COIN doctrine, counter-insurgency theory, says “protect the people” comes before “kill the enemy.” In meeting after meeting we heard all the right things from officers and civilian leaders who were earnest, brave, well-intentioned, smart, sincere, hard-working and absolutely decent and ethical.  We heard about construction projects and rules of engagement and mitigating civilian casualties, about liaising with tribal elders and managing escalation of force and irrigation and extracting resources and using local people, defeating the corruption of the Karzai regime, delivering good governance, etc.  But I didn’t see any Afghans in the rooms.  I didn’t see any in the PRT sessions (the meetings with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams.)

Maj. Cal Worth, foreground, with Gen. Mattis and MP Tobias Elwood in Marjah

Maybe that observation is unfair. Maybe it was in the nature of this trip—that its task was to investigate other areas. In Marjah and Lashkar Gah, we heard about the construction contracts that would start soon and the “government in a box” that would be set up immediately. Certainly the new Afghan flag fluttering over the police station looks hopeful. But Marjah has been a Taliban stronghold for the past five years and those boys aren’t going away. Will development efforts stick?  Will the tribal people accept police and administration from the government in the capital? In meetings in Kabul, we heard experienced, honest U.S. generals declare with full confidence that today’s Afghans possess a sense of national identity.  “Ask a man who he is and he won’t name his tribe; he’ll tell you he’s an Afghan.”

Will he? I wish I believed it. Searching the eyes of the men and boys in Marjah, the best I could see was wariness and skepticism, the worst enmity and hostility. Who can blame them? I’d be half-Taliban and hedging my bets too. Yeah, the Americans are strong and brave and they’ve got jets and armor. Some of them even speak a bit of Pashto. But how long are they going to stick around?

Can the Machine make the stretch?  In Kabul we drove past rows of Arabian Nights mansions behind fifteen-foot walls topped with razor wire and security cameras. Drugs lords and corrupt officials who have raked millions from construction contracts and international aid. To truly reach the people (and that is, after all, the be-all and end-all of COIN strategy), the Machine has to get around that—and around a culture of family, clan and tribal loyalty and patronage that goes back five thousand years, not to mention bonds and rivalries, blood feuds and grievances of honor among warlords who are now cabinet ministers and sub-commanders and ex-mujahideen who are fighting on three sides at the same time and whose codes and secret ways are as impenetrable to our Machine as the squiggles in Farsi and Dari (or is it Arabic?) on the walls of the mechanics’ shops and the ad billboards for cell phones.

11. We meet with ISAF commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in a conference area adjacent to his “war room.” Without exception, the American and Coalition commanders we spend time with are A+++ leaders, and Gen. McChrystal impresses me as the best of the best.  Clearly he understands (far better than any of us reporting on it) the maddening complexity of the conflict, and he and his team are working as hard and as smartly as they can to do their job and accomplish their mission. Gen. McChrystal is the only U.S. commander with no budget. What he needs, he gets. He can cherry-pick any individual from any unit and get him sent wherever he wants. At least that’s the theory. But even the Machine can grind slowly sometimes.  I ask him if he feels he is getting enough support from up the chain of command. He answers sincerely, I believe, that he feels backed up fully by the White House, the SecDef and all hands in the Capitol and the Pentagon.

I know he means it, and I know that generals don’t get four stars because they don’t relish handling an adult portion. But this chore is a real bastard. I wish I felt that the Prez and the American people were in it with both feet.

Market scene in Marjah

12. Maybe Vietnam is the culprit–the U.S.’s last unhappy experience with a conscripted army. Maybe blame can be localized to whatever forces or events turned the U.S. electorate off to the idea that every citizen owes service to his country–and decreed that 100% of the burden for defending our nation be borne by 5% of its citizenry.  The all-volunteer military is probably the most highly functioning sector in American society and the only one in which the public still places full faith. But our troops are out here alone in space. They can hack it. In their own way they relish it.  But that’s a lot of weight on their shoulders–and lot on Gen. McChrystal’s. “Today in America,” says Navy Capt. Kevin Sweeney, Gen. Mattis’ executive assistant, “if you don’t have a son or husband or a neighbor who’s in the military, you don’t even know there’s a war on. You see film on the news but the fight seems a million miles away, and you don’t want to hear about it anyway. It’s someone else’s problem. I don’t blame people. Who wants to ruin their dinner, hearing about civilian casualties and suicide bombers? But it’s happening. We’re here and this is a real fight and somebody ought to know about it.”

What’s my final takeaway from all this?

13. I went into this trip with an axe to grind (the name of this blog is, after all, “It’s The Tribes, Stupid”) and I came home carrying that same axe.

To me, the tribes are the X factor. They and the boots-on-the-ground troopers who work with them are the link between the Machine and the People. We were meeting with Gen. Scaparotti, commander of Combined Joint Task Force – 82, whose area of responsibility is the 14 provinces of Regional Command East, where the Pashtun tribes dominate and where enemy supplies and fighting men roll in and out across the Pakistani border. Gen. Scap told us of the Shinwari tribe, 400,000-strong, who had on their own concluded an internal treaty to resist the Taliban and work with Coalition forces. Tribal elders signed and planted their thumb prints, agreeing to fine any member who supported the insurgency and to burn down that person’s house. I asked the general how he placed this development in context of the overall fight. Was it an aberration or a potential game-changer? “The tribes signing up was huge,” he said. In the cities it’s different because tribal influences are less, but in the country (and 95% of Afghanistan is country) this is exactly the kind of turnaround we need and we must support it any way we can.

Gen. Scap worried though that such self-generated, bottom-up movements can be messy and difficult to control.  I told him about my own friend, Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai (you know him if you’ve followed this blog), and the Tribal Police Force he has raised in his district in Paktia province. Though the chief speaks better English than I do and is passionately pro-Western, he has had to move heaven and earth to get the U.S. units in his district to work with him–and as recently as a month ago, American elements were trying to arrest his chief of police. I heard this same skepticism voiced at a recent think tank meeting in Washington, D.C.  “Won’t empowering the tribes,” one of the Senior Fellows asked, “inevitably conflict with supporting the central government, which is, after all, our mission in Afghanistan?”

We missed the tribes on this trip. The agenda was to meet with American and Afghan commanders. But in the meetings and the walkarounds and on the plane flights, I couldn’t help thinking about Special Forces Maj. Jim Gant (you know him too from these pages) and the Marine infantry battalions and Special Forces teams and the officers and men of army and allied units who have been, and are today, out there with the real Afghan people. I still don’t know how many of these men (and women too) there are—or where this fits into the enterprise of the overall Machine. I hope we’ve got somebody with the Shinwari. I hope more are coming, to that tribe and to others <em>as tribes</em>. And I hope those officers who are doing this work, in whatever form it takes, are getting support and not just lip service.

