You will naturally ask what remedy I propose for this state of things, and I will briefly state the principle on which I would proceed. First of all, I would endeavour to meet the danger as far as possible from our own frontier, without placing any hostile power between us and our Indian base. Some of those measures I have already described. They involve the establishment of a perfect Intelligence department of European officers in Affghanistan, and, if possible, a preponderating influence there; but I would not attempt the subjugation of the country nor its military occupation, because I believe that we can effectually keep out all rivals by supporting a national government.
—Sir Bartle Frere, Afghanistan and South Africa, 1881
When I announced this surge at West Point, we set clear objectives: to refocus on al Qaeda, to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, and train Afghan security forces to defend their own country. I also made it clear that our commitment would not be open-ended and that we would begin to draw down our forces this July.
—President Barack Obama, Speech on Afghanistan, June 22, 2011
By the spring of 2011 the crack of rifle fire in Dand had been replaced by the steady chug of tractors tilling the fields. Insurgents were reduced to intimidating maliks, assassinating isolated victims, and setting bombs at the fringes of the district.
Then, on June 2, we learned the Taliban had killed Haji Kakar Mohammad, who was a cluster leader in the northeast of Dand, a Barakzai tribal elder, and one of the most influential men in the district.
Assassination was a favored Taliban tactic, and life in the province had grown increasingly violent. One study suggested insurgents had killed 515 elders and officials connected to the government in Kandahar between 2001 and mid-2010.1 No one was safe—not aid workers, clerics, government officials, or progovernment tribal elders. Later that summer the Taliban killed a female aid worker in Dand after they captured her in the eastern part of the district. She died in a village midway between the strongholds of the Karzai and the Sherzai clans.
The higher the profile, the bigger the target. In quick succession the Taliban killed the mayor of Kandahar City, the provincial police chief, and one of the most prominent women in the province, Sitara Achekzai. A member of the provincial assembly, Achekzai was the only woman police officer in Kandahar. And in mid-July 2011 Ahmed Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s brother, was killed. The chief of his bodyguard detail, a man who had worked for Ahmed Wali Karzai for years, took out his pistol and shot Karzai in the head at his home in western Kandahar City. The shooter, quickly gunned down by other bodyguards, never revealed his motive; the Taliban claimed the man as one of their own.
The reach of the Taliban’s assassination campaign seemed to extend everywhere, putting the city on edge. They’d tried to kill Nazak twelve times, usually when he traveled by car between Dand and his home in Kandahar City. Once a suicide bomber infiltrated the second floor of the district center before he detonated his explosives outside Nazak’s office, blowing out the windows and scorching the interior. That event happened the year before I arrived. There were few reminders of the explosion except the extra careful screening that Nazak’s bodyguards gave all visitors.
Nazak replied that he had an income but was not rich, and $120,000 was a lot of money. Eventually a solution was found by Captain Matt Kotlarski, who paid $80,000 of the cost from military funds while Nazak covered the rest. Inevitably Nazak arranged the sale and got a better deal on the car than the military could have, saving himself some money. In return for Nazak kicking in his own money the military allowed him to take the car with him to his next government job in 2012. Despite Kotlarski’s compromise solution, it rankled Nazak that the American civilians had tried to force him to foot the bill for his armored car when other district governors received funding for their vehicles. This kind of small and irritating incident was typical and acted as a constant burr under the saddle of the U.S. relationship with Nazak.
The assassinations accompanied a trickle of other security incidents in Dand in mid-2011. A U.S. patrol operating in the southwest corner of the district near the border with Panjwai heard about a suspected IED. As it arrived in the area, one of the eight-wheeled armored Strykers hit the IED, which exploded near the driver and killed him—one of a series of incidents over the previous two years that demonstrated the Strykers’ vulnerability to IEDs when hit in the wrong part of the vehicle. Eventually the army redesigned the bottom of the vehicle and mothballed the old-style hulls.
