Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (93 page)

Tensions between the United States and Karzai were running particularly
high when I arrived on March 7, following the deaths the preceding week of nine young Afghan boys in an American air strike. I had a long private meeting with him late that first afternoon. I apologized profusely for the deaths of the boys and, as I had so often before, described for him the extraordinary measures we were taking to avoid civilian casualties. With regard to the security transition, I told him I shared his concerns about foreign governments and organizations operating independently of the Afghan government, creating parallel structures. I also recognized the intrusiveness of ISAF troops and operations on the daily lives of Afghans. The solution, I said, was for the Afghans gradually to assume leadership for security. While NATO would provide recommendations on which places were ready to transition, I said, Karzai should have the final approval authority.

I said the Afghan security forces were critical for transition. The United States had budgeted $12.8 billion to train, equip, and sustain those forces for the coming year, but how, I asked him, could that be sustained long term? Maybe over time Afghanistan could maintain a small regular army plus a large national-guard-type organization. I told Karzai I believed a long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan would be important for his country but also in the interest of regional stability. We did not want permanent bases, I made clear, but perhaps we could share some facilities with the Afghan security forces. He had spoken of a binding agreement between us, but I told him it had taken Congress five years just to ratify defense-technology-sharing agreements with the British and Australians. What we needed was a mutual commitment to an enduring U.S. presence.

Partnerships must be of mutual value to last, I said, raising the level of my intensity. He and I had been working together for more than four years, I said, and I had been his advocate and defender throughout. “I have listened to you” on civilian casualties, on more respect for Afghans, on respect for Afghan sovereignty, on private security contractors, and most recently, on the provincial reconstruction teams. “But my efforts are not helped when you blame us for all of Afghanistan’s problems. We are your ally and partner. We protect your government, and we saved your life. Your criticisms are making a long-term relationship more difficult to sustain in the United States and elsewhere.” Looking ahead, I said, we needed to work together on transition and the Kabul Bank. In February, Dexter Filkins had published a devastating exposé of the looting
of the bank in
The New York Times
. I told Karzai he could not ignore it or blame earlier audits or the United States or the international community. I told him that if he did not address the bank problem or continued to blame us, it would undermine efforts to agree on any strategic partnership. I said the bank issue provided “an opportunity for you to stand up for your people.” Not for the first time, I warned him that he had people around him who exploited his worries and concerns, who tried to get him angry and upset at us, and who propounded all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Karzai’s responses in the meeting and then at dinner led me to wonder if he listened to anyone
but
the conspiracy-minded. He said he had heard that the United States wanted to weaken Afghanistan, to create many small states in its place. U.S. efforts to build the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and to work with local leaders could “be very destabilizing,” he added. In the war on terror, he claimed, it was never clear whether the United States wanted Pakistan strong or weak. The Chinese view, he said, was that the United States wanted to strengthen Afghanistan against Pakistan and to use India against China. What is the “real” American agenda? he asked. He carried on at some length about the “radicalization” of the Pashtuns, wondering who was behind it. The Indians, he said, thought it might be the United States or the United Kingdom. To all this and more, knowing the futility—and risks—of challenging him in front of a roomful of people, I responded only that he “needed to get his relationship with the United States straight in the very near future.”

Before and after the Karzai meeting, I met at length with Petraeus, Rodriguez, the operational commander, and others to pose questions I felt would be at the heart of the White House discussions in the coming weeks. I asked about their expectations for the spring and summer campaigns, whether the Pakistanis were actually making a difference, and how we might discourage our allies from pulling out of Afghanistan prematurely.

The day after the Karzai encounter was an emotional one. I flew to Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan and visited the medevac unit there. Pilots, medics, and doctors described what they had been able to do with the additional assets we had provided them, the lives they had been able to save. Every day those crews put their lives on the line to save our troops; to say they are heroic doesn’t do them justice. Talking with them fueled my gratitude for what had been accomplished but reignited
my fury at those in the Pentagon who had fought the medevac initiative with such vigor.

I flew to Sangin in northern Helmand province, scene of some of the toughest fighting of the Afghan War. At Forward Operating Base Sabit Qadam, I met with Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Twenty-nine Marines had been killed and 175 wounded in five months clearing Sangin, the heaviest losses of any battalion in the entire war. Accompanying me was my new senior military assistant, Marine Lieutenant General John Kelly. Kelly’s son Robert had been one of those twenty-nine killed. Kelly met privately with the Marines of his son’s platoon, who gave him a picture of Robert taken a few hours before he was killed and signed by all the Marines in the platoon.

The commanders in Sangin expected a resurgence of violence during the summer. I told the press, “The Taliban will try to take back much of what they have lost, and that in many respects will be the acid test.” Rodriguez told reporters accompanying me, “We think they’ll be returning this spring to a significantly different environment than when they left last year.” I told the Marines at Sabit Qadam that they had written “in sweat and blood” a new chapter in the Marine Corps’ roll of honor. I added, “Every day I monitor how you are doing. And every day you return to your base without a loss, I say a little prayer. I say a prayer on the other days as well.”

During the worst of the battalion’s fight in Sangin, when they were taking such significant casualties, some in the Pentagon had suggested the unit be pulled out of the line. Commanders in the field strongly recommended against it, and I had deferred to their judgment. I thought to myself at Sabat Qadam that pulling them out would possibly have been one of my worst mistakes as secretary of defense. These Marines had been hit hard, very hard. But despite their terrible losses, they were very proud they had succeeded where so many others had failed. And justifiably so.

