In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (39 page)

One effective IED was the “TV bomb,” which was pioneered by Iraqi groups. The bomb was a “shaped”-charge mechanism that could
be hidden under brush or debris on a roadside and set off by remote control from 300 yards or more. It was useful for focusing the energy of a bomb toward a specific target. Taliban commanders learned from Iraqi groups to disassemble rockets and rocket-propelled-grenade rounds, remove the explosives and propellants, and repack them with high-velocity shaped charges—thus creating armor-penetrating weapons. In addition, Afghan groups occasionally adopted brutal terrorist tactics, such as beheadings, used by Iraqi groups. In December 2005, insurgents posted a video of the decapitation of an Afghan hostage on al Qa’ida-linked Websites. This was the first published video showing the beheading of an Afghan hostage, and it sent the message that the Taliban was no less serious about repelling the Americans than Iraqi insurgent groups were.
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The Taliban also developed or acquired new commercial communications gear and field equipment from the Iraqi insurgents, and they appeared to have received good tactical, camouflage, and marksmanship training, too. Some Taliban units even included al Qa’ida members or other Arab fighters, who brought experience from jihadi campaigns in Iraq and Chechnya.
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Perhaps most troubling, insurgents increasingly adopted suicide tactics, especially in such major cities as Kandahar and Kabul.
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Afghan National Police were common targets of suicide bombers. Al Qa’ida leaders in Pakistan encouraged the use of such attacks. Ayman al-Zawahiri argued that “suicide operations are the most successful in inflicting damage on the opponent and the least costly in terms of casualties among the fundamentalists.”
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Al Qa’ida’s involvement was particularly important in this regard because Afghan insurgent groups were surprisingly inept at suicide attacks. Even a UN study of suicide bombing led by Christine Fair acknowledged: “Employed by the Taliban as a military technique, suicide bombing—paradoxically—has had little military success in Afghanistan.”
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Despite their initial reluctance, Afghan insurgents began to use suicide attacks for a variety of reasons.
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First, the Taliban had begun to rely more and more on the expertise and training of the broader jihadi community, especially the international al Qa’ida network,
which advocated and condoned such attacks. These militants—with al Qa’ida’s assistance—helped supply a steady stream of suicide bombers. Second, al Qa’ida and the Taliban saw the success of such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Iraqi groups, and they concluded this was an effective method for disrupting Coalition actions.
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Suicide attacks allowed insurgents to achieve maximum impact with minimal resources, and the chance of killing people and instilling fear increased exponentially with suicide attacks.
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Third, al Qa’ida and the Taliban believed that suicide attacks raised the level of insecurity among the Afghan population. This caused some Afghans to question the government’s ability to protect them and further destabilized the authority of local government institutions. Consequently, the distance widened between the Afghan government and the population in specific areas. Fourth, suicide attacks provided renewed visibility for the Taliban and al Qa’ida, which previous guerrilla attacks did not generate. Because each attack was spectacular and usually lethal, every suicide bombing was reported in the national and international media.

Most of the bombers were Afghans or Pakistanis, though some foreigners were also involved.
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Many were recruited from Afghan refugee camps and
madrassas
in Pakistan, where they were radicalized and immersed in extremist ideologies. Taliban-affiliated Deobandi
madrassas
in Pakistan afforded ready access to bombers, and the Taliban prevailed on some teachers and administrators to help recruit them.
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Al Qa’ida continued to play an important role by funding suicide bombers, and they paid as much as several thousand dollars to the families of suicide bombers.

Al Qa’ida’s role in Afghanistan can be accurately summed up by the advertising slogan used by the German-based chemical giant BASF: “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” Al Qa’ida leaders improved the tactical and operational competence of Afghan and Pakistani groups, who were able to manufacture a better array of products—from
improvised explosive devices to videos. Al Qa’ida strengthened the competence of insurgent groups, although its leaders generally shied away from direct involvement in ground operations in Afghanistan, leaving the dirty work to local Afghans. Instead, it operated as a force multiplier, improving the groups’ capabilities. Even as al Qa’ida enjoyed a resurgence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, however, some U.S. military forces began to make limited progress in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 and early 2008.

AS IT BECAME CLEAR that the U.S. military would have to shift its focus from military operations to counterinsurgency tactics, new personnel were given a different set of responsibilities. U.S. Navy Commander Larry Legree was one of those new faces. Legree’s preparation for counterinsurgency operations in landlocked Afghanistan was, somewhat ironically, serving aboard an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, and an amphibious ship. It was not exactly standard training for participating on the front line of a major ground war. “I was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer,” Legree told me, almost apologetically. “The four and a half months I spent at Fort Bragg in North Carolina before deploying to Afghanistan was about the only preparation I had. I learned how to wear body armor and shoot, move, and communicate, but didn’t learn any real fundamentals about counter-insurgency.” Most of that had to come on the fly.

