My Share of the Task (66 page)

When
Karzai walked in, people stood and applauded. Had “Happy Days Are Here Again” erupted from a waiting band it would have felt like an old-fashioned campaign rally. Someone in the audience threw flowers, and the president took his seat on the stage. As he did, Dr. Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, rose to welcome everyone. Wesa was a soft-spoken man who had grown up in Kandahar. An accomplished academic who helped found Kandahar University in 1991, serving as its first president, Wesa had returned to Afghanistan after fourteen years abroad, most recently living in British Columbia, Canada. Governor since 2008, he and Nick Carter had done extensive work to “shape the environment” in the preceding weeks.

Wesa was representative of a group of highly educated, honest, and patriotic Afghans I'd met who accepted leadership positions in the years after 2001. Talented but often outclassed in the bare-knuckle power struggles of places like Kandahar, most found themselves unable to wrest real control from local personalities. In Wesa's case, that personality was a quiet man with an almost obsequious manner. Ironically, as Wesa spoke that day I could watch his nemesis moving around at the very back of the crowd—far from any position of overt prestige or influence. Yet Ahmed Wali Karzai—the president's forty-nine-year-old brother, leader of the Popalzai tribe and chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council—was the essential power broker for Kandahar.

After Wesa's remarks, President Karzai moved to the podium, and asked the camera crews to move. He wanted a better view of the people, he said, though I suspect he really wanted them to have an unobstructed view of him. He was glad to be face-to-face with them, Karzai said, including his sisters, and began his remarks. I sat and listened, with simultaneous translation of his words coming into the earpieces Mark and I wore.

The
shura
came after a difficult week between Karzai and the United States. Still sensitive from his belief that the international community had unfairly accused and then undermined him during the lengthy election process and its contentious aftermath, Karzai had made recent remarks that brought new controversy. He'd reportedly told a group of Afghans that if pushed too far by the United States, he
would join the Taliban. His words became public a mere month before a planned visit for him to the United States, and the White House indicated his remarks
put that trip in jeopardy.

I knew that in the claustrophobic palace, bad advisers could goad President Karzai during moments of fatigue and sadness, leading him to say things he did not really feel. But I was bothered by his comments. They were dispiriting to my soldiers fighting to sustain his government. I questioned whether I was too respectful of him and his position, whether I'd gone native. Shouldn't I take a harder line? But in the hall-of-mirrors politics of Kabul, I looked to his actions, not his words. Western observers, and many Afghans, had a menu of items they wanted Karzai to address. For most, corruption was at the top. That was clearly important for our campaign. But as I looked at the rest of my menu for the past ten months, there was room for satisfaction. President Karzai wanted night raids to stop, and yet we'd quadrupled the number of precision strike teams and raids, even taking the president for his first-ever visit to TF 714's in-country headquarters. Through an evening of detailed briefs, he saw the precision that marked each operation, and the direct involvement of Afghan officers that ensured effective collaboration. And although I knew he was deeply skeptical of our logic for bringing more foreign forces to his country, he'd agreed to support my recommendation to add forty thousand. He visited multiple locations like Marjah, and moved closer, albeit haltingly, to his role as commander-in-chief of a nation at war. It was maddeningly incomplete, but he'd made some tough concessions for a partnership that was badly stressed by missteps on both sides. One reason he did so, I felt, was the relationship we'd built.

That April morning in Kandahar, President Karzai insisted I be inside the
shura
room. He sat me close to him, and at one point told the crowd of his close partnership with Mark Sedwill and me. It was an interesting move on his part. On the surface our presence provided a clear signal of NATO and U.S. support, and could also indicate ISAF endorsed anything he said. For me, there were clear risks in that, particularly after the previous week. But there were risks for him as well. Mark and I were visible symbols of Karzai's continued dependence on foreign support, and of Afghanistan's still incomplete sovereignty. Regardless of what he said, I represented much of what frustrated ordinary Afghans about their situation. In the end, I thought he put us on the stage less out of shrewd calculation than intuition. At his core, Hamid Karzai was a man of strong emotions and loyalties. Rubbed raw, sometimes to cynicism, by long years of politics, he was slow to trust but committed to relationships.

