by Nir Rosen
On my first night I had dinner with the Americans of Team Ironhorse and Colonel Saki, who headed the ANCOP in Helmand. Ironhorse was the U.S. squad training ANCOP. We found him watching Bollywood movies in his office. He brought out a pile of kabob and bread, and the Americans chatted with him through Bariyal, a thickly muscled translator the Americans called Shotgun. He was the 2002 weightlifting champion in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Like most translators who spend enough time with the Americans, he adopted their argot as well. “ANCOP are fucking badass people,” he told me. Colonel Saki and the Americans shared the same macho warrior culture, and the language divide proved easily surmountable. Ironhorse’s captain was going on leave, and he asked Saki what he wanted from the United States. Saki said he just wanted him to come back.
The next morning the frustrated Americans on Team Prowler helped the PR unload a truck full of rifles and ammunition. The Afghans had just tossed them in a pile without conducting any inventory or organization. “I’m at my wits’ end!” shouted Sgt. Ryan Kilaki. Captain Westby was exasperated because many of the cops were at home and not on the base. They are a quick reaction force, he told me, and they are supposed to live on base.
The British and Helmand police command had mismanaged a few hundred thousand dollars in back pay for the police, and the Americans had stepped in to cover the loss. “Jesus, fuck, they got a long way to go,” said an exasperated Sergeant First Class Clark. The British army had taken sixty men from the Provincial Reserve with them on a recent operation in Babaji. The PR men didn’t want to go with them, and the Americans were pissed off because the reserve was supposed to be one unit. Like many Afghans, the police believed that the British secretly supported the Taliban.
On the Fourth of July, Team Prowler set off with the PR to patrol Highway 601, the key road in the province. It connected to Highway 1, the main road in the country. All trade entering the province passed through Highway 601, and it was also the land route to supply British, American, and Afghan forces. The “skuff ” hall in the British-run base was running out of food. Villages along the road were controlled by the Taliban. The British were supposed to control the route. Sergeant Dyer, a brawny former Navy SEAL with the stern gaze, square jaw, and low raspy voice of a real-life Marlboro man, complained to me about nightly reports that Highway 601 was mined but that the police didn’t pursue the insurgents. Civilian vehicles avoided it because of IEDs. The police knew where the Taliban were but didn’t pursue them, and they were growing too dependent on the Americans. “At one checkpoint they were still wearing their man-jammies, not uniforms,” he said. “IEDs are placed two clicks from police checkpoints, they don’t go on patrol, at the sound of the first shot they request air support. But they’ve cried wolf too many times, and then they say, ‘If we don’t get air support we’re leaving.’”
Dyer was on his third combat deployment in Afghanistan. “There’s too much talk of COIN and civil affairs,” he said. “It requires security. You can’t build a school if you can’t protect the teacher.” The rules of engagement had changed over the course of Dyer’s three deployments. He worried that his men were more at risk because of limitations on when they could shoot. Like many American troops, he could barely hide his contempt for most of the other coalition members. Only the British, Australians, and Canadians were aggressive, he said. Americans joke that NATO’s ISAF actually stands for “I see Americans fighting” or “I suck at fighting” or “I stay at the FOB.” Some of the European allies, meanwhile, complained that the Americans were too aggressive.
