In response, Petraeus launched intensive negotiations that over the next few weeks led to a series of critical compromises with the Karzai regime. Most crucially, the United States granted the Karzai government control over which of Afghanistan’s roughly four hundred districts would be earmarked for the program. The initial plan was to recruit ten thousand local police, to be trained and mentored by twelve-man Special Forces teams. That number was later increased to thirty thousand, to be recruited by 2015. The local security effort was to be coupled with economic development projects and the building of grassroots governance, an effort the U.S. military called village stability operations (VSO). But in order to get the program approved and off the ground, Petraeus agreed to have the Afghan Ministry of Interior put in charge of the vetting, pay, and weapons distribution for the forces, which were formally named Afghan Local Police (ALP). In time, the bureaucratic and rampantly corrupt government control would hamper the responsiveness of the Special Forces teams to local needs. Ethnic politics would delay approvals for police for months in different regions. Meanwhile, the U.S. military bureaucracy would present its own challenges for carrying out the strategy.
Petraeus instructed Jim’s new chain of command—the men who oversaw all Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan—to make the local defense mission their top priority and to expand the program as rapidly as possible. Petraeus turned in particular to Brig. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller and Col. Donald C. Bolduc.
Bolduc oversaw day-to-day Special Operations missions as the commander of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force–Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A), based at Bagram Air Field. Bolduc was a veteran Special Forces officer who first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 with a team sent to link up with and advise Karzai, who was just returning to the country from overseas. Bolduc already had three tours in Afghanistan under his belt and had been awarded two Purple Hearts and two awards for valor. A wiry fitness fanatic, Bolduc was serious and aggressive as a commander. He had a knack for articulating a crystal-clear intent as a military leader and seeing that everyone below him carried it out. Bolduc knew Jim well. He had been one of Jim’s battalion commanders when Jim was a captain and had consistently rated Jim highly in evaluations. Bolduc and his staff drew on Jim’s ideas as they wrote a detailed, step-by-step plan for implementing VSO. Petraeus considered Bolduc’s work masterly.
One level above Bolduc, Miller was head of the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A), based in Kabul. Tan, with close-cropped silver hair and a tennis player’s build, Miller had spent most of his career in the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC). In Kabul, Miller was instrumental in negotiations to gain the support of senior Afghan ministry officials for the local police program. He believed the tie-in of the program to the government was vital, as was the development portion. Petraeus and others praised Miller’s efforts for helping to expand the program to a national scale.
Miller had sat down with Jim when they were both studying at the Defense Language Institute in Rosslyn, Virginia, in the spring of 2010. Miller was taking a six-week course in Dari, the dialect of Persian spoken by non-Pashtun peoples in Kabul and other parts of northern, central, and western Afghanistan. The two officers respected each other’s combat experience. As a captain, Miller commanded elite Delta Force troops as they fought off waves of Somali gunmen during the infamous 1993 battle surrounding two downed U.S. military Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu. Miller was awarded a Bronze Star for valor for his bravery in the battle. Yet Miller grew up in a force that specialized in man-hunting raids and hostage rescue—a military tribe distinctly different from Jim’s.
In Washington, Miller had warned Jim to “lie a little bit low.” “There are some out there who fault you for your access, your article,” Miller wrote Jim in an email. “Just trust me, it’s the nature of the beast and something we all deal with.”
Once Jim arrived in Kabul and was sent to work for Miller, he was put on guard right off the bat. Miller’s first instruction to Jim after he stepped off the airplane was to shave his beard and get into uniform—a signal he would be working close to the flagpole. Jim sensed the one-star general was slightly wary of him and his direct line to Petraeus, Olson, and Gen. James Mattis, a Marine Corps general who led a division in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and who had been promoted in July 2010 to take over Central Command after Petraeus went to Afghanistan.
