In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

CHAPTER EIGHT Early Successes

IN SEPTEMBER 2004, Zalmay Khalilzad flew to the western Afghan city of Herat to meet with the Tajik warlord Ismail Khan. With his bushy white beard, Khan had a reputation for running the best fiefdom in Afghanistan. At the request of President Bush, Khalilzad had left Washington in November 2003 to become the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He was going to see Ismail Khan on a sensitive mission, and he had the support of Washington and President Karzai.

“We had been encouraging the removal of several governors who were weakening the power of the central government,” Khalilzad told me. So he flew to Herat, met with Ismail Khan, and, standing next to him, announced that Ismail Khan had agreed to move to Kabul.¹

This brazen act—putting Ismail Khan on the spot by offering him a position in Karzai’s cabinet, which he reluctantly accepted—was vintage Khalilzad. He was the only senior White House official in the Bush administration who had lived in Afghanistan, and he had a visceral feel for the country’s social, cultural, and political intricacies. As an Afghan, he understood the people of Afghanistan and their warrior spirit, and his familiarity with Pashtun culture, including his fluency in both national Afghan languages, Dari and Pashto, made him a tremendous asset. His influence among Afghan officials was unparalleled among U.S. diplomats in the country. Behind his thick, six-foot frame was a charming, almost unassuming, personality. But Khalilzad could also be an imposing figure. He exuded an extraordinary sense of confidence and authority when he walked into a room, but his true métier was the face-to-face meeting.

Herat, in the fertile Hari River Valley, lies seventy miles from the Iranian border, along the ancient trade routes that linked Europe with the Middle East, India, and China. The city was later used by the British, Soviet, and Taliban armies, each of whom conquered the city and constructed key military installations. Ismail Khan had been a staple figure in Herat for several decades, participating in the Soviet War in the 1980s and the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, until he was captured by the Taliban later in the decade. He escaped from a Taliban prison in 2000 and assisted United States forces during the 2001 invasion.

As U.S. forces withdrew to Iraq and international support withered, Ismail Khan became the de facto ruler of Herat. A decade earlier, the city’s western suburbs had been a sea of ruins littered with burned-out tanks and land mines, a far cry from the city that Mountstuart Elphinstone had described two centuries earlier as the most stunning city in Afghanistan, with its “beauty and variety from the mosques, tombs, and other edifices, intermixed with numerous trees and gardens, with which it is embellished, and from the lofty mountains by which it is surrounded.”² After coming to power, Ismail Khan began a major architectural refurbishing of this once-beautiful city. He orchestrated a flurry of new construction projects, including modern apartment blocks and tree-filled parks, and ensured a regular supply of electricity. Streetlights with energy-efficient bulbs gave the city an eerie, almost modern glow.³

But there was a problem. Ismail Khan had established security with his own militia forces and had retained most of the customs revenue from the trade that flourished between Herat and Iran and Central Asia. Other Afghan warlords were doing the same, but Ismail Khan posed one of the greatest challenges to Hamid Karzai and U.S. officials, including Khalilzad, who were trying to establish a strong, viable central government. Fighting involving tanks and mortars had erupted in March 2004 between Khan’s forces and Afghan National Army units under General Abdul Zahir Nayebzadeh. Gunmen killed Ismail Khan’s son, Mirwai Sadeq, the minister of civil aviation and tourism in Karzai’s cabinet. On March 22, the Afghan government dispatched a force of 1,500 soldiers, headed by Defense Minister Muhammad Fahim, to restore order in Herat. But tensions continued, so Khalilzad made his trek to the city.

This period was, in many ways, a high-water mark of the U.S. experience in Afghanistan. Within the first two years of U.S. engagement, Afghanistan made significant gains on the political front. It held presidential and parliamentary elections, and the levels of insurgent violence stayed relatively low. But this hopeful opportunity for peace would eventually be squandered, as Khalilzad—ironically because of his success—was later moved to become U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and the United States increasingly shifted its attention and resources away from Kabul and the war in Afghanistan.

