Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  The Taliban have been portrayed as coming out of nowhere and rescuing a war-weary population that welcomed them because they were terrorized by warlords. In truth, most of the country was not in an anarchic state, although Kandahar and its environs were. In much of the country the Taliban had to fight its way into areas that were already at peace and where local services were better than anything the Taliban could provide. The Taliban even engaged in rape, murder, and massacres to conquer some areas. Some of their violence was ethnically motivated. In some places they violated Islamic laws of war with a scorched-earth policy. They even had a sex trade in Tajik girls. And while Kabul was not at peace, residents of the capital certainly did not welcome the arrival of the Taliban, who also bombarded the city. According to Afghan expert William Maley, “While the Taliban attempted to legitimate their power by reference to their provision of ‘security,’ with the passage of time it became clear that . . . they had made a wilderness and called it peace.”

  The austere mix of strict Islam and Pashtunwali was harsh. But Western NGOs were able to work in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, though subject to draconian conditions, and the United States had a civil relationship with the group through diplomatic back channels until 1998. The Taliban had little interest in the West but instead cracked down on local practices they viewed as un-Islamic, including music and flying kites. The Pashtunwali code of hospitality forbade the Taliban leadership from handing over the Al Qaeda leadership, as the Americans demanded after September 11, and NATO, which was seeking a new reason for its existence after the demise of the Soviet Union, united to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan and install a friendlier government. The UN-brokered Bonn conference in December 2001 established an interim administration led by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun with no power base of his own. Pashtuns are the largest of Afghanistan’s fifty-five ethnic groups, but the government was dominated by Tajiks, many of whom had battled the Taliban. In 2002 a loya jirga (grand assembly) was held, which established a transitional administration dominated by Tajiks. For the first four years, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was restricted to Kabul, where it protected the Karzai government but ignored the fires spreading throughout Afghanistan. After September 11, the Pakistanis played a double game, joining the U.S. “war on terror” while continuing to back the Taliban. The Pakistani dictatorship backed Islamists to help it confront its more secular and popular democratic opposition. But these Islamists were allied with the Taliban. Just as American neglect of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal led to the Taliban and secure bases for Al Qaeda, so too did American neglect of Afghanistan after it removed the Taliban and moved on to Iraq lead to a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Following the defeat of the Taliban, the American strategy was centered on a “light footprint,” relying on Special Forces to turn Afghanistan over to local leaders, with a weak central government in Kabul. Warlords were paid to run things and fight Al Qaeda. A continuous flow of U.S. funds was necessary to maintain the local militias and prop up anti-Taliban elders.

  I had first come to Afghanistan in 2004, after my time in Falluja, seeking respite from the war. It was an idyllic time for me. Afghanistan was still the forgotten war; the mood in the country was optimistic. I drove up to Bamiyan in the north and went swimming in lake Bandi Amir. South of Kabul, I took road trips through villages in Logar and Paktiya all the way to the Pakistani border. I watched the first presidential elections in Gardez. But by 2008 the distance between Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to have closed. It was as if Afghanistan had become Iraq’s neighbor. The foreign military occupation was now killing and arresting innocent civilians, always denying initial reports that turned out to be accurate. The insurgency was increasingly sophisticated, learning from Iraq; its IEDs and suicide bombings were devastating.

  The alleged success of the surge in Iraq seemed to confirm the notion that more American troops could solve other problems. For American politicians and the complacent news media, the U.S. was on the verge of victory in Iraq, even if it had taken five years, the destruction of the country, a civil war, hundreds of thousands of dead, millions displaced, communities divided by concrete walls, and the creation of new militias to reduce the violence from its highest points. As I showed in previous chapters, this is not the case, and the reduction of violence, falsely attributed to the increase in American troops, was leading many to draw the wrong lessons from Iraq and then apply them to Afghanistan.

  Seven years after the Americans overthrew the Taliban, the movement was gaining confidence, able to control territory right up to Kabul’s backyard, while the American-backed government was weaker than ever. President Hamid Karzai was unable to extend his control beyond the capital. CNN was calling Afghanistan the “forgotten war,” and it had indeed received less attention than Iraq from the international media and even from the Bush administration. The 2008 presidential campaign changed that.

  For Republicans the military has traditionally been the chief tool of foreign policy, but Afghanistan became a much more central issue for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama than it did for John McCain. Obama wanted to legitimize his call for a withdrawal from Iraq by increasing troops in Afghanistan. The Democratic narrative was that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan and needed to swivel the cannons back to the original target. The Democrats worried about appearing weak. They wanted to prove that they too could be bellicose and tough, and kill foreigners. But calling the war in Iraq wrong didn’t necessarily mean that expanding the war in Afghanistan was right.

  By September 2008 there were already about thirty-three thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan and a total of sixty-five thousand troops in the international coalition. They were facing more resistance than ever, and by September 2008 the 2007 total of 111 dead troops had already been surpassed. Speaking at the National Defense University on September 9, President Bush announced a modest troop increase in Afghanistan, which he described as a “quiet surge” to help “stabilize Afghanistan’s young democracy.” He would not allow the Taliban to return to Afghanistan, he said, unaware that they already had, and that only negotiation with the Taliban could bring any hope of stabilizing Afghanistan. “Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan pose the same challenge to our country, and they are all theaters in the same struggle,” he said, proclaiming his “faith in the power of freedom.” But the Taliban had their own faith, and so far they were winning.

