6
Historian Russell Weigley famously characterized the American way of war as the use of industrial mobilization, grinding attrition, and firepower-centric methods to crush an adversary under the weight of American might.1 In some ways, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to usher in a new, bolder, swifter way of war characterized by precision munitions, special operations forces, and the seamless integration of land, sea, and air power.2 Known as Joint Operations, the American military’s ability to overcome interservice rivalries among the army, navy, and air force and operate as a team was on powerful display. Terms such as “shock and awe” described the battlefield effects of this new military synergy.
These important advances in military operations have not been matched by the US interagency. The United States has no analogous way to integrate elements of national power—diplomatic, military, political, economic, intelligence—into a coherent whole. While the US military has learned to fight wars as an integrated team, America’s national security agencies have not established how to wage war as an integrated team.
Instead, America wages war by bureaucracy.
Before the war begins, diplomats try to prevent hostilities and may attempt to gather allies in the event that war breaks out. Once war is declared, uniformed militaries fight one another until one side wins, or a stalemate ensues. Following the military contest, diplomats negotiate a peace treaty, with their negotiating leverage largely determined by the outcomes of the military engagements. Once peace is concluded, aid and development agencies repair the damage.
Conventional war is typically fought in these four broad stages: (1) diplomacy, (2) clash of military forces, (3) diplomacy, and (4) aid and development. Think of a relay race: the diplomats get the baton and do their job, they hand the baton to the military to fight, the military hands that baton back to the diplomats to negotiate peace, and then the diplomats give the baton to those repairing the damages.
The relay race sequencing has the added convenience of aligning with the major national security agencies: State—Defense—State—USAID. Certainly, there is military activity occurring in support of the State-led phases (deploying forces, defending territory, securing populations, etc.). Diplomats will continue seeking support from allies or encouraging the enemy’s allies to defect during the military-led phase. Their actions are normally supporting efforts to the military contest. The bureaucratic lines are very clear: each agency optimizes its own efforts in its lead phase while the other agencies support. The priorities are also well-established.
Does this sequencing and focus on military objectives work for irregular war? As noted earlier, outcomes are more greatly impacted by the insurgency’s ability to sustain tangible internal and external support and by the government’s measure of political legitimacy in insurgent-contested areas than by battlefield engagements.3 This means that the political and diplomatic efforts to undermine the insurgency and to bolster the credibility of the host nation government are as (or even more) critical for success than are the military efforts—even during the war.
Because the clash between fielded forces is so central to success in conventional war, political and military leaders work carefully to “define a military objective that, if achieved, can deliver the political objective.”4 Military objectives such as the defeat of the enemy’s forces, the capture of the capital, or the seizure of territory are common ways to seek a decisive military victory. Interventions against insurgencies, however, don’t tend to hinge upon the clash of opposing forces; there may not even be a realistic military objective that could deliver the political aims. Moreover, the nature of guerrilla warfare renders the annihilation of insurgent forces very difficult—and nearly impossible if they have sanctuary across a national border. Furthermore, given that there is no insurgent capital, seizing territory might not make any difference. This is especially true if the population provides clandestine support to the insurgency.
The nature of the struggle between a host nation and an insurgency tends to require an intervening power to employ elements of national power concurrently rather than sequentially. Rather than a relay race that features one agency at a time, irregular war tends to be more of a team sport, like basketball. Every agency is on the court at once and must work together as a team so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The host government’s political legitimacy—its ability to govern justly and effectively—is the foundation for success (State and USAID). International support and recognition can boost perceptions of legitimacy (State). To defend the people and government, recruits need to be organized and trained (Defense). The insurgency needs to be fought (Defense). Economic development and services can boost popular satisfaction with the government (USAID). Greater host nation political legitimacy leads to better information from the people about the insurgency (State and Intelligence). Better information leads to more effective military operations (Intelligence and Defense). More precise military operations damage the capability of the insurgency and prevent civilian casualty incidents that could undermine the new government (Defense).
