88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  The warlord had told Jim he would be willing, for a consideration, to allow his eight guests to travel to the local airfield, as requested. But it would take time. There were at least two other tribal leaders who controlled territory between his area and the airport. They would have to be negotiated with. It would take time, he repeated. The conversation ended abruptly.

  For Jim, JSOC liason officer Marco, and David Donohue, the consul-general, it had already been a long day. Early that morning, David received a call from the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Islamabad. Afghan colleagues in Ghazni, they said, had called to tell them that Georg Taubman, leader of the eight SNI employees, was with them at the Red Cross office there. David had rushed to report the exciting news to Jim and Marco. After quickly consulting with the JSOC forward control base in Oman, Marco thought they could get rescue helicopters in to Ghazni that night, after dark. They settled on 11:30 PM as the target for a pickup.

  David hurried to ICRC to speak on a sat phone with Georg, who in turn summoned the two American women, Dayna and Heather. He told them to be prepared to link up with their rescuers at eleven thirty; further instructions would follow.

  Meanwhile, Jim got in touch with Isfandiar. When the Afghan source had learned on November 13 that the SNI detainees had been gathered up by their captors the night before to join the Taliban’s southward exodus from Kabul, the loyal agent had set off in his car in hopes of somehow locating them. He found the Kabul-Kandahar highway choked with vehicles and armed men fleeing the Northern Alliance’s advance on the capital. When Jim reached him early on the morning of the 14th, Isfandiar was sitting forlornly in Wardak, having spent the night by the side of the road. A group of fighters had stopped him and stolen his car; thankfully, he had somehow managed to keep his sat phone hidden.

  “Get to the ICRC office in Ghazni right away!” Jim commanded, sending his agent off again to the south, this time hitchhiking. When several hours later Jim again heard Isfandiar’s voice, the young man sounded scared.

  “I am in the ICRC office with Georg and the local commander.” There had been a general uprising in Ghazni on the 13th, forcing the Taliban to flee. Now the town was chaotic, alternating between joyful euphoria and armed tension. Various small-caliber warlords were staking out their turf in the absence of any clear authority. “The men here are very suspicious of me,” Isfandiar continued, a slight quaver in his voice. “They want to know where I got the satellite phone.”

  “Isfandiar,” Jim replied. “Listen to me. Give the sat phone to Georg. Be sure to give him the charger as well, and get out of there. Leave right away.” He was happy to comply.

  Over the next several hours, Jim held a series of conversations in Dari with the commander. Alternately ingratiating and truculent, the strongman kept changing his story as to what he could or would be willing to do with the foreigners on his hands. He seemed to recognize that his guests represented a financial opportunity, but the political situation on the ground was changing rapidly, almost hour by hour, and he had to accommodate for it. It seemed everyone in Ghazni was aware of the ex-captives’ presence. Those whose cooperation was necessary to move them would want their cut.

  The minutes ticked past 9:00 PM, and then nine thirty. It had been hours since Jim last spoke with the commander. Marco reported that the helicopters were in the air; their estimated time of arrival was about midnight Islamabad time, 11:30 PM Afghan time. I left the room, with orders to come get me if anything happened.

  It must have been nearly ten thirty at night Afghan time when the phone rang again. Everyone leaned forward.

  “Georg! Georg, where are you?” The SNI chief reported that the commander with whom Jim had been speaking earlier had agreed to allow the detainees to remain overnight with a local family, provided they promised not to leave the area. “Georg,” Jim pleaded. “Do you know where the airport is? You’ve got to go to the airport.”

  “No. We cannot.” The German was adamant. “This family have been good to us. If we leave, they will be in serious trouble.” Jim was trying everything he could think of to get Georg to change his mind.

  “Georg, listen to me. You have a responsibility to the others. The family will be all right.”

  “No. We will stay here tonight. I will hang up now.” The line cut off. A collective groan went up from the group.

