In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones

  But there was a problem. Ismail Khan had established security with his own militia forces and had retained most of the customs revenue from the trade that flourished between Herat and Iran and Central Asia. Other Afghan warlords were doing the same, but Ismail Khan posed one of the greatest challenges to Hamid Karzai and U.S. officials, including Khalilzad, who were trying to establish a strong, viable central government. Fighting involving tanks and mortars had erupted in March 2004 between Khan’s forces and Afghan National Army units under General Abdul Zahir Nayebzadeh. Gunmen killed Ismail Khan’s son, Mirwai Sadeq, the minister of civil aviation and tourism in Karzai’s cabinet. On March 22, the Afghan government dispatched a force of 1,500 soldiers, headed by Defense Minister Muhammad Fahim, to restore order in Herat. But tensions continued, so Khalilzad made his trek to the city.

  This period was, in many ways, a high-water mark of the U.S. experience in Afghanistan. Within the first two years of U.S. engagement, Afghanistan made significant gains on the political front. It held presidential and parliamentary elections, and the levels of insurgent violence stayed relatively low. But this hopeful opportunity for peace would eventually be squandered, as Khalilzad—ironically because of his success—was later moved to become U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and the United States increasingly shifted its attention and resources away from Kabul and the war in Afghanistan.

  Important Strides

  Even before Khalilzad’s trip to Herat, the Afghan government had made extraordinary progress. In late 2001, James Dobbins had been appointed the U.S. envoy to the Afghan opposition; he was tasked with leading U.S. efforts to establish an Afghan government. Dobbins had no experience in Afghanistan, but he had performed admirably as U.S. special envoy to four major hotspots in the 1990s: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He was, he told me, “the State Department’s handyman of choice in the increasingly busy craft of nation-building.” Dobbins’s goal was to broker an interim government among Afghan political leaders. While the United States would be deeply involved in this process, Dobbins admitted that the United States wanted to avoid “any appearance of occupying Afghanistan or selecting its new government.” Consequently, the United States asked the United Nations to take the lead. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan assigned the job to Lakhdar Brahimi.4

  In late November 2001, Brahimi, Dobbins, Khalilzad, and senior officials from India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and a number of European countries hammered out an agreement with Afghan leaders. The negotiations were fraught with difficulties. One delegate, Haji Qadir, abandoned the conference in a well-publicized huff, claiming that his ethnic group, the Pashtuns, was underrepresented. His tense departure raised the specter of further defections, which threatened to undermine the credibility of the whole process. Perhaps the most rancorous debates occurred during the choices of a leader and key cabinet ministers. Hamid Karzai was the leading candidate of the Iranians, Indians, Russians, and many of the European delegates. Pakistan’s ISI also suggested Karzai as a candidate, something they undoubtedly regretted several years later. But the Afghans could not agree. Many wanted Abdul Sattar Sirat, a respected scholar of Islamic law who had been teaching in Saudi Arabia for several years. Finally, after intense pressure from Brahimi, Dobbins, and ultimately the Russians, the delegates agreed to an interim constitution and cabinet.

  As Dobbins recalled: “The critical moment came when the Russian Ambassador in Kabul interrupted a meeting of the Northern Alliance top leadership to deliver a message from Moscow. The Russian government wanted the Northern Alliance leadership to understand that if they did not accept the package which was on the table in Bonn, they should expect no further Russian aid.”5

  On December 5, 2001, Afghan leaders officially signed the Bonn Agreement, and the UN Security Council endorsed it the following day.6 The parties at Bonn had also asked the United Nations to “monitor and assist in the implementation of all aspects” of the agreement. UN Security Council Resolution 1401, passed on March 28, 2002, established the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).7

  In January 2002 in Tokyo, international donors pledged more than $4.5 billion to reconstruction efforts. Additional roles were assigned: Britain agreed to be the lead nation for counternarcotics, Italy for justice, the United States for the army, Germany for police, and Japan for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants. The emergency loya jirga, which was attended by about 2,000 people, took place between June 12 and June 19, 2002, following extensive preparations and countrywide consultations. At the conclusion, Afghan delegates chose Hamid Karzai as president of the transitional administration and head of state, and approved his nominees for key posts in the administration. Karzai gave the defense and foreign-affairs portfolios to the mainly Tajik Northern Alliance, and the Ministry of Interior portfolio to a Pashtun regional governor.

