All In (25 page)

Petraeus, inhaling his food, shook his head as McMaster explained that his audience with Karzai would be with a group of Afghans and Americans. Then Petraeus cut him off.

“You won't get access to Karzai through that group,” he said. “You'll get it through me.”

Petraeus was the Karzai gatekeeper, at least for his subordinates; other avenues seldom worked. But he saw McMaster's work as a critical line of effort and would remain closely involved.

“Yes, sir, okay,” McMaster said. “We thought this working group would be powerful. It would be a symbol.” Petraeus agreed but pointed out that he would be the one who would get McMaster access to Karzai, given that the working group had not yet even had a meeting with the president.

McMaster rolled through the slides, explaining at one point how Karzai seemed supportive but that his government was slow in executing reforms. There had been something of a chill, he said, since the Salehi case came to light.

Salehi, a member of the National Security Council and an aide to Karzai, had been accused and arrested in July for soliciting a bribe in exchange for the dismissal of a corruption investigation. In November, officials dropped corruption allegations, sparking an outrage among Afghan police and officials. No one, it seemed, advised the American advisers to the Afghan team on the political implications of arresting a high-level Karzai aide in a predawn raid by heavily armed special Afghan police, which put a damper on Afghan-U.S. cooperation. It also taught McMaster that he had to understand the political context of every move he made.

General Petraeus took some time to critique his presentation. “Reduce the number of bullets, and don't use sentences,” he told McMaster, referring to the bullet-point items in his briefing. “Ensure that President Karzai has to listen to you because you don't put everything in the bullets. Right now, he'll just read the slides himself.”

McMaster laughed at himself and shot back: “At least all the bullets start with verbs.”

“Okay,” Petraeus conceded with a grin, “you get credit for parallelism.”

After McMaster flipped to the next slide, which explained the prosecution of doctors for stealing millions in prescription medicines from the National Military Hospital, Petraeus stopped him. “Be clear on who is doing what. Is this ISAF or U.S.? Which Afghan officials? He'll ask you for some examples.”

“Yes, sir,” McMaster said. “One theme we want them to take in is the concept of joint investigations. And we are going to hit ‘Afghan first,'” explained McMaster.

“Good,” nodded Petraeus, now wearing his reading glasses, explaining that he had already briefed Karzai on this case. “But it would be good to double-tap him on this.”

McMaster had another case study to review for Karzai. “The major crimes task force uncovered a major corruption ring at one of the key border crossings. No surprise. They were able to prosecute that network. After that happened, revenue at that border crossing went up considerably,” he said. “But since then, some of the individuals were released from prison, and the head of the ring is back in a customs job in a different area without having served his sentence.”

He moved to the next slide, depicting airport corruption.

“It's all about leadership at the end of the day,” Petraeus said. “If they have a decent leader [at a border checkpoint or airport], they will get it done. I look forward to laying this out for the president.”

LATER, ALONE IN
his office, Petraeus seemed weary, even though he'd recently gone for a week to see Holly and other family members in Germany; it was his first leave in several years. He and Holly had repeatedly made plans for leave, but unexpected missions kept interfering. He'd skied with his kids for the first time since they were small children and gone running in the Bavarian hills, but there was still work to be done each day, and that had kept him occupied during much of the break. He was, after all, still the commander of the effort in Afghanistan, even if officially on leave. Some of his aides thought the break hadn't been enough, and they worried that he was losing his edge. One thing or another seemed to keep him up most nights—issues in working relationships with Washington, the relationship with Karzai or, on this night, coalition casualties. “Well, every now and then you gotta get a decent night's sleep,” he said. “This wears on you over time, and it wears on you over years. No one else feels the same weight of responsibility that the commander does. . . . Yesterday was a bad day. That takes a toll on a person. The whole command feels the emotional swing, from a period when we had a couple of really decent days.”