  Sitting on the floor a few feet away, his back against the wall, Marco was staring intently at a laptop perched atop his knees. He was wearing earphones; a long black wire trailed from him to the window, where it joined a bundle of similar wires running upward to a series of satellite antennas on the roof. The two rescue helicopters continued churning through the night. They had a full complement of specialists aboard, from shooters to medics. There was even a hostage rescue psychologist with them. These guys never ceased to amaze. If we could somehow get our lost sheep to the retrieval point, the helos would be there to pick them up.

  Marco was speaking quietly with the JSOC controllers in Oman via his encrypted Irridium phone. They, in turn, could relay his information to the helicopter pilots, and convey their responses. On the laptop Marco could see the map grid of the Ghazni airfield and the surrounding area. He had arbitrarily selected a grid point at the field, to which the helo pilots were now vectoring. JSOC had its grid point, but the detainees had no grid. Marco was filling his JSOC colleagues in on the latest developments.

  Despite our best efforts, it appeared nothing else would happen until morning. Some drifted out of the room. David Donohue appeared stoic as usual, but his face was ashen. He had done everything he could to free the detainees since their arrest by the Taliban in August. He felt the tension more than anyone.

  About thirty minutes later, the phone rang again. Georg seemed slightly out of breath, as though walking rapidly.

  “We are on our way to the airport.” A surge of energy coursed through the room. Jim relayed Marco’s instructions: When they arrived at the airfield, they were to go to the most remote part, away from any people, and try to stay out of sight. They were to find a barrel, or anything that would contain a fire, and gather as much flammable material as possible. If there were any Afghans with them, the locals should stay back when the helicopters approached. They must not display any weapons. Anyone with a weapon was liable to be shot. They were to call as soon as they were ready.

  It seemed like an eternity as the JSOC helos continued their approach from the southwest. Word spread; soon the operations war room was packed, despite the hour. The aircrew reported they were five minutes out.

  “Georg, do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes. Yes. But we haven’t much wood.”

  “Start the fire. Make sure it’s visible. Make sure you keep it going!”

  Use of a fire to mark their location was less than ideal. The flames might “whiteout” the helo pilots, equipped with night-vision goggles. But there was no alternative. With Marco relaying word of their progress, the helos made their approach, low and fast, toward the airfield. There was no fire in sight. They circled once, and then again. At length, they spotted a fire, off in an isolated corner of the field, and made for it. The lead helo went into a hover and quickly landed, blades still spinning rapidly. Several of the crew made a few tentative steps forward, peering toward the fire barrel. Out of the shadows came a handful of bearded, turbaned men, carrying weapons.

  As Marco relayed, secondhand from the Oman control station, what the crew was seeing on the ground, Jim was nearly shouting at Georg.

  “Where are you? Why aren’t you showing yourselves?”

  My heart sank. Had they been taken hostage again? JSOC operators were trained for rapid, lethal missions. Dealing sensitively with armed and undisciplined militiamen was not part of their normal repertoire. One menacing move from the Afghans, and a firefight would surely break out. We didn’t even know where the detainees were at this point. It had seemed that we were so close. Now the situation was turning into a disa
ster.

  Jim relayed word from Georg. The detainees could hear a helicopter, but they were at a different part of the field. The helo had approached the wrong fire. The pilot revved his rotors, rose, and banked sharply away from the Afghans. Meanwhile, Georg reported that their fire was going out.

  “Are the women wearing head scarves?” Jim asked. They were. “Well then, tell them to throw them on the fire!” Georg’s sat phone, whose signal had been steadily weakening, cut out. Communication with the detainees was lost.

  The helo swung toward the opposite side of the field. The pilot could see a small glimmer of flickering light. There were minutes of complete, seemingly interminable silence as Marco hunched forward, listening intently to the feed from Oman. Suddenly, he looked up.

  “They’re on board,” he said.

  Chapter 26

  * * *

  ENTERING THE RAPIDS

  NOVEMBER 14–15, 2001

  THE VOICE ON THE other end of the line sounded unbelievably, almost maddeningly young. It was always like that with the Predator operators. I suppose it was the combination of extreme youth and cocky self-assurance which always got under my skin. “Do you have an update on the convoy?” I demanded.

  “No, sir. The Predator has dropped off.”

