serious attempt to get money into the countryside so that rural Afghans could see some improvement in their lives. The program was hugely successful, and within two years it had received $375 million in pledges from numerous countries. Parallel to this effort was the enormous improvement in the health system with the establishment of one hospital in every province and an enormous investment in women and children’s health care.

  Such successes were all the more remarkable considering that Afghanistan was on the back burner in Washington as the Bush administration planned for war in Iraq. It took a year before the State Department appointed a full-time coordinator for reconstruction in Afghanistan. The appointee, William Taylor, who arrived at the U.S. embassy in Kabul in October 2002, was a dedicated, charismatic diplomat who had learned his trade during the Balkans crisis. But he was to be constantly blindsided by the administration’s concentration on the Iraq project.

  On Afghanistan there was a lack of coordination and focus in Washington. Robert Finn described the complex process in Washington:

  Every morning there was an interagency meeting at the State Department on Afghanistan, chaired by Richard Haass [director of policy planning], which duplicated the meeting we would have in the U.S. embassy in Kabul. My role was to try and get all the various pieces of the government to work together, like a sheepherder managing his sheep. Khalilzad had his own team, the Pentagon was conducting its own foreign policy, while the State Department, USAID, the Pentagon, and the CIA were all trying to do reconstruction. To put it simply, you had a hundred and fifty cooks.26

  The real hindrance was still the CIA, which even in 2003 was deciding what projects other agencies should undertake on the basis of how those projects would affect the war on terrorism. USAID officials complained bitterly about CIA interference, but Andrew Natsios refused to take a position to defend USAID’s independence and work. Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told Congress in October 2003 that CIA operations were the main hindrance to reconstruction and that the CIA had too much money and power.27

  In one salient example, Karzai’s pleas to Bush for money to rebuild the ring road encircling Afghanistan were initially turned down by the CIA. The road had been first built by the Americans and the Soviets in the 1960s but had been destroyed in the war. Road building made sense for Americans and Afghans alike, as it would spur internal trade and economic growth, allow for cheaper imports, and help bring the warlords under control by connecting them to Kabul. Robert Finn harassed the State Department and USAID, urging them to build the ring road, but USAID said it did not do road building, while the CIA declined to support the project.28 Finally, in November 2002, Bush agreed to rebuild the highway connecting Kabul to Herat via Kandahar. The road would be built by the Louis Berger Company in thirty-six months, at a cost of $250 million, a financial burden to be shared equally among the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.29 So it took nearly a year after 9/11, and constant pleading by Karzai, to persuade the Bush administration to build its first road in Afghanistan.

  A few months later Bush promised to have the Kabul-Kandahar section of the road finished by the end of 2003. Costs soared due to Washington’s sudden urgency and as the Taliban attacked road crews. The Kabul-Kandahar section was completed on time but at the astronomical total cost of $190 million, or $1 million a mile. The entire cost was met by the United States because the Saudis refused to come up with their share, while the Kandahar-Herat section was delayed, as the Japanese who were building it refused to start until security had improved. The rebuilt road was a mile-stone, and soon the World Bank and
the European Union began to build other parts of the ring road. Once road building started in earnest in 2003- 2004, the shortage of electricity in the major cities became an embarrassing problem. No country was prepared to build new power houses or a national electricity grid. Ninety-five percent of Kabul citizens lived without power, and until 2005 the entire country generated just 260 megawatts of electricity—enough for a small American town of only a hundred thousand people.

  Once road building started, Ashraf Ghani pushed for a tougher stance against rogue warlords who refused to surrender the vast sums they were collecting from customs revenue. Ghani’s earlier efforts at this had failed because the warlords were supported by the CIA and used this relationship as an excuse to defy the central government. The annual revenue from customs was estimated at $500 million, more than the entire Afghan budget, but in 2002, only $80 million was collected. Washington’s pro-warlord policy was hindering any kind of institution building within the government.

