In mid-October, Clapper reported that there was a “robust” dialogue under way among all of the different analytical communities with respect to the “real situation” in Afghanistan. He said that analysts from CIA and other agencies had gone to Afghanistan and, working with the experts there, had come up with forty-five to fifty questions to try to sharpen where they disagreed and what they could agree upon. I thought the intelligence folks were missing the point. Too much of the reporting was tactical—day-to-day combat reports—and anecdotal; everyone saw the same data, but interpretation of it varied widely. What was the broader picture?
In mid-June 2008, I again let loose my frustration in a videoconference with the generals in Kabul and Brussels and the senior Pentagon leadership in Washington: “You guys [in Kabul] sound pretty good, but then I get intelligence reports that indicate it is going to hell. I don’t have a feel for how the fight is going! I don’t think the president has a clear idea either of exactly where we are in Afghanistan.” The differences in perspective and views were genuine, but still…
The lack of clarity fed my worry that things were not going well. Our insufficient levels of combat troops and trainers, inadequate numbers of civilian experts, confusing military command and control, the lack of multinational coordination on the civilian side, and deficient civil-military coordination were matched and then some on the Afghan side—corruption at every level, the mercurial Karzai, the scarcity of competent ministers and civil servants, problems between the capital and the provinces. Eric Edelman told me about these Afghan weaknesses as early as mid-March 2007. Eric also said that the Ministry of the Interior was probably involved in the drug trade and that Karzai spent far too much time in his palace and not enough time showing the flag around the country. Edelman, a career diplomat, ended his litany with a line perhaps designed to keep me from getting too depressed: “I’m not discouraged, but there are issues.”
Two weeks later Rice, Hadley, and I met in Washington with NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. His message was familiar: “I feel we can ‘contain,’ but cannot ‘prevail’ ” against, the Taliban. He questioned the sustainability of the NATO commitment and told us the alliance needed better coordination, better integration of our forces, better training of the Afghan army, and more consistency in the public statements of NATO and contributing governments about the war. He added that someone with real clout was needed who could speak to Karzai on behalf of all the countries working in Afghanistan, someone who “can tell him what the truth is.” We agreed with everything he had to say, and Hadley asked whether we really needed three senior representatives in Kabul—one each from NATO, the EU, and the UN, as at present. I asked if NATO should own the entire role, and Rice chimed in, “You can do it de jure or de facto, but make the NATO guy the strongest.”
During my second visit to Afghanistan, in early June 2007, I continued to worry that we were strategically more or less in the same place as we had been in Iraq in 2006—at best, at a stalemate. In my comments to the press, I said, “I think actually things are slowly, cautiously headed in the right direction. I am concerned to keep it moving that way.” In fact, I was very concerned. In a meeting on July 26 with the senior civilian and military leadership in the Pentagon, I said we were losing European forces because they didn’t have the stomach for the fight; we were doing well in conventional military terms against the Taliban, but the level of violence was rising; a new U.S. president would have to decide whether to put more forces into Afghanistan without much NATO support; the Pakistanis weren’t pushing al Qaeda or the Taliban from their side of the border so that we could take care of them in Afghanistan, nor would they let us go after them unilaterally in Pakistan. The one comparatively bright spot was the Afghan army, which for all its problems was significantly more competent and respected than any other Afghan government institution.
The problems I faced with command personalities, as well as figuring out what was going on in Afghanistan, were demonstrated in a videoconference on September 13. The deputy U.S. commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Brigadier General Joe Votel, assured me we still held the initiative in eastern Afghanistan, but he went on to describe the situation there as deteriorating, with the Taliban and their allies increasing the number of suicide bombings, kidnapping of women and beheadings, and moving their support bases closer to Kabul. He said there were increased numbers of the enemy across the border in Pakistan; that attacks in the east were 75 percent higher than the previous year; and that collusion was growing among the disparate insurgent groups. General McNeill questioned Votel’s “dire assessment” and asserted, “We’re not going down the tubes here and the Taliban does not have the upper hand. We’re killing a lot of them, getting to sufficient numbers of their leaders and having great effect. I think we’re in pretty good shape when it comes to the Taliban.” I thought to myself, Well, that’s just great. Even the military commanders on the ground don’t agree on how we are doing. Admiral Fallon then added, “I’m with Dan [McNeill] on the prospects in Afghanistan—it’s not as gloomy as some would have you believe.”
I arrived in Kabul on December 4 and helicoptered to Khowst province in eastern Afghanistan. The 82nd Airborne had, in fact, done a superb job there of fighting an effective counterinsurgency, and despite the increase in violence, it was clear, as Votel had said, that we still had the initiative. While in Khowst, I flew to a small village to meet with a group of provincial officials and tribal elders. We landed in a field outside the village, and there didn’t seem to be a living green thing in sight. Everything was brown. As so often in visiting such remote places in Afghanistan, I asked myself, Why are people fighting over this godforsaken place? The officials and elders were already assembled in an open-sided but roofed structure and did me the favor of providing chairs to sit on. There were some stunning beards in the room, many of them white and streaked with red henna. It could have been a scene out of the eighteenth century—until one of the elders told me he had read my recent Kansas State University lecture on soft power on the Internet. It was a useful reminder that traditional customs and dress do not equate with technological backwardness—a lesson to remember in dealing with the Taliban as well. I came away from Khowst impressed with the effective partnering of military efforts with civilian experts from State, AID, and the Department of Agriculture. It was a genuinely comprehensive counterinsurgency, combining military operations with robust reconstruction efforts, with Afghans fully integrated. Khowst at that time was a model of a sort: open-minded and skilled U.S. military leaders, adequate numbers of U.S. civilian experts, Afghan involvement, and a competent Afghan governor.