In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones

  A United Nations report on the incident, however, claimed that ninety civilians had been killed, including sixty children, fifteen women, and fifteen men.25 The Afghan Ministry of Interior released a statement blaming the United States and announcing that “seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition force operation in Herat Province.”26 President Karzai, who rarely left the Presidential Palace in Kabul, made an unprecedented trip to Shindand and “strongly condemned the unilateral operation of the Coalition Forces in Shindand district of Herat Province.”27 On August 25, Karzai held an emotional meeting at the palace in which cabinet members vented about the U.S. actions. That same day, Karzai held a meeting with approximately fifty legislators, including speaker Yunus Qanooni, who harshly criticized the attack and pressed Karzai to condemn the U.S. actions.

  American officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood, complained that these were cursory assessments and that there was no physical evidence to support the higher death tolls. They said that the UN and Afghan reports had relied on the word of villagers who either supported or were cowed by Taliban fighters. Ambassador Wood sent a memo to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates prior to his September visit to Afghanistan, warning that President Karzai would express his outrage to Gates and would push for rethinking “the proportionality of air strikes, U.S. coordination with Afghan security forces, the violation of Afghan homes during night raids on residential compounds, and the detention of Afghans without prior approval of the government.”28 A subsequent U.S. military investigation, led by Brigadier General Michael Callan of the U.S. Air Force, concluded that thirty-three civilians had died, not the seven that U.S. commanders had initially announced. The report concluded that the United Nations, Afghan government, and other assessments were wrong because they relied primarily on “villager statements, limited forensics, and no access to a multi-disciplined intelligence architecture.”29

  Regardless of what the actual number was, the attack had a searing impact on Afghans, who grew increasingly angry about the civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes. An assessment for U.S. Central Command said American credibility had dropped “sharply” and found “that civilian casualties and security are strongly linked to attitudes to the U.S. military.”30 And an opinion poll in 2008 found that 40 percent of Afghans who sympathized with the Taliban were at least partly motivated by resentment about civilian casualties from NATO airstrikes.31 In a war over the hearts and minds of Afghans, civilian casualties undermined the gains made with infrastructure and other projects and increasingly pushed locals toward the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

  A Regional War

  In 2008, U.S. military data showed a stark increase in violence from 2007 levels. There was a 32 percent increase in insurgent-related violence, a 25 percent increase in attacks from improvised explosive devices, a 56 percent increase in kidnappings and assassinations, and a 300 percent increase in attacks on district centers. In addition, violence was up in several provinces, such as Helmand and Wardak, and along major highways. Highway 4, which connects Kandahar City and Spin Boldak, experienced a 400 percent spike in violence.32 A leaked 2008 United Nations security report showed that insurgent violence had increased that year to the highest levels since the U.S. invasion in 2001.33 Afghan National Police and Afghan civilians took the brunt of insurgent attacks. Between January 2007 and July 2008, nearly two-thirds of the security forces killed were Afghan National Police, rather than Afghan National Army or Coalition forces.34

  The Taliban and other insurgent groups also conducted a number of audacious attacks against U.S. and other NATO forces. On July 13, about 200 militants raided a U.S. base in Nuristan Province, using machine guns, crew-served weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. They breached the walls of the base before eventually being driven back by U.S. forces, but the defense required the support from AH-64 Apache helicopters, a Predator drone with Hellfire missiles, and eventually B-1B, A-10, and F-15s. Afghan and U.S. reports indicated that the militants received assistance from locals in the village of Wanat, as well as the district governor, Zul Rachman. As a U.S. Army after-action report concluded, “post-attack intelligence indicates that both the District Police Chief and District Governor were complicit in supporting the AAF [Anti-Afghan Force] attack.”35

  On August 18, the Taliban ambushed a French patrol east of Kabul, killing ten French soldiers and wounding another twenty-one. A NATO after-action report found that “the French platoon had only one radio,” making it difficult to call for air support, and the Afghan National Army “performed very poorly…. The ANA force spent much of the time lounging on the battlefield. When they finally dispersed, most left their military equipment [including] weapons, ID cards, and other items for the enemy.”36 The French soldiers’ bodies were not recovered until the following day; and insurgents had stripped most of the bodies and taken their equipment.

  The irony of even the limited U.S. progress was that while such forces as the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had made great gains in counterinsurgency actions, they were hamstrung by militant groups crossing the border on a daily basis. “The problem,” one military intelligence officer candidly noted, is obvious: “We recognize the border. They don’t.”37

  What had started out as a U.S.-led war in Afghanistan developed into a regional insurgency. In nuclear-armed Pakistan, militant groups were destabilizing the North West Frontier Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Baluchistan Province, and urban areas. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, circulated a memo in early 2008 warning that “militant extremists in Pakistan have sharply increased attacks, both in tribal areas along the Pak-Afghan border and into settled areas.” These attacks were “undermining regional stability and effective prosecution of the war on terror by Coalition Forces in Afghanistan,” and the Pakistan military was “hindered by significant capability gaps and fears of civilian casualties, which could undercut already weak public support for offensive operations.”38 Consequently, some U.S. officials advocated overhauling U.S. assistance to Pakistan and called for providing additional airmobile capacity, combat logistics and sustainment, counter-IED capability, and night operations.

