by Duane Evans
Within a day or two I traveled out to the airport to meet up with Charlie, the CIA liaison officer attached to the Marine Expeditionary Unit. Charlie was a friend of mine whom I had known since my first days at the Agency, and as a former Marine, he was one of the paramilitary instructors when I went through some of my early training. Charlie had been in Islamabad when I had passed through there before joining Echo team. He was looking to get on a team going to Afghanistan and had jumped at the chance to join up with the Marines.
It was good to see him there in the Afghan desert. He seemed in good spirits, although he told me the last few weeks had been frustrating for him and the Marines. According to Charlie, while at Rhino Base in Helmand Province, the MEU had been kept on a pretty tight leash and had been limited to mostly defensive operations. Staying on the defense was not part of the Marines make-up, but as the only conventional U.S force in the country, it was what was required to keep the American military profile low.
Charlie walked me around parts of the airfield and pointed out where the Marines had constructed some basic POW holding facilities made of concertina wire. For the moment the cages were empty, at least the ones I saw, but the hope was that surrendering Taliban and al-Qa’ida would soon be filling them up.
Our next stop was to meet the MEU commander, a one-star general named James Mattis, about whom Charlie had nothing but praise. Mattis invited us into his office. A big coffee cup already in his hand, he had an orderly bring us some as well. Down to earth and unassuming, he provided us with a short, informal briefing about the MEU and the situation at the airport. Myself and another member of Foxtrot team who had accompanied me reciprocated, explaining who we were and our current understanding of the situation in Kandahar. The entire meeting lasted no more than 15 minutes.
After the meeting, as we were walking out to our pickups, Charlie asked me for a favor. He had no long gun and was armed only with his Glock-19. He asked if I could get him an Agency rifle. He said the Marines had at times loaned him an M-4, but he needed his own rifle. I knew Echo team had been supplied with M-4’s at some point and I told him I would pass the request on to them, which I did. I never saw Charlie in Afghanistan again and I don’t know if he ever got his rifle.
Another priority task was to carry out raids against locations in Kandahar that CIA Headquarters believed were al-Qa’ida safe houses. We suspected they would have been abandoned, but we really didn’t know for sure until we checked. Regardless, we were hopeful that we could still find materials of intelligence value.
Even prior to arriving in Kandahar, Foxtrot team had been working with Shirzai to create a special counterterrorism unit of 50 better-than-average fighters for carrying out these raids. The night before we were to begin the raids, Khalil came to me and complained that the recently arrived Army lieutenant colonel in charge of the SF CCE had told him that the Afghan counterterrorism unit was now under the colonel’s command. This was news to me. I found the colonel and explained that we had been putting this force together for some time for the express purpose of carrying out the safe house raids when we reached Kandahar, and that if he needed fighters, Shirzai had plenty of others from which to choose. The colonel responded that, no, he wanted this group as they were better trained. He went on to say that, as the senior U.S. military commander on the ground, he was in charge of all allied armed forces, and therefore the CT unit was under his command.
On the surface, the colonel seemed to have a valid point. Unquestionably he was the senior U.S. military officer, and depending on the terms of joint-agreements made with the Afghans, his rank could put him in charge of allied forces. It was a concept with which I was familiar. The colonel’s rationale was specious, however, as Shirzai’s forces were not, in fact, “allied forces.” Shirzai had not signed any alliance agreement with the U.S. military. Rather, he and his forces were operating as counterterrorism assets, managed and supported by the CIA as authorized under Title 50, the legal authority under which the war was being fought at the time. The truth was, both as a practical and legal matter, it was only through the CIA’s auspices that the SF ODA’s were working with Shirzai’s fighters, and that work was in an advise and support role, not a command role.
Still, I had no interest in getting into a legal debate or turf battle over who controlled Shirzai’s forces. In the interest of maintaining a good relationship I held my fire, avoiding what I believed would have been a contentious, unproductive, and ultimately, destructive debate. I was glad I did so. The next day an understanding was reached that CIA officers and ODA members would conduct joint raids supported by the special Afghan CT unit.
