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Scientist and bestselling author James Gleick has been fascinated by the science of chaos ever since being introduced by Edward Lorenz to the so-called butterfly effect. Lorenz, a meteorologist, wondered about the unpredictability of weather systems. He noted that minor changes to what he called the initial conditions of the system could produce disproportionately large effects. He famously described that a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia could create a hurricane in the Caribbean.1
Linear relationships can be captured on a graph. They are very attractive, Gleick writes, “because you can take them apart, and put them back together . . . the pieces add up.”2 The weather, by contrast, was what Lorenz called a nonlinear system; elements within the system expressed relationships that were not strictly proportional. Large inputs to a system might result in little to no change. Relatively small or subtle inputs to initial conditions, by contrast, could produce significant differences.
Physicist M. Michael Waldrop turned these insights into a larger study of complexity. A system is complex when “a great many independent agents are interacting with each other in a great many ways.”3 The Latin roots of complex (com = together; plex = woven) mean interwoven. This is in contrast to complicated, which means layered together. A complicated system is linear; that is, the pieces add up. Real life, as Waldrop, Gleick, and others in the field suggest, is more complex than complicated. Independent actors interact in a great many ways, and the outcomes are uncertain.
The danger for policymakers and strategists is mistaking a nonlinear system for a linear one—trying to turn a complex situation into a complicated one. The urge to do so is tempting, as it is much easier to explain a way forward in a linear manner, where the pieces add up, than to make sense of a complex situation and draw out the strategic implications. In Washington, D.C., where cabinet-level officials are bombarded with myriad global problems and difficult domestic policy challenges, and have major departments to run, there is limited bandwidth for nuance. Linear explanations and solutions can be far easier to grasp and accept.
The problem is that the linear approach is normally at odds with reality. This problem frustrated General Stanley A. McChrystal, the former commander of America’s Joint Special Operations Command and, later, of the International Security Assistance Forces—Afghanistan (ISAF). In his bestselling book Team of Teams, McChrystal describes the challenges his elite special operations forces had keeping pace with the enemy in Iraq, despite the fact that their adversaries tended to be poorly trained and resourced. The core problem: “We were using complicated solutions to attack a complex problem.”4
Things that are complicated, he explains, have many parts but they are joined in relatively simple ways. The workings of an aircraft engine might be confusing, but they can be broken down into a clear set of relationships. Complexity occurs when the interactions create multiple interdependencies.5 The elements cannot be broken down into a clear set of linear relationships.
Once McChrystal’s team began to appreciate complexity, they were able to design strategies that ultimately defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. “The solution we devised,” he recalls, “was a ‘team of teams’—an organization in which the relationships between the constituent teams resembled those between individuals on a single team: teams that traditionally resided in separate silos would now have to become fused to one another via trust and purpose.”6 Open communications, shared consciousness, common purpose, and empowered execution made McChrystal’s team of teams successful.
The US and international efforts in Afghanistan, unfortunately, were being plagued by the same problems McChrystal was encountering—the tendency to use complicated, linear solutions to address complex problems. We see this materializing in the arrangement of political, diplomatic, military, and economic milestones for Afghanistan, and in US strategies that employed bureaucracy-centric efforts (military campaign plans, capacity-building programs, economic development initiatives, etc.) that were unprioritized and poorly integrated.
The whole became less than the sum of its parts. Multiple, independent entities interacted with one another to exploit the chaotic situation and turn major milestones to their advantage. Local actors sought to secure power and influence while reducing that of their rivals. Afghanistan’s neighbors vied for influence to secure their interests and keep others off balance. The efforts of US bureaucracies and international actors often worked at cross-purposes. As US and international officials fixated on achieving certain milestones, they grew blind to the deterioration of the broader political and security situation that was happening in plain sight. They were implementing a complicated solution to a complex problem.
A Technocratic Approach
As the Northern Alliance and coalition forces advanced against the Taliban and al Qaeda, US and international diplomats began discussions about post-Taliban Afghanistan. The United Nations convened an international conference outside of Bonn, under the leadership of veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi. They aimed to gather together Afghan leaders who could find a political solution.
The conference participants established key milestones for the development of a new government: creation of an Afghan Interim Transitional Administration; convening an Emergency Loya Jirga7 in 2002 to select an Afghan Transitional Administration, which would develop a new constitution and govern the country until the 2004 elections; a 2003 Constitutional Loya Jirga; a presidential election in 2004, and parliamentary elections a year later. Follow the road map, they assumed, and Afghanistan would have a government supported by the Afghan people.