Legree also didn’t have the stereotypical disposition of a war-fighter. His congenial, unassuming temperament, honed during his childhood in western Michigan, and his extraordinary politeness seemed oddly suited for Afghanistan’s bloody front lines. He was also something of an academic. Legree attended the prestigious U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then went on to get three master’s degrees at George Washington University, Duke, and North Carolina State.

But he was a critical cog in the U.S. military’s transition in eastern Afghanistan from a purely war-fighting machine to a counterinsurgency force through 2008. Legree was sent to Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, only a few miles from the Pakistan border, to become the commander of a U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team. Insurgent groups had dug into the impenetrable terrain and created extensive cave networks along the province’s border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. They had done the same thing during the Soviet era. Legree’s job was to show locals that the United States could provide reconstruction and development assistance. “Our primary contributions were building roads and bridges,” Legree said, “as well as helping establish a health care network. They brought concrete change to local Afghans.” The roads and bridges paid off: Legree and his colleagues helped build extensive infrastructure across the province, transforming the dynamics of the local economy. As commerce began to flow more rapidly and into new areas, Legree became a powerful and popular figure.

“I was almost never targeted,” Legree said, somewhat nonplussed, since Kunar was one of Afghanistan’s most violent provinces. “My view is that the locals were pragmatic. They wanted the money and they knew I was the checkbook. The message got out: Don’t mess with the Provincial Reconstruction Team.”
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And Afghans in Kunar felt incresingly secure. A 2008 Asia Foundation poll indicated that Afghans in the province felt relatively secure, despite violence in isolated pocket like the Korengal Valley.
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An Epiphany

Legree was not alone in his efforts. The U.S. military gradually improved its counterinsurgency capabilities over the course of its tenure in Afghanistan, though it still faced an entrenched and dedicated enemy. Among the most successful contingents were those led by Major General David M. Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Coalition Joint Task Force 82. Rodriguez is tall and
immensely polite but somewhat uncomfortable in front of large crowds. He had served as deputy director of regional operations on the joint staff at the Pentagon, where he was responsible for synchronizing and monitoring U.S. military operations abroad.

The 82nd Airborne’s previous tours in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004 had been marred by controversy, earning them a reputation as “doorkickers.” “We were good at one thing,” said Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. “Killing bad guys.” This ultimately proved counterproductive. Schweitzer was a gregarious, affable colonel with short-cropped hair, bushy eyebrows, and dark sunglasses that clung to his neck like a necklace. “What we needed to do was to spend more time separating the enemy from the population. That meant engaging in non-kinetic operations,” Schweitzer continued. In U.S. military lingo, “non-kinetic” referred to reconstruction and development activities, such as building health clinics, roads, and schools.
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In August 2002, the 82nd Airborne conducted Operation Mountain Sweep, which involved a weeklong hunt for al Qa’ida and Taliban fugitives in eastern Afghanistan. During the operation, a U.S. Special Forces team knocked at the door of a mud compound in the Shah-i-kot Valley, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. An elderly Pashtun farmer let the soldiers inside. When they asked if there were any weapons in the house, he led them to his only firearm, a decrepit hunting rifle. The Special Forces team thanked him and walked toward the next house. Not long after the Special Forces left, six paratroopers, also from the 82nd Airborne, also part of Operation Mountain Sweep, kicked in the door. Terrified, the farmer tried to run but was grabbed by one of the soldiers, while others tried to frisk the women. “The women were screaming bloody murder,” recalled Mike, one of the Special Forces soldiers who was present during the confusion. “The guy was in tears. He had been completely dishonored.” It was a strategic blunder, recalled another soldier. “After Mountain Sweep,” he noted, “for the first time since we got here, we’re getting rocks thrown at us on the road in Khowst.”
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This and other experiences had marred the 82nd Airborne’s reputation. But through the end of its rotation in early 2008, the 82nd Airborne had worked assiduously to change the general impression of the division, embracing the three core principles of counterinsurgency: clear, hold, and build. Colonel Schweitzer declared: “The Taliban and other groups tell locals: don’t send your kids to school, don’t take advantage of the medical care provided, and don’t support the government by helping with security. We say the opposite. Send your kids to school and we’ll build them, seek the available medical care, and the government will support you through the construction of roads, schools, dams, and infrastructure that will stimulate the economy.”
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Building on counterinsurgency lessons from the British, French, and American historical experiences, the 82nd Airborne increasingly focused its efforts on “soft power.” This translated into a greater focus on reconstruction and development projects and less emphasis on combat operations. At the core of this strategy was an assumption that local Afghans were the center of gravity, a basic tenet of counter-insurgency warfare. The French counterinsurgency expert Roger Trinquier summed this up lucidly: “The
sine qua non
of victory in modern warfare is the unconditional support of a population.”
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Many Afghans had been frustrated by the lack of development over the previous several years, and unhappy with poor governance. To address these concerns, the 82nd Airborne worked with tribal leaders to identify local needs and to develop projects that helped address those needs. Thus, in Khowst Province, for example, Colonel Schweitzer and provincial governor Arsala Jamal teamed up to build infrastructure and hospitals. In Paktia Province and in Kunar, where Larry Legree was stationed, locals saw newly paved roads, electricity, and reliable water projects move toward swift completion. A sizable chunk of the money came from the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), which enabled U.S. military commanders to dole out aid quickly. Another strategic component was hiring local Afghans to perform and evaluate the work.
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Against all odds, eastern Afghanistan appeared to rebound in 2008. In Khowst Province, the number of children in school quadrupled—from 38,000 in 2004 to more than 160,000 in 2008. Roughly 10 percent of Afghans in the east had access to basic health care in 2004, while more than 75 percent had access in 2008.
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And, perhaps one of the most revealing metrics of progress in a country where cell phones were a primary method of communication for those who could afford them, there suddenly seemed to be service throughout the region. It was a shock when my BlackBerry worked almost everywhere I visited in eastern Afghanistan, including in remote border outposts.

