The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (36 page)

The stats: Only 20 percent of new recruits can read. One out of four deserts the ranks on a regular basis. Child rape is endemic in both the police and Afghan armies; in the south, Afghan soldiers take boys as young as eight or ten years old as lovers, dressing them up as girls at parties. It makes the Western forces very uncomfortable. (“Boys are for pleasure, women are for children” is a popular expression in the country.) It isn’t until January 2011 that Afghanistan signs a UN agreement to prevent child soldiers from joining the security forces (though teenagers are still welcome in government-backed militias). An American trainer estimates that 54 percent of the Afghan army and police smoke hash regularly. Another earlier study showed at least 60 percent of police in Helmand province were users.

Worse: The American forces and the Afghan forces don’t trust each other. Afghan soldiers have picked up a very bad habit of murdering American soldiers there to train them. NATO orders a study, and the conclusions are hot—there is a “growing systemic threat” that is “provoking a crisis of confidence” between the Afghan and American soldiers. Almost every twelve days there is a murder. In one five-and-a-half-month period, 16 percent of American casualties are caused by the Afghan security forces killing soldiers in the American Army. In a three-year period, at least fifty-eight NATO soldiers have been killed, and around the same number wounded, in what are officially called ANSF-committed fratricide murders, 6 percent of all NATO deaths. ISAF decides they better classify the study, and quick. The study gets classified, but not before it gets leaked to
The
Wall Street Journal.

The American trainers, according to the study, have a list of complaints
about the Afghan soldiers: “pervasive illicit drug use, massive thievery, personal instability, dishonesty, no integrity, incompetence, unsafe weapons handling, corrupt officers, no real NCO corps, covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents, high AWOL rates, bad morale, laziness, repulsive hygiene, and the torture of dogs.” The Afghans are cowardly and are ready to run away in battle, the Americans say.

The Afghan soldiers have a list of complaints about the Americans: “extremely arrogant, bullying, unwilling to listen to their advice and lacking concern for civilian and ANSF safety.” The Americans are always “urinating in public… cursing at and insulting and being rude and vulgar” to Afghans while “unnecessarily shooting animals.” The Americans are cowardly, the Afghan soldiers say, hiding behind heavily armored vehicles and close air support in battle.

The study includes anecdotes from the approximately six hundred Afghans and five hundred American soldiers surveyed.

Verbatim quotes from the Afghans:
They take photos from women even when we tell them not to.
U.S. soldiers kill many innocent civilians: If ambushed, U.S. soldiers panic, spraying fire in all directions. A U.S. MRAP killed six civilians traveling in a vehicle—it was intentional. We once loaded and charged our weapons because we got tired of U.S. soldiers calling us “motherfuckers.” They always shout and yell “motherfucker.” They are crazy. They are too arrogant. We try to warn them if the enemy is planning something, they usually fail to listen and get shot up. They treat us like thieves. U.S. soldiers killed a carload of civilians in front of an OP. U.S. soldiers have never been held responsible and sent to prison for any of these crimes. A raid in
[redacted]
province killed nine students; they were a study group and had no weapons. They pee all over, right in front of civilians, including females. If we tell them not to, they either don’t listen or get angry. Two U.S. soldiers even defecated within public view. They peed in front of a house. They don’t care if women see them. A U.S. soldier peed in a stream right in front of a woman. This greatly angered us. U.S. soldiers shoot cattle for no reason. They fired on donkeys for no reason. How we treat dogs is no one’s business; the Koran is very
clear about the low status of dogs. U.S. soldiers often retreat and leave us behind during firefights. Often the U.S. lets itself get involved in personal feuds by believing an unreliable source. These people use the U.S. to destroy their personal enemies, not the insurgents. They will break in doors before the people can answer. They don’t care if they cause accidents. For years, U.S. military convoys sped through the streets of villages, running over small children, while shouting profanities and throwing water bottles at people. Infidels are not allowed inside mosques. They often don’t even take off their boots. It’s rude for them to wear their sunglasses when meeting with elders. They constantly pass gas in front of ANSF, in public, in front of elders—a very low class people. If they hand out candy to children, the children are at risk of getting hurt by being too close to the Americans if there is an attack. They put them in danger. The U.S. soldier threw his hand grenade (without pulling the pin) with the candy he was throwing at the children.

