July 2008 The Indian Embassy in Kabul is bombed on July 7, killing more than fifty people. In leaks to several newspapers, U.S. government sources acknowledge that Pakistan’s intelligence service is involved in the attack. On July 13, insurgents launch a coordinated attack on a U.S. vehicle patrol base in Wanat, as heavily outnumbered U.S. and Afghan soldiers bravely fend off the assault.
August 2008 A United States AC-I30 gunship accidentally kills Afghan civilians on August 22 in the Shindand district of Herat Province. In an unprecedented move, President Hamid Karzai flies to Herat to meet with locals and condemn the “the unilateral operation of the Coalition Forces.” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf resigns on August 18.
September 2008 U.S. Special Operations Forces conduct a helicopter-borne assault in South Waziristan, Pakistan. On September 20, a truck bomb explodes outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing more than fifty people, including two Americans.
November 2008 On November 26, approximately ten terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba conduct a coordinated attack on several sites in Mumbai, India. After telephoning Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Afghan President Hamid Karzai calls for a regional fight against terrorism.
February 2009 President Barack Obama announces a nearly 50 percent increase in U.S. forces to Afghanistan, sending an additional 17,000 Marines and Army soldiers. Militants wearing suicide vests attack three Afghan government buildings in the heart of Kabul, killing at least twenty people.
Photographic Insert
Central Intelligence Agency memo identifying Afghanistan’s key players, circa 2001. National Security Archive
Decades of fighting destroyed much of Kabul, leaving thousands of burnt-out buildings scarred by bullets and artillery shells. United Kingdom Ministry of Defence
Aerial view of Paktia Province from a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter. Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain has long made it difficult for invading armies to conquer. Obaid Younossi
Afghan national security forces prepare for operations against insurgents in Helmand Province in January 2008. While Afghan National Police suffered from incompetence and corruption, the Afghan National Army became increasingly competent at conducting counterinsurgent operations. U.S. Department of Defense, Specialist David Gunn
Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s minister of foreign affairs, shown here speaking at a NATO event in August 2003, repeatedly warned Washington policymakers that the security situation was getting more dangerous. NATO
Lieutenant General David Barno (foreground), Major General Lloyd Austin (left), Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (center), and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (right) meet in Kabul on December 4,2003, to talk about stabilization efforts. U.S. Department of Defense, Technical Sergeant Andy Dunaway
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, briefs journalists at the Pentagon on October 15, 2004. Khalilzad was instrumental in developing a strategy on “Accelerating Success” in Afghanistan.U.S. Department of Defense, R. D. Ward
Lieutenant General David Barno, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, at a press conference at the Pentagon on October 19, 2004. One of his most successful efforts was helping provide a secure environment for the presidential elections that year in Afghanistan. U.S. Department of Defense, R. D. Ward
Two Afghan women, wearing bright blue burqas, show their ink-stained fingers after voting for parliamentary elections on September 18, 2005. U.S. Department of Defense, Staff Sergeant Jacob Caldwell
Children peer through the damaged wall of their schoolhouse in Kabul. After the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime, increasing numbers of boys and girls went to school in Afghanistan. U.S. Department of Defense, Corporal Matthew Roberson
Afghan laborers build the perimeter wall at a NATO Forward Operating Base in Badghis Province. NATO completed its movement to western Afghanistan in September 2005. U.S. Department of Defense, Technical Sergeant Laura K. Smith
U.S. Army soldiers establish a security perimeter after exiting a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter near Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2005. Insurgent violence grew steadily throughout 2005 and hit unprecedented levels in 2006. U.S. Department of Defense, Specialist Harold Fields
A U.S. Marine (left) inspects a poppy plant next to an Afghan National Army soldier (right) during a patrol in Helmand Province. Poppy is most heavily cultivated in southern Afghan provinces like Helmand. U.S. Department of Defense, Staff Sergeant Luis P. Valdespino Jr.
