CHAPTER SEVENTEEN In the Eye of the Storm
AS IT BECAME CLEAR that the U.S. military would have to shift its focus from military operations to counterinsurgency tactics, new personnel were given a different set of responsibilities. U.S. Navy Commander Larry Legree was one of those new faces. Legree’s preparation for counterinsurgency operations in landlocked Afghanistan was, somewhat ironically, serving aboard an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, and an amphibious ship. It was not exactly standard training for participating on the front line of a major ground war. “I was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer,” Legree told me, almost apologetically. “The four and a half months I spent at Fort Bragg in North Carolina before deploying to Afghanistan was about the only preparation I had. I learned how to wear body armor and shoot, move, and communicate, but didn’t learn any real fundamentals about counter-insurgency.” Most of that had to come on the fly.
Legree also didn’t have the stereotypical disposition of a war-fighter. His congenial, unassuming temperament, honed during his childhood in western Michigan, and his extraordinary politeness seemed oddly suited for Afghanistan’s bloody front lines. He was also something of an academic. Legree attended the prestigious U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then went on to get three master’s degrees at George Washington University, Duke, and North Carolina State.
But he was a critical cog in the U.S. military’s transition in eastern Afghanistan from a purely war-fighting machine to a counterinsurgency force through 2008. Legree was sent to Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, only a few miles from the Pakistan border, to become the commander of a U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team. Insurgent groups had dug into the impenetrable terrain and created extensive cave networks along the province’s border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. They had done the same thing during the Soviet era. Legree’s job was to show locals that the United States could provide reconstruction and development assistance. “Our primary contributions were building roads and bridges,” Legree said, “as well as helping establish a health care network. They brought concrete change to local Afghans.” The roads and bridges paid off: Legree and his colleagues helped build extensive infrastructure across the province, transforming the dynamics of the local economy. As commerce began to flow more rapidly and into new areas, Legree became a powerful and popular figure.
“I was almost never targeted,” Legree said, somewhat nonplussed, since Kunar was one of Afghanistan’s most violent provinces. “My view is that the locals were pragmatic. They wanted the money and they knew I was the checkbook. The message got out: Don’t mess with the Provincial Reconstruction Team.”1 And Afghans in Kunar felt incresingly secure. A 2008 Asia Foundation poll indicated that Afghans in the province felt relatively secure, despite violence in isolated pocket like the Korengal Valley.2
An Epiphany
Legree was not alone in his efforts. The U.S. military gradually improved its counterinsurgency capabilities over the course of its tenure in Afghanistan, though it still faced an entrenched and dedicated enemy. Among the most successful contingents were those led by Major General David M. Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Coalition Joint Task Force 82. Rodriguez is tall and immensely polite but somewhat uncomfortable in front of large crowds. He had served as deputy director of regional operations on the joint staff at the Pentagon, where he was responsible for synchronizing and monitoring U.S. military operations abroad.
The 82nd Airborne’s previous tours in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004 had been marred by controversy, earning them a reputation as “doorkickers.” “We were good at one thing,” said Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. “Killing bad guys.” This ultimately proved counterproductive. Schweitzer was a gregarious, affable colonel with short-cropped hair, bushy eyebrows, and dark sunglasses that clung to his neck like a necklace. “What we needed to do was to spend more time separating the enemy from the population. That meant engaging in non-kinetic operations,” Schweitzer continued. In U.S. military lingo, “non-kinetic” referred to reconstruction and development activities, such as building health clinics, roads, and schools.3
In August 2002, the 82nd Airborne conducted Operation Mountain Sweep, which involved a weeklong hunt for al Qa’ida and Taliban fugitives in eastern Afghanistan. During the operation, a U.S. Special Forces team knocked at the door of a mud compound in the Shah-i-kot Valley, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. An elderly Pashtun farmer let the soldiers inside. When they asked if there were any weapons in the house, he led them to his only firearm, a decrepit hunting rifle. The Special Forces team thanked him and walked toward the next house. Not long after the Special Forces left, six paratroopers, also from the 82nd Airborne, also part of Operation Mountain Sweep, kicked in the door. Terrified, the farmer tried to run but was grabbed by one of the soldiers, while others tried to frisk the women. “The women were screaming bloody murder,” recalled Mike, one of the Special Forces soldiers who was present during the confusion. “The guy was in tears. He had been completely dishonored.” It was a strategic blunder, recalled another soldier. “After Mountain Sweep,” he noted, “for the first time since we got here, we’re getting rocks thrown at us on the road in Khowst.”4
This and other experiences had marred the 82nd Airborne’s reputation. But through the end of its rotation in early 2008, the 82nd Airborne had worked assiduously to change the general impression of the division, embracing the three core principles of counterinsurgency: clear, hold, and build. Colonel Schweitzer declared: “The Taliban and other groups tell locals: don’t send your kids to school, don’t take advantage of the medical care provided, and don’t support the government by helping with security. We say the opposite. Send your kids to school and we’ll build them, seek the available medical care, and the government will support you through the construction of roads, schools, dams, and infrastructure that will stimulate the economy.”5
