Directorate S

by Steve Coll

  The killers’ motivation was group identification, as Muslims or Afghans, where the terms of membership required violent action against the enemy. In that sense, Sageman’s hypothesis was even darker than Bordin’s. In theory, cultural misunderstanding might be overcome through training. The broad, fertile belief that American soldiers were occupiers could be addressed only by their departure.

  Sageman’s findings had one major implication for N.A.T.O. operations. Its forces needed a much more attentive counterintelligence program to monitor the communications of allied Afghan soldiers and police to detect defectors before they acted. If some of the phone conversations Sageman reviewed had been monitored when they took place, killings would have been prevented. “The challenge is to detect people who defect to the insurgency after they join” government forces. By Sageman’s count, four out of five shooters joined the Taliban after they had been initially vetted for the Afghan army or police; only one out of five was a true sleeper or infiltrator. “Many perpetrators were recruited in place by their peers or superiors, either for ideological or political reasons, especially during Ramadan, or by corrupt commanders trying to reach a compromise with the insurgency.”

  Sageman’s analysis also showed that there was a strong statistical likelihood that when one insider murder took place, another would follow within two days. This copycat pattern in the numbers also had operational implications: After an attack, N.A.T.O. should raise its alert levels for several days. After that, statistically at least, the threat subsided.

  The report’s bar graphs again created a reassuring sense of clarity, but the case studies Sageman mustered were dismal and evocative of the felony docket in a Mafia stronghold:

  A police checkpoint commander and his deputy had extensive connections to both local insurgents and drug traffickers. The commander also allegedly sexually abused young adolescents who were forced to serve him. He took an interest in a young handsome police recruit of low intelligence. The commander and his deputy encouraged the young recruit to shoot at I.S.A.F. forces accompanying a female USAID civilian inspecting a local school. Prior to the attack, the deputy gave the eventual shooter some opium.

  A corrupt army combat outpost commander, who extorted money from local villagers and sexually abused young recruits and had extensive connections to insurgents, encouraged a young soldier to carry out an attack on I.S.A.F., who were transferring the outpost over to the Afghans. The commander claimed that the withdrawing forces would take all the weapons, tanks and vehicles with them. One of his subordinates carried out the attack and the commander organized the escape with the help of insurgents.17

  All militaries, including the U.S. Army, had to manage criminals in their ranks and the threat of traitors. The practical thing to do was to catch them before they did too much damage. In many of the cases Sageman reviewed, “people within the [Afghan National Security Forces] knew about the plans to carry out an insider attack” in advance. Sometimes, the plot was reported up the Afghan chain of command, “but nothing was done.” And nobody told American or European commanders about what was going on. That reflected deeper problems in the Afghan system. “The failure of leadership is often compounded by widespread corruption by A.N.S.F. unit leaders using their position to extort money from local citizens, commercial traffic crossing their area of responsibility, and drug trafficking,” Sageman wrote.18

  Sageman briefed Allen, who embraced the findings, despite the discouraging elements. The analysis affirmed Allen’s core belief: American and Afghan government forces were allies who had and would share sacrifice to defeat the Taliban. The problem was not cultural incompatibility. The problem was the insurgency. In truth, Sageman’s evidence made clear, it was both; Allen could not do much about Sageman’s belief that the presence of international troops in such large and visible numbers was itself dangerously provocative. Sageman had at least identified a counterintelligence task—identifying Taliban defectors after they were vetted at enlistment, but before they struck—that offered a path to improvement as the American withdrawal went on. And he had provided Allen with a framework for talking to Afghan and American troops about the murder wave. The general could use Sageman’s evidence to move from “let’s hang together” speeches to a rallying cry: “We have a determined enemy.”

  Sageman’s report overturned the analysis earlier circulated by the I.S.A.F. Joint Command intelligence analysts. They had found a much lower percentage of links to the Taliban than Sageman did, and therefore had emphasized the theme of cultural friction. In intelligence bureaucracies, it is common to attack the findings of rival units. Tribalism is a factor, but the disputes can also reflect a healthy marketplace of ideas. The lead Joint Command analyst on the murder wave was a civilian with a bachelor’s degree. Her team told Ashley that Sageman was wrong—that he had misclassified his cases, misread the evidence, and ended up with a distorted picture of high Taliban involvement in the killings. According to the Joint Command matrix of cases, only 18 percent of shootings showed links to the insurgency. She and her analysts sent Ashley a long, line-by-line critique of Sageman’s report.