  Ghani estimated that Ismael Khan in Herat earned $160,000 a day from the traffic arriving from Iran and Turkmenistan. Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Kandahar, controlled vast fees from the high volume of traffic from Quetta and from the movement of trucks from Herat to Kabul. In the north, at the Hairatan customs post with Uzbekistan, there was a brazen division of the spoils, with General Dostum receiving 37 percent of the take; his rival, Gen. Mohammed Atta, drawing 50 percent; the Hazaras, 12 percent; while 1 percent was used to cover costs and salaries. The warlords also controlled the country’s natural resources: Coal and salt mines in Baghlan and Thakar provinces, cement and cotton factories, gas fields in Shebarghan that had once supplied Uzbekistan, and emerald mines continued to be controlled by them. They also controlled the import of petrol and diesel from Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. As long as this continued, Karzai’s claim to rule the country was patently false.

  In May 2003, at Ghani’s urging, Karzai summoned twelve key provincial governors and warlords and threatened them with “serious action” if they failed to deliver customs revenues, and he also threatened to resign. “Day by day the people are becoming disappointed with the government,” Karzai told them. “I will summon the Loya Jirga and say the government could not work.”30 The warlords signed on to a thirteen-point agreement in which they promised to remit money. A few days later Ghani flew to Herat to confront Ismael Khan. His preemptive boldness worked. On June 2 two heavily guarded Toyota Land Cruisers arrived in the courtyard of the Ministry of Finance in Kabul and unloaded sacksful of money— $20 million in all. In August, Karzai was to strip Ismael Khan of all military powers, but leave him as governor of Herat.

  Some U.S. officials, particularly UN ambassador Khalilzad, were beginning to realize that the “path of least reconstruction” Washington had chosen was neither winning the war against al Qaeda nor winning over the Afghan people. Khalilzad discussed “a course correction” with Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, and the need for more resources. His direct access to senior figures because of his neocon connections made it easier for him to be heard—Robert Finn’s long-standing pleas for more funds had fallen on deaf ears in Washington. Khalilzad’s demands coincided with plans by Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove, who wanted to portray Afghanistan as a success story in the propaganda buildup to Bush’s bid for a second term as president—elections were to be held in November 2004. At the same time, presidential elections were also due in Afghanistan, which the United States wanted Karzai to win and be a showcase for democracy. Khalilzad termed his plan “accelerated success” and was appointed ambassador in Kabul.

  Just fifty-two, Khalilzad was now in his element. Tall and imposing, with a jutting jawline, he looked every bit the Afghan warrior, albeit one with a penchant for sharp Italian suits. Zal, as everyone called him, became the most powerful man in Afghanistan, and made no attempt to hide it. He was not in the least embarrassed when reporters described how Karzai did not make a move without first consulting him.31 Khalilzad was a complicated personality: a Westernized scholar and neoconservative but an Afghan Muslim who had the taste for intrigue that is the hallmark of political culture in both Washington and Kabul. He was disliked by traditional diplomats but appreciated by the CIA and the U.S. military because of his can-do attitude.

  Zalmay Khalilzad was born in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1951. His mother was twelve years old and illiterate when she married his father.32 Khalilzad’s family moved to Kabul, where his father was a civil servant. As a teenager, Zal was briefly an exchange student in California, and in 1970 he received a scholarship to study at the American University of Beirut. He did his doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he was influenced by the same teachers who influenced other neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz. Khalilzad became a professor at Columbia University and one of the founding members of a small group of neocon intellectuals there before joining a think tank, where he specialized in nuclear weapons and Iran. He made his mark in government in the mid-1980s, when, under Wolfowitz, who was then director of policy planning at the State Department, he wrote several papers on U.S. policy toward the Afghan Mujahedin.

