by Steve Coll
5. Interview with Eide.
6. Notes from the February 19 dinner.
7. Ibid.
8. Panetta, Worthy Fights, p. 194.
9. Interview with Obama administration officials involved. Two drone strikes January 23: “Detail of Attacks by NATO Forces/Predators in FATA.” South Waziristan strike: Klaidman, Kill or Capture, pp. 39–40.
10. Panetta, Worthy Fights, p. 203.
11. “Very effective . . . Al Qaeda”: Interview with the former intelligence official.
12. Itinerary, briefing about Al-Kini: Interview with a former official familiar with the trip. All quotations from the dinner with Zardari and Pasha are from an interview with a participant.
13. “Open, charming”: Author’s interview. The blowup with Bennett was described by two people, one who was in the room when it occurred, a second who heard about it soon afterward at C.I.A. headquarters. All quotations from author’s interviews. Panetta declined to comment.
14. “An obligation . . . uncomfortable”: Panetta, Worthy Fights, p. 195.
15. All quotations from Saleh are not from his meeting with Panetta, but reflect what he told another American interlocutor in the same period, according to contemporary records.
16. “As good a partner”: Author’s interview with the former colleague.
17. “A giant among Pygmies”: Interview with Cowper-Coles.
18. The account of the meeting at C.I.A. and all quotations are from interviews with more than one participant as well as contemporary records.
19. Ibid.
20. Terrific subordinate . . . terrible colleague: Author’s interview. Diplomacy as jazz improvisation: Author’s interview with Holbrooke.
21. Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul, p. 222.
22. All quotations, interview with a participant.
23. “Desperate”: State Department cable, Islamabad to Washington, May 25, 2009, WikiLeaks. Holbrooke flew secretly to Abu Dhabi: Author’s interview with an official involved. “Greatest issue . . . Pakistani state”: from interviews with participants and contemporary records.
24. www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-new-strategy-afghanistan-and-pakistan.
25. Meeting scene and all quotations from notes by the author, who was present.
26. Interviews with multiple participants in the Riedel review.
27. See Gates, Duty, p. 341. Asked to respond to Gates’s criticism, Riedel said, “Gates understood that the previous administration had had no goal, no overarching objective. . . . At the time, in March 2009, Gates was fully on board and backed the review process.” Gates was the most influential holdover from the Bush administration, which complicated the situation.
28. “Destroy” to “defeat” and other aspects of the document are from author’s interviews with participants, then and later. See also the unclassified paper distilled from the top secret document: www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Afghanistan-Pakistan_White_Paper.pdf. That Obama felt strongly from the beginning that war aims should not include the Taliban’s full defeat: Interview with Ben Rhodes.
29. Ibid. Principals, Biden dissent on political grounds: Gates, Duty, p. 342.
30. Ibid., pp. 345–46.
31. “Awkward . . .”: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 288. Skelton: Ibid., p. 291. Meeting with Kayani: All quotations from an interview with a participant in the meetings, the thrust of which was confirmed by three participants.
32. Interviews with participants, ibid.
Chapter Twenty-one: Losing Karzai
1. Arg Palace: Author’s visits. Polished calligraphy, other descriptions: Eide, Power Struggle over Afghanistan, p. 16.
2. From author’s interviews with diplomats who met frequently with Karzai in this period, as well as correspondence with Karzai.
3. Ibid.
4. “What can we do . . .”: Interview with Eide.
5. Interview with Eide.
6. All quotations, interview with the minister.
7. State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, May 2, 2009, WikiLeaks.
8. Interviews with multiple U.S. and N.A.T.O. officials familiar with the intelligence assessments of Karzai.
9. Interview with the official. In correspondence, Karzai denied that he had ever told diplomats that he criticized the Pentagon or American policy in public for political credibility in an election year; the implication of his note was that he was fully sincere in his criticisms, never politically tactical.
10. Karzai’s outlook on Afghanistan’s geopolitical position: Interviews with multiple diplomats who spoke with him at length during this period, including Khalilzad and Eide.
11. Intercepts, U.S. person issue: Interviews with N.A.T.O. officials familiar with the episode.
12. State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, May 7, 2009, WikiLeaks. Later in May, Khalilzad called Spanta and told him that he would not run. His decision seemed definitive, but it did not end speculation in Kabul that he might seek office in some sort of brokered deal as the election descended into allegations of fraud and manipulation.
13. What Karzai believed: Interview with Eide, who met with Karzai frequently during this period. “The more people who challenge Karzai”: Interview with Barnett Rubin.
14. From interviews with four British officials involved in the discussions.
15. Karzai had an account of the meeting, “should be . . . with experience”: Interviews with participants, correspondence with Karzai. “Before we took office . . .”: Interview with Rubin.