The team aspect is critical. Like in basketball, the players cannot simply afford to stay in their individual comfort zones. Overemphasis on a single player will enable the opponents to adjust and to find and exploit weaknesses in the team overall. The 2004 US Olympic basketball team was bursting with the best professional athletes in the game. They should have won another gold for Team USA. Instead, they barely salvaged a bronze medal after losses to Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina. The obvious lesson: a group of less talented individuals who play together as a team can be more effective than top talents who play as individuals. The point guard can have the most assists, the shooting guard can have the most points, one forward can have the most rebounds, the other can have the most steals, and the center can have the most blocks—and the team can still lose the game. Talent silos will doom a group of individually exceptional players to defeat at the hands of a team of less individually gifted players who work well together.
Bureaucratic silos can create the same effect. Key national security agencies deploy their forces and capabilities to the host country. While they are encouraged to work together, the lines of authority extend from each agency lead in country directly back to Washington, D.C. There is no American official in the combat zone who has the authority and responsibility to manage all of the deployed elements of national power and who is held accountable for achieving US objectives. Each agency can optimize its performance even as the team performs poorly overall.5
America’s bureaucratic way of war reinforces agency-centric silos and undermines the teamwork necessary for success. In Afghanistan, the absence of a coordinating authority and governing strategy led to disjointed efforts between the military campaign and diplomatic actions to organize a post-Taliban government. As military and diplomatic leaders focused on their comfort zones, major gaps developed and were exploited by others, to the detriment of US interests. The Bush administration did not put a single US official in charge of managing American efforts on the ground, so no one was empowered to integrate the efforts of various agencies and make decisions that addressed the emerging problems in the dynamic conflict. International silos added to the coordination challenges. The result was a slow failure because the whole was less than the sum of its parts.
Believing that victory was won after the Taliban’s ouster, the Bush administration aimed to minimize its commitment in Afghanistan by outsourcing reconstruction to other international actors.6 President Bush initially focused American assistance on building Afghanistan’s army and national police.7 He urged the international community to support other major needs: “We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations.” Although the United States was not prepared to do nation-building, Bush later reflected, “We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better.”8
The administration remained divided on the type and extent of support America should provide.9 On April 8, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discouraged Secretary of State Colin Powell from making a further commitment of American resources to Afghan reconstruction, arguing that “The U.S. spent billions of dollars freeing Afghanistan and providing security. . . . There is no reason on earth for the U.S. to commit to pay 20 percent for the Afghan army. I urge you to get DoS [Department of State] turned around on this—the U.S. position should be zero.”10 Powell replied eight days later and invoked the president’s decision to support Afghan reconstruction. The United States, he argued, needed to do its “fair share,” particularly regarding the Afghan military and police.11 Rumsfeld eventually conceded, having accepted the view that by accelerating the development of Afghan security forces the United States could withdraw its own forces more quickly.12
Institutionalizing Silos: The Lead Nation Concept
The result of America’s efforts to get the international community to support nonmilitary efforts was a commitment by the Group of Eight (G8) countries (the world’s top eight economic powers) to provide a broad range of development support for Afghanistan. In April 2002, the G8 announced a “lead nation concept” for the Afghan security sector, which entailed five interdependent efforts. Each one was assigned to a lead donor nation: Afghan National Army (US), Afghan National Police (Germany), counternarcotics (UK), judiciary (Italy), and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration [DDR] (Japan).13
The lead nation concept was quickly and aptly exploited by Afghan elites to promote personal and political power. With no overarching strategy or decision-making body that could set priorities, integrate efforts, and mitigate unintended consequences, the efforts of each lead nation were open to manipulation.
By November 2002, UN Security Council Resolution 1444 called for the establishment of “fully representative, professional and multi-ethnic army and police forces.”14 For the US-supported Afghan National Army, Minister of Defense Fahim wanted a large, 200,000-man conscript force raised by provincial levy (where each province provides a designated number of recruits) to secure the country and defend its borders.15 Fahim planned to handpick the cadre, thus keeping the military under his control.
Provincial levy was the traditional method of raising an Afghan army, and it was also an effective way of ensuring every part of the country shared the burden of the military commitment. The levy would, over time, create a large body of people who had experienced military service. Such a method of raising and maintaining forces often leads to an army becoming a so-called “school of the nation.” But the advantages would come with disadvantages: this type of manning system would draw recruits from an overwhelmingly illiterate population and would need to rely on simple weapons and tactics.