Building on counterinsurgency lessons from the British, French, and American historical experiences, the 82nd Airborne increasingly focused its efforts on “soft power.” This translated into a greater focus on reconstruction and development projects and less emphasis on combat operations. At the core of this strategy was an assumption that local Afghans were the center of gravity, a basic tenet of counter-insurgency warfare. The French counterinsurgency expert Roger Trinquier summed this up lucidly: “The sine qua non of victory in modern warfare is the unconditional support of a population.”6
Many Afghans had been frustrated by the lack of development over the previous several years, and unhappy with poor governance. To address these concerns, the 82nd Airborne worked with tribal leaders to identify local needs and to develop projects that helped address those needs. Thus, in Khowst Province, for example, Colonel Schweitzer and provincial governor Arsala Jamal teamed up to build infrastructure and hospitals. In Paktia Province and in Kunar, where Larry Legree was stationed, locals saw newly paved roads, electricity, and reliable water projects move toward swift completion. A sizable chunk of the money came from the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), which enabled U.S. military commanders to dole out aid quickly. Another strategic component was hiring local Afghans to perform and evaluate the work.7
Against all odds, eastern Afghanistan appeared to rebound in 2008. In Khowst Province, the number of children in school quadrupled—from 38,000 in 2004 to more than 160,000 in 2008. Roughly 10 percent of Afghans in the east had access to basic health care in 2004, while more than 75 percent had access in 2008.8 And, perhaps one of the most revealing metrics of progress in a country where cell phones were a primary method of communication for those who could afford them, there suddenly seemed to be service throughout the region. It was a shock when my BlackBerry worked almost everywhere I visited in eastern Afghanistan, including in remote border outposts.
The 82nd Airborne Division’s efforts created a bit of defensiveness among some U.S. allies. In May 2008,
the British government circulated a paper in response to “suggestions that U.S. successes in their counter-insurgency campaign in eastern Afghanistan should be migrated to the south,” where British forces were located. The paper asked whether there were any lessons that might be applied to British operations in Helmand Province. The British pointed out that U.S. forces had been present in eastern Afghanistan much longer than British forces had in Helmand; U.S. military tours of duty were longer than British tours; and the United States provided significantly more funding through its CERP and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) than Britain had in the south. Also, there were important differences between the east and the south in geography, population density, tribal structure, and types of jihadi groups. The result, British analysts concluded, was that “the east is easier terrain for counter-insurgency” and that “differences of geography, of resources, and of campaign timing suggest that many of the American approaches…are not transferable to Helmand.”9
Building on Success?
Despite an innovative strategy, inadequate resources once again thwarted U.S. efforts. “We’re like the Pacific theatre in World War II,” a U.S. civil-affairs officer in eastern Afghanistan complained. “We will get more resources after we defeat Berlin,” he said, alluding to the U.S. focus on Iraq.10
There were too few American and Coalition military forces, and there was too little American civilian expertise to ensure the permanence of this progress. By 2008, some 56,000 Coalition forces were stationed in Afghanistan, compared with more than three times that number in Iraq. American troop strength was even more disproportionate. U.S. military force levels in Iraq were frozen at 140,000 personnel, while just over 30,000 were deployed to Afghanistan. Thus, as during the earlier periods of the campaign, the U.S. military, other Coalition forces, and the Afghan National Army could clear territory but generally could not hold it. In June 2008, General David McKiernan became commander of ISAF; several months later, his staff completed the ISAF campaign plan, which was fairly blunt about the lack of forces to hold territory, noting that NATO had to resort to an “economy of force and special operations” effort to make up for the shortfalls and “to disrupt the insurgency and shape future operations.”11 Troops involved in reconstruction work could have been reallocated to combat operations, but there were still too few civilians in the field from the State Department and USAID. The rough living conditions and acute security concerns meant that the U.S. military had to shoulder most of the burden for governance and economic development activities, which in more normal circumstances would have fallen to officials in the Department of State, Commerce, Agriculture, or USAID.
U.S. and other NATO forces also had trouble “building” in some areas. In his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, Roger Trinquier argued that counterinsurgency requires “an interlocking system of actions—political, economic, psychological, military—that aims at the [insurgents’ intended] overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime.”12 One of the most innovative aspects of the Afghan counter-insurgency campaign was the cooperation between civil and military programs, especially the use of Provincial Reconstruction Teams.13 The “building” that the Americans were able to accomplish almost always happened through these PRTs.
Each PRT consisted of roughly 60 to 100 personnel. Soldiers, who made up the bulk of each team, were divided into civil-affairs units, Special Forces, force-protection units, and psychological operations personnel. In most cases, more than 90 percent of the personnel were soldiers because of the struggle to get civilian personnel.14 According to Larry Legree, “recruiting civilians was a tremendous challenge” in Kunar Province. “A number of U.S. agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, were simply not optimized to operate in an insurgency.”15 Legree was fortunate, however, since he managed to recruit a handful of competent civilians to assist in development and reconstruction. One was Alison Blosser, a sharp, young foreign service officer who spoke Pashto and was instrumental in dealing with Kunar’s governor, Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi.