Important Strides

Even before Khalilzad’s trip to Herat, the Afghan government had made extraordinary progress. In late 2001, James Dobbins had been appointed the U.S. envoy to the Afghan opposition; he was tasked with leading U.S. efforts to establish an Afghan government. Dobbins had no experience in Afghanistan, but he had performed admirably as U.S. special envoy to four major hotspots in the 1990s: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He was, he told me, “the State Department’s handyman of choice in the increasingly busy craft of nation-building.” Dobbins’s goal was to broker an interim government among Afghan political leaders. While the United States would be deeply involved in this process, Dobbins admitted that the United States wanted to avoid “any appearance of occupying Afghanistan or selecting its new government.” Consequently, the United States asked the United Nations to take the lead. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan assigned the job to Lakhdar Brahimi.⁴

In late November 2001, Brahimi, Dobbins, Khalilzad, and senior officials from India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and a number of European countries hammered out an agreement with Afghan leaders. The negotiations were fraught with difficulties. One delegate, Haji Qadir, abandoned the conference in a well-publicized huff, claiming that his ethnic group, the Pashtuns, was underrepresented. His tense departure raised the specter of further defections, which threatened to undermine the credibility of the whole process. Perhaps the most rancorous debates occurred during the choices of a leader and key cabinet ministers. Hamid Karzai was the leading candidate of the Iranians, Indians, Russians, and many of the European delegates. Pakistan’s ISI also suggested Karzai as a candidate, something they undoubtedly regretted several years later. But the Afghans could not agree. Many wanted Abdul Sattar Sirat, a respected scholar of Islamic law who had been teaching in Saudi Arabia for several years. Finally, after intense pressure from Brahimi, Dobbins, and ultimately the Russians, the delegates agreed to an interim constitution and cabinet.

As Dobbins recalled: “The critical moment came when the Russian Ambassador in Kabul interrupted a meeting of the Northern Alliance top leadership to deliver a message from Moscow. The Russian government wanted the Northern Alliance leadership to understand that if they did not accept the package which was on the table in Bonn, they should expect no further Russian aid.”⁵

On December 5, 2001, Afghan leaders officially signed the Bonn Agreement, and the UN Security Council endorsed it the following day.⁶ The parties at Bonn had also asked the United Nations to “monitor and assist in the implementation of all aspects” of the agreement. UN Security Council Resolution 1401, passed on March 28, 2002, established the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).⁷

In January 2002 in Tokyo, international donors pledged more than $4.5 billion to reconstruction efforts. Additional roles were assigned: Britain agreed to be the lead nation for counternarcotics, Italy for justice, the United States for the army, Germany for police, and Japan for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants. The emergency loya jirga, which was attended by about 2,000 people, took place between June 12 and June 19, 2002, following extensive preparations and countrywide consultations. At the conclusion, Afghan delegates chose Hamid Karzai as president of the transitional administration and head of state, and approved his nominees for key posts in the administration. Karzai gave the defense and foreign-affairs portfolios to the mainly Tajik Northern Alliance, and the Ministry of Interior portfolio to a Pashtun regional governor.

Following this breakthrough, media outlets thrived in the more permissive environment. Within three years, the government had registered 350 publications, 42 radio stations, and 8 television channels. Tolo TV, the most popular television station in Afghanistan, introduced a mixture of drama and satire to those Afghans who could afford televisions.⁸

Afghanistan also established the National Security Council (NSC) to provide advice and analysis to Karzai. “It was modeled after the United States NSC system,” explained Daoud Yaqub, director for security-sector reform on the Afghan NSC. “But the British played the critical role of funding it and ensuring that it got off the ground.”⁹ Yaqub, an erudite, bespectacled Afghan-American with olive skin and carefully combed hair, had received his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to Yaqub, Karzai appointed Zalmai Rassoul, a physician who had served at the Paris Cardiology Research Institute, as the first national security adviser. By 2003, the National Security Council had expanded to twenty members, meeting twice a week and coordinating among Afghan ministries.

