All In (10 page)

In any event, the bitter complaining by troops who felt their hands had been tied ceased after Petraeus issued his update.

AT ISAF HEADQUARTERS
on the morning of August 15, Petraeus and his staff geared up to begin doing press engagements again, after Petraeus, following the precedent he'd set in Iraq, had eschewed such activities in his first month in Afghanistan. NBC's David Gregory, the first to arrive, called him “easily America's most famous warrior” at the start of the broadcast and asked him during a lengthy interview whether he would ever run for president. “I am not a politician and I will never be, and I say that with absolute conviction,” Petraeus said, paraphrasing Sherman's famous response to a similar question.

“No way, nohow?” Gregory asked.

“No way, nohow,” said Petraeus.

Since arriving in Afghanistan, he had spoken again and again during his stand-ups about the need for skillful media interplay, mindful of what one of his heroes, T. E. Lawrence, said in 1920: “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander.”

As he sat down with Gregory, Petraeus repeated a point he had made during a stand-up back in early July: “We're making progress, and progress is winning.” His performance was measured. “I think it's incumbent upon us to show greater progress . . . really just began this spring.”

Petraeus said that he and General McChrystal had spent the past year and a half getting “the inputs” right. By the end of the month, when the final brigade from the 101st Airborne had arrived, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be three times what it had been at the beginning of 2009. Now the real fight could begin.

CHAPTER 3

TRUE BELIEVERS

A
merica's involvement in Afghanistan since the fall of 2001 had been a colossal missed opportunity. The brilliant combination of U.S. Special Operations Forces, the Central Intelligence Agency, Afghan Northern Alliance fighters, and American airpower that toppled the Taliban in three months was squandered when the United States marched headlong into Iraq in early 2003. The war there diverted troops, airpower, technology, and focus from Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces were far too few in number to stop an insurgency that had returned with a vengeance by 2006. The reemergence of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other insurgent fighters was by no means inevitable, if America and its NATO allies had capitalized on the Taliban's swift demise and brought enough soldiers to Afghanistan to protect the people and rebuild the nation, beginning at the village and provincial level. But that was never to be. By the time McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, took command of the war in Afghanistan in the spring of 2008, the United States had only 33,000 military personnel in the country—and only about a third of them were fulfilling combat missions. Despite the success of counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq, where U.S. forces moved off large bases to live with the people, in Afghanistan most U.S. forces remained on heavily fortified bases and a limited number of outposts. Protecting the Afghan people, rooting out corruption and fostering competent government were not priorities they could execute.

The “light footprint” mandated by then–Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the first five years of the war reflected Rumsfeld's preference—critics would call it a prejudice—for speed, agility and precision instead of a heavy, massed force. The Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force was an outdated Cold War imperative that, in Rumsfeld's mind, was no longer necessary in an age of proxy forces, smart bombs and armed drones that could find and kill the enemy without any troops at all. The stunning speed with which small numbers of Special Forces and CIA operatives, working in tandem with Afghan warlords, had dispatched the Taliban the first time around only served to confirm and validate Rumsfeld's notions.
Indeed, Rumsfeld imposed a “force cap” in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002.

His preference for a lighter force also contributed to the downward spiral in Iraq, where U.S. forces invaded with fewer troops than most generals, including Petraeus, thought advisable. While the invasion force easily toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, the Bush administration did not have enough personnel to either secure the nation or contain the sectarian violence that brought the country to the brink of civil war in late 2006. In both wars, Petraeus was called on to command “surges” that finally addressed troop shortfalls and made progress possible.

With Iraq on the brink of civil war in 2006, Afghanistan also increasingly faced a “perfect storm of political upheaval.” Effective and honest government was largely absent; Pakistan had emerged as a sanctuary for the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups, and Islamist fervor had enabled the Taliban to recruit villagers alienated by the corrupt central government in Kabul. By the time McChrystal took command of the war in the summer of 2009 and began implementing the tactics spelled out in Petraeus's
Counterinsurgency Field Manual
, it was almost too late. The insurgency had spread to virtually every province in Afghanistan, with civilian fatalities, suicide bombings, attacks and assassinations all surging. McChrystal recognized that he lacked sufficient forces to root out the Taliban, secure the border with Pakistan and hold the villages that had been cleared.

