If in 1879 we secured a predominant influence for India in Afghanistan, without risking hasty and dangerous annexations, we are now in the position of having spent thousands of brave lives and fifteen millions, to gain exactly—nothing.
—Charles Gray Robertson, Kurum, Kabul and Kandahar, 1881
In mid-July 2012 District Governor Nazak held a press conference and announced his resignation. The district staff and residents were alarmed and deeply unhappy. For them this was the end of an era and the beginning of an unsettling time in which nothing was certain anymore.
I didn’t call to commiserate or congratulate Nazak. I figured he had his own thoughts and worries. Nothing I could add would make much difference. His announcement reminded me of the day he’d told me that when the Americans left, he’d be going too. I could imagine why he had resigned.
By then Nazak had been attacked by the Taliban twelve times. One of the worst attacks came in March 2009, when a suicide bomber made his way up to the second story of the district center and detonated his vest. Eight people died, six were wounded, and the entire floor was devastated.1
The threat level against Nazak was so high that continuing attacks became an almost macabre joke. But he showed no fear. The Taliban targeted him four times in 2010 alone, the final time in December. During an August attempt a suicide bomber tried to blow up Nazak’s armored car when he was on his way home. Six children playing nearby died instead. A second blast wounded two more children and a police responder a few minutes later.
“I saw the children playing by the edge of the road, and they are still in my mind,” Nazak told a reporter about the explosions. “I will not be deterred from the campaign I have launched against the militants. I just wish that it were me or one of my policemen who were killed. It was painful that innocent children have been killed.”2
But Nazak didn’t resign because of the threats. Those would continue. At the press conference he complained about the district staff not being paid extra money to top up their salaries; the District Delivery Program that handled the money was being quietly killed by the embassy. He expressed anger that U.S. Army Special Forces had conducted a night raid that targeted the compound of a tribal elder who had made it possible for him to win over the people. And he pointed out that the official status of the district had never been resolved; Dand remained an “unofficial” district more than six years after it had been formed.
Nazak also noted that, despite all of the open schools in the district, the government ignored the district when it came to additional projects. Clearly he believed that outside support for the district was slipping away. That spring the flow of projects was at a reduced rate, down from $400,000 a month in funding to $200,000. Then, within the next few months, the funding dropped to a tiny fraction of that.
We had hoped that several USAID projects would continue for at least six months, which was when we estimated the Afghan government money would begin to kick in. This is what Nazak asked his high-level visitors from KAF to arrange. He explained that if USAID funding ended before Afghan government resources arrived, the villagers and maliks would be less inclined to engage with the government, which would spell deep trouble in terms of security.
Our district team was splitting up too, which added to the sense of uncertainty in the district. I wasn’t there to see Nazak’s announcement. On April 11, 2012, I left Dand for the last time. The sun shone brightly, the day practically cloudless—a powder-blue replica of the day on which I’d arrived more than eleven months earlier. Cip and my replacement, Lulu, saw me off at the landing zone, helping me run my boxes into the belly of the big CH-46 helicopter. After smiles all round, a quick handshake from Cip, and a hug from Lulu the helicopter rose with a whirl of dust.
In August, after a year in the district, Cip departed too. Lulu represented an unknown quantity for Nazak. She had worked in Panjwai prior to arriving in Dand, and she knew how to move USAID programs along. But her playful practice of making balloon animals during meetings in the district center and giving them to staff to take them home to their kids probably did not endear her to Nazak, who had a serious fight on his hands to keep his district together.
The previous winter and spring Nazak had seen his warnings about the district center coming unglued go unheeded. This neglect was demonstrated by a long-running but ultimately futile battle to bring electricity to the district center. Nazak lost, even though he did everything right and followed every instruction from ISAF.
Nazak had conceived the idea of stringing a power line to the district center the previous autumn. He hoped that with an electricity hookup, the staff would no longer need to run a generator to power their lights and computers. In order to connect to the Kandahar City power grid, a line would need to be extended six kilometers from a village named Spin Ziarat, located on the southern fringe of the city. Our district team agreed to help Nazak investigate the idea. It turned out to be feasible, but with caveats.