The diplomats crafted a complicated solution to a complex problem. While western diplomats tended to see the way forward in technocratic milestones and processes, Afghan and regional actors viewed the situation as an opportunity to gain power and influence—and to deny the same to their rivals. Whoever won the looming scramble would gain control of the government as well as western largesse; they could also use western backing to take down their rivals. Authoring the so-called facts on the ground—namely, seizing Kabul and assuming control of security ministries—would give the possessor control of the game.
Facts on the Ground
By November 10, 2001, Massoud’s Shura-e-Nazar forces, now commanded by Mohammad Qassim Fahim, were racing toward Kabul. Fahim appreciated the importance of seizing the capital, as his leader had done in 1992. Control of the capital in 2001 would put Fahim in control of events.
Western officials, on the other hand, wanted Kabul to remain an open city. They recognized that control of the capital would give the holder controlling influence at the Bonn Conference. Diplomatic and military officials urged Fahim to stop north of Kabul.
Fahim used Massoud’s playbook instead. Ignoring US requests that he hold north of Kabul until the Bonn Conference was completed, Fahim captured Kabul on November 13 and began taking control of the city.8 US officials watched it unfold, unprepared for such defiance. Many Afghans perceived that the United States backed Fahim’s seizure of the capital. By mid-December 2001, the Taliban forces had collapsed and their leaders either returned home or fled to Pakistan for safety.9 The vacuum created by the removal of the Taliban was filled by Northern Alliance forces and local militias, primarily those associated with Shura-e-Nazar.10
As Fahim’s forces seized control of Kabul, they gained control of the security ministries by fait accompli. They immediately organized police and military forces and directed allied warlords and strongmen to do the same in their local areas.11 US envoy James Dobbins recalled that diplomatic efforts were unable to keep pace with the rapidly unfolding events.
With Kabul firmly under their control, Fahim and other Northern Alliance leaders dominated the political situation in the lead-up to the Bonn Conference. Fully entrenched in the de facto security ministries, Fahim and his allies gained significant leverage. Any effort to make the security architecture of the new government more inclusive would mean ousting a Fahim-placed incumbent. He could extract a high price for any such concessions. Although the design of the conference was to invite a diverse array of non-Taliban leaders to chart a new political future for Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance and warlords from the former Islamic State of Afghanistan wielded significant influence over the composition of the Bonn Conference and Interim Transitional Authority.12 Control the guns, control the situation.
The selection of who would lead the Transitional Authority was a delicate one. The person (and faction) chosen would have significant advantage for the 2004 elections—and would have the backing of the United States and the West. The United States grew increasingly concerned that the divisive former President Burhanuddin Rabbani would try to get himself installed as president.13 With Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud assassinated by al Qaeda operatives on September 9, 2001, no natural consensus leader among the Northern Alliance was available. Even had he been alive, Massoud was a Tajik in a country traditionally ruled by the plurality Pashtuns.
Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan émigré to the United States and a rising star within the Republican Party ranks, was the US special envoy for the Bonn Conference. He was a natural choice to lead the American effort at Bonn. As expected, he dominated the international actors present and played a decisive role shaping the new Afghan government.
Khalilzad and others recognized the advantages of having a Pashtun head of the interim administration. Pashtuns had ruled Afghanistan since the creation of the Afghan empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. Some favored the return of the king, Zahir Shah, who lived in exile in Rome after being deposed in the 1973 coup. Zahir Shah appeared to be willing to be selected as head of state. Sensing that America wanted Afghanistan to become a democracy rather than a monarchy, Khalilzad went to Rome and reportedly arm-twisted the former ruler. Zahir Shah dropped out and endorsed Khalilzad’s choice: a tribal leader from Kandahar named Hamid Karzai.14
Consensus on who would lead the interim administration thus began to form around Hamid Karzai. Fiercely anti-Taliban and without blood on his hands from the civil war, Karzai proved an attractive option.15 Because he had no party, militia, or following of his own, he was unobjectionable to the warlords, who traditionally favored weak leaders they could control and manipulate. Karzai spoke perfect, almost poetic English, which made him attractive to the United States and the western powers. He had spent much of his life in Afghanistan and in the region, rather than in the United States or Europe. Karzai, in fact, was reportedly arrested and tortured in 1994 by Fahim Khan, now the de facto leader of Afghanistan’s military.16
The factors that made Karzai an attractive choice to lead the new government would leave him beholden to warlords. These powerful and well-armed figures could make Karzai’s life miserable or could even kill him if he threatened their interests. Preventing Karzai from consolidating Pashtun support would enable the Northern Alliance leaders to maintain the upper hand.
