by Steve Coll
In the decades after helicopters lifted the last Americans off the roof of the United States embassy in Saigon, a generation of U.S. military leaders and spies lost touch with the challenges of carrying out long expeditionary wars in poor countries in an age of saturated media. As the Soviet Union wobbled and then collapsed, the size and technological advantages of the U.S. military ushered in an era of global battlefield superiority. After September 11, the shockingly rapid triumph of the C.I.A.-inspired campaign to overthrow the Taliban so exceeded expectations that it blinded some of its architects to their own limitations. No small part of N.A.T.O.’s ultimate failure to stabilize Afghanistan flowed from the disastrous decision by George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003. That war inflamed and mobilized deeper resistance to American counterterrorism policy and warfare in the Muslim world. The Taliban’s comeback, America’s initial inattention to it, and the attraction for some Afghans and Pakistanis of the Taliban’s ideology of national resistance under Islamic principles—all these sources of failure cannot be understood in isolation from the Iraq war. The Bush administration committed other unforced strategic errors in conceiving a global war on terror: the prison at Guantánamo and the C.I.A.’s torture of Al Qaeda suspects in secret offshore prisons, for example.
Yet it also seems likely that even without Iraq or Guantánamo the United States would have struggled to achieve many of its goals in Afghanistan. Primarily this was because two administrations led by presidents of different political parties could not resolve essential questions about the conflict. Did they truly believe that Afghanistan’s independence and stability was more important than Pakistan’s stability? Why did they accept I.S.I.’s support for the Taliban even when it directly undermined American interests and cost American lives? If they were to try to stop I.S.I.’s covert action, what risks were they prepared to take? Inside Afghanistan, which was more important: to work with unsavory but sometimes effective warlords and militias against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, or to promote decent government, even if the attempt to do so created instability? How important was drug enforcement, if the antidrug campaign risked alienating farmers and laborers in Taliban country? The Taliban might be abhorrent, but did the movement pose a direct threat to the United States? If the Afghan war could be settled only by peace talks that included as much of the Taliban as possible, as many at the highest levels of the Obama administration came to believe after 2010, why was this daunting project left to a secret cell of negotiators and not made a higher, more explicit priority of the United States, as were the comparably risky negotiations with Iran and Cuba undertaken during Obama’s second term?
The United States and its allies went barreling into Afghanistan after September 11 because they felt they had no alternative. The complex wars and the political strategies that followed were often reactive, improvised, and informed by illusions. Yet America did not fight alone or for cynical gain. The United States was one of fifty-nine countries, or more than a quarter of the world’s nations, to deploy troops or provide other aid to Afghanistan in an attempt to stabilize the country after the Taliban’s fall. The motivations of the political leaders, military volunteers, and aid workers who participated in the war varied greatly. For many American and European generals and counterterrorism specialists, the critical mission was security—to deprive Al Qaeda of the territorial sanctuary from which it had been able to organize such a devastating terrorist raid on New York and Washington on September 11. A secondary aim was to prove that the compact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—founded on the premise that an attack on one member was an attack on all—had meaning, and that N.A.T.O. could operate if necessary outside its defensive perimeter in the West. Yet many lower-ranking volunteers who came to Afghanistan from around the world after 2001 saw themselves on a humanitarian mission. A more stable and prosperous Afghanistan restored to independence and peaceful sovereignty—restored to its best twentieth-century example of ethnic and linguistic pluralism—might contribute to international security. Yet a strong, rising Afghanistan relieved of some of its recent suffering was, for many of these volunteers, an end in itself.
September 11 made plain how the security of ordinary Afghans was connected to the security of ordinary Americans and Europeans. Yet the problems of restoring stability to Afghanistan proved to be rooted not only in the patterns of terrorism, but also in the country’s massive underdevelopment. On September 11, Afghanistan languished at the very bottom of United Nations and World Bank tables measuring poverty and human potential. Even that ranking was a guess, because the country no longer produced reliable statistics. Less than a quarter of all school-age children were enrolled. Girls were even less likely than that to learn to read and write. The wars since 1979 had ripped jagged losses in most Afghan families.
The international community has an unimpressive record of fostering rapid economic development in extremely poor, war-shattered countries. From the 1980s on, infrastructure investment, trade, and free-market policies transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of Asians and Latin Americans, fostering new middle classes and reducing the risks of war between states. By the 1990s, a number of coastal African nations had embarked on similarly transforming paths of economic growth, international trade, and middle-class formation. Yet the political economy of Afghanistan in 2001 had more in common with the world’s most intractable cases: Somalia, Haiti, the Central African Republic, or the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Both administrations that fought the Afghan war between 2001 and 2014 tolerated and even promoted stovepiped, semi-independent campaigns waged simultaneously by different agencies of American government. The easiest way for the National Security Council and the president to resolve policy conflicts among the C.I.A., the Pentagon policy offices, the D.E.A., Central Command, D.I.A., and the State Department was to tell each agency: Do it your way, but follow our broad guidance. The agencies often interpreted White House policy memos liberally; the agencies proved to be more inclined to apologize in the event of a perceived transgression than to implement policy they did not like. It is hardly surprising that policies riddled with such internal contradictions and unresolved analytical questions failed to achieve the extraordinarily ambitious aim of stabilizing war-shattered Afghanistan. The war instead became a humbling case study in the limits of American power. It became a story of mismatched means and ends. Rich, technologically advanced, and often ably staffed, the United States foreign policy, intelligence, and military machine was built for competition with other states: to win conventional wars against opposing armies, to negotiate treaties with professional diplomats, to patrol sea lanes, or to steal the secrets of other governments. At those sorts of tasks, the machine remained mostly competent. It was never well equipped to build good governance in deeply impoverished, violent landscapes or to win asymmetric conflicts with ideological, media-savvy guerrillas on short time lines.