  “What? Dropped off? What do you mean, it’s ‘dropped off’?”

  “Too much time on station, sir. Had to return to base for refueling.” Always the clipped, pseudomilitary manner. It would have been nice if the idiot had let me know before now.

  “Well, when can you get another one on station?”

  “About an hour, sir. Maybe a little more.”

  “The convoy will be long gone by then! How will you ever find it?”

  “We know their average speed, where they’re reported to be going, and the likely route they’ll take. We should be able to pick them up again.”

  I was not reassured. Earlier on that November 14, we had received a highly reliable report from one of our human sources in Kandahar that the Taliban had dispatched a force of between 150 and 200 fighters, mounted in some twenty trucks, to attack Gul Agha in Shin Naray. A few hours later, a Predator was able to confirm the movement of a large convoy matching that description, moving eastward on the highway from the Taliban capital. And now we’d lost it.

  Mark, Shirzai’s contact, had immediately sent an encrypted message to the chieftain to warn him of the potential danger. We were able to source the information to aerial reconnaissance—we would never have intimated the existence of a human source for fear of compromising him—but there had been no confirmation from Shirzai’s people that the warning had been received. This was shaping up to be a disaster. Shirzai had reported having 350 men under arms in Shin Naray, but we could hardly be sure of that figure, especially given the Afghan penchant for exaggeration. And even if the Taliban were attacking with an inferior force, they would have the potential advantages of surprise and the ability to concentrate their forces at one or two points of attack, while Shirzai’s men were spread out in defensive positions all along the ridges flanking the valley. The Taliban were experienced fighters; we had absolutely no knowledge of the experience or martial qualities of the mob Shirzai had assembled. Why the hell hadn’t we heard back from them?

  I spent the next ninety minutes pacing up and down the hallway, bursting into the operations war room at what must have appeared to them like thirty-second intervals, asking whether we’d heard anything from Shirzai. Dave, who had stayed late for yet another video conference with headquarters and had noticed the long absence from my office, came looking for me as I wandered aimlessly, hunched over in frowning concentration.

  “You’ve got to calm down,” he said.

  “How the hell can you be so calm?” I shot back. “The Taliban are about to attack Shirzai, and they don’t even know what’s coming!”

  Dave smiled. “They’ll be fine,” he said. He had followed Gul Agha and his father closely during the jihad. “These guys know how to defend themselves.”

  Earlier that day, Gul Agha entered Shin Naray on schedule, just before dawn, with the Afghans’ claimed 350 armed fighters and 23 vehicles. As promised, ISI arranged their unmolested passage past the Pakistani military checkposts along the Afghan border. An additional 300 fighters, lacking weapons and so useless for the moment, remained back in Quetta.

  Many who have never dealt with them believe that the ISI is essentially a rogue organization, a sort of state within a state, pursuing its own independent policies and subverting the authority of the Pakistani government it nominally serves—particularly where Afghanistan and Kashmir are concerned. That view is far too simple, and fundamentally incorrect. In my experience, the ISI is a disciplined military organization that follows the orders of the chief of Army Staff, even if individual officers, and particularly those with years of experience implementing state policy in Afghanistan and Kashmir, have clear sympathies that they are not above promoting when the occasion presents. Their dealings with Gul Agha on this occasion were a case in point.

  When Shirzai’s people met with the ISI man in Quetta to arrange for road escort and for the eventual delivery of several truckloads of Pak military weapons, the officer carried out his orders to the letter; but during their meeting, when alone behind closed doors, he pointedly suggested to his Afghan friends that they were making a serious mistake in trying to overthrow the Taliban, one which they would regret, and one which they should seriously reconsider. The two faces of ISI at work.

