The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (48 page)

His reputation as a killer grew during an offensive in 2006, where he terrorized the population of a rival tribe. “People began to say he was here to kill every Noorzai he could find,” according to one eyewitness. The aggressive tactics backfired, however. “In our area, the Taliban went from forty to four hundred in days,” said another eyewitness. Other stories started to circulate: According to local reports, Razzik’s men stopped sixteen civilians on their way to a New Year’s celebration and summarily executed them. Razzik was briefly suspended while his men were investigated, but the results of the inquiry were never made public. As he took a leading role in operations around Kandahar in 2010, more human rights abuses were reported, though local Afghans were too afraid of retribution to go on the record. A Human Rights Watch report came to the same conclusion about Razzik: “In Afghanistan an ordinary person can’t
do anything,” an Afghan was quoted as saying. “But a government person can do what he wants—killing, stealing, anything.”

The swirling allegations did give NATO a temporary pause. On February 4, 2010, deputy to U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry met with the then intelligence chief, Major General Michael Flynn, along with a number of other American officials supposedly involved in stopping corruption. The meeting was intended to figure out how to handle the “prominent Afghan malign actors” or “corrupt/criminal Afghan officials,” according to a leaked State Department cable describing the meeting. Three Afghan officials were specifically named and discussed at the meeting based on information from the “intel and law enforcement files” that had been gathered on them: Ahmed Wali Karzai, a police chief and, yes, Abdul Razzik. By embracing Razzik, U.S. officials acknowledged in another cable, they were undercutting any chance for legitimate governance: “by ascribing unaccountable authority to Razzik, the Coalition unintentionally reinforces his position through its direct and near-exclusive dealings with him on all major issues in Spin Boldak.”

American officials briefly considered ways to sideline Razzik and his partners in crime, like Ahmed Wali Karzai. Take them out? Capture them? Bring corruption charges or legal cases against them? At minimum, U.S. officials thought, they could at least try to give them a slap on the wrist—by (1) having “no public meetings with the official (and no photos), and no high-profile public visits from CODELs [congressional delegations] and other dignitaries; (2) no giving or receiving of gifts; and (3) restrictions on opportunities for corrupt officials to participate in U.S.-funded training, travel, and speaking engagements,” according to a leaked cable. The cable concluded that “Applying minimum COAs [courses of action] is designed to help change perceptions held by parts of the Afghan public that the U.S. supports, explicitly or implicitly, known corrupt officials.” Over the past year, even those modest goals were abandoned, much to the dismay of local Afghans. “Americans are
always choosing stupid friends here,” says Izatullah Wasifi, a former governor in Herat. “Razzik has killed hundreds of people. Karzai and the rest are all crooked, and they are ruling now. They’re seeking a weak and fragmented state for their own self-interest. We are heading to another civil war. To get stuck in this shit? That’s a shame.”

After Petraeus assumed command, any pretense of even the most minimal punishment became a joke. If the Afghan government was a criminal syndicate, it was a syndicate we embraced. We both implicitly and explicitly supported corrupt officials that U.S. officials had fretted about months earlier. Ambassador Eikenberry posed for a photo op with Razzik in November. In August, Razzik received even more funding and direct ISAF military support, officially getting welcomed to run operations around Kandahar; and he’s been given the gift of a dedicated Special Forces team to personally advise him and a force of three thousand Afghans under his command. “Sometimes I travel in the American helicopters, sometimes in my own trucks and Humvees, sometimes even in the Corollas,” he says.

It still wasn’t a relationship that everyone in the government was comfortable with, but perceived expediency had clearly won out over any chickenshit moral qualms. “On one side, you have State, DEA, FBI saying, hey, this guy is a smuggler, a criminal, he’s letting drugs in over the border,” a U.S. official in Kabul tells me. “On the other side there’s the CIA and the military, who are saying, this guy is giving us good intel in Panjway or Zabul, or wherever else.” (In fact, by supporting Razzik, Petraeus and the U.S. military were pushing up against American law: A condition in the supplemental bill passed last year to fund the war stated that no U.S. money could go to units where there was “credible” evidence of human rights violations. In the fall of 2011, a journalist for
The Atlantic
will publish photos of Razzik’s torture victims.)