14. What makes us Americans different from the Russians or the Brits who came to Afghanistan before us? For one thing, we’re not there to conquer the place. We’re not out to destroy the tribal system, as the Russians tried to do, and we’re not here unilaterally. Our mandate derives from the U.N. and our support comes from troops of more than forty countries. We’re the good guys, and the more up close and personal our soldiers and Marines and PRT teams can get with the village and tribal Afghans, the clearer that truth will become to them and the more impact it will have. The Machine is doing fine in its sphere. The Afghan people are the same as they’ve always been. Where the twain meet, if indeed they do, is and will be face-to-face, person-to-person, man-to-man.

Can we do that? Does the Machine have that gear? I don’t know.

The Senior Fellow at the think tank raised another excellent question. He was expressing skepticism about the feasibility of a policy that reaches out to the tribes and banks on the people-skills of American and Coalition team members to produce bonds and build trust across cultures so disparate and so far apart. “How can the United States bet on a policy,” the Fellow asked, “that relies on geniuses?”

The ANA commander in Marjah. Pressfield is back left, in civvies.

That question shut me up. I didn’t have an answer in the moment. But I think now that such a policy doesn’t need geniuses. It doesn’t need anything that our Marines and soldiers don’t already have and aren’t already doing. It needs smart and brave young captains and lieutenants and sergeants and lance corporals who can connect across the cultural divide. It needs civilians like Greg Mortenson of <em>Three Cups of Tea</em> and <em>Stones Into Schools.</em> It needs money to back these individuals, political will to protect them and patience to keep them in place until they have time to do their job. I hope Marjah works. I hope it’s the start of something.

Afghanistan is ancient; it’s not coming into the modern world any time soon.  Afghanistan is tribal. We’re not going to turn it into New Jersey in the next eighteen months. The Machine can’t overcome those realities by itself, and it can’t connect across the gulf between East and West, ancient and modern, unless it can bring to bear a dedicated element whose task is to do just that. I’m not a believer yet. I want to be. When I see that dedicated component–and see it in the field, being supported by our unbeatable Machine–maybe I will be.

[Photos by 1LT Joshua Diddams, MEB-A Media Officer.]

It’s more than a little weird, participating in one of these PR walkarounds. Self-congratulation is the inevitable theme. The bubble can get pretty thick. For me, at least, it’s almost impossible to grok the street reality. Are things going great or are we all lining up to drink our own Kool-Aid?  For all I can tell, the sullen, hood-eyed bandits eyeballing our procession have been cutting loose AK rounds at Marines twenty-four hours earlier—and may be doing it again three days from now. Not that that means anything. Earlier in the trip, Gen. Mattis, speaking of Iraq and the Anbar Awakening, had credited British general Graeme Lamb with the philosophical breakthrough that made that turnaround embraceable by the field commanders, the battlespace owners.  “Gen. Lamb’s mental model divided the Iraqi population into two groups—those who were reconcilable and those who weren’t.  The trick was to reintegrate the first group into the life of the nation–and to kill or chase the second bunch out of Dodge.”

Gen. Mattis with an Afghan commando in Marjah, 28 Feb 2010

That would be the next phase here in Marjah and in the succeeding towns and cities on the Marines’ clear-hold-build list.  Will it work?  Can the ANA pull it off?  Can the police from the new “government in a box?” Two days earlier we’d been in a meeting in Kabul with LtGen. William Caldwell, commander of the NATO Training Mission, and his staff, who had been tasked with bringing the ANA and ANP up to speed.  I didn’t envy these officers; they had definitely drawn the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Here’s how good intentions go wrong: the Pentagon has decreed that the job of training the Afghan National Police be outsourced. Contractors will do it. So the bids go out; one company wins. But wait, a spurned bidder files a protest. “Now we’re set back,” says Gen. Caldwell, “for however long it takes to settle the dispute. Meanwhile the individual contractors—retired American law enforcement officers, police chiefs and so forth—can’t stick around waiting half a year. They’ve taken other jobs.”  Gen. Caldwell’s original wish list calls for over 2000 trainers; now he’s down to 400+, and it’s no sure thing that he’ll get even those.  “And this,” notes on staffer, meaning the train-up of the ANP, “is the centerpiece of the whole counterinsurgency operation!”

The Machine giveth and the Machine taketh away.

9. Lashkar Gah is our next stop. The name means “camp of the warriors.”  Alexander the Great’s warriors. His columns came through here in 330 B.C., skirting the Dasht-e-Margo, the Desert of Death, before setting up the tent city that would become Kandahar and trekking north across the Hindu Kush into the Bactrian plain. I peer down from our vertical-take-off Osprey. You can’t tell me much has changed in 2300 years. Below are mud-walled compounds, irrigated fields divided into squares, dark-eyed men in shalwar kameezes. The tribes even have the same names. Alexander and his generals sat around planning tables just like our ISAF commanders, trying to dope this theater out. The great conqueror employed the same tactics we’re using—he hired his enemies for pay, treated them with respect and sought to make them friends. He invested fortunes, built towns and cities, cut off cross-border sanctuaries (or tried to) and ran operations constituted of assault forces and blocking elements, aiming to trap the foe in between. I’m talking to a Marine colonel. “Alexander’s mother Olympias wrote him a letter once,” the officer tells me, “getting on his case for taking so long to knock off these primitive, poverty-stricken Afghans.  So Alexander captured three tribal chiefs and sent them back to Macedonia, each one carrying an offering of soil from his own tribal homeland; they were supposed to deliver these tokens to Olympias as a gift from her son. But waiting outside the queen’s palace door, the three chiefs got into a fight and killed one another. Alexander’s Mom wrote back: ‘Now I understand, my son.’”  I’m not sure what that story means in the current context, but I’m pondering it as we fly back to Kabul at dark.

Alexander would recognize some of the residents of Marjah

A Marine KC-130 is a cavernous, workhorse cargo plane powered by four turbo-props. You board via a rear ramp. The interior can be configured to ferry troops, in canvas seats facing inboard along the airframe wall with others facing outboard down the centerline, or for cargo on roller pallets. For this flight it’s fifty-fifty. Our nine-man troupe is joined by a platoon of Afghan commandoes, fresh out of the fight at Marjah. What a fine-looking bunch they are. The commandoes, Maj. Raymond of Gen. Mattis’ staff explains to me, are the cream of the ANA, way beyond the regular line troops.  These guys are all young, no one above 22 is my guess. They look like fighters. Obviously this is their first plane ride. They’re trying to be cool, but as the huge, clamorous KC-130 starts rattling and banging into takeoff, all palms are turned heavenward in a quick prayer. Maj. Raymond shakes hands with a half a dozen of these young men; they light up with big, Chiclet smiles. The Taliban, a number of Marines have told me, haven’t stood up to our guys yet.  Is the momentum shifting to the Coalition side? The enemy will mount a spring offensive,  says Gen. Scaparotti of the 82^nd Airborne.  “He has to, because our side is getting so much traction.  If the enemy lets us keep doing what we’re doing now, we’ll hit a tipping point and it’ll be over for him.”