American technical officials at KAF estimated it would cost about $50,000 to string the line. A project of that size required the approval of the local U.S. Army brigade, since USAID lacked the money. It was too large an outlay for the battalion to handle. The brigade commanders said they would support it and provide the money if the necessary authorities, both U.S. and Afghan, did too. Several USAID officials at KAF, hearing the idea, immediately tried to quash it, because the electricity grid was already overburdened and there was little chance of demand easing in the future. But other USAID officials and the army indicated that, if the Afghan company in charge of distributing electricity in the province approved the idea, then they would consider it too. In fact extending power to one building would have little impact on the long-standing problem of giving power to neighborhoods across the entire city, but it could be a game changer for Dand.
In February 2012 Nazak convened a meeting at his office to hash out the issue once and for all. All the local players were present, including the brigade deputy commander, the district team, and the technical officer from the PRT in charge of electricity. Nazak said he had the approval of the state-owned power company, known as DABS, as well as the approval of the provincial governor, the brigade, and the district team. We had told him he needed to get these signatures on paper, which he had done. Could he get approval from everyone in the room to go forward?
The technical officer from the PRT remarked that the primary DABS engineer had told him that the agency hadn’t approved the idea. Nazak promptly telephoned the engineer, Wali, who told the group via speakerphone, “I can give electricity to the district center, and this line is no problem.”
The technical officer then commented that the head of DABS, Haji Sultan, had told him the project was not possible.
“He said there is no extra power, and if I took power for this line I would be taking power that is in short supply,” the PRT officer explained.
“I’ll call Haji Sultan,” Nazak answered, again reaching for his phone. “Engineer Wali and I already went to see Haji Sultan.” Nazak waved the signature sheet. “This is Haji Sultan’s signature and this is Provincial Governor Wesa’s.”
Haji Sultan answered the call. Nazak explained the purpose of the meeting and held up the phone so everyone could hear.
“I approve the power for the district center building but not for the village,” said Haji Sultan. He then added, “Probably this is a misunderstanding.”
The PRT officer shrugged. “He said yesterday to talk about it in the future. I’ll send a letter saying DABS was in on the meeting and that they approved it.”
The brigade deputy, a smart and dedicated soldier, stated the obvious—that everyone in the room needed to agree. They did. With that the final decision on the power line was pushed up to KAF, where it awaited the signature of the brigadier general responsible for all large U.S. Army–funded projects. He was very likely to sign, since everyone now approved.
By an ugly twist of fate Nazak’s electricity project died. The general whose signature was needed went on vacation in March before he could sign the final papers. During his absence a female captain on his staff confessed to their superior that she and the brigadier had engaged in a years-long affair. The army took a hard line, and Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair never returned. In the turmoil of the moment, which coincided with our local U.S. Army brigade leaving the country at the end of its tour, Sinclair’s hastily appointed replacement never signed the paperwork. The power line was never extended to the district center—one in a string of disappointments for Nazak.
A sense of futility probably weighed heavily on Nazak, and he simply decided it was time to go. Nazak’s very public resignation stirred a response from the provincial governor and the U.S. headquarters at KAF. Words were had. Nazak was persuaded to stay on, which he did reluctantly. His tenure in Dand limped on for another six months, with foreign correspondents coming to Dand to see the miracle at work.3 He continued his push to bring mullahs into the fold. In October he expelled thirty clerics he had decided were under Pakistani influence.4
Nazak still kept one eye on the exit, and in December word filtered through that he was finally leaving for good. His ties to the extended network of Gul Agha Sherzai continued to pay dividends, his sterling stewardship of Dand being a useful rung on the ladder of progress. He soon moved to Zabul Province for a higher profile government job that entailed handling the provincial security service. After a year in Zabul he took over the security service in Helmand Province, one of the highest-profile jobs in southern Afghanistan.