Earlier that spring a patrol with Canadian, U.S., and Afghan soldiers had struck another IED in the northwest fringe of the district, killing a popular sergeant major of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and destroying the Ford Ranger he rode in. Because the ANA had few armored Humvees and usually traveled in unarmored Ford pickup trucks, an IED strike was usually devastating and often killed several of the occupants riding in the cab or in back. Mangled Fords of the Afghan army and police littered many of the American and Afghan bases, unwelcome reminders of the poor equipment the Afghans were forced to use. Humvees were armored but harder to maintain, and the ANA and ANP at the district level were chronically short of parts for the few Humvees they possessed. After years of delay the United States planned to deliver more than seven thousand Humvees to the Afghans in 2011.2
On July 4 the Taliban placed two IEDs in eastern Dand near some road-work contractors. One of the bombs detonated while the other malfunctioned. The police investigation revealed that the Taliban planned to detonate the second IED after the first one had exploded and drawn people to the area. Luckily the plan went awry and the contractors continued to rebuild the road.
Nazak was unhappy that the IED had gone off at all. He blamed the villagers for not being more alert and cooperative. “For better security, people must work more closely with the government,” he told his staff and several maliks who visited his office.
So the insurgency in Dand continued at a slow boil, with a small but steady trickle of incidents, with maliks kidnapped and occasionally murdered. Meanwhile farther west in Panjwai District the fighting reached full throttle. Matthew Roberts, a USAID field officer in our training class in Washington, reported difficulty in getting into the villages because the security situation had become too tenuous. Also the local battalion expressed reluctance to take him into the villages, because it had few vehicles based at the district center in Panjwai, where he lived, and it did not want to make special trips along a hazardous road to pick him up. Matthew had purchased Kevlar underwear prior to coming to Afghanistan, for which he had received weeks of ribbing. It looked like he would not be using his innovative undergarments any time soon.
By contrast it was easy for those of us with USAID in Dand to get out on patrols. Mohammad Zahir and I tried to get out once a week, tagging along with the scouts based near the district center or going to visit the companies based around the district and hitching rides on their patrols. Lt. Colonel Payne recognized that if we could not see what was going on, we would be of little use. We needed information directly from the villagers, on whether the government worked, if it could be trusted, and what they really needed. As Antoine Huss moved out and was succeeded in August by Cip Jungberg, we were able to complete the picture we had received from the district staff by talking directly with the elders in their own villages. Without a weekly hands-on encounter, we would not have a good feel for the current situation.
These side trips could take a few hours or several days. We might be picked up at the district center, visit several villages, and be dropped off at the end of the day. Or we might spend the night at a combat outpost manned by an American company and go on two patrols, one on the first day and one on the second. The local people gave their candid views of the security situation, even in the more insecure areas.
During an early trip Mohammad and I headed to COP Ainsworth in southwest Dand, an area still unstable because it bordered Panjwai. To the south of the COP lies a large desert called the Reg. A mass of rolling dunes covering hard rock, this desert spread for miles, running from Helmand in the west to Pakistan in the east and the south. Kuchi nomad settlements dotted the desert, hugging the river that bordered it to the north and cut it off from Dand.
Insurgents coming from Pakistan often wound their way through the desert, heading to Panjwai, a few miles west of Ainsworth. The trouble they caused in Panjwai had spilled over the border into Dand. Our destination, a village named Nahre Shefe (pronounced NAH-ree SHEE-fa), lay almost exactly at the nexus of the two bars of an upside-down T formed by the desert to the south, Panjwai to the west, and Dand to the east.
Nazak had failed to persuade the village elders to send a representative to the district center. They refused, complaining of the danger because the Taliban had easy access to their houses. In retaliation Nazak decreed the village would get no projects until they sent someone. The soldiers also reported no success in persuading the villagers to go. Life was especially difficult for the villagers, who had only one drinking water well for all the houses within a kilometer. They desperately needed another. Mohammad and I wanted to hear the stories for ourselves.