10. Could this be true? Here, for what it’s worth, is how I see it after my trip inside the bubble:

The campaign has two extremities. At the top-end is the NATO/ISAF/American Machine. This Machine is made up of men and money, of massive bases and O’Hare-sized airfields, of vehicle parks and tarmac aprons chockablock with MRAPs and Black Hawks and C-130s and Navy fighters. Its elements include drones and laser-guided missiles, satellite imaging and biometrics. It is thousands of tons of supplies and construction materials; rooms full of captains and majors manning laptops; it is PowerPoints, flow charts and projections, focus groups, think tank treatises. The Machine is also constituted of a can-do attitude, a fierce and dedicated work ethic, a commitment to integrity and transparency and an attitude of good intentions that no one who has seen it can ever doubt. All of it is powered by a will and a level of professionalism that is without peer for putting a man on the moon or a thousand-pound bomb down a chimney. That’s the input end of the dynamic. That’s the Machine.

At the bottom, at the receiving end, is the villager, the tribesman and the Afghan man in the street. From where he stands, the Machine is a marvel. It is rich beyond imagining. It can call down death from the sky or beyond the horizon; it can see in the dark and strike without warning out of nowhere. Its intentions are good. Its heart is in the right place. But what can it do for him? He has seen clever men manipulate the machine and wicked men take vengeance on those who have been reckless enough to befriend it.  He may be illiterate, this man of the village or the street, but he is not stupid. He has seen great powers come and go. In his own or his father’s lifetime he has lived through domination by the Soviets, the Afghan communists, the warlords and the Taliban. Now the NATO Machine has come. If our man can tap this apparatus for a job or a contract, he will. Every little bit helps. Most Afghans, we are told, view the Coalition presence favorably. I would too. The Yanks and their allies bring in cash and development projects, and they’re a far more benign presence that Genghis Khan or the Brits or the Russians, who were there for reasons of conquest or self-aggrandizement. The Americans just want to help. The Machine wants to bring security, development, education. It wants to get Afghanistan up on its feet. Can it?

An Osprey comes in over Marjah. Note the .50-caliber machine gun aft. In foreground, beneath camo netting, are the tents where the Marines have temporarily set up camp.

In the middle lies the space between the Machine and the man of the village, the man of the tribes. Here is the payoff point. This ground is occupied by the Marines and Army troopers and allies who man the frontier posts in the mountains, who hold down the outposts in the south and east. This space is held by the Marines in Helmand who fight and camp with their Afghan counterparts, who wash in the canals and eat the same lentils and flatbread, who haven’t had a shower in the past twenty-one days and won’t have one for the next three months. These are the guys who put a human face on the Coalition effort. They’re the young warriors who make friends and learn the lingo and constitute the person-to-person payload that the Machine above (which is as remote to them as it is to the Afghans they operate beside) has come halfway around the world to deliver.

My question is: are there enough of them? Have they penetrated deeply enough? Will they stick around? Does the Coalition possess the patience and political will to give their efforts time to bear fruit?

[Read Part Four]

[Photos by 1LT Joshua Diddams, MEB-A Media Officer.]

6. Kabul is a Third World city, squalid as mud and dirty as hell. Every building that’s above the level of the people is built like a fortress; compounds with high walls topped with razor wire, AK-toting guards out front and security cameras atop Y-shaped posts. At the airport, guard towers are set in onion fields with police asleep or tending little vegetable gardens or heating tea over propane stoves. They’re keeping watch, supposedly, over cyclone fences topped with concertina wire and protected at ground level by rolls of the same, so no one can crawl under. Hesco barriers are squarish barrel-like containers made of super heavy duty cardboard and wire; fill them with rock or gravel or dirt and they make impenetrable blast walls.  Stack them three or four high around a perimeter: instant Fort Apache. On bases, the quonset-shaped living tents are surrounded by sandbags piled four and five feet high. Checkpoint guards are TCNs–Third Country Nationals–from Fiji, Mongolia, Bangladesh. We circle Massoud Square again and drive past the famous Serena Hotel. “Why is it famous?” I ask SSgt Barr, our security team leader. “Because,” he says, “the Taliban keep trying to blow it up.”

The Marine Osprey aircraft can fly like a helicopter or a fixed-wing. That's BG Nicholson, back to us, in the foreground.

On the street: boys and men manning wheelbarrows, contracting themselves out; guys selling phone cards; flat wooden handcarts balance on two car tires, selling oranges and onions; goat meat hanging in sidewalk stalls.  Every street is muddy, with shallow brown lakes and piles of dirt, rubble and stone ten feet high every fifty feet.  Local police in beat-up Ford Rangers with machine guns guard every roundabout; they help the convoys go through. A typical run of traffic will be yellow cabs (Toyota Corollas), Toyota mini-buses carrying ten people sardine-style, hitchhikers getting picked up by kind-hearted Samaritans, motorcyles, convoys from the UN or ISAF (the International Security and Assistance Force), Tata trucks and Mercedeses and Russian Kamazes, lots of bicycles, a few horse carts, many people walking. Shops are corrugated tin sheds or mini truck containers with roll-down metal doors. Plastic jugs and jerry cans in a stack serve as a signboard for an auto repair shop or a parts fabricator. Energy comes from propane tanks, big ones, five feet tall, which you see singly on the street or in stacks of four or five, rusty and dirty.  The vendors and mechanics use torches to work metal or primus-style burners to cook up lunch. We pass coffee and tea shops, carpet stores, women’s apparel shops, more than one bodybuilding gym with drawings of muscle men our front, video stores, phone emporia; signs are all hand-lettered, in Arabic (or is it Dari?) and English. Billboards advertise education: learn computing, accounting, vehicle repair. Streets are laid out like this: a main vehicle boulevard with traffic running both ways, separated by a median of mini-concrete barriers and sometimes a lane of forlorn-looking mulberry trees; then, to each side, an unpaved, muddy frontage road, on the outboard margin of which is a sunken runoff ditch. You cross by footbridge to the shops on the far side. I’m speaking theoretically of course, for us Yanks; we’re in the Bubble and nobody’s letting us out. Eating establishments look nasty but tasty: Brothers Restaurant and Hamra are two whose names I jot down. We pass good-looking women packing knockoff iPhones and Blackberries, Gucci-esque bags studded with geegaws.  You see wives in burkas but not many.

My own feeling on Day One is one of apprehensiveness and Third World bummerdom. But after a few jaunts around town, even in body armor, you start getting the hang of it. You begin to see the city, grim and muddy and conflict-ravaged as it is, as a vibrant metropolis–poor as dirt, yes, but with a lot of action going on.  Maj. Nelson and I share the back seat of Chase Two. “In the sixties and seventies,” he says, “Kabul used to be part of the Hippie Trail that ran across Central Asia to Katmandu.” Young Brits and Americans and Euro-freaks would backpack and bunk in villages, carrying only a few dollars; locals were friendly in those pre-Soviet days.  Kabul looked good.  “I bought some postcards when I was deployed here a few years ago that showed these boulevards back in the day. There were cafes and shops, the trees hadn’t been all blown up.”

