by Steve Coll
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One Saturday late that winter of 2010, Richard Holbrooke met a reporter privately for lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. The dining room was almost empty. Holbrooke juggled a cell phone and a BlackBerry restlessly.
Before he even looked at a menu, he admitted that he wasn’t at all sure that the Afghan war would succeed. “The military clears areas out but if they can’t transfer security and governance to civilians, it won’t matter,” he said. “McChrystal doesn’t know if it will work and neither do I. Petraeus is the best four-star general I’ve ever seen, but he’s spinning all the time. . . . Unlike David Petraeus, I’m willing to tell you . . . that I don’t know if it’s going to work or not. And neither does Stan McChrystal or Karl Eikenberry or Hillary Clinton. Or, I think, the president.”
“There’s a very clear definition of midterm success,” he continued, “and that is a policy that allows our combat troops to start leaving in the summer of next year, at a pace, and a size and configuration to be determined—but which, when it occurs, does not collapse the country. That’s what Nixon and Kissinger and Abrams tried to do in Vietnam. They called it ‘Vietnamization.’ We have avoided the word ‘Afghanization’ because it didn’t feel right and would evoke Vietnam . . . which people hate, by the way. But they should be less scared of history.”
He was feeling his way toward a negotiation with the Taliban. Mullah Mohammad Omar had defended his ties to Al Qaeda at every critical moment, even though it cost him the Islamic Emirate in 2001. “I think Mullah Omar is incredibly important,” Holbrooke said. “The more I look at this thing the more I think he is a driving, inspirational force whose capture or elimination would have a material effect. . . . That’s why I think eliminating Mullah Omar is so critical. Right now, if you could choose between Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, I personally would lean toward Mullah Omar.”
“Do you assume that I.S.I. could deliver Mullah Omar if they wished to do so?”
“I don’t know. If I had an answer to that, I would act on it.”
Holbrooke continued, “There are three countries here—Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India—with vastly different stages of political, social, and economic development. They share a common strategic space. As has happened so many times in history, the weak state is the one that sucks in the others. That’s the history of Afghanistan and now the Great Game is being played with different players. The India-Pakistan relationship is an absolutely critical driver.”
Holbrooke was preparing a secret memo for Hillary Clinton, which he would deliver in about two weeks. The draft had a despairing tone. He wrote it under the slightly anachronistic heading “Private and Most Confidential.” The title was “How Does This Thing End?: In Search of a Policy.”
It began, “Since last August, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get a serious and sustained process in the interagency on policy toward what we call, somewhat euphemistically, reconciliation—by which we really mean contacts with the Taliban. . . . We cannot defer this issue any longer.” Based on his extensive discussions with Petraeus, McChrystal, Mullen, and Gates, as well as private comments from senior White House officials, “I believe it is quite likely that there will be significant differences of opinion within the Executive Branch, and even inside the military, on these issues. The differences can be ironed out, but only with the President’s personal involvement.” He went on to inventory the disagreements. His memo surveyed the underexamined assumptions of the Obama administration’s expeditionary war:
PREMISE ONE: The war will not end in a pure military victory.
Everyone says they agree with this premise.
But upon closer examination, even this truism produces some disagreement. For Petraeus, it means that the war will follow the Iraq model—a slow reduction of violence as reintegration “works its way upward.” David does not foresee, and so far opposes, any real discussion with the leadership of the Taliban. He feels it would show weakness, might if and when it became public demoralize people, and would be unnecessary. He appears to believe completely that the current offensive will succeed to such a degree that the enemy will simply switch sides in increasing numbers, as they did in Iraq. . . .
Of course, we all know where Hamid Karzai stands on the issue. He simply does not believe our counter-insurgency policy will succeed—hence his constant outreach, in private and public, to the enemy. . . .
ISSUE ONE: What is an “acceptable and achievable” end state for the U.S.?