  There was a glitch in the matrix when, on September 10, 2008, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. In his prepared testimony, which he submitted after it was approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush, Admiral Mullen stated, “I am convinced we can win the war in Afghanistan.” His oral testimony was different. “I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan,” he said. In a war, if you are not winning, then you are usually losing.

  BEFORE LEAVING KABUL I bought several pairs of kala, or salwar kameez, the traditional dress worn by Afghan men consisting of a long tunic-like shirt with buttons on the top and baggy pants. I had grown my beard longer than ever, and endured suspicious looks in New York City subways as a result. In New York I had also taken intensive Pashtu-language classes, to at least have some basic communication skills. Very few Western journalists knew Pashtu, but it is the language spoken by the ethnic group that dominates the Taliban, one of the biggest thorns in the side of the American military in Afghanistan. It is also the language of those people in Afghanistan and Pakistan who support or protect the Taliban, and what remains of the original senior Al Qaeda leadership. Regardless of who ended up winning the 2008 election, I knew America was certain to remain embroiled in conflicts with movements based in the lawless majority-Pashtun areas of South Asia. I didn’t think conflicts could be understood by studying only one side; journalists needed to study Pashtu and not merely embed with the American military.

  Pashtu was not exactly in high demand, and t
he book the language school gave me was pretty basic and clearly designed for the military. It had a list of ranks, such as “general of the Air Force” and “private first class.” It also gave me a list of weapons such as land mines and bullets. It provided the Pashtu translation for important phrases like “You are a prisoner,” “Show me your ID card,” “Hands up,” “Surrender,” and “Let the vehicle pass.” If I wanted to arrest an Afghan, I was now prepared. Interestingly, in the list of foods the book included hummus, which is eaten in the Arab world but not in Afghanistan (unless some fastidious Al Qaeda volunteer brought some with him). The book provided essential advice such as “Don’t burp or fart in public,” “Don’t call everyone Hajji,” “Don’t trust everyone,” “Don’t use the same route every time,” and “Don’t offer pork to any Muslim.” It also advised me not to whistle or make catcalls toward any woman and not to insult “a native” in public.

  Ghazni fell to the Taliban in 1995, early in their campaign to seize Afghanistan from the warlords. I was told it fell without a fight, almost overnight, soon after Kandahar. There were many subcommanders allied with various mujahideen parties. Alliances shifted often, and it was easy for the Taliban to co-opt these commanders, who just put on turbans, flew the white flag of the Taliban, and said, “Okay, we’re Taliban.”

  In the last few years of their reign the Taliban even succeeded in gaining the cooperation of Ghazni’s Shiite Hazara community. So the area was fertile ground for the neo-Taliban, whose control was spreading once again. Tribal leaders were weak in Ghazni while religious leaders were strong, making it easier for the Taliban to embed themselves with the population. The neo-Taliban also seized upon the population’s many grievances. Police would release prisoners in exchange for bribes, while Afghan soldiers looted people’s homes and government officials took goods from shops without paying for them. In 2006 forty policemen quit, and some joined the Taliban, because their salaries were many months late. Police chiefs had to buy supplies with their own money, so they extorted from the population. More and more clerics started supporting the Taliban. In 2006 the former governor of Ghazni was assassinated after announcing he was taking over security in the Andar district so that he could defeat the Taliban there. By 2006, in Andar alone dozens of government officials and others viewed as collaborators had been killed by the Taliban; soon there was no government presence in most of Ghazni’s countryside. When the Americans distributed cash to villagers, they would hand it over to the Taliban, and as soon as the Americans visited a village the Taliban would follow and seize anything that had been distributed. Former mujahideen commanders in Ghazni joined the Taliban. A 2006 military operation called Mountain Fury was said to have “dealt Taliban and foreign fighters a string of sharp defeats” in Andar. The U.S. Army claimed that “large swaths of southern and central Ghazni Province, described as ungovernable as recently as late August, embraced the allies and the reemerging provincial government.” But things continued to worsen. Twenty-three South Korean missionaries were captured by the Taliban in Ghazni in 2007. That year eighteen Afghan de-miners were kidnapped from their base in Andar three weeks after a military operation attempted to remove the Taliban’s “shadow government” there, and when President Karzai gave a speech in Andar, the Taliban fired fifteen rockets at the event. One month before I arrived, Afghan broadcasters showed clips of Taliban kidnapping and executing two Afghan women on charges of “immorality.”