Both U.S. and NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams faced significant staffing hurdles. Short tours of duty—including some for as little as three months—made it difficult for PRT members to understand local politics and culture. There were also too few of the teams. Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the United States and other NATO countries were able to put PRTs in virtually all major Afghan cities, but they had little operational reach into rural areas.16 Colonel John Agoglia, director of the Counterinsurgency Training Center on Afghanistan, bluntly acknowledged that “many Coalition forces do not actively and consistently patrol their areas of responsibility or, when they do patrol, they sally forth from Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) for a quick-order patrol that has very little enduring effect.”17
USAID faced serious challenges in adapting to the new environment. According to one official involved, USAID’s initial attitude was to treat Afghanistan as a post-conflict environment. It wasn’t. It was an insurgency. USAID did not prioritize reconstruction aid geographically and focus specifically on the south and east until 2006.18
NATO countries also faced deep challenges in linking military operations with reconstruction efforts. In a series of briefings in 2008 at NATO headquarters in Kabul, for example, key military officials from Regional Command South expressed growing frustration with the failure to meld reconstruction efforts with military operations. Despite oral commitments to focus on development and not combat operations, these officers reported: “By the time we get to executing plans, most of our operations are kinetic.” There was little comprehensive NATO activity on economic development in rural areas of the south, and no systematic coordination between the military and such civilian agencies as USAID, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the UK’s Department for International Development. “The biggest problem we have,” the briefers concluded, “is consolidating military gains with development.”19
Civilian Casualties
In addition to reconstruction challenges, civilian casualties—collateral damage”-from NATO airstrikes created an uproar among Afghans, even though the Taliban and other groups killed a larger number of civilians. In 2008, U.S. military data indicated that the number of civilian casualties caused by NATO and Taliban fighting increased by somewhere between 39 and 54 percent from 2007 levels. 20 Over the course of the war, however, improvements in intelligence minimized the number of civilian casualties when the U.S. military planned airstrikes in advance. Rules were written to prevent major catastrophes. Targeters were required to obey strict procedures to minimize collateral damage. They had to make a positive identification of any target, and they were expected to alter the angle, depth, and type of bombs dropped, depending on the context. In addition, targeters were required to make a thorough assessment of who lived in a particular structure or area before calling in an airstrike. Problems sometimes emerged, however, when ground forces were ambushed in the field or came under unexpected fire. In such “troops-in-contact” situations, NATO and Afghan forces required immediate support, leaving little time to complete a formal collateral-damage assessment and increasing the possibility of faulty intelligence and civilian casualties. It was in these situations that the close air support—AH Apache attack helicopters, A-10 and F-14 fighters, B-52 bombers, and AC-130 Spectre gunships—could lead to heavy civilian casualties. To make matters worse, the Taliban and other insurgent groups frequently fired from homes and other buildings near civilian populations, retreated into civilian areas, and concealed themselves as civilians while firing on NATO and Afghan forces. Their goal, of course, was to trick NATO forces into killing civilians, a nihilistic and horrifying tactic that has nevertheless worked in previous insurgencies.21
Not all civilian casualties were caused by airstrikes, however. One of the most widely publicized incidents took place on March 4, 2007, when nineteen civilians were killed in
the eastern province of Nangarhar, a farming region known for its plump oranges, rice, and sugarcane. An explosives-rigged minivan had targeted a convoy of Marines from Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), who were traveling along the road between Torkham and Jalalabad. Some local Afghans insisted that the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away. U.S. officials said insurgents shot at the Marines and may have caused some of the civilian casualties. But a U.S. investigation of the incident concluded that the Marines’ response was “out of proportion to the threat that was immediately there.” Lieutenant Colonel Paul Montanus, commander of 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, after consultation with Major General Dennis Hejlik, MARSOC commander, pulled the Marine company out of Afghanistan days after the incident. He had “lost trust and confidence in the MARSOC leadership” in Afghanistan.22 The U.S. military formally apologized, telling the families of the victims that they were “deeply, deeply ashamed” about the incident and describing it as a “terrible, terrible mistake.”23 The local response was swift and intense. Angry demonstrations erupted in Nangarhar and other provinces, with locals chanting antigovernment and anti-American slogans.
On August 22, 2008, U.S. and Afghan forces in the Shindand district of Herat Province were ambushed during an operation against a Taliban commander named Mullah Sidiq, who was planning to attack a nearby American base. Pinned down under small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, U.S. Special Forces engaged Taliban forces with small-arms fire, crew-served weapons, and close air support. Just after midnight, an AC-130H Spectre gunship opened fire with 20-millimeter guns and 105-millimeter howitzers on several compounds that were believed to house a large contingent of Taliban. But the airstrikes also killed civilians. The U.S. military initially reported that only seven civilians were killed in the attack while the strikes killed nearly three dozen Taliban insurgents, including Mullah Sidiq.24
In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan Page 35