88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  Within days of Tenet’s departure, Barry McManus was back in Islamabad, and he and the nuclear specialists were back at work on Dr. Bashir. After two days—December 5 and 6—they were bogged down again. Bashir simply could not get through a polygraph exam without showing clear signs of deception. McManus and I sat down alone.

  “We’re getting close to the point where we can’t run a valid test on this guy,” he said. “His stress levels are getting so high that he’s reacting just to being hooked up to the machine.” The polygraph is actually a simple device. It simultaneously tracks heart and respiration rates, blood pressure, and perspiration levels, and charts them on a graph. It doesn’t measure lies. What it actually measures is a person’s fear response. It will only work if the subject being questioned fears getting caught in a lie. Clearly, Dr. Bashir was hiding information from us, and feared the consequences of our discovering the truth. Whatever he was hiding mattered to him. What we didn’t know was whether it mattered to us.

  “Maybe we need to go about this a different way,” I said, thinking aloud. “Bashir obviously has a lot to hide, and we could spend years wandering around the fever swamp of his mind trying to figure out what it is. But there are only a few things we really need to know. We need to know whether, to his knowledge, al-Qa’ida has a nuclear device, fissile material, or a working bomb design. We need to know whether there is anyone else in touch with them who could advance their WMD capabilities. Apart from those, we can live with anything. We don’t need to know the whole truth about Bashir’s activities or what he was intending. Instead, we should start with what we absolutely need to know, and work backward from there.”

  After another intense day of interrogation, we had satisfied ourselves that if bin Laden’s people had any of the three things we most feared—a nuclear device, fissile material, or a weapons design—Bashir didn’t know about it. He had not introduced such knowledge or materials, nor did he know of anyone else in touch with al-Qa’ida who could advance their capabilities. Whatever his past intentions, he had not succeeded in bringing them to fruition, and did not know of anyone else who had. Our work with him was done.

  That still left the matter of the anthrax documents from the UTN house in Kabul. And a couple of weeks later, my officers would find a cache of documents and supplies related to efforts to produce biological toxins, poisons, and chemical weapons—including a formula for atropine, used to counteract the effects of chemical warfare nerve agents—in bin Laden’s abandoned compound at the Tarnak Qila, just outside Kandahar. The documents at the Qila were associated with an effort led by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to generate a biological weapons program. Months of subsequent investigation would show that these programs were at an embryonic stage when halted; but as indications of intent, they were unmistakable.

  The thought of terrorists—accountable to no one and nothing beyond their warped conception of religious obligation—in control of a nuclear weapon or other implements of mass terror, is the ultimate nightmare scenario. UTN and its bizarre link with al-Qa’ida gave such fears a tangible face. Now, as a nuclear-armed Pakistan continues its gradual dissolution in a growing tide of Islamic radicalism, a flood which our Afghan adventure has done much to promote, the nightmare remains very much with us.

  Chapter 34

  * * *

  THE CONVERGENCE

  DECEMBER 3, 2001

  THE SCENE WOULD HAVE been comical, if it weren’t dangerous. From where Mark stood, Highway 4 sloped upward to the west where it crested a few hundred yards away. There he could see Gul Agha apparently wrestling with three members of the ODA, as rockets roared over their heads to explode in the desert beyond. Most of his men had sensibly taken cover, but not their chief: He had continued to stand in the open, shouting to them and trying to direct their fire on the Arabs hiding in the dry irrigation canals bordering the airfield below. Seeing him exposed to enemy fire, the Special Forces troopers had ceased directing close-air support to pull their principal charge out of harm’s way. They eventually succeeded. “Say what you will about Shirzai,” Mark said, “but he’s a warrior.”

  It had been twelve days since the battle of Takht-e Pol, eleven days since Gul Agha and Team Foxtrot had succeeded in cutting Highway 4. As soon as they had done so, they set up roadblocks to screen traffic heading in either direction. The following day, Gul Agha’s men intercepted five Arabs traveling down the highway toward Spin Boldak. After a brief firefight, they killed three and captured two, and a cousin of Gul Agha was shot in the abdomen. Gut wounds are always the worst. Although they were reluctant at first, we convinced the military to medevac the young man to Germany. It went a long way in further cementing our relations with Shirzai.

