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

and a central government. When rebellions occurred, as they sometimes did, the government could temporarily move into rural areas and crush them. The Soviet-backed regimes never learned the Musahiban secret, and they tried to establish order entirely from the top down. The United States and much of the international community made a similar mistake beginning in 2001, conceiving of success as emanating only from a powerful central government. But this reflects a quintessentially Western understanding of the nation-state. “I’m afraid we are still looking for the solution only in Kabul,” a senior U.S. government official recently told me. “It is a false hope.”³⁰

After the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the United States and its allies began building an Afghan national army and police force. They also supported presidential elections in 2004, parliamentary elections in 2005, and presidential elections in 2009. The 2009 elections were marred by substantial fraud in which nearly one million votes for President Karzai and another one hundred thousand for Abdullah Abdullah were thrown out. But there were no systematic efforts to engage tribes, sub-tribes, clans, and other local institutions as the Taliban were doing.

Community Defense

The United States must beat the Taliban at the local level. Tribal, religious, and other local leaders in Afghanistan best understand their community needs, but they are often under-resourced or intimidated by the Taliban and other insurgents. Yet some Afghan officials still cling to a solution that involves only the central government. “Effective development and governance cannot happen apart from credible security,” wrote Mohammad Ehsan Zia, Afghanistan’s Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development. “Security is the precursor to the government’s ability to deliver essential services, which ultimately leads to winning the trust of the population…. Afghans need a viable national police force in which the legitimate use of force is firmly, and solely, in the hands of the government.”³¹ But many others disagreed, including the head of Afghan police. “We need to subcontract security in some areas to local villagers,” Minister of Interior Mohammad Hanif Atmar told me. “And then let Afghan and coalition forces target insurgents in between.”³²

A review of local security forces in Afghanistan provides several important lessons. The first is that community defense forces need to be tied to legitimate local institutions, especially village-level shuras, which include tribal, religious, and other leaders. This means empowering legitimate institutions that have historically contributed to local security and the rule of law. It also means preventing local forces from becoming hijacked by warlords. The last three decades of warfare in Afghanistan have been littered with efforts to establish forces under the control of warlords, whose fighters are loyal to them and not to local communities. Another lesson is that local forces need to be small, defensive, and geared toward protecting local villages. In some areas of eastern Afghanistan, Zahir Shah even provided land to communities that established arbakai.

A final lesson is that the Afghan government needs to manage the process. The objective should be to help tribes, sub-tribes, and communities provide security and justice. When tribes rebel against the government or fight each other, government and coalition security forces can mediate the disputes or disrupt uprisings. Ultimately, a successful Afghan strategy will require building more competent Afghan army and police forces that can provide order in urban areas and along key roads, as well as finding ways to reintegrate insurgents into Afghan society. But it will also require effectively building and managing community defense forces in rural Afghanistan.

In some areas, local tribes and villages have already tried to resist the Taliban but have been heavily outmatched. They should be carefully supported, especially when it comes to security and providing justice for grievances. In areas of eastern Afghanistan, such as Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, some tribes have lost faith in local police forces that they perceive as corrupt and incompetent. In such northern provinces as Kunduz and Baghlan, locals have created forces because they fear a spreading Taliban insurgency and seek additional protection. “I haven’t seen the potential for such a backlash against the Taliban since 2001, when they were overthrown,” one U.S. government official told me recently on a visit to southern Afghanistan. “But we need to monitor this carefully and properly to have a chance of turning this war.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MANY BOOKS ORIGINATE with an epiphany, that illuminating moment when an idea first strikes the writer like a bolt of lightning. Mine came in a rather unkempt setting. I had lunch in January 2007 with Bruce Hoffman, a colleague and friend, at The Tombs, a drab, windowless pub in Washington, DC. I had been thinking about writing a book but had made little progress in narrowing down a rather inchoate set of ideas. Bruce convinced me that my repeated trips to Afghanistan put me in an enviable position to write about Afghanistan and its recent history. A great deal of ink had been spilled about Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion. But Afghanistan, the initial front in America’s global war on terror, had been pushed to the backburner. It was sage advice.

Writing any book is a struggle, what John Mearsheimer, my graduate school adviser, likened to getting up every day and wrestling with a bear. This book was no different. But the process was facilitated by the kindness and help of countless individuals. Several read drafts of the manuscript and provided excellent comments, including Peter Bergen, Daniel Byman, James Dobbins, Bruce Hoffman, Arturo Munoz, Ronald Neumann, David Phillips, and Obaid Younossi. Several others served as explicit or implicit tutors on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and their respective histories, especially Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid. Still others were helpful in broader discussions on counterinsurgency, including Austin Long, Christine Fair, Steve Hosmer, William Rosenau, and John Gordon. And Peter Crowley educated me on the finer points of Alexander the Great’s incursion into Afghanistan.

Several key people served behind the scenes but had extraordinary input in the book. One of the most significant was Tom Mayer, my editor, who put the manuscript through a grist mill and turned the research and ideas into something digestible. My agent, Eric Lupfer, was patient, tirelessly helpful, and excited from the beginning about the book. Kathleen Brandes copyedited the book from her perch in Spruce Head, Maine, not far from my undergraduate alma mater. Don Rifkin and Devon Zahn gave the book careful attention and should be applauded for getting this complicated project done under tight deadlines. My assistants, Nathan Chandler and Joya Laha, were extraordinarily helpful throughout the research, writing, and editing phases.

The book would not have been possible without the ability to interview a range of policymakers, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Comptroller and Under Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin, CIA Station Chief in Islamabad Robert Grenier, CIA Station Chief in Afghanistan Graham Fuller, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Lieutenant General David Barno, and countless others. I also owe a debt of gratitude to those Afghanistan officials that I interviewed—such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, Minister of Interior Ali Jalali, and Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad—who worked tirelessly for their country during such trying times.

One of the most fruitful parts of the book was presenting drafts and ideas to a range of academic and U.S. government audiences, as well as those from foreign countries and international organizations. Within the United States, I gave presentations to audiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, New York University, Heritage Foundation, Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, RAND Corporation, and George Washington University. Students in my summer 2008 Georgetown University course on counterinsurgency were particularly helpful in pointing out problems with the manuscript.

I would also like to thank those individuals who gave me their precious time and energy from the U.S. Department of Defense, State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, White House, and U.S. intelligence community. Others from Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, United Nations, European Union, and NATO were also generous with their time and knowledge. Many requested that I not thank them by name, so they remain anonymous.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My parents (Alec and Sethaly) and three brothers (Alex, Josh, and Clark) have been supportive during the writing process and jumped to my wife’s defense whenever I had to travel to Afghanistan or other war-torn places. I owe a particularly heartfelt debt of gratitude to my wife, Suzanne, and daughters, Elizabeth and Alexandra. They have been my daily solace and joy, and I dedicate this book to them.