7. What happens in Gen. Mattis’ meetings? Reports are given quickly, efficiently. There’s a lot of laughter. These officers know each other; they’ve dodged bullets together and gotten drunk together and lost good men together. When they greet each other today, though they’re all wearing stars, they go back instantly to when they were lieutenants and captains in the field–in Desert Storm and Ramadi, in Baghdad and Camp Rhino and Kandahar. Then they get down to business.  It’s like the most efficient American or British corporation imaginable. “How can I help you?” Gen. Mattis asks. “What do you need that you don’t have?”

The background is always COIN theory–counterinsurgency–and the alteration in priorities from “kill the enemy” to “protect the people.” CIVCAS is the military acronym for civilian casualties. All hands are hyper-conscious of avoiding this. But there’s still plenty of killing to be done and a long fight ahead. Gen. Scaparotti commands the 82nd Airborne Division; his AO, Area of Operations, is Regional Command East, the run of provinces between Kabul and the Pakistani border. He tells Mattis of successes and setbacks.  Gen. Scap’s State Dept. counterpart is Dawn Liberi; she’s the civilian equivalent of a three-star general and they work together as a team. Both are tremendous. Tactical victories, COIN strategy says, must be followed up at once by actions that support the people and increase good governance. They’re talking about marble deposits in one province, rail transport in another, and a particularly robust harvest of grapes in a third.  “General,” I ask, “when you were a young trooper jumping out of airplanes, did you think that one day you’d be getting excited about the size of grapes?”

Marjah and surrounding countryside, seen from a Marine Osprey aircraft

8. Marjah.  Day Three, we fly by KC-130 to Kandahar, then by Osprey to Camp Bastion, the huge British base and airfield adjacent to Camp Leatherneck, in Helmand province. The area is thick with history–Alexander, the Silk Road, Persian adventures–and populous. The Marine Osprey takes us down to Marjah, where the big U.S.-Afghan push has been going on for two weeks or more.  The tilt-rotor aircraft touches down vertically in a field of winter grass, after jinking and juking on the approach to make it tougher on any RPG gunner to line the plane up in his sights from below.  We leap off like infantry and sprint/stumble over an irrigation ditch with a footbridge to the compound where the victorious Marines, Afghan National Army and U.S. Army Special Forces have set up shop. BrigGen. Larry Nicholson commands the overall operation. Morale is sky-high. The compound is Hesco’ed up, with a half dozen or so MRAPs (IED-proof armored vehicles the size of two Humvees that cost about a million bucks each) and a machine gun nest on the roof.  The gate entry has been sandbagged so you have to zig-zag to get in and out.  The outer gate is sealed by an MRAP parked sidelong and a Marine sergeant operating concertina wire like a collapsible gate.

Eight Marines have been killed taking Marjah. It’s too painful for anybody to think about so the emotion is choked down to be dealt with later. In a bare dirt room, a young major gives Gen. Mattis a quick map briefing. Marines and ANA and Afghan commandoes are still involved in “kinetic” action, meaning shooting and getting shot at, a few miles ahead. But here it’s pretty much over; the stability operation has begun.  Reporters are on the ground—the excellent Tony Perry of the L.A. Times, whom I know by e-mail but have never met in person, and a pair from Germany or England, a pretty girl in a head scarf and a cameraman. Marines and Afghan army commanders are gravely solicitous about each other’s casualties. This is no joke. An Afghan soldier was killed several days ago. Gen. Nicholson ordered his body to be flown by Marine KC-130, all by itself, to Kabul to the soldier’s family. Among Muslims immediate burial is of the highest spiritual importance. A tough-looking young major tells Gen. Nicholson how word of his gesture has made the rounds of the Afghan platoons, making a deep impression. Gen. Nicholson is delighted. “This is their boy’s victory,” he says, meaning the Afghans’, “as much as it is ours. Maybe more.”

We walk several miles up the dirt road that serves as Main Street in the part of town we’re in. Flat fields stretch to the horizon. Mud walls surround compounds constructed like forts. The street itself is deeply rutted and potholed. Your boots sink ankle-deep in dust the consistency of talcum powder.  It’s a market town road, the country version of the boulevards in Kabul—traffic down the middle, irrigation ditches on one side, shops and stalls on the far side of the ditch and the dry side too.  Tobias Elwood, our young British MP, is an expert in post-conflict stabilization operations. He’s already trying to rally the troops to re-do this road. “Hire local people, do it all by hand; pay as many people as we can. It doesn’t matter if it’s a perfect job by Western standards; what counts is to get the people involved and let them see real change happening right now. Every hour we dither increases skepticism about our intentions and our capabilities.”

As our party of generals, colonels, majors and reporters trudges along, protected by ANP (Afghan National Police) and Marine infantry providing 360-degree security, local boys and men eye them from market stalls, rooftops and margins of fields.  We have heard that in another part of Marjah, the Taliban had set up such an efficient government of their own that streets were paved, homes were electrified and there were full-time courts of law.  Maybe the locals aren’t too pleased to see the Marines and the ANA. “We’ve got work to do in that part of town,” says the young major running the show.

Coming home: a family returns to Marjah

One thing that doesn’t come across back home in TV coverage of the army and Marines is what great-looking, superbly-professional guys they are. There’s no way, I’m thinking, that the Marjah locals can look at these young men and not be impressed.  Tremendous fighters as these Marines clearly are, it’s also obvious that they aren’t here to conquer the place or rape the resources; they’ve come to help and they intend to.  Still the locals are giving us the stink-eye, skeptical about how long this new boss is gonna stick around or if they even want him to. A big farm tractor is rumbling down the road toward us like Tom Joad’s jalopy, overloaded with people, at least twenty–a big extended family, we are told. Where are they going?  “Coming back,” says the interpreter.  Returning to their homes now that the Taliban are gone.  The family itself is a wonderful-looking bunch—boys and girls with lively, intelligent eyes; young men looking smart and strong and ready to laugh; elders who look like … like Afghan elders.  The grown women are bundled up, but their eyes are quick and savvy too. Stalls in the bazaar that have been vacant or shuttered are open again and more are opening every few minutes, as in Nawa nearby where, we heard, Marines and ANA troops have done the same thing. We squint down the talcum-powder road. Here comes another tractor, also overflowing with returnees.

[Read Part Three]

[Photos by 1LT Joshua Diddams, MEB-A Media Officer.]

Gen. Mattis in Marjah, Helmand province, 28 Feb 2010

1. Jim Mattis is a four-star Marine general. He doesn’t go out of his way to be quotable; he just can’t help himself.  Here, from Iraq 2004, are his instructions to the Marines under his command on how to conduct themselves with the natives they will encounter.

Be polite.  Be professional.  But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

In the first battle of Fallouja, Gen. Mattis commanded the Marines assigned to take the city. There came a point during the fighting when Mattis had to negotiate with the Sunni sheikhs and Baathist ex-army officers who claimed they wanted to quit, but whose acquaintance with the truth had been a little dubious.