  Ashley called Sageman in. “We have to resolve this,” he said. Sageman explained that his differing conclusions were grounded in intercepts that Joint Command analysts had probably not examined. Ashley appointed what was in effect a three-judge appellate panel—three D.I.A. analysts, including the one who had worked with Sageman. They looked at every case. To support his brief, Sageman pulled documents from six different systems that he had used to accumulate his evidence. In the end, after extensive reviews and debate, the appellate panel downgraded one of Sageman’s findings of “definite” links to the Taliban to “probable,” but it upgraded another from “probable” to “definite.” He felt vindicated.19

  That winter, Sageman returned to Washington. From there, he helped I.S.A.F. headquarters’ “lessons learned” team rewrite standard operating procedures to account for the category of internal defectors he had identified, to monitor their communications and improve vetting. Some of his Pentagon colleagues wanted to send portable lie detectors to Afghanistan. Even though American courts regarded them as unreliable, polygraphs were a routine tool of counterintelligence vetting at the C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies. Sageman and the other analysts involved didn’t think they would work in the environment he had seen in Helmand and Kandahar. The only thing Afghan police and army commanders would use them for would be “to beat the other guy,” meaning the detainee, with the machine. Ashley thought the polygraph machines, adapted for use in the Pashto language, were effective, as one part of an array of new measures. These included the deployment of more investigators to support the screening system, Allen’s guardian angel programs, and stepped-up efforts to convince Afghan leaders that they had to take greater responsibility.

  The new standard operating procedures did not end the insider murder wave. The number of attacks declined in 2013 and 2014, but so did the number and activity of N.A.T.O. troops. During Allen’s tour, his command closed about 500 out of about 835 N.A.T.O. bases and outposts in Afghanistan. European governments reduced or ended their military commitments to the Afghan war, but they did not abandon support for the Karzai government’s struggle with the Taliban. Allen believed the murder rate fell because of the measures taken during and after Sageman’s investigations, not because of the reduction in troop numbers.

  Allen understood Sageman’s point about the provocative potential of the international troop presence. He thought it could be overcome, but Karzai’s public criticism made it harder. Karzai’s rhetoric played into the Taliban’s narrative. Once, Allen confronted Karzai in his office at the Arg.

  “Look at the numbers that are in school today,” he said. “Look at the numbers of Taliban we removed that were victimizing your population.”

  Karzai cited the number of tribal leaders being assassinated in Kandahar and implied that the Americans had a hand in th
e violence, so as to sow chaos, so as to have a reason to stay in Afghanistan.

  Allen came out of his seat. “We aren’t staying. We are going home. If you’re implying that we are committing these assassinations, you need to tell me.”

  Karzai backed off. This had become his familiar demeanor. He shared freely his belief that the United States had a hidden agenda in Afghanistan (otherwise it would do something about Pakistan and the I.S.I.) but he never went so far as to sever relations with American counterparts altogether. Later, when Allen’s mother died, Karzai called him to offer personal condolences.

  Sageman reflected on what he had learned. He had spent the last several years studying counterintelligence problems in several settings—the U.S. Army, the Afghan army and police. The Army also commissioned him to study military traitors during the Cold War period to determine what insights might be gained. Whether the context was Soviet-inspired communism or the Taliban or the Islamic State, Sageman concluded, an individual’s act of crossing over to the other side was often about identification, not ideology. It was about feeling a part of someone else’s “imagined community,” in the anthropologist Benedict Anderson’s resonant phrase. Such a change of identification might arise from discussions with friends or coworkers. It might arise from provocations like Koran burnings or images of civilian casualties on the battlefield. Sageman now believed that this had implications for American counterterrorism policy. If the United States escalates a conflict violently and visibly, that action would as a side effect contribute to more terrorism. For the Army Sageman served, it would not be a satisfying or popular insight, but it was where the evidence led him.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Self-inflicted Wounds

  Early in 2012, Doug Lute moved from his cramped office in the West Wing of the White House to a suite on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door. His walls displayed photos of the smoking rubble in New York after the September 11 attacks, and of President Obama on a tarmac in Afghanistan, talking to American soldiers and to Karzai. Another showed Lute briefing the president. Topographical and demographic maps of Afghanistan and Pakistan were mounted nearby. On the floor was one of those Afghan rugs woven for foreigners depicting an AK-47 and a helicopter gunship. Jeff Eggers, the former Navy SEAL, served as Lute’s deputy. The seven other “directors” or professional staff included Jeff Hayes, the D.I.A. analyst who had negotiated with Tayeb Agha. Lute had now been the principal National Security Council specialist on Afghanistan and Pakistan for five years, across two administrations, an unusually long run in such a grinding wartime role. He had started as an operations man, a West Point–credentialed general who could connect White House policy with Pentagon systems. During the first years of the Obama administration, he had evolved into a skeptical but influential coordinator, the guy who seemed to be in every meeting, taking notes, and who could run the back channels at the White House to Tom Donilon or Denis McDonough, who were then Obama’s most trusted foreign policy advisers. White paper after white paper, interagency review after interagency review, trip after trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Lute mastered the file. He tried to keep his thinking fresh by consulting outsiders. He maintained his somewhat unlikely friendship with Barney Rubin and consulted the State Department adviser regularly.

