In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Three-Front War

IN LATE 2006 and early 2007, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry conducted a series of briefings on the Afghan insurgency for senior U.S. policymakers, including National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, and Vice President Dick Cheney. The presentation showed where the command- and-control locations for the Taliban and other insurgent groups were headquartered, especially in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In one section, for example, the briefers interspersed satellite images of a major compound used by Taliban ally Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah with video footage from the PBS Frontline documentary “The Return of the Taliban.”

At one point in the documentary, producer Martin Smith asked Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations: “Let me just raise a few things they say you can do. Haqqani, Jalaluddin Haqqani—why don’t you arrest him?”

Akram confidently responded: “Well, I think Jalaluddin Haqqani, if he’s found, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.”¹

The briefing team then presented satellite imagery of a wider area, which showed offices of the Pakistan Army next door. “Not only does Pakistan know where Haqqani is,” one of the briefers noted to senior U.S. officials, “but they are virtually co-located with him. If they wanted to get him, they could.”

The Pakistani government was also shown a version of the briefing, though the Frontline segment was taken out. It was a disturbing reminder to those at the highest levels of the U.S. government that insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan, who were killing U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces and civilians, used Pakistan as a sanctuary, especially for their top-level commanders.

Complex Adaptive System

The perfect storm that hit Afghanistan in 2006 involved a disparate set of groups that established a sanctuary in Pakistan. There were two striking themes. One was the sheer increase in the number of insurgent groups over the course of the decade. Some groups, such as Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), migrated to the Afghanistan theater. Both were formed in the early 1990s to fight against India over control of Jammu and Kashmir. Another theme was the diffuse, highly complex nature of the insurgency, which was perhaps best described as a complex adaptive system. This term refers to systems that are diverse (made up of multiple interconnected elements) and adaptive (possessing the capacity to change and learn from experience). Examples of complex adaptive systems include the stock market, ant colonies, and most major social organizations.²

At least five different categories of groups were included in this system. The first were insurgent groups, who were motivated to overthrow the Afghan government and coerce the withdrawal of international forces. They ranged from the Taliban to smaller groups such as the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), and al Qa’ida. A second category included criminal groups involved in such activities as drug trafficking and illicit timber and gem trading. The third included local tribes, subtribes, and clans that allied with insurgent groups. Most were Pashtun. The fourth category comprised the warlord militias, many of whom had become increasingly powerful after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime. A fifth category included local or central government forces complicit in the insurgency, such as the Afghan National Police and the Pakistani Frontier Corps.

These groups could be divided along three geographic fronts: northern, central, and southern. Figure 13.1 provides a rough illustration.

The northern front stretched from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province to Afghan provinces of Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar. The largest of the groups in this region was Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, but other groups were also operating in this front. One was an offshoot of Hezb-i-Islami led by Anwar al-Haq Mojahed, whose group was made up of former Hezb-i-Islami fighters, disgruntled tribesmen, and some ex- Taliban. Another was TNSM, whose objective was to enforce sharia law in Afghanistan and Pakistan. TNSM fractured into three blocs based out of Pakistan: Sufi Mohammad’s loyal following, a Swat- based faction started by Sufi Mohammad’s son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah, and a Bajaur-based militant group led by Mullah Faqir Muhammad. Bajaur is located at the northern tip of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Swat district is located east of Bajaur in the North West Frontier Province.

FIGURE 13.1 The Insurgent Fronts

Lashkar-e-Taiba was active on this front, as was al Qa’ida, including Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, an Egyptian who had fought against the Soviets in the 1980s and had married a local woman. There was also a variety of criminal organizations, especially groups involved in the illicit timber and gem trades. Timber was smuggled across the border into Pakistan by networks run by timber barons. Some Afghan and Pakistani government officials were also involved in assisting insurgents and criminal organizations—often to take a cut of lucrative business opportunities. “Illicit timber trading was big business,” noted Larry Legree, the Provincial Reconstruction Team commander from Kunar. “Everyone, from government officials to insurgent groups, had their hands in the profits.”³

The central front lay farther south along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It stretched from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas to eastern Afghan provinces of Paktika, Khowst, and Lowgar. One of the most significant groups was led by Jalaluddin Haqqani’s son Sirajuddin (“Siraj”), who was especially elusive. U.S. military and intelligence analysts strained to get a good photograph of him. Haqqani’s organization had close links with Pakistan’s ISI, from which it received aid, and it became lethal at conducting attacks deep into Afghanistan. Haqqani also had close ties to an umbrella group, Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan, which operated out of Waziristan and was led by Baitullah Mehsud. Both the Pakistani government and the Central Intelligence Agency publicly stated that Mehsud was involved in the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007.⁴ Al Qai’da also operated in this area, along with a number of other foreign groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Finally, there was the southern front, in the southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province. The largest group in this front was Mullah Omar’s Taliban, based near Quetta. The Taliban linked up with a number of Pashtun tribes, especially Ghilzai tribes, which provided logistical support, fighters, and local legitimacy. Its strategy involved approaching local tribes and commanders at the village and district levels. In some cases, Taliban commanders were well received because of common tribal affinities or because locals had become disillusioned with the Afghan government—fed up with the slow pace of reconstruction and the paucity of security. Where they weren’t well received, they sometimes resorted to brutal tactics. “They have perfected the art of targeted assassination,” one soldier noted, “to intimidate locals who support the Afghan government. A bullet in the head is all it takes.”⁵ The southern front also boasted criminal groups, especially drug-trafficking organizations, which operated on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The skyrocketing trade in poppy was a boon to insurgent organizations such as the Taliban, as well as to Afghan government officials.

There was evidence of some coordination among the major insurgent groups at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, including through several shuras, or Islamic councils, located in Pakistan.⁶ But there was no unified leadership.

“Learning Organizations”

These groups focused on classic guerrilla warfare. Promoting disorder among the population is a key objective of most insurgents, and disrupting the economy and decreasing security helps produce discontent with the indigenous government, undermining its legitimacy. Once insurgents establish a hold over the population, those who are hostile to the insurgents often become too fearful to oppose them. Some may be eliminated, providing an example to others. Some may escape to other areas, and still others may be cowed into hiding their true feelings. By threatening the population, insurgents keep individuals from cooperating with the indigenous government and external actors.⁷

Afghan and Pakistani insurgent groups were successful at adapting their tactics, techniques, and procedures to become “learning organizations.”⁸ The command-and-control structure of the insurgent groups was fragmented. Within the Taliban, for example, the inner shura maintained links to field commanders through a weak hierarchical structure. A district or village commander usually had a connection to one