He was referring to the five U.S. soldiers who'd died on January 12. Staff Sergeant Omar Aceves, 30, of El Paso, Specialist Jarrid L. King, 20, of Erie, Pennsylvania, and Private First Class Benjamin G. Moore, 23, of Robbinsville, New Jersey, members of an engineer battalion attached to the 10th Mountain Division, were killed by an IED in Ghazni Province. Sergeant Zainah C. Creamer, 28, of Texarkana, Texas, serving in the 212th Military Police Detachment, was also killed by an IED, in Kandahar. And Major Evan J. Mooldyk, 47, of Rancho Murieta, California, part of the 19th Sustainment Command, died of a heart attack in Khost. Five soldiers from four states, ages 20 to 47. Petraeus wrote personal letters to the families of every soldier killed on his watch and attended as many memorial ceremonies in Afghanistan as he could. “We try to get out to them, but you have to really commit to that work, because it's not easy to get to some of the bases,” he said, referring to the ramp ceremonies where troopers' flag-draped caskets are loaded onto aircraft for return to the United States for subsequent unit memorial ceremonies. Petraeus and his command sergeant major, Marvin Hill, made a significant effort to attend ceremonies in the provinces. “They're out in small outposts, little bases, not exactly C-130 accessible in all cases,” he said. Dealing with death on a daily basis, Petraeus had nonetheless dispensed with wearing body armor and a helmet as he moved around the country; in fact, his security chief didn't recall Petraeus ever wearing it on that tour. “If [an attack] happens, it happens, and it doesn't matter what you're wearing,” he said fatalistically, adding that he and his wife had been far more worried about their son, Lieutenant Stephen Petraeus. “He was actually getting shot at,” he said a few months after his son rotated out of Afghanistan.

Stephen's unit, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, serving in Chak District, Wardak Province, had been engaged in numerous gunfights with insurgents. At one point, a deserted compound Stephen's platoon had occupied was assaulted and Stephen had ordered his men to take cover below while he remained on a rooftop calling in support over the radio. Petraeus was very proud of his son. Neither Petraeus nor his wife had pushed their son to enter the military, and during high school and his first year in college at MIT, it didn't appear it was his calling. Stephen was a soft-spoken computer techie, and MIT was quite a contrast with Petraeus's college experience at West Point. But at the start of his second year at MIT, Stephen surprised his parents by joining ROTC on his own. He subsequently was commissioned as an infantry officer upon graduation from MIT, completed the Infantry Officer Basic Course and earned the coveted Ranger tab. He had reported to the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy, the previous spring and deployed to Afghanistan immediately after arrival.

In Afghanistan, Petraeus knew his son was fighting in one of the tougher areas, an insurgent-infested district that had been an economy-of-force effort until the summer of 2010. By the fall of 2010, there had been hundreds of coalition troops killed or wounded in that area. Stephen's safety was often on Petraeus's mind. But the risk of allowing insurgents or even the Afghans to know that his son was there was so real for him that he would not visit his son until the final week of his tour—to pin a Combat Infantryman Badge on his son's chest and to present Purple Heart medals to some of Stephen's platoon members wounded during their tour.

In mid-January 2011, shortly before Obama delivered his State of the Union address, Petraeus issued a letter to all troops, civilians and NATO officials in Afghanistan with the subject line “COMISAF Assessment.” He had been working on it since late December, constantly tweaking it, conscious that it would be read not just by ISAF members but also by the American people, NATO allies, the White House and the Afghan people. It was his measured, carefully calibrated State of the War message, which credited ISAF and Afghan forces with “hard-won progress” in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, as well as advances “in a number of other areas in the east, west, and north, aided by the growth of Afghan and ISAF forces, the commencement of the Afghan Local Police initiative, the beginning of Afghan-led reintegration of reconcilable insurgents, and the relentless pace of targeted operations by ISAF and Afghan special operations forces. . . . Indeed, while there clearly is a need for additional work in numerous areas, it is equally clear that ISAF and Afghan forces inflicted enormous losses on mid-level Taliban and Haqqani Network leaders throughout the country and took away some of their most important safe havens. Now, in fact, the insurgents increasingly are responding to our operations rather than vice-versa, and there are numerous reports of unprecedented discord among the members of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban senior leadership body.” But, he cautioned,

 

Despite the achievements of 2010, there is much work to be done in 2011. And, as always in Afghanistan, the way ahead will be difficult. As President Karzai has made clear, the Kabul security bubble needs to be expanded into neighboring provinces. The gains in the south and southwest have to be solidified, joined, and expanded. Areas of improved security in the east and west need to be connected and extended. And insurgent advances in recent years in the north and mountainous northeast must be halted and reversed.