Like Yaqub, Rassoul and Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, many of Afghanistan’s key policymakers were Western educated and had extensive experience living abroad. Ali Jalali, the minister of interior in charge of Afghanistan’s vast police apparatus, was an American citizen who had served as the director of the Afghanistan National Radio Network Initiative and chief of the Pashto Service at the Voice of America in Washington, DC. Muhammad Hanif Atmar, the minister of rural rehabilitation and development who later became minister of education, received his bachelor’s degree in international relations and postwar development from York University in England. The fact that so many prominent senior Afghan government officials had lived abroad, however, naturally caused resentment among Afghan officials who had never left.

“Accelerating Success”

When Khalilzad took over as U.S. ambassador in 2003 from Robert Finn, America’s first ambassador after the Taliban collapse, one of his most important contributions was bringing roughly $2 billion in additional assistance to Afghanistan—nearly twice the amount of the previous year—as well as a new political-military strategy and private experts to intensify rebuilding.¹⁰ Relations were close between Khalilzad and Lieutenant General David Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A native of Endicott, New York, seventy miles south of Syracuse, Barno was congenial, almost unassuming, and was well liked by his staff. He was also extremely smart and surprisingly easy to get along with.

Barno moved into a half-trailer on the U.S. Embassy compound and established an office next to Khalilzad’s. Each day, Barno attended country-team and security-group meetings with Khalilzad, and the two developed a common view of counterinsurgency operations. Barno also seconded five military staff officers to Khalilzad to make up an interagency planning group. This small core of talented planners—referred to as “the piglets”—applied structured military staff planning to the requirements Khalilzad faced in shaping the interagency response in Afghanistan.¹¹ Together, they developed a broad strategy in Afghanistan, though the planning had been underway for several months.

In early 2003, Marin Strmecki at the Department of Defense had helped develop an acceleration package for Afghanistan, which he had presented to Secretary Rumsfeld. The plan outlined a process for building Afghan institutions and defeating a low-level insurgency. Strmecki was a bright, somewhat reserved intellectual who had a law degree from Yale and a PhD from Georgetown University. He had served for sixteen years as a foreign-policy assistant to Richard Nixon, helping him with the research and writing of seven books on foreign policy and politics. At the time, Strmecki was the U.S. Department of Defense’s Afghanistan policy coordinator and also served as the vice president and director of programs at the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Khalilzad, then at the National Security Council and a close confidant of Strmecki, took the acceleration package for Afghanistan to the White House and helped push it forward. It evolved into a Power Point presentation of roughly thirty slides that set U.S. goals for Afghanistan. The document assumed that Afghanistan was a central front in America’s war against terrorism and, as Khalilzad prophetically warned, that a “lack of success—a renewed civil war, a narco-state, a successful Taliban insurgency, or a failed state—would undermine the Coalition’s efforts in the global war on terrorism and could stimulate an increase in Islamist militancy and terrorism.”¹² The “accelerating success” concept was approved by the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council on June 18, by the Principals Committee on June 19, and by President Bush on June 20, 2003. Khalilzad then began to work on obtaining additional funding even before he became ambassador to Afghanistan.

“There were several components of the strategy,” noted Khalilzad. “The first was getting Afghan institutions built.”¹³ His goal was to enable the Afghan people to elect their government and build a national government with viable ministries that could deliver services to the population. “A key point of emphasis in our program,” Khalilzad asserted, would be “on rural development and the private sector in Afghanistan. Economic development—the establishment of a thriving private sector—is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, schools, and clinics.”¹⁴ This was an important lesson from Afghanistan’s history, since Afghan wars have typically been won—and lost—in rural areas, not in the cities. One of the first orders of business would be jump-starting reconstruction. Khalilzad vowed to finish the road from Kandahar to Kabul, and he started a new one from Kandahar to Herat.

