The Longest War (74 page)

169
AQI was well financed
: Ayman al-Zawahiri, letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, July 9, 2005.
www.rjchq.org/media/pdf/zawahiriletter.pdf
.

169
recorded income of $386,000
: West Point, Combating Terrorism Center.
Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qaida’s Road in and out of Iraq
, ed. Brian Fish-man.
http://ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/
CTCForeignFighter.19.Dec07.pdf
.

169
double suicide attacks
: Edward Wong, “Mosque attacks kill 70 in Iraq; hotel is hit too,”
New York Times
, November 19, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/
international/19iraq.html
.

169
Diyala
: Martin Chulov, “Violent province’s 27 female suicide bombers who set out to destroy Iraqi hopes of peace,”
The Guardian
, November 12, 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/12/
iraq-gender-suicide-bombers-diyala
.

169
husband-wife suicide teams
: BBC News, “Journey of a Belgian female ‘bomber.’” December 2, 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/
4491334.stm
; baker’s assistant: Anthony Browne and Rory Watson, “The girl who went from baker’s assistant to Baghdad bomber,”
Times of London
, December 2, 2005.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/
iraq/article744833.ece
; “walked into a wedding reception”: “Jordan failed bomber confesses on TV,” CNN.com, November 14, 2005.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/13/
jordan.blasts/index.html
. Full confession available from
The Independent
, “Words of a would-be killer,” November 14, 2005.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/
world/middle-east/sajidamubarak-
atrous-alrishawi-words-of-a-
wouldbe-killer-515256.html
.

169
Al-Qaeda also deployed children
: Ben Morgan, “Iraq story: meeting the suicide bomber child.” Agence France Press blog, September 4, 2008.
http://blogs.afp.com/?post/2008/09/04/Puzzling-over
-the-motives-of-a-suicide
-bomb-child
.

170
mentally unstable
: David Leppard and Abul Taher, “MI5 fears jihadis will use mentally ill as suicide bombers,”
The Times (London)
, May 25, 2008.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
uk/article3999058.ece
; killed around 100: “U.S. raids Iraqi psychiatric hospital over attacks,” Reuters, February 10, 2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/
idusL10400113
.

170
the use of chlorine in bombs
: BBC News, “‘Chlorine bomb’ hits Iraq village.” May 16, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/
6660585.stm
. See also chapter 13 of this book for a more detailed account of the chlorine attacks.

170
responded to an IED
: Clarence Williams, “Life of normalcy rests in his palm,”
Washington Post
, November 28, 2005; Katherine Heerbrandt, “Soldier’s wife comforts wounded,” Gazette.net, October 13, 2005.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/101305/
frednew192331_31892.shtml
and Brian Doyne, interview by author, Virginia 2007.

170
wrapped in a steel case
: Discovery Channel, “Mission Ops: Assignment IEDs.” Originally aired May 15, 2007. Directed by Carsten Oblaender and author interview with Sidney Alford, Somerset, England, September 5, 2007.

170
3 percent
: Robert Bryce, “Man vs. Mine,”
The Atlantic
, January/February 2006.
http://www.theatlantic.com/
doc/200601/explosives
; “one in ten”: Rick Atkinson, “The IED problem is getting out of control. We’ve got to stop the bleeding,”
Washington Post
, September 30, 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/tent/article/
2007/09/29/AR2007092900751.html
.

171
“an integral part”
: United States Marines. State of the Insurgency in al-Anbar. August 17, 2006.
http://media.washingtonpost.com
/wp-srv/nation/documents/marines_
iraq_document_020707.pdf
.

171
millions of dollars
: John Burns and Kirk Semple, “U.S. finds Iraq insurgency has funds to sustain itself,”
New York Times
, November 26, 2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/
world/middleeast/26insurgency.html?
pagewanted=print
.

