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

the insurgents.”³ For many Americans, support for the war boiled down to a simple question: What are America’s strategic interests in Afghanistan?

Al Qa’ida and Russian Roulette

For some, Afghanistan has little strategic value for the United States. They contend that the objectives are skewed and the war is unwinnable. Instead of continuing a faltering counterinsurgency campaign, they believe the United States should withdraw most of its forces and shift to a counterterrorism strategy that targets al Qa’ida terrorists with Special Operations Forces and drones.

Steven Simon, for example, who served as senior director for transnational threats on the Clinton administration’s National Security Council, said that “Washington should concentrate on its already effective policy of eliminating al Qa’ida’s leadership with drone strikes” rather than target the Taliban, since “the moment to rescue the mission…has passed.”⁴ Simon continued that the core al Qa’ida threat to America resides in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.⁵ University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate, similarly wrote that the U.S. government should “accept defeat” and “withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.”⁶ In September 2009, U.S. State Department employee Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. Marine captain, resigned from his post as the senior civilian representative for the U.S. government in Zabol Province. In his letter of resignation, he warned that “we are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come.”⁷

These are serious arguments from thoughtful, experienced individuals. But they are ultimately misleading and unrealistic. First, they fail to grasp the close relationship between al Qa’ida and Afghan insurgent groups, which make the prospect of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan perilous for America’s national interest. It would mean playing Russian roulette with U.S. security. Take the Taliban. The al Qa’ida–Taliban relationship has deep historical roots going back to the personal links that Mullah Mohammad Omar developed with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. The relationship strengthened after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime, and senior al Qa’ida and Taliban officials regularly communicated and coordinated efforts to overthrow the Karzai government in Afghanistan.

In southern Afghanistan, there are pockets of al Qa’ida and other foreign fighters in Helmand and several neighboring provinces, such as Kandahar and Zabol. Taliban leaders, including Helmand shadow governor Mullah Naim Barech, offer protection to al Qa’ida and other foreign fighters. During a November 2009 trip to Helmand Province, U.S. and British forces detailed for me the networks of foreign fighters in such areas as Marjeh, which lies southwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Marjeh is a small agrarian community near the Helmand River that is a hotbed for the drug trade, and it has long been a strategic location for the Taliban. From Marjeh they are able to launch attacks on Lashkar Gah and the surrounding region. “The foreigners are involved in helping local fighters conduct suicide attacks and other improvised explosive devices,” said one U.S. Army major, who had led several operations in the Marjeh area. “Some also bring video cameras with them to take footage of insurgent operations and use it for propaganda.”⁸ In eastern Afghanistan, there are several small pockets of al Qa’ida and other foreign fighters in the area beginning around Khowst Province and reaching north to Kunar Province. In July 2008, at least one Arab was involved—and ultimately killed—in the insurgent attack on a U.S. vehicle patrol base in Wanat Village, Kunar Province. A U.S. Army After Action report on the attack described him as wearing “traditional Afghan clothing over a set of woodland camouflage military fatigues.”⁹

The Haqqani network has also developed close ties with al Qa’ida. Jalaluddin Haqqani, the organization’s founder, picked up on al Qa’ida themes in his propaganda, equating the United States with “Crusader” forces. “The financial expenses that the United States spends in Afghanistan as well as the killing of dozens of the U.S. forces at the hands of the mujahidin every day reflect the victory of the mujahidin and the defeat of the aggressive Crusader forces,” he wrote in Al-Samud, a monthly jihadist magazine.¹⁰ Jalaluddin even married an Arab woman as a symbol of his support. Jalaluddin’s son Sirajuddin, who was given the title “khalifa” as the leader of the Haqqani network, developed a close relationship with al Qa’ida leaders in Pakistan, who helped him orchestrate a range of audacious terrorist attacks in Afghanistan.¹¹ One of the most spectacular was the September 17, 2009, attack in Kabul, for which some al Qa’ida operatives from Peshawar helped build the IED that killed six Italian soldiers.¹²

