by Steve Coll
Colonel Kandarian, a balding man in his midforties with extensive combat experience in Iraq, rolled through the area with an armed escort. He sent his Afghan interpreter to talk to some children he saw hanging around, watching him.
“What did those kids say to you?” Kandarian asked when the interpreter returned.
“They said, ‘You can build your fort anywhere, because when the gardens grow, the Taliban will run at you.”
Kandarian thought, If that’s what an eight-year-old understands, what do the local adults know?
“How far do you get on patrol?” Kandarian asked a forward American officer he met.
“About a kilometer.”
“What happens after that?”
“After that, they think we’re Russians.”5
As they planned, Kandarian and his lieutenants studied the history of Soviet operations in the green zone during the 1980s. It was not encouraging. The Soviets had sent two armored regiments into the Arghandab Valley and still had not been able to hold it. Those were the battles that had taken Mullah Mohammad Omar’s eye.
The first elements of the “Strike” task force landing at Kandahar Airfield included engineering units that worked at a furious tempo to site and build new walled combat outposts along and south of Highway 1. By June, foot patrols began at an aggressive tempo. Strike soldiers discovered the unknown one walk at a time. One of Kandarian’s early decisions was to combine all bases into joint U.S. and Afghan facilities, to improve the Afghan forces and to give American soldiers greater access to local knowledge while on patrol.
The First Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, or “First Strike,” deployed early on in Zhari District. The regiment’s Bravo Company called themselves the “Bull Dogs.” On June 18, one of Bravo’s platoons marched on a routine patrol to a village. Staff Sergeant James Hunter, twenty-five, an Army journalist and photographer whose family lived in Kentucky, joined the maneuver. As he walked down a sandy lane holding his camera, a massive I.E.D. detonated, badly wounding him. The platoon radioed for evacuation and a helicopter soon appeared. Private First Class Benjamin Park, also twenty-five, of Fairfax Station, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., lifted Hunter’s body and carried him toward the chopper. A second I.E.D. detonated. Both men died.6
With that “double tap” land mine strike, the Second Combat Brigade’s war of attrition in the green zone—a fight that would become, alongside some of the Marines’ engagements in Helmand, the costliest in lives and limbs of the entire American war in Afghanistan—had opened.
June 19, 2010: Last night we went to a ceremony for two soldiers [Hunter and Park] that were killed from 1-502. It was all the units from 101st that were still at KAF and some other foreign units. It was a long-ass walk to the airfield where we waited around for about 30 minutes and then we marched out to the rear of the airplane and had 8 ranks lined up on each side, to form a corridor for them to bring the bodies into the plane. . . . Not that I didn’t know we were going into the shit of it but damn its different seeing a casket with an American flag wrapped around it being carried by you, while they play taps, and you have hundreds of other soldiers doing a ceremonial salute. I really don’t want to go home like that.
Some of the soldiers were a little freaked but I was surprised that so far everyone seems pretty resilient. I mean, we are only in second week though and still sitting around at KAF with not much to worry about except rocket attacks. I haven’t really gotten much of a chance to call Jenny. I’m starting to miss her a lot. It is just weird to not really have the ability to just call conveniently. . . . It was much different in Korea. The information flow is still just a drip from the faucet. So the guys that were killed were on a dismounted mission and hit a pressure plate I.E.D. One was the PAO [public affairs officer] who actually took our battalion photo.
