Four annexes at the end of the book look in detail at specific programs, areas, and efforts to make complex organizations work.
Besides the two case studies mentioned above, others case studies look at efforts to strengthen local governance through the District Delivery Program (Annex I), operations in Khost province (Annex II), and maneuver battalion operations in Bermal, Paktika province, a UN program to bring stability to a difficult area, and elections (Annex III).
While many military aspects of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan have been thoroughly reported in both open-source articles and internal U.S. government documents, analysis of the civilian aspects is less comprehensive. This book is meant to fill part of this gap. At the same time, views of the Afghan government and civilians are largely underrepresented in the Western press, enough so that this book intends to break new ground in this area.
This study is one person’s perspective, informed by various participants, including the U.S. government, the Government of Afghanistan, the Government of Pakistan, the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the various insurgent groups, and the views of the different branches of the U.S. military. Most of the chapters draw on the author’s views of what happened and why and include lessons learned. It was written with military and civilian officers in mind––those who need to make policy succeed in the field––but in hopes that it will be of interest to other readers who have a general interest in what happened in Afghanistan during this time and why. It is also written to document hard-won knowledge that too often was lost when officers and units rotated out of Afghanistan.
Acknowledgements
While this book focuses on a four-year period of the war in Afghanistan, in the end it took much longer than that to write, and the author is indebted to many people as a result.
I would like to thank the soldiers, Marines, and Special Forces of the U.S. military for getting me “outside of the wire” on two year’s worth of patrols, battlefield circulations, and development trips. Afghanistan can be a difficult and, at times, dangerous place to move around in, but these professionals set high standards and kept to them. I also benefited from their views on COIN, civilian-military relations, and Afghanistan. Similarly, this book has benefited from conversations with many State Department, USAID, and USDA officers, along with the dedicated men and women of NGOs and the United Nations.
A special thanks to Robert “Turk” Maggi, twice Political Advisor at the headquarters in Bagram, for his unique brand of insight, strategic overview, and outrageous sense of humor. Dennis Hearne, also a Political Advisor, contributed with insights gained over several tours. Several outstanding military officers, including then Col. Patrick Donahue, LTC Mike Fenzel, Major (Reserve) Carl Hollister, and Col. Chip Preysler and his talented staff helped a civilian understand more about the military tribe.
Afghanistan is also a complex, and rapidly changing country. This book is a reflection of conversations with many Afghans–– civilian and military, both in and out of government––during my time in their country between 2003 and 2010. Theirs is a wonderful country, and I thank them for their efforts to explain it.
Parts of this book were initially published, in somewhat different versions, in various journals: Military Review, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the Small Wars Journal, the SAIS Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs, and the military journal Campaigning. I would like to acknowledge their permission to reprint these articles.
Many thanks to Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where parts of this book were written during a year as a Dean Rusk Fellow, funded by the U.S. State Department. Also at Georgetown, thanks to Alba Seoane, for her skills as a research assistant, and to the students in my spring 2012 class on Afghanistan, for bringing new perspectives and criticisms to a complex situation.
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training adopted my book in its series and shepherded it to publication. Special thanks to Margery Thompson, ADST’s publishing director and series editor, for skillfully and patiently transforming a draft manuscript into a book, and to ADST interns Brianna Guarino and Mary Edwards. Several anonymous reviewers looked at earlier drafts and thereby improved the final product.
Thanks to Jane Ann Kemp for reading and commenting on the many drafts of the articles that formed the basis for much of this book, as well as the draft manuscripts of the book.
And to Shiela, for holding down the home front during frequent absences in Afghanistan and Pakistan over a decade, and for giving me the space to write.
I appreciate the concurrence of my employer, the U.S. Department of State, in the publication of this book. However, the views expressed herein do not represent those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Department of State, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, or the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training; they are my views alone.
1. Introduction
Overview of the Border Regions of Eastern Afghanistan
The Afghan frontier remains a wild and colorful place, still tied more to what Kipling saw in the late nineteenth century than to the modern world. With the attacks of 9/11 and the resulting U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, America—and its NATO allies—found themselves engaged in a very foreign land, culturally complex, often violent, while at times strikingly hospitable. A kaleidoscope of issues—history, Islam, foreign influence, money, drugs, land, personalities, and arms—came together to make this engagement exceedingly complex. This made it difficult for foreigners to see any sort of “big picture” clearly. At the same time, the (re) entry of the outside world into a conservative, often closed, traditional society certainly was a shock to the Afghans, while being a source of hope as well.
The insurgency and counterinsurgency in eastern Afghanistan involved a complex range of players and factors. These include ethnic and tribal groups; Afghan, U.S., and Pakistani security organizations; and political and religious leaders. In turn, the nature of the insurgency varied from province to province, and even district to district. This book will examine in detail the various factors that influenced counterinsurgency (COIN) during this period. The next sections offer a general overview of the history, culture, and geography of the military zone covered by Regional Command-East (RC-East), with subsequent chapters focusing on particular topics.
History of Afghanistan since 1979: A Series of Wars
Viewed during the years immediately following the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan had suffered a tremendous amount of physical damage, inflicted by twenty-five years of war on an already minimal infrastructure. Much of Kabul was ruined, highway bridges on the major routes out of town were destroyed, public services were minimal to non-existent, and the population was generally exhausted. This was the result of five periods of warfare with almost no intervening periods of peace. The first period was the Soviet invasion, when uprisings against the government, notably in Herat Province in western Afghanistan and in Konar Province in the east, were followed by the deployment of the Soviet 40th Army in December 1979. This war lasted ten years, reaching its height in 1985, when the Soviets made a final major push to win the war—while also devastating the countryside in a counterinsurgency strategy based on forced depopulation.1 The results of this strategy can be seen to this day, not only in the Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan and Iran, but in destroyed irrigation systems, numerous minefields, and ruined villages.
The second period of warfare pitted the Communist regime of President Najibullah against the mujahedeen groups formed to fight the Soviets, ending in 1992 with the collapse of his regime. Following this was a period many Afghans remember as worse than the Soviet war: the fighting between the various mujahedeen factions. This civil war resulted in the destruction of much of Kabul, particularly West Kabul, areas of which remained in