171
“I wouldn’t say”
: John Negroponte. United States Senate. 2007, January 11. Select Committee on Intelligence.
Current and projected national security threats
. 110th
Congress, 1st session. increased sevenfold: Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Iraq Effect,”
Mother Jones
, March 1, 2007.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/
featurex/2007/03/iraq_
effect_1.html
.

172
undermined America’s place in the world
: Pew Global Attitudes Project, “A Year After Iraq War,” March 16, 2004.
http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/
206.pdf.p._1
; “Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Views of a Changing World 2003: War with Iraq further divides global publics,” June 3, 2003.
http://pewglobal.org/reports/
pdf/185.pdf
.

172
On May 1, 2003
: George W. Bush, Aboard the USS
Abraham Lincoln
, May 1, 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/U.S./05/01/
bush.transcript/
.

172
was not the case
: See the January 2003 paper by the CIA that is referenced in chapter 9, and is described in George Tenet’s autobiography,
At the Center of the Storm
, on page 358.

174
“It is very important”
: Paul Wolfowitz, Department of Defense News Briefing, December 10, 2001.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.
aspx?transcriptid=2628
.

175
back into the Middle Ages
: Author observations and interviews, Kabul, Afghanistan, December 1999.

175
The moneychangers down by the Kabul River
: These impressions are based on my visits to Kabul in 1999 and 2002.

175
almost two million Afghans came home
: United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Operational Information—Monthly Summary Report, July 2008, p. ii.
http://www.aims.org.af/services/sectoral/emergency_
assistance/refugee/unhcr_summaries/jul_08/summary1.pdf
.

175
firmly in the grip of the United States
: Author observations in Kandahar in 2004.

175
forty-eight U.S. servicemen being killed
: CNN.com, Enduring Freedom Casualties—Special Reports, 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/
oef.casualties/2003.12.html
; “disarming almost all”: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Afghanistan: Where Rule by the Gun Continues,” IRIN News, May 2006.
http://www.irinnews.org/InDepthMain.aspx?InDepthId=8&ReportId=34289&Country=Yes
. On this point also see page 297 of “A Different Kind of War,” The U.S. Army’s official history of the war in Afghanistan from October 2001 to September 2005.

176
consolation prize
: Amin Tarzi, “Karzai turns warlord into potential ally,”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
, January 19, 2005.
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1056955.html
.

176
fancy title but no real power
: CanWest News Service, “Former Afghan warlord says he can defeat the Taliban,” May 10, 2007.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/
story.html?id=1acb5330-dfe8-4f0e-8a1b-
4f581478244f&k=44800&p=1
.

176
dropped Mohammad Fahim
: Carlotta Gall, “Defense chief backs Karzai’s rival,”
New York Times
, August 5, 2004.

176
“warlord-led militias,”
The Economist
, January 1, 2005.

176
Ten million Afghans registered
: BBC News, “Afghanistan’s election challenge,” September 6, 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3631920.stm
.

176
turnout was heavy
: Author observations in Gardez on the day of the election, October 9, 2004.

176
Eight million Afghans voted
: Kenneth Katzman, “Afghanistan: Elections, Constitution, and Government,” Congressional Research Service, August 8, 2006.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/
organization/71864.pdf
.

176
70 percent
: Carlotta Gall and Stephen Farrell, “Afghan election called a success
despite attacks,”
New York Times
, August 20, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/
world/asia/21afghan.html
; “since 1900”: Peter F. Nardulli, Jon K. Dalager and Donald E. Greco, “Voter Turnout in U.S. Presidential Elections: An Historical View and Some Speculation,”
Political Science and Politics
, September 1996.

176
Eighty-three percent
: “Afghans’ criticism of U.S. efforts rises; in the southwest, Taliban support grows,” BBC/ABC News Poll, December 3, 2007; “less than one in five Iraqis”: “Poll finds broad optimism in Iraq, but also deep divisions among groups,” ABC News poll, December 12, 2005.