The most powerful and organized Pashtun party was Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG). Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a power-obsessed warlord who was once considered America’s favorite mujahideen leader during the Soviet war, had run afoul of the United States for his role in the Afghan civil war. He welcomed the removal of the Taliban but opposed the presence of international forces in Afghanistan.
Seeing the HiG as a threat to their political hegemony, the Northern Alliance factions sought to marginalize Hekmatyar and his party and keep them out of the Bonn negotiations. They suggested that HiG was allied to the Taliban and al Qaeda, thus encouraging the American military to target Hekmatyar and his key leaders. Leaflets reportedly appeared in refugee camps in Pakistan claiming Hekmatyar had joined al Qaeda. Hekmatyar was later accused of an April 2002 assassination attempt on Karzai, which he vehemently denied.17 Such manipulative efforts were successful in keeping the HiG out of Bonn, out of power, and in the United States’ crosshairs.
In February 2003, the United States designated Hekmatyar as a global terrorist. They reportedly fired on his vehicle in May of that year.18 Hekmatyar declared jihad on the Americans afterward. His reported efforts to join the Karzai government in 2004 were rebuffed.19 Like the Taliban, the HiG turned to insurgency.
The Warlords Are Back
During the Bonn process the former warlord government known as the Islamic State of Afghanistan seemed to reemerge.20 Shura-e-Nazar, Massoud’s party of Panjshiris now dominated by Fahim, controlled the key security ministries: Defense (Fahim), Interior (Younis Qanooni), National Directorate of Security (Muhammad Arif Sarwari), and Foreign (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah). Other warlords such as Uzbek leader Dostum, Tajiks Ismail Khan and Atta Noor, and Hazaran leaders Muhammad Mohaqqeq and Mohammad Karim Khalili were given positions of power and influence.
Fahim promoted himself from general to “Marshal” and made it clear to Karzai who controlled the guns (and hence the real power) in Afghanistan. When Karzai arrived in Kabul in December 2001 as the newly appointed head of the Afghan Interim Authority, he was greeted on the tarmac by Fahim with his forces in military formation. Karzai’s former jailer pointedly asked him, “Where are your men?” Karzai pointed to Fahim’s militia and deftly replied, “You are my men.” Karzai would have been unlikely to miss Fahim’s not-so-subtle message.21 Politics was blood sport in Afghanistan. Karzai would either need international military support to curb the influence of the warlords or he would have to co-opt them. This political calculation would decisively shape the rule of Hamid Karzai.
Consolidating Power in Kabul
The Bonn process had called for several steps in the political formation of a new government. The warlords and elites craftily exploited each one for personal advantage. The stakes were high for warlords and strongmen to consolidate their positions and influence. Their significant wealth and ability to use militia forces for intimidation, due in part to the scarcity of international forces, enabled these elites to ensure their representatives were always present, to buy votes as necessary, and to intimidate opposition.22
They were enabled in this unwittingly by the United States. Seeking to remain focused on counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda, the United States wanted to assign responsibility for security and reconstruction in Afghanistan to the international community as soon as possible.23 This left a vacuum of responsibility for the overall international effort and no checks against the warlords.
The Bonn process began to unfold as planned. An Emergency Loya Jirga was convened on June 7, 2002, with the purpose of establishing the Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA), to include filling the presidency and cabinet positions. A proposal to invite the Taliban was floated and quickly rejected by the Northern Alliance factions.24 Southern Pashtuns had little representation in the Emergency Loya Jirga. Feeling marginalized during the proceedings, many of them walked out.25 Vote buying and intimidation by the warlords ensured the votes went the way they wanted.
As expected, Karzai was chosen as the leader of the ATA. The Northern Alliance retained control of all but two ministries. The ATA was responsible for drafting the new constitution, which would be ratified in the December 2003 Constitutional Loya Jirga.
The new constitution, partially modeled on the 1964 Afghan constitution, created a highly centralized government with little to no provisions for accountability. The Afghan parliament was given the authority to approve and to impeach ministers, a process that would later be used to extract enormous bribes.26 The failure to implement a census, called for in the Bonn Agreement, and a poorly organized voter registration process left elections open to widespread fraud.27 A method known as the Single Non-Transferable Vote system was selected for parliamentary and provincial council elections. This favored the better organized parties, which happened to be those of the warlords.28
The international community, Barnett Rubin concludes, reempowered leaders that the Afghan people had rejected when they sided with the Taliban in 1996.29 Efforts by international organizations to address the history of human rights abuses by these warlords during the Afghan civil war were repeatedly repressed by both the United States and the Afghan government.30 “The Bonn conference did not reflect the interests of the Afghan people,” a former Afghan government senior advisor reflected. “It reflected the interests of those deposed by the Taliban.”31
Gathering Storm
The gathering storm within Afghanistan and the region largely escaped the Bush administration’s notice. The Americans set up bases primarily in the southern and eastern parts of the country to support the counterterrorism efforts. The military command restricted international forces to Kabul to avoid complicating the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.32 “General Franks is very much in charge of everything, and he doesn’t want to worry about a multinational force,” explained a US military spokesman. “The US has one goal: Attack AQ and get the job done. And they’re not too worried about the rest of it right now.”33
The absence of international forces in the countryside, combined with the US military’s exclusive focus on hunting al Qaeda and Taliban senior leaders, left America and the international community blind to the predatory behavior of Afghan militias on the Afghan people. The Northern Alliance and local strongmen used their militias to secure power, land, and de facto authority. Civilian casualties mounted.