We had spent the previous night in dusty green tents surrounded by the high HESCO walls of the base. The COP, comfortable if cramped, boasted a gym, a small chow hall, and a shower tent. Plywood walls separated the officers’ “rooms” inside the accommodation tents. Afghan soldiers, still in Dand at the time, shared the base with the Americans.
We set out early one morning, bouncing in the back of a Stryker with two other soldiers. Mohammad sat inside the back and dozed, and I stood with my head out a rear hatch. The view inside the hull consisted of the legs of the two men standing on the rear seats with their heads out the hatches and a small monitor attached to a forward bulkhead fed by a video camera on the nose of the Stryker. Swirls of dust rolled into our faces and down through the hatches, coating everything with grit that resembled beige ash from a fire.
Mohammad wore his usual outfit of well-used U.S. Army cargo pants in the old desert pattern, topped with a tan-painted helmet issued by the embassy. We both wore embassy-issued tan flak jackets that were bulky, heavy, and uncomfortable. A veteran of hundreds of patrols, Mohammad had spent years working with U.S. Special Forces, so these jaunts into the countryside were deeply anticlimactic for him. Growing up in Kabul when the Taliban controlled it, Mohammad had been living this conflict since primary school, and it had become routine. But we both welcomed these patrols as interesting diversions that allowed us a break from the stifling confines of the district center. As for IEDs, you either let the threat bother you or you didn’t. Since the locals used this road frequently, it seemed more appropriate to doze than to worry.
The Strykers approached Nahre Shefe via a dirt track running across the scrubby desert. The Americans and Afghans kept a sharp lookout for IEDs. Eventually we passed some sparse green wheatfields with still visible traces of old irrigation channels carved in the hard-baked dirt. We followed a narrow road into the village, winding past several scattered compounds. Once we pulled off the road the vehicles spread out. The rear ramp dropped. Several soldiers dismounted. Others remained crouched behind their guns. An Afghan army pickup truck faced the desert.
Walking past several mud houses, we found the drinking water well and asked around. The village elder was in, and we were led by the ANA troops into his large mud house. We shook his hand and settled down onto thin wool rugs inside the thick mud walls. A young boy brought us hot tea, and we began to chat.
The elder was in his late sixties and rail thin, like most rural Afghans. With high cheekbones, his face bore lines that framed shrewd eyes. His mouth turned upward into something just short of a smile. He spoke freely and easily even though our visit would almost certainly cause the Taliban to pay him a visit in the next few days.
The elder said five or six tribes lived in the village, and he confirmed the existence of only one usable well. “This well was done before the Taliban came, and was done by an NGO,” he said.
There was not enough water because the other five wells in town were too salty to use, and the people were having to haul water to their houses from the next village over, about three miles to the east. This cost a lot of money, he said, and the people were suffering.
But the elder again refused to go to the district center. He explained that the tribes could not agree on a single representative, so sending one was impossible. This was a convenient evasion of the central issue—working with the government—which he was clearly reluctant to do. Instead he said he wanted to work through the local tribal elder, who lived in the town nearest to COP Ainsworth, where security was better. Working through the elder would be less visible and allow him to deny any cooperation with the government when the Taliban inquired. He said that villagers had gone three or four times to ask this elder for a new well, but nothing had been done.
We pointed out that the people in Nahre Shefe were missing out by refusing to work with the government. Other villages sometimes received sacks of subsidized seed wheat, and the only way to secure a new well would be to work with Governor Nazak. In the end the elder declared he would make a concession, and, if someone came to see him, he would send someone to the cluster shura associated with the government, which met every week near COP Ainsworth. Of course he never followed through on his promise, nor did we really expect him to. As for going to the district center, that would remain a nonstarter as long as the Taliban passed by so frequently. Stalemate.