—Journal of Lieutenant Tim Hopper
Art Kandarian had joined the Army in 1986, out of R.O.T.C. at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. He had gotten to know McChrystal on the battlefield in Iraq. Kandarian’s most difficult tour there was in Diyala Province, as a battalion commander in the Second Combat Brigade. The brigade rotated home in 2008. Kandarian took command in March 2009 and was told they would be headed back to Iraq after rest and refitting. Only in December were they told, no, they were headed to Afghanistan for a combat mission. Normally they would have a year to prepare; this time, it would be less than six months. Some of the brigade forces trained in dry mountainous terrain near Yuma, Arizona. Platoon leaders arriving in Kandahar were stunned to discover they had to ford muddy canals and Arghandab tributaries with their carbines held above their heads, as in iconic Vietnam photographs. This was a step-by-step battlefield where visibility was extremely poor and hidden I.E.D.s were the main danger. The basic tactical plan was to provoke contact with embedded Taliban forces and then destroy them or force them to flee the region. The patrolling conditions would test the acumen of even the most experienced infantrymen. There were, in fact, many such infantrymen in the Second Combat Brigade: soldiers, sergeants, and captains schooled the hard way about I.E.D.s in Iraq and elsewhere in Afghanistan, who knew how the enemy booby-trapped footpaths and the best ways to walk safely. Often, the Taliban rigged the easiest and most obvious pathways with trip wires and pressure plates. To survive, the veterans knew, you had to patrol down the least likely, most arduous routes. Never walk through an obvious opening in a grape wall, for example, when it was possible to climb over the highest point of the wall, however difficult. The easy openings were where the Taliban placed trip wires.
Yet not everyone in Kandarian’s task force had been trained for such yard-by-yard, life-or-death decision making. Because of the strains on the Army’s combat readiness after nearly a decade of continuous war, Kandarian had to fill out his green zone force by converting an artillery unit, the First Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, to an infantry role. Many of the officers and soldiers of the 1/320th had spent their careers learning how to fire big guns at the enemy from distant points, often from secure bases. They did not train routinely to conduct harrowing foot patrols. The 1/320th was Lieutenant Tim Hopper’s battalion, which partly explained the butterflies he recorded in his journal. He was taking command of platoon-level infantry operations he had never experienced; the lives and limbs of his men depended on his eyesight and judgment. Hopper was in his midtwenties. He had grown up in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, a town of ten thousand to the west of Boston. He enrolled in R.O.T.C. at Northeastern University. After college, he had served a year in South Korea before moving to become a medical platoon leader at the 1/320th at Fort Campbell. The idea that he should lead a platoon through the most difficult terrain of the Afghan war struck him as strange. When he enlisted in the Army, he listed infantry duty as fourteenth out of fourteen choices in declaring his preference for assignment. But he was accepting of his duty. This was not the only place in Iraq or Afghanistan where the Army had been forced to convert artillery to infantry. It was, however, an especially difficult place to try.
June 22, 2010: So the latest word is that we are going to this town Jazah to the north of the Shuyens, which is where Bravo is going. It is a town where no one has really been so it could be really good or really bad, we don’t know. . . . Well, I’m sure the plan will change a few more times, though. I got an intel dump from the S-2 the other day. . . . It was pretty good but worrying at the same time. I mean, it is about 80 percent I.E.D.s and some of them have fucked up these vehicles we have a lot. They have these new I.E.D.s called D.F.F.C. [Directionally Focused Fragmentary Charge] which are basically a big shotgun shell that shoots out a concentrated blast instead of buck spray. So they pack an old artillery round case with shrapnel and charge and cover the end with enamel to shape the charge a bit along with some HME [Home Made Explosives]. It blew the turret off the same type of vehicle I’ll be riding in about 75 [meters] away from the vehicle itself and the engine block about 50 [meters]
. . . holy shitake.