The I.S.I. proved to be a formidable adversary, but it was not omnipotent; it suffered from the same corruption and weakness that plagued the entire Pakistani state. America failed to achieve its aims in Afghanistan for many reasons: underinvestment in development and security immediately after the Taliban’s fall; the drains on resources and the provocations caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; corruption fed by N.A.T.O. contracting and C.I.A. deal making with strongmen; and military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon. Yet the failure to solve the riddle of I.S.I. and to stop its covert interference in Afghanistan became, ultimately, the greatest strategic failure of the American war.
—
In the autumn of 2014, the United States military finished the massive project of tearing down or turning over to Afghan forces the sprawling infrastructure built in the country since 2001, to prepare for the official end of N.A.T.O. combat operations at year’s end. The United States operated 715 bases around Afghanistan; it would ultimately keep only 12, to carry out the forthcoming mission of advising and assisting the Afghan Na
tional Army and police. The Afghan National Army took control of about 225 of the former American bases; the police took another 118. Most of the rest were closed or abandoned. Altogether, the United States handed over to Afghanistan about $900 million of “foreign excess real property”—military hand-me-downs of various kinds—and destroyed another $46 million worth because the items were too sensitive or impractical to transfer. The largest single gift was Camp Leatherneck, the United States Marine base in Helmand, valued at $235 million; the Marines lowered the American flag and flew away in late October.28
The war against the Taliban grew deadlier for Afghan civilians and troops during 2014. More than 10,000 Afghan civilians died or suffered injuries during the year, the highest number since the United Nations began counting civilian casualties there in 2009. The U.N. judged the Taliban responsible for almost three quarters of the civilian casualties, through roadside bombings and other indiscriminate attacks, but hard ground battles between Afghan forces and the Taliban also took a heavy toll—more than 3,000 civilian casualties. The Afghan National Army and police suffered 4,634 deaths and many more wounded, a rate of casualties that Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, a senior American commander in Kabul, termed “not sustainable.”29
The Taliban consolidated control in rural areas, threatened highways, but captured no major cities. The war remained a bloody stalemate but one in which the government’s position—high casualties in the security forces, high rates of desertion and attrition, and paralysis within the new “unity” government of Ghani and Abdullah—looked precarious. By the year’s end, the unhappy partners had yet to name a cabinet. On the Taliban’s side, there were some signs of fragmentation as opportunists and Pakistani militants repositioned themselves for a post-American war. During the summer and fall, through video messages and fragmentary statements, various Pakistani and Afghan Taliban commanders offered support for the Islamic State. Some of the declarations of allegiance were ecumenical expressions of support for any righteous jihadist movement of the Islamic State’s character. Later in the year came more outright defections; the black flags of I.S.I.S. flew in place of Taliban banners in some districts of Nangarhar, Helmand, Farah, and Logar.
On February 15, 1989, the final armored column of the “Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan,” as the Soviet Fortieth Army called itself, crossed over the Friendship Bridge above the Amu Darya River, officially ending Soviet combat operations in the country. (Thousands of Soviet advisers remained behind.) General Boris V. Gromov, the final Soviet commander of the war, sat in the column’s last armored personnel carrier. On the bridge, the vehicle stopped and Gromov climbed down. He walked the final yards on foot, never looking back on Afghanistan. On the Soviet side of the border, his teenage son greeted him with a bouquet of flowers.30
General John Campbell, the final commander of the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, wanted a less dramatic and final-looking ceremony. The mission was changing but the number of troops in country was not; this was by no means a final withdrawal. He also had to manage security arrangements to be sure the Taliban did not disrupt his ceremony. On December 28, 2014, a Sunday, Campbell invited Afghan government officials, diplomats, and journalists to a gymnasium inside N.A.T.O.’s secure perimeter in Kabul. The ceremony program noted that attendees should lie flat on the ground in the event of a rocket attack. A small military brass band played in a corner as Campbell rolled up the I.S.A.F. flag and unfurled a new green one, emblazoned with the words “Resolute Support,” as the new advisory mission would be known. Campbell promised a “bedrock partnership” with Afghanistan. “The road before us remains challenging, but we will triumph,” he said. The Taliban issued a statement declaring that “the infidel powers” that had thought they would turn Afghanistan “into their colony” instead stood on “the brink of defeat.” From Washington, President Barack Obama issued a statement of his own. The end of American combat in Afghanistan was “a milestone for the country,” he said. He thanked the American troops and intelligence officers who had devastated, he said, “the core Al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama Bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives.” Finally, Obama went on, after much sacrifice, “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.”31
As it happened, the American war in Afghanistan would officially start again in just over twelve months, this time against the Islamic State’s new Afghan affiliates. The longest war in the country’s history would be longer still.