The United States rejected Fahim’s concept and limited the size of the Afghan Army to a volunteer force of roughly 50,000.16 US military officials believed that Afghanistan needed only a small military to dissuade warlords from using their militias to destabilize the government. According to a RAND study on the development of the Afghan security sector, “When U.S. [Security Force Assistance] efforts in Afghanistan were first being planned in 2002, a driving assumption was that the Taliban had been decisively defeated and would not reappear. Instead, the major threat envisioned was a return to the warlordism that had plagued the country in the 1990s and had given rise to the Taliban.”17 A smaller, professional force, US officials argued, would be less likely to fracture along ethnic lines.
The levy system, however, would have the same benefit as the smaller, professional force while also providing a stronger deterrent to Afghanistan’s neighbors. Moreover, the levy system would enable the Afghan military to expand more easily in times of threat and contract in times of peace. Overall, such a force would be less expensive and more flexible than the smaller, professional force.
US officials remained wedded to the idea of the volunteer force, likely because of their own experiences: conscription during the Vietnam War had profoundly negative effects on both American society and the military effort. It disproportionately relied on low-income and poorly educated groups to fill the ranks; the wealthy had many ways to opt out of the system. Morale plummeted. The United States went to an all-volunteer force in the late 1970s, ultimately creating the highly educated and sophisticated military that crushed Saddam Hussein’s army in the 1991 Gulf War and the Taliban in 2001. Such a military relied upon intelligent recruits who were highly motivated to join and capable of handling the sophisticated technology. As noncommissioned officers and junior officers, recruits were expected to exercise judgment and initiative.
The general population of Afghanistan, after two decades of war, was very different from the general population of the United States. Over 90 percent of the population was illiterate. The country, driven apart by decades of war, was badly in need of cohesion. Armed militant groups had already begun preying on the population. The military leaders had largely been trained in the very hierarchical Soviet system. The ingredients that made a high-tech volunteer force possible in the United States were simply not present in Afghanistan.
Mirror imaging likely provided the rationale for American insistence on a small, volunteer force. The US military officials advising the effort had no recent experience with conscript or levy forces. They had no doctrine to draw from in developing such a force. The manning, equipping, training, sustainment, and training systems required substantially different approaches than that to which the American officials were accustomed. The small, volunteer military was ill-suited for Afghanistan.
Whatever its reservations, the Afghan government had to accept what it could get. Defense Minister Fahim moved quickly to manipulate recruiting and training efforts to lock in Shura-e-Nazar’s control of the army. Ninety of the 100 general officers were from Panjshir—a tiny province that was Fahim’s home.18 As insurance, Fahim kept his own large militia while using the DDR process to disarm his rivals (more on that later).19 Many Afghans perceived US support for Fahim’s actions.
The Ministry of Interior, meanwhile, was responsible for the police, subnational governance, and counternarcotics. Police development formed a silo under the Germans, and counternarcotics was supported by the British. No one bothered to address subnational governance.
German efforts to build the police forces proceeded very slowly. For a country of nearly 30 million people, the Germans planned for an Afghan national police force of 1,500 officers to be trained over the course of a five-year program.20 The small force was to be ready by 2007. Notably, the plan for local policing was unaddressed. Rumsfeld began to get frustrated at the slow pace of forming the army and police, demanding ways to accelerate the efforts. “There is not a sufficient sense of urgency on the part of anybody,” he complained to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Richard Myers.21 The Germans and Americans began to pull the police in different directions—the former toward basic western-style law enforcement, the latter toward a paramilitary role.22
US counterinsurgency doctrine suggests a country should have roughly one security official for every 50 people. Hence, a country of 30 million would theoretically need 600,000. While the ratio could be smaller during peacetime, the original plan for the size of Afghan forces was barely one-tenth of the standard size.
Perverse incentives grew. Police chief positions mostly went to favored local strongmen or the highest bidder. The police chiefs used their official position to consolidate power, marginalize their rivals, and engage in illicit economic activities.