Obama's State of the Union address contained just two paragraphs about the war in Afghanistan.

 

We've also taken the fight to al-Qaeda and their allies abroad. In Afghanistan, our troops have taken Taliban strongholds and trained Afghan security forces. Our purpose is clear: By preventing the Taliban from reestablishing a stranglehold over the Afghan people, we will deny al-Qaeda the safe haven that served as a launching pad for 9/11.

Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we will work with nearly fifty countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And this July, we will begin to bring our troops home.

Obama had committed thirty thousand additional troops and placed Petraeus in command of the war. Even conservatives who found fault with nearly everything Obama did had to acknowledge that he had prosecuted this war with a sense of determination and purpose. They just didn't detect much enthusiasm and were concerned that he might scale down the U.S. effort too soon. Obama deeply respected the effort being put forth by the American military. But he was obviously looking to the drawdown in July and appeared to believe the time was approaching to begin to reduce the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan.

PETRAEUS'S CAMPAIGN PLAN
was built upon what he called six “lines of operation.” Combat forces covered the first two: “Protect the population” and “disrupt insurgent networks.” Martins's Rule of Law Field Force contributed to two more: “Support legitimate governance” and “foster sustainable socioeconomic development.” McMaster worked the fifth: “Neutralize criminal patronage networks.” The final line was “support the development of the Afghan armed forces,” a task headed by Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, a close associate of Petraeus since Caldwell replaced him as General Shelton's executive assistant.

More than almost any other effort, the development of Afghan forces was the key to Obama's drawdown plan. Since the fall of 2009, Afghan forces had grown in size and capability, financed by billions from U.S. taxpayers. In 2010, the Afghan National Army (ANA), the Afghan National Police (ANP) and the Afghan Air Force (AAF) grew by some 70,000. By the fall, the ANA stood at just under 145,000 and the ANP just above 113,000; the AAF was just over 4,000. The commitment of funds to this enterprise by the United States and its NATO allies was $11.6 billion in 2011, bringing the total for 2010 and 2011 to about $20 billion. Fourteen percent of Afghan recruits were literate, and thousands had gone AWOL, but Caldwell's command was able to keep recruiting enough to ensure 305,000 men in uniform by the fall of 2011. Wages had been substantially increased, paychecks were being delivered to soldiers electronically to cut down on theft, and advanced weaponry was being issued. All recruits were receiving mandatory literacy training so that they could read and write their names, recognize simple numbers and comprehend basic words of text.

Major Fernando Lujan believed fervently in the potential of Afghan forces. To take the CAAT concept inside the Afghan military, Lujan had embedded deep inside the 205th Afghan National Army Corps. He wore an Afghan uniform, grew a beard and fought for two weeks at a time with Afghan units. He spoke to soldiers in Dari, and upon his return to headquarters he briefed the corps's commanding general in Dari. He discovered that Afghan culture was most welcoming to foreigners who took the time to learn Dari or Pashto. At one point he was so impressed with the bravery of Afghan soldiers—their calm in battle and their acceptance of death, which he attributed to their Islamic faith—that he considered converting to Islam. He loved his work: “I'll do [this] in the Army for as long as they'll let me, . . . then I'll get out and do it as a civilian or some other type of governmental actor until I'm too old to walk patrols,” he said.
“Counterinsurgency is that kind of fight—too fluid and dynamic to draw old lessons from. To develop real insight, you have to stay connected to conflict in a very real, very direct way.”