As Nazak’s final chapter played out, I’d left Dand and settled into a new assignment in Maiwand District, a rural area forty miles to the west. I was not happy to leave. About a month before I left, headquarters had asked me to move to KAF to “make use of my experience” and to “let others have a shot at a DST.” I declined that offer because, I explained, I had come to help Afghans in a district, not to ride a desk. Then, three weeks prior to my departure, headquarters phoned and told me I was to leave Dand for Maiwand. The second phone call did not offer a choice. I was told to leave within ten days, even though the American unit that owned Dand, the 5-1 Cavalry Squadron, was also switching out that same week and their replacements had not yet arrived. The brigade in charge of the whole area was also leaving, as was the mentor team assigned to the Afghan police in Dand. No one except Cip would know what was going on, and he was on leave and due to return the day I would have departed.
It was a typical headquarters screwup. I wangled an extra eleven days to hand over to the incoming units as best I could. It would take time to explain how the district operated, what the future plan entailed, and what needed to be most urgently pushed forward. The normal army handover lasted two weeks, and I would use every minute.
Now, as we lifted off and flew away, my mood hardly matched the sunny sky. A single side gunner hunched over an M240 machine gun on the starboard side, his face hidden behind a green plastic wind mask. The big chopper made its shuddering way into the air, flying slightly crabwise under the influence of its big rotors mounted fore and aft. I gazed out the side windows as a second Sea Knight helicopter followed to the side. Behind it the jagged hills bordering Dand receded. We passed the green rectangular fields of Panjwai on our right, and the brown desert floor etched with erosion marks of long-past streams flowed by on our left.
Leaving Dand, I felt uneasy. Some things had gone right. We had set up programs that were economical and easy to continue, and we had the attention and cooperation of the provincial officials. But the programs’ continued success depended on the next step working out: Afghan government funds filtering into the district to support these activities. I knew it was a long shot that the situation would improve anytime soon.
We had also set up a number of programs to revamp local businesses, but we hadn’t pulled the trigger yet because we were waiting for funds to be released. Some of these initiatives, such as new chicken businesses, had been opposed by headquarters for months. I doubted that Cip and Lulu would overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to get them done quickly. I wanted to stay for at least another three months to shepherd them through, but it was not to be.
As the baked sand of the desert rolled by, I reflected on the past eleven months. Personally I had enjoyed every minute of it. We had mentored the Afghan officials almost every day, working together with friendship and good cheer. Running USAID projects had also taken time, constantly requiring emails with updates or inquiries to write, time spent investigating how the budget worked, or writing reports. One of the hardest challenges had been to carve out time to think about the big picture of what needed to be done and then to figure out how best to work that into existing plans and programs.
Ultimately the war in the district was not rocket science. When I left Dand, it was much as I found it: reasonably quiet, somewhat prosperous, and with a fully developed political system. For all these things Governor Nazak and the ISAF units who served there deserved full credit.
Over the course of eleven months the U.S. Army had been pulling out, going from more than three maneuver companies to none as the 5-1 Cavalry left. The Afghan army had also departed, and only Afghan police remained. Of the U.S. forces, only the police advisors continued on, with the USAID officers living alongside them. Yet peace held tight through the drawdown of these units because the political system was strong.
When I left, I warned headquarters that simultaneously taking out troops and projects would risk security. Projects should be downsized incrementally and cautiously. Most important, almost all the activities should be directed by the Afghans themselves, especially those who knew how to extract the most impact in the villages per dollar spent. As I left, a sufficient amount of projects and services remained, but not for long. Within four months of my departure the main USAID program disappeared. Its replacement program would not appear until 2013. Our greatest fear, a gap in funding that was not filled by Afghan government money, was fully realized. The gap would persist for years, not months.
Nazak’s grand bargain with the people persisted, but for how much longer? It was unfortunate that convincing KAF of the seriousness of this problem had been an uphill battle. When I first arrived, people in headquarters argued that Dand should be cut off from assistance “to see what happens.” We lobbied KAF intensely to kill this idea, but the concept lingered.
Soon enough Dand experienced a string of events that threatened to erode the system, much as an incoming tide laps against and damages the pilings of a pier.