Governorships were often allocated the same way. This would create perverse incentives for officials to turn a profit on their positions through misappropriation of customs revenues, aid dollars, or even extortion (such as land theft and kidnapping for ransom).23 Afghans believed these corrupt officials were backed by the US military. The absence of any ombudsman or government watchdog, and perceptions of international acquiescence or complicity, meant that the Afghan people had no avenue to register complaints or air grievances. No lead nation was established to promote subnational governance, so the international community had little information on how well or poorly the new government was connecting to the people outside Kabul.
The British counternarcotics efforts, meanwhile, were exploited by local strongmen, who directed international eradication efforts at their rivals while keeping unwanted attention away from their own crops.24 The Rule of Law sector did not develop beyond an Italian-written plan that was never implemented. The justice sector positions were often allocated in ways like those used for police chiefs and governors.25 Open to bribery, justice, too, would often go to the highest bidder.
Powerful warlords like Defense Minister Fahim and others manipulated the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) efforts by the Japanese to bring their militias into the army and police while disarming rivals.26
Each ministry developed a strong, informal chain of command tied to the warlords, who controlled key appointments. Successive ministers were never able to assert proper authority over the army or police.27 Warlords and powerful elites used threats of violence and the ability to block policy or legislative action to prevent reforms that could damage their interests.
To make matters worse, the military efforts were divided into silos. The coalition military (International Security Assistance Forces—Afghanistan [ISAF]) was small, Kabul-based, and commanded by a series of generals who rotated in rapid succession. US combat forces existed under a separate command that supported the counterterrorism mission. These forces focused on killing or capturing senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Comfortable in a military silo, the US combat forces remained largely uninformed about local political dynamics or the damaging effects of being manipulated by local power brokers.
Setting the Stage for Taliban Resurgence
Many Afghan officials and strongmen used this ignorance for personal advantage—with devastating impact. Afghan elites played on the Americans’ dangerous combination of aggressiveness and naivete and began manipulating intelligence to use unwitting American forces to settle scores with rivals or to consolidate power.28 Such military operations, combined with the predatory actions of warlords, strongmen, Afghan police, and military and government officials, as well as reports of torture in American prisons such as Bagram and Guantanamo, caused significant civilian harm.
These problems began to foster a sense of alienation and unwanted military occupation—themes the Taliban would deftly exploit in their recruiting and propaganda. When directed against community leaders, civilian harm had disproportionately large effects in driving the people away from the government and often into the embrace of armed opposition groups.29
Hamid Karzai, the head of the Afghan Transitional Administration, recognized the damage the warlords and strongmen were having on the population and on the legitimacy of his own government. Karzai’s best hope to keep them in check was political support—with military backing—from the international community and, more specifically, from the United States.
But no such support was given. The United States refused to support him in a 2002 effort to take on a threat from eastern warlord Pacha Khan Zadran.30 A year later, Rumsfeld was adamant to CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, Zalmay Khalilzad, and others, “We do not want him making moves [against warlords] under the mistaken belief that we are going to back him up militarily.”31 International officials would continue to press Karzai to make reforms and keep the warlords in check, but they provided no clear backing to help him manage the fallout.
Some American officials sent very different messages. In an April 2003 meeting with Karzai, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who had long-standing relationships with the Northern Alliance warlords, encouraged the Afghan president to “integrate” these “ethnic leaders” into the government before devolving power to them. Karzai reportedly rejected the idea, suggesting that actions of that nature would only recreate the conditions of 1994 that originally catalyzed the development of the Taliban. Rohrabacher allegedly replied that the “wild West” in America was secured by local strongmen and their militias. He contended that radical Islam and Pashtun nationalism were in league with one another, which seemed to imply that the United States was at war with both. In yet another stunning statement, the congressman reportedly told Karzai that the United States, Saudis, and Pakistanis “created” the Taliban to bring law and order to Afghanistan.32
Karzai must have been deeply troubled by the conversation. He may have perceived that Rohrabacher was expressing true US policy, one of empowering the warlords or carving up Afghanistan, waging a secret war on Pashtuns, and having a role in the creation of the Taliban. Karzai would, in the future, levy charges against the United States on all three fronts. American officials would dismiss them as paranoid conspiracy theories.