To me, Razzik represented just how warped our role in Afghanistan had become. He was getting the Extreme Makeover, Afghan Edition. As in Iraq, insurgents and criminals of yesterday became the heroes and patriots
of tomorrow. His military and Special Forces advisor had gone into overdrive to refurbish his image. Another State Department cable suggested offering Razzik an “information operations” team to rehabilitate his image by getting “stories in the international press.” Nine months later, his senior American military advisor told
The Washington Post
that he was like “Robin Hood,” while Major General Nick Carter endorsed him as “Afghan good enough,” a play off the most condescending and colonial phrase imported from Iraq. (
Iraq good enough
basically meaning a high-grade level of shit.) In November, his Special Forces mentor gushed to
The Wall Street Journal
that he was a “folk hero,” bragging about his recent exploits, like when his men accidentally ran a truck into a tree and a suicide bomber popped out, blowing up. As one Afghan contractor told me, “The difference between Abdul Razzik and others in government: When Abdul Razzik sees a Taliban, he kills them. Karzai and the rest are part Talib, part government.”

Not all of the coverage has been positive, however. Razzik almost didn’t do the interview with me, he told my translator, because he doesn’t feel like his recent portrayals in the press have been fair, blaming the “journalists in Kabul” for biased coverage. (Usually, news stories about Razzik mention that he’s been accused of human rights abuses, graft, and drug smuggling.) In a magazine profile from last year, he was tagged as a drug lord—that story, Razzik says, was because the author was associated with the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. “It’s a democracy, so sometimes the press you get is bad and sometimes it is good,” he says rather diplomatically when I ask about all the accusations. “But I think the press should act responsibly and not spread rumors and suspicions to target a man’s character with no proof.”

Once we begin to leave Afghanistan, it will be warlords like Abdul Razzik who’ll take over. And if we aren’t engaged in “nation-building,” then it doesn’t really matter what kind of government we leave behind in Kabul, as long as the Afghans let us use their country as a base for killing Al-Qaeda. Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Islamabad,
called for just that—balancing a “small but capable Afghan army” with “local militia forces… sometimes disparaged as warlords” to provide “a platform for U.S. lead counterterror operations.” In the end, despite all of the counterinsurgency doctrine’s emphasis on good governance, the desire for stability trumps the fight for human rights. The face of Afghanistan after ten years of America’s war is that of a thirty-four-year-old drug lord.

Sitting in the office at Razzik’s base, I was reminded of something that Berkazai, the mayor’s media advisor, told me. “The world promised us, America promised us democracy and human rights,” he said. “If America is fighting for that, they should stay. If they are not, if they are going to leave behind militias and warlords, then they should leave now.”

That would suit Colonel Abdul Razzik just fine. I finished up my interview with him. I posed for a picture with him. I noticed his watch—I showed him mine, a Breitling Super Ocean. He showed me his, a diamond-encrusted black Concord. “Nice watch,” I said, and he returned the compliment. We strolled outside to take a look around his base. He had a parking lot full of Humvees and armored SUVs, all provided by the Americans. He pointed out a fort on top of the small rocky hill behind his headquarters. “That’s an old British castle,” he says. “It’s about ninety years old.” I asked him what his plans for the future were. “It is the happiest time in my life,” he says. “I am the police chief around here, and I am in my own country.”

He asked if I needed security for the trip back. I politely declined, thanking him for his time. As we drove back to Kandahar, my translator noticed that we were being followed by two green Ford Rangers, courtesy of Colonel Razzik. He wanted to be sure his guests left safely.

 DECEMBER 10, 2010, TO JUNE 2011, WASHINGTON, DC, AND KABUL

On December 10, 2010, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke walks into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office in Foggy Bottom. He turns pale; he puts his hands over his eyes and tells the secretary of state that he’s not feeling right. She picks up the phone and calls an ambulance—she wants him brought to George Washington University Hospital a few blocks away. Holbrooke, being Holbrooke, argues that he’d rather be taken to Sibley Hospital. Hillary wins this battle.

The doctors diagnose him with a torn aorta. It requires lengthy surgery.

