My Share of the Task (46 page)

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I
had moved my flag to Iraq during the uprising in Fallujah in April 2004, but during these years I still devoted roughly a quarter of my energy and focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, as Iraq showed fragile indications of improvement during the summer of 2007, the bigger and more worrying war in Afghanistan increasingly drew my attention.

Until 2006, TF 714 had limited its role in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to pursuing Al Qaeda leaders. Given the reconstitution and growing strength of the Taliban, I directed our task force in Afghanistan, in careful coordination with the NATO military coalition—the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—to begin targeting Taliban leaders.

The initial routing of the Taliban in the fall of 2001 had not so much destroyed it as fragmented it. The less ideologically extreme members of the movement returned home to wait and see how the new government of Afghanistan would perform, while the hard-line factions melted into Pakistan. There, under the direction of Mullah Omar and others, they began to turn themselves from a dislocated government into a full-fledged insurgent movement.

That summer, one of our top targets was one such hard-line Taliban leader: a cruel, one-legged mullah named Dadullah Lang, or
Dadullah the Lame, who drove the movement's regeneration and lent it a particular bent. His life trajectory tracked the Taliban's own rebirth post–2001. Born in Uruzgan in 1966, as a teenager he joined the first generation of jihadists in the
anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s. When the communists were expelled, Dadullah returned to his studies in Pakistan but
quit school to join the gunslinging students across the border as they formed the Taliban movement in 1994.

During the Taliban's fight to retake the country in the 1990s, he
stepped on a mine near Herat and, as one of his Al Qaeda eulogizers put it, “his leg
preceded him to Paradise.” After Dadullah's men massacred hundreds of Shiite Afghan civilians in the Hazarajat,
Mullah Omar retired him. Indignant after being fired, Dadullah presented Omar with his AK-47 and prosthetic and declared, “If you no longer need me,
I no longer need them.” Omar would indeed need Dadullah again and dispatched him to the bitter fight against the
United Front in the north, where his name was cursed for
the atrocities he carried out.

As the Taliban regrouped after 2001, Dadullah helped make them into a twenty-first-century insurgency. Unlike their forebears who fought against the Soviets, the post-2001 incarnation of the Taliban
relied increasingly on suicide bombs. Arabs provided inspiration and some technical instruction on IEDs, based upon the success of the
bombs on the roads of Iraq. Men like Dadullah, who claimed tighter ties with Al Qaeda Arabs and other non-Taliban terrorist groups in Waziristan, often facilitated these exchanges. Dadullah, meanwhile, had a more direct role in the introduction of suicide bombing to the Afghan battlefield. Although some in the Quetta
shura
—the Taliban's leadership council—were queasy with the tactic, Dadullah pushed it enthusiastically.

To field the first tranche of “martyrs,” he skimmed from Pakistan's mental asylums and orphanages, strapped the parentless and infirm with suicide vests, and sent them across the border. The propaganda and mythology surrounding those attacks lured further recruits—madrassa students and refugees. In 2004, only six suicide bomb attacks occurred in Afghanistan. In 2006
there were 141. Dadullah developed a cultlike following through his regular media appearances, and his boasts of global aims and tight ties with Al Qaeda were often to the chagrin of Taliban leaders, who sought to maintain
distance from Al Qaeda. He granted regular interviews to Al Jazeera, while the Taliban media arm produced a steady stream of DVDs—hawked in Quetta and in Peshawar for
four dollars a disc—that showed Dadullah trekking
ridgelines and beheading “spies.”

By 2007, we were aware of Dadullah's periodic trips into Afghanistan, during which he dispensed funds and guidance and motivated Taliban forces. Like Zarqawi's, Dadullah's personal visits were a powerful leadership tool. But they also made the self-styled top Taliban field commander vulnerable to our forces.

Typically we would detect Dadullah's movements only after he was in Afghanistan, and then it was difficult to obtain pinpoint locations and react with forces fast enough to target him. However, partly by tracking his recently released brother, Mullah Shah Mansoor, we were able to learn about a forthcoming trip into Afghanistan before he traveled. We positioned collection and raid forces in advance.