“A second component,” Khalilzad continued, “was changing the balance in the Afghan government by removing some members and adding others in order to broaden support for the government and increase its competence.”¹⁵ When Ali Jalali, a Pashtun, was appointed minister of interior, some thought his appointment was political, a way of balancing ethnicities in Karzai’s cabinet. But he had his own talents. The author of several books, Jalali had been a former colonel in the Afghan Army and was a top military planner with the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. His book The Other Side of the Mountain included more than 100 firsthand reports from mujahideen veterans and provided riveting accounts of the mujahideen experience in ambushes, raids, shelling attacks, and urban warfare.¹⁶ In 2002, he had written an influential critique of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, arguing that they had enhanced the power of warlords. “Ethnic warlords with questionable track records claim to represent different ethnic groups and geographic regions in the country,” Jalali wrote. “Despite their nominal support of the interim administration in Kabul, provincial strongmen and warlords maintain their private armies, sources of income, foreign linkages, and autonomous administrations.”¹⁷

A final concern was “on the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of militia and weakening warlords, as well as reaching out to the Taliban through a reconciliation process”¹⁸—in other words, undermining Ismail Khan and the other warlords.

This strategy shifted the U.S. focus from counterterrorism to nation-building and counterinsurgency. Up to that point, the U.S.-led Coalition comprised more than 12,000 troops representing nineteen nations. It was led by Combined Joint Task Force-180, based at the old Soviet air base at Bagram, a twenty-minute helicopter flight north of Kabul. The United States had downsized the original Com bined Joint Task Force in the spring of 2003, replacing a powerful and well-resourced three-star-led headquarters (XVIII Airborne Corps) and a subordinate division headquarters (Task Force 82) with a single division-level headquarters (10th Mountain Division). At the time, the declared aim of the military was to hunt down the remnants of al Qa’ida and Taliban leaders across the rugged landscape of southern and eastern Afghanistan, and to build the Afghan National Army. “Nation-building” was explicitly not part of the formula.¹⁹

In 2002 and 2003, U.S. soldiers could not use the word counterinsurgency to describe their efforts. Lieutenant General John R. Vines refused to countenance it. He was the commander of Coalition Task Force 82 in Afghanistan from September 2002 until May 2003, and then commander of Combined Joint Task Force 180 until October 2003. U.S. soldiers were told they were fighting terrorists.

Toward Counterinsurgency

Khalilzad and Barno’s strategy ushered in a number of changes. Beginning in 2003, Barno established two ground brigade-level headquarters, one assigned to the hazardous south and the other to the east. As Figure 8.1 shows, the northern half of the country remained largely free from any enemy threat, which meant few international forces were necessary to stabilize the area. The brigade headquarters in the south and east became regional command centers, and each brigade was assigned an area of operations spanning its entire region. All organizations operating in this battle space worked directly for, or in support of, the brigade commander. These numbers eventually increased to 20,000 American and 10,000 NATO soldiers—which still left a ratio of only one soldier per 1,000 Afghans.²⁰ Barno recast United States and other Coalition units to fight a counterinsurgency rather than a counterterrorism mission, and he assigned forces specific territory where they were to secure the population.²¹ He focused on putting a military and civilian presence in the south and east to create a “security halo” that would ensure protection for the local population.

FIGURE 8.1 U.S. and Coalition Battlefield Geometry, May 2004²²

The early results were laudable. Following a visit to Afghanistan in October 2003, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans wrote a memorandum for President Bush stating that Afghanistan was experiencing significant improvement. He visited an Afghan school, had lunch with U.S. troops, held meetings with key Afghan-American business leaders, and talked with senior Afghan government officials, such as Commerce Minister Sayed Mustafa Kazemi. Evans was buoyant, telling President Bush: “I witnessed a people who are enjoying freedom from the repressive Taliban regime. Four years ago there were 800,000 students (all boys) in the Afghan school system. Today, there are 4.5 million students—1.5 million who are girls—embracing their ability to pursue an education and to live in a country of hope and equality.”²³

