Nir Rosen - Aftermath

The austere mix of strict Islam and Pashtunwali was harsh. But Western NGOs were able to work in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, though subject to draconian conditions, and the United States had a civil relationship with the group through diplomatic back channels until 1998. The Taliban had little interest in the West but instead cracked down on local practices they viewed as un-Islamic, including music and flying kites. The Pashtunwali code of hospitality forbade the Taliban leadership from handing over the Al Qaeda leadership, as the Americans demanded after September 11, and NATO, which was seeking a new reason for its existence after the demise of the Soviet Union, united to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan and install a friendlier government. The UN-brokered Bonn conference in December 2001 established an interim administration led by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun with no power base of his own. Pashtuns are the largest of Afghanistan’s fifty-five ethnic groups, but the government was dominated by Tajiks, many of whom had battled the Taliban. In 2002 a loya jirga (grand assembly) was held, which established a transitional administration dominated by Tajiks. For the first four years, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was restricted to Kabul, where it protected the Karzai government but ignored the fires spreading throughout Afghanistan. After September 11, the Pakistanis played a double game, joining the U.S. “war on terror” while continuing to back the Taliban. The Pakistani dictatorship backed Islamists to help it confront its more secular and popular democratic opposition. But these Islamists were allied with the Taliban. Just as American neglect of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal led to the Taliban and secure bases for Al Qaeda, so too did American neglect of Afghanistan after it removed the Taliban and moved on to Iraq lead to a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Following the defeat of the Taliban, the American strategy was centered on a “light footprint,” relying on Special Forces to turn Afghanistan over to local leaders, with a weak central government in Kabul. Warlords were paid to run things and fight Al Qaeda. A continuous flow of U.S. funds was necessary to maintain the local militias and prop up anti-Taliban elders.

I had first come to Afghanistan in 2004, after my time in Falluja, seeking respite from the war. It was an idyllic time for me. Afghanistan was still the forgotten war; the mood in the country was optimistic. I drove up to Bamiyan in the north and went swimming in lake Bandi Amir. South of Kabul, I took road trips through villages in Logar and Paktiya all the way to the Pakistani border. I watched the first presidential elections in Gardez. But by 2008 the distance between Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to have closed. It was as if Afghanistan had become Iraq’s neighbor. The foreign military occupation was now killing and arresting innocent civilians, always denying initial reports that turned out to be accurate. The insurgency was increasingly sophisticated, learning from Iraq; its IEDs and suicide bombings were devastating.

The alleged success of the surge in Iraq seemed to confirm the notion that more American troops could solve other problems. For American politicians and the complacent news media, the U.S. was on the verge of victory in Iraq, even if it had taken five years, the destruction of the country, a civil war, hundreds of thousands of dead, millions displaced, communities divided by concrete walls, and the creation of new militias to reduce the violence from its highest points. As I showed in previous chapters, this is not the case, and the reduction of violence, falsely attributed to the increase in American troops, was leading many to draw the wrong lessons from Iraq and then apply them to Afghanistan.

Seven years after the Americans overthrew the Taliban, the movement was gaining confidence, able to control territory right up to Kabul’s backyard, while the American-backed government was weaker than ever. President Hamid Karzai was unable to extend his control beyond the capital. CNN was calling Afghanistan the “forgotten war,” and it had indeed received less attention than Iraq from the international media and even from the Bush administration. The 2008 presidential campaign changed that.

For Republicans the military has traditionally been the chief tool of foreign policy, but Afghanistan became a much more central issue for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama than it did for John McCain. Obama wanted to legitimize his call for a withdrawal from Iraq by increasing troops in Afghanistan. The Democratic narrative was that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan and needed to swivel the cannons back to the original target. The Democrats worried about appearing weak. They wanted to prove that they too could be bellicose and tough, and kill foreigners. But calling the war in Iraq wrong didn’t necessarily mean that expanding the war in Afghanistan was right.

By September 2008 there were already about thirty-three thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan and a total of sixty-five thousand troops in the international coalition. They were facing more resistance than ever, and by September 2008 the 2007 total of 111 dead troops had already been surpassed. Speaking at the National Defense University on September 9, President Bush announced a modest troop increase in Afghanistan, which he described as a “quiet surge” to help “stabilize Afghanistan’s young democracy.” He would not allow the Taliban to return to Afghanistan, he said, unaware that they already had, and that only negotiation with the Taliban could bring any hope of stabilizing Afghanistan. “Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan pose the same challenge to our country, and they are all theaters in the same struggle,” he said, proclaiming his “faith in the power of freedom.” But the Taliban had their own faith, and so far they were winning.

There was a glitch in the matrix when, on September 10, 2008, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. In his prepared testimony, which he submitted after it was approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush, Admiral Mullen stated, “I am convinced we can win the war in Afghanistan.” His oral testimony was different. “I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan,” he said. In a war, if you are not winning, then you are usually losing.

BEFORE LEAVING KABUL I bought several pairs of kala, or salwar kameez , the traditional dress worn by Afghan men consisting of a long tunic-like shirt with buttons on the top and baggy pants. I had grown my beard longer than ever, and endured suspicious looks in New York City subways as a result. In New York I had also taken intensive Pashtu-language classes, to at least have some basic communication skills. Very few Western journalists knew Pashtu, but it is the language spoken by the ethnic group that dominates the Taliban, one of the biggest thorns in the side of the American military in Afghanistan. It is also the language of those people in Afghanistan and Pakistan who support or protect the Taliban, and what remains of the original senior Al Qaeda leadership. Regardless of who ended up winning the 2008 election, I knew America was certain to remain embroiled in conflicts with movements based in the lawless majority-Pashtun areas of South Asia. I didn’t think conflicts could be understood by studying only one side; journalists needed to study Pashtu and not merely embed with the American military.

Pashtu was not exactly in high demand, and the book the language school gave me was pretty basic and clearly designed for the military. It had a list of ranks, such as “general of the Air Force” and “private first class.” It also gave me a list of weapons such as land mines and bullets. It provided the Pashtu translation for important phrases like “You are a prisoner,” “Show me your ID card,” “Hands up,” “Surrender,” and “Let the vehicle pass.” If I wanted to arrest an Afghan, I was now prepared. Interestingly, in the list of foods the book included hummus, which is eaten in the Arab world but not in Afghanistan (unless some fastidious Al Qaeda volunteer brought some with him). The book provided essential advice such as “Don’t burp or fart in public,” “Don’t call everyone Hajji,” “Don’t trust everyone,” “Don’t use the same route every time,” and “Don’t offer pork to any Muslim.” It also advised me not to whistle or make catcalls toward any woman and not to insult “a native” in public.