I come in peace.  I didn’t bring artillery.  But I’m begging you, with tears in my eyes, if you fuck with me, I will kill you all.

Who would be an historical counterpart to Gen. Mattis? My pick would be Epaminondas, the great Theban general (like Mattis, a bachelor) who beat the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 B.C.  When he retired, Epaminondas took nothing home but his clothes and his books.  Gen. Mattis will be packing it in in November. He’ll go home to Washington State and hike the high country. Will he write his memoirs? “No way.” Such a document might break trust with the military and political leaders who expect private, candid counsel from their senior military colleagues and depend upon those colleagues keeping the content of such discussions in confidence. We’re in the library of Gen. Mattis’ spacious, columned quarters, the Virginia House, on the naval base at Norfolk, and I’m trying to talk him into reconsidering. I’m a student of history; I want to hear those stories. The current era is important, and Mattis was there at the center of it. But he won’t budge.

It’s February 24^th and Gen. Mattis has invited me to accompany his party on a four-day burst to Afghanistan. I’ve never been there. I want to go. So I’ve flown to Norfolk from Los Angeles, where I live. We take off in the morning.

2.  A couple of disclaimers before we plunge into this narrative. I’m not a journalist, and the piece that follows doesn’t purport to be journalism. It’s not a war story.  Nobody got shot at or blown up. We didn’t live with the tribes or sleep in the field alongside the Marines and the Afghan National Army. We traveled in a bubble and most of what I saw was glimpsed through a bubble-distorted lens. So take what follows with a grain of salt. Here’s what I saw and how it struck me.

3. What’s the first thing you think about when you realize you’re going to Afghanistan? Warm clothes. Good boots. Immunizations. For me the big deal was medical insurance. It took some doing (“I’m sorry,” says the rep at my company, “we do not cover injuries sustained in a war zone”), but my quest ends happily at an outfit called Global Underwriters, via Lloyds of London, that insures reporters and filmmakers who travel to places where bombs sometimes go off.  Bottom line: fifteen hundred bucks for what (I hope) will cover my butt if the shit hits the fan.

4. The day comes. We’re “wheels up” over the Atlantic. How does a four-star general travel? By Gulfstream 5, it turns out. It’s like Mick Jagger but without the girls. The party is fourteen, including pilots, security team, aides and communicators. The other guest besides me, is the Hon. Tobias Elwood, an up-and-coming member of Parliament and a former Royal Green Jacket infantry officer. We’ll pick him up in London. Over the Atlantic it’s Gen. Mattis and me, in seats facing each other, up front in a compartment with a banquette berth and a fold-down table. Gen. Mattis currently heads JFCOM, Joint Forces Command; it’s his job to integrate the all-forces team—Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines—and prepare it for joint operations.  He travels to the front regularly, to check with the commanders face to face and see how they’re doing and how he can help.

Bring briefed in Marjah by BG Larry Nicholson. Member of Parliament Tobias Elwood is next to Gen. Mattis. That's me, obscured in "deep background."

I had imagined we’d fly all the way in one long, spine-crunching haul. But the trip is broken up into two days because the crew stays with the plane; safety regs require that they rest. We stop in London at Stansted Airfield. A four-star general is a serious piece of gear, as the Marines would say. He is a key component in America’s defense apparatus and has to be on call 24 hours a day. Security teams escort the party everywhere. When we land, cars are waiting with the advance team. Zip, we’re in the hotel. Special Agent Jim Rivera is the security chief. He’s NCIS. “Like the TV show,” he says. “Only real.” Our bags appear; our passports are taken care of. The only snag for me is I’m having trouble sleeping. It’s the time zone change. And I’m keyed up. By Day Two, after we’ve picked up Tobias and are flying over the Black Sea, with

TEHRAN

and

BAGHDAD

on the cabin trip monitor, this jaunt is starting to feel serious. Darkness falls.  There’s Kabul below. It looks like a regular city but without the street lights. What was I expecting? Stalingrad? Pluto? The banquette in the forward cabin is now heaped with flak jackets and helmets. Everyone is suiting up. Magazines are being slotted into 9mm Berettas and M-4 carbines. Tobias and I are the only ones not packing heat. The plane doesn’t come down in a death spiral to avoid rocket fire. It’s a regular landing, just like at O’Hare. KAIA is huge and we taxi for a long time, up to the WELCOME TO KABUL sign and down the stairs to a four-vehicle convoy of armored Suburbans and Expeditions. I’m with Maj. Tom Nelson, Gen. Mattis’ special assistant, in “Chase 2.” Again, I’m not sure what I expected–stopping for flat bread or lamb kebob on the streets? Apparently not. We zig and zag along muddy back tracks for what seems like half an hour, then past a skein of security points and out into actual Kabul. We’re heading for Camp Eggers, which is in the city, not far. I’ve never worn a flak jacket before. It’s heavy. By the time you’ve donned helmet and gloves and wedged yourself into the back seat of a Chevy Suburban, you feel like Spam in a can or a turtle inside its shell. How secure can Kabul be if we have to schlep around like this? Answer: it ain’t. As our vehicles circle the roundabout at Massoud Square with Afghan taxis and Hi-Luxes jostling on all sides, it’s clear that the “security environment” is a free, open city. Risk is accepted by everyone, included the women waiting in the crosswalk and the kids kicking a soccer ball across a field.

We enter Camp Eggers through a maze of chicanes and checkpoints. Signs says NO JAMMERS and TURN OFF ECM–Electronic Counter Measures, i.e. signals to jam cell phone transmissions that might be used to trigger IEDs. The camp itself is smack in the middle of the city, carved out of  … what? Existing shops and apartments? Our quarters are a nest of rooms at the end of a souk-like passage past security doors and concertina-wire-topped walls. It’s warm and raining.  Kabul sits in a bowl at 6000 feet with the Hindu Kush mountains invisible behind dense smoke and fog in the distance. The team sets up its office at one big table in their desert-tan t-shirts.  Everyone is here to serve Gen. Mattis, to keep him on schedule and in touch with whomever he has to be in touch with. “Why have you chosen Mr. Pressfield and me to accompany you?” Tobias asks.  “Because I like you both,” the general answers. “And I want your fresh eyes. I can get all the predictable responses I want already. You gentlemen will give it to me straight.”

5. Breakfast. Before dawn in the chow hall (which is two cramped rooms run by KBR contractors), we hear a bang in the distance. “Did you hear that?” The blast will turn out to be part of a coordinated Taliban attack, including suicide bombers and a VBIED, a vehicle-borne IED, that will leave sixteen dead and dozens wounded. We don’t know that yet, though, as we head out to the day’s round of meetings.