177
There were many grim statistics
: World Health Organization, Afghanistan and Iran, 2006.
http://www.who.int/countries/afg/en/
and
http://www.who.int/coun tries/irn/en/
.

177
ubiquitous street kids
: Author interview with Muzghan and her family, Kabul, Afghanistan September 2006.

178
“Me no speak English”
: Author reporting, Kabul Afghanistan, September 2006. Peter Bergen, “Waltzing with warlords,”
Nation
, January 1, 2007.

179
shot the guards
: Nick Meo, “Foreigners in Afghanistan now key targets for Tale-ban’s suicide bombers,”
The Times (London)
, January 16, 2008 and author observations over the course of multiple trips to Afghanistan after 9/11.

179
Graeme Smith
: Graeme Smith, “Talking to the Taliban,”
Globe and Mail
, 2008.
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/talkingtothetaliban/
. Pashtun Ghilzai tribes played a prominent role in the leadership of the Taliban, in particular Mullah Omar’s Hotaki sub-branch of the Ghilzai. This was an undervalued point in helping to understand the Taliban insurgency, which could, at least in part, be understood as a movement of Ghilzai Pashtuns, rural tribes long on the outs in Afghanistan, fighting for power against the Durrani Pashtuns who have traditionally ruled the country since the mid-18th century. See Thomas Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and insurgency in Afghanistan,”
Foreign Policy Research Institute
, winter 2007. A survey commissioned by the British government of some two hundred members of the Taliban and others who supported them found a range of reasons for joining or supporting the insurgency, including the perception that the central government was corrupt, the failure of the state to provide security and justice, and the behavior of foreign forces, particularly house searches at night. Sarah Ladbury, “Testing hypotheses of radicalization in Afghanistan: why do men join the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami? How much do local communities support them?” Department of International Development, August 14, 2009.

179
The Taliban also benefited
: Michael R. Gordon, “Bush would stop U.S. peacekeeping in Balkan fights,”
New York Times
, October 21, 2000; “a disagreement”: George W. Bush, Boston, Massachusetts, October 4, 2000; “not our key strategic goal”: Memo from Douglas J. Feith to Donald Rumsfeld, October 11, 2001. Originally from
www.dougfeith.com
. It was removed from the site at some point in 2009.

180
“We don’t want to repeat the Soviets’ mistakes”
: Franks op. cit., p. 324.

180
Marshall Plan to Afghanistan
: George W. Bush, Lexington, VA, April 17, 2002,
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/
2002/04/20020417-1.html
and David Rohde and David Sanger, “How a ‘good war’ in Afghanistan went bad,”
New York Times
, August 12, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/
asia/12afghan.html
; “low input”: James Dobbins,
After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan
(Dulles, VA: Potomac Books Inc, 2008), pp. 144–145.

180
Aid per capita to Bosnians
: James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel M. Swanger, Anga R. Timilsina, America’s Role in Nation Building From Germany to Iraq (RAND,: Santa Monica, 2003), p. 146.

180
“low levels of security”
: James Dobbins quoted in Elizabeth Rubin, “Taking the fight to the Taliban,”
New York Times Magazine
, October 29, 2006.

180
“economy of force”
: Michael Mullen, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2008
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4256
; “least amount of resources”: James Dobbins, Testimony before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 8, 2007. foreign.senate.gov/
testimony/2007/DobbinsTestimony070308.pdf, p. 3.

181
meeting in the White House Situation Room
: James Dobbins,
After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan
(Dulles, VA: Potomac Books Inc, 2008), pp. 114– 116. “the strong antipathy”: “A Different Kind of War” op. cit., p. 327. “under enormous pressure”: “A Different Kind of War” op. cit., p. 246.

181
slowed the formation
: Pamela Constable, “Key security initiatives founder in Afghanistan; Taliban resurgent in as development, reforms lag,”
Washington Post
, September 19, 2003. four times more soldiers and policemen: Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “Obama’s War,”
Washington Post
, February 15, 2009.