These kinds of problems, which arose from the combined effect of silos and the absence of an overall authority to direct and manage the international efforts, undermined the foundations of the new government. Predatory Afghan officials and warlords manipulated the disjointed efforts to their personal advantage. With only a counterterrorism-focused US military presence outside Kabul, international officials had almost no view on what was occurring in the provinces and how predatory Afghan officials and strongmen were alienating significant parts of the population. The perception that post-Taliban Afghanistan was peaceful was an illusion. The violence was being perpetrated by the very people who were supposed to be providing security and reporting incidents.33
As the abuses by predatory actors and militias grew in scale and scope, the Taliban began to reorganize.34 The “harassment and persecution [of former Taliban officials and Afghan civilians] by pro-government groups and by US forces,” political scientist Antonio Giustozzi writes, “was a major factor in the original mobilisation of the Taliban insurgency . . . and continued to drive recruits to the Taliban even in 2014–15.”35
In the face of US resistance, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi continued to push in 2002 and 2003 for greater international military presence to protect Afghan civilians from predatory militias. “Skirmishes between local commanders,” he observed in July 2003, “continue to cause civilian casualties in many parts of the country where terrorism is no longer an issue. . . . There are daily reports of abuses committed by gunmen against the population . . . all too often—while wielding the formal title of military commander, police or security chief.”36 Predatory activities by the government and civilian harm by Afghan and coalition forces drew disaffected groups to the Taliban cause.
Across the border, Pakistan military officials, alarmed by their diminishing sway and India’s growing influence on Afghanistan, supported the Taliban’s use of Pakistani territory to foment and sustain an insurgency.37 Prolific military businesses and logistics companies in Pakistan, as well as a secretive intelligence service that operated outside civilian control, gave the Taliban ready access to supplies, logistics, and expertise. The vast refugee camps there offered substantial numbers of recruits.
The absence of any US official managing the American efforts on the ground enabled the former Northern Alliance leaders to more effectively influence the United States in blocking Karzai’s efforts toward peace. Jim Dobbins and Carter Malkasian describe how the Taliban sent several peace overtures in the early years, even offering to surrender in December 2001.38 Negotiations were rejected by the United States and the Northern Alliance factions in government.39 Secretary of State Colin Powell’s suggestion that the United States sought talks with moderate Taliban was ridiculed as naive by Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.40
Rumsfeld flatly rejected Karzai’s December 2001 idea that the Taliban be allowed to “live in dignity” in retirement.41 He told Karzai that al Qaeda and Taliban leaders still needed to be hunted down. “There are a lot of fanatical people,” he concluded, “And we need to finish the job.”42 Brahimi later described this decision to be a fundamental error in the Bonn process.43 Taliban leaders who turned themselves in were sent to prisons in Bagram and Guantanamo, and some reportedly were tortured. Others were killed or captured in raids. The rest fled to Pakistan.
The preamble of the new Afghan constitution placed the resistance against the Taliban on equal footing with the jihad against the Soviets.44 The message to the Taliban was quite clear—they had no place in the new order.
America’s bureaucratic way of war played an essential role in these disconnects—problems that would continue as the war in Afghanistan grew more Americanized. They would play a damaging role in Iraq as well.
Conclusion to Part II
The lack of strategic thinking on war termination—how to achieve a favorable and durable outcome—heightened the risk that the successful overthrow of the Taliban would turn into a quagmire. The Bush administration had given detailed attention to the military campaign but wished away the challenges presented in the aftermath. Such neglect damaged the United States’ ability to address the exploitative actions taken by Afghan and international actors during the chaotic post-Taliban period. These activities, many of which were hidden in plain sight, undermined the legitimacy of the nascent government in the eyes of Afghans and aroused suspicions among Afghanistan’s neighbors—especially Pakistan.
American officials attempted to simplify the complex challenges of post-Taliban Afghanistan by creating a step-by-step blueprint for political, military, and economic development. This became known as the Bonn process. Officials crafted a detailed plan that arrayed key milestones along a timeline. Each milestone had its particular plan and deliverables. Afghanistan achieved each one. But the situation in the country slowly deteriorated.