My last troop visit on the trip was to Combat Outpost Kowall, just north of Kandahar. The area had long been a Taliban stronghold. I walked a few hundred yards to a nearby village to meet with the elders and take a look at the Afghan Local Police unit there. The ALP, mentioned previously, was an initiative pushed by Petraeus that recruited men from local villages and trained them as a local security force to keep the Taliban away. There were farm animals around and, more significantly,
lots of children and women out and about, unique in my visits to rural Afghanistan. There were a number of troops lining the road about twenty-five yards apart, and again, for the first time in my experience, about half were Afghans. The village council greeted me, and I met with about twenty of the ALP. I was encouraged when told by the village council that the ALP had worked so well, other nearby villages were starting to participate.

After leaving Kowall, I told the press with me that I was very encouraged and felt that “the pieces were coming together.” “The closer you get to the fight, the better it looks.” I thought but didn’t say that I only wished some of the skeptics working in the White House and the NSS would get a little closer to the fight and be a little less reliant on Washington-based intelligence assessments and press reports.

After the killing of Bin Laden, there was a frenzy of commentary about whether that success would allow us to get out of Afghanistan faster, and if not, why not. There were several Principals Committee meetings on issues relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan in April, but the decisive discussion about how many troops to withdraw and at what pace was not to occur until June.

I made my twelfth and final visit to Afghanistan in early June. Support for the war was steadily dropping at home. On May 26, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had given a speech in which she said Americans had done our job to help the Afghans, and “it is time to come home.” That posture wasn’t new for her, but twenty-six Republicans joining most House Democrats in voting for an amendment calling for an exit strategy and accelerated withdrawal was. The measure failed by 215–204. One of my goals during this last trip was to make the case, through the press accompanying me, for a gradual drawdown of troops, so as to not jeopardize the troops’ hard-won gains. I warned Karzai how fragile support for the war was in Washington and mentioned his “constant criticism.”

The main purpose of the visit, though, was to say thanks and good-bye to the troops. I visited five different forward bases over two days, including spending the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, with units of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. I shook hands and had photos taken with some 2,500 soldiers and Marines. Choking back tears, at the end of each visit I said the same thing:

More than anybody except the president, I’m responsible for you being here. I’m the person who signed the deployment papers that got you here, and that weighs on me every day. I feel your hardship and your sacrifice and your burden, and that of your families, more than you can possibly know. You are, I believe, the best our country has to offer. My admiration and affection for you is limitless, and each of you will be in my thoughts and prayers every day for the rest of my life.

I participated in the first White House session on drawdowns by videoconference. It was very discouraging. Briefers talked about the weakness of the Afghan central government, the poor performance of the Karzai government, the dependence of the Afghan forces on ISAF, and the lack of progress on reconciliation. To my chagrin, both Panetta and Clapper said that another year or two of effort still would not lead to a satisfactory outcome. Petraeus was recommending that the final elements of the surge be withdrawn in December 2012. Biden said the president should withdraw 15,000 troops by the end of 2011 and the remaining 15,000 of the surge by April 2012 or July at the latest, before the next “fighting season.”

I responded on the video screen by asking whether the strategy was to get out of Afghanistan at all costs or to achieve some level of success for the president and the country. I said the critics were too focused on Karzai and the central government, that the situation was far better than it had been a year earlier. The war was not open-ended, I said. The surge would end in 2012, and we faced a deadline of 2014.

Donilon was so concerned that Biden had convinced the president to withdraw the entire surge by April or July 2012 that he helped me get a private session with Obama a few days after my return from Afghanistan. I started with my bottom line: I recommended he announce a drawdown of 5,000 between July and December 2011 and the return of all surge troops by the end of summer 2012—late September. This would, I said, be consistent with his decision to surge for between eighteen and twenty-four months. I said the full surge had been in place only since late summer 2010—just nine months. I said the strategy was working and that you couldn’t generalize across the entire country. A quarter of the Afghan population was under Afghan security, and our troops had a much more positive view of the Afghan army than did intelligence assessments. Kabul was now safer than Baghdad, and the Afghans had primary
security responsibility there. Karzai was a challenge, I said, but we had a new start with Ryan Crocker as ambassador, and in any event, we had successfully managed around Karzai when necessary. The coalition was strong, our costs were declining sharply—from $40 billion in FY2012 to $25–$30 billion in FY2013. This most certainly was not an endless war. We needed to retain our confidence, act in a measured way. Afghanistan would be messy, just as Iraq still was, but the commanders in the field, many journalists, and NATO leaders believed we were achieving success. “The more time you spend in Afghanistan,” I told the president, “the closer to the front you get, the more optimistic people are.”

I then tackled Biden’s proposal to withdraw all surge forces by April 2012. I reminded Obama that the vice president had never accepted the 2009 decision, had never thought about the consequences if his approach failed. I said if Obama were to announce the withdrawal of all 30,000 surge troops by April, he would signal to the Afghans, the Taliban, the Pakistanis, the allies, and the world that the United States had concluded it could not be successful and was pulling the plug nine months into the surge. I continued that if he opted for April or even July, the entire force would be focused on withdrawing, on choosing which areas to leave exposed, on defense, and on meeting the deadline. The surge effort would largely be over before the first soldier came out. I reminded him that the logistics were complicated and that we would be looking at pulling 40,000 to 50,000 troops out of Iraq by December, another 15,000 from Afghanistan by then as well, and another 15,000 by April. I said I thought the troops would feel betrayed by such a decision: “After all their losses, they are convinced they are winning and thus would consider their sacrifices in vain.” Confidence and morale were high, I said, but a precipitous withdrawal of the surge troops would lead them to believe that their successes were neither understood nor appreciated. “I know you want to end this war,” I told him, “but how you end it is of critical importance. To pull the entire surge out before the end of summer would be a tragic mistake.”