The U.S. in Afghanistan: The Longest War

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Time

The soldiers crept into the village of Loi Kolay under the light of a crescent moon, slipping into defensive positions around a darkened house, gun sights trained on the rocky cliffs above. Four sharp knocks on the wooden door echoed through the silent valley. "Niazamuddin, we know you are in there!" the interpreter shouted. After a few tense moments, the tribal elder appeared. For months the village leaders of the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Kunar had complained about the U.S. and Afghan armies' searching of houses, a practice that went against tribal custom. Niazamuddin had suggested that he go along on the next search to help soften the impact. The U.S. soldiers were about to take him up on his offer.
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Nobody was sure where Niazamuddin's loyalties lay. The local Afghan army commander was sure he was Taliban, though the U.S. commander wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Niazamuddin was willing to lead a search, that would provide an example of solid leadership in a town riven by extremist sympathies. But Niazamuddin had gone back on his offer. If members of the Taliban found out he had led the Americans to suspicious houses, he said, they would kill him. The operation's leader, 1st Lieut. Glenn Burkey, exploded with frustration. U.S. forces had taken gunfire from the village several times, and previous house searches had turned up weapons, explosives and even a Taliban flag. Yet repeated raids risked alienating residents further. Burkey needed the elder's help. "You told us we had to do things differently," he said to Niazamuddin. "We are trying. I want the U.S. and Afghan forces to work together with the villagers to make this place safe." Niazamuddin was silent. "You remember Qadir?" he finally asked, naming his predecessor. "I don't know if he helped the U.S. or not, but the Taliban thought he did. They shot him coming out of the mosque." Then they beheaded his corpse in the public square. (See pictures of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.)

The Valley of Death
Seven and a half years after U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the war there is more deadly — and more muddled — than ever. When American troops first went to Afghanistan, they did so to overthrow the Taliban regime, which then ruled the nation and provided a haven for al-Qaeda. In less than three months, the Taliban was defeated, and a U.S.-supported administration, headed by President Hamid Karzai, was installed in Kabul. Yet in 2009, the U.S. is still fighting the Taliban, and al-Qaeda operatives are still plotting from Afghanistan. And one part of the region's deadly muddle has gotten worse. In 2001 there were fears that the war in Afghanistan would destabilize Pakistan. (The Pashtun ethnic group, which makes up a large part of the Taliban insurgency, straddles the border between the two countries.) Those fears are now reality; the Pakistani Taliban threatens nuclear-armed Pakistan's viability as a state even more than its cousins jeopardize Afghanistan's.

It is because the war in Afghanistan threatens to destabilize an entire region that it has become America's biggest foreign policy challenge. On Feb. 18, President Obama committed an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan; when they all arrive, there will be about 55,000 troops there from the U.S., plus 37,000 from its allies. The latest Afghan war is now Obama's war. The Administration has signaled that it is downsizing expectations about what can still be achieved: the principal goal now is to counter terrorism and bring a degree of stability to Afghanistan — not to turn a poor and fractious nation into a flourishing democratic state. When Obama laid out his new strategy last month, he made it clear that the mark of success would be the ability "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future." But accomplishing even that comparatively limited objective at this stage will require a massive and sustained U.S. Commitment — one that involves more than military boots on the ground. Al-Qaeda still thrives in the ungoverned tribal areas along the border between the two countries, and while many of its members have been killed, new recruits quickly take their place. U.S. soldiers have learned that to deny al-Qaeda a foothold in Afghanistan will require the establishment of a government that Afghans can believe in, the security that allows them to support it and jobs that provide an alternative to fighting. "We are not going to kill our way out of this war," says Lieut. Colonel Brett Jenkinson, commander of the U.S. battalion stationed in the Korengal Valley. "What we need is a better recruiting pitch for disaffected youth. You can't build hope with military might. You build it through development and good governance."

The experience of the Americans fighting in the Korengal Valley illustrates how difficult the war in Afghanistan is — but also how it can still be won. Over the past nine months, Bravo Company, a 150-strong unit of the 1st Battalion 26th Infantry Regiment, lost seven men in the Korengal while trying to cool down a toxic cauldron of local insurgents, Taliban leaders, foreign jihadis and al-Qaeda members that has some calling this cedar-studded gorge the "Valley of Death." The villages of Korengal have had their losses too, but they are deaths mourned in secret. Elders say the Americans haven't killed a single innocent. The villagers claim not to know those who are buried following bombing campaigns and mortar barrages. Yet every day, soldiers watch men leave the village and disappear into thick underbrush, only to emerge hours later to rain bullets down from their favored fighting positions. No one knows what — or who — lies at the end of the 6‑mile-long (almost 10 km) valley because no one has been able to make it that far. (Read "Avoiding a Quagmire in Afghanistan.")