  A couple of days after Takht-e Pol was taken, and after several rescheduled flights, Foxtrot finally received its second airdrop. When the bundles were broken open, they revealed considerably less weaponry and ammunition than expected: much of the precious volume had been taken up with bales of hay. Apparently, the packers had thought the shipment was bound for the horse-mounted team accompanying General Dostum in the north. Mark provided a sober, thorough accounting of the supplies received, including the number of hay bales, adding a comment: “We have no fucking horses.”

  The Directorate of Operations, the Clandestine Service, does not tolerate profane or abusive language in cable traffic. I had once seen a senior officer formally reprimanded by the deputy director for operations when he failed to adequately proofread a colorfully worded cable dictated in anger to a literal-minded secretary. The station officers supporting Team Foxtrot brought Mark’s message to me.

  “Should we send it like this?” they asked. The cable would bear my station’s site line, and I would be held responsible.

  “You saw Headquarters’ instructions,” I replied. “Send it out as received.”

  On November 28, we got a striking report from Kandahar. Mullah Omar had instructed his commanders to allow Gul Agha to move westward unimpeded until he reached the Shurandam bridge on the eastern outskirts of the city. They were then to attempt an ambush from the rear, using a combined Taliban-Arab force staged at the airport, just to the south. Rather than moving into the trap with his main force, on the night of December 1, Gul Agha sent a sixty-man advance party well ahead of the main body of his army to seize the Shurandam bridge and cut off reinforcements to the airport from the west. Taliban troops withdrew from the area west of the bridge, leaving only some Arabs, who subjected Gul Agha’s men to a mortar and artillery barrage for an hour. The Taliban then staged a small attack on the bridgehead from the south, but were easily beaten off.

  The following day, Gul Agha moved forward with his main force to seize the Arghistan bridge located east of the airport, cutting off the area. By December 3, there were few if any Taliban remaining at the airfield, leaving a substantial number of Arabs to fight on alone, using irrigation canals as cover. Gul Agha was growing increasingly impatient. As soon as the Arabs had been sufficiently weakened from the air, he planned to attack them with 500 men. They were the last obstacle. In the near distance, he could see the prize: the ancient city founded by Alexander the Great, whose name it bore; the glorious former capital of Ahmad Shah Durrani, father of modern Afghanistan; the center of the Pashtun world. Kandahar, which Shirzai once had ruled, lay tantalizingly just ahead.

  DECEMBER 5, 2001

  I can no longer remember who brought word, perhaps because the message was so shocking: “Greg’s team has been hit by a bomb. They’ve all been wiped out.”

  Before I could come to grips with the news, the first thing to enter my mind was that I needed to speak with Cindy. Greg’s wife had been working in the station since being evacuated from her home along the Afghan border. I didn’t want her to get the news in the hallway; I thought she should hear it from me. First reports from the field, they say, are never correct. Thank God, this was no exception. Within minutes, new information came across: catastrophic as the strike had been, most of
the team, including Greg, had survived. Now I wanted to get to Cindy with the welcome news before someone told her that her husband was dead.

  The CIA team was filing brief sitreps (Situation Reports), from which we could begin to piece together what was happening. The ODA, Team Echo, and a number of Afghan fighters had been skirmishing with Taliban troops intermittently since late on December 3 at the village of Shawali Kowt, which controlled the northern access point to a key bridge over the Arghandab River, about 20 kilometers north of Kandahar. By late on December 4, with liberal application of airpower, they had effective control of the village and, with it, the bridge. On the morning of December 5, the remainder of Lieutenant Colonel Fox’s battalion headquarters element joined the band, and began directing further airstrikes. One of the new controllers made a devastating error, calling in a GPS-guided 2,000-pound JDAM (joint direct attack munition) “smartbomb” on his own location. The first several casualty estimates were contradictory, but as the dust cleared and the initial shock of the concussion wore off, we were told that three Americans had been killed, and many more severely wounded. Afghan losses, both killed and wounded, were far heavier—perhaps forty in all. In addition to losing two of its number, several members of the original ODA 574, including its commander, Captain Jason Amerine, were seriously wounded and quickly evacuated by helicopter. The unit had been decimated. Miraculously, none of the CIA officers was killed or seriously wounded. Karzai, standing inside a small building with Greg by his side, had suffered a minor cut when a mirror fell from a wall; Greg had immediately thrown himself on top of the insurgent leader when the initial blast hit.