Second, proponents of a withdrawal overstate the effectiveness of drone strikes using MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers. Drones can have a short-term impact, as they did in the 2008 and 2009 attacks on al Qa’ida operatives such as Abu Khabab al-Masri, a chemical and biological expert; Khalid Habib al-Masri, a commander in Afghanistan; and Abu Jihad al-Masri, an external operations planner. But drones don’t offer a long-term solution. One U.S. intelligence official told me, “They are lethal in targeting foreign fighters. But using them as a long-term strategy would be like playing whack-a-mole.”¹³

Finally, there remain small numbers of al Qa’ida operatives and other foreign fighters in Afghanistan, and the al Qa’ida fighters in Pakistan tend to be clustered along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Few actually recognize the border, and insurgents cross regularly with ease. Beginning in October 2009, the Pakistan army launched Operation Rah-e-Nijat against militants in South Waziristan, which triggered an exodus of foreign fighters across the border into Afghanistan. Indeed, Pakistani militants, including Wahad Shah, facilitated the movement of foreign fighters out of South Waziristan and into the Afghan province of Paktika. In addition, senior al Qa’ida leaders have repeatedly claimed the war in Afghanistan as their raison d’etre. “The mujahideen [in Afghanistan] are hopeful and high spirited,” remarked Abu al-Yazid, al Qa’ida’s chief of operations, in a 2008 interview with Pakistan’s GEO TV. “They are now expanding their areas of operations and carrying out actions in northern provinces too. And by the will of God, we will be able to wrestle Afghanistan free of foreign occupation very soon.”¹⁴

A related contention is that it is pointless to focus on Afghanistan because al Qa’ida can easily find other sanctuaries in Somalia, Yemen, or numerous other locations.¹⁵ Yet this argument fails to understand the origins and development of al Qa’ida in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have taken nearly three decades to hone. “It is simply not true that all potential al Qaeda sanctuaries are of the same importance, now or potentially,” wrote journalist Steve Coll, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ghost Wars, which documented the CIA’s activities in Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to September 11, 2001. “Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have a 30-year, unique history of trust and collaboration with the Pashtun Islamist networks located in North Waziristan, Bajaur, and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan.”¹⁶

It is important to recognize the link between al Qa’ida and Afghan insurgent groups. A policy focused on targeting al Qa’ida—and not the Taliban, Haqqani network, or other groups—would ignore one of the most egregious lessons from September 11, 2001: Taliban-controlled areas will likely be used as a sanctuary for al Qa’ida and other jihadist groups targeting the United States. These groups have close links with al Qa’ida, and there is no evidence—just wishful thinking—that senior Taliban or other leaders would break those links if they controlled more territory in Afghanistan, including Kabul itself. Taliban leaders permitted al Qa’ida and other militant groups to establish training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and a similar development would likely occur again because their relationship is even stronger today.

A Shadow Government

The al Qa’ida connection is significant because the Taliban and other groups continue to push into rural Pashtun areas and are desperately trying to get a permanent foothold in northern parts of the country. As I visited Pashtun villages in southern and eastern Afghanistan, I saw the Taliban strategy at the grassroots level.

At its core, their strategy is designed to co-opt or coerce local tribes and other communities at the village and district levels. The insurgency is organized along both vertical and horizontal lines. The inner shura, based out of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, exerts some authority over lower- level Taliban fighters inside southern Afghanistan through a series of subordinate shuras, shadow governors, and military commanders. Some of the most influential figures include Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, his principal deputy Abdul Ghani Berader, and military commander Abdul Qayum Zakir. Berader is particularly important because he tends to run most of the shuras involving senior Taliban commanders. “Omar is reclusive and unpolished,” one Taliban leader told me, “and has preferred to confide in a small number of trusted advisors rather than address larger groups.”¹⁷ The two are close, however, and Omar is apparently married to Berader’s sister. Berader, whose name means “brother” in Pashto (making it a nom de guerre), is a devout Muslim from the Popalzai tribe, the same tribe as President Hamid Karzai. His body has paid the price of years of jihad: he has a scar on his shoulder from a bullet wound and a scar on his leg from shrapnel. Like many senior Taliban leaders, Berader lives in Baluchistan Province, Pakistan, where he cannot be reached by U.S. operations and can coordinate with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and