Here success cannot be measured in territory gained, schools built or clinics opened. Irrigation pipes and water pumps are blown up by the insurgents as soon as they are built. The road the villagers so desperately want has foundered, with construction forbidden by a Taliban edict that no one dares disobey. It's a good day in the Korengal when an elder slips an oblique warning that one of the observation posts might be attacked that evening. Sometimes progress is so slow it feels like a stalemate, admits company commander Captain James Howell. But, he says, "if we can reach a point where the villagers want to work with us and the Taliban are the only thing stopping them, that's success." Howell knows his company won't be able to tame the valley completely. He's not sure his successors will either. "To win this war," he says, "it's going to take patience." (See pictures of Osama Bin Laden.)

Honest Infidels
Blindfolded and handcuffed, the man crouched on the ground, surrounded by Afghan soldiers and their U.S. Marine mentors. He had been found with insurgent propaganda and a Taliban flag and had a bruise on his shoulder — the kind the Afghan soldiers recognized from their days of carrying AK-47s while fighting Soviet forces more than 20 years ago. He said he was an illiterate shepherd, but he had a notebook full of writing. He claimed never to have visited Pakistan, but his mobile phone was filled with Pakistani numbers. Most likely, he was an insurgent. But the U.S. service members let him go. "You can't prosecute a guy for having a bruise," explains Howell. "We have to abide by rule of law." The village elders like to joke that the Americans may be infidels, but at least they are honest infidels. If a cow gets caught in a mortar attack, the soldiers pay for it. The hope, says Howell, is that such examples of transparency will eventually be emulated by local leaders. "The locals are justifiably frustrated with the corruption in their government. That has got to change."

Other than leading by example, the military can do little to bolster faith in the state. As part of his plan, Obama has proposed a civilian surge — a phalanx of mentors for the Afghans. Much of the more than $32 billion that the U.S. government has spent in aid to Afghanistan since 2002 has gone through the military or its provincial reconstruction teams. The projects are designed to earn goodwill for foreign forces as much as for local governors, but they also have the unintended consequence of undermining the central government, which never gets a chance to take credit for providing basic services such as roads, electricity and education. "We aren't here to win hearts and minds," says Jeremy Brenner, a U.S. State Department adviser based in Jalalabad. "What we need is to engender hope and faith in the Afghan government."

A government in which people have hope would be one that offers them security. The U.S. exit strategy for Afghanistan, according to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is to strengthen the Afghan forces so they can protect the fragile advances of the government. To that end, Obama has pledged 4,000 trainers and mentors, and European allies have promised more military trainers to help boost the Afghan National Army (ANA) and police.

The Korengal shows why effective troops and police are needed. Lieutenant Burkey's evening operation to Loi Kolay was supposed to include a squad of Afghan soldiers. But at the last minute, the ANA commander pulled out, saying his men weren't up to it. Howell has seen that sort of thing before. "A lot of times, the ANA commanders want to do the bare minimum," he says. "It's frustrating because this is a way for them to start working with the elders, the community. If they can't make that connection, then we won't be able to hand security over to them." Many U.S. soldiers complain that the ANA simply isn't ready for the fight, that its soldiers are careless with their ammunition, often expending it all in the initial moments of battle. More training and better equipment will help, says Jenkinson. "I don't think the ANA is lacking the ability to fight the close fight. What they are lacking right now is air support, logistics and medevac abilities. If we were missing that kind of support, we wouldn't be going out either." (See pictures of America's gun culture.)

Why Jobs Are a Strategy Too
Long before the U.S. arrived in Afghanistan, the Korengal was relatively rich. It wasn't farming that sustained the area's residents; the rocky hillsides grow few crops. But a lucrative trade in the region's cedar forests funded satellite-TV dishes and fancy four-wheel-drive trucks. Local lore holds that the fight with the Americans began in earnest when the U.S., acting on a tip from a rival tribe, dropped a bomb on the lumber mill of a local chief, killing some of his relatives and leading to a campaign of vengeance.