  Following this breakthrough, media outlets thrived in the more permissive environment. Within three years, the government had registered 350 publications, 42 radio stations, and 8 television channels. Tolo TV, the most popular television station in Afghanistan, introduced a mixture of drama and satire to those Afghans who could afford televisions.8

  Afghanistan also established the National Security Council (NSC) to provide advice and analysis to Karzai. “It was modeled after the United States NSC system,” explained Daoud Yaqub, director for security-sector reform on the Afghan NSC. “But the British played the critical role of funding it and ensuring that it got off the ground.”9 Yaqub, an erudite, bespectacled Afghan-American with olive skin and carefully combed hair, had received his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to Yaqub, Karzai appointed Zalmai Rassoul, a physician who had served at the Paris Cardiology Research Institute, as the first national security adviser. By 2003, the National Security Council had expanded to twenty members, meeting twice a week and coordinating among Afghan ministries.

  Like Yaqub, Rassoul and Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, many of Afghanistan’s key policymakers were Western educated and had extensive experience living abroad. Ali Jalali, the minister of interior in charge of Afghanistan’s vast police apparatus, was an American citizen who had served as the director of the Afghanistan National Radio Network Initiative and chief of the Pashto Service at the Voice of America in Washington, DC. Muhammad Hanif Atmar, the minister of rural rehabilitation and development who later became minister of education, received his bachelor’s degree in international relations and postwar development from York University in England. The fact that so many prominent senior Afghan government officials had lived abroad, however, naturally caused resentment among Afghan officials who had never left.

  “Accelerating Success”

  When Khalilzad took over as U.S. ambassador in 2003 from Robert Finn, America’s first ambassador after the Taliban collapse, one of his most important contributions was bringing roughly $2 billion in additional assistance to Afghanistan—nearly twice the amount of the previous year—as well as a new political-military strategy and private experts to intensify rebuilding.10 Relations were close between Khalilzad and Lieutenant General David Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A native of Endicott, New York, seventy miles south of Syracuse, Barno was congenial, almost unassuming, and was well liked by his staff. He was also extremely smart and surprisingly easy to get along with.

  Barno moved into a half-trailer on the U.S. Embassy compound and established an office next to Khalilzad’s. Each day, Barno attended country-team and security-group meetings with Khalilzad, and the two developed a common view of counterinsurgency operations. Barno also seconded five military staff officers to Khalilzad to make up an interagency planning group. This small core of talented planners—referred to as “the piglets”—applied structured military staff planning to the requirements Khalilzad faced in shaping the interagency response in Afghanistan.11 Together, they developed a broad strategy in Afghanistan, though the planning had been underway for several months.

  In early 2003, Ma
rin Strmecki at the Department of Defense had helped develop an acceleration package for Afghanistan, which he had presented to Secretary Rumsfeld. The plan outlined a process for building Afghan institutions and defeating a low-level insurgency. Strmecki was a bright, somewhat reserved intellectual who had a law degree from Yale and a PhD from Georgetown University. He had served for sixteen years as a foreign-policy assistant to Richard Nixon, helping him with the research and writing of seven books on foreign policy and politics. At the time, Strmecki was the U.S. Department of Defense’s Afghanistan policy coordinator and also served as the vice president and director of programs at the Smith Richardson Foundation.