Over two days, Gen. Mattis will be conferring with BrigGen. Jeff Smith, BrigGen. Gus Gilmore, LtGen. David Rodriquez, ViceAdm. Robert Harward, LtGen. William Caldwell, MajGen. Curtis Scaparrotti, and four-star Gen. Stanley McChrystal.  These guys are the real deal. Here’s one instructive civvie comparison: Col. Joe Felton whom we meet on the second day (Commander of the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team) has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford and an MPA from the Kennedy School at Harvard–and he’s out there fighting the Taliban. We’re supposed to meet Ambassador Eikenberry but that falls through, as does one get-together I had circled on my calendar–with British LtGen. Sir Graeme Lamb. It was Gen. Lamb’s concept of “reconcilables” versus “irreconcilables” that set the mental model for the Anbar Awakening that turned the tide in the Iraq War.

After these meetings we’ll fly down to Marjah in Helmand province, where the Marines are fighting right now. That will be the highlight, for me anyway. But for now, we’re suiting up and heading back out into the capital …

[Read Part Two]

[Photos by 1LT Joshua Diddams, MEB-A Media Officer.]

[This week has been a rough one for our troops in Afghanistan--and a contentions one among policymakers here in the States.  I'm going to interrupt our ongoing interview with tribal chief Ajmal Khan Zazai to post this open letter.  The same note was sent by e-mail two days ago to the parties below.]

TO: Gen. James Jones, Adm. Michael Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal

FROM: Steven Pressfield

SUBJ: An opportunity in Afghanistan

Dear Gen. Jones,

I’m the author of Gates of Fire. I read in a newspaper interview a few years ago that Gates is your favorite book–and you and I have corresponded briefly by e-mail in the past. I cite this connection in the hope that it will give me enough credibility in your eyes that you’ll keep reading this note.

I want to draw your attention to a situation in a valley in Afghanistan that may afford an opportunity for real progress in the Afghan campaign. Please bear with me for a little background.

A pro-American Tribal Chief

For some months I’ve been writing a blog called “It’s the Tribes, Stupid.” Its address is http://blog.stevenpressfield.com. The thesis of the blog is aligned very much with Gen. Petraeus’ and Gen. McChrystal’s COIN strategy of “protect the people.” Recently I’ve been running a series on the blog–a multi-part interview with an Afghan tribal chief, Ajmal Khan Zazai of Paktia province. Chief Zazai holds the paramountcy of eleven tribes in the Zazi valley. He’s an extraordinary man. He and his father fought the Soviets in the 80s and the Taliban after that. Chief Zazai’s father was assassinated under orders from Mullah Omar; the chief himself has survived two attempts on his life.

Chief Zazai, right, with his father and bodyguard, both murdered in 2000.

Chief Zazai was educated in Canada; he’s an excellent English speaker and holds Canadian citizenship. He has been a champion for his people for decades; in fact right now he is in London meeting with Sir David Richards to try to further his country’s cause.

A grass roots anti-insurgent force

This past summer Chief Zazai formed a Tribal Police Force of 85 men. This is purely a grass roots effort, intended to protect the people of the valley and founded by the chief under his own initiative. He has been in contact with the 10th Mountain Division, whose Area of Operation is the Zazi valley; in fact elements of the division helped provide security this past July for the tribal council at which the TPF was organized. The chief’s earnest hope is to ally with U.S. forces, to share intelligence and to work together to “protect the people”–i.e., his eleven tribes–in the valley.

Zazi Valley, Afghanistan. The meeting place of 11 tribes this summer to organize a Tribal Police Force

Three weeks ago, the Tribal Police Force was attacked with an IED. The enemy (no one knows who) struck at a mosque where the unit was dining at the end of Ramadan. Just a couple of days ago, a second attack occurred on a road in the valley. So far, luck has held. No one has been seriously hurt.

If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” then Chief Zazai and his tribal police are America’s friend. But they are in danger.

Thank God somehow the main bomb in the mosque did not go off [Chief Zazai wrote to me], if that had gone off, it could have killed as many as 30 to 40 people easily. The reason the insurgents planted this bomb is that they are aware we are siding with the US, just imagine if this bomb had gone off and killed this many people, do you really think I could have been in the position to form another such group? No, never.

A chance for COIN to work

Here’s what I’d like to put before you, Gen. Jones:

If you or Admiral Mullen or Gen. Petraeus or Gen. McChrystal could assign one aggressive young officer to look into this situation (and grant that officer access to you), I believe a real breakthrough could be made that might serve as a model for U.S.-Afghan cooperation.

A beginning this summer

We need some on-site person to bridge the gap between 10th Mountain Division commanders and Chief Zazai’s tribal police. As it stands right now, chain-of-command bureaucracy is deadly. If no action is taken, this opportunity will fizzle. This is a classic situation of How To Lose A War, if “business as usual” is allowed to prevail. We need a man on the spot. Somebody who can assess the situation and move for action up the food chain. Here’s a note from Chief Zazai yesterday:

I spoke to Wayne (Borders, the 10th Mountain Division commander in Ali Khell in the Zazi valley). There is not much he can do to help really, what I need is more resources, more support … Wayne is a great guy, he already expresses his total support and is 100% dedicated to help in any way he can, what he can do really is put some good words for the Programme to his superiors and I believe he has done so already.

The relationship is there, it’s building, what really is missing is lack of logistical support for my Tribal Police Force programme. With proper funding I will be able to have proper Intel teams and my night Working team who will look after these [bad] guys who have taken safe refuge in my Valley!

More than just one valley

I would not put this before you, Gen. Jones, if I didn’t think this particular situation bore enormous potential for expansion beyond just this one valley. When the eleven Zazi tribes met this summer,

… the Tribes were excited to take part in the gathering and this was seen widely throughout Afghanistan by many other tribes on Shamshad TV which broadcasted the event for 3 days and a momentum is now circulating around Afghanistan for a tribal united front which could find a way forward. My team in Kabul and Zazi have been contacted by many Tribal chiefs throughout Afghanistan who wish to join our efforts for uniting all the Afghan Tribes.

Chief Zazai’s father, before he was murdered, worked for years to unite the Afghan tribes–not only the Pashtuns, but the Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks and others. Now Chief Zazai himself is championing this cause.

Yes, this is only one man and only one valley. But the opportunity is real and so is the peril. If the next IED attack succeeds, this bottom-up effort could be snuffed out before it even gets going.

At a time when the U.S. Afghan mission is under tremendous pressure politically at home and under attack in the world press, here in Ali Khell in the Zazi Valley is a chance to “protect the people”; to ally with a passionate, articulate, pro-American Afghan patriot; and to link with a true grass roots movement that is on our side and only wants to help and work with us.

I can put you, or any officer you designate, in touch with Chief Zazai. Just respond in the Comments box below or write me at steve [at] stevenpressfield [dot] com.

Chief Zazai and I have been invited to speak in January at Marine Corps University; we will be at other venues and media outlets in Washington D.C. as well. But that is a long way away.

I salute you, Gen. Jones, and Adm. Mullen and Gen. Petraeus and Gen. McChrystal on giving your all to an incredibly daunting and complex task–one that has frustrated no less illustrious a personage than Alexander the Great (not to mention Cyrus the Great, Genghis Khan, Akbar the Great and the Brits and Russians) in the past.

