One Hundred Victories (43 page)

Although many military leaders have learned to quote T. E. Lawrence—better known as Lawrence of Arabia—over the past decade, his maxims did not form the central spine of the American outlook or approach to Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter. Almost any country can be substituted for “Arabs” in one of Lawrence’s most astute and applicable injunctions in his “Twenty-Seven Articles”: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.”
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Strategic patience does pay off. The United States rarely musters the kind of patience required for these ventures to produce results, but that does not render invalid the argument for taking a long view. The United States may find its way to an enduring and affordable formula to support Afghanistan over the coming decade. In doing so it would be following US policy toward El Salvador and Colombia, a model that might be called “go small, go long.” Such a model entails a realistic assessment of the government and an appraisal that it is in the long-term interest of the United States to support it, warts and all, as well as to exercise whatever leverage and influence the United States possesses to help the recipient improve. It should be noted that countries can change substantially in a decade’s time due to demographic, educational, and social shifts.

A middle road must be charted between pure expedience and excessive aspiration if foreign policy and national security objectives are to be achieved. On the one hand, special operations forces have often leaned toward expedience as the more “realistic” posture for averting near-term danger—but taking this path involves risks and possible pitfalls that must be more explicitly acknowledged  and weighed. On the other hand, the latter years in Afghanistan witnessed some ill-advised excursions into overly aspirational development and anticorruption crusades. That is not to say the United States should turn a blind eye to malfeasance by those whom it aims to help. It must simply decide whether it is, on balance, supporting or attacking a given government,

and refrain from waging war on both the government and the enemy simultaneously.

A more routinized approach to conditionality and accountability would help. All US assistance should be attached to minimum requirements for transparency and accountability, with auditing mechanisms that can be performed by third-party professionals. Such mechanisms work very well, for example, in the National Solidarity Program, with checks administered by both the World Bank and grassroots community development councils. The auditing in the case of Kabul Bank, in contrast, was clearly deficient. If standards are universally applied, they will be less contentious—and more effective—than when individuals, such as the president’s brother or close advisers, are singled out.

This appeal for principled pragmatism as a guide to foreign engagement encompasses a wide range of possible approaches, though it eschews the unilateral use of force except in the case of the direst threats to national security. After war, this nation often veers into isolationism, but it should be ready to fight when it identifies grave, existential threats from concrete plots of identified foes. In most if not all other cases, it can find other ways of winning without fighting—to paraphrase Sun Tzu—and be better off for it.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A little over two years ago I set out to chronicle the special operations forces’ largest-scale initiative since Vietnam as well as their evolving approach to war. The number of operators involved and the geographic extent of the operations made this a challenging project. It was not possible to capture the scope and complexity of Village Stability Operations and the associated civil defense program called Afghan Local Police at a single site, but it was not feasible to visit all the sites, which numbered 106 as of April 2013. So I developed an approach aimed at gaining the best possible appreciation of what special operations forces were doing in the villages and districts in which they “embedded” and what had resulted from this close interaction with the population.

I selected three locations for repeat visits, made random visits to other sites, and obtained countrywide data about the program from the commands, including a weekly tracker of the number and location of local defenders who were enrolled in the program, weekly reports summarizing the latest developments, and other documents, such as “fragmentary orders” (FRAGOs) and program procedures. The command also shared analytical papers with me as well as formal quarterly assessments that were produced by RAND. In addition, I consulted the official record of the program in the semiannual “1230 Reports,” prepared by the US Department of Defense, and two independent reports, one by Human Rights Watch and the other by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. My original research, which is the primary material on which this book is based, consisted of more than three hundred interviews with US special operations personnel at all echelons, other US officials, and Afghan citizens and officials along with my field observations.

The interviews and my personal observations form the basis for the scenes described and the quotations used; in some cases, participants recounted conversations they had with others. To the greatest extent possible, I have consulted more than one source when reconstructing scenes that I did not witness; in other cases, I used secondary sources. Some of the interviews were conducted on a background or off-record basis, so the interviewees cannot be named. In the case of team-level special operators, except for those not returning to field-level duty, for security reasons I have used only first names or nicknames rather than full names.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) granted my access to the units in the field and the various echelons of the commands above them. I used commercial transportation and lodging whenever possible, but my visits to the sites entailed reliance on US military transport as well as lodging and meals at US military sites, including
qalats
rented by the US military in Afghanistan. My access to sites and individuals was generally unfettered. In a few cases I was not permitted to visit certain sites at certain times: during the ouster of Jim Gant, which occurred while I was in Kunar; during the massacre at Belambay, which took place a few hours before I arrived in Maiwand; and when a team’s leadership had been fired in eastern Paktika. Subsequent to those events, however, I was granted the interviews I requested.

The leadership of the US Special Operations Command (USSO-​COM), first Admiral Eric Olson and then his successor Admiral Bill McRaven, permitted access to special operations units in the field and following their tours, as did their subordinate commands and commanders. I am grateful to Colonel Tim Nye, USSOCOM’s director of public affairs, who cheerfully championed my endless requests, understanding how much access is required to produce a book. He and his able deputy, Ken McGraw, helped me at every turn over the past ten years as I sought to understand this closed—and now much less closed—world.