16. Eide, Power Struggle over Afghanistan, locations p. 178.
17. “Widely understood . . .”: State Department cable, “Is Kandahar Under Siege?,” Kabul to Washington, September 28, 2009, WikiLeaks. Holbrooke and Karzai in April: Interviews with two U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
18. Interviews with participants.
19. Eide, Power Struggle over Afghanistan, p. 172.
20. Bijlert, “How to Win an Afghan Election,” Afghanistan Analysts Network, February 2009.
21. “The 2009 Presidential and Provincial Council Elections in Afghanistan,” National Democratic Institute, www.ndi.org/files/Elections_in_Afghanistan_2009.pdf. The International Election Commission reported turnout at 38 percent. Other credible estimates, accounting for evidence of phantom and fraudulent voting, suggest it may have been as low as 30 to 35 percent.
22. Intercepts, “No unrest . . . goes to the streets”: From interviews with participants, contemporary records. Conference call on August 21: Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul, pp. 234–35. “We had been speaking . . . on an open line,” the British envoy writes. “Holbrooke sounded as though he was on his mobile. Afghan listeners reported our every word . . . to Karzai in unusually quick time.” The contents of the call are also documented in fragmented form in contemporary records. “We have to respect the process . . . will be disputed”: Interviews with participants, contemporary records. Cowper-Coles writes that “Holbrooke was clear” that there “would have to be a second round,” a position that would infuriate Karzai. The interviews and records show Holbrooke taking a more ambiguous position. In any event, Holbrooke did soon lobby Karzai insistently to accept a second round, as Cowper-Coles describes.
23. Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
24. “Will say . . . defeat him”: Ibid. “One way . . . it’s a fact”: Author attended the meeting and took notes.
25. Karzai’s bodyguard: Interview with Nabil. In correspondence, Karzai wrote that he was never concerned about his Panjshiri guards but confirmed that he had asked Nabil whether he should be concerned, and that Nabil told him that he could rely on their professionalism.
26. “Look, we’ve all had some tough decisions . . .”: The New York Times, November 24, 2009. Khalilzad and Kerry: Interviews with officials familiar with the conver
sations.
27. “Backseat . . . runaway car”: Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
Chapter Twenty-two: A War to Give People a Chance
1. This account of I.S.A.F. tactical intelligence in 2009 is drawn from interviews with more than a dozen military and intelligence officers deployed to Afghanistan during this period, including McChrystal. It is also drawn from interviews with American and European military officers and diplomats who worked in or with I.S.A.F., as well as Afghan and N.D.S. officers. The author made several reporting trips to Afghanistan and one to Iraq during this time and conducted many of the interviews in the field, contemporaneously or soon after the events described.
2. Flynn, Pottinger, and Batchelor, “Fixing Intel.”
3. Zabul: State Department cable captioned “Outrage Against Coalition Special Ops Increases in Zabul,” Kabul to Washington, January 19, 2009, WikiLeaks. I.S.A.F. pedestrian accidents: See, for example, War Logs field entries for November 28, 2008, which describe a British van in Kandahar running over a pedestrian and fleeing the scene, provoking a mob to gather to sack the next foreign vehicle through. These sorts of portraits also drew from D.I.A. and C.I.A. field reporting as yet unpublished but identified in disclosed cables. Examples include D.I.A.’s July 21, 2009, “Kandahar Province Overview” and “C.I.A. Field Memo: Security in Kandahar City . . . May 28, 2009.”
4. Interview with participants and contemporary records.
5. State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, August 1, 2009, WikiLeaks.
6. Press reports described aspects of Stone’s classified study that summer. Holbrooke described the finding of Taliban command and control within prisons, conducted by cell phone, in contemporaneous discussions with the author.
7. Interviews with participants.
8. Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Chandrasekaran, Little America, and Kaplan, The Insurgents, are among the multiple well-sourced accounts of McChrystal’s summer review. This summary draws on those and interviews with multiple military officers involved. “District Stability Frameworks” and “It’s great to make sure” from a briefing the author attended as a reporter at the Pentagon. “Science project”: Interview with the aide.
9. Interviews with participants and contemporary records.
10. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records.
11. McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 310.
12. When Bob Woodward obtained a copy of the report, the Pentagon prepared an unclassified version that was ultimately published by The Washington Post on September 21, 2009. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html.
13. All quotations from interviews with three U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. The dialogue reflects their recollection of the essence of the exchanges, which were reported contemporaneously in diplomatic cables. A version of the meeting was also described in Partlow, A Kingdom of Their Own.
14. Interviews with the U.S. officials, ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records.
17. State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, October 7, 2009. The cable’s author sarcastically called the Pakistani brigadier’s remarks about the Quetta Shura “the high point” of the meeting, which took place in Kandahar on September 29. Holbrooke: Author’s interview.
18. Interviews with White House officials. See also the Woodward, Chandrasekaran, and Kaplan books cited in note 8 above.