On Saturday, May 12, 2007, Dadullah crossed the border, and we were able to track his movement to a compound in southern Helmand Province. There, in a raid that included air strikes and both ground- and helicopter-delivered forces, British commandos engaged in a four-hour fight in which we had indications Dadullah was killed. We tracked the enemy's movement, and in an operation the next evening, Dadullah's body was found, absent his prosthetic leg.

As when Zarqawi died, Dadullah's bosses possibly felt some
relief when he was disposed of. But his death nonetheless brought
eulogies from Al Qaeda bigwigs like Abu Yahya al-Libi and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The hunt for those top leaders had never ceased, even as Zarqawi and Iraq became a higher priority. Later that summer of 2007, our task force in Afghanistan began to collect intelligence that indicated bin Laden might be in or returning to the notorious mountain area of Tora Bora. Known to locals as Spin Ghar, it was famous as bin Laden's “mountain lair” and the location of the December 2001 battle in which the United States sought, and failed, to corner and capture him and his closest compatriots.

For the past six years, the hunt for bin Laden had included doggedly persistent efforts by a variety of individuals and agencies around the globe. I watched extraordinarily complex and clever technical initiatives employed to track devices, multidisciplinary analysis leveraged to predict and locate potential hiding spots, and daring human intelligence operations conducted to identify potential sources who might lead us, as Sheikh Rahman had with Zarqawi, to the elusive Al Qaeda leader. But his apparent discipline in avoiding phones and Internet and limiting personal interaction had left behind only theories to his whereabouts, and a mostly cold trail.

We were unable to verify the limited but tantalizing hints that bin Laden might appear at Tora Bora but also unwilling to ignore that there was to be a confirmed gathering of insurgents there. So I moved my headquarters temporarily to Afghanistan, and over a period of more than a month we refined our intelligence about the area, then conducted an operation—Valiant Pursuit—to search and clear known or likely insurgent pockets. The initial phases were intense as we focused an unprecedented array of ISR surveillance aircraft, manned and unmanned, over the area, with a particular focus on mapping every communication signal being transmitted. It provided a fascinating, if still inconclusive, picture of insurgent activity, and we subsequently conducted helicopter insertion of Rangers and SEALs on initial targets, some at extraordinarily high altitudes.

Bin Laden wasn't there, as I'd doubted he would be. But the operation worked to shut down insurgent sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, a critical goal in counterinsurgency. As was so often the case in this long war, however, the relationships we in TF 714 forged with Dave Rodriguez's paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division—then in charge of eastern Afghanistan—were invaluable. Rod was quickly accumulating more time in Afghanistan than any other general officer, and the importance of my friendship with him would be fully apparent to me only a year later.

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B
ack in Iraq, Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker worked hard to manage our relationship with Prime Minister Maliki. Although supportive of aggressive targeting of Sunni extremists, the Iraqi prime minister remained skittish about going after Shia. On several occasions Dave sent me to Baghdad to brief Maliki on TF 714's operations and to make our case for confronting the Shia groups.

Each occasion was almost exactly the same. Armed with a briefing book of PowerPoint slides summarizing recent operations, their effects, and the intelligence that underpinned our targeting, I'd pass through Iraqi security and sit in a large meeting room with chairs arranged in a rectangle along the walls. There was no main table, and when the prime minister arrived we sat side-by-side with a small table in front of us on which I laid the book.

Maliki was always cordial but not effusive and seemed to know little about my force. Sometimes Dave's trusted cultural adviser Sadi, and on occasion Ryan, sat in and interpreted. Each time I reminded Maliki who my force was and what we did, and then started with a summary of our operations against Sunni extremists. Maliki asked few questions but nodded energetically in agreement as he listened to my accounts of raids and the effects they had against AQI, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other insurgent groups. For that part of the brief I felt the glow of approval.

Then I'd flip to the section on Shia groups and he'd perceptibly stiffen, almost recoil. I'd review the operations, emphasizing the accuracy of our intelligence, and, seeking to convince him of the necessity of the effort, I'd review information we'd gotten from captured documents and interrogations. He remained civil, but it was a hard sell. He clearly understood and accepted the overall premise, but in many cases, we were targeting his constituents.

