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

execute its foreign policy in neighboring countries. Pakistan and India follow the political truism outlined by George Kennan, the father of America’s containment strategy against the Soviet Union, and academics such as Hans Morgenthau of the University of Chicago. In simple terms, states balance against more powerful ones. As the German-born Morgenthau wrote, the balance of power is a “natural and inevitable outgrowth of the struggle for power” that is “as old as political history itself.”¹² Security competition between India and Pakistan, which has triggered several wars and countless skirmishes, creates the impetus for each to check the power of the other. And Afghanistan has served as a key battleground state, much as Poland did for European powers in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries—a country that historian Norman Davies referred to as “God’s playground.”¹³

After September 11, 2001, senior U.S. policymakers—such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin—presented then- President Pervez Musharraf with a stark choice: Support the United States or militant groups. There was no middle ground. This choice put Musharraf in a difficult position, since it meant overthrowing the very Taliban government that Pakistan had painstakingly supported for nearly a decade. But the combination of blunt threats and promises of economic assistance altered Musharraf’s cost-benefit calculation. By 2002, however, the United States quickly lost interest in the Taliban, who fled to Pakistan, deferring to Islamabad. Instead, the United States fixated first on al Qa’ida in Pakistan and then on prosecuting the war in Iraq. Ironically, the United States continued to give substantial amounts of assistance to Pakistan, even as individuals in the ISI, the Frontier Corps, and other organizations provided support to militant groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani network, who were attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has historically used militant groups operating in Kashmir, India, and Afghanistan to pursue its interests. It has legitimate security interests in its region, and its key neighbors—India and Afghanistan—have frequently shown resolute disinterest in accommodating Pakistan’s security concerns. Until the appointment of U.S. regional envoy Richard Holbrooke in 2009, the United States demonstrated little inclination to promote regional solutions that would help resolve Pakistan’s territorial tensions with its neighbors. This was unfortunate, since Musharraf had agreed to cooperate with the United States because he believed America would help protect its regional interests. After joining hands with Washington, most of Pakistan’s key security challenges worsened rather than improved, long after Musharraf left office.

Pakistan’s security interests, however, do not justify the use of militant proxies. It is imperative that the United States persuade Pakistani military and civilian leaders to conduct a sustained campaign against militants mounting attacks in Afghanistan and the region (including India), plotting attacks in the United States and European capitals, and, most important, threatening the foundation of the nuclear-armed Pakistani state. This requires that Washington identify pressure points that raise the costs of stalling. Perhaps the most significant is tying current assistance to cooperation. Since the United States annually gives Pakistan more than $ I billion in military and economic assistance, it could link assistance to achieving specific benchmarks in targeting key groups such as Mullah Omar’s Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al Qa’ida.

In addition, Washington needs to make a concerted effort to engage both Pakistan and India, which have competing interests in Afghanistan. Transforming regional security perceptions among the Afghans, Pakistanis, and Indians has always been a monumental challenge, especially in light of such events as the November 2008 terrorist attacks in India’s financial hub, Mumbai, which were perpetrated by militants operating from Pakistani soil and tied to the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba. But regional cooperation constitutes the only way to stabilize and secure Afghanistan so that it does not again become a terrorist sanctuary. Otherwise, the Afghan population will continue to pay a heavy price for the conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad, on the one hand, and Kabul and Islamabad, on the other.

Paradise on Earth?

In Babur’s gardens, the inscription on his tomb serves as a source of inspiration for those who pay tribute: “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!” Afghanistan can be deceptive. It has a beautiful, dramatic landscape with villages and district centers that look much as they did hundreds of years ago, untouched by modern technology. But the country has also been a quagmire for invading armies, which have torn the country apart even as they wasted themselves in the high mountain sands.

On the outskirts of Kabul, in an area called Asmai Heights, lies the Kabre Ghora graveyard, which was established by British forces during the second Anglo-Afghan War. The name is taken from the term used by Afghans to describe British soldiers (ghora), and the cemetery is believed to contain the graves of 158 British soldiers, diplomats, and their families who died in the city during the occupations of 1839— 1842 and 1879—1880. The original British gravestones have mostly disappeared, leaving only the remnants of ten grave markers, now relocated against the southern wall of the cemetery. But a new memorial has been erected and new names have been added, honoring soldiers from the United States, Canada, and Europe who have died here from 2001 to the present day.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Afghanistan is its continuity. The NATO memorial may be brand new, but soon it will feel as ancient and totemic as the British graveyard, another artifact from empires past. Like the gardens of Babur, Afghans have shown an uncanny ability to regenerate. Time has a rather curious way of slowing down here. “You have the watches,” one Taliban detainee told his American interrogators, “but we have the time.”¹⁴ Most Afghans have never asked for much. They have longed for security and hope, and perhaps something to make their difficult lives more bearable. After decades of constant war, they deserve it.

AFTERWORD

THE GREAT CHALLENGE of writing about any ongoing conflict is knowing when to “end” the story. While I was living in Kabul in 2009, there appeared to be no end to the insurgency—at least on the surface. Many Afghans remained defiant of the Taliban, but insurgents continued to pull off lethal attacks against international forces and Afghans. Not far from my office, the Haqqani network blew up a two-vehicle Italian military convoy traveling from Kabul International Airport in September. The suicide bomber pulled out of a side street in an SUV, maneuvered between the two vehicles, and detonated. The blast was deafening. The explosive weight of the main charge was between 600 and 800 pounds, and left a huge crater in the middle of the road. The force of the blast threw the front Italian vehicle thirty-five meters to a dirt patch on the shoulder and peeled the roof off the passenger compartment. As with many suicide attacks in Afghanistan, it was innocent Afghans who took the most casualties. Sixteen civilians were killed and another sixty were wounded, in addition to the six Italian soldiers and four Afghan police officers who were killed.

“It was a mess,” said one U.S. army soldier who had been standing near the blast zone. “Shrapnel was coming down like rain. And car fragments, dirt, rocks, and chunks of nearby trees came hurtling at us.”¹

But there were bright spots. I noticed grassroots initiatives sprouting across Afghanistan in which local tribes and communities began to resist the Taliban and other insurgents. They ranged from Noorzais, Barakzais, and Alikozais in the west and south to Shinwaris, Kharotis, Mangals, and Jajis in the east. Even in such northern provinces as Konduz, there were ongoing local efforts by Tajiks, Uzbeks, and even Pashtuns to fight the Taliban. In October 2009 in Herat Province, Afghan army commandos and U.S. Special Operations Forces killed Ghulam Yahya Akbari, a senior insurgent leader who had just tried (and failed) to assassinate Afghan Minister of Water and Energy Ismail Khan. Akbari was colloquially referred to as the “scourge of Herat” because he had committed so many kidnappings and assassinations. Seventeen of his close associates were also killed during the air assault as AH-64 Apache attack helicopters closed in on them after they scrambled away from a camp of nomadic Kuchi herdsman with whom they had been hiding. The most startling outcome of Akbari’s assassination, however, was that seventy insurgents loyal to him turned themselves in to U.S. Special Operations Forces and the Afghans, vowing to support the government.

The Obama administration, which had come to office pledging to reverse course in Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban and al Qa’ida, still found itself in a predicament. “This is not quite where we expected to be,” one White House official told me somewhat wryly.² U.S. General Stanley McChrystal’s summer 2009 assessment of Afghanistan said, “we face not only a resilient and growing insurgency; there is also a crisis of confidence among Afghans—in both their government and the international community—that undermines our credibility and emboldens