It is a difficult question, fraught with strategic, political and even moral implications. Our stated goal is to destroy Al Qaeda. Suppose we were to achieve just that—would we then leave Afghanistan once again, or simply remove our combat forces? . . . In the end, there is this: Even if the Taliban maintains a very hard line position, the American public and our Allies will not accept an open-ended commitment that involves continual combat and casualties, nor is it likely the Afghan people will, either. Most Afghans may not want the Taliban to return, but there is an old adage: If the guerillas do not lose, they ultimately win. . . .
PREMISE TWO: Whatever else is decided, we should maximize our military pressure.
This is a fundamental point, although often disputed by well-intentioned but misguided members of the European and American left. The chances of success of any reintegration or reconciliation policy will be significantly increased by battlefield success. . . . But Karzai’s support for this is less clear. His constant public requests for an end to night raids, an end to all Afghans held by the United States, and his vocal public exploitation of the civilian casualties issue are all warning signs that he might turn on us one day if it would help him negotiate a deal. . . .
PREMISE THREE: Timing is critically important.
Integrating the military and diplomatic track is essential for success. . . . Nixon and Kissinger encountered this problem, and were defeated by it; when they began negotiating with Hanoi in 1969 there were 550,000 American troops in Vietnam, but under domestic pressure, Nixon unilaterally drew down to about 135,000 while Kissinger negotiated for almost five years. By the time they cut the final deal in later 1973, the two men were like the losers in a strip poker game, naked. They had no chips—or clothes—left with which to bargain; the result was a communist takeover of our South Vietnamese ally less than two years later. Roughly the same thing happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan, without even the negotiating.
This argues for a simple proposition: If we are going to explore the options for any sort of settlement, it should be done while U.S. troop levels are increasing, not flat or declining. . . .
It was Holbrooke at his strongest—at once an outsider and an insider in his thinking, bold and clarifying. The problem was, within the Obama administration, beyond Hillary Clinton, he had lost his audience. The president could not abide Holbrooke’s mannerisms and undisguised ambition and tried to avoid meeting him. In January 2010, Obama instructed Jones to suggest to Clinton that it was time for Holbrooke to depart. Holbrooke’s relations with the ambassadors in Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi had deteriorated. The election fiasco with Karzai lingered. Holbrooke was in regular conflict with Doug Lute at the N.S.C. They shared skepticism about the military surge in Afghanistan but disagreed about how to pursue diplomacy. Holbrooke wanted to talk to the Taliban himself, but Lute argued that they needed a non-American in the lead; he suggested Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian-born diplomat and troubleshooter. In any event, Clinton was unwilling to fire Holbrooke and she had enough influence with Obama to prevail. The result, however, was less a team of rivals than a system of parallel policies and priorities running on diverse premises.18
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As diplomatic and intelligence reporting about Karzai’s unmoored musings and flirtations with I.S.I. came in, the White House recognized it had to make an effort to reel Afghanistan’s president back. British intelligence officials warned American counterparts that the �
�Pakistanis are confident in their strategy” and at the same time “confused” about what the United States wants. There was a reason, as Holbrooke had outlined in his memo: The administration remained divided and “in search of a policy” that could produce an acceptable outcome.
“The U.S. government seems utterly focused on secondary or trivial issues,” Rubin wrote to Holbrooke on April 13, “and remains virtually clueless about and unengaged with the rapid and deep political shifts taking place in the region.” These included “the degradation of the U.S.-Afghanistan bilateral relationship,” as well as “the perception that the U.S. and N.A.T.O. are on a fast glide path out of the region” while the Pakistan military displayed “increased confidence and assertiveness.”