American forces and Afghan militias, meanwhile, closed in on Osama bin Laden and the remainders of al Qaeda in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, but, in the end, were unable to prevent bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan.34 Despite all efforts, the world’s most wanted terrorist was still at large.
Across the border in Pakistan, the situation was deteriorating just as quickly. Pakistan had supported the Taliban’s rise to power because the Islamic State of Afghanistan had been closely tied to India. The rapid overthrow of the Taliban, coupled with the marginalization of both the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami during the Bonn process, must have been disconcerting to Pakistan. India quickly became a close partner of the new Afghan government, in part because so many former partners—ex-communists and ISA leaders—were back in power, but also because India sought all opportunities to thwart Pakistan’s designs.35
Threats from the Bush administration to Pakistan’s President Musharraf were successful in gaining a measure of Pakistani support against al Qaeda, but Afghanistan’s eastern neighbor was unwilling to turn on its Taliban allies.36 The myriad Afghan refugee camps still in Pakistan gave the Taliban plenty of places to hide, plan, recruit, and reconstitute.37 Pakistan came to believe that India and Afghanistan were supporting the insurgency in Baluchistan and aimed to partition much of Pakistan between them.38 The Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin became Pakistan’s insurance against what the Pakistani military perceived to be a looming existential threat. This anxiety underpinned Pakistan’s belief that instability in a hostile Afghanistan was preferable to a stable, hostile Afghanistan.39
US officials were tone deaf to these concerns, so Pakistan began to play a double game. To keep the United States happy, Pakistan supplied information on and even arrested al Qaeda leaders. Meanwhile, Pakistan allowed the Taliban to establish sanctuary and create an insurgency. To the United States officials, al Qaeda and Taliban were equivalent—terrorists. But Pakistan viewed these groups differently and insisted on being seen as a good partner on terrorism (al Qaeda) while silently enabling the Taliban’s insurgency.
US relations with Iran, another of Afghanistan’s neighbors, had become strained, too. Iran first proved helpful in the Bonn process.40 That support ended abruptly, however, in 2002, following President Bush’s declaration that Iran was part of the axis of evil. Nonetheless, Iran continued backing the Hazara factions and promoting economic development in Herat and western Afghanistan.41
The United States could not keep pace with the scrimmage for political power among Afghan and international actors, and most likely failed to understand the intricacies of the politics and issues. Without a governing strategy that looked beyond the ouster of the Taliban, the United States found itself unable to adapt to a dynamic situation. In Kabul, a Northern Alliance-dominated government formed with a politically weak and isolated Hamid Karzai at its head. Pakistan grew alarmed by the dominant influence competitors like India and Iran wielded over the new Afghan government. America was backing these arrangements, unwittingly feeding the fears of the southern and eastern Pashtuns in Afghanistan, as well as those of the Pakistani military.
By adopting a technocratic approach to a complex issue, the international community squandered tremendous leverage without realizing the strategic implications. Western officials were not ignorant of the broad challenges; they were, however, naive in believing they could finesse the behavior of other actors. Failing to address how the likely actions of domestic, regional, and international actors might undermine US plans was a salient mistake.
Western officials celebrated progress as the Bonn process milestones were reached, but they did not recognize that the manner in which they had been achieved damaged the legitimacy of the new government. The security services were dominated by Shura-e-Nazar and other Northern Alliance factions, military and development contracts were captured and pilfered by powerful warlords and their backers, government positions began to be brokered by warlords and sold to the highest bidder. In the eyes of many Afghans, the despised Islamic State of Afghanistan had returned in a different guise. Across Afghanistan’s eastern border, the Pakistani military grew alarmed at the emerging India-allied Afghan government. These changes, many in Afghanistan and the region assumed, had international backing.
To understand why highly talented western officials were unable to see the gathering storm, let’s examine America’s bureaucratic way of waging war.