The Afghan National Army (ANA) also made some progress against insurgents. In July 2003, for example, the ANA launched Operation Warrior Sweep with U.S. forces in Paktia Province against Taliban and al Qa’ida forces. This was followed in November 2003 by Operation Mountain Resolve in Nuristan and Kunar Provinces. The ANA deployed outside of Kabul to stem interfactional fighting in such areas as Herat and Meymaneh. During the constitutional loya jirga in December 2003, the ANA was deployed in the capital region to enhance security for the delegates. In 2004, the ANA conducted combat operations with such names as Operation Princess and Operation Ticonderoga in a number of provinces in the east and south. In March 2004, the government deployed some of its newly trained ANA soldiers to Herat to patrol roads, secure government and UN buildings, and institute a curfew following the removal of Ismail Khan. At first their efforts were marred by tensions and frustration. Afghan Army forces clashed with Ismail Khan’s militia, and more than a hundred people were killed. But the ANA eventually succeeded in establishing law and order.

“Perhaps the best example of the competence of the Afghan National Army was their performance in Herat in 2004,” Barno told me. “They didn’t fire into the crowd and they established order. It was a good marker for their capability.”²⁴

One of the greatest achievements for both U.S. and Afghan forces was the return of democracy after a thirty-year hiatus, harkening back to Zahir Shah’s “blueprint for democracy” period in the 1960s and early 1970s. Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers crowed, was establishing a viable and democratic government. In his 2004 State of the Union speech, President Bush announced: “As of this month, that country has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women.” He continued that the “men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free and proud and fighting terror—and America is honored to be their friend.”²⁵ In January 2004, Afghans had adopted a new constitution, and in October 2004 they elected Hamid Karzai as president. The United States and other Coalition forces had made securing the elections its strategic priority, and it had paid off handsomely.

“It was our main effort,” noted Barno. “Successful elections took a tremendous amount of air out of the Taliban.”²⁶ In September 2005, Afghans elected a new parliament, which included a number of ex-Taliban ministers. One was Abdul Salam Rocketi, a fiery speaker who had earned the alias “Rocketi” for his exceptional skills in targeting Soviet tanks with RPG-7 rockets during the 1980s. Another was Mawlawi Arsallah Rahmani, who was elected to the upper house (Meshrano Jirga). The Hezb-i-Islami party was registered after pledging it had cut ties with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Its leader, Khalid Farooqi, was elected to the lower house (Wolesi Jirga).²⁷ Opinion polls showed high levels of support for Karzai. According to one poll in 2005, for example, 83 percent of Afghans rated President Karzai’s work as either excellent or good.²⁸ This was a greater level of support than most Western leaders enjoyed, including George W. Bush, whose approval rating was only 45.7 percent in 2005 as the war in Iraq began to heat up.²⁹

War in Iraq

The gains made by Khalilzad, Barno, and their Afghan allies looked especially promising compared to Iraq, which had quickly deteriorated into a bloody insurgency. Ronald Neumann had gone to Iraq in 2004 as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). He went on to serve as the U.S. Embassy’s principal interlocutor with the Multi-National Command in Baghdad, where he was deeply involved in coordinating the political part of military operations in Fallujah, Najaf, and other areas. With great dismay, Neumann watched the situation deteriorate in Iraq. In an informational memo to CPA Administrator Paul Bremer, he described the growth of coordinated “attacks across the country, primarily aimed at police forces in various locations.” Neumann explained that “enemy cells, associated with the Zarqawi group, were moving out of Syria that possibly had the Green Zone on their target list,” referring to the location in central Baghdad that housed the CPA and much of the international personnel.³⁰

In fact, security in Iraq had been deteriorating since the summer of 2003. While senior U.S. government officials publicly assured Americans that the situation was not as bad as press reports indicated, internal CPA documents showed growing alarm. In a June memo to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, as they prepared to brief President Bush, Bremer noted that the threat to U.S. forces had become multifaceted.