Kayani sought a separate understanding with Karzai but he also wanted to explore whether it might be possible to change Pakistan’s relationship with the United States. Early that year National Security Adviser Jim Jones flew to Islamabad to meet with the army chief. Kayani handed him a 106-page document describing Pakistan’s views on a range of issues. The document came to be known at the National Security Council as “Kayani 1.0.” When intelligence and State Department analysts pored over it, they noticed that it seemed to have been drafted by the Pakistani Foreign Office and contained a lot of familiar boilerplate. It described five key areas of Pakistani security interests: nuclear deterrence, Kashmir, access to water, the future of Afghanistan, and the search for a “nonhegemonic South Asia,” meaning one in which India had less influence. Islamic extremism wasn’t on the list. From his reading of the paper and his discussions with Kayani, Holbrooke boiled down the position of I.S.I. and the army: They believe the United States wants to take away Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. They see the Afghan National Army and N.D.S. as pro-Indian forces commanded by the remnants of the Northern Alliance. They want the U.S. to mediate on Kashmir. It would take a great deal of effort to change that mind-set.19
Jones and Doug Lute worked on a plan to invite Karzai to Washington. In mid-March, Obama and Karzai held their first secure video teleconference in months. It seemed plain that an enormous effort would be required to break the alienation between the White House and the Arg Palace. In a gesture of respect, Obama would fly to Kabul to formalize the invitation for a state visit to Karzai in person. The president landed at Bagram on March 28, just over two weeks after Karzai returned from Islamabad.
Wearing a flight jacket, Obama flew by helicopter to the Arg, where Karzai received him upstairs. They spoke one-on-one and then joined a table of Karzai’s cabinet members and advisers. Obama’s message—to Karzai, the Afghan cabinet, and American troops he addressed—was one of unwavering commitment: “The United States does not quit once it starts on something,” he said. “We keep at it. We persevere. And together with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that.”20
Each Afghan minister said a few words to Obama. When Amrullah Saleh’s turn came, he spoke bluntly. He wanted to be sure Obama heard what he believed to be the unvarnished truth.
“Pakistanis believe the West has lost” the war against the Taliban already, Saleh said. The Pakistani view is that it is just a matter of time before the United States and Europe acknowledge their defeat. The West, on the other hand, thinks that Pakistan is losing because its economy is weak, it can’t produce enough energy to light its houses and factories, and its politicians are corrupt and ineffectual. “But that is not how they see it,” Saleh insisted. “They see you are losing. They see division between Europe and the United States. . . . They see these mild approaches to talk to the Taliban.”
He continued, “We have to change their perception, to say, ‘We have not lost and you are too weak to defeat us.’ If we do not do that, we lose. We lose to whom? Al Qaeda, Pakistan, Taliban . . . It is our joint mission. We don’t need to compliment each other every day. This effort needs such intense cooperation. And remember, a failure here means some time of trouble in more than sixty countries” as extremist movements find space for revival.21
Obama listened, stone-faced. He said nothing in reply.
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Amrullah Saleh understood that he was working on borrowed time as the N.D.S. director. For one thing, he had a reliable sense of what Karzai was discussing with Pasha, even when Saleh wasn’t present. He had been head of N.D.S. for six years. He had survived many iterations of palace intrigue. He had the C.I.A.’s confidence, but to many of Karzai’s aides and Pashtun allies, he remained a symbol of undue Panjshiri influence over the government. He was well aware that his removal from office would please Kayani and Pasha at a time when Karzai was exploring a new partnership with Pakistan.
The N.D.S.’s tree-shaded compound in downtown Kabul had been renovated since 2004 by infusions of C.I.A. and European budgetary support, but it lacked the high sheen and washed marble look of the I.S.I.’s new headquarters in Islamabad. Saleh furnished a musty room just off the main entrance to receive foreign visitors. He remained clean-shaven and typically wore a dark suit. He was a hard man and oversaw a network of prisons and interrogation centers where torture and brutality remained common, according to human rights groups.
Saleh knew that talking to the Taliban about peace was in the air. Barnett Rubin had discussed the project with him. He opposed such talks because they would inevitably empower I.S.I. He felt that Karzai was pursuing not a national agenda, but a Pashtun ethnic agenda, evident by the president’s regular remarks, in private, along the lines that the Taliban were his “cousins” and that “we can’t keep fighting them forever.”