As we suspected, all the houses we raided were abandoned by al-Qa’ida, but we did find some material of interest at some of the targeted locations. In one house there were a lot of newspapers, magazines, and other printed material. Keeping an eye out for booby-traps, I rummaged through it and came upon an English language technical magazine. On the cover it highlighted an article that rated the best flight training simulators on the market. In the same house we found the carton in which a flight simulator had been packaged. As I examined the carton, images of the hijacked aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center Towers flashed through my mind. Had the terrorists used this flight simulator as part of their preparation for their mission on 9/11? Was this the house where they once stayed? Odds were the answer was yes.
On another day, some of us traveled out to Tarnak Farms south of Kandahar, where al-Qa’ida had maintained its premier training facility. It had been one of the first targets of the bombing campaign. All that remained of the place was rubble. We spent a few hours poking around the shattered remnants of the buildings looking for anything of intelligence value.
During this search we discovered a small underground room broken open by bombs and fully exposed to daylight. In the room were numerous metal footlockers filled with dark blue semi-precious Lapis Lazuli stones which al-Qa’ida used for trading purposes. Before loading them up for transport back to Kandahar, we each stuck one of the blue uncut rocks in our pocket. The souvenir-taking reminded me of the scene in the book “Slaughterhouse-Five” when the character Rosewater, commenting on Billy Pilgrim’s wedding diamond taken as war booty, says, “That is the attractive thing about war. Everybody gets a little something.”
There were other attractive things, too. Pieces of women’s lingerie were found scattered around in the rubble. I could not say what brand it was, but it was as sexy as the Victoria Secrets line, and it gave rise to jokes about what kind of training had been going on at Tarnak Farms.
That evening after my return to the Governor’s Palace I was invited to watch a movie being shown by one of Hank’s ODA members. I had not seen a movie since I had left home and readily accepted the invitation. The film was a relatively recent fictional drama about a high-altitude climbing expedition. It was shown on a computer in a little room with some of the ODA members crowded in close to the small screen. I found a seat on the floor and was quickly caught up in the story. Although a drama with moments of life and death tension, I felt relaxed and comforted in watching it, and in being entertained and completely absorbed by something different than the life I had been living.
After the movie ended, I realized just how much of a mental escape it had been for me. I also realized that I felt guilty about it. Somehow my forgetting about where I was and what I was doing just felt wrong to me. It almost felt like it was a risky thing for me to have done—that I needed to stay fully engaged in the reality I was living and not allow myself any escape from that reality until it was time for me to leave Afghanistan.
36
Tensions Among the Tribe
With THE FALL OF Kandahar, and Karzai’s emergence as the leader of the transitional government to come, simmering frictions between Shirzai and Karzai came to a head. A major catalyst for this was Karzai’s decision to appoint Mullah Naqib Alikhozai, the former Taliban governor of Kandahar, as the new head of security for the province. This
decision enraged Shirzai. Even before we had entered Kandahar, Shirzai’s informants were reporting that Naqib was involved in helping al-Qa’ida fighters escape from the city. This was taking place even as Naqib was supposedly negotiating with Karzai the surrender of Kandahar. Shirzai would have no part of the new plan, and he threatened to challenge Karzai’s authority to appoint Naqib without his consent as the governor of Kandahar.
The growing rift between the two Pashtun leaders set off alarm bells in Washington, as it could have resulted in the splintering of the fragile, but much needed united anti-Taliban Pashtun front. To head the situation off before it became any worse, Greg and I were directed by Headquarters to meet with the two men to see if we could get them to come to a meeting of the minds on the Mullah Naqib issue.