  The desultory fighting of the previous thirty-six hours north of Kandahar had been mirrored at the outskirts of Kandahar Airport, where Gul Agha continued his efforts to root out its Arab defenders. The reason for the Taliban’s mysterious disappearance from the airfield had become apparent on December 3, when I had another long conversation with Mullah Jalil. Dadullah-Lang had finally returned to Kandahar from the north, he said, but was not exerting his influence in the direction he had hoped. Most of the Taliban leadership were posturing and claiming they would fight to the end, but Jalil could see their hearts were not in it. Many were secretly hoping Omar would change his mind if there was a consensus. Some 600 or 700 Arabs remained in and around Kandahar, he said, many of them at the airport, where some of the Taliban commanders were strongly encouraging them to press on with the fight.

  “We are telling them it is jihad,” he chortled; they were hoping to see as many Arabs killed as possible. Their presence in the city, he said, was impeding the negotiations.

  Before ringing off, Jalil had another request. Could I arrange safe passage for him to Pakistan? It was too late for that, I said. The situation was too chaotic and uncertain. His best course would be to surrender to Karzai.

  “Do you think so?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do.” He seemed skeptical. We never spoke again.

  On December 5, the Arabs were continuing to block Gul Agha’s progress. The irrigation canals just outside the airfield were of an unusual, semi-enclosed design, with a horizontal flange extending inward from either side to reduce evaporation loss. Working from within these partial tunnels, the Arabs were able to constantly change their positions while remaining mostly invisible to the aircraft and to those guiding them. They would emerge briefly to fire unguided rockets at Gul Agha’s positions, and then dive back in again and change location. This made targeting them difficult work, but it also made their rocket fire inaccurate, as such rockets normally have to be “walked” onto their targets by firing a series from the same position, making gradual aiming adjustments each time.

  On the morning of December 6, the day after the fratricidal bombing incident, Karzai received word that the Afghan representatives at the UN Bonn Conference had selected him to be chairman of Afghanistan’s Interim Administration. He would serve for six months until a Loya Jirga, or “Grand National Assembly,” could form a legitimate transitional government which would, in turn, write a new constitution and organize national elections. His first instinct was to leave immediately to go to Bonn. Could Greg arrange helicopter transport? Greg strongly advised that he do no such thing until Kandahar was liberated.

  “The reason you have credibility with these people is because you’re leading the Pashtun uprising against the Taliban. You need to finish the job,” Greg said. They were still at Shawali Kowt, 20 kilometers from the southern capital. At that point, we still had no idea how long finishing the job might take, but events were moving quickly.

  Later on that morning of the 6th, sitting in a hut with four Taliban representatives under the watchful gaze of Greg and Jimmy, Karzai hammered out the outlines of a surrender agreement. The Taliban Shura, he told Greg, had agreed to surrender the city and to recognize the Interim Administration. Mullah Naqib would have responsibility to secure the city proper, while Gul Agha would secure the airport and the southern and eastern approaches to the city. Once Karzai had entered Kandahar and assured himself that the situation was stable, he would appoint Jan Muhammad, a loyal supporter and former mujahideen commander from Uruzgan, to command his forces while he himself would depart immediately to see about organizing a national government.