The 82nd Airborne Division’s efforts created a bit of defensiveness among some U.S. allies. In May 2008, the British government circulated a paper in response to “suggestions that U.S. successes in their counter-insurgency campaign in eastern Afghanistan should be migrated to the south,” where British forces were located. The paper asked whether there were any lessons that might be applied to British operations in Helmand Province. The British pointed out that U.S. forces had been present in eastern Afghanistan much longer than British forces had in Helmand; U.S. military tours of duty were longer than British tours; and the United States provided significantly more funding through its CERP and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) than Britain had in the south. Also, there were important differences between the east and the south in geography, population density, tribal structure, and types of jihadi groups. The result, British analysts concluded, was that “the east is easier terrain for counter-insurgency” and that “differences of geography, of resources, and of campaign timing suggest that many of the American approaches…are not transferable to Helmand.”
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Building on Success?

Despite an innovative strategy, inadequate resources once again thwarted U.S. efforts. “We’re like the Pacific theatre in World War II,” a U.S. civil-affairs officer in eastern Afghanistan complained. “We
will get more resources after we defeat Berlin,” he said, alluding to the U.S. focus on Iraq.
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There were too few American and Coalition military forces, and there was too little American civilian expertise to ensure the permanence of this progress. By 2008, some 56,000 Coalition forces were stationed in Afghanistan, compared with more than three times that number in Iraq. American troop strength was even more disproportionate. U.S. military force levels in Iraq were frozen at 140,000 personnel, while just over 30,000 were deployed to Afghanistan. Thus, as during the earlier periods of the campaign, the U.S. military, other Coalition forces, and the Afghan National Army could clear territory but generally could not hold it. In June 2008, General David McKiernan became commander of ISAF; several months later, his staff completed the ISAF campaign plan, which was fairly blunt about the lack of forces to hold territory, noting that NATO had to resort to an “economy of force and special operations” effort to make up for the shortfalls and “to disrupt the insurgency and shape future operations.”
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Troops involved in reconstruction work could have been reallocated to combat operations, but there were still too few civilians in the field from the State Department and USAID. The rough living conditions and acute security concerns meant that the U.S. military had to shoulder most of the burden for governance and economic development activities, which in more normal circumstances would have fallen to officials in the Department of State, Commerce, Agriculture, or USAID.

U.S. and other NATO forces also had trouble “building” in some areas. In his book
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency,
Roger Trinquier argued that counterinsurgency requires “an interlocking system of actions—political, economic, psychological, military—that aims at the [insurgents’ intended] overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime.”
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One of the most innovative aspects of the Afghan counter-insurgency campaign was the cooperation between civil and military programs, especially the use of Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
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The “building” that the Americans were able to accomplish almost always happened through these PRTs.

Each PRT consisted of roughly 60 to 100 personnel. Soldiers, who made up the bulk of each team, were divided into civil-affairs units, Special Forces, force-protection units, and psychological operations personnel. In most cases, more than 90 percent of the personnel were soldiers because of the struggle to get civilian personnel.
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According to Larry Legree, “recruiting civilians was a tremendous challenge” in Kunar Province. “A number of U.S. agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, were simply not optimized to operate in an insurgency.”
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Legree was fortunate, however, since he managed to recruit a handful of competent civilians to assist in development and reconstruction. One was Alison Blosser, a sharp, young foreign service officer who spoke Pashto and was instrumental in dealing with Kunar’s governor, Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi.

Both U.S. and NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams faced significant staffing hurdles. Short tours of duty—including some for as little as three months—made it difficult for PRT members to understand local politics and culture. There were also too few of the teams. Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the United States and other NATO countries were able to put PRTs in virtually all major Afghan cities, but they had little operational reach into rural areas.
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Colonel John Agoglia, director of the Counterinsurgency Training Center on Afghanistan, bluntly acknowledged that “many Coalition forces do not actively and consistently patrol their areas of responsibility or, when they do patrol, they sally forth from Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) for a quick-order patrol that has very little enduring effect.”
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USAID faced serious challenges in adapting to the new environment. According to one official involved, USAID’s initial attitude was to treat Afghanistan as a post-conflict environment. It wasn’t. It was an insurgency. USAID did not prioritize reconstruction aid geographically and focus specifically on the south and east until 2006.
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