“The Taliban, all of a sudden, once again, have become the bargaining tool for the Pakistanis,” he told an international visitor during this period. “Talks with the Taliban, in the eyes of I.S.I., must be under the control of the Pakistani military. Regardless of how much we kill the outer circle of Taliban soldiers or influence the middle circle of Taliban commanders, they can create massive numbers of infiltrators from our refugee population in Pakistan, train them again, send them back to fight in Afghanistan. And they will keep the Taliban leadership hibernating somewhere in Pakistani territory, with some degree of deniability.”
In Saleh’s analysis, the strategy of I.S.I. and Kayani was now to help N.A.T.O. leave Afghanistan with dignity, preserving as much stability and access to Western finance and defense supplies for Pakistan as possible, before I.S.I. again asserted political control over Afghanistan. The Obama administration could reach out to the Taliban all it wished. Its grasp of its enemy would prove elusive.
“They are masters of this,” Saleh said, referring to the I.S.I. and the Pakistan Army. “They developed their nuclear bomb under the watchful eyes and smelling nose of the West. Keeping twenty-five guys roaming around Quetta is far easier than developing a nuclear bomb. The West has to ask itself: How many times in its history with Pakistan have they been deceived?”22
TWENTY-FOUR
The Conflict Resolution Cell
During the first months of 2010, the Obama administration pursued three strategies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. From I.S.A.F. headquarters, Stanley McChrystal commanded an intensifying ground war based on the clear-hold-build-transfer principles of counterinsurgency. His campaign plan posited that the Afghan war could be handed off successfully to Afghans even if the problem of Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was not addressed. From the Global Response Center in Langley, the C.I.A. independently ran a secret drone air war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban holed up in Waziristan. The rate of strikes reached an unprecedented tempo during 2010, about two per week. Simultaneously, from the ground floor of the State Department, Richard Holbrooke and his aides, who were largely shut out of the first two lines of war strategy, pursued a third: trying to talk to Mullah Mohammad Omar’s lieutenants about peace. Holbrooke’s team also moved to persuade Kayani and Pasha to abandon Pakistan’s historic pursuit of influence in Afghanistan through the promotion of violent Islamists.
On
paper, Obama’s National Security Council supported all three policies. But it would require feats of mental gymnastics to call these lines of action synchronized.
That spring, under the rubric of “strategic dialogue,” Holbrooke showed Kayani and Pasha around Washington and tried to give them the intimate, high-level attention afforded to leaders of Britain or France or China—flags and flowers by day, fireside chats by night. The more Kayani and Pasha felt welcomed to informal conversation with high-level American counterparts at Blair House, the guest home across from the White House, or at Admiral Mullen’s residence, the more likely the generals were to finally move past the stiff formulations of the Kayani 1.0 white paper and toward some honest discussion of the I.S.I.’s tangled relationship with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Afghanistan’s violence. At least, this was the theory.1
Holbrooke and Mullen also encouraged Kayani to repair I.S.I.’s battered image in Washington by talking more openly about how Pakistani soldiers and spies had suffered their own casualties from terrorist and insurgent attacks inside Pakistan, particularly since 2007. Tell your story, the Americans urged Kayani. It was not his strong suit, but he agreed.
Black Suburban S.U.V.s with red police lights on the dashboards whisked the army chief down L Street one weekday morning in late March. Kayani traveled with a minimum of aides. He gripped a laptop containing a PowerPoint slide deck. At a think tank where he was to present, he ducked into the stairwell for a cigarette. He was wearing his army greens, but he wished to appear onstage in civilian clothes, so he stripped to his undershirt in a conference room, pulled on and half buttoned up a dress shirt, and then ducked out for another smoke. A few minutes later, his eyes hooded and his hair lightly combed, Kayani sat folded up in an armchair before a crowd of former American policy makers, journalists, and intelligence analysts. He spoke in sentence fragments, barely audible. Over his shoulder his PowerPoint slides flashed on a small movie screen.2
