My Share of the Task (64 page)

Despite his often one-dimensional depiction in the media, outside the palace President Karzai was gifted at retail politics. Once on the ground in the various locales we visited, his ability to communicate with local leaders, his “presence,” and his natural empathy with his countrymen seemed to resonate in a way that surprised many westerners. In such environments, I was struck anew by his courage and self-discipline.

On one trip north over the Hindu Kush to Kunduz, a rocket attack forced us to forgo our planned return to Kabul by C-130 aircraft. Instead we flew in German MH-53 helicopters ninety-nine miles west to Mazar-e-Sharif. En route, a haboob engulfed the MH-53s in a soupy fog of suspended dust. Sitting next to Karzai, I began to envision the impact on our mission of losing Afghanistan's president in the crash of an ISAF chopper and was irritated at my failure to have asked hard questions about the weather before adopting this plan. I smiled to myself when I remembered that if the aircraft went down, at least I wouldn't have to be the one to explain to President Obama how I'd lost his counterpart. President Karzai likely sensed my frustration but maintained his calm poise and never once, then or later, mentioned anything about it.

The more travel we did, the more I believed that the visits had value. The trips deeply affected President Karzai, as they would any leader exposed to what we called “ground truth.” Firsthand contact with the people and the realities of insecure and corruption-racked areas produced thoughtful conversations on our return flights to Kabul.

*   *   *

S
uch presidential reflection was evident three weeks after Moshtarak began, when on, March 7, I sat quietly, legs crossed, on the floor of Marjah's main mosque. Though the troops I commanded had become the dominant feature of Marjah's landscape for the past three weeks, here I was a guest, a listener. The humble mosque just outside the bazaar was a low box of clay, with rough timber ceiling supports and cracked beige plaster walls inside. Mark Sedwill was next to me. Amrullah Saleh and Minister Wardak sat a few feet away, quietly watching as well. From our position at the front of the room, we saw the crowd that now filled the rug-covered floor. Some two hundred local elders sat cross-legged and still. Quarters were tight, and everyone sat touching. The men a few feet in front of me had significant beards, and sun-darkened faces. Past them I could see the tops of swirled fabric, a sea of thick turbans. As the initial commotion quieted, all gazes were directed to our left. There, President Karzai stood at a small wood podium, topped with a clump of microphones angled toward him.

“I'm here to listen to you, to hear your problems,” the president said. This was his first visit to Marjah.

The words came to me, delayed a few seconds, through my translator's voice in an earpiece. The elders sat remarkably still. No uncomfortable shifting or side conversations. On occasion, their work-worn fingers rubbed weathered chins, or silently fingered white beards. With flat faces, they listened with attentive respect. This was the first time in memory such a senior figure from the distant Kabul government had visited their district. Karzai was welcome here, as was I. But this was not scripted theater, and the small space soon got loud when it was the crowd's turn to address him.

The questions were blunt. A man, clearly a father, complained that military units had turned the
schools into bases. Another said that the Americans had detained innocent farmers. At one point, an
old man, in thick layers of robes, rose, but then turned away from Karzai and squared himself with a man who was off to the side. The old man quivered and shouted, cracking his arm like a whip in front of him as he pointed and denounced the man as a drug trafficker. The seated men nodded and cheered their approval, clapping vigorously, while Karzai raised his hands out to bring quiet again.

Only then did I see them. I hadn't originally. But to the side was Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, along with his hated former police chief Abdul Rahman Jan. These were dangerous men to accuse openly.

And yet the elders did so, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly, as in the case of the pharmacist appointed by the town to speak for them.

“
Their hands have been stained with the blood of innocents and they have killed hundreds of people,” he said, pleading with Karzai. “Even now they are being imposed on the people.” The message in Marjah was clear:
We do not like the Taliban, but Adbul Rahman Jan and his police gangs are intolerable. They steal from us and rape our children.