Please consider what I have put before you here. Just one bright, assertive young officer could make an enormous difference if he were given latitude to act and direct access to you. Thanks and all my best …

Semper Fi,

Steven Pressfield

The thoughts and I ideas that I will put forward in this paper are mine alone. Although I credit the U.S. Army Special Forces for the training I have received and the trust of [its] commanders, nothing in this paper reflects any other person’s or organization’s ideas.

Maj. Gant and ODA 316 in Afghanistan 2004

This is the opening author’s note from Maj. Jim Gant’s paper, “One Tribe At A Time,” which this blog is proud to present–in excerpt and quasi-serialization form–over the next few weeks. We’ll archive the posts in one place as they appear and also have a free downloadable .pdf of the full piece soon.

Why do I think this presentation is valuable? First I agree with it. I believe tribal engagement is the best, if not the only, “light-footprint” way to stabilize the current situation in Afghanistan and offer hope for a long-term Afghan-centric solution. Second, Maj. Gant’s ideas form a revealing and instructive complement to Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai’s actions and proposals, which this blog is presenting in this space each Friday. Third and most important, because Maj. Gant and his Special Forces team have tried these ideas in the real world and they have worked.

I have fought [Maj. Gant says] on the battlefields of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan is by far more the trying, the more difficult and the more brutal operational environment. The enemy there has never been defeated. And time is on their side. Trust me. I have sat face to face with Afghans, both friends and enemies, who will endure hardships that are unimaginable to us. They will do it, their children will do it and their children’s children will do it. They own all the time.

When one says “Afghan people” what they are truly saying is “tribal member.” Every single Afghan is part of a tribe and understands how the tribe operates and why. This is key for us to understand. Understanding and operating within the tribal world is the only way we can ever understand who are our friends, who are our enemies and how the Afghan people think and what is important to them, because they are all tribesmen first.

“One Tribe at a Time” reflects what I believe to be the one strategy that can help both the US and the people of Afghanistan by engaging the centuries-old tribal system present in Afghanistan. We must engage these tribes at a very close and personal level and with a much deeper cultural appreciation than we have ever had to engage in before. When we gain the respect and trust of one tribe, in one area, there will be a domino effect throughout the area and beyond. [One tribe] will eventually become 25 or even 50 tribes.

I asked Major Gant, “Isn’t the U.S. implementing a form of this strategy already?” Yes, he said, but not with the depth of understanding and commitment that is necessary to make it work.

Maj. Gant with Dr. Akhbar and others, Mangwel village, Konar

This is Ph.D. level warfare and one that will take a drastic shift in the current paradigm held by the US military.

What is needed, Major Gant says, is a strategy based on US Tribal Engagement Teams (TETs) working with Afghan Tribal Security Forces (TSFs) to secure tribal villages and districts from infiltration, intimidation and domination by the Taliban, al-Qaeda, corrupt warlords or other insurgent forces.

TSF is an acronym that will be used throughout this paper for Tribal Security Force. I will put the term Arbakais beside this term … as this is the Afghan term that is most used to describe the type of element the TETs would “advise, assist, train and lead.”

These American Tribal Engagement Teams will not be big, heavy-footprint behemoths, but small teams whose members would commit to living and fighting with the tribes over the long haul–months and years. They would be given the broadest possible latitude in action and support in firepower, funding and civil affairs assistance. Could it work? Maj. Gant has no doubt that it will with the Afghans. The biggest problems, he fears, will come from our own hidebound military bureaucracy. Below are just the first few in a long list of “questions, criticisms and obstacles” …

[A true strategy of tribal engagement will require a] complete paradigm shift at the highest levels of our military organizations–and then the ability to push these changes down to group/brigade and battalion commanders. I believe Secretary Gates, Gen. Petraeus and Gen. McChrystal are flexible enough and forceful enough to embrace and initiate a strategy of this type. [My fear is that] the farther down the “food-chain” it went, the more it would be resisted by the ground commanders. What changes would need to happen to make this strategy work?

1. Command and Control of the TETs would have to be streamlined dramatically. “One radio call could get an answer…”

2. The CONOP approval process (the process currently used to get missions approved from higher headquarters) would also have to be streamlined and shortened. To take this one step further, some missions would have to be conducted with no approval, due to the time-sensitive nature of the opportunity. The TETs would need special “trust and approval.”

3. The risk-averse nature of our current method of operating would have to change. American soldiers would die. Some of them alone, with no support. Some may simply disappear. Everyone has to understand that from the outset.

4. The TETs must be allowed to be on their own to grow beards, wear local garb, and interact with the tribesmen at all levels, at all functions. [They must be allowed] to be what they are: “American tribesmen.”

5. The OPFUND (money) issue would need to be streamlined and made more efficient. The TETs will once again need special trust to do what is needed with the money that they are allocated to help the tribe. Money and guns equal the ultimate power.

6. Rules of Engagement (ROE) must change. Using the TETs will become a very intense, personal fight. If they need to drop bombs or pursue an enemy, they will need to be able to do so. [Because the teams will always be fighting in conjunction with Tribal Security Forces], no missions will be conducted unilaterally. There will always be an Afghan face on any mission. However, there will be much fighting at some point.

8. The problem of identifying, attracting and training American personnel who could truly do this type of mission would be a daunting task.

Major Gant cites this recent quote from Inam-ur-Rahman, head of the Swat Valley peace committee in Pakistan: “Even if you take a Pashtun person to paradise by force, he will not go. He will go with you only by friendly means.”

Operating with the Tribal Security Force (TSF)

Afghan tribes always have and always will resist any type of foreign intervention in their affairs. This includes a central government located in Kabul, which to them is a million miles away from their problems, a million miles away from their security.

“Democracy” only has a chance to be cultivated at the local level by a small group of men who are willing to dedicate their lives to the Afghan people and cause.

At a time where the outcome of the war in Afghanistan hangs in the balance … when high ranking military officers are asking for more troops … I believe the [light-footprint] approach put forth in this paper will not only work, but will help to ease the increasing need for larger and larger numbers of US soldiers being deployed to Afghanistan.

[End of Post #1. These excerpts are from only the first six pages of "One Tribe At A Time," which is 55 pages long. Lots more over the coming weeks. This initial post at least gives a flavor of Maj. Gant's thinking. He goes into great depth and detail in future segments. Stay tuned each Monday. We'll archive all "One Tribe" posts in one place for easy reference. Thank you, Maj. Gant, and thanks to our readers.]

Chief Zazai, right, with his father, Chief Raiss Afzal Khan Zazi and his bodyguard, both murdered in 2000

[The blog is out of town this week.  Here is a re-boot of our first post in this ongoing series. See you Monday!]

This will be the first of a multi-part conversation with Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai of Paktia province, Afghanistan. Let’s plunge right in.

SP: Chief Zazai, this summer you were elected to the paramountcy of eleven tribes in your home region in Paktia province along the border with Pakistan. Why did the tribes meet at this time? What was their agenda?