After greeting the crowd, Karzai began a wide-ranging speech. He said the tribes needed to secure the peace, and he castigated them for not sending sons to serve in the National Army. He talked of a peace
jirga
as a solution. As he spoke, dressed in black, with a black turban, Karzai's face appeared more dour than usual, almost combative. The crowd appeared cool. Eventually, he broached the topic of Hamkari.

“These days the foreigners speak of an operation in Kandahar,” he said. “I know you are worried. Are you worried?”

Shouts came back: Yes!

“Well, if you are worried, then there won't be an operation, if you are not happy.”

Some observers judged the exchange that day indicated Hamkari lacked the support it needed. I had no such reservation. It was how the question had been asked, how the game was played. Karzai had asked the question he knew would elicit genuine concerns—which he wanted us to hear. I was confident that both Karzai and the Kandahari leaders welcomed better security in and around the city. But like Marjah's elders, they had articulated their conditions. Karzai was placing a marker that we couldn't ignore. For a leader who'd felt helpless to check eight years of escalating foreign military operations inside Afghanistan, it was a good move. He knew Hamkari had to happen, as did I. But he was forcing us to listen in ways we'd done too rarely in the past.

*   *   *

O
n Saturday, April 10, 2010, a twenty-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft flown by pilots of the Polish Air Force crashed in a thick fog in western Russia, ironically en route to the Katyn Forest, site of a World War II massacre of Polish military officers by the Soviets. The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, was among the eighty-eight souls lost in the accident.

Poland was stunned. In addition to the president, a significant contingent of Poland's most influential leaders were killed, sadly including my friend Franciszek “Franc” Gagor, the chief of the general staff of the Polish Army. Franc and his wife had befriended Annie and me back at the Lisbon Conference in September 2009, and his special warmth and friendship made him a valued comrade. We'd worked through a variety of operational issues associated with the Polish brigade that operated in Ghazni Province, and I'd promised Franc I would visit Warsaw so I could explain in person to the Polish political leadership the ISAF strategy and war in Afghanistan.

When the accident occurred, I was less than a week from fulfilling my promise to Franc with a stop in Warsaw on a trip to Europe that also included Paris, Berlin, and Prague. In each location, the objective was the same: To meet requests like Franc's from leaders in the four countries and, as the commander of ISAF, provide insights and address questions first-hand. Each nation was an important member of the ISAF Coalition. After the accident I canceled our visit to Warsaw but felt the remainder of the trip needed to go as planned.

On April 14, 2010, we flew to Europe, conducting a short visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels and then continuing to Paris, the first stop of the original four. We had an itinerary of office calls, ceremonies, a dinner, and a talk at the Staff College, all of which began as coordinated.

The same day, seismic activity in Iceland produced an ash cloud that closed most of Europe's airspace for the next five days. Unable to keep our original schedule, I modified the plan, ultimately canceling our stop in Prague and reaching Berlin by a lengthy bus ride. Our schedule there was similar to that in Paris, and highlighted by laying a wreath with Defense Minister Guttenberg at a memorial service for German soldiers recently killed under my command in Kunduz, Afghanistan. They had been Germany's first loss in direct combat since World War II, and I very much wanted to demonstrate my respect for their sacrifice.

In response to official invitations from each nation, I arranged for Annie to join me in Europe, and she participated in all the events that often helped build relationships. We enjoyed the chance to be together, particularly on Friday, April 16, when I took Annie for dinner at a small French restaurant to celebrate our thirty-third wedding anniversary. Mike and Lori Flynn joined us.