I was most fortunate to have two welcoming perches from which to research and write this book. One was the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where I was a public policy scholar. This center is a treasure of an institution, headed by Jane Harman and led by a thoughtful band of intellectuals and directors, including Rob Litwak, Bob Hathaway, and Mike Van Dusen. A special thanks to my research intern, Ben Arnett, who braved the deadline pressures along with me. I am immensely grateful to Richard Haass and Jim Lindsay, president and vice president of studies, respectively, for welcoming me as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where I spent fifteen months, ably assisted by Jane McMurrey, my research associate, in the company of many fine professionals. I thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for its grant to support this research and my study on the future of special operations forces at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in particular its program director, Nadia Schadlow, an astute colleague and scholar of the military.

I relied on the sage advice and moral support of the best agent and friend anyone could hope to have—Flip Brophy, president of Sterling Lord Literistic. Clive Priddle is also a friend as well as an utterly unflappable editor, now publisher of PublicAffairs, which is publishing my work for the third time; thank you for your deft pen, your cool head, and your terrific team, including Melissa Raymond; Robert Kimzey; Jaime Leifer; Kathy Streckfus, whose conscientious copyediting greatly improved the book; and Susan Weinberg, now Group Publisher of Basic Books, Nation Books, and PublicAffairs. Pete Garceau did a beautiful job with the cover.

In the writing of any book, especially one relying so heavily on interviews, literally hundreds of individuals have given of their time and shared their insights. My effort to thank all of the individuals who consented to interviews, in many cases multiple times, will inevitably leave out someone, but I have attempted to recognize all those who can be acknowledged. Any errors, misjudgments, or omissions are of course mine alone.

The principal interviews conducted in southern Afghanistan were with Chris Riga, Bill Carty, Richard Navarro, Brian Rarey, Justin Sapp, Brian Mack, and other members of their staffs; Scott White, Angel Martinez, J. R. Jones, Dan Hayes, and Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 3314; Tyler Oliver, Brad Hansell, and ODA 7233; J. R. Anderson and his staff; Mike Hayes and his staff; Ben Jahn, SEAL platoon leader Marshall, Brian Strickland, Dan Green, Beau Bezouska, and team members in Kajran and Gizab; officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department, and the US Department of Agriculture; Abdullah Niazi, Fazil Ahmad Barak, Obaidullah Barwari, Najibullah, and ODA 112; Azizullah Rahman Tutakhel and ODA 115; Jan Mohammed, Abdullah Hakim, Dawood Mohammed, Ahmadullah Popal, and Shah Janan.

The principal interviews conducted in the east were with Bob Wilson, Bob Davis, Bill Linn, Chris Fox, John Bishop, Eddie Jimenez, Pat Rotsaert, Kent Solheim, Mike Holahan, Ben Hauser, Jay Pope, ODA 3316, Jake Peterson, Craig Kunkel, Mike Perry, Tim Ambrose, ODA 3436, ODA 3131, Mike Bandy, Jason Clarke, John Meyer, Michael Hutchinson, and ODA 3325; Jason Russell and ODA 1114; Jae Kim and ODA 1411; ODA 1326; and Mary Kettman, Jess Patterson, Hanif Kheir, Waliullah Hamidzai, Wali Mohammed, Nur Mohammed, Gudjer, Asim Gul, Wazir, Commander Aziz, Major Osman, Kasim Diciwal, Ramazon, and Noor Mohammed.

At the headquarters commands in Kabul and Bagram, the principal interviews were conducted with Don Bolduc; Scott Miller and his command group, including Geno Paluso, J. R. Stigall, Fred Krawchuk, Scott Whitehead, and Scott Kesterson; Chris Haas and his command group, including John Evans, Wes Spence, Heinz Dinter, Beau Higgins, Alec MacKenzie, Pat Stevens, Ken Gleiman, Gail Yoshitani, Jack Stanford, and Chris Foltz; Billy Shaw, Doug Rose, Randy Zeegers, Duke Christy, Tony Thomas, Scott Howell, Art Kandarian, Andrew Pence, Jim Linder, Sean Swindell, Ed Reeder, Pat Mahaney, Chris Castelli, Mike Sullivan, Mark Schwartz and his staff, Brad Moses, and Tony Fletcher and his staff. Others interviewed included General Sher Mohammed Karimi, Ali Shah Ahmadzai, Dadon Lawang, Nooristani, Zia Karimi, David Petraeus, John Allen, James Terry, John Campbell, Curtis Scaparrotti, Jim Huggins, Ryan Crocker, Fred Johnson, Noorzai Ahmed Hamdard, Nader Nadery, Abdullah Abdullah, and Shahmahmood Miakhel. Scott Mann, Dave Phillips, Clare Lockhart, Tom Barfield, Todd Greentree, Harj Sajjan, and Neamat Nojumi generously shared their knowledge and perspectives on Afghanistan.

The past decade has seen many Americans in uniform in war zones, and in many ways their experience creates a great gulf between them and their fellow Americans who have not gone to war. I hope this book may serve as a bridge between those two sets of Americans as well as a source of understanding for anyone interested in what special operations forces do—and what they may be asked to do in the future. I have grasped the trunk and maybe the tail of the elephant, and I recognize that there are many other vantage points from which to tell the story.

Finally, I must thank, above all, my beloved husband, Scott, who put up once again with my long absences. I made it safely home, but many others did not. Since 9/11, 434 special operators have been killed in action and another 2,021 wounded. Their sacrifices and their families, and all of those killed in these wars, should be remembered.

BOOKS

Barfield, Thomas J.
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History
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Bergen, Peter L.
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda
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———.
Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad
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Berntsen, Gary, and Ralph Pezzullo.
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander
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Blaber, Pete.
The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander
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Blehm, Eric.
Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown
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———.
The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan
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Boot, Max.
Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present
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Bradley, Rusty.
Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds
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