The Longest War (75 page)

181
couldn’t hold many of
: Sean Rayment, “British troops hunt the Taliban in Afghanistan,”
The Daily Telegraph
, September 4, 2007.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
uknews/1561956/British-troops-hunt-
the-Taliban-in-Afghanistan.html
.

181
“mowing the lawn”
: author interview with western diplomat, Kabul, Afghanistan, July 2008.

182
traveled to Kuwait City
: Author interview with Robert Grenier, Washington, D.C., February 18, 2009.

182
five times more U.S. funding
: Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other global war on terror operations since 9/11,” Congressional Research Service, May 15, 2009.
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
.

182
“way too committed to Iraq”
: David Gordon, interview by author, Washington, D.C. October 15, 2009.

182
Rumsfeld ordered
: Rashid op. cit., p. 353.

182
“Tragically, I believe that”
: David Barno, Testimony before the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, February 15, 2007. foreign affairs.house.gov/110/33319.pdf.

182
“Where the road ends”
: Karl Eikenberry interview by author, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2006.

183
Afghans hadn’t seen much
: Yuma Turabi and Lorenzo Delegates, “Afghanistan: Bringing Accountability Back In From Subjects of Aid to Citizens of the State,” Integrity Watch Afghanistan Report, June 2008.
http://www.iwaweb.org/Bringing Accountabilitybackin.pdf
.

183
funneled back
: Matt Waldman, “Falling Short: Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan,” Oxfam Research Report, May 2008.
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/files/
ACBARAidEffectivenessPaper.pd]
; Jon Hemming, “Afghan Aid ineffective, Inefficient, Watchdog Says,”
Reuters
, June 9, 2008.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/id UKISL1120120080609
; “local Afghan projects”: A report by the Peace Dividend Trust in 2007 states only 15% of aid used Afghan resources.

183
Too often
: Oxfam International, “Falling Short: Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan,” by Matt Waldman. March 2008.
http://www.oxfam.org/files/ACBAR_aid
_effectiveness_paper_0803.pdf
.

183
typical of suicide bombers in Afghanistan
: Christine Fair, “Suicide attacks in Afghanistan, 2001–2007,” United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, September 9, 2007.

184
chat with a failed suicide bomber
: Author interview with Imdadullah, April 2007, Kabul, Afghanistan.

184
Eight of every ten
: Human Rights Watch, “The Human Cost,” April 15, 2007.
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/04/15/human-cost-0
.

184
Taliban were back with a vengeance
: Christine Fair op. cit.; “IED attacks doubled”: “IED attacks up in Afghanistan, down in Iraq,” November 15, 2007.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/
2007/11/gns_ied_071115/
; highest levels: CNN OEF casualties database op. cit.

185
brought more attacks into Afghanistan
: Jason Dye, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, July 5, 2007.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/
TRANSCRIPTS/0707/05/acd.02.html
. and author’s observations at the Bermel base in eastern Afghanistan, September 11–14 2006; “signed a peace deal”: BBC News, “Pakistan Taleban in peace deal,” September 5, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5315564.stm
.

185
unwilling or incapable
: Author interview with U.S. military officials Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2006. Amir Haqqani: Frank Sturek, interview by author, Zabul, Afghanistan, July 2006.

185
“generally accepted”
: James Jones, testimony before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, D.C., September 21, 2006.

185
“down to a particular section of Quetta”
: Peter Bergen and Charlie Moore, “Source: Mullah Omar in Pakistan,” CNN.com, September 9, 2006.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/09/
pakistan.mullahomar/index.html
.

186
“They were calling from Pakistan”
: Author interview, Abdul Haq Hanif, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

186
“We would not have got him”
: Author interview, U.S. military official, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

186
at some 40 million
: CIA World Factbook, Afghanistan and Pakistan, February 10, 2009.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html
; BBC/ABC/ARD, “their view of the Taliban”: Afghanistan poll by BBC/ABC, January 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/
bsp/hi/pdfs/05_02_09afghan_poll_2009.pdf
, p. 20; high as 27%: International Council on Security and Development, “On a knife edge: southern and eastern Afghanistan,” May 2007.
http://icosgroup.net/modules/
reports/Knife_Edge_Report
.

187
between 7,000 and 10,000
: Author interview U.S. military official, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2006.

187
some 12,000 fighters
: BBC News, “Afghanistan: Taleban second coming,” June 2, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5029190.stm
; “in contact with his top aides”: CBS News, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, December 29, 2006.

187
“They won’t be taken”
: Author interview with U.S. military official, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2006.

187
“The Arabs taught us”
: Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, “The Taliban in their own words,”
Newsweek
, September 26, 2009,
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216235/page/1
. This section draws on Peter Bergen, “The Front,”
The New Republic
, October 19, 2009.

187
bin Laden himself had supervised
: Carlotta Gall, “A mile from Cheney, Afghan bomber kills at least 23,”
New York Times
, February 28, 2007; “Al Libi was behind the operation”: Alisa Tang, “Libyan blamed for bomb at Cheney visit,”
Associated Press
, May 3, 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050300963.html
.

187
Hassan Gul
: “U.S. reveals al-Qaeda Iraq plot,” BBC, February 9, 2004,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3473881.stm
; “the case of Omar Al Farouk”: Justin Huggler, “The last stand of Al Qaida’s Houdini,”
The Independent (London)
, September 27, 2006.

188
“trained in Iraq”
: Author interview with Hamid Mir, Islamabad, Pakistan, May, 2007.

188
“We are on a good and strong relationship”
: Mustafa Abu al-Yazid’s interview with Al Jazeera, June 22, 2009, translated by NEFA Foundation.
www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/…/nefa_yazidqa0609.pdf
.