Still, Miller initially instructed Jim to travel the country and gain an overview of how the preliminary village defense effort championed by Petraeus was unfolding. The program was in its infant phases at a several locations, mainly in the south, where U.S. forces were concentrating their main effort. There, Jim would uncover some serious problems for Petraeus, Miller, Bolduc, and other senior commanders to address.
Jim headed south in July 2010, just as Obama’s surge forces were flowing into southern Afghanistan in a bid to reverse the Taliban’s growing momentum. The troop influx brought fresh fighting, and violence in Afghanistan was at its highest since the start of the war. Jim scanned the windswept, barren southern Afghan desert as the mine-resistant vehicle he was riding in sped down a bomb-pockmarked road that fed into the troubled Argandab valley, then into the village of Adehera, just outside Kandahar.
The hulking armored vehicle rolled past several mud-brick compounds and stopped outside a defensive position at the edge of the village. A young Special Forces team leader, Capt. Joe Quinn, came out to greet Jim, his face weary from stress. Quinn’s eleven-man team was under siege, having difficulty recruiting Afghans for a local security force. Making things worse, Jim found, the team and others he visited were hampered on several fronts by an overly rigid and risk-averse U.S. military bureaucracy.
In “One Tribe at a Time,” Jim argued that to be successful, the military chain of command had to give the Special Forces teams working with the tribal forces unusual trust and latitude. They needed to be able to hit targets quickly, gaining approval if necessary through a single radio call instead of having to abide by the standard glacial rules of engagement. They had to fight side by side with the tribal forces, not in segregated teams. They had to be free from burdensome reporting requirements and have greater leeway to spend money to benefit the local communities. “A strategy of tribal engagement will require a complete paradigm shift at the highest levels of our military organization—and the ability to push these changes down to group/brigade and battalion commanders,” he wrote.
But Jim found that Quinn and other team leaders faced lengthy delays of days or longer in approvals to conduct operations—a laborious process that then had three dozen people involved. When one team gained intelligence that a key insurgent was just a mile away, the team leader had to decide whether to risk going after the target without approval, which would be a serious legal violation, or let the insurgent go. Another issue was that the “battlespace owners”—conventional military units that had responsibility for the areas within which the Special Forces teams were operating—were often unsupportive or even hostile to the teams.
The teams were further hamstrung by a requirement that they conduct all missions with an Afghan partner force—but they had not received permission to operate with the very Afghan Local Police they had recruited and trained. How could they build esprit de corps with their Afghan allies if they weren’t allowed to launch missions with them or back them up in combat? Team commanders were also asked to write scores of different reports informing various superiors of their activities. Simply obtaining funds needed to operate was an onerous process. It required two team members to fly to Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad, or another large U.S. military base and spend on average two weeks doing paperwork and gaining signatures to draw money from a myriad of different sources.
One particularly maddening problem to Jim was the military’s imposition of uniform and grooming standards on the teams. How were they supposed to blend in with the Afghans? The military required the team memb
ers to wear U.S. flag patches Velcroed on the shoulders of their traditional Afghan clothing. Team members also had to shave their beards if they went on leave. No facial hair was an absurd requirement for soldiers operating in an honor-based culture where beards are one of the most important symbols of manhood for tribesmen. Jim was wrestling with the problem himself.
Apart from the frustrating tactical issues, Jim had a strategic concern based on his research on Afghan tribes. He questioned the decision to put most of the initial teams in southern Afghanistan, where tribal organizations were generally far weaker than in the east. That decision was made in part because the south, where violence was highest, was the focus of the overall NATO campaign. In contrast, at the time there were only three teams working on the local defense plan in the east. Jim believed that was a huge missed opportunity, because the stronger tribal structure in the east would allow for greater security gains with the investment of a relatively small number of Special Forces soldiers. Jim’s recommendation for a greater focus on the east proved especially relevant when the Taliban and other insurgent groups steadily increased their attacks in eastern Afghanistan in an effort to open up a new front.