—Journal of Lieutenant Tim Hopper
“We will be unable to succeed in the governance in Kandahar if we cannot eliminate a vast majority of the corruption there and set up a legitimate government structure—period,” Admiral Mullen told reporters traveling with him to Afghanistan early in 2010. He added, “We’re not going to keep risking the lives of our soldiers if the will is not there to address these issues.”7
“Sending troops into Kandahar is like sending them to Chicago in the 1920s,” Holbrooke remarked to his staff in Washington. “The city administration is controlled by Al Capone,” that is, Ahmed Wali Karzai, or A.W.K., the longtime C.I.A. ally and a security contractor whose gunmen protected U.S. fuel and supply trucks. Ahmed Wali described himself privately to Frank Ruggiero, Holbrooke’s deputy, as “the most powerful official in Kandahar,” who could “deliver whatever is needed.” In reply to accusations that he was a drug runner, he volunteered to take a polygraph to prove his innocence. His protestations worked. Across the Obama administration and within N.A.T.O., opinion varied widely about how dangerous Ahmed Wali Karzai was, whether he really trafficked opium or not, and whether he should be engaged as a necessary evil or removed from power. The British commander of RC-South, Major General Nick Carter, favored tough love as the only practical course. McChrystal’s intelligence chief, Mike Flynn, and a civilian adviser, Sarah Chayes, who had lived and founded a nongovernmental organization in Kandahar, advocated ousting Ahmed Wali, although it was not clear how this might be done. McChrystal concluded reluctantly that without Hamid Karzai’s cooperation, he had few options.8
In mid-March, Flynn met Ahmed Wali at his Kandahar compound and told him that if the C.I.A. or I.S.A.F. intelligence units acquired any evidence that Karzai was collaborating with the Taliban or engaged in major criminal activity, Flynn would place Ahmed Wali’s name on the Joint Priority Effects List. This was the classified capture-kill list of enemy leaders and facilitators on the Afghan battlefield. American or N.A.T.O. forces could strike anyone on the list without warning.
“You’re threatening me,” Ahmed Wali observed.
“Yes, it’s a threat, but you’re threatening us by standing in the way of our success.”9
Still, I.S.A.F. never acted. American generals and diplomats tried to work with Ahmed Wali, as the Canadians had also tried, to persuade him to adopt the good-government tenets of counterinsurgency. He was dealt with as a “sort of unfortunate fact that was wished away or left to the C.I.A. to deal with,” as a senior N.A.T.O. official involved put it. McChrystal and Flynn settled on a policy by which they identified “red lines” that Ahmed Wali must not cross, such as providing material aid to the Taliban. The implication was that they would not arrest or attack Karzai for routine bribery or racketeering. The “red lines” strategy, reported a classified State Department cable, would at least mean that American “intelligence collectors will have a focus” and could gather evidence on the kinds of drug crimes and massive corruption that might trigger more decisive U.S. intervention.10
The uncomfortable truth was that the Obama administration did not have the means or will to remove Ahmed Wali Karzai or other strongmen in Kandahar. Hamid Karzai would have to act, and he had chosen to leave his allies in place. In any event, some of the Americans involved feared that if they decapitated a mob boss like Ahmed Wali, they might touch off a free-for-all to control his abandoned rackets.
June 26, 2010: Last night a [Specialist] from C/2-508 was killed [by an] IED followed by a complex attack from five different directions. They came up to a canal and were conducting a deliberate crossing and clearing it when they hit what they believe was a pressure plate IED followed up by small arms fire. . . . All this stuff has me really thinking about what’s going to happen up there. Not to mention that General McChrystal, the I.S.A.F. Commander, was relieved of command for contempt of the President. General Petraeus the CENTCOM commander is stepping down from his position to take over. Every day Kandahar is on the headlines and all the issues surrounding the war. We are really in the middle of history here and it probably is not going to be a good thing. . . .
Damn . . . what did I get myself into here? I am not a tactical genius. I’m smart but this doesn’t come naturally to me. I keep trying to put myself in the mindset of the Taliban but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. . . . Regardless of whether I feel like I’m ready or not I am being thrust into this and do not have a choice. My life is going to be on the line in the next month or so. . . . I’ve decided I am going to write a death letter for my parents, Jenny and my brother. I know it is morbid but I think it is probably a good thing to do just in case anything happens.
—Journal of Lieutenant Tim Hopper
On June 22, 2010, Rolling Stone published “The Runaway General,” a profile of McChrystal in which unnamed aides to the commanding general were quoted making loose, disparaging remarks to an embedded reporter about Vice President Biden and the French, among other subjects. The article made it sound as if the officers commanding the Afghan war held Obama and other civilian leaders in contempt. Stan McChrystal was a disciplined individual but retained something of a fraternity boy’s imperviousness to political risk. He did understand immediately the scale of his error. On Tuesday, June 22, 2010, the day the story appeared, McChrystal was supposed to appear by secure video for an interagency meeting about negotiating with the Taliban to end the Afghan war. The session was postponed. The general boarded a long flight to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the president.