Driving down Highway 601, an insurgent with an itchy trigger finger prematurely detonated his IED on the road in front of Team Prowler and the police. The police discovered the command wire for it and fanned around to look in vain for the trigger man. The blast slowed down the police. Captain Westby complained to me that the police were “squirrelly” and that he had to do a lot of “mentoring” to get them to go forward. They headed toward a village called Balochan. The National Directorate of Security men accompanying them—the NDS is the Afghan equivalent of the FBI—didn’t know how to get there, and none of the police had ever been there, so they got lost. Westby worried that this would be a problem when the police ran their own operations. The Americans took the lead, but when they got to Balochan, Lieutenant Farid, the police commander, insisted it was the wrong town. In Balochan they were shot at from four hundred meters away. A British contingent was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. The Americans, I was told, “lay devastating fire” on the tree line from where they received fire—then the insurgent fire subsided. The Americans couldn’t confirm any dead insurgents. “Afghans suck at shooting,” they said. The Americans thought they were up against foreign fighters because of the accurate shots. One policeman was shot in the head. The others thought he was dead; they laid him on the ground and covered his face. The Americans saw the man was still breathing and had a pulse, so they evacuated him by helicopter. The Americans searched the maze of compounds. One policeman was killed; his friend insisted on going out to save him, but the other Afghans were too scared. The police had no radios, so they couldn’t communicate, and their fire was coming too close to the Americans. They also weren’t wearing their armor. “They don’t like it because it’s heavy,” one American explained. Another policeman was shot in the chest. The others backed off, abandoning their friend. An American tried to figure out where the fire was coming from and drag the man to safety, as the interpreter Mansur ran to help. They extracted the dead policeman, and Lieutenant Farid was wounded in his calf. He was wearing a black T-shirt without body armor. “You and I as leaders have to make the decisions to set examples for our men,” Westby told him. Farid made excuses, and Westby felt like he was talking to a kid. Armor was hot and heavy and wouldn’t have helped his leg, Farid argued. An American was wounded. Mansur picked up the American’s rifle and started firing (all the interpreters were trained to fight as well). Sergeant Dyer was disappointed with the PR’s performance. “They sucked,” he said. “They folded,” one of his soldiers agreed.
The next day Team Prowler and the PR trained at the shooting range. Sergeant Dyer was dejected. “The Provincial Reserve aren’t ready,” he said. “Their training is too short. They can’t drive. They can’t shoot. They’re weak on tactics, lacking in motivation. In training the last few days, after two or three hours their performance drops even more. Squad leaders are terrible because in the Soviet system NCOs don’t do anything.” Mansur joined in, laughing. “They couldn’t hit targets,” he said. “Some hit the sand.” Out of eight men in each group, three could aim at a target, Specialist Campos told me.
Police working in the south had a high rate of desertion. They often refused to work if Americans were not present, and they were afraid to go on operations. Their vehicles were more vulnerable to IEDs and attacks. They lacked ammunition, fuel, and other essential supplies, and they didn’t have the logistical ability to provide it for themselves.
Bill Hix, an experienced Special Forces colonel with extensive COIN experience, led the Afghan Regional Security Integration Command in Kandahar, which was in charge of training and mentoring the Afghan police and army in southern Afghanistan, including Helmand. There were forty-one portraits on his wall of Americans from his organization who had died. All but two had been killed by IEDs. He would need a much bigger wall for the Afghans. From January 2007 to April 2009, he lost 2,096 Afghan police and 949 soldiers. Hix did not believe more American troops were needed, merely an “adequate” police force and army, whose numbers he hoped would double. “The police should be identifying clandestine networks,” he said. But there weren’t nearly enough of them: the ratio in southern Afghanistan was two police per thousand people. In the United States it was four per thousand; Afghanistan was at war, so more were needed. “We’re driving this car as we’re changing the engine,” he said.
Should Afghanistan cease to be a protectorate of the West, it wouldn’t be able to pay for it
s own security forces. It doesn’t have the resources to fund such a large military. The result, instead, would be a heavily militarized society. With the end of American subsidies, the men with weapons and training would return to warlordism and militias, preying on the population. Pakistan’s army, which had been subsidized by the Americans for years, became a state unto itself, independent of the civilian control it should have answered to.
An effective police requires an effective justice system, including judges, lawyers, court clerks, prisons, and an administrative system. Corruption among the police and other government officials was also a huge problem for the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. Afghan cops couldn’t be expected to turn down bribes when they knew that everyone else in the system was taking them. And it was the cops who took the greatest risks in the country’s most dangerous job. The high illiteracy rate also made it difficult to build a system of justice. How could records be kept? Training lasted only a couple of months. Creating and training security forces were difficult enough in peacetime, but they were even more challenging during war. After training the cops returned to the same conditions: corruption and lack of support. They were the only face of the Afghan government most people saw, and it was too often an ugly one.