  During the first Gulf War, in 1991, Khalilzad served under Dick Cheney, who was then defense secretary, helping the neocons draw up the Defense Planning Guidance that outlined the themes that later came to be known as preemption. I got to know Khalilzad in the 1980s, and we would frequently spar at conferences on Afghanistan in Washington. It was a surprise to meet an Afghan who was so staunchly Republican, and at the time I found his knowledge of Afghanistan superficial because he had been away too long.33 During the Clinton era he went back to the think tank RAND and became a consultant to the oil giant Unocal, which was trying to build a gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Khalilzad co-wrote a paper criticizing Clinton’s policy in the region, saying the United States was underestimating its interests in Afghanistan.34

  In May 2001, Khalilzad became senior director for the Gulf and Southwest Asia division of the National Security Council. Then, on September 11, his life changed completely. He was soon fielding calls from the NA warlords and every Afghan tribal leader. He helped run the war from his cell phone, urging warlords to cooperate with their rivals or to help the U.S. SOF teams. Even the CIA and the Pentagon had to go through Zal to cajole or motivate individual Afghan leaders. He was soon appointed special presidential envoy to President Bush on Afghanistan.

  Nearly two years had passed by and there were few signs of U.S. efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan. Afghans were becoming restless with and critical of the lack of progress in developing their country, blaming both the government and the Americans. Several concerned U.S. officials at the State Department, including Khalilzad, urged greater focus on and aid for Afghanistan, especially in light of Bush’s hope for reelection in November 2004. It took several months of persuasion before Condi Rice called an interdepartmental meeting of the National Security Council on June 20, 2003.

  After almost two years of dismal waste, a meeting of the National Security Council chaired by Bush on June 20, 2003, took the secret decision to change direction in Afghanistan and step up aid. The new policy was never made public. Advertising it would have begged the question as to why the United States had provided so little aid until now and whether this change was a preelection stunt. Moreover, the war in Iraq had gone well and the White House could finally focus on Afghanistan. I was quick to notice the sudden change in U.S. attitudes. “We are seeking ways with the Afghan government on how to accelerate reconstruction in Afghanistan,” Khalilzad told me in Kabul on July 15. “Improving security, reconstruction, political reform—all these are important areas which must be accelerated. Failure is not an option.” A senior U.S. Army officer was more blunt: “We cannot spend seven times more in Bosnia and Kosovo than we do in Afghanistan and then pretend we are doing nation building,” he said.

  Certainly the plan offered great potential. With U.S. spending in Afghanistan doubling from $740.0 mil
lion in 2003 to $1.9 billion in 2004, Washington could now justifiably urge European donors to donate more money. There was stepped-up U.S. spending for building schools, clinics, and roads, and for training Afghans.35 U.S. forces would expand from 10,000 to 18,000 troops, and the U.S. general in charge would move from Bagram to the capital so he could better coordinate with Khalilzad. The Pentagon would speed up training of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and take over the all-too-slow training of the police from the Germans. The Pentagon would embed 650 trainers with ANA units, and the ANA’s Kabul Corps of 10,000 troops would be ready in time for the Afghan presidential elections in June 2004. In the first week of July 2003, a thousand ANA soldiers had gone into battle alongside U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan for the first time, and they had performed very well. Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Security Directorate, would be downsized from 35,000 agents to 12,000, who would be retrained by the CIA at a cost of $80 million.36

  Robert Blackwell, the former U.S. ambassador to India, joined the National Security Council to handle the demands from Kabul in a newly formed Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group, which would include all U.S. government departments. Khalilzad arrived in Kabul with a team of nine retired business professionals who constituted the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group, based in the U.S. embassy. They helped restructure the ministries and organized a survey of Afghanistan’s natural resources. However, once again there were too many cooks and tensions arose between the private-sector group, regular U.S. embassy staff, and USAID officials. At times it was unclear who was in charge. Khalilzad’s efforts at centralization resembled L. Paul Bremer’s plan for Iraq, which also tried to bypass the U.S. government. Bremer, the U.S. envoy to Iraq, reported directly to the White House just as Khalilzad did—a chain of command that sidelined the State Department.