The bomb coincided with a decision by the Karzai government, concerned about the environmental impact of clear-cutting, to ban timber exports outright. The valley's population lost its only source of income. Smuggling rings took over, bringing corruption in their wake. As it has elsewhere in Afghanistan, the national Taliban movement co-opted local grievances. (Taliban, these days, no longer refers just to the regime that once ruled the country; the word has become synonymous with any number of antigovernment forces.) Tribal elders say the fight in the Korengal is directed and funded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who was once backed by the U.S. and has links to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, says valley elder Sham Sher Khan, the way to counter the insurgency hasn't changed. He thinks reopening the timber trade would help. "The Taliban say they are fighting because there are Americans here and it's a jihad. But the fact is, they aren't fighting for religion. They are fighting for money," he says. "If they had jobs, they would stop fighting."

Is it really that simple? Afghans like Khan say only a small fraction of the insurgency consists of hardened jihadis willing to fight to the death; the rest are ordinary, poor villagers who simply haven't been given a better option. Khan estimates that the insurgents earn from $100 to $200 a month, money that comes from the illegal trade in lumber. Similarly, analysts in Afghanistan's south, where U.S. and coalition forces are fighting an insurgency funded by the opium trade, argue that the U.S. policy of poppy eradication has only fueled the fighting by eliminating income without providing an alternative.

Obama has spoken of peeling away "moderate" Taliban members from extremists and reintegrating them into society. The easiest way to do that would be to provide opportunities and jobs. "It's not just about winning hearts and minds," says Ettore Francesco Sequi, the European Union's special representative to Afghanistan. "We also have to fill stomachs. That's the way we — and the Afghan government — will succeed."

But success in Afghanistan will mean nothing if fighters can find sanctuary in Pakistan. Commanders in Afghanistan say the battle next door will be far more complicated than anything they have seen, simply because the Pakistani military doesn't have the skills and resources to conduct an effective counterinsurgency. U.S.-operated Predator drones have successfully targeted al-Qaeda leadership in the border areas, but at the cost of inflaming the Pashtun-led insurgency on the Pakistan side. Stabilizing Afghanistan might well become crucial to preventing the far more terrifying prospect of an Islamist takeover in Pakistan. Says U.S. Army Brigadier General John Nicholson Jr., who commands U.S. and NATO troops in southern Afghanistan: "If the Pashtun population of Pakistan sees a moderate, Islamic and Pashtun-led government in Afghanistan, well, it's hard to argue with. So we have potentially a greater impact in Pakistan with success in the east." (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province.)

That's one reason failure in Afghanistan is not an option. An Afghan businessman adds another. He lived through the resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s, only to see the U.S. abandon Afghanistan when they left. Another betrayal, he thinks, could produce the same blowback that helped lead to 9/11. "If Afghanistan is sold out again," he says, "you would be basically giving 60% of the nation into the hands of the people who want to destroy the West. And I can tell you that these young Afghans are ingenious, they are creative and they know how to use computers. I can guarantee you that they will find infiltration routes into the U.S. and Europe within four years. There won't be another chance for the West to get it right."

As the soldiers know, it's almost certain that getting it right now, after years of Western drift and inattention, will come at a heavy price in American money and lives. Having doubled down in the hopes of winning in Afghanistan, the Obama Administration has no choice but to live with the consequences.

A few days after the Loi Kolay mission, a bullet ripped through the thick morning fog blanketing a U.S. firebase perched on a ridge overlooking the village. The soldiers jumped to their firing positions, and squad leaders started shouting mortar coordinates into their radios. "I can't see s___," said one. "Where's it coming from?" Reports of more fire came in from another base and observation post. This was a coordinated attack; the dense clouds provided perfect cover. A new command came over the radio: "If you see anyone standing outside of a building, consider it hostile intent and fire at will." A vicious burst of gunfire echoed from below the post, silenced only by the roar of mortars hitting the insurgents' suspected positions. Then all was still. The thin, wavering sound of the call to prayer lifted from the village below. The soldiers could see nothing. They had no idea if they had been able to defeat their enemy or if he had simply disappeared back into the village he had come from.

Two mistakes I think they're making. They should be in the village itself and the ANA unit should be directly attached to them. Use the CAP formula. It worked.