Helmand is not only the worst province in Afghanistan; it is also the wealthiest. It has a sophisticated irrigation system and some paved roads. Its dam helps to pump out cheap, stable electricity. It is little wonder that Helmand, with some of the best agricultural land in the region, is the world’s largest grower of poppy. With the best resources in the country, it has been a convenient place for an insurgency to sustain itself. Although taxing heroin sales is one source of the Taliban’s finances, in fact the drug trade funds everybody and all sides in Afghanistan, and the Taliban get most of their funding from donors in the Arab Gulf and elsewhere. Heroin is Afghanistan’s only real industry, but it has created a parallel shadow economy that undermines and corrupts the government. The drug trade is more of a consequence than a cause of Afghanistan’s many problems.
In the 1980s and ’90s the Alizais dominated Helmand at the expense of their rival tribe, the Ishaqzais. Nasim Akhundzada was the top mujahideen commander in the area and was responsible for creating the poppy industry in Helmand. He brutally forced farmers to grow opium and established a sharecropping system that trapped poor indebted farmers in an endless cycle of planting opium. His brother Muhamad was his army commander, and Muhamad’s son Sher Muhamad Akhundzada, known as SMA, would go on to control Helmand. The Ishaqzais were dominant during the Taliban’s reign, from 1994 until 2001. But when SMA became governor after the Taliban were removed in 2001, the Ishaqzais were once again marginalized and punished. The Taliban took advantage of this rivalry to increase their influence over both majority-Ishaqzai areas and also Alizai groups. Most of the governors appointed by Kabul in 2002 were warlords. Helmand had no effective administration after 2001. The provincial government did not provide anything to locals, and it abused them. Between 2001 to 2006, SMA and those around him labored to build a strong base of support in Helmand, and he placed his men throughout the province’s police and government. Under his reign poppy growers affiliated with him were immune from eradication. SMA pressured farmers to grow poppy, leading to a 160 percent increase in the harvest. Meanwhile, the Taliban protected poppy farmers whose crops were targeted for eradication.
It took a while for Helmand to get really bad. In 2002 Afghan security locations in Helmand on the Pakistani border were attacked several times. In 2004 some clerics in the area urged their flocks to fight the Americans and Afghan government. Although militias allied with President Karzai helped ward off the Taliban, they also abused the population and took advantage of their power to punish rivals. They would also give false tips to the coalition or the Afghan security forces against their rivals. These fears drove many to seek protection with the Taliban. By 2004 it was clear that locals were being recruited in Helmand to join the new Taliban. Those who had suffered at the hands of Afghan security forces were especially susceptible to recruitment. In 2005 the Taliban began to set up strongholds in Helmand, and by 2006 they dominated most of Helmand. That year it became common for Taliban attacks in Helmand to involve hundreds of fighters.
Dad Muhamad Khan, the Helmand boss for the National Security Directorate under SMA’s reign, was known for being abusive. But the American military backed him because of his loyal service. In 2006 the British and the UN insisted that SMA be removed, and Karzai finally relented. The British had just taken over control of Helmand and discovered ten tons of heroin in the governor’s house. SMA’s successor as governor was Engineer Daud. Though Daud had not had a militia in the past, he demanded that he be allowed to set one up for his own survival. The government allowed him to have up to five hundred men. SMA still had a good relationship with Karzai, though, and was made a senator. His loyalists plotted against Daud, and Karzai made sure SMA was still the real power by appointing his brother as the deputy governor. Daud was pressured to support poppy eradication, which cost him the support of the local population. In late 2006 Karzai fired Daud, who was trying to go after militias and the unruly police of Helmand. Daud’s police chief was sent elsewhere. British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to save Daud but failed. The British were angry and blamed the Americans for Daud’s removal. Daud’s successor was weak and too scared even to go to Lashkar Gah, the capital for Helmand, for the first few months. After SMA was removed his militias stopped fighting the Taliban, so security only worsened. The Americans got SMA to arm tribesmen to fight the Taliban, but many switched sides and joined the insurgency. Similar defections occurred when the Americans tried to set up tribal militias in other provinces. SMA kept his militia even after he was no longer in power; he and his men still worked with Afghan security forces and the British and abused the population.