On Sunday, October 21, 2007, my aide Chris Fussell stopped by my office during the first part of the morning, while I was still in the gym, to get a jump on any pressing issues. The operations center was in its quiet lull, a few hours after dawn. As usual, Chris checked in with the daytime operations officer, who gave a rundown of the previous night's raids.

“And seventeen is just wrapping up an op,” he added, referring to TF 17.

“Long one, huh?” Chris asked, concerned. Something didn't seem right. We tried to avoid operating in daylight, when more civilians and traffic were out.

“Yeah, in Sadr City. No friendlies lost, but they think more than fifty fighters were killed,” the ops officer said.

Chris stared at him, stunned. “Wait. You're saying we just killed fifty people in Sadr City? In
daylight
?”

The operations officer nodded. Chris asked whether I had been notified. No, the operations officer said, looking quizzically back at Chris, “no friendly casualties.”

Chris took off for the gym and caught me as I was walking along the hot gravel back to my hooch. He told me quickly about the operation: a big gunfight in Sadr City, went into daytime, maybe fifty killed. I went straight to the SAR to get a better understanding of the situation.

As I sat in my gym shorts and shirt, the staff gathered as many details of the firefight as possible. For nearly three months, there had been a cease-fire in effect between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iraqi government and Coalition. As in this case, our only raids into Sadr City were against the Special Groups that shunned Sadr's agreement with the Maliki government and continued to attack both Iraqi and Coalition forces with devastating rockets. The operation in question had begun as a night raid to
target a Special Groups leader in charge of
kidnapping and death squads. But quickly, it had gone bad in the thicketlike backstreets of Sadr City.

While clearing the target building, the team came under fire from surrounding buildings, as fighters fired machine guns and rocket grenades at them. Helicopters came to their support, firing from the air. The team fought street to street in order to escape the slum, departing under gunfire and hitting
an IED as they withdrew. As I watched the recorded aerial surveillance of the fight, the violence and the rapidly gathering swarms of enemy fighters moving to the site reminded me of the Battle of Mogadishu, where in October 1993, special operations forces fought a desperate battle against Somali fighters who gathered like antibodies against an infection.

By the time this battle in Sadr City was over, our force reported that forty-nine fighters had been killed, but there were no known civilian casualties. Despite the immense violence, TF 17's assault force was able to withdraw.

Dave Petraeus called, and I closed the door to my office.

“Stan, this is bad. This could be really ugly,” Dave said. He was a masterfully cool commander, but as he spoke, his words carried an edge of worry.

“Sir, I understand,” I said.

“Stan,” he said, “Maliki called; he's really upset.” He paused. “He said the whole government may fall.”

“Sir, I understand,” I said. “It's over; there's nothing I can do about it now.”

After a couple of hours, our force made it back to its outstation. In the meantime, the insurgents had cranked into gear their propaganda machine, filming at the local hospital, igniting outrage and barraging the Iraqi government with complaints. Iraqis in the neighborhood reported that bullets from the helicopter had
killed teenagers and children, and the Iraqi government spokesman said that fifteen people, not fifty, had died, but that all fifteen were civilians. Dave was taking the heat from Maliki and would later meet with him to discuss the raid.

I understood how fragile a moment this was for the Coalition—and for Dave Petraeus in particular. A month earlier, he and Ryan Crocker had returned to Washington, D.C., for a highly scrutinized public update on the surge in front of Congress. He faced strong skepticism and outright hostility from many of the legislators. And yet he presented—most memorably, in a thirteen-slide PowerPoint presentation—evidence of a truly dramatic reduction in violence. He showed improvements on a number of key metrics. Civilian deaths, ethno-sectarian killing, and weekly attacks were down. American fatalities had spiked as more troops entered the war during the early summer, but now
fewer Americans were dying. In May, 126 Americans were killed; in October, that number was 38. It was far from clear that these trends were real and would continue, and the political reconciliation that the added security was meant to midwife was not yet moving. But it appeared for the first time that a spectacular turnaround of the war, under Dave's leadership, seemed within grasp.