Though he also would not have all the forces he'd have liked, Petraeus wouldn't have that problem to the same extent. When he replaced McChrystal in July, nearly all of the new surge forces were in country. They would work closely with Afghans at the district level and even the village level in the key districts identified in Rodriguez's campaign plan.

Petraeus issued counterinsurgency guidance to all the forces in Afghanistan in early August—the twenty-four commandments to accompany “King David's Bible,” the
Counterinsurgency Field Manual
. The four-page document was not your run-of-the-mill memo from the commander. One had to wonder what Afghanistan might have looked like, eight years after September 11, 2001, had these tactics been carried out from the beginning.

 

SECURE AND SERVE THE POPULATION.
The decisive terrain is the human terrain. The people are the center of gravity. Only by providing them security and earning their trust and confidence can the Afghan government and ISAF prevail.

 

LIVE WITH THE PEOPLE.
We can't commute to the fight. Position joint bases and combat outposts as close to those we're seeking to secure as feasible. Decide on locations with input from our partners and after consultation with local citizens and informed by intelligence and security assessments.

 

PURSUE THE ENEMY RELENTLESSLY.
Together with our Afghan partners, get your teeth into the insurgents and don't let go. When the extremists fight, make them pay. Seek out and eliminate those who threaten the population. Don't let them intimidate the innocent. Target the whole network, not just individuals.

 

WALK.
Stop by, don't drive by. Patrol on foot whenever possible and engage the population. Take off your sunglasses. Situational awareness can only be gained by interacting face-to-face, not separated by ballistic glass or Oakleys.

 

BE FIRST WITH THE TRUTH.
Beat the insurgents and malign actors to the headlines. Preempt rumors. Get accurate information to the chain of command, to Afghan leaders, to the people, and to the press as soon as possible. Integrity is critical to this fight. Avoid spinning, and don't try to “dress up” an ugly situation. Acknowledge setbacks and failures, including civilian casualties, and then state how we'll respond and what we've learned.

 

LIVE OUR VALUES.
Stay true to the values we hold dear. This is what distinguishes us from our enemies. We are engaged in a tough endeavor. It is often brutal, physically demanding, and frustrating. All of us experience moments of anger, but we must not give in to dark impulses or tolerate unacceptable actions by others.

 

These imperatives and others were neatly distilled in the
Counterinsurgency Field Manual
of 2006, the first revision of Army counterinsurgency doctrine since Field Circular 100-20, a slim low-intensity-conflict manual from 1986 that had survived the systematic purge of everything the Army had learned about counterinsurgency warfare after Vietnam. The new manual Petraeus produced as commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth was downloaded 1.5 million times in the first month following its release via the Web by the Army in December 2006.
The University of Chicago Press then released it in book form, which was favorably reviewed on the cover of the
New York Times Book Review.
Former lieutenant colonel John A. Nagl, a Petraeus acolyte, wrote in a foreword to the book version that at the start of the Iraq War in 2003, most conventional Army officers knew more about the Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency. But by the time Petraeus assumed command in Afghanistan seven years later, this was no longer true, thanks to many hard-learned lessons in Iraq, Petraeus's work at Leavenworth in 2006, and success with the counterinsurgency doctrine during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

While it was certainly true that U.S. forces hadn't fought a successful counterinsurgency during the first seven or eight years of the war in Afghanistan, due to the focus of troops and resources being in Iraq, McChrystal had been working to implement a counterinsurgency campaign for a year prior to Petraeus's arrival. And many of the U.S. forces serving in Afghanistan—especially the officers commanding units—had prior counterinsurgency experience in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Petraeus's counterinsurgency guidance bore some parallels to the guidance he'd issued in Iraq in 2007, but it had also been modified to reflect the challenges in Afghanistan.

Petraeus first issued the points on July 27, only to uncharacteristically pull the document back almost immediately. When he reissued it five days later, he explained that it was his first update, slightly revised based on feedback he had received from “Afghan partners,” “elders” and Special Forces teams in Herat Province's Zerkoh Valley. “I welcome further feedback,” Petraeus wrote. Most of the changes softened the document's tough stand on corruption by stressing the need to cooperate with NATO's Afghan partners.

 

HELP CONFRONT THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY.
The Taliban are not the only enemy of the people. The people are also threatened by inadequate governance, corruption, and abuse of power—recruiters for the Taliban. President Karzai has forthrightly committed to combat these threats. Work with our Afghan partners to help turn his words into reality and to help our partners protect the people from malign actors as well as from terrorists.