Epilogue: Victim Impact Statements
After Abdul Saboor murdered Darin Loftis and Robert Marchanti at the Interior Ministry in February 2012, American and Afghan intelligence and police officers tried to hunt him down. At one point, a signals intelligence operation traced Saboor’s cell phone to Iran. Among the Afghan officers who took an interest in the case was General Mohammad Ayub Salangi, a former Kabul police chief who had risen to become deputy interior minister. Salangi worked closely with American and European generals and police trainers; he was an Afghan nationalist who spoke out regularly against the I.S.I., accusing the service of providing military-grade explosives to the Taliban and sending Pakistani commandos in disguise to fight inside Afghanistan. Salangi came from the same area of Parwan Province as Saboor (just to the north of Kabul), so the case had an aspect of personal honor. As months and then years passed, the general made sure that Saboor remained on the wanted list. Early in 2016, after living in Iran for four years, Saboor returned to Parwan. The N.D.S. had instructed local informants to notify the service if he turned up. In the end, it wasn’t hard to track him down; that winter, Saboor openly hosted neighbors for discussions about Islam. Police arrested him on March 19 while he was “preaching in favor of the enemies of Afghanistan,” as the Interior Ministry put it.1
On April 21, in Kabul, the police arranged for Saboor, who was now thirty-two years old, to make a brief appearance before the Afghan media. He entered a Kabul briefing room in handcuffs, wearing a blindfold. A policeman removed the cloth as he stood before microphones. Saboor introduced himself and recited a verse from the Koran: “God says it is obligatory upon you to wage jihad against the enemies of your religion, creed, honor and pride.” He offered a brief and unrepentant confession. Since the “coalition forces have come to this country, what good have they done?” he asked. “What is the service they have provided to this land?” He recalled the burning of the Korans at Bagram Airfield in early 2012. “I couldn’t control myself,” he admitted. He was “grateful to God” and did “not care if I die for this.”2
In Florida, Holly Loftis learned about Saboor’s arrest by text message from Peggy Marchanti, who had been given some fragmentary information about the case by Army liaisons. Eventually she contacted military lawyers from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or J.A.G. Corps. They explained that Saboor would be tried for murder later in the summer. The families had an opportunity to submit Victim Impact Statements to the court in Parwan. Victim impact evidence—typically, written statements or videos submitted by family members of crime victims—is a relatively recent feature of American jurisprudence, at times controversial, particularly in capital cases, because of the emotional hold such testimony can have on juries. In the redevelopment of Afghan law and justice after the Taliban’s fall, shaped by European and American finance and advice, Victim Impact Statements became part of some Afghan proceedings.
The eldest of Holly’s two daughters, Alison, was seventeen years old. For the past few summers, she had participated in Gold Star Teen Adventures, a program for children of Special Operations soldiers killed in the line of duty. She had learned scuba diving and had decided to study marine biology in college. Camille, the younger daughter, was fourteen. She was enrolled in a preprofessional ballet program and was about to attend a summer intensive organized by the American Ballet Theatre. For both girls and Holly, the news of Saboor’s arrest and the invitation to
write about the loss of their father and husband turned the spring of 2016 into a season of new emotional trials. Holly tried to seek out professional counseling for all of them again, although between her work schedule and the constraints of her health insurance network, it wasn’t easy.
For her part, Holly had never expected justice for Darin’s murder. She thought it was appropriate that Afghans who respected her husband’s memory had tracked Saboor down. It wasn’t comforting, exactly, but “it came full circle.” For four years, she had dreamed from time to time that Darin had come home. The dreams were not of a gauzy, running-through-the-wildflowers reunion, but routine, matter-of-fact. The two of them picked up where they had left off. She talked with Darin about what had happened since he died—who in the military had been difficult with her, who had been kind. Somehow, with Saboor’s arrest, it felt to her now as if that fantasy might vanish.3
Holly and both of her daughters decided to go ahead and submit Victim Impact Statements. Alison’s was “without a doubt the most difficult thing I have ever had to write,” as she noted near the start. It ran to several pages. She was thirteen when her father was killed, and “over the last four years I have struggled with heartbreak, grief, anger and devastation.” Revisiting her loss after Saboor’s arrest had “redoubled all the feelings of bereavement I have had since the Air Force knocked on my door four years ago.” She recounted her father’s qualities, the richness of their relationship, her memories of him, and her struggle with depression since his death. Over the Memorial Day weekend, she had visited her father’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery and played taps on the trumpet. “As I played the tribute for him,” she wrote, “I was faced with the truth that my dad will not ever be able to tell me how proud he is of me, or be able to listen to the music that I have composed about his life and death.”