Almost five years earlier, at the request of the British, Karzai had sacked Sher Mohammed Akhundzada as governor of Helmand. Karzai did so reluctantly, and sometimes seemed to regret the firing. Every year since, the province had seen greater Taliban presence, more violence, and more western troops. It wasn't hard to imagine how from his seat in Kabul, the president could conclude that removing Akhundzada had lost him Helmand, and set off a cycle of violence. But from our perspective, with Akhundzada and his men, Karzai could have order, but it would be corrupt and criminal—and thus impermanent. If Helmand landed back under the Akhundzada empire and Marjah came under the thumb of Abdul Rahman Jan, the Taliban hardly had to work to regain the people's favor. As in 2006, and 1994 before that, the pendulum of power would swing back to the Taliban just as soon as the predations became too much for the people to bear. But if the government could unmoor itself from warlords and drug lords, and install something better, it would shift initiative to itself and the Coalition.

The people of Marjah had good reason to be afraid. Abdul Rahman Jan had already organized a thirty-five-man local Marjah
shura
to gain a toehold. He was
actively campaigning against the newly installed governor of the district, Haji Abdul Zahir, defaming the Coalition effort, and politicking in Helmand and Kabul to get Marjah back in his hands.

Inside the mosque, President Karzai reacted carefully, his political instincts guiding him. He listened attentively to everyone. He answered complaints he thought unjustified, and he accepted legitimate criticism. The crowd continued to express their grievances to Karzai, but they were not against him. He was quick and conversational with his responses. He got them laughing at one point, and when he asked if they supported Abdul Zahir, the new district chief, the whole
crowd erupted in cheers. After one litany that blamed Karzai for letting Akhundzada's men run roughshod over the area in the first place, the president turned to one of the men whom an elder had singled out.

“Shame on you,” Karzai said simply and loudly to much applause. From the floor, it appeared to be a first step away from Rahman.

After more than two hours of tense back-and-forth, and some deft politicking, Karzai appeared to win much of the crowd.

“Are you with me?” he asked. “Do I have your support?” The president raised his own hand toward the crowd.

“We are with you,” came from the crowd. “We will support you,” some said, as many of them raised their hands back at their president.

When the meeting concluded, everyone filed out of the small mosque into the grassless courtyard outside. I sat and slid on my boots, the soles heavy with mud, as Karzai addressed the press outside, this time in English. “
We exchanged views. I heard them, they heard me. They had some very legitimate complaints. Very legitimate. They feel as if they were abandoned, which in many cases
is
true.”

He walked off, the crowd pressed close around him. He clasped the hand and shoulders of greeters. As I lost site of Karzai into the huddle of people that glided away, out of the corner of my eye I saw a man approach. The first thing I noticed when I turned were the shoes, stepping gingerly through the mud. Beneath the skirt of his
salwar kameez
were black patent leather shoes with long, slender toes that to me seemed absurdly out of place. I looked up at his face. His wide smile parted his ruddy, almost maroon cheeks and black, wooly beard. With outstretched hand, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada introduced himself to me.

I was surprised that he had approached me, although I probably shouldn't have been. Even the appearance of a genial relationship between he and the ISAF commander could send a powerful, potentially frightening message to the throng of locals streaming out of the mosque—the kind of message that could undermine the change we were promising.

“It is good to see you,” I told him with a smile, and quickly turned to catch up with Karzai.

I walked with the president through the nearby bazaar. While we were in a small shop, with curious residents surrounding us, Taliban rocket fire impacted some distance away. It was far enough off to have been little immediate danger. But it signaled the Taliban's awareness of Karzai's visit and their intent to target him. With the crump of the rocket, President Karzai looked at me inquisitively. When I shrugged, he smiled back and continued his conversation as if oblivious to any hazard.

I caught up with Kosh, and asked him what he thought. He's good, Kosh said, impressed. Karzai was thickening his Kandahari accent, giving his
folksy greetings a twang I couldn't hear.