Verbatim quotes from Americans soldiers on Afghans:
They are high as fuck. Their eyes are always bloodshot. One ANA shot himself in the chest twice and leg once. He was high as shit. The ANP were high off their asses. The ANA were always high on hash. A police officer was shot. His tolerance for morphine was astronomically high due to heroin use. We were on patrol and they stopped the patrol so they could start smoking in front of us. They are totally infiltrated by insurgents. You just could not trust them. One of them at a base in Pech got caught working for the Taliban. [They] drew down on U.S. soldiers a few times. [An] ANA locked and loaded on a U.S. civilian contractor because he accidentally bumped into him even though he had apologized right away. A U.S. soldier then locked and loaded against the ANA to emphasize the point of the apology. We do everything for them. It’s like a kid you have to spoon-feed… but you have to put on an Afghan face. We even got training at JRTC [with role players] who acted like stupid and lazy ANA. That set us up for what we found there. This is a lazy ass culture; they won’t do anything unless they have to. They are constantly showing up for duty or missions late, even thirty minutes late. They make excuses… but nothing changes. Their leadership is hot garbage. Many of their soldiers are much better
than their leaders. It’s like the commercial of the big bulldog and the small yipping dog bouncing around; you take away the big bulldog and the small dog hides its tail and slinks away. Whenever we made contact they would just hide. Others refuse to patrol if it is at all dangerous. If they are afraid, they won’t do anything. Theft among [them] is bad; they have local kids steal things for them. [They] are garbage, shit. These guys are not soldiers; they are a ragtag bunch of thugs and civilians dressed in uniforms. I would never like to admit that Iraqis are smarter, but they are Einsteins compared to Afghans. They talk on their cell phones, yell into them on missions. They learned to be helpless and that is partly why they are so fucking bad. They are always on their cell phones during patrols. They are worse than teenage girls. They don’t plan ahead for fuel and water. We just give them shit so they stop bothering us. They are completely dependent on the U.S. They are turds. We are better off without them. The “Afghan Face” strategy doesn’t work. They fucking stink. We all had to take cover while they were returning fire. They would spray and pray. They listened to local mullahs and were pretty radical. The ANA use culture and religion as a shield to hide their incompetence. We had a big clearing mission during Ramadan. They just lay down and fell asleep. The ABP killed a couple of our dogs. They were strays but we fed them. Slowly they started disappearing. They killed them. We received no training for trainers. We got one part day cultural training. It was crap. We do not socialize outside of operations. I’d just as soon shoot them as work with them. Interaction with ANA was minimal. The only time was to go see what they had stolen. The people don’t want us here and we don’t like them.

“U.S. soldiers perceived that 50 percent of the ANA were Islamic radicals,” the report states. Afghan soldiers “were more likely to think a suicide bomber in Afghanistan would see salvation than a U.S. soldier killed in action.”

NATO has already spent more than $30 billion training the Afghan security forces. Police officers regularly accept bribes; it’s the least trusted institution in a land of mistrusted institutions. The training courses are completed again and again by the same Afghan soldiers to get a $240 stipend
without actually having to fight. And fighting-wise, though the Afghan army is allegedly getting better, they are still years away from being able to “take the lead,” says Caldwell.

Caldwell’s plan to fix the debacle? To teach the Afghan security forces how to read. Only then, Caldwell believes, can they fight. “You can’t expect a soldier to account for his weapon if he can’t even read the serial number on his rifle,” Caldwell says. In briefing after briefing, he goes on at length about the “literacy problem” in the security forces. He needs to “educate an entire generation of Afghans,” he says, for his plan to succeed.

