Elusive Victory
In the first post-9/11 battlefield, the challenges remain complex—and deadly
HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN—From a lookout near a local prison, soldiers point toward the horizon and a wide swath of lush grass and palm trees that runs along the banks of the Helmand River. They have dubbed it "the Green Zone," an appellation that bears more than a trace of irony. This is not the sort of semisafe haven that the term conjures up in Iraq—it is the hiding place of the Taliban, a base for attacks and ambushes.
Now that opium poppy harvesting season is over, the Taliban, preoccupied with the drug trade in recent months, has lately gotten back to the business of fighting in this southern part of the country. "We've seen more ambushes, more deliberative attacks," says U.S. Col. Michael Clancy, who heads up training for Afghan security forces in Kandahar—best known as the stronghold and onetime home of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. And the attacks are increasingly sophisticated. "They know tactics. Some of their ambushes are classic, with kill zones and crossfire," Clancy adds. "They'll do coordinated attacks to hold a force so they can't respond—they'll do RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] in the front and back, then small arms fire out the wazoo. It gets pretty sporty down here."
Trust matters. Sporty is a soldierly understatement, but repulsing these attacks is the sort of dangerous work troops here are trained to do, they add, and they do it well. In any head-to-head confrontation with the Taliban, U.S. soldiers and their partners in the International Security Assistance Force tend to win handily. But the problems that most threaten the country today aren't often the sort the military can solve. Warlords jockeying for power in the national government. Rumors of corruption and drug trafficking involving high-level officials, including the brother of the president (true or not, officials say, they erode popular trust in the government). And low salaries for Afghan security forces that drive them to earn their money elsewhere—often by extracting bribes, occasionally by providing freelance muscle to the highest bidder.
Other tensions within the country have been exacerbated by the casualties of daily fighting. What soldiers here call the vital "third dimension"—the use of air power—wins battles with the Taliban but is not helping with the elusive war for hearts and minds. A spate of civilian deaths in recent months has angered Afghans and spurred President Hamid Karzai to accuse forces here of being careless and indiscriminate. According to the United Nations mission in Kabul, some 600 Afghan civilians have been killed this year, more than half of them by Afghan or international forces.
This has prompted arguments among senior U.S. military officials about how best to handle such incidents—and has drawn criticism from America's partners along the lines that more coordination and less high-altitude bombing might help avert such incidents. American military officials tend to privately point out that they might not have to rely quite so heavily on air power if NATO allies here would fulfill their troop commitments.
All sides can, however, agree that these are pivotal times for a country on the brink. "In Afghanistan, we face a choice between audacious success and dismal failure," says Ronald Neumann, who finished up a tour as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in May. The outcome hinges on the government having a wide measure of popular support—what Neumann calls "the rough equivalent of democracy." To that end, there are new efforts underway to root out corruption—much of it inextricably linked with the booming drug trade-as well as to promote national reconciliation efforts to bring some former Taliban officials to the table, even into government.
Frustration. In essence, it comes down to convincing the Afghan people that their government can protect and provide for them. "It's not that the people despise the government," Said Jawad, Afghan ambassador to the United States, tells U.S. News. "But they are frustrated by the fact that the government can't deliver." They still widely back the international troop presence, according to polls showing 80 percent support. But while Afghans are optimistic about their future, they are not quite as optimistic as before: Some 44 percent say their country is headed in the right direction, versus 64 percent in 2004. And while they say life is better today, it is not, they add, as good as it should be after six years of international attention. Half say they are more prosperous than they were under the Taliban; one quarter say they are less so.
Such economic factors are key, particularly when it comes to the Afghan security forces. In the training classes for new police recruits in Kandahar, there is frequent talk of salaries, with the topic woven into the day's lecture on "how to be a good person." On the blackboard at the front of the room are some figures. The first is 3,575. "This is my salary," says the instructor, pointing to the number of Afghanis, the country's currency, that he earns each month-about $72. He gestures toward another figure, 5,000, or about $100. "This is my house payment." Another police instructor notes, "We have children, we take out loans—and we will take from the people that money, like thieves." But he drives home the impact of such graft. "If we take from the people," he says, "our country will never change." And so, he says, the police "sell their belts, their uniforms." In the previous months, others left to harvest opium poppies and never returned.