*   *   *

I
nside a small, bunkered post on a bluff in Surobi District overlooking the Kabul River, they had assembled an honor guard for me to review, each legionnaire selected for his English-language skill. It was April 30, 2010, Camerone Day, a sacred date for the French Foreign Legionnaires assembled in front of me. It commemorated the 1863 stand of sixty-five of their forebears under the legendary Captain Jean Danjou against a force of twelve hundred Mexican cavalry. Captain Danjou, a Crimean War hero with a wooden left hand, led his men in a determined but ultimately fatal defense, reportedly declaring, “We have munitions, we will fight.”

For a boy who'd grown up on stories of legionnaires, it was easy to feel the thick spirit that filled this small outpost, home to the parachute battalion that had this corner of the fight. I had come to thank them for their service and their courage. Talking to young soldiers, some already seasoned warriors, who had purposely selected a life of expeditionary service, I thought of their predecessors in Indochina and Algeria. I looked over at two of my aides, one a German officer, another an Afghan. How different wars could be, I thought, but the soldiers seemed the same.

*   *   *

T
wo weeks later, on May 12, 2010, President Karzai arrived to the United States for four days to meet with President Obama and other U.S. leaders. At President Karzai's request, Karl Eikenberry and I made the trip as well. It closely followed a visit by General Kayani and other Pakistani leaders to Washington, D.C., a few weeks earlier, and was meant to strengthen our partnership with President Karzai and his government. Both relationships, with Afghanistan and with Pakistan, needed improvement.

By May 2010, the wounds created by the August 2009 Afghan elections had healed somewhat, although scars remained. President Karzai's support of operations Moshtarak and Hamkari, though more lukewarm than enthusiastic, had made us feel more aligned than we had in the fall. President Obama had briefly visited Afghanistan on March 28, in an effort to tighten the relationship between the nations and leaders. Even so, underlying tensions remained.

The most poignant moments of the stay involved visits President Karzai made to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to visit wounded soldiers and to Arlington National Cemetery to recognize the fallen. At Walter Reed, Karzai was visibly moved by the courage of badly wounded American soldiers. When several amputees said they'd been wounded in Arghandab, he seemed sobered by the ferocity of the fighting they described. In Arlington Cemetery we walked among the markers of the recently fallen and when I came upon headstones of soldiers I knew, I described the men to Karzai.

*   *   *

O
n May 26, I met with the latest group of “Afghan hands” to arrive for duty in Afghanistan. The program, conceived by Scott Miller in my office in the Pentagon over a year earlier, had graduated its second round of officers and dispatched them to theater. Although I was frustrated with what appeared to be half-hearted service support for the program—they sent a number of nonvolunteers and noncompetitive officers—it still represented a step forward, and I spoke during an orientation course we conducted before sending this contingent forward to specific duty positions around the country.

After almost a year in command, I was more convinced than ever that a cadre of language-trained professionals, steeped in the culture and assigned for multiple tours to establish genuine relationships, would be the single most powerful asset we could field. This most recent group—which included my former TF 714 aide-de-camp, then-Major Donny Purdy, now fluent in Dari—could begin to provide a more educated, nuanced capability to complement our already overwhelming conventional military power.

*   *   *

A
s I navigated the first month of my second year in Afghanistan, I recognized that we were a different team than the one I'd joined the previous June. Rod's IJC had matured into a headquarters capable of executing a nuanced counterinsurgency campaign across a collection of very different regional commands. Leavened by the arrival of additional combat-experienced U.S. forces, these commands were approaching the 2010 fighting season with resolve. It would be brutally violent, we knew. Already, in stark
rejection of Mullah Omar's
layha
from the previous year, it appeared insurgents had turned toward targeting civilians in order to defeat our attempt to protect them. Since January, the enemy had wounded and killed more Afghan civilians than it had during the first six months of 2009, using more IEDs, suicide bombs, and a ramped-up
assassination campaign. While the insurgents killed and wounded more civilians, ISAF and Afghan security forces were
responsible for fewer civilian casualties than we had been during the first half of 2009. But we were still killing far too many Afghans, particularly at checkpoints, and needed to better shield them.