In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan
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The year concluded with a controversial ceasefire between British troops in Musa Qala and the Taliban. British troops agreed to move quietly out of Musa Qala, and the Taliban agreed not to conduct attacks in the area. The two sides had thus far fought to a stalemate, with casualties on both sides. In a sense, the ceasefire allowed British forces to withdraw from a tenuous and undesirable situation. It was sanctioned by Muhammad Daud, governor of Helmand Province, and most tribal elders, who felt they could now exercise control over the Taliban themselves. But neithear Daud nor the tribal elders could prevent the return of insurgent fighters. The truce only succeeded in strengthening the Taliban’s penetration of northern Helmand. General David Richards, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, said at the time that the British deal turned northern Helmand into “magnets” for the Taliban.62 Apparently he was fuming about the deal. Several months later, a UN report concluded that the ceasefire allowed the Taliban “to move freely in the area.”63
Back to Baghdad
U.S. government officials finally had begun to acknowledge the growing violence in Afghanistan. A 2007 National Security Council assessment of the war in Afghanistan concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration had set in Afghanistan had not been met, even as Coalition forces scored significant combat successes against resurgent Taliban fighters. The NSC evaluation examined progress in security, governance, and the economy, but it concluded that only “the kinetic piece”—individual battles against Taliban fighters—showed substantial progress, while improvements in the other areas continued to lag. This judgment reflected sharp differences between U.S. military and intelligence officials on where the Afghan War was headed. Some intelligence analysts acknowledged the battlefield victories, but they highlighted the Taliban’s unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium-poppy cultivation, and the weakness of President Karzai’s government as signs that the war effort was deteriorating. While the military found success in a virtually unbroken line of tactical achievements, U.S. intelligence officials worried about a looming strategic failure.64
But the war in Iraq continued to siphon off funds and attention. In an unusually frank admission in December 2007 before the House Armed Services Committee, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen observed that an American military stretched by the war in Iraq could only do so much in Afghanistan. “Our main focus, militarily, in the region and in the world right now is rightly and firmly in Iraq,” he noted. “It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity. In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”65
In addition, Secretary of Defense Gates initially blocked a push by the U.S. Marine Corps to move into Afghanistan. In December 2007, for example, Gates met at the Pentagon with General James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, to discuss a formal proposal that would shift Marine forces from Anbar Province in Iraq to Afghanistan. The proposal called for a Marine integrated “air-ground task force” of infantry, attack aircraft, and logistics to carry out the Afghanistan mission and build on counterinsurgency lessons learned by Marines in Anbar.66 But senior Pentagon officials, including Gates, were concerned that reallocating resources to Afghanistan would jeopardize some of the fragile gains the U.S. military had made in Iraq in 2007. “The secretary understands what the commandant is trying to do, and why the commandant wishes to transition the Marine Corps mission to Afghanistan,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, “but he doesn’t believe the time is now to do that. Anbar is still a volatile place.”67
A small contingent of U.S. Marines eventually deployed to southern Afghanistan, but it was only a token force. By then, insurgent groups led by the Taliban had mounted a challenge to NATO and the Afghan government.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Three-Front War
IN LATE 2006 and early 2007, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry conducted a series of briefings on the Afghan insurgency for senior U.S. policymakers, including National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, and Vice President Dick Cheney. The presentation showed where the command-and-control locations for the Taliban and other insurgent groups were headquartered, especially in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In one section, for example, the briefers interspersed satellite images of a major compound used by Taliban ally Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah with video footage from the PBS Frontline documentary “The Return of the Taliban.”
At one point in the documentary, producer Martin Smith asked Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations: “Let me just raise a few things they say you can do. Haqqani, Jalaluddin Haqqani—why don’t you arrest him?”
Akram confidently responded: “Well, I think Jalaluddin Haqqani, if he’s found, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.”1
The briefing team then presented satellite imagery of a wider area, which showed offices of the Pakistan Army next door. “Not only does Pakistan know where Haqqani is,” one of the briefers noted to senior U.S. officials, “but they are virtually co-located with him. If they wanted to get him, they could.”
The Pakistani government was also shown a version of the briefing, though the Frontline segment was taken out. It was a disturbing reminder to those at the highest levels of the U.S. government that insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan, who were killing U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces and civilians, used Pakistan as a sanctuary, especially for their top-level commanders.