  That was the plan. Not everyone was happy with it. Shortly after, Karzai reported again to Greg that Gul Agha was objecting strongly to the prominent role being given to Naqib, his old antagonist and a Taliban ally, while Gul Agha himself, despite having led armed opposition to the Taliban, was locked out of the city. Citing Shirzai’s ambition to be governor, he complained that the Barakzai leader’s “greed and ego may continue to present us problems.” This was not going in a good direction.

  Greg got on the phone with me. I strongly seconded his admonition to Karzai that he should see through the final liberation of Kandahar, or risk a serious loss of credibility with the other factions in Kabul. We talked over the dispute with Shirzai. I should speak with Hamid, we agreed.

  As I went to take the call, I considered how I should address our newly elevated friend. “Hamid,” it seemed, would no longer do. “Mr. Chairman” seemed bloodless and stilted: a very un-Afghan title. I drew on my past experience in the francophone world, where they excel at diplomatic forms of address.

  “Your Excellency,” I began cheerfully, slightly concerned that I was overdoing it. “I want to congratulate you on your appointment.” Hamid thanked me warmly and modestly, and made a few remarks about the important work ahead. I shifted to the reason for the call. My first mention of Shirzai brought a litany of complaints, most having to do with the former governor’s bluster. When Karzai paused, I cut in:

  “Your Excellency, Gul Agha is a simple man. He lacks your sophistication. He can’t play the sort of role that you can. But he is a good man; he has a good heart. If you will put your trust in him, I know for a fact that he will accept your leadership, and will be very loyal to you.” In fact, Mark had told me that Shirzai had been quite enthusiastic about Karzai only days before, and quite willing to follow him until the recent unpleasantness. Karzai saw immediately where I was going.

  “Well . . .” he hesitated. “Well, I suppose he can be Governor,” he said petulantly. From his tone, one might have thought that Gul Agha was demanding much more, and that this was a reluctant compromise. Once more, I’d gotten Hamid’s agreement more easily than I had anticipated. I moved to consolidate.

  “Your Excellency, that’s wonderful. An excellent idea. I know you won’t regret this.” I recall having slight misgivings over the arbitrariness of what we were doing. As chairman of the Interim Administration, could Hamid be appointing governors? Was this legitimate? What sort of precedents were we setting? I put my misgivings aside. We could worry about governance issues later. Right now, I had to make sure that Karzai’s and Gul Agha’s forces wouldn’t start fighting each other even before Kandahar was secured.

  That out of the way, we moved on to a broader discussion, with Hamid reco
unting the events of the day. He had met with Taliban defense minister Obeidullah and former interior minister Abdul Razzak, both senior and influential members of the Taliban. Minister of Aviation Akhtar Muhammad Mansur was not present, but he had been strongly associated with the talks. It was agreed that Mullah Naqib would begin at the western end of the city, moving from checkpost to checkpost, disarming the Taliban and collecting their weapons. At the eastern end of the city, Taliban forces were to go to the airport, where Gul Agha would disarm them.

  I didn’t say so, but this all sounded too simple and orderly to be realistic. I wondered if Karzai believed things would unfold this way. He had promised amnesty for low-level Taliban members who agreed to be disarmed. I didn’t even ask about the disposition of the Taliban leadership. Everything we were discussing was dependent upon the voluntary compliance of the Taliban. Between Karzai and Shirzai, there were not enough forces to ensure compliance with anything, and Karzai’s men were still well outside Kandahar. Although there was regular bombardment of Taliban targets within the city, which was increasing as our intelligence and targeting improved, it was not as though we had the area surrounded and could block anyone’s escape. With Karzai having reached nominal agreement, we would have to see how things unfolded.

  When I expressed some misgivings about Naqib, Karzai said he shared our wariness. He fully understood that the reason the Taliban wanted to use Naqib as an intermediary was that they trusted him. That was useful for the moment, he said, but it also meant that Naqib should be watched carefully. In any case, given that the Popalzai, Barakzai, and Alikozai were the principal tribes represented in the city, it was important to include Naqib, as a respected Alikozai elder, to reassure his people that their interests were not being overlooked. It all made eminent sense.