The DST was supposed to remain open until December 2012, or so Nazak had been promised. But that summer as Cip left, KAF slated it for closure. They reduced it from a seven-days-a-week presence to a day and a half. A few months later KAF closed it down completely, with occasional drop-in visits from KAF. These visits worked poorly, with limited coordination between the Afghan staff and the person assigned to drop in.
One of the Afghan staff reported, “It is like no DST, because when he comes he even does not see us and we don’t know when he comes and goes.”5 The Afghans felt that they were on their own.
Nor had any way been found to fund the district center. Without enough money for district staff to do their jobs thoroughly, the staff would again work at a fraction of their potential. Headquarters at KAF took the strictly legalistic point of view that nothing could be done, though ISAF had a history of finding ways to push the government to do the unpopular but correct thing. On this the issue was conceded, and there didn’t seem to have been much of a fight to find a solution. The problem was just assumed away; the district would simply make do.
And then we learned there would be no effort to train the district staff in how to use their own Afghan budget system. They were expected to figure it out themselves. The official line was that the district staff didn’t need to know how the system worked, because they didn’t handle money, just requests. That was hogwash. The more the staff knew about the system, the better they could make it work to their advantage. KAF had conceded as much when it said the district team should try to discover the amounts of money that the provincial ministries had to spend, because this knowledge would strengthen the arguments that district staff could make when submitting requests.
The district staff would continue to do the best they could. But there was another bleak omen.
In late fall 2012 the district chief of police, Major Rahmatullah, decided to go to Gorgan, a village in southwestern Dand. He mounted up with his men and drove south along an asphalt road that had been opened barely eighteen months before. They followed the road as it wound past vineyards, across the Tarnak River, and continued south.
The tires of the Ford Ranger whirred as it traveled south on the road that carried taxis, tractors, and motorcycles going to and from Kandahar City.
The police chief passed Nakadak, the scene of one of Nazak’s greatest triumphs, and approached Gorgan. Six months previously an elder had been kidnapped in this village. The Taliban had bundled him over the border with Panjwai, just three kilometers to the west, and held him for ransom. The Taliban let him go after a dozen elders intervened and he promised to pay a $10,000 bounty.
But that was Panjwai and this was Dand. The last time anyone in this area had died from insurgent violence was a year earlier, when an American patrol searching for an IED got too close to it and a Stryker was blown up. That was two kilometers farther west, hard against the Panjwai border.
The day was bright and sunny, with a wind rushing in from the west. Major Rahmatullah didn’t even know what hit him. Suddenly there was an IED blast and his life ended. The subsequent investigation suggested that one of his own men had fired a weapon during the incident and the bullet struck him, probably accidentally.6
Did his death mean violence was creeping back into the area or was it a random act? Major Rahmatullah’s death probably marked the beginning of the end of the time when Dand could be considered mostly safe. In coming years it would be more difficult for government employees to commute between Dand and Kandahar City. In 2011 they covered their faces with scarves and commuted every day, keeping cautious and alert but not fearful. Within a few years the drive became a much more serious enterprise.
And in coming years the district staff would return to the lives they’d had before we’d started. With little money coming in and few projects there was far less they could do to influence the villages. The schools remained open, as did the clinics, which were run as they had always been—by staff hired by an NGO.
After years of extraordinary efforts by thousands of people to bring peace to Dand, and seeing it achieved to a large extent, we now contemplated how fast the district would progress downhill. Ultimately we could not fix national problems, such as dysfunctional budgets and faltering security, at the district level.
So we won. And then we lost. We failed to give the government the tools to consolidate and make a political bargain that would stick for years to come. As I flew toward Maiwand, twisting in the nylon webbing seats to look out the small portholes of the helicopter, I reflected that it had been a good year. We had figured out how to help villagers for small amounts of money. The district staff felt motivated and empowered. They were set up for success. And every month Dand remained stable, residents grew more accustomed to good government. As long as we continued to avoid losing, we could win. If only the system wouldn’t let them down. It was frustrating.
My experience in Dand would be good preparation for a year in Maiwand. But as I arrived in April 2012 at the new district, located on the western fringe of Kandahar Province, I quickly found that everything we had in Dand was absent from Maiwand.