As we chatted he also told us the sorts of details we needed to plan projects for the area: what the village grew (wheat), where they traded (“We sell in Kandahar City, and it takes two or three hours to get to Kandahar City by tractor”), and how safe they felt (“We are close to Panjwai and we have some fear. But the Taliban cannot stay here inside the village”). After an hour we shook hands, thanking the man for his tea and for telling us what he wanted. The soldiers piled back into the Strykers, I popped my head through the hatch, adjusted the headset, the ramp came up, and we lurched down the dirt track again, kicking up a great plume of dust. We stopped at two more villages and repeated the entire process, speaking to the elders and hearing their thoughts about the government. Located in safer areas a few kilometers farther away from Panjwai and the desert, these villages sent elders to see Nazak. In return they received projects. One village even opened a school. Nahre Shefe proved the exception rather than the rule.
The soldiers were happy to confirm this information. By seeing it for ourselves we heard the nuances and assured ourselves that when we discussed strategies with Nazak, he was giving us the straight information. We could talk to him as equals and better understand the people he governed.
The fact that people even in the more unstable areas were willing to talk was a testament to the ground covered by Nazak and the soldiers from the Afghan, U.S., and Canadian military forces. It was a remarkable turnaround in a short space of time. In other parts of Kandahar Province district governors struggled to do what Dand had accomplished by building or reopening schools and health clinics and persuading maliks to work with the government. Dand was quiet and that was good. It suggested few insurgents were operating freely.
In early June the security situation was poised to change. The Canadians would be pulling out in July and returning home, although some of their forces would shift to Kabul to help to train the Afghan army. But the kinds of intensive patrolling and fighting in the villages they had done so much of over the previous six years would end.
The ANA left Dand that summer, too. The U.S. military started pulling out its companies and reassigning them to Panjwai a few weeks later; their pullout was spread over several months.
To settle all the questions surrounding these wrenching changes, Nazak hosted a security shura attended by the ANA general in charge of the province, the Canadian general, and Lt. Colonel Payne. Nazak worried that he would be shortchanged as the forces shifted out, but he was a gracious host as the officers trooped into the district center on June 4. A dozen village elders waited to greet them, as the military and Nazak tried to get everyone on board with the changes coming soon.
The Canadian general, Brigadier Milner, noted that security efforts in Dand had been successful. “Last September there were insurgents here in Dand. But you don’t let the insurgents back in. That is the most important thing,” he stressed.
Several maliks complained, though, that someone had set up a checkpoint the previous week, and no one knew if it had been ANA or the Taliban. The elders said they could keep the Taliban out of the villages, because they would not let in strangers, but they also stated that this problem with checkpoints on the roads was almost impossible to solve by themselves.
Nazak piped up and said the only solution was for the ANA to step up the number of patrols. Checkpoints were useless because they were too static.
“Patrols are better because they reach more places,” insisted Nazak.
Several maliks agreed. They said the ANA needed to patrol more, especially on the border with Panjwai. Insurgents had set up temporary roadblocks on the border with Panjwai, and the people were afraid. The insurgents viewed anyone who helped the government as the enemy.
“The Taliban says that by cooperating with the government we are invaders and infidels,” one of the maliks complained loudly. The elders declared they could guard the new schools and the villages, but they were wary of getting caught by the Taliban roadblocks when moving around the district.
Nazak urged the maliks to work with the government, pointing out that in return for security the maliks would get projects. This prospect made the maliks happy, and they agreed to provide security.
The upshot of the meeting was that the security forces would think about patrolling more. But the drawdown was inevitable. This kind of balancing act, between the demands of the elders and the steadily diminishing resources of the security forces, meant that the future of Dand would hang in the balance.
But as much as Nazak could control the maliks, a number of factors exceeded his powers of persuasion and threatened to destabilize the district as the troops started to pull out.
He could not fight geography. To the west sat Panjwai District, unstable and violent. Panjwai weakened Dand, because insurgents staged weapons there for use in Dand and Kandahar City. Forty miles to the east lay the border with Pakistan. Since the 1980s fighters from Pakistan had infiltrated in from the east and south, passing through or along the fringes of Dand. The border was irredeemably porous, and drug and weapons smugglers used the desert south of Dand to move their wares. Dand represented a pit stop on the underground highway from Quetta to Kandahar City, as it had been for years.