Then there are those in the employ of warlords. Clancy discovered a number of them when his first class of recruits showed up for training last year. "They were half militia," he says—working for the governor and one of the major drug lords down south. Of the 327 men who came for training, many had visible needle marks and "glassed-over" eyes, signs of drug use. "So we asked them, 'What are you doing here?' And they said, 'Because the governor told me to be here.'" The trainers kept roughly 175 for the first class and ran them through a boot camp so tough that "a couple of the guys hid in the latrine," says Clancy, afraid, he adds, that their drill sergeant "was going to kill them."
But the sway of local warlords, some of whom are now government officials, remains strong. And charges of corruption abound. It has long been rumored that President Karzai's brother, the head of the provincial council in Kandahar, is involved in the drug trade. It is a charge that senior U.S. military officials say they have yet to see any solid evidence to support. "I think if President Karzai had it, he'd find it an intolerable situation," said a senior U.S. military official. Ambassador Jawad says that he has urged Karzai "to make this rumor into a case—or definitely say it's not true." Part of this, he adds, involves "helping to trace" large transfers of funds from Kabul to Dubai. An Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman says there is no doubt that some high-level officials are involved in the drug trade and that the government is investigating.
Trust issues. Whatever the reality, they add, such rumors tend to erode trust in the government. The best way to rebuild it, many believe, is to strengthen Afghan security forces. But there aren't nearly enough trainers throughout the country, say U.S. military officials here. In Kandahar, their ranks have recently been more than tripled, but it is "nowhere near what we need," says Clancy. Recent congressional approval of additional money for security forces should help with the goal of increasing the national police force from the current 62,000 to 82,000.
In the meantime, U.S. planners have rolled out a national auxiliary police force with the aim, says Clancy, "just to get us a lot of numbers very quickly." Training police in two weeks and then sending them back to their home villages to supplement sparse local forces, the program initially prompted concerns it could produce a glorified militia, or be infiltrated by the Taliban. In fact, U.S. military officials say, there are some Taliban in the forces, but most are young former Taliban who are simply looking for a job. Better they find it in the auxiliary police then fighting against International Security Assistance Forces. Rigorous screening measures, including consultation with village elders, remain in place, say officials, to root out the real troublemakers.
Yet there remain lingering charges that international forces are failing to coordinate with their Afghan counterparts. Such coordination is vital, says Jawad, even when it comes to something as simple as searching a house. "The door as part of Afghan culture is like your face," and breaking it down is like "a slap in the face." International forces, he adds, need to "trust more the role of Afghans"—or risk losing "entire villages for being bullish." A spate of civilian deaths in the aftermath of U.S. and international military operations here was caused in large part, said Karzai last month, because of a "lack of coordination with the Afghan government."
Anger. At a joint operations center in Kabul, a wall map is marked with locations of recent protests against airstrikes. Though the protests have been peaceful, notes the Afghan operations officer on duty, some have been harshly suppressed by local leaders. The U.S. military grapples with the aftermath of civilian anger. When 19 civilians were killed and 50 injured in Nangarhar province last March following a Taliban attack on Marine special forces, Col. John Nicholson, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, told reporters that "events such as that do set us back with the population and they have to be addressed very directly and forthrightly with the Afghan people."
To that end, Nicholson issued an apology, which read in part, "I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that the Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people ... the death and wounding of innocent Afghans at the hand of Americans is a stain on our honor."
Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, took issue with the statement, contending that Nicholson should have waited until the incident was fully investigated. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of the International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan, tells U.S. News that "the Afghan people don't ask for a whole lot, and I can understand [Nicholson's] motivation" for issuing the apology. "He is one of the finest officers I know." McNeill added that he could also understand Conway's comments that for reasons of due process some of the comments "may have been ill-timed." Jawad says that Nicholson's use of the word "shame" was the "right word" for conveying his sorrow to the Afghan people. But the bottom line, says Jawad, is that in a country where citizens have prodigiously long memories, the military has to do "whatever it takes to reduce this number" of deaths.
Clancy agrees—so much so that he voluntarily extended his stay in Afghanistan for another year. It is a pivotal time for the country, he says, and he has seen Afghan forces step up and training "start to stick." But he echoes the concerns of U.S. officials throughout the country, too. "There are times I think we're really making big progress," he says. "Then we get set back again." A number of high-level Afghan officials that he regularly works with "either bought their positions or are trying to get other guys fired for corruption or ineptness. ... You never know who the real power broker is."
It will take time to sort that out. But time is in short supply "and the enemy is going to try to wait it out," says a senior U.S. military official. He invokes a Pashtun proverb, one frequently cited here these days: "The invaders may have the watches, but we have the time."
This story appears in the July 16, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.