Though the Taliban failed to set up a base in northern Helmand in 2004, two years later they succeeded—thanks to the increased popularity they enjoyed as a result of SMA’s abusive attitude and arrogance. The rivalry between Alizais and Ishaqzais also led to fighting. When the government and the coalition began attempting to eradicate poppy in Helmand, the Taliban’s popularity increased. Pro-Taliban songs and sermons could be purchased in Helmand markets. Villagers would act as informers and help the Taliban set up ambushes, and they would throw stones at coalition convoys. Soon districts began to fall under Taliban control. The Taliban recruited from the displaced people’s camps in Helmand. During 2006 the area where poppy was harvested increased by 250 percent, and the next year it nearly doubled. By 2006 the Taliban had the support of the population in Helmand, and most of the fighters were locals. There were reports of the police collaborating with the Taliban against the coalition in Helmand, or even fighting against it. Helmand police would arrest people and demand ransoms for their release. Following six months of fighting in one district alone fifty-two Afghan police were dead. In another Helmand police unit of 350 men, seventy deserted in 2006. The British thought they would defeat the Taliban by the summer of 2006. Instead they realized they were besieged by up to two thousand of them in northern Helmand alone. Although the British had spent nearly ten million dollars on reconstruction projects in Helmand by the end of 2006, nobody seemed to notice. District governors and police chiefs in northern and southern Helmand were targeted. There were failed assassination attempts against Daud. Most districts were abandoned or unable to operate. The Taliban had a logistical base and a clinic for fighters close to the provincial capital that could handle nearly one thousand men. In May 2006 the British launched an operation to take control of Helmand, but in July the Taliban captured the Nawa and Garmsir districts. The British retook Garmsir, and then the Taliban re-retook it.
By the fall of 2006, the British were exhausted in Helmand and negotiated truces with the Taliban via village elders in two districts that allowed the elders to choose the governor, chief of police, and other officials in the district governments. The
Afghan government and American military were opposed to this “surrender,” but the UN backed the deal. A few months later the truces ended, with the British blaming the Americans for their demise. Daud had been crucial in negotiating the truces, but he was removed. Relations between the British and Afghan governments deteriorated. SMA maintained his pernicious control. In 2007 only four of the thirteen district police chiefs were appointed from Kabul, with the rest under the control of SMA, who remained close to Karzai. Karzai, meanwhile, complained that if it were not for pressure from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he would have reinstated SMA. Most police in Helmand were more like a militia, and mostly from the same tribe.
The year 2007 was the first in which the Taliban faced pressure in Helmand, but the situation continued to deteriorate. The Afghan army complained that police in Helmand were demanding road taxes from drivers and stealing private property. That year five hundred kilograms of opium were seized by security forces in the area and divided between the police and the army, with only fifteen kilograms given to coalition forces. The British were opposed to eradication, while Americans pushed for aerial eradication, which only further alienated the population. The British floundered, unable to hold territory or defeat an enemy that fought asymmetrically. On one occasion in 2007, the British responded to a single shot fired by the Taliban with mortars, heavy machine guns, and missiles, and they dropped a bomb for good measure.
In 2008 the deputy governor was assassinated by a suicide bomber while still inside a mosque. That year the U.S. Marines joined the eight thousand British troops. The Marines tried to take Garmsir and also failed. They spoke of implementing COIN, living among and protecting the people, holding the territory they cleared, and winning over the population. It seemed as though every year there was a new plan that was better than the previous one, and when the foreign troops moved on, the Afghans who had made the mistake of working with them would be killed. Although the stated goal of the Western coalition was to extend the reach of the Afghan government, in the past extending the reach of the very unpopular central government had only caused further instability. The Americans and the Taliban had a similar narrative: the Taliban promised to protect people from the Afghan government, and the Americans promised to protect them by extending the government’s reach. By 2009 half of Afghanistan was controlled by Taliban, and Helmand was the province most surely in Taliban hands. “Control” might be overstating the strength of the Taliban in some areas, but at a minimum they could deny the government and international forces the ability to control. In some cases insurgents did not formally belong to the Taliban. They may have been locals who resented the American and British occupation just as they had resented the Soviet occupation. Increased foreign intervention had made the security situation only worse for locals.