The White House had previously scheduled a National Security Council meeting on Afghanistan in the Situation Room for Thursday, June 24. Upstairs in the Oval Office, Obama accepted McChrystal’s resignation after what the general described as “a short, professional” exchange. David Petraeus was already in the West Wing, waiting for the N.S.C. meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Reggie Love, the president’s personal aide, turned up in the hallways asking if Petraeus was around. Petraeus had no idea that Obama had accepted McChrystal’s resignation. The general followed Love upstairs; he passed the White House national security team coming out, refusing to make eye contact with him. He sat down with Obama and waited for a White House photographer to record the moment and leave.
“I’m asking you as your president and commander-in-chief to take command in Afghanistan,” Obama said.
Petraeus knew the only answer was yes. He tried to introduce his thinking about the planned drawdown of surge forces, that his recommendations would all be based on “facts on the ground,” as well as an awareness of the realities of politics in Washington and N.A.T.O.
The assignment was a step down in authority, as Petraeus oversaw the entire Central Command area of operations, from Cairo to Islamabad. (McChrystal had reported to him.) As it happened, although he had backed McChrystal fully during the first half of 2010, Petraeus had somewhat different ideas about how to prosecute the Afghan war on Obama’s time line. His arrival in Kabul that summer would lead to a reinterpretation of counterinsurgency, from Kandahar’s green zone to the Pakistani borderlands.11
June 28, 2010: So we are leaving KAF tonight. We are taking a Chinook up to FOB Jelawur. Four guys from my platoon went up yesterday. I was on the boardwalk getting some ice cream with Doc and my FO [Forward Observer] when we saw a couple guys from the 82nd [Airborne]. They came up and asked who we were relieving and we said we were going up to the Arghandab. The were telling us about it and man I’m not going to lie but it scares the shit out of me and kind of depresses me. They were telling me that it is really bad up there. . . . There is a shitload of I.E.D.s and they travel in a file with a dog team up front and a mine detector and that they are still losing guys. . . . He said they [the Taliban] are using kids as spotters and that when you see them get down and book it get ready for something to go down. Same thing with the farmers—when you see them leave, something is going to happen. He also said these guys are not your regular T
aliban. They are the Pakistani I.S.I.-trained guys and that they will ambush you and not break contact until rotary wing [American attack helicopters] is called in. . . .
This is going to be crazy. The trip wires are not only down at the foot or leg level but head level too. People get so focused on the ground that they forget to look up so we need to look up as well as down. The orchards are super fucking thick and you basically have to bear-crawl through them. The number one thing he said was that every operation needs to be incredibly deliberate and take everything slow. . . .
Well I am going to go relax and enjoy having two arms and two legs while I still have them.
—Journal of Lieutenant Tim Hopper
The initial phase of Colonel Art Kandarian’s campaign in the green zone wasn’t much different from that of the U.S. Army in the American West during the nineteenth century: Build forts in Indian Country and poke around. The task force’s engineering units designed a crude combat outpost—a C.O.P. or “Cop” as it was rendered in jargon—that could be erected in ten to fourteen days. The outposts were usually about 200 meters by 250 meters in area. The outer walls were made of HESCO gabions—manufactured blast walls of dirt held together by mesh wire, 11 feet high and 7 feet thick. The standard outpost design included Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment, or R.A.I.D., cameras with infrared capabilities that allowed soldiers to watch their perimeter from behind the HESCO walls. The larger forward operating bases in the zone also installed big aerostat blimps of the sort General Mike Flynn had ordered in large numbers, starting in 2009. These blimps were known as Persistent Threat Detection Systems. They allowed intelligence officers in secure quarters below to see for miles. “From six kilometers away, I could see a guy holding an AK and tell you what color his beard was,” as Lieutenant Colonel Brian Spears, who deployed to the green zone that summer, put it. Spears used the blimps to watch small Taliban groups as they shot at supply convoys on Highway 1. He could then order aircraft to drop a bomb on them.12