On a personal level, Jim’s reconnaissance visits brought home to him what a daunting task it was, even for the Special Forces, for teams to live in such austere conditions all the while abiding with the alien Afghan tribal culture. Getting them in wasn’t enough. They had to spend long periods to win the tribe’s trust. The average six- to eight-month Special Forces deployments were too short, and rarely were teams sent back to the same locations to enable them to build on existing relationships. And after nearly a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Special Forces as a whole were suffering heavily from the psychological and physical strains of waging two simultaneous wars and back-to-back rotations. Jim understood combat fatigue.
In the village outside Kandahar, Jim discovered that Quinn’s team was in shock from the recent loss of its team sergeant. The team was particularly young, and five of the members had gone straight into Special Forces without prior military experience. It was a recent program aimed at expanding the ranks of Green Berets more quickly. The young recruits were referred to as “18 X-rays”—in Jim’s day they were “SF babies.” The team sergeant—who was a father figure to the younger men—had been literally blown to pieces before their eyes when an IED he was disarming detonated. Team leader Quinn was required to radio a situation report to higher while the other members collected the sergeant’s body parts and placed them in Ziploc bags. Later, Quinn confessed to Jim that he was anguished that he hadn’t helped them in the gruesome task. The event tore the team apart. Quinn finally broke down as he told Jim about the horrific scene.
With these and other observations, Jim got on a helicopter back to the main U.S. military base in Kandahar. Lugging all his gear and wearing a dirty uniform, with several weeks of growth on his face, he was walking through the Special Forces camp when he unexpectedly ran into Adm. Olson—the SOCOM commander who had given Jim his “assemble your team” mission. Olson was delighted to see Jim in-country and stepped away from his entourage to greet him warmly and pat him on the back. “Are the men prepared for the mission?” Olson asked. Jim said he believed so.
Accompanying Olson a short distance behind was Miller. Miller shot a stern look at Jim, noticing he had allowed his beard to grow in the field, and ordered him coolly: “Jim, you need to shave.” He then walked away. Jim bridled at the comment but did as he was told, and soon returned to his headquarters at the military base in Kabul.
A few days later, Jim attended a staff meeting in which Miller’s and Bolduc’s senior enlisted officers, Command Sgt. Maj. Ledford H. Stigall and Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Wright, were discussing combat stress and how to help returning troops. Afterward, Jim, fresh from his encounter with the young Quinn in Adehera, pulled Stigall aside. He confided in him and candidly told him about his own struggles and those of the soldiers he had led. “Everyone I know in Special Forces who has seen a lot of combat drinks too much, has anger issues and PTSD, and needs help, including myself,” Jim said with typical bluntness. He knew that the majority of Special Forces teams in the country had members who were drinking, smoking hashish, or taking other illicit drugs—not to mention their widespread use of illegal steroids. At one tiny outpost, he had to intervene to stop a drunken brawl in which a Special Forces team member had smashed computer equipment and threatened to kill some conventional Army troops.
As one of the main jobs of noncommissioned officers is to take care of soldiers, Jim was outraged when he found out the next morning that Stigall had apparently reported what he said to Miller. Jim was immediately called on the carpet—summoned to a meeting with the CJSOTF-A deputy commander, Col. Wade Murdock. Murdock told Jim that he was “an alcoholic, womanizing, mentally unstable maverick.” He then read him the riot act. “You can go home now. You can marginalize yourself on the staff. Or, if you step out of line in any shape, form, or fashion, you are going to be fired—and we will be watching every move you make.”