Aerial view from a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter in Nangarhar Province near Jalalabad. Despite insurgent violence, the United States was still involved in a range of reconstruction projects in the cities and villages of Nangarhar and other provinces in eastern Afghanistan. Obaid Younossi
An F-15E Strike Eagle from the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, launches heat decoys during a close-air-support mission over Afghanistan. Afghans became increasingly angry as close air support caused more civilian casualties. U.S. Department of Defense, Staff Sergeant Aaron Allmon
U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann (front) in Nuristan Province with Alonzo Fulgham (center), the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission director in Afghanistan, and Governor Tamim Nuristani (back). Neumann’s father had been the ambassador to Afghanistan during the reign of Zahir Shah. Three decades later, Neumann faced the challenge of working with Hamid Karzai to establish security and eradicate corruption in the Afghan government. Photo by Jennifer Harris and courtesy of Ronald Neumann
Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, head of Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan, briefs journalists at the Pentagon on December 8, 2005. Eikenberry, who was instrumental in helping build the Afghan army, faced a “perfect storm” that hit Afghanistan in 2006 as violence levels skyrocketed. U.S. Department of Defense, R. D. Ward
Dutch soldiers in Uruzgan Province launch mortar rounds near Mirabad. While some NATO countries engaged in combat, U.S. government officials increasingly complained that most NATO countries shied away from fighting. NATO
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, greets the Pakistani chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2008. With the U.S. war in Iraq winding down, U.S. military leaders were finally able to give more attention to Afghanistan. At this meeting, they discussed a range of security issues, including Afghan insurgents operating from Pakistani soil. U.S. Department of Defense, Petty Officer 1st Class William John Kipp Jr.
An armed MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) taxis down a runway in Afghanistan on its way to a wartime mission in 2008. The United States increasingly used UAVs to target insurgents across the border in Pakistan. U.S. Department of Defense, Staff Sergeant Brian Ferguson
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (left) and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai (right) meet in Kabul in June 2007. They discussed the insurgency, civilian casualties, and efforts to build Afghan national security forces. U.S. Department of Defense, Cherie A. Thurlby
U.S. Marines prepare for an attack against a Taliban stronghold in Now Zad, Afghanistan in 2008. Anticipating heavier fighting, the Marines increased their presence in Afghanistan’s violent southern regions in 2009. U.S. Department of Defense, Sergeant Freddy G. Cantu
INTRODUCTION
I SPENT THE MORNING of September 8, 2006, with several Afghan friends in a guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, sipping a warm cup of sher chai, a traditional Afghan drink prepared using black tea, cardamom, and milk. The house was constructed of concrete, with whitewashed walls and a small leafy courtyard. There was a meticulously crafted assortment of red and pink roses around the perimeter, and a small vineyard with green grapes on one end. Like much of the capital city, this house had been rebuilt after the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. Just five years after the American invasion, Kabul was a vastly different city, awash in electronics equipment and sprinkled with new Internet cafés. The streets were clogged with bright yellow taxicabs, watermelon carts,
bicycles, and cars imported from Europe and Asia. Young boys and girls shuffled to school along the congested sidewalks. Construction projects dotted the city. Several new banks and an upscale indoor shopping mall named Kabul City Center were going up downtown. Economic growth was up 8.6 percent that year alone.1
But there were ominous signs that the new order was teetering. At 10:20 a.m., a piercing noise shattered the morning lull. A suicide bomber had driven a dark Toyota Surf into a convoy of U.S. soldiers. I was in the vicinity of the attack, which occurred near Massoud Square, bordering the main gate of the U.S. Embassy. The square had been named for Ahmed Shah Massoud, military leader of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (or Northern Alliance), who was assassinated by al Qa’ida suicide bombers two days before September 11, 2001.
