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

Areas, Baluchistan Province, and urban areas. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, circulated a memo in early 2008 warning that “militant extremists in Pakistan have sharply increased attacks, both in tribal areas along the Pak-Afghan border and into settled areas.” These attacks were “undermining regional stability and effective prosecution of the war on terror by Coalition Forces in Afghanistan,” and the Pakistan military was “hindered by significant capability gaps and fears of civilian casualties, which could undercut already weak public support for offensive operations.”³⁸ Consequently, some U.S. officials advocated overhauling U.S. assistance to Pakistan and called for providing additional airmobile capacity, combat logistics and sustainment, counter-IED capability, and night operations.

But America’s biggest challenge was impacting the will of Pakistan’s security agencies. Efforts to bolster Pakistani security capabilities were significantly undermined by the political and security chaos in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, who had established a close relationship with Washington, resigned from the presidency on August 18, 2008, in the midst of impeachment proceedings. And a weak civilian government led by Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto, tried to pick up the pieces.

In the fall of 2008, the government of Pakistan shuffled its way to the brink with a severe balance-of- payments crisis. The new civilian government, reluctant to jeopardize its popularity, maintained price controls on food and fuel, financing the difference from the budget. Pakistan’s trade deficit widened alarmingly because of higher global oil prices. The capital market upheavals on Wall Street triggered a flight toward less risky assets, and Pakistani and foreign investors fled the rupee. In its 2008 Monetary Policy Statement, the State Bank of Pakistan noted that government borrowing from the central bank—which it had earlier described as having reached “alarming levels” during 2007 and 2008—was “unsustainable.” The State Bank also concluded that inflationary pressures were “alarming,” and inflation continued to be stoked by “aggregate demand pressures” and a “fall in the productive capacity of the economy.”³⁹

On September 9, Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps forces, supported by aerial bombing sorties, conducted operations in the Bajaur Agency and Swat district against several militant groups, including Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e- Shariat-e-Mohammadi. The effort was code-named Operation Sher Dil. They were met with staunch resistance from heavily armed militants reinforced by fighters who had come from Afghanistan. The conflict triggered significant population displacement within Pakistan, and some residents even fled to Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives provided humanitarian relief, delivering nonfood items and engaging in reconstruction once the fighting stopped. USAID was also involved in governance and development projects in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Bajaur. But as one senior State Department official remarked, “Pakistan has not employed a clear, hold, build counterinsurgency strategy,” making sustained reconstruction work virtually impossible.⁴⁰

On September 20, a truck bomb exploded outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing more than fifty people, including two Americans. It left a crater forty feet wide and twenty-five feet deep, mangling cars and charring trees in the blast zone. “All roads lead to FATA,” said Interior Minister Rehman Malik, explaining where the terrorists came from.⁴¹ The Marriott bombing damaged a nearby office building (the Evacuee Trust Complex, also known as Software Technology Park 2), which housed local offices of American and multinational information-technology companies, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Motorola, and Kestral (the local representative of Lockheed Martin).

Escalation Among “Allies”

American and Pakistani forces engaged in several firefights in 2008, escalating tensions along the border— often referred to as the “zero line” by U.S. military and CIA forces. During a June 10 firefight, U.S. forces killed about a dozen Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers who were targeting them. One villager from Suran Dara, a few hundred yards from the fighting on the Pakistan side, remarked: “When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans…. They were trying to help the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post.”⁴²

On July 29, NATO, Afghan, and Pakistani military commanders met at Nawa Pass in eastern Afghanistan to discuss cross-border issues. Afghanistan’s border police central-zone commander, Colonel Qadir-Gul, represented the Afghan side; Brigadier General Adamcyn Khan and Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed headed the Pakistani delegation. According to a senior NATO official involved in the meeting, “the Pakistanis wanted to recuperate their weapons and equipment,” which they claimed had been taken from their border posts during a firefight a few months earlier. During the fighting, the Frontier Corps had abandoned several positions along the border to insurgents, who then directed fire against Afghan forces. The Afghans counterattacked and seized the border posts, occupying the positions for seventy-two hours before Afghan and Pakistani commanders could negotiate their withdrawal. In a provocative move, Afghan troops then posed for the press with the captured equipment. But the July 29 meeting degenerated into finger-pointing. As the NATO official remarked, “sentiment on both sides of the Durand Line is coloring border units’ ability to cooperate. Afghan claims that Pakistani units are complicit in cross-border attacks and have undermined the two sides’ relationship.” Part of the problem was that Afghan and Pakistani officials disagreed about the exact location of the border. “The Durand Line underlies much of the argument; the two sides will not openly disagree about where territory lies, but appear to be under orders not to concede anything.”⁴³

A defining moment for U.S.-Pakistan relations came in late July 2008, following the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. U.S. intelligence assessments, which were based on intercepted communications, concluded that ISI agents were involved in planning the attack, which killed fifty-four people, including an Indian defense attache.⁴⁴ The attack destroyed the embassy’s protective blast walls and front gates and tore into civilians waiting outside for visas.

After being briefed on the situation by U.S. intelligence officials, President Bush lost his temper. He approved orders that allowed U.S. Special Operations Forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without the approval of Pakistan’s weak civilian government or the ISI. “We had no other option,” said a senior White House official I interviewed. “A range of high-value targets were operating at will in Pakistan, and conducting attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Security in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as at home in the United States, was in serious jeopardy.”⁴⁵

In early September, U.S. Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force, supported by AC-130 Spectre gunships, launched a ground assault from Afghanistan into South Waziristan against members of al Qa’ida and the Haqqani network. These and other cross-border U.S. attacks raised the ire of Pakistani officials. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, responded that the “right to conduct operations against the militants inside our own territory is solely the responsibility of the [Pakistani] armed forces.”⁴⁶ President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani supported Kayani’s statement, as did the Pakistani press. The English-language Daily Times front page ran side-by-side headlines: “Boots on Ground: Bush” and “No Way, Says Kayani.”

Between June 20 and July 20, 2008, there had been more than sixty insurgent attacks against Afghan or Coalition forces along the Paktika and Khowst border with North and South Waziristan. There were also twenty attacks along the Kunar and Nangarhar border with Pakistan’s Bajaur, Mohmand, and Khyber Agencies.⁴⁷ On September 25, U.S. OH-58 Kiowa helicopters flying near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border came under small-arms fire from a Pakistani military checkpoint near Tanai district in Khowst Province. A ground-based American patrol then returned fire with the checkpoint. What had begun in September 2001 as a U.S.-led war in Afghanistan had gradually transitioned into a regional struggle involving the United States and all major countries in the region. The Great Game was alive and well.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Back to the Future

JUST SOUTH OF KABUL, nestled on the western slope of the jagged Sher-i-Darwaza mountain, lies a series of serene walled gardens built in the mid-sixteenth century by the first Mughal emperor, Babur. Among the dozen or so gardens that he built around Kabul, this was his favorite, and he chose it as his final resting place. The layout is rectangular, with a system of pools, channels, and distinctive waterfalls. The main entrance to the gardens from the Sarak-e-Chilsitun road leads to a gentle climb up the mountainside that becomes noticeably steeper near the eastern cusp of the gardens. The gardens fell into disrepair during the decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century, and over the next several centuries they went through several cycles of decrepitude and