As had happened so often in the past, Jim had felt obligated to tell his commanders the truth on the ground as he saw it—only to learn they didn’t want to hear it, at least not from him. Unfazed, he brushed the criticism off, stayed in Bagram, and set about writing his first assessment of the local security strategy. He laid out the problems that were hampering the teams on the ground, and called for a greater focus on eastern Afghanistan. He then sent the assessment directly to Olson, Mattis, and Petraeus, who had asked for his input. Petraeus wrote back a long email a few hours later telling Jim he agreed with virtually all his recommendations and asking him to help carry them out. Shortly beforehand, Petraeus had walked into a video teleconference with Miller and other Special Operations Forces personnel. Without saying where the recommendations came from, Petraeus ticked off Jim’s proposals one by one and instructed Miller and the other officers to implement several of them, according to a Special Forces officer who attended. Miller, realizing what had happened, was furious.
Petraeus moved to protect Jim, writing him an email stating that he had ordered Jim to report to him directly—“sua sponte”—of his own accord.
Soon afterward, Bolduc—who knew Jim’s strength was not as a staff officer but as a tactical leader on the ground—moved to put Jim under his immediate command. “I’ve got Jim,” he told Miller in a brief phone call. Then Bolduc assigned Jim to be the advisor for the village defense strategy in eastern Afghanistan and let him grow his beard. Finally Jim was returning to where the Pashtun tribes were strongest, where he had first learned of the power of the tribes in Konar Province in 2003.
CHAPTER 11
IT WAS PITCH DARK on the night of May 24, 2003, as Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces A-team crossed a footbridge over the river that coursed through the rugged Pech valley of Konar Province, one of the deadliest regions for American troops in Afghanistan. The team’s target was an Afghan insurgent named Dr. Naimetullah, a financier of roadside bombs. Jim expected Naimetullah would not go out without a fight, and the new team had rehearsed exhaustively for the raid. One of the biggest challenges was the treacherous terrain deep in the Pech where Naimetullah lived, in the village of Dag.
To reach the village, the team had to navigate up the valley on a long, winding dirt road so narrow that in places its edges crumbled from the weight of their Humvees. Mountains dotted with scrub brush rose up on either side, seeming to close in on them the higher they went. The soldiers scanned the hillsides through night vision goggles that made the landscape glow in fuzzy shades of green and white, creating an eerie sense of detachment. They turned off the lights of their Humvees to make it harder for Afghan insurgents to spot them, but the engines’ growl and grinding of wheels on the road left no doubt an American patrol was approaching. Several Toyota Hilux pickup trucks followed with an Afghan Counterterrorism Pursuit Team (CTPT) and their CIA handlers. All Jim could hope for was momentary surprise.<
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A short way off from the village they stopped their vehicles and got out. Below they could hear the rushing Pech River. Without speaking—they had rehearsed the operation several times—Jim and his men walked swiftly up the road and over the footbridge. The Afghans and CIA paramilitaries took up position behind them, encircling the target area to create an outer perimeter and prevent anyone from escaping. Jim and his assault element turned and picked their way down a path that ran between the wall of the doctor’s compound and a steep fifty-foot drop off to the rushing Pech River. They lined up with their shoulders pressed against the wall, and an Afghan police officer with them called the doctor out. The only response, from behind the door, was muffled voices and the distinctive metal clacking as men inside racked bullets in their AK-47 rifles.
“Breach it!” Jim ordered.
Staff Sgt. Scott Gross, a young ox of a man from Indiana, breached the outer courtyard door with a heavy crowbar known as a “hooligan tool.” Staff Sgt. Tony Siriwardene pivoted right through the doorway, followed by Sgt. 1st Class Mark Read and Jim. They immediately came under fire at close range from men inside.
Tony hadn’t even rounded the first corner when heavy gunfire started coming in their direction. As he turned into the compound, he saw muzzle flashes from inside a room that stood about thirty feet directly in front of them in the courtyard’s interior. He fired back and moved along the courtyard wall as bullets hit the wall and pelted him with pieces of dirt.
Mark turned left in the door and saw a shadowy figure in a vest with an AK-47 run past the window in the inner room. He opened fire on the figure. You dumb motherfucker. You have fucked with the wrong guys, Mark thought.
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