Meetings like these put tremendous pressure on Helmand's Taliban, who since the town's anticlimactic clearing had regrouped and were intimidating the liberated people. Their threats were making it difficult to convince the scared citizens to use the local government being slowly erected. Much of the menacing came from local insurgents, whom Marjah's people knew were playing the long game. But other more grisly attempts to terrify came from the Mullah Dadullah Front. This
large, roving
mahaz
still bore the imprint—fanaticism and cruel tactics—of Dadullah, a man we'd killed two years earlier. Around this time, unsettling news of
beheadings arose in the district. It appeared Quetta's newly appointed military chief Qayyum Zakir—who had stolen across the border from Pakistan for a midnight
pep talk to Marjah's Taliban before Moshtarak—had dispatched the Dadullah Front to contest our front-page effort to reclaim and rebuild Marjah.

That evening, we marshaled the president and the polyglot collection of travelers in a muddy field to board helicopters back to Kandahar. But the desert skies turned dark, and a steady rainstorm moved in. Worried about getting the entire party stuck in Marjah, I stood outside with our team coordinating aircraft as President Karzai waited inside the small Marine base, rain plunking on the roofing. After a time, the first MH-53 descended into the tight landing zone and we boarded. President Karzai and I sat near the front of the aircraft, next to open windows through which machine guns protruded for protection. As we flew through the now-black night sky, the downpour and wind battered President Karzai and me mercilessly and I shivered from the chill. Directly across from me, Karzai sat motionless. His only move was to reach into his pocket and produce a dry handkerchief that he didn't use to wipe his face—but instead reached across the aisle and handed to me.

*   *   *

A
s I'd anticipated, because of its timing after President Obama's December speech, the fight for Marjah, never in doubt militarily, became a litmus test for the validity of our strategy in Afghanistan. On display was our ability to conduct effective counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. It also tested the performance of Afghan soldiers, and the Afghan government's commitment and ability to bring legitimate governance to a skeptical population. Finally, the action offered the chance to examine whether it was possibile and appropriate to sharply limit the use of our overwhelming advantage in lethal fires. That judgment would have accompanied the operation regardless of where we'd conducted it.

The natural eagerness in Washington and Brussels to see tangible results following the announcement of more troops created expectations difficult to satisfy with the often glacial speed of counterinsurgency. The drumbeat ahead of the operation, and the dramatic kickoff on February 13, made matters worse. I should have worked harder to tamp down unrealistic expectations of how quickly and dramatically we'd see progress.

That spring there was talk of my returning to Washington, D.C., later that year, as Dave Petraeus had in September 2007 to show progress in Iraq. I remembered his convincing presentation to Congress wherein he showed graphs with steep downward lines and dramatic metrics. Afghanistan, I thought, would never yield anything that clean, or clear. Only over time—a span of months, then years—would we cumulatively be able to produce convincing change.

Indeed, as the first operations of 2010 began, we asked what psychic effect among Afghans we could produce through material gains. Would Afghanistan
feel
the addition of troops and the benefits of security they brought? Would such turns in feeling be large enough, and happen fast enough?

Inevitably, some came to label the decision to increase forces in Afghanistan a surge, and drew comparisons with events in Iraq during 2007 and 2008. The situation we faced in Afghanistan, however, was much different. In Iraq, violence reverberated and was animated along sectarian lines. The 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra set off sectarian purges hundreds of miles away. Our strategy in Iraq reflected that reality, and that of the insurgents: The U.S. campaign began by focusing on
sixteen key cities, then narrowed to twelve, then to nine, until we eventually came to realize that the war's center of gravity was one city, Baghdad. Whoever controlled the capital controlled the country, and American planners designed the surge to lock down Baghdad.

More rural and significantly less developed than Iraq, Afghanistan could absorb the effects of violence, and the swings of power between the diffuse insurgency and the NATO-backed government, more than could a country of highly connected urban centers. Unlike infusing the majority of surge troops into Baghdad, in Afghanistan we would spread our troops across the eighty districts whose control we judged could be decisive. We hoped gains made in the coming year would bring about the critical mass of confidence that we thought necessary to keep Afghans from perceiving the cause lost. If they felt the effort was a failure, they would act accordingly by siding with the Taliban, or arming themselves for the civil war that they thought would follow America's departure.