19. Contemporary records, including a reconstructed chronology by a participant.
20. Lavoy’s briefings, including the assessment that the Taliban controlled about a third of the population at the time: Interviews with several participants and contemporary records.
21. Ibid. Obama’s thinking and frustration: Interview with Ben Rhodes.
22. Ibid.
23. Author’s contemporaneous notes of the meeting.
24. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records. $4 billion in the fiscal year beginning October 2009: Chandrasekaran, Little America, p. 197.
25. Contemporary records, including a reconstructed chronology by a participant.
26. All quotations, interview with Holbrooke.
27. Kayani: State Department cable, Islamabad to Washington, October 7, 2009, WikiLeaks.
28. At the time there was considerable confusion about how the decision to name a departure date had been reached. The White House did not circulate drafts of the West Point speech containing the announcement for interagency review, corrections, and pleadings, a typical process for policy speeches. Chandrasekaran and especially Kaplan have cleared up the mystery. Obama and his White House advisers kept their own counsel, their accounts report, and then sprang the decision on the war cabinet just after Thanksgiving, presenting it as part of a kind of contract that the president asked his commanders and senior civilian war advisers to support. There was no serious debate outside the White House about the costs and benefits of making the decision public. The summary here draws mainly on Kaplan and Chandrasekaran.
29. All quotations, McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 357.
30. Kaplan, The Insurgents, p. 317, and author’s interviews with officials involved.
31. Author’s interview with Holbrooke. Obama’s comments: Interview with Ben Rhodes. Karzai: State Department cable, Kabul to Washington, November 29, 2009, WikiLeaks. What Karzai recalled later: Correspondence with Karzai. The available contemporary records—WikiLeaks cables and other contemporary records—don’t show Karzai advocating for a withdrawal of U.S. forces to bases at this time, but it is certainly a view he developed over time.
32. McChrystal, My Share of the Task, p. 358.
33. Text of Obama’s speech: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan. Author’s interview with Holbrooke, February 27, 2010.
34. McChrystal: Author’s contemporaneous notes of the meeting.
Chapter Twenty-three: The One-man C.I.A.
1. “Alarming . . . U.S. government”: Interview with Holbrooke, 2010.
2. All quotations from interviews with participants and contemporary records.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Interview with Rubin.
6. The author attended the meeting and took notes.
7. From interviews with participants and contemporary records.
8. Interview with participants. Remarks by the President: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan.
9. Interviews with British and American officials involved in the discussions. All quotations, interviews with participants and contemporary records.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. All quotations are recollections from interviews with six senior international and Afghan officials then in Kabul who either participated in the meetings or received accounts of them soon after from Karzai or his aides. Some of these interviews were conducted by the author in Kabul within days or weeks of the meetings described. Some of the quotations and summarized statements were also recorded in contemporary records reviewed by the author. In correspondence, Karzai wrote that the account of his interactions with Pakistani leaders and Saleh during this period was “not true,” without elaborating.
14. Ibid. It was impossible, without access to Afghan or Pakistani records, to resolve the contradictory accounts of N.D.S.-I.S.I. interactions in the aftermath of the attack.
15. Ibid. In correspondence, Karzai confirmed the exchange between Saleh and Kayani and the birth of talks about a new strategic partnership. However, he called the account here of his breakfast with Saleh “not true.”
16. All quotations from author’s interviews in Kabul
in March 2010.
17. Ibid. In correspondence, Karzai denied asking whether there was too much influence in Afghanistan during this period. However, the author recorded these comments contemporaneously, as related by diplomats in Kabul who had just met with the Afghan president.
18. All quotations from the Four Seasons are from author’s notes and recorded transcript of the lunch interview. “How Does This Thing End?”: from interviews with U.S. officials. White House: Interview with Jones.
19. British intelligence briefing: Interviews with participants and contemporary records. Rubin: Memo in author’s files. 106-page paper: Chronology of diplomacy developed by a participant. “Nonhegemonic South Asia”: Contemporaneous interview with a State Department official who read the paper. Holbrooke summary: Interviews with participants.
20. Mid-March videoconference between Obama and Karzai, first in months: Contemporaneous interview with a participant. Obama quotations: CNN, March 28, 2010.
21. All quotations, interview with an Afghan participant in the meeting, the thrust of which was confirmed by a second Afghan participant.
22. All quotations from interviews with participants and contemporary records.
Chapter Twenty-four: The Conflict Resolution Cell
1. Interviews with Holbrooke, his aides, and N.S.C. staff, contemporaneously and later.
2. The author hosted and moderated a presentation by Kayani at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute, on March 25, 2010. He presented the slides at several meetings in Washington that week.
3. In a report for the Atlantic Council, Shuja Nawaz published some of the slides Kayani presented on March 25. “Learning by Doing.”