The attack wounded twenty-nine people and killed sixteen. Two of the dead were American soldiers. One was Staff Sergeant Robert Paul, an Army reservist from The Dalles, Oregon, who was part of the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade. In an obituary, his grieving family wrote, “He never turned down an opportunity because he always wanted to make a difference in everything he did.”2 The other American killed was Sergeant 1st Class Merideth Howard, an Army reservist from Waukesha, Wisconsin, whose husband mourned her death by blasting her remains skyward in two fireworks displays. A few months earlier, an Army crew filming a segment on U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan showed Sergeant Howard handing out hundreds of backpacks. “Most of the kids are in school, even if it’s just a few hours a day,” she said. “And that’s what we’re trying to do, is just help them out as much as we can.”3
The rest of the dead were Afghan civilians unfortunate enough to be in the blast zone. One was an elderly man selling used clothing from a dilapidated, rusty pushcart. Among the others were a half-dozen municipal street sweepers finishing their morning cleaning, and two gangly boys selling water. At the bomb site, I could see thick black smoke curling up the charred trees nearby. The blast had torn a six-foot-wide crater in the road and left scattered over a wide area a gruesome and disquieting collection of items: Muslim prayer caps, khaki-colored military hats, shoes, and body parts. The explosion, which also had ripped apart an armored Humvee, was the largest suicide bombing in the capital up to that point. I tried not to be discouraged, but the trends suggested a growing insurgency.
Two days later, on September 10, another suicide bomber assassinated Hakim Taniwal, governor of Paktia Province. I had been scheduled to visit him later that week. He was a genteel, bespectacled sociology professor who had fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan in 1980, moved to Australia in 1997, and then returned home to Afghanistan in 2002 to help rebuild his shattered country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai had asked his close friend Taniwal to come to Paktia, a rugged province in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains in eastern Afghanistan, which had become a hotbed of insurgent activity. Australia’s minister of foreign affairs, Alexander Downer, who knew Taniwal, described him as a scholarly, soft-spoken man of integrity, and “a good man, with a reputation as a highly capable administrator.” 4
Taniwal’s family had begged him not to return to Afghanistan, but he felt an overwhelming sense of patriotism and couldn’t miss the opportunity to help rebuild his homeland. Ghulam Gul, the suicide bomber, crept up to Taniwal’s car and blew himself up as the car pulled away from the governor’s office in Gardez. The next day, nearly a thousand mourners attended Taniwal’s funeral, including the Afghan ministers of interior, refugees, communications, and parliamentary affairs. The outpouring of grief and the admiration for Taniwal were palpable. But in a shocking display of irreverence, another suicide bomber blew himself up at the funeral, killing at least seven people and wounding up to forty. Five of the dead were policemen and two were children. The Taliban decision to target a funeral, one of the most solemn occasions in Islam, defied basic human dignity. President Karzai denounced the attack as a “heinous act of terrorism…against Islam and humanity.”5
Afghanistan, one U.S. soldier remarked to me at the time, was beginning to feel like Iraq in 2003. Kabul—and indeed Afghanistan more broadly—had a strange fin de siècle air. What had happened? Why did an insurgency develop in Afghanistan?