  But America’s biggest challenge was impacting the will of Pakistan’s security agencies. Efforts to bolster Pakistani security capabilities were significantly undermined by the political and security chaos in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, who had established a close relationship with Washington, resigned from the presidency on August 18, 2008, in the midst of impeachment proceedings. And a weak civilian government led by Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto, tried to pick up the pieces.

  In the fall of 2008, the government of Pakistan shuffled its way to the brink with a severe balance-of-payments crisis. The new civilian government, reluctant to jeopardize its popularity, maintained price controls on food and fuel, financing the difference from the budget. Pakistan’s trade deficit widened alarmingly because of higher global oil prices. The capital market upheavals on Wall Street triggered a flight toward less risky assets, and Pakistani and foreign investors fled the rupee. In its 2008 Monetary Policy Statement, the State Bank of Pakistan noted that government borrowing from the central bank—which it had earlier described as having reached “alarming levels” during 2007 and 2008—was “unsustainable.” The State Bank also concluded that inflationary pressures were “alarming,” and inflation continued to be stoked by “aggregate demand pressures” and a “fall in the productive capacity of the economy.”39

  On September 9, Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps forces, supported by aerial bombing sorties, conducted operations in the Bajaur Agency and Swat district against several militant groups, including Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi. The effort was code-named Operation Sher Dil. They were met with staunch resistance from heavily armed militants reinforced by fighters who had come from Afghanistan. The conflict triggered significant
population displacement within Pakistan, and some residents even fled to Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives provided humanitarian relief, delivering nonfood items and engaging in reconstruction once the fighting stopped. USAID was also involved in governance and development projects in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Bajaur. But as one senior State Department official remarked, “Pakistan has not employed a clear, hold, build counterinsurgency strategy,” making sustained reconstruction work virtually impossible.40

  On September 20, a truck bomb exploded outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing more than fifty people, including two Americans. It left a crater forty feet wide and twenty-five feet deep, mangling cars and charring trees in the blast zone. “All roads lead to FATA,” said Interior Minister Rehman Malik, explaining where the terrorists came from.41 The Marriott bombing damaged a nearby office building (the Evacuee Trust Complex, also known as Software Technology Park 2), which housed local offices of American and multinational information-technology companies, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Motorola, and Kestral (the local representative of Lockheed Martin).

  Escalation Among “Allies”

  American and Pakistani forces engaged in several firefights in 2008, escalating tensions along the border—often referred to as the “zero line” by U.S. military and CIA forces. During a June 10 firefight, U.S. forces killed about a dozen Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers who were targeting them. One villager from Suran Dara, a few hundred yards from the fighting on the Pakistan side, remarked: “When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans…. They were trying to help the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post.”42

  On July 29, NATO, Afghan, and Pakistani military commanders met at Nawa Pass in eastern Afghanistan to discuss cross-border issues. Afghanistan’s border police central-zone commander, Colonel Qadir-Gul, represented the Afghan side; Brigadier General Adamcyn Khan and Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed headed the Pakistani delegation. According to a senior NATO official involved in the meeting, “the Pakistanis wanted to recuperate their weapons and equipment,” which they claimed had been taken from their border posts during a firefight a few months earlier. During the fighting, the Frontier Corps had abandoned several positions along the border to insurgents, who then directed fire against Afghan forces. The Afghans counterattacked and seized the border posts, occupying the positions for seventy-two hours before Afghan and Pakistani commanders could negotiate their withdrawal. In a provocative move, Afghan troops then posed for the press with the captured equipment. But the July 29 meeting degenerated into finger-pointing. As the NATO official remarked, “sentiment on both sides of the Durand Line is coloring border units’ ability to cooperate. Afghan claims that Pakistani units are complicit in cross-border attacks and have undermined the two sides’ relationship.” Part of the problem was that Afghan and Pakistani officials disagreed about the exact location of the border. “The Durand Line underlies much of the argument; the two sides will not openly disagree about where territory lies, but appear to be under orders not to concede anything.”43

  A defining moment for U.S.-Pakistan relations came in late July 2008, following the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. U.S. intelligence assessments, which were based on intercepted communications, concluded that ISI agents were involved in planning the attack, which killed fifty-four people, including an Indian defense attaché.44 The attack destroyed the embassy’s protective blast walls and front gates and tore into civilians waiting outside for visas.

  After being briefed on the situation by U.S. intelligence officials, President Bush lost his temper. He approved orders that allowed U.S. Special Operations Forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without the approval of Pakistan’s weak civilian government or the ISI. “We had no other option,” said a senior White House official I interviewed. “A range of high-value targets were operating at will in Pakistan, and conducting attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Security in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as at home in the United States, was in serious jeopardy.”45

  In early September, U.S. Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force, supported by AC-130 Spectre gunships, launched a ground assault from Afghanistan into South Waziristan against members of al Qa’ida and the Haqqani network. These and other cross-border U.S. attacks raised the ire of Pakistani officials. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, responded that the “right to conduct operations against the militants inside our own territory is solely the responsibility of the [Pakistani] armed forces.”46 President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani supported Kayani’s statement, as did the Pakistani press. The English-language Daily Times front page ran side-by-side headlines: “Boots on Ground: Bush” and “No Way, Says Kayani.”