 

Only two words were added to the earlier release: “Help” in front of “confront the culture of impunity”—meaning that this was something U.S. forces could do only in partnership with the Afghans—and “forthrightly,” to highlight Karzai's commitment to combating corruption. Petraeus hoped to see Karzai assume a leadership role in that important effort.

 

BE A GOOD GUEST.
Treat the Afghan people and their property with respect. Think about how we drive, how we patrol, how we relate to people, and how we help the community. View our actions through the eyes of the Afghans and, together with our partners, consult with elders before pursuing new initiatives and operations.

 

This final sentence was refined from the earlier version, which had included two sentences that read: “View your actions through the eyes of the Afghans. Alienating Afghan civilians sows the seeds of our defeat.”

PETRAEUS WASTED LITTLE TIME
implementing the Afghan Local Police program he'd won approval for shortly after his arrival in July.
His enthusiasm was based in part on a paper written by Special Forces major Jim Gant, entitled
One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan.
Petraeus made it required reading for leaders in Afghanistan. If you believed what Gant was saying, as Petraeus did, you could believe that success in Afghanistan was possible, that Afghan hearts and minds could, indeed, be won.

The son of a middle school principal in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Gant sported tattoos of Achilles and Chinese characters that say
FEAR NO MAN
on his right arm.
He carried three times as much ammunition as he needed for a mission and had been called “Lawrence of Afghanistan.” Not all of his peers and superiors thought so highly of him, but “Lawrence of Iraq” (a title Petraeus had earned for his four years there) embraced Gant's ideas.

Gant's story in Afghanistan began with a six-man Special Forces team, Operational Detachment Alpha 316, part of the Army's 3rd Special Forces Group, in Kunar and Helmand provinces in 2003 and 2004. Gant and his cohort dropped out of a helicopter in Kunar, in northeast Afghanistan on the Pakistan border, in the middle of the night with a mission to kill the Taliban and other “anti-coalition” fighters. After fighting their way out of an ambush by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), they ended up in a village called Mangwal, whose tribe was led by a malik (chief) named Noorafzhal. Gant spent hours with him, explaining what this small band of Americans was doing there to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. When Noorafzhal explained to the American that he was involved in a dispute with a subtribe that had taken land that did not belong to them, Gant said his team, which had grown to eight, would fight with the malik's eight village warriors if necessary. “With that, a relationship was born,” Gant writes. “We talked for hours, discussing what next steps to take. Then, out of the blue, the malik leaned over and told my interpreter to tell me that he had not been completely honest, that he had not eight, but 80 warriors.” Later, after more talk and more tea, the malik looked Gant in the eye and said, “‘Commander Jim, I have 800 warriors and they are at your disposal. You only need to ask and they will be yours.'”

Afghan villagers in some areas would resist any form of outside interference, Gant realized, be it from a foreign power or the central government in Kabul. The only form of governance that mattered was tribal. “We saw firsthand the depth and power of the existing (though initially invisible to us) tribal defense system,” Gant wrote, referring to the tribal army he found at his disposal. “And we grasped the absolute necessity of working with and bonding with the tribal leader—man-to-man, warrior-to-warrior.”

Gant's conclusion: “The enemy thinks he can wait us out. However, we can turn time into an ally if we engage and partner with the tribes and, most importantly, demonstrate our commitment to them. Once they believe that we share the same objectives and are not leaving, they will support us and fight alongside us.” It was a common theme in counterinsurgency theory, and for Petraeus, who also believed that all counterinsurgency operations were local, understanding politics at the tribal level was key for a successful transition.

AFTER WEST POINT,
Petraeus's interest in counterinsurgency only deepened when, as a newlywed and newly minted 2nd lieutenant, he headed to Vicenza, Italy. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team. In those days of the “hollow Army,” still recovering from Vietnam, the 509th was an elite unit, the first choice of the top-ranking graduates from West Point. It fell under the headquarters at the Southern European Task Force, whose primary mission was to oversee the security and transfer in wartime of tactical nuclear weapons based in Italy, Greece and Turkey, and that focus meant that the higher headquarters generally left the 509th to its own devices. Many of the unit's captains and above had Vietnam combat experience. One of them was a “Plankholder cadre” member of the 1/75th Rangers, a major named Keith Nightingale. Petraeus admired his irreverent, cocky spirit. Nightingale would become a mentor for life.