  Before I left for Ghazni, I spoke to a senior UN official. “I don’t think you should go,” he said. “It’s deteriorated. Many Taliban commanders were killed there, and the leadership is totally fragmented. There is a lot of criminality within. In the past there was a sense of protection for foreigners here, but being a foreigner there is a major risk. There are Taliban checkpoints in the middle of Ghazni at night. Much of Ghazni is under Taliban control.” I put his admonitions out of my mind. Three months earlier an Afghan soldier returned to Andar to irrigate his land. He was wearing civilian clothes, but the Taliban arrested him and executed him near the district bazaar. “The Andar district compound near the bazaar has only fifteen police,” said one local who now lived in Kabul and was afraid to return. “They can’t even secure their compound, so how can they secure the district?” His cousin had once worked for the Parliament in Kabul, but the Taliban had threatened him with death if he returned to his work, so he stayed in Andar.

  The Taliban governor for Ghazni issued ID cards and passports for the Taliban regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Farmers with land disputes went to the Taliban there to seek justice according to their interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence. Beginning in 2004 the roads in Ghazni started getting dangerous, but now the Taliban could stop you there in broad daylight and check your cellphone to determine from your calls if you were a worthwhile captive. The Taliban’s former minister of education had been released in exchange for the Korean hostages in 2007. He returned to assume a position of importance among the Taliban of Ghazni. In order to gain control of one district, a senior UN official told me, the province’s government-appointed governor had to move his troops and surrender control of another district. Before leaving I asked my friend if I should worry about my trip succeeding. “In Afghanistan you should always worry,” he said.

  Shafiq, another commander from Ghazni, drove us down as Mullah Abdillah sat in the front passenger seat. We were accompanied by Kamal, a twenty-eight-year-old Afghan who knew just enough English to confuse both of us. I had tried and failed to find a real translator; some were unavailable, and others refused when they were told what the trip entailed. With the Arabic I knew as well as my basic Farsi and Pashtu, I hoped I would manage.

  Abdillah had been injured recently in clashes with a rival commander from the Taliban, though at first he told me the wound was from an American bullet. He paid one thousand dollars of his own money for two surgeries at a private Kabul hospital to repair nerve damage. The wound was now covered with a bandage. He bore older scars on his arm and leg, and had lost one of his legs in fighting in the civil war during the ’90s. Abdillah was now a commander in the Dih Yak district of Ghazni. He told me he had five hundred men under his command. Abdillah was also a liaison with more senior Taliban leaders and regularly communicated with the Taliban’s minister of defense. Shafiq had light skin with a short light-brown beard and wore a cap with embroidery and rhinestones. He had fought the Russians with the mujahideen. I asked him who was a more formidable foe: the Russians or the Americans. The Russians were stronger, he told me, more fierce. “We will put the Americans in graves,” he said. Shafiq was a commander of fighters in Andar. He and Abdillah chatted and joked on the way to Ghazni. We were stopped at an Afghan army checkpoint, and the wary soldiers singled me out, growing more suspicious when they heard in my accent that I was a foreigner. One of the soldiers wore a brown T-shirt, and on his black vest he had a roll of plastic American flex-cuffs. My companions persuaded the soldiers that I was only a journalist. As we drove away, Abdillah and Shafiq laughed, explaining that the soldiers thought I was a suicide bomber.

  We soon left Kabul province and entered Wardak. The road, lined with poplar trees and green fields, took us between arid sand-colored mountains with sharp peaks. Nomadic Kuchi women with colorful scarves draped over them ignored us, tending to camels as small boys herded sheep. On the hill-sides were cemeteries with rough tombstones haphazardly pointing in various angles and multicolored flags flying above them. In Wardak the new road was torn apart by craters. We circled around them as if they were giant potholes, but most had been made by roadside bombs buried in culverts beneath the road. Without the culverts floods would wash away roads, but they were an ideal location to hide bombs targeting Afghan security forces, the U.S. military, and its allies, as well as the convoys of trucks that provided logistical support. We drove by a truck still smoldering from an attack the day before and a truck charred from an attack a month before. Three or four American armored vehicles drove by, as did Afghan Nati
onal Army (ANA) pickup trucks.

  By the time we reached the town of Salar in Wardak, we had passed about six trucks destroyed by Taliban bombs on the road. In Salar we approached a large group of cars with people standing on the side of the road by a gas station. Shafiq and Abdillah called Taliban friends on their mobile phones to see what was going on. “The Americans are fighting the Taliban,” my companions explained. We could see smoke several hundred meters away and heard the chatter of machine-gun fire interrupted by the thuds of mortar fire and loud explosions—which clapped against my ears and got closer, shaking us. I flinched and ducked, gasping and cursing, as Shafiq and Abdillah laughed at me. “Tawakkal ala Allah” (depend on God), Shafiq lectured me, using a common expression to tell me not to be afraid. That same month in Salar the Taliban had tried to assassinate the governor of Ghazni, wounding two of his guards.

  Two small green NATO armored personnel carriers zipped by driving away from the battle. Shafiq and Abdillah laughed. Bulgarians, they told me. As more cars stopped on the road, more men got out to watch the battle, point at what they could spot, and chat. At a small shop by the gas station, my companions bought a syrupy Taiwanese version of Red Bull called Energy. People went to urinate behind rusting shipping containers. Afghan men squat all the way down when they piss. I couldn’t manage this feat of acrobatic skill, and a man standing as he relieved himself would have immediately attracted attention, so I waited until everybody had left before I went and pissed between shipping containers.