  Between June 20 and July 20, 2008, there had been more than sixty insurgent attacks against Afghan or Coalition forces along the Paktika and Khowst border with North and South Waziristan. There were also twenty attacks along the Kunar and Nangarhar border with Pakistan’s Bajaur, Mohmand, and Khyber Agencies.47 On September 25, U.S. OH-58 Kiowa helicopters flying near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border came under small-arms fire from a Pakistani military checkpoint near Tanai district in Khowst Province. A ground-based American patrol then returned fire with the checkpoint. What had begun in September 2001 as a U.S.-led war in Afghanistan had gradually transitioned into a regional struggle involving the United States and all major countries in the region. The Great Game was alive and well.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Back to the Future

  JUST SOUTH OF KABUL, nestled on the western slope of the jagged Sher-i-Darwaza mountain, lies a series of serene walled gardens built in the mid-sixteenth century by the first Mughal emperor, Babur. Among the dozen or so gardens that he built around Kabul, this was his favorite, and he chose it as his final resting place. The layout is rectangular, with a system of pools, channels, and distinctive waterfalls. The main entrance to the gardens from the Sarak-e-Chilsitun road leads to a gentle climb up the mountainside that becomes noticeably steeper near the eastern cusp of the gardens. The gardens fell into disrepair during the decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century, and over the next several centuries they went through several cycles of decrepitude and rehabilitation.

  During the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, the gardens served as a temporary refuge for civilians fleeing the fighting. Most of the trees in the gardens were either destroyed by the rain of rockets or cut down and used for firewood. The pavilion, built for the entertainment of royal guests, was looted in 1993. So was the Harmesarai (Royal Residence), which was burned and left cluttered with unexploded ordnance. Bullet holes are still visible in several of the remaining trees and buildings, which look like pockmarks from Afghanistan’s violent past.

  Yet the gardens have demonstrated an almost surreal ability to regenerate. With the aid of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and other donors, the gardens experienced a rebirth after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime. They now include ten terraces that are part of the central axis descending westward toward the Kabul River, which meanders through the city before eventually joining the Indus River in Pakistan. The central axis has been reconstructed after extensive archaeological excavation and research, and water is again flowing down the length of the garden, as it did during Babur’s time. Yellow, red, and pink roses welcome visitors near the entrance of the gardens, and an avenue of trees has been planted to provide shade along the terraces of the central axis.

  Tucked away on the upper terrace is the tomb of Babur. His body, moved here in 1540, lies next to those of his son Hindal and one of his grandsons. Around 1507, Babur penned the following lines, which illustrate the hardships faced by all Afghans:

  There is no violence or injury of fortune

  That I have not experienced

  This broken heart has endured them all.

>   Alas, is there one left that I have not encountered?1

  Today, Babur’s grave lies open to the sky, encircled by a carved marble screen surrounded by fruit trees. Just below the grave is an exquisite mosque layered in marble and built by Babur’s successor, Shah Jahan, in the mid-seventeenth century. Shah Jahan’s reign proved to be the height of Mughal splendor—his lasting monument is the Taj Mahal—and it is fitting that these two great historical figures left their mark on the gardens of Kabul.

  For me, the gardens illustrate serenity and mystique, both literally and symbolically, in the midst of chaos. Their evolution—from destruction to rejuvenation—over the centuries reminds Afghans and foreigners alike that this is an ancient land that has seen terrible bloodshed and revived itself time and again. There is hope that the region will eventually stabilize and prosper, as it did during the first half of the twentieth century. To get there, however, requires completely rethinking America’s involvement in the region.

  The Tragedy of Afghanistan

  The U.S. experience in Afghanistan, like that of the great powers that came before it, will not soon be forgotten. Before launching the 2001 campaign, few Americans had an appreciation for the country’s history and subtle complexities, despite the U.S. involvement in the Soviet Union’s disastrous defeat in the 1980s. U.S. policymakers had to relearn that building a government in a fractured, xenophobic country is almost infinitely more challenging than overthrowing one.

  The rise of the insurgency in the wake of the U.S. victory over the Taliban was deeply unfortunate. But it was not inevitable. Indeed, the irony of the U.S. experience is that some of America’s most seasoned diplomats and military commanders in Afghanistan did understand the country, but they could not get through to their leaders, who were initially uninterested in nation-building and distracted by Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, who had grown up in Afghanistan, and Ronald Neumann, whose first expedition to Afghanistan was in 1967, had a keen appreciation for the historic challenges they faced in Afghanistan. But despite their calls for greater resources and attention, and those of several of their colleagues, such support never came.