On December 13, it’s the night of the annual Christmas party at the State Department. About three hundred people gather in the eighth-floor ballroom, most of the foreign emissaries in the city. Clinton takes Holbrooke’s staff of about thirty into a private room and tells them how much his staff means to Holbrooke, calling him “a true fighter.” Obama joins the private gathering, offering his support to Holbrooke’s wife, Kati, and the ambassador’s two sons. Out in the main ballroom, the singer Marvin Hamlisch entertains the crowd with Christmas carols,
singing “Deck the Halls” and “Frosty the Snowman,” a surreal moment, officials on Holbrooke’s staff will later recall, listening to the festive tunes while their boss was on life support at the hospital only a few blocks away. Obama gives a speech to the assembled crowd, calling Holbrooke a “titan” of diplomacy.

Before the president’s speech, Holbrooke’s family leaves for the hospital. Soon after, his son Anthony would take the elevator down to the hospital lobby. He has tears in his eyes. “He’s gone,” he says to a friend. They smoke a cigarette outside. Clinton arrives in the lobby next. She’d rushed over from the ballroom within five minutes after learning of Holbrooke’s death. Along with her assistant, Huma Abedin, and her security detail, they sit, wiped out in the Starbucks connected to the lobby of George Washington Univeristy hospital. Holbrooke’s other close friends start to arrive—senators, journalists, and the dearest members of his staff—trickling in over the next hour. As the mourners gather, Clinton takes command. “We need an Irish wake for Richard,” she tells his family and friends, saying they would plan a tribute for him. But right now, she observes, everybody needs a drink. “Where’s the nearest bar?” she asks.

Hillary and Holbrooke’s staff go to the Ritz Carleton on M and 22nd. They drink and share stories, an impromptu wake. Hillary consoles his staff members—she was a close friend of Richard’s as well. The crowd begins to split up into smaller groups, with a few friends heading to Holbrooke’s Georgetown apartment to be with the ambassador’s family, where they order Thai food and talk late into the night. It starts to snow outside. His son Antony leaves, and walks back to a member of Holbrooke’s staff’s apartment in Foggy Bottom, where he’s crashing on the couch, a symbol of just how close the ambassador was to the people who both loved him and worked for him.

The Pakistanis send dozens of flowers, which Holbrooke’s friends joke should be “swept for listening devices.” There’s a gathering in Holbrooke’s wife’s Central Park West apartment in New York City on Friday, December
17, which draws celebrities and political leaders—Bill and Hillary are there, Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore. “You know, if Dad were here today, he’d be pretty proud that you all came out here for him—he loved this sort of stuff, being at the center of attention,” Holbrooke’s other son, David, tells the room. “But he’d also think you’re crazy to be here talking about him when the Heat are in town playing the Knicks right now.”

On January 14, 2011, there’s a memorial for him at the Kennedy Center. Two presidents speak, Clinton and Obama. His friends notice a distance during Obama’s remarks (“You could tell Obama just didn’t know him,” says one State Department official, comparing Obama’s remarks to Clinton’s), which to them symbolizes something larger: Obama’s failure to embrace and listen to Holbrooke represented a larger failure to get control of the war in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke’s replacement is named, Ambassador Marc Grossman. As special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Holbrooke had an odd role, where he had to fight for his own diplomatic turf. He did so by the force of his personality, which poses a problem for Grossman: He’s got a lower profile. It’s a signal, according to State Department officials, that the White House is trying to shut down Holbrooke’s operation, putting an end to the special envoy slot. It’s the White House quietly “strangling” the position that Holbrooke held, says one State Department official.

It marks the shift to unmake Afghanistan as an issue.

In January, Vice President Biden travels to Afghanistan and meets with Petraeus. “It’s a little uncomfortable with those two,” says a White House official. “Petraeus views him as the competition.” During one of his meetings, Biden listens to Petraeus’s reports on progress. Biden sees the larger game ahead: The military is making its case for why it needs to stay longer, testing out the arguments they’ll make to avoid the planned drawdown in July 2011. “He could tell they were going to try to stay as long as possible,” says a White House official. At another stop along the trip, an American civilian talked to Biden about a well they were building. “Why do they need a well?” Biden says, sensing “mission creep.”