  No sooner had Gul Agha’s fighters entered the valley and secured it than they raced into the villages of Arghistan district immediately to the west, where they surrounded a force of sixteen Taliban. Forty-five other Taliban fighters scattered through the area could also sense the shift in local attitudes, and surrendered their weapons. Gul Agha had not intimated to anyone on either side of the border, outside of his closest associates, precisely where he was going, lest the Taliban be waiting for him when he got there. Now safely ensconced, he immediately sent commanders north into Maruf and south into Spin Boldak to rally tribesmen to his cause, and ordered the 300 fighters left behind to join him. En route from Quetta that afternoon, though, they found the road blocked by pro-Taliban students from a Pakistani madrassa in Gulistan. Gul Agha ordered his men via radio to turn back for the time being rather than risk a violent confrontation. That same evening, the Taliban Shura in Kandahar lost no time in reacting, apparently intending to strike a crippling blow against the Barakzai chieftain before he could attract more disgruntled tribesmen to his cause.

  Once again, as the minutes ticked past 1:00 AM, I phoned CTC’s Global Response Center. “Have you located that Taliban convoy yet?”

  “No, sir. We can’t find it.”

  I was frustrated beyond belief. “How can we lose an entire convoy?” The watch officer explained that the Taliban was becoming clever at hiding from our overhead reconnaissance.

  “They’ve probably hidden the trucks in a brush thicket somewhere, and placed dirt and branches over them.” At least by now we’d received acknowledgment from Gul Agha that they were aware of the threat. But there was still a substantial Taliban force, unmolested and presumably lying in wait, somewhere in the vicinity of Shin Naray.

  I was sufficiently convinced of Gul Agha’s ability to survive the night, at least, to be able to return home for a few hours’ sleep, but I felt on the verge of nervous exhaustion. The mood around the station had been considerably lighter just a few hours before, as Dave and I sat around in my office laughing and joking with a handful of other senior lieutenants, waiting for the second video conference in as many nights with headquarters to start. Everything had seemed to be going well since our long-distance discussion just twenty-four hours earlier. The Northern Alliance offensive had broken through Taliban lines on the Shomali Plains just north of Kabul far more quickly than anyone could have anticipated, causing a rout, and General Fahim’s forces had already entered the Afghan capital. In addition to Gul A
gha having just crossed the border, it appeared that Hamid Karzai’s reentry into Uruzgan was imminent.

  As loose as we felt, the contrast with our headquarters colleagues when they came on the screen could not have been greater. Unlike the night before, this time the room at the headquarters end was packed, the walls lined with straphangers. The DCI had called for the conference specifically to get my take on the day’s events. From the grim expressions around the room, you would have thought we were losing the war. I looked at Dave. These guys were definitely not having fun.

  I reviewed the latest developments from a Taliban perspective. The rapidity of the Taliban collapse had been predicted for me by the ISI’s foremost expert on the Taliban, a distinguished-looking officer given to ascots and blazers who had spent years living in Afghanistan among the ISI’s Taliban clients. His name was “Brigadier Suhail Majid”; I had known him for many months, but now that he had been given permission by his leadership to meet frequently with me, and to share with me what he knew, we had developed a genuine bond. Suhail had no idea when the Taliban lines might be breached—the American bombing of the World War I–style Taliban entrenchments across the Shomali Plains had been disappointingly ineffectual until shortly before November 14—but he predicted that once they were, the Taliban position would crumble quickly. The undisciplined Taliban forces were mortally afraid of being outflanked, he said; as soon as they saw units on either side breaking under attack, they would flee in panic. This is precisely what happened.

  Once they found their lines broken, one might have expected the Taliban leadership to try to regroup their forces in Kabul to mount a defense of the city, but Mullah Omar had decided instead to abandon the northern capital and order the withdrawal of his forces. I was convinced that this was a mark of his ability as a strategic thinker—perhaps not all that impressive in its own right, but head and shoulders above the ability of anyone around him. He, perhaps alone, recognized that the rout of his army in Shomali had left the Taliban position in the north untenable. Rather than waste his forces in a hopeless rearguard action in Kabul, it would be better to try to effect an orderly withdrawal and regroup in the south. The problem for him was that while he could conceive of such a plan, his troops and subordinate unit commanders were incapable of effecting it. Rather than an orderly strategic withdrawal, he was now confronted with the dissolution of his forces in the north. The situation probably had not been helped by his previous decision to recall some of his most capable senior commanders to aid in the defense of Kandahar.