  Lute had become a passionate believer in the necessity of pursuing a peace deal with the Taliban. According to the C.I.A.’s classified District Assessments, despite the American-led combat escalation after 2009, the territory assessed to be under Taliban control had expanded by about 1 percent; the two sides had fought to a draw. If the Taliban could not be defeated militarily, and if the movement was to be prevented from returning to power, the only plausible alternative was some kind of political settlement. After Karzai’s demands scuttled the talks with Tayeb Agha, the Qataris initiated a new attempt to get direct talks between the Taliban and the United States back on track. Obama sent word down: He, too, wanted another major effort to get the negotiations restarted.1

  Kayani had closed American ground supply routes through Pakistan to Afghanistan in retaliation for the deaths of Pakistani soldiers in a violent border incident at Salala late in 2011. The closure of Pakistani routes had forced Central Command and General John Allen to import materials from the north of Afghanistan and by air, at an expense to taxpayers of $100 million more per month compared with the Pakistani option. The impasse had become a politicized, highly public matter of honor, with the Pakistanis demanding an American apology and the Obama administration, still seething over the discovery of Osama Bin Laden at Abbottabad, among other offenses, unwilling to bend. Lute decided to go back to work on the relationship with Kayani.

  The first task was to reopen the supply routes. Peter Lavoy, the Pakistan specialist now in charge of Asia-Pacific policy at the Pentagon, negotiated with Sherry Rehman, the new Pakistani ambassador to Washington, and Hina Rabbani Khar, the foreign minister. The Pentagon did have financial leverage—it had suspended the Coalition Support Funds to the Pakistan Army, running into hundreds of millions of dollars annually. There was also $500 million or so in defense equipment that the Pakistanis wanted that had been placed on hold. By late spring Lavoy and his counterparts had sorted out a deal. Hillary Clinton issued a careful statement that acknowledged mistakes on both sides, which the Pakistanis accepted as the apology they had required.

  Lute arranged to visit Kayani at Army House in Rawalpindi. He brought Lavoy and, initially, Marc Grossman. (After Grossman left office at the end of 2012, James Dobbins, who had helped to negotiate the original Bonn Agreement, replaced him as the State Department’s special envoy.) Lute inaugurated what would become, over the ensuing months, half a dozen long, private, discursive conversations with Kayani at Army House. The purpose was to try to find a way to structure a peace deal that would end the war in Afghanistan or at least greatly reduce its violence. If the Afghan Taliban continued to sow chaos, this would inevitably strengthen the Pakistani Taliban, Kayani’s principal domestic insurgent threat. Gradually, in private, they developed a shared commitment to drawing Tayeb Agha and the Taliban political leadership back into talks. They met in the wood-paneled reception room of the bungalow, the room where Kayani’s stewards gave prominent display to ancient Chinese vases and other gifts from Beijing. Kayani chain-smoked from his stemmed holder. After each session, the Americans stumbled back to their quarters, typically in the early hours of the morning, their eyes watering and their clothes in need of fumigation. Lute habitually took notes in a government-issued, green clothbound notebook, and he would write little tick marks every time Kayani lit up.

  After all the recent history—after Kayani 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, after Raymond Davis and Bin Laden, after the secret negotiations with Tayeb Agha, where the Americans had largely locked Kayani and Pasha out of the channel—Lute’s idea now was to come clean. Lute believed that no political agreement with the Taliban, if one could be achieved at all, would be sustainable without Pakistan’s participation, even though Tayeb Agha had insisted that the Taliban wanted to negotiate independently with the United States, free from I.S.I. pressure.

  For the first time, the Americans told Kayani the whole story about their talks with Tayeb Agha. They narrated the history of the meetings and the confidence-building measures—how Tayeb Agha had delivered a proof-of-life video of Bowe Bergdahl, how he had been able to place certain agreed-upon statements in Taliban media. They told Kayani how far they had gotten in negotiating for prisoner exchanges that would lead to the opening of a Taliban political office in Qatar. And they related the embarrassing story of how Hamid Karzai had blown up that deal.

  It was always hard to tell exactly what Kayani knew and didn’t know, but he seemed surprised by how far the Americans had gone with Tayeb Agha, how close they were to a meaningful initial agreement, one that would legitimize the Taliban on the international stage. This had been a historical goal of I.S.I. Kayani’s take in private on Tayeb
Agha’s credibility and about the personalities within the Taliban leadership was similar to American analysis. About Karzai, the general was dismissive. The Americans should be able to force Karzai to do what they needed. About the Taliban, the I.S.I.’s client, Kayani sang a different tune. The I.S.I. had “contact but not control” and there was no way Kayani could “deliver” the Taliban to some sort of grand peace bargain.2

  They also spoke candidly about the military stalemate in Afghanistan. In the first meetings, Kayani had some I-told-you-so to get out of his system. He had, in fact, long expressed doubt about the American faith in military success against the Taliban in such a short time, and also about Washington’s hurried, expensive project to enlarge, train, and equip Afghan National Security Forces. For their part, Lute and Lavoy gradually allowed themselves to express “personal views” about the Afghan war, opinions that departed from the Obama administration’s public line. Essentially, they told Kayani, Look, Washington understands. The U.S. military does not yet understand, but Washington understands that we aren’t going to win in Afghanistan. There is no amount of military effort there that is going to look like victory. And we know the problems and the limits we have with the Afghan government.”3

  The point was, didn’t the United States and Pakistan now have a common interest in preventing the Taliban from returning to power via armed revolution? Wouldn’t that outcome be even worse for Pakistan than for the United States? A restored Islamic Emirate in Kabul would fire up the Pakistani Taliban and provide them with a deep base for operations against Kayani’s military.