When the meeting took place I asked Mark to come along. Throughout our time on the ground in Afghanistan, I considered him to be Foxtrot’s “Shirzai expert,” and when it came to anything of consequence involving Shirzai I wanted him to be in a position to weigh in on the issue. An ardent supporter of Shirzai, over the last several weeks Mark had grown to believe that he was not getting the credit he was due for his accomplishments in the south, and that Karzai was being favored. I actually agreed with him, but I did not take it as personally as Mark seemed to, or believe it was a deliberate decision being taken by Headquarters to disenfranchise Shirzai. To my mind the apparent favoritism was rather a natural result of Headquarters’ recognition that if he survived, Karzai, not Shirzai, would likely become the leader of Afghanistan. On this point, when there was something in the cable traffic that seemed to support Mark’s belief, and I did not seem to be affected by it, Mark would shake his head and say, “Man, you have the patience of Job.”
At the meeting, Greg took the lead, and he did not beat around the bush in laying out Washington’s concerns to the two tribal leaders. Shirzai was not cowed, however, and in the ensuing discussions made his case that Mullah Naqib was a snake and could never be trusted. In the end, Karzai agreed to look into Shirzai’s charges. Mark did not say a word throughout the meeting. I knew that he was furious that Karzai was even considering the appointment of Naqib to a government position, and I think it was everything he could do to keep his anger from showing.
Within a day or two, Karzai through his own sources confirmed Shirzai’s derogatory information about Naqib, and he agreed that Naqib would not have any position in the new government. An inter-Pashtun crisis was avoided, to Washington’s relief.
37
Death from Above
“Never turn away free man or slave, by day or night, though you may be sleeping, eating, or bathing, if he says he has news for you.”
Nicephorus II Phocas
Byzantine Emperor
It WAS THE MORNING of December 16th, the day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan, and I was brushing my teeth at an outdoor wash station in the courtyard of the Governor’s Palace. Khalil approached and reported to me that an Afghan had walked up to the perimeter security and had asked to speak with an American.
I put away my toothbrush and told Khalil to have the man searched and then brought to me. In a few minutes, I met the man, whose name was Moktar. Through Khalil he told me that he had tried to come into the compound the previous day, but the Afghan guards had turned him away. He had decided he must try again, however. He pointed to the building occupied by Shirzai and his staff no more than 50 feet away and said there were many explosives buried in the dirt roof of the building. He claimed that they would be detonated that night during the Eid al-Fitr breaking of the fast banquet. Moktar seemed confident in what he was saying, and I saw little to be gained by him making up the story and coming to tell us.
Fortunately, we were in an excellent position to check out Moktar’s tale, which is often not the case with a walk-in who volunteers information. Only a few hours earlier a team of bomb technicians from the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, or OTS, had arrived to support our operations in the Kandahar area. They brought with them hundreds of pounds of technical gear, so if anyone could figure out if there were explosives in the roof, they could.
I had Khalil wait with Moktar while I found the OTS team chief. He was cocooned in a sleeping bag completely zonked out among his teammates, all similarly cocooned and zonked. The poor guy had only been asleep for two or three hours after a grueling marathon trip from the States, so I felt bad about having to roust him from his sleep.
“Hey, Mike. Wake up, man. Sorry, but I’ve got to put you to work.”
Mike slowly opened his bloodshot eyes which had that look of where the hell am I and who the hell are you? in them. He then stiffly sat up, and I let him have a few more seconds to get his wits about him. I then gave him the Cliff Notes brief on Moktar. With the mention of explosives, Mike was fully awake and firing on all cylinders.
I took him to meet Moktar, and while Mike talked to him I went into Shirzai’s building. In anticipation of the night’s festivities, his staff was already arranging the place settings around the edges of a large Afghan carpet that covered the floor of the banquet room that was directly beneath the suspect roof. I found Shirzai in his office, and through one of his English-speaking staff I told him about the reported explosives. I insisted that he and his staff leave the building immediately until the threat could be evaluated. He reluctantly agreed, and everyone in the building moved outside and away from the building.
It didn’t take Mike and his team long to determine that Moktar’s information was accurate. The roof was filled with buried Russian land mines and 122mm artillery rockets rigged with detonators for command detonation. For me, it was lightning and snakes all over again, although worse because they were only feet away, coiled and nested together, and ready to strike.