Downward Spiral
As horrible as they were, the September 11, 2001, attacks provided the United States with an opportunity to eliminate al Qa’ida from Afghanistan. And the United States jumped at the chance, launching within weeks the most significant and expensive counterterrorism effort in the history of the United States. In an emotional address to a joint session of Congress nine days after the attacks, President George W. Bush pledged to begin a global “war against terror”: “The leadership of al Qa’ida has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qa’ida’s vision for the world.” Afghanistan would be the first battleground. “Our war on terror begins with al Qa’ida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”6
Overall, the United States spent more than $430 billion for military and diplomatic efforts over the first five years and deployed military forces to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.7 This amount was larger than the annual gross domestic product of 89 percent of the world’s countries.8 Afghanistan was where much of the planning and training for the September 11 attacks took place and, at least initially, it was the central front of America’s “war on terror.” And rightly so. Following his capture, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, head of al Qa’ida’s military committee and Osama bin Laden’s principal operative for the attacks, boasted: “I was Emir [commander] of Beit al Shuhada [the Martyrs’ House] in the state of Kandahar, Afghanistan, which housed the 9/11 hijackers. There I was responsible for their training and readiness for the execution of the 9/11 operation.”9
In 2001, U.S. Special Operations and CIA forces, along with Afghan indigenous troops backed by U.S. airpower, combined to overthrow the Taliban regime in less than three months while suffering only a dozen U.S. fatalities.10 Some argued that the operation revitalized the American way of war.11 Indeed, it was a remarkably effective campaign. Approximately 100 CIA officers, 350 Special Forces soldiers, and 15,000 Afghans—running as many as 100 combat sorties per day—defeated a Taliban army estimated at 50,000 to 60,000 plus several thousand al Qa’ida fighters.12
Despite the idealism of the initial campaign and the success of military operations, the United States squandered this extraordinary opportunity. America was a global superpower with the resources and talent to effectively overthrow governments and replace them with new ones. But it failed to seize the moment. By 2006, tensions had escalated dramatically and Afghanistan was leveled by a perfect storm of political upheaval in which several crises came together: Pakistan emerged as a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qa’ida, allowing them to conduct a greater number of operations from bases across the border; Afghan governance became unhinged as corruption worked its way through the government like a cancer, leaving massive discontent throughout the country; and the international presence, hamstrung by the U.S. focus on Iraq, was too small to deal with the escalating violence. The simultaneous pressures came to a head in 2006, when the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, the Haqqani network, foreign fighters, criminal groups, and a host of Afghan and Pakistan tribal militias began a sustained effort to overthrow the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
This book has much to say about insurgencies. For our purposes, an insurgency is a political-military campaign by nonstate actors seeking to overthrow a government or secede from a country through the use of unconventional—and sometimes conventional—strategies and tactics.13 Insurgencies can involve a wide range of tactics and forms of protest, from small-scale marches to large-scale conventional violence.14 The Afghan insurgency quickly made the leap to extreme violence. Insurgents in both Afghanistan and Pakistan imported suicide bombing, improvised explosive technology, and globa
l communications strategies from Iraq and other battlefields, such as Hizbullah in Lebanon. Al Qa’ida succeeded in reestablishing its base by skillfully exploiting the weakness of the Pakistani state in the Pashtun tribal belt. Instead of defeating al Qa’ida and the Taliban in 2001, the U.S.-led Coalition merely pushed the core leadership of al Qa’ida and the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan. This outcome was not inevitable. Rather, it was the result of America’s inability to finish the job it had started and to provide the requisite attention and resources.
By 2006, a full-bodied insurgency had developed in Afghanistan. The overall number of insurgent-initiated attacks increased by 400 percent from 2002 to 2006, and the number of deaths from these attacks increased more than 800 percent during the same period.15 Many of the attacks were against Afghan government officials, though others targeted civilians and Coalition forces. The increase in violence was particularly acute between 2005 and 2006. The number of suicide attacks quadrupled, remotely detonated bombings more than doubled, and armed attacks nearly tripled between 2005 and 2006.16 The following year would bring more of the same, as insurgent-initiated attacks rose another 27 percent.17
The rapid growth of Afghanistan’s insurgency led to a series of recriminations by U.S. soldiers and their NATO allies. Some U.S. soldiers began referring to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) by a range of derogatory names such as “I Suck at Fighting,” “I Saw Americans Fight,” or “I Sunbathe at FOBs.” The latter was a reference to the small, heavily fortified forward operating bases (FOBs) established in rural areas. American soldiers dismissed many of their NATO allies for hunkering down in their FOBs and blamed the escalation of violence at least partly on the reluctance of NATO countries to fight.
In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan Page 2