188
a piece of red-hot coal
: Pamela Constable, “Tales of the Taliban: Part tragedy, part farce,”
Washington Post
, February 28, 2004.

188
their cell phone numbers
: Daniel Kimmage, “Al-Qaeda Central and the Internet,” New America Foundation, February 2010.

188
Hundreds of dollars
: Author interview with U.S. military official in Afghanistan, September 2006.

189
scores of tapes like this
: Selection of Taliban propaganda tapes, IntelCenter, Washington, D.C., 2005–2009.

189
two dozen law courts
: Yochi Dreazen and Siobhan Gorman, “Taliban regains power, influence in Afghanistan,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 20, 2008.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122713845685342447.html
.

189
fourteen pages of “national caveats”
: Author interview with senior NATO commander, Kabul, Afghanistan, December 2005; “only a handful of countries”: Author interview with U.S. military official, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

189
German forces
: “A Different Kind of War” op. cit., p. 298.

190
the summer of 2008
: Carlotta Gall, “Afghan border concerns NATO’s force leader,”
New York Times
, June 5, 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/world/asia/05afghan.html
.

190
$100 or more a month
: Peter Bergen, “The Taliban, regrouped and rearmed,”
Washington Post
, September 10, 2006; “$70 salary of an Afghan policeman”: Farah Stockman, “On the streets of Kabul, a scramble for money,”
New York Times
, April 11, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/world/asia/11iht-afghan.5226639.html
.

190
millions of dollars
: author interview with Abdul Haq Hanif, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

190
a drug cartel
: author interview with Abdul Haq Hanif, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

190
from April 2007 to January 2009
: Embassy of Afghanistan, History.
http://www.embassyofafghanistan.org/history.html
; “preference for aerial eradication”: Kirk Semple and Tim Golden, “Afghans pressed by U.S. on plan to spray poppies,”
New York Times
, October 8, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/asia/08spray.html
.

191
jump into a fifty-five-gallon drum
: Author interview with U.S. official then involved in Afghan policy, Washington, D.C.

191
General Mohammed Daud
: Two years later Canada’s
Globe and Mail
newspaper would identify General Daud as someone who himself profited from the drug trade, a charge he denied. “a very dangerous place”: Author interview with Afghan counternarcotics official, Uruzgan, Afghanistan, April 2007.

191
fifth-largest poppy harvest
: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008,
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan_Opium_Survey_2008.pdf
, p. 171.

192
DynCorp guys were easy to spot
: Author observation of the Afghan Eradication Force in Uruzgan province, April 2007.

192
Afghan support for poppy cultivation
: ABC/BBC/ARD News poll, “Afghans’ criticism of U.S. efforts rises; in the southwest, Taliban support grows,” December 3, 2007. abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1049a1Afghanistan-WhereThingsStand.pdf.

192
put up to three million people out of work
: Vanda Felbab-Brown,
Shooting Up
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Press, 2009), p. 135.

192
twelve dollars a day
: Felbab-Brown op. cit., p. 134.

192
successful counternarcotics policy
: Lt. Gen. David Barno, observation to author, Washington, D.C. 2007.

193
one of the most corrupt countries
: Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2008,”
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/
surveys_indices/cpi/2008/cpi_2008_table
.

193
nine tons
: William Grimes, “Afghan struggle to change poppy fields into roads,”
New York Times
, November 7, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/books/07grim.html?fta=y
.

193
profiting from the drug business
: James Risen, “Reports link Karzai’s brother to heroin trade,”
International Herald Tribune
, October 4, 2008.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/04/asia/05afghan.php
.

193
instituted a review
: Meghan O’Sullivan interview. Washington, D.C., November 6, 2009 and email to author, June 11, 2011.

193
“There were many discussions”
: U.S. national security official Washington, D.C., January 2009.

193
everything was fine
: Author interview with former U.S. official, Washington, D.C., December 2009.

193
“from their bubble”
: Author interview with U.S. official, Washington, D.C., January 2009.

193
“the shura”
: David Kilcullen, author interview, New York; November 20, 2009, “in May 2007”: Associated Press, “Bush Taps Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as ‘War Czar’ for Iraq, Afghanistan,” May 15, 2007; “the green shrinking”: Eliot Cohen, author interview, December 10, 2009, Washington, D.C.

194
“There is a point”
: Douglas E. Lute, interview by author, Washington, D.C., January 8, 2010.

194
soup-to-nuts
: Lute interview.

194
“all Iraq all the time”
: Kilcullen interview.

194
“I don’t want a written report”
: Kilcullen ibid.

194
private polling
: Author interview with former U.S. official Washington, D.C., January 2009.

195
“We gave them a briefing”
: Kilcullen interview, Washington, D.C. January 19, 2010.

195
“leave it for us”
: Hadley op. cit.

195
“unpublicized Bush review”
: Lute, Hadley, Kilcullen interviews.

195
adjusting their tactics
: Julian Barnes, “U.S. general seeks to curb Afghan civilian deaths,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 17, 2008.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/17/world/fg-afghan17
.

195
four hundred tribes
: Author interview with U.S. intelligence official, 2008.

195
pilot program
: Dexter Filkins, “Afghan and U.S. plan to recruit local militias,”
New York Times
, December 23, 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/world/asia/24afghan.html
.

195
requested more than 20,000
: Tom Vanden Brook, “Commander sees ‘tough fight’ in Afghan war,”
USA Today
, December 8, 2008.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-12-07-afghantroops_N.htm
. See also Stephen J. Hadley in the
Washington Post
, “How Obama’s surge can stabilize Afghanistan,” December 11, 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121003439.html
.