First, elements of the former regime, such as Ba’athists, Fedayeen Saddam, and intelligence agencies had focused their attacks on three targets: Coalition forces, infrastructure, and Iraqi employees of the Coalition. “To date,” Bremer wrote, “these elements do not appear to be subject to central command and control. But there are signs of coordination among them.”³¹ Former officers of the Mukhabarat, Iraq’s intelligence service, were active in a number of ways, including making radio-detonated bombs. They used money channeled through radical Islamic clerics, who had been funded by wealthy donors in the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries. ³² Second was Iranian subversion: “Elements of the Tehran government are actively arming, training and directing militia in Iraq. To date, these armed forces have not been directly involved in attacks on the Coalition. But they pose a longer term threat to law and order in Iraq.” Third, international terrorists—especially jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen—had arrived in Iraq to target the United States.³³

In a briefing to President Bush at a July 1, 2003, National Security Council meeting, Bremer stated bluntly that “security is not acceptable.” The threat, he continued, was from a conglomeration of Ba’athists, terrorists, Iranians, and criminals. The Iranian focus “is on Shias using several political parties.”³⁴ U.S. security assessments also suggested an increasing tempo of attacks against Coalition forces using small arms, mortars, rocket grenades, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to a CPA analysis, the “attack patterns show emerging regional coordination in: Baghdad, Karbala, Fallujah, Mosul, and Tikrit.” In response, the Coalition conducted a series of offensive operations to pressure insurgent groups and disrupt their activities.³⁵

Reports of the deteriorating security environment began to resonate with the Iraqi public. One of the first public-opinion polls in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein confirmed that Iraqis were “unhappy” with their country.³⁶ A Gallup poll shared among CPA staff indicated that 94 percent of Iraqis in Baghdad believed the city was a more dangerous place to live after the U.S.-led invasion. Majorities also said they were afraid to go outside of their homes during the day (70 percent) and night (80 percent). And anti-American sentiments in much of Iraq were extremely high.³⁷

By 2004, the security situation had become even worse in Iraq. Insurgents mounted attacks on the oil pipelines, denying the government petroleum revenues. A CPA assessment of critical infrastructure declared that “the Former Regime Elements demonstrate some agility in switching their attacks between Oil, Power and Rail—but greater ruthlessness should be anticipated. Damage to pylons, oil pipes and rail track is unacceptable but relatively easily repaired; sabotage of a power plant or refinery (Critical Infrastructure) is catastrophic.” At one point there was an average of two attacks per day on infrastructure.³⁸ With more than 12,000 miles of infrastructure to protect, the Coalition and Iraqi security forces stood no chance of securing the entire system. Instead, they focused on critical infrastructure, developed intelligence-directed patrolling and air-surveillance capabilities, and invested in rapid repair techniques.³⁹

Most alarmingly, reports from the CPA’s regional offices suggested a spreading insurgency. “A number of incidents have occurred which have served to reinforce that this is a dangerous place,” wrote Regional Security Coordinator Bill Miller in March. “We have had numerous attacks, bombings, rocket attacks, and improvised explosive devices.”⁴⁰ After the assassination of CPA members Fern Holland, Salwa Oumashi, and Bob Zangas, staffers began wearing more protective equipment, varying times and routes of travel, increasing the presence of Gurkhas to provide security at camps, and taking State Department counterthreat classes. Bremer became sufficiently concerned about the security situation that he postponed U.S. congressional visits to Iraq, though not all members of Congress complied. Military convoys were being attacked so regularly that on April 17 Bremer seriously considered ordering food rationing at the CPA.⁴¹

Warning Signs

The levels of violence and sheer brutality continued to increase in Iraq, with the introduction of grisly suicide bombings and a string of beheadings in 2004. Afghanistan, by comparison, was relatively quiet. The Taliban and other insurgent groups, bolstered by the American preoccupation in Iraq and America’s unwillingness to target them in Pakistan, began to conduct small-scale offensive operations to overthrow the Afghan government and coerce the withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition forces.⁴² In April 2002, insurgents orchestrated a series of offensive attacks in Kandahar, Khowst, and Nangarhar Provinces. In 2003 and 2004, the Taliban continued a low-level insurgency from bases in Pakistan. Perhaps the most significant event was the September 2004 rocket attack against President Hamid Karzai in the eastern Afghan city of Gardez.