Despite the $11.6 billion allocated to the training program in 2011 year, he doesn’t feel that it’s enough. He takes to the media to complain. He doesn’t have enough trainers (nine hundred short), he doesn’t have enough Afghan recruits (he needs to add seventy thousand more), and he doesn’t have enough money—he wants $2 billion extra, on top of the billions spent on the training over the previous decade. The $2 billion will put them over the top, he claims. Three times as many Afghan troops drop out as stay—to increase the forces by 56,000, Caldwell explains, he needs to recruit 141,000 Afghans.

To keep retention up, Caldwell will soon start to charter commercial planes for Afghan soldiers and police to go on vacation to their homes in the southern part of the country. Despite his own statements that information operations are for “foreign audiences,” he’ll assign a team of American information operation specialists to target the U.S. public. IO teams are typically trained in electronic warfare, psychological operations, military deception, among other skill sets, to “influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own,” according to the Department of Defense. This IO team, which had received training in conducting psychological operations, is tasked with convincing visiting senators and other VIPs to give Caldwell more funds. It’s unclear if the information operations team’s efforts have any effect, but at the end of the year, leading senators
will endorse his call for $2 billion more. Serious legal questions are raised by a whistleblower under Caldwell’s command about whether he directly violates the law banning the Department of Defense from propagandizing its own citizens, as well as other government rules. However, a subsequent Pentagon investigation into the program, prompted by a story I published in
Rolling Stone
, will find that Caldwell has done nothing wrong. The Afghan training mission continues.

APRIL 30 TO MAY 8, 2010, KABUL

Duncan’s office was on the second floor in a building hidden in the back of the headquarters campus. The floor housed the ISAF media center, an open newsroom filled with computers and telephones, where military public affairs pumped out an endless stream of press releases and photographs.

Duncan decorated his office carefully with a pattern of ironic mementos. There was a photo of Hamid Karzai, snapped in a way that made it look like the Afghan president was giving the middle finger to the audience. There was a picture of McChrystal, Photoshopped into the famous Obama “Hope” campaign photo, red and white coloring over the general’s face. There was a political cartoon from October 2009, drawn during the lengthy troop review process—it showed McChrystal calling the White House and being put on hold. (“How long have you been on hold?” a soldier asks. “At the top of the hour, it will be about three months,” McChrystal says.) An
Onion
headline: U.S. C
ONTINUES
Q
UAGMIRE
B
UILDING
E
FFORT
I
N
A
FGHANISTAN
. A copy of a book called
Selling War to America
was stacked atop a pile of books on the floor.

The pièce de résistance of the office was a handwritten note on a yellow Post-it. It was a message from a Pentagon spokesperson named Bryan Whitman that had been left for Duncan and Lieutenant Colonel Tadd Sholtis, the public affairs officer Duncan shared his office with. The Pentagon spokesperson had telephoned from Washington, and when no one could take his call, he had an ISAF staffer transcribe his message verbatim:

“I’m calling the bullshit flag on this,” the message said. “What the fuck is going on over there? What the fuck is wrong with that public affairs office there? I know exactly what you are doing to me there. Get him to answer my fucking questions. Go get him on the phone.”

Duncan and Tadd saved the note for posterity. They didn’t really get along with the Pentagon press office, Duncan explained. Sholtis, an aspiring writer turned public affairs officer, had a weirdly subversive streak, too, keeping a personal blog called The Quatto Zone, named after the Martian rebel leader from the movie
Total Recall
. On the blog, he regularly slammed the media for seeing the war through “shit-colored glasses” and complained about press coverage—he said it was a blog for him to “think and write.”

I was back at ISAF headquarters to do my final interviews with McChrystal’s top advisors. I had a sit-down interview with Sir Graeme Lamb, the British Special Forces commando; General Mike Flynn; Command Sergeant Major Michael Hall, the top-ranking enlisted man in the country; and a few other members of the team.