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

of nongovernmental organizations.

The book includes information from original interviews with key U.S. policymakers, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, CIA Station Chief in Islamabad Robert Grenier, 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. It also includes original interviews with key Afghanistan policymakers, such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, Minister of Interior Ali Jalali, and Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad.

In addition to interviews, I compiled and reviewed thousands of government documents from the United States, Afghanistan, and Coalition countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as transcripts and videos from the Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami, al Qa’ida, and other insurgent groups. I was fortunate to have access to a trove of documents that have not yet been published, such as the Afghan National Directorate of Security’s Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan, the Afghanistan National Security Council’s National Threat Assessment from various years, and the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense’s The National Military Strategy. ³⁰ The book also includes recently released declassified material from the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department, Soviet Politburo, and other sources about Afghanistan’s descent into war from the 1970s through 2001. The use of such material helps capture more accurately the course of events—and their causes—over the past several decades.

A Road Map

This book proceeds somewhat chronologically. It follows the gradual collapse of governance in the late 1960s and 1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion of 1979, which led a band of Americans such as U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson to increase U.S. assistance to the Afghan mujahideen as they drove the Red Army out of the country. In June 1993, CIA Director James Woolsey told a small gathering at CIA headquarters that honored Charlie Wilson, “The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history.”³¹ This book continues with an examination of CIA and other U.S. government assessments of the bloody Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, the rise of the Taliban regime in the late 1990s, and the Taliban’s fateful alliance with Osama bin Laden and al Qa’ida.

With the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the story transitions to the overthrow of the Taliban regime that year by an eclectic mixture of Northern Alliance forces, CIA operatives, U.S. Special Forces, and staggering U.S. airpower. It follows the discussions in the U.S. government about establishing a “light footprint” in Afghanistan, as Pentagon, State Department, CIA, and White House officials debated whether or not to engage in nation-building. It also tracks the exodus of Taliban and al Qa’ida fighters into neighboring Pakistan, and the establishment of a sanctuary for many of these fighters in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and North West Frontier Province.

The book then moves to the rise of Afghanistan’s insurgency and the collapse of Afghan governance. It outlines Afghan difficulties in establishing law and order in rural areas as well as challenges in delivering essential services to the local populations. Weak governance, it turns out, has been a critical factor in the rise of most insurgencies over the past fifty years. The next chapters explore the proliferation of violence beginning in 2006, catalyzed by what Lieutenant General Eikenberry referred to as a “perfect storm” of crises. The book also explores the role of outside actors in aiding insurgent groups, including al Qa’ida and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and Frontier Corps.

To better appreciate Afghanistan’s complex history, which has seen the ruthless destruction of foreign armies, our story begins with Alexander the Great’s audacious sojourn into Afghanistan—one of the most notable failed attempts to conquer the region. What becomes eerily apparent, however, is how quickly the United States ran into challenges similar to those faced by past empires. “Ambushes, assassinations, attacks on supply convoys, bridges, pipelines, and airfields, with the avoidance of set piece battles; these are history’s proven techniques for the guerrilla,” wrote Mohammad Yousaf, who ran Pakistan’s ISI operations in Afghanistan during the Soviet War.³² Indeed, Afghanistan’s rich history serves as a springboard for understanding the American experience in a country that since antiquity has been called a graveyard of empires.

IN THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES

FIGURE 1.1 Map of Afghanistan

CHAPTER ONE Descent into Violence

AFGHANISTAN’S STRATEGIC LOCATION, wedged between Persia, the weathered steppes of Central Asia, and the trade routes of the Indian Subcontinent, has long made it alluring to great powers. When Alexander the Great began his march into Afghanistan around 330 BC, locals witnessed a forbidding sight. Riding ahead of the invading force were scouts armed with sarisas—pikes up to twenty feet long, weighted at the base and projecting fifteen feet in front of the mounted cavalry. Agile soldiers armed with javelins surveyed the heights on both flanks. The core of Alexander’s army was a thick column of horsemen and foot soldiers that snaked along Afghanistan’s windswept roads. Some soldiers wore plumed helmets, purple tunics, and glistening armor. Alexander had begun his Asia campaign four years earlier, and the invasion of Afghanistan was a key part of his quest. His army had already swept through what is now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran before arriving at the edge of Afghanistan.¹

One of the most interesting accounts of the campaign was provided by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus. He described Alexander gathering his soldiers together before their march into Afghanistan and addressing them with bravado:

In a new, and if we wish to confess the truth, insecure empire, to whose yoke the barbarians still submit with obdurate necks, there is need of time, my soldiers, until they are trained to milder dispositions, and until better habits appease their savage temper. Do you believe that so many nations accustomed to the rule and name of another, united with us neither by religion, nor customs, nor community of language, have been subdued in the same battle in which they were overcome?

It is by your arms alone that they are restrained, not by their dispositions, and those who fear us when we are present, in our absence will be enemies. We are dealing with savage beasts, which lapse of time only can tame, when they are caught and caged, because their own nature cannot tame them. Then you will hurry to recover what is yours, then you will take up arms. But how much better it is to crush him while he is still in fear and almost beside himself.²

Rufus wrote that the address was received with great enthusiasm by Alexander’s soldiers.³ The great Hellenic army entered Afghanistan from what is today Iran. They paused to found a garrison city, Alexandria-in-Areia, near Afghanistan’s western city of Herat, then marched south to the lower Helmand River Valley. The Helmand River, the longest in Afghanistan, stretches more than 700 miles from the Hindu Kush mountains in the north to the Helmand Valley in the south. Its waters, used by local farmers for irrigating crops, left behind rich soil to feed the orchards and date-palm groves that lined its banks. In this period, the valley was fertile and well populated, and Alexander’s army halted there to await the end of Afghanistan’s bitter winter before proceeding north. In the early spring, the army marched to the Kabul Valley, trekking across melting snow and ice, but the persistent, biting cold took its toll.

Rufus wrote: “The army, then, abandoned in this absence of all human civilization, endured all the evils that