Insurgents also began to target international aid workers. Afghans organizing or otherwise involved in election work were attacked or killed. So were nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers and Afghan citizens believed to be cooperating with Coalition forces or the Afghan government. In October 2004, three UN staff members were abducted in Kabul. Attacks occurred throughout the country, though most were in the south and east, in such provinces as Nangarhar, Paktia, Paktika, and Khowst.⁴³

The result was a decrease in security for Afghans and foreigners, especially those living in the east and south, but “the level of criminal activity—characterized by increasing numbers of armed robberies, abductions, and murders even in areas controlled by the ANA and police patrols—[was] still high.”⁴⁴ Interfactional fighting continued among regional commanders in Herat, Nangarhar, Nuristan, Lowgar, Laghman, and Badghis Provinces.⁴⁵ The withdrawal in July 2004 of the NGO Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), which had been in Afghanistan for nearly three decades, was a sobering testament to the deteriorating security environment. A month earlier, five Médecins sans Frontières workers had been ambushed and shot in the head in the northwestern province of Badghis.

“We began to get concerned about the insurgency in late 2003 with the shift in tactics,” noted Afghan National Security Council official Daoud Yaqub. “There was an increase in the number of improvised explosive devices, and soft targets were increasingly attacked.” But the U.S. position was different, he contended. “U.S. officials in Afghanistan didn’t see the Taliban as a strategic threat then”.⁴⁶

Indeed, Lieutenant General Barno believed that “the Taliban were a fairly amateurish organization. There were only a few Arabs from al’Qaida present in Afghanistan, and we killed most of them. In 2004, we killed insurgents video-taping helicopter take-offs near Jalalabad. Most of the insurgent deployments we were seeing were in the 10s and 20s, not in the 100s of fighters. It was a ragtag group.”⁴⁷ Nonetheless, there was thinning patience with the slow pace of killing or capturing insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Secretary Rumsfeld wrote a memo in October 2003 to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several top-level officials expressing frustration that “we are having mixed results with Al Qa’ida, although we have put considerable pressure on them—nonetheless, a great many remain at large.” The United States had made some progress in capturing top Iraqi insurgents, but it “has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban—Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.”⁴⁸

Bitter Irony

Despite these concerns, the levels of violence in Afghanistan were relatively low. Fewer than 300 Afghans died in 2004 because of the insurgency, which paled in comparison with the tens of thousands who died in Iraq in 2004.⁴⁹ Most Afghans believed the security situation was somewhat better than under Taliban rule. An opinion poll conducted by the Asia Foundation indicated that 35 percent often or sometimes feared for their personal safety, a decline from 41 percent during the Taliban period.⁵⁰ And another poll showed that 84 percent of Afghans believed that their living standard had improved since the end of the Taliban government.⁵¹

Yet fate took a strange twist. In 2005, Zalmay Khalilzad replaced John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador in Iraq. It was a move symptomatic of the U.S. government’s tunnel vision on Iraq. The State Department had taken one of its most seasoned and effective ambassadors, who spoke Afghanistan’s two main languages and had a special rapport with its political leaders, and moved him to Baghdad during an extraordinarily fragile period in Afghanistan’s history. Lieutenant General David Barno was replaced by Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, effectively shattering the military-civilian coordination Khalilzad and Barno had painstakingly fashioned during their tenure together. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Iraq had taken center stage as America’s most important foreign-policy concern. Proven staff were in great demand and Khalilzad and Barno had thus far been among the best. Still, it was a dangerous gamble.

The rise of an insurgency in Afghanistan was a serious and unfortunate development. Insurgencies frequently lead to the death of thousands—and sometimes millions—of civilians. To paraphrase Princeton history professor Arno Mayer, if war is hell, then insurgency belongs to hell’s darkest and most infernal region.⁵²