  Khalilzad, then at the National Security Council and a close confidant of Strmecki, took the acceleration package for Afghanistan to the White House and helped push it forward. It evolved into a Power Point presentation of roughly thirty slides that set U.S. goals for Afghanistan. The document assumed that Afghanistan was a central front in America’s war against terrorism and, as Khalilzad prophetically warned, that a “lack of success—a renewed civil war, a narco-state, a successful Taliban insurgency, or a failed state—would undermine the Coalition’s efforts in the global war on terrorism and could stimulate an increase in Islamist militancy and terrorism.”12 The “accelerating success” concept was approved by the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council on June 18, by the Principals Committee on June 19, and by President Bush on June 20, 2003. Khalilzad then began to work on obtaining additional funding even before he became ambassador to Afghanistan.

  “There were several components of the strategy,” noted Khalilzad. “The first was getting Afghan institutions built.”13 His goal was to enable the Afghan people to elect their government and build a national government with viable ministries that could deliver services to the population. “A key point of emphasis in our program,” Khalilzad asserted, would be “on rural development and the private sector in Afghanistan. Economic development—the establishment of a thriving private sector—is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, schools, and clinics.”14 This was an important lesson from Afghanistan’s history, since Afghan wars have typically been won—and lost—in rural areas, not in the cities. One of the first orders of business would be jump-starting reconstruction. Khalilzad vowed to finish the road from Kandahar to Kabul, and he started a new one from Kandahar to Herat.

  “A second component,” Khalilzad continued, “was changing the balance in the Afghan government by removing some members and adding others in order to broaden support for the government and increase its competence.”15 When Ali Jalali, a Pashtun, was appointed minister of interior, some thought his appointment was political, a way of balancing ethnicities in Karzai’s cabinet. But he had his own talents. The author of several books, Jalali had been a former colonel in the Afghan Army and was a top military planner with the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. His book The Other Side of the Mountain included more than 100 firsthand reports from mujahideen veterans and provided riveting accounts of the mujahideen experience in ambushes, raids, shelling attacks, and urban warfare.16 In 2002, he had written an influential critique of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, arguing that they had enhanced the power of warlords. “Ethnic warlords with questionable track records claim to represent different ethnic groups and geographic regions in the country,” Jalali wrote. “Despite their nominal support of the interim administration in Kabul, provincial strongmen and warlords maintain their private armies, sources of income, foreign linkages, and autonomous administrations.”17

  A final concern was “on the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of militia and weakening warlords, as well as reaching out to the Taliban through a reconciliation process”18—in other words, undermining Ismail Khan and the other warlords.

  This strategy shifted the U.S. focus from counterterrorism to nation-building and counterinsurgency. Up to that point, the U.S.-led Coalition comprised more than 12,000 troops representing nineteen nations. It was led by Combined Joint Task Force-180, based at the old Soviet air base at Bagram, a twenty-minute helicopter flight north of Kabul. The United States had downsized the original Com bined Joint Task Force in the spring of 2003, replacing a powerful and well-resourced three-star-led headquarters (XVIII Airborne Corps) and a subordinate division headquarters (Task Force 82) with a single division-level headquarters (10th Mountain Division). At the time, the declared aim of the military was to hunt down the remnants of al Qa’ida and Taliban leaders across the rugged landscape of southern and eastern Afghanistan, and to build the Afghan National Army. “Nation-building” was explicitly not part of the formula.19

  In 2002 and 2003, U.S. soldiers could not use the word counterinsurgency to describe their efforts. Lieutenant General John R. Vines refused to countenance it. He was the commander of Coalition Task Force 82 in Afghanistan from September 2002 until May 2003, and then commander of Combined Joint Task Force 180 until October 2003. U.S. soldiers were told they were fighting terrorists.

  Toward Counterinsurgency

  Khalilzad and Barno’s strategy ushered in a number of changes. Beginning in 2003, Barno established two ground brigade-level headquarters, one assigned to the hazardous south and the other to the east. As Figure 8.1 shows, the northern half of the country remained largely free from any enemy threat, which meant few international forces were necessary to stabilize the area. The brigade headquarters in the south and east became regional command centers, and each brigade was assigned an area of operations spanning its entire region. All organizations operating in this battle space worked directly for, or in support of, the brigade commander. These numbers eventually increased to 20,000 American and 10,000 NATO soldiers—which still left a ratio of only one soldier per 1,000 Afghans.20 Barno recast United States and other Coalition units to fight a counterinsurgency rather than a counterterrorism mission, and he assigned forces specific territory where they were to secure the population.21 He focused on putting a military and civilian presence in the south and east to create a “security halo” that would ensure protection for the local population.