Meanwhile the Taliban and drug smugglers sent a huge amount of traffic through the district to the east abutting the Pakistani border, an area called Spin Boldak, which was poorly patrolled. Few border police or customs officers made much fuss beyond collecting customs revenue. The problem expanded when in 2011 the head of the border police at Spin Boldak, Brig. General Abdul Razziq, was appointed chief of police for Kandahar Province as a whole. Little would change on the border, where making an end run around the official border crossing could take as little as two hours. More brazen individuals drove right through the customs post, offering bribes on each side of the border.
If the porous border threatened Dand, so too did centuries-old tribal problems. More than 40 percent of the population of Afghanistan is Pashtun. Areas where Pashtuns reside span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The border zone on both sides, known as Pashtunistan, extends from Kandahar along the spiny border leading north. Consequently crossing the border is perceived as an age-old right rather than a pressing national security issue.
The Pashtunistan concept has irritated relations between the governments on both sides of the border for decades, because reuniting Pashtunistan at the expense of Pakistan was official Afghan government policy. Afghans continue to lament the loss of their tribal members to Pakistan, and it is national lore that the Durand Treaty, which established the border line in 1896, is an injustice.
Ideology also drives the war. The Pakistani government is comfortable with insurgents’ radical Islam. For thirty years it has supported Islamists such as the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, because it approves of their view of the world. In the 1970s President Zia ul Haq, a devout Muslim, pursued policies to support and spread a strict version of Islam. Then in the 1980s Pakistan supported the most hard-line and Islamist of the mujahidin commanders, who received the lion’s share of the assistance channeled to fight the Soviets. Pakistan continued to support these same commanders in the 1990s, when it helped to develop the Taliban, and it supports them even now, according to many reliable sources.
Taliban commanders have reported the movement derives direct support from Pakistan’s ISI, or Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, the intelligence service. One study noted, “According to Taliban commanders the ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement. They say it gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In their words, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky.’”3 The same study noted, “As a south-eastern commander put it: ‘We receive a lot of training, weapons, ammunition and expenses from the Pakistan government. . . . Everyone knows Pakistan gives money, it goes centrally, then flows down.’”4
Pakistani support is both a strength and a weakness for the Taliban. The average Afghan tends to believe the war is a Pakistani creation. Nazak fully exploited this belief as he tried to persuade elders to work with the government.
But Nazak had good reason to be worried. The ANA and ANP were still ramping up to a full strength of 352,000 men. Even this was barely adequate to the task, according to the ISAF commander, General Stanley McChrystal, whose internal studies showed 400,000 Afghan security forces would be needed in a country the size of Afghanistan.5 Since the surge was due to conclude within a year, the size of the Afghan forces was a key concern that would increase as security forces started to withdraw from Dand itself.
By midsummer 2011 the ANA had pulled out of Dand. Soon after, the American soldiers began to reduce their forces in the district. Security stayed about the same. Spending on projects remained strong, if slightly lower with the loss of the Canadians. The government continued to work with the maliks and people.
By early 2012 almost all the Americans were gone. Still the government remained strong and maliks kept coming to the district center, working with DG Nazak. He had produced a fragile but functioning government.
The deadline for the end of the surge was mid-2012, and most districts in Kandahar were unlikely to improve after that. Continuing security depended on good performance by the district governments. The Taliban had no reason to ease off just because U.S. forces were leaving; it had every incentive to go all in.
Looking ahead, so it proved. In late spring 2012, the start of the fighting season, the number of attacks was 11 percent higher nationwide than at that time the previous year.6 The pressure continued to rise thereafter. We hoped that our experiment in nation-building in Dand would survive, despite signs that the United States’ focus had shifted to simply getting out, with scant regard for conditions on the ground.