As relayed by Moktar, some weeks earlier the Taliban and al-Qa’ida had anticipated that if they had to flee Kandahar before Ramadan ended, either Shirzai or Karzai would likely establish himself at the Governor’s Palace and that he would host a breaking of the fast celebration on Eid al-Fitr. Present would be his commanders, important tribal leaders, and his American friends—all the ingredients for a juicy, or in this case, bloody, target.
It was a prescient and shrewd plan. The Taliban was now poised to wipe out half of their armed opposition’s leadership in the south with the push of a button. The detonation of the buried explosives would also do massive damage to the co-located U.S. military and intelligence presence in the south, dealing the U.S. effort in Afghanistan a huge blow and setting back much of what had been gained.
Using its sophisticated gear, the OTS team located the command detonation cord that ran off the compound, and neutralized it with a small cutting charge. The explosives could no longer be detonated remotely. While the immediate threat was gone, there was so much ordnance packed into the roof—2,500 lbs. of it to be precise—it would require many days to safely remove it.
The reality of how close we had come to catastrophe was sobering. All it would have taken for that disaster to happen would have been for Moktar not to have returned back to the Governor’s compound a second time after having been turned away on his first attempt to warn us. With this in mind, I met with him a final time, both to thank him and to pay him. The first part was easy. The second part was a bit more complicated. I was flush with cash at that point, as the OTS team had just brought me a replenishment of a million dollars. So funds were available and the man had undoubtedly just saved dozens of lives, quite possibly mine included. So how much was that worth? The word “priceless” came to mind, although it was a bit hard for me to be objective about the matter.
Someone on Foxtrot suggested a payment to Moktar of $300, rationalizing that $300 is a lot of money in Afghanistan for a man of Moktar’s economic status, and it should make him happy. If we gave him more, the reasoning continued, his sudden affluence could bring suspicion on him from Taliban still in the area and result in bad things happening to him and his family.
> Having once lost an agent for this very reason, I was sympathetic to the argument. But $300! No way, we had to do better than that. Finally, I gave Moktar $2,500. It was a princely sum for him, but a paltry sum for us considering what we had gotten, or perhaps more importantly, had not gotten, out of the deal. Was it the right amount? I didn’t know. There aren’t any books that tell you these kinds of things, but that is what I gave him.
Remembering the agent I had once lost, I also gave him a warning that if anyone found out he had the money he would likely be killed, either by a thief or by his erstwhile friends, the Taliban, who would assume he was an American agent. Either way, I told him, “You will be dead.”
38
Do I Go or Do I Stay
The NEXT DAY I learned that the schedule for my return to the States had been moved up. I was to catch a ride back to Jacobabad on a MC-130 that would be at the Kandahar airport that very night. Although I knew my departure date was approaching, now that it was unexpectedly upon me I had conflicting feelings about leaving, and I considered whether I should go.
On the one hand, the timing seemed right. Our mission to capture Kandahar had been accomplished. Al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan had been smashed, and what was left of it was badly wounded and on the run. My team no longer existed, as Foxtrot and Echo had been unceremoniously combined under Greg’s command a couple of days before.
On the other hand, I knew that there was still work to be done, and that the Afghanistan story was far from over. I also had to admit to myself that I actually liked being in Afghanistan, that I felt more fully alive in a way that I had not felt before, and that without a doubt I was living the greatest adventure of my life.
In part, this was due to the element of danger that had always been present, but in equal part it was because of the freedom my teammates and I had experienced in dealing with the uncertainties and challenges we faced. This had meant that whatever decisions we made, we did so knowing our fate and our mission’s success was in our own hands and no one else’s. To its credit, Headquarters had recognized the dynamic nature of the Afghanistan theater of operations and had refrained from dictating actions from thousands of miles away, allowing the teams on the ground to operate in a near autonomous fashion and to call the shots as each saw fit. This approach was a blessing to every CIA officer who was serving in Afghanistan at the time.