American officials in Kabul and Washington found themselves completely unprepared for the intense and sometimes violent struggle for control among Afghan elites. “Local elites know how to consolidate power,” observed Lieutenant General Terry A. Wolff, “but not how to build a country.”1 Each milestone was manipulated for advantage, mainly by Northern Alliance figures who enjoyed almost uncritical US backing. The result was a set of rules and systems that seemed to marginalize southern Pashtuns.
America’s (and NATO’s) bureaucratic way of war added to the challenges. Each agency worked hard within its silo, but the whole became less than the sum of its parts. The absence of a senior official to manage US efforts in Afghanistan hurt America’s ability to set the new Afghan government and security forces on solid ground, prevent abuses that could give rise to an insurgency, and address Pakistan’s concerns about Indian influence. The so-called lead nation concept and the tendency of US agencies to operate in bureaucratic silos undermined the woefully under-resourced stabilization effort and left international civilian and military efforts open to manipulation.
The limited US interests in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration’s desire to minimize security and reconstruction commitments, should have led to a more thoughtful discussion with Karzai about the Taliban’s offer to capitulate. The Taliban had little to no leverage—negotiations by competent Afghan and international authorities were highly likely to result in a favorable outcome and probably could have prevented or limited the scale of the insurgency. The Bush administration, however, viewed the Taliban and al Qaeda as one and the same—international terrorist organizations bent on attacking the United States. Given the September 11 attacks and the way American political leaders framed the conflict, an effort to negotiate with the Taliban in 2001 or 2002 probably would have entailed huge audience costs.
Strategic empathy is the ability to place yourself into the mind of another so that you can see yourself and the situation from their point of view.2 Sun Tzu counseled generals to know the enemy and yourself.3 Knowledge of the enemy is more than assessing their military forces and capabilities. You need to understand another’s perspective—and their pressures and motivations—to gauge their intentions and anticipate their moves. Knowing yourself, particularly your strategic empathy limitations, will motivate you to close gaps in your understanding.
Strategic narcissism, by contrast, is the tendency to view others only in relation to your interests and to believe that their success relies upon their adopting your point of view.4 Problems such as confirmation bias and mirror imaging indicate strategic narcissism, which can result in leaders believing what they want to believe about partners and enemies while presuming that others aspire to their point of view and strategies. Empathetic competitors manipulate narcissists to gain advantage.
Lack of strategic empathy undermined America’s ability to understand the objectives and motivations of the key actors in the early stages of the conflict—a problem that persisted throughout this war and the Iraq war, too. The upshot was a US approach that unwittingly created incentives for the conflict to widen. The Afghan government, as we will see in Part III, turned into a predatory kleptocracy, the Taliban mobilized into an insurgency, and Pakistan played the double game of supporting some US counterterrorism objectives while allowing the Taliban to use Pakistani soil as an insurgent sanctuary.
In 2004, according to a former Taliban official who was part of the delegation, the Taliban made another peace overture.5 But the Bush administration still refused. Standing alongside President Karzai in February 2004, Rumsfeld said, “I’ve not seen any indication that the Taliban pose any military threat to the security of Afghanistan.” Karzai, noting that he was being contacted daily by Taliban leaders seeking to be allowed to return home, surmised, “The Taliban doesn’t exist anymore. They’re defeated. They’re gone.”6 The 2004 overture would be the Taliban’s last for many years.
Had the Bush administration considered multiple options for war termination, they still might have come to the view that negotiations with the Taliban were unacceptable. Transition-and-withdraw was another option, and one that the Bush administration backed into as the insurgency fomented. A strategy that considered in advance the requirements for a successful transition would likely be based on factors such as establishing and maintaining political legitimacy and inclusiveness, deploying sufficiently capable peacekeeping forces until credible local forces were built and trained, ensuring civilian protection, and emphasizing regional cooperation. The United States, however, was myopic in its approach; to the detriment of its long-term goals, the United States continued to invest most of its time, energy, and resources into hunting down Taliban remnants—efforts that were manipulated by local actors.
By 2006, an insurgency that had durable internal and external support was fighting against a predatory, kleptocratic host nation government that was losing legitimacy. The stage was set for quagmire.