Complex Adaptive System
The perfect storm that hit Afghanistan in 2006 involved a disparate set of groups that established a sanctuary in Pakistan. There were two striking themes. One was the sheer increase in the number of insurgent groups over the course of the decade. Some groups, such as Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), migrated to the Afghanistan theater. Both were formed in the early 1990s to fight against India over control of Jammu and Kashmir. Another theme was the diffuse, highly complex nature of the insurgency, which was perhaps best described as a complex adaptive system. This term refers to systems that are diverse (made up of multiple interconnected elements) and adaptive (possessing the capacity to change and learn from experience). Examples of complex adaptive systems include the stock market, ant colonies, and most major social organizations.2
At least five different categories of groups were included in this system. The first were insurgent groups, who were motivated to overthrow the Afghan government and coerce the withdrawal of international forces. They ranged from the Taliban to smaller groups such as the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), and al Qa’ida. A second category included criminal groups involved in such activities as drug trafficking and illicit timber and gem trading. The third included local tribes, subtribes, and clans that allied with insurgent groups. Most were Pashtun. The fourth category comprised the warlord militias, many of whom had become increasingly powerful after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime. A fifth category included local or central government forces complicit in the insurgency, such as the Afghan National Police and the Pakistani Frontier Corps.
These groups could be divided along three geographic fronts: northern, central, and southern. Figure 13.1 provides a rough illustration.
The northern front stretched from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province to Afghan provinces of Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar. The largest of the groups in this region was Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, but other groups were also operating in this front. One was an offshoot of Hezb-i-Islami led by Anwar al-Haq Mojahed, whose group was made up of former Hezb-i-Islami fighters, disgruntled tribesmen, and some ex-Taliban. Another was TNSM, whose objective was to enforce sharia law in Afghanistan and Pakistan. TNSM fractured into three blocs based out of Pakistan: Sufi Mohammad’s loyal following, a Swat-based faction started by Sufi Mohammad’s son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah, and a Bajaur-based
militant group led by Mullah Faqir Muhammad. Bajaur is located at the northern tip of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Swat district is located east of Bajaur in the North West Frontier Province.
FIGURE 13.1 The Insurgent Fronts
Lashkar-e-Taiba was active on this front, as was al Qa’ida, including Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, an Egyptian who had fought against the Soviets in the 1980s and had married a local woman. There was also a variety of criminal organizations, especially groups involved in the illicit timber and gem trades. Timber was smuggled across the border into Pakistan by networks run by timber barons. Some Afghan and Pakistani government officials were also involved in assisting insurgents and criminal organizations—often to take a cut of lucrative business opportunities. “Illicit timber trading was big business,” noted Larry Legree, the Provincial Reconstruction Team commander from Kunar. “Everyone, from government officials to insurgent groups, had their hands in the profits.”3
The central front lay farther south along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It stretched from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas to eastern Afghan provinces of Paktika, Khowst, and Lowgar. One of the most significant groups was led by Jalaluddin Haqqani’s son Sirajuddin (“Siraj”), who was especially elusive. U.S. military and intelligence analysts strained to get a good photograph of him. Haqqani’s organization had close links with Pakistan’s ISI, from which it received aid, and it became lethal at conducting attacks deep into Afghanistan. Haqqani also had close ties to an umbrella group, Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan, which operated out of Waziristan and was led by Baitullah Mehsud. Both the Pakistani government and the Central Intelligence Agency publicly stated that Mehsud was involved in the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007.4 Al Qai’da also operated in this area, along with a number of other foreign groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Finally, there was the southern front, in the southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province. The largest group in this front was Mullah Omar’s Taliban, based near Quetta. The Taliban linked up with a number of Pashtun tribes, especially Ghilzai tribes, which provided logistical support, fighters, and local legitimacy. Its strategy involved approaching local tribes and commanders at the village and district levels. In some cases, Taliban commanders were well received because of common tribal affinities or because locals had become disillusioned with the Afghan government—fed up with the slow pace of reconstruction and the paucity of security. Where they weren’t well received, they sometimes resorted to brutal tactics. “They have perfected the art of targeted assassination,” one soldier noted, “to intimidate locals who support the Afghan government. A bullet in the head is all it takes.”5 The southern front also boasted criminal groups, especially drug-trafficking organizations, which operated on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The skyrocketing trade in poppy was a boon to insurgent organizations such as the Taliban, as well as to Afghan government officials.
There was evidence of some coordination among the major insurgent groups at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, including through several shuras, or Islamic councils, located in Pakistan.6 But there was no unified leadership.