  FIGURE 8.1 U.S. and Coalition Battlefield Geometry, May 200422

  The early results were laudable. Following a visit to Afghanistan in October 2003, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans wrote a memorandum for President Bush stating that Afghanistan was experiencing significant improvement. He visited an Afghan school, had lunch with U.S. troops, held meetings with key Afghan-American business leaders, and talked with senior Afghan government officials, such as Commerce Minister Sayed Mustafa Kazemi. Evans was buoyant, telling President Bush: “I witnessed a people who are enjoying freedom from the repressive Taliban regime. Four years ago there were 800,000 students (all boys) in the Afghan school system. Today, there are 4.5 million students—1.5 million who are girls—embracing their ability to pursue an education and to live in a country of hope and equality.”23

  The Afghan National Army (ANA) also made some progress against insurgents. In July 2003, for example, the ANA launched Operation Warrior Sweep with U.S. forces in Paktia Province against Taliban and al Qa’ida forces. This was followed in November 2003 by Operation Mountain Resolve in Nuristan and Kunar Provinces. The ANA deployed outside of Kabul to stem interfactional fighting in such areas as Herat and Meymaneh. During the constitutional loya jirga in December 2003, the ANA was deployed in the capital region to enhance security for the delegates. In 2004, the ANA conducted combat operations with such names as Operation Princess and Operation Ticonderoga in a number of provinces in the east and south. In March 2004, the government deployed some of its newly trained ANA soldiers to Herat to patrol roads, secure government and UN buildings, and institute a curfew following the removal of Ismail Khan. At first their efforts were marred by tensions and frustration. Afghan Army forces clashed with Ismail Khan’s militia, and more than a hundred people were killed. But the ANA eventually succeeded in establishing law and order.

  “Perhaps the best example of the compet
ence of the Afghan National Army was their performance in Herat in 2004,” Barno told me. “They didn’t fire into the crowd and they established order. It was a good marker for their capability.”24

  One of the greatest achievements for both U.S. and Afghan forces was the return of democracy after a thirty-year hiatus, harkening back to Zahir Shah’s “blueprint for democracy” period in the 1960s and early 1970s. Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers crowed, was establishing a viable and democratic government. In his 2004 State of the Union speech, President Bush announced: “As of this month, that country has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women.” He continued that the “men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free and proud and fighting terror—and America is honored to be their friend.”25 In January 2004, Afghans had adopted a new constitution, and in October 2004 they elected Hamid Karzai as president. The United States and other Coalition forces had made securing the elections its strategic priority, and it had paid off handsomely.

  “It was our main effort,” noted Barno. “Successful elections took a tremendous amount of air out of the Taliban.”26 In September 2005, Afghans elected a new parliament, which included a number of ex-Taliban ministers. One was Abdul Salam Rocketi, a fiery speaker who had earned the alias “Rocketi” for his exceptional skills in targeting Soviet tanks with RPG-7 rockets during the 1980s. Another was Mawlawi Arsallah Rahmani, who was elected to the upper house (Meshrano Jirga). The Hezb-i-Islami party was registered after pledging it had cut ties with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Its leader, Khalid Farooqi, was elected to the lower house (Wolesi Jirga).27 Opinion polls showed high levels of support for Karzai. According to one poll in 2005, for example, 83 percent of Afghans rated President Karzai’s work as either excellent or good.28 This was a greater level of support than most Western leaders enjoyed, including George W. Bush, whose approval rating was only 45.7 percent in 2005 as the war in Iraq began to heat up.29