Taliban also developed or acquired new commercial communications gear and field equipment from the Iraqi insurgents, and they appeared to have received good tactical, camouflage, and marksmanship training, too. Some Taliban units even included al Qa’ida members or other Arab fighters, who brought experience from jihadi campaigns in Iraq and Chechnya.48
Perhaps most troubling, insurgents increasingly adopted suicide tactics, especially in such major cities as Kandahar and Kabul.49 Afghan National Police were common targets of suicide bombers. Al Qa’ida leaders in Pakistan encouraged the use of such attacks. Ayman al-Zawahiri argued that “suicide operations are the most successful in inflicting damage on the opponent and the least costly in terms of casualties among the fundamentalists.”50 Al Qa’ida’s involvement was particularly important in this regard because Afghan insurgent groups were surprisingly inept at suicide attacks. Even a UN study of suicide bombing led by Christine Fair acknowledged: “Employed by the Taliban as a military technique, suicide bombing—paradoxically—has had little military success in Afghanistan.”51
Despite their initial reluctance, Afghan insurgents began to use suicide attacks for a variety of reasons.52 First, the Taliban had begun to rely more and more on the expertise and training of the broader jihadi community, especially the international al Qa’ida network, which advocated and condoned such attacks. These militants—with al Qa’ida’s assistance—helped supply a steady stream of suicide bombers. Second, al Qa’ida and the Taliban saw the success of such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Iraqi groups, and they concluded this was an effective method for disrupting Coalition actions.53 Suicide attacks allowed insurgents to achieve maximum impact with minimal resources, and the chance of killing people and instilling fear increased exponentially with suicide attacks.54 Third, al Qa’ida and the Taliban believed that suicide attacks raised the level of insecurity among the Afghan population. This caused some Afghans to question the government’s ability to protect them and further destabilized the authority of local government institutions. Consequently, the distance widened between the Afghan government and the population in specific areas. Fourth, suicide attacks provided renewed visibility for the Taliban and al Qa’ida, which previous guerrilla attacks did not generate. Because each attack was spectacular and usually lethal, every suicide bombing was reported in the national and international media.
Most of the bombers were Afghans or Pakistanis, though some foreigners were also involved.55 Many were recruited from Afghan refugee camps and
Al Qa’ida’s role in Afghanistan can be accurately summed up by the advertising slogan used by the German- based chemical giant BASF: “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” Al Qa’ida leaders improved the tactical and operational competence of Afghan and Pakistani groups, who were able to manufacture a better array of products—from improvised explosive devices to videos. Al Qa’ida strengthened the competence of insurgent groups, although its leaders generally shied away from direct involvement in ground operations in Afghanistan, leaving the dirty work to local Afghans. Instead, it operated as a force multiplier, improving the groups’ capabilities. Even as al Qa’ida enjoyed a resurgence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, however, some U.S. military forces began to make limited progress in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 and early 2008.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN In the Eye of the Storm
AS IT BECAME CLEAR that the U.S. military would have to shift its focus from military operations to counterinsurgency tactics, new personnel were given a different set of responsibilities. U.S. Navy Commander Larry Legree was one of those new faces. Legree’s preparation for counterinsurgency operations in landlocked Afghanistan was, somewhat ironically, serving aboard an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, and an amphibious ship. It was not exactly standard training for participating on the front line of a major ground war. “I was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer,” Legree told me, almost apologetically. “The four and a half months I spent at Fort Bragg in North Carolina before deploying to Afghanistan was about the only preparation I had. I learned how to wear body armor and shoot, move, and communicate, but didn’t learn any real fundamentals about counter-insurgency.” Most of that had to come on the fly.
Legree also didn’t have the stereotypical disposition of a war-fighter. His congenial, unassuming temperament, honed during his childhood in western Michigan, and his extraordinary politeness seemed oddly suited for Afghanistan’s bloody front lines. He was also something of an academic. Legree attended the prestigious U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then went on to get three master’s degrees at George Washington University, Duke, and North Carolina State.
But he was a critical cog in the U.S. military’s transition in eastern Afghanistan from a purely war-fighting machine to a counterinsurgency force through 2008. Legree was sent to Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, only a few miles from the Pakistan border, to become the commander of a U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team. Insurgent groups had dug into the impenetrable terrain and created extensive cave networks along the province’s border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. They had done the same thing during the Soviet era. Legree’s job was to show locals that the United States could provide reconstruction and development assistance. “Our primary contributions were building roads and bridges,” Legree said, “as well as helping establish a health care network. They brought concrete change to local Afghans.” The roads and bridges paid off: Legree and his colleagues helped build extensive infrastructure across the province, transforming the dynamics of the local economy. As commerce began to flow more rapidly and into new areas, Legree became a powerful and popular figure.
“I was almost never targeted,” Legree said, somewhat nonplussed, since Kunar was one of Afghanistan’s most violent provinces. “My view is that the locals were pragmatic. They wanted the money and they knew I was the checkbook. The message got out: Don’t mess with the Provincial Reconstruction Team.”1 And Afghans in Kunar felt incresingly secure. A 2008 Asia Foundation poll indicated that Afghans in the province felt relatively secure, despite violence in isolated pocket like the Korengal Valley.2
An Epiphany
Legree was not alone in his efforts. The U.S. military gradually improved its counterinsurgency capabilities over the course of its tenure in Afghanistan, though it still faced an entrenched and dedicated enemy. Among the most successful contingents were those led by Major General David M. Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Coalition Joint Task Force 82. Rodriguez is tall and immensely polite but somewhat uncomfortable in front of large crowds. He had served as deputy director of regional operations on the joint staff at the Pentagon, where he was responsible for synchronizing and monitoring U.S. military operations abroad.
The 82nd Airborne’s previous tours in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004 had been marred by controversy, earning them a reputation as “doorkickers.” “We were good at one thing,” said Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. “Killing bad guys.” This ultimately proved counterproductive. Schweitzer was a gregarious, affable colonel with short-cropped hair, bushy eyebrows, and dark sunglasses that clung to his neck like a necklace. “What we needed to do was to spend more time separating the enemy from the population. That meant engaging in non-kinetic operations,” Schweitzer continued. In U.S. military lingo, “non- kinetic” referred to reconstruction and development activities, such as building health clinics, roads, and schools.3
In August 2002, the 82nd Airborne conducted Operation Mountain Sweep, which involved a weeklong hunt for al Qa’ida and Taliban fugitives in eastern Afghanistan. During the operation, a U.S. Special Forces team knocked at the door of a mud compound in the Shah-i-kot Valley, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. An elderly Pashtun farmer let the soldiers inside. When they asked if there were any weapons in the house, he led them to his only firearm, a decrepit hunting rifle. The Special Forces team thanked him and walked toward the next house. Not long after the Special Forces left, six paratroopers, also from the 82nd Airborne, also part of Operation Mountain Sweep, kicked in the door. Terrified, the farmer tried to run but was grabbed by one of the soldiers, while others tried to frisk the women. “The women were screaming bloody murder,” recalled Mike, one of the Special Forces soldiers