“Learning Organizations”
These groups focused on classic guerrilla warfare. Promoting disorder among the population is a key objective of most insurgents, and disrupting the economy and decreasing security helps produce discontent with the indigenous government, undermining its legitimacy. Once insurgents establish a hold over the population, those who are hostile to the insurgents often become too fearful to oppose them. Some may be eliminated, providing an example to others. Some may escape to other areas, and still others may be cowed into hiding their true feelings. By threatening the population, insurgents keep individuals from cooperating with the indigenous government and external actors.7
Afghan and Pakistani insurgent groups were successful at adapting their tactics, techniques, and procedures to become “learning organizations.”8 The command-and-control structure of the insurgent groups was fragmented. Within the Taliban, for example, the inner shura maintained links to field commanders through a weak hierarchical structure. A district or village commander usually had a connection to one or two shura members, as did a more important commander who operated in a wider geographic area. One UN study found that “there is no area ownership among TB [Taliban] commanders. Several TB commanders may carry out operations in the same area of operation without recognizing a hierarchy amongst them. Regular competition between commanders seems to be the norm rather than the exception.” It continued: “Once commanders grow in importance by laying claim to military success they receive special attention from al-Qaida and foreign donors. They subsequently adopt a more independent stature and start individual fundraising.”9
Insurgent groups conducted a wide variety of attacks against U.S., Coalition, and Afghan security forces as well as Afghan and international civilians. They generally yielded the population centers to U.S. and Afghan forces, choosing instead to base operations in rural areas. They staged ambushes and raids using small arms and grenades, and they shelled U.S. and other NATO troops using 107-millimeter and 122-millimeter rockets and 60-, 82-, and 120-millimeter mortars. The weapon that received the most media attention was the improvised explosive device (IED), which was particularly effective against Coalition ground convoys. Most shelling and rocket fire was not accurate, though there was some evidence that insurgent forces considered the simple harassment of enemy forces and populations to be valuable. Insurgent groups, especially the Taliban, also succeeded in capturing government installations, villages, and occasionally district centers, though usually for brief periods. They intimidated local villagers by distributing shabnamah, or night letters, leaflets that warned villagers not to cooperate with foreign forces or the Karzai regime. In addition, insurgents conducted targeted assassinations, torched reconstruction and development projects, and set up illegal checkpoints along major roads.10
The Taliban and other groups also began to stage kidnappings. Taliban commander Mansour Dadullah acknowledged: “Kidnapping is a very successful policy and I order all my mujahideen to kidnap foreigners of any nationality wherever they find them and then we should do the same kind of deal.”11 Kidnappings were increasingly used to raise money. They had been profitable in Iraq, especially since a number of governments—such as France and Japan—paid ransoms for the release of hostages.12 This practice had caused L. Paul Bremer to send out a memo to foreign embassies in Iraq condemning ransom payments. Bremer’s words were just as true for Afghanistan as they were for Iraq: “There is no greater spur and no greater encouragement to hostage takers, than the payment of ransom money in return for the liberation of hostages. Such payments make hostage takings more likely; they increase the level of jeopardy for present and future hostages; and they have the potential to fund the procurement of weapons that will be used to continue the terror that is damaging this nation and killing its people.”13
In Afghanistan, there were strong indications that foreign governments, including South Korea and Italy, paid for the release of hostages. 14 In 2007, dozens of hostages were taken, including an Italian journalist in Helmand Province, two French and three Afghan aid workers in Farah Province, two German engineers and four Afghan nationals in Wardak Province. The worst incident involved the kidnapping of twenty-three South Koreans in Ghazni Province. But the kidnappings were only the beginning. One Taliban military official said: “Our military tactic is to control a district center, kill the government soldiers there, and withdraw to our mountainous strongholds, where it would be very difficult for the government to pursue us.”15 Some, if not many, of these tactics, techniques, and procedures were similar to those used by mujahideen forces against Soviet and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan army forces during the Soviet-Afghan War.16
In such southern provinces as Helmand, insurgents dep
loyed in larger numbers. In 2002, they operated in squad-and platoon-size units. In 2005, they operated in company-size units of up to a hundred or more fighters. In 2006 and 2007, there were a few cases in which they operated in battalion-size units of up to 400 fighters, though they deployed in smaller units as well.17 This suggested that insurgents moved around with more freedom without being targeted by Afghan or Coalition forces. They also shifted from hard targets, such as U.S. and other NATO forces, to soft targets, such as Afghans involved in election work, nongovernmental organization workers, Afghan National Police, and Afghan citizens believed to be cooperating with Coalition forces or the Afghan government.
Some of the most brutal incidents were the executions by insurgents of “collaborators” who sided with the Afghan government or Coalition forces.18 Taliban fighters killed Islamic clerics critical of their efforts, including Mawlawi Abdullah Fayyaz, head of the Ulema Council of Kandahar.19 Schools were increasingly targeted, and as one Taliban night letter warned: “Teachers’ salaries are financed by non-believers. Unless you stop getting wages from them, you will be counted among the American puppets.”20 This rationale also extended to election candidates and members of Parliament, since “the elections are a part of the American program” and those who participate in the elections “are the enemies of Islam and the homeland.”21