Chief Zazai: On July 17th, 2009, my 11 tribes, their Chiefs and Tribal elders gathered in the Zazi valley, where the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division is also based. The event was broadcast for three days by the TV channel “Shamasad” and was seen throughout Afghanistan. The tribes met to address the problems created by the escalation of the insurgency and of course the failure of the Karzai administration to bring a stable, uncorrupt and people-representing government to Afghanistan.

SP: Prior to this meeting, you had established a tribal police force. Can you tell us why you did this and what has happened since?

Chief Zazai: At the end of May 2009, the tribal council, after many meetings, created this force to protect the people of the valley and to provide security for the council members. Our Zazi force is constituted of 80 men, who are governed by the tribal council. They serve full-time; they are armed with their own weapons and commanded by my friend Amir Mohammed. Commander Amir fought against the Soviets in the 80s and has been the commander of the border police appointed by the interior minister. He is a brave commander and a man of his word.

On September 13, just a few days ago, I was having a dinner with my family when I received a phone call from Commander Amir, who informed me of an IED placed in the mosque where he and the Tribal Police were having a dinner. It was Ramadan and they had been fasting all day so they came together to break their fast. An explosive device went off, blowing up part of the mosque and injuring a few tribal police. Thank God somehow the main bomb did not go off. If it had, it could have killed 30 to 40 people easily. Just imagine if this bomb had gone off and killed this many people! Could I have been in the position to form another such group? No, never.

Site of the 11 Tribes' Meeting, Paktia province

SP: Who planted the bomb and why?

Chief Zazai: The reason the insurgents planted this bomb is that they are aware we are siding with the US.

SP: Your own father was assassinated, I understand, under orders from Mullah Omar. You yourself have survived two attempts on your life. Can you tell us about your father and what you and he are fighting for?

Chief Zazai: My father was Chief Raiss Afzal Khan Zazai; he was murdered in 2000. My father led our Zazi tribes in the fight against the Soviets and later he organized the Tribal Chiefs from three provinces (Paktia, Paktika & Khost) in order to upraise against the Taliban. Some ex-commanders were visiting him at our family home and there they carried out this heinous crime. I have not found who gave the orders yet but the motive behind this was to bring a full stop to this movement and also to frighten the rest.

My father was one of our country’s first industrialists. He and my uncle founded the first Afghan transport company, Mrastay Transport, using old British Bedford trucks. His company, Wazir Ltd, exported raisins, dried fruits and Afghan carpets to Russia, Germany and Britain, while importing vehicles, appliances and medicines.

My father believed that the tribes were the past and future of Afghanistan. Let me show you a letter he wrote before he was killed (and several years before 9/11) to our dear friend David Simpson in England, who had fought alongside my father against the Soviets and is writing a book about this and much more. I thank David for his kind permission to excerpt this.

Besides the full support of Pushtoon tribes, I’ve the full support of Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Turkmen Tribes. I successfully expanded the “Zazi Tribes Union” to national tribal union where all the major tribes in Afghanistan are included. The present situation in my country is very bad.  People are suffering terribly under the unlawful regime of the Taliban … In 1995 I warned you of Taliban’s agenda towards extremism and [predicted] the present situation. I hate to say this but “I told you so.” Dear Dave, I need [the outside world's] support. My tribesmen are ready. Our Tribal main issue is to completely finish drugs and end the deep roots of terrorism.

SP: Is this your cause too, Chief Zazai?

Chief Zazai: Yes! The difficulty is in making people understand, people of America and the West. Afghanistan seems so complicated and confusing. It is complicated even to us! But, Steve, I tell you it is possible to bring together the tribes, which are the true power on the ground in Afghanistan and from there build a stable structure of governance. I said before that the gathering of the eleven Zazi tribes was broadcast for three days. A momentum is now circulating around Afghanistan for a tribal united front which could find a way forward. My team in Kabul and Zazi have been contacted by many Tribal chiefs who wish to join our efforts in uniting all the Afghan tribes.

Inside the tent: elders from the 11 tribes

SP: I want to talk more about issues that (you’re right) are confusing to non-Afghans: who’s who … the Taliban, the warlords, al-Qaeda, the insurgency. And about how your tribal union might work with the US military, what you’re doing, what the American responses have been, what’s possible. Are you game to keep going?

Chief Zazi: I will talk as long as you want, if we can get even a few people to listen.

[To be continued next Friday.  Monday, we'll start serializing Special Forces Major Jim Gant's white paper, "One Tribe At A Time."]

Site of the tribal gathering in Zazi, Paktia province

They say that every enterprise, from D-Day to a kitchen remodel, takes three times as long as you think and costs three times as much. I must apologize: our two new series have run afoul of this same syndrome. Here’s the latest:

We will launch, for sure, next Friday, with a reconfigured site.

Series #1: A multi-part, in-depth interview with an Afghan tribal chief

Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai was recently elected to the paramountcy of eleven tribes in his home district, the Zazi Valley in Paktia province. His first act was the creation of an 80-man tribal police force to protect the valley from insurgents. Chief Zazai must be doing something right because last week, his enemies tried to blow the force up.

I was having dinner with my family when I received a phone call from my commander, Amir Mohammed, telling me that an IED had been placed in the mosque where [the tribal police] were having a dinner. A small device went off … thank God the main bomb did not … it would have killed 30 to 40 people easily.

Chief Zazai’s father, who fought the Soviets and the Taliban, was assassinated several years ago; the chief himself has survived two attempts on his life. His cause is to unify the Afghan tribes and use them as a basis, not only for security for the Afghan people and state, but for a new (actually very old and traditional) form of governance for the entire country.

Inside the tent: elders from eleven tribes

Series #2: Special Forces Major Jim Gant’s “One Tribe At A Time”

Major Gant, who has served in Helmand and Konar provinces, approaches this same problem from the US side. While Chief Zazai is attempting to work with the 10th Mountain Division, whose area of responsibility is the chief’s home district, Major Gant lays out a program for US Tribal Engagement Teams to reach out to the tribes all over Afghanistan, one at a time. This is from his Foreword:

Afghanistan. I feel like I was born there. The greatest days of my life were spent in the Pesch Valley and Musa Qalay with the great “Sitting Bull” (a tribal leader in the Konar Valley who you will meet later in these pages). I love the people and the rich history of Afghanistan. They are a people who will give you their last bite of food in the morning and then try and kill you in the evening. A people who will fight and die for the mere sake of honor. A great friend and a worthy enemy.

Major Gant with "Sitting Bull," Konar province

Both Chief Zazai and Major Gant express the same belief:

The US [says Chief Zazai] has only one card to play in Afghanistan and that is the tribes.

Major Gant agrees.

… the answer lies in understanding and then helping the tribal system to flourish.

We’ll get these series rolling next Friday, I promise. And we’ll have free downloadable .pdfs of both, with photos and video, as soon after that as possible. Thanks, friends, for your patience.

This past Friday marked eight years since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Looking back over the last eight years, Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” comes to mind:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

and sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Two roads diverged from 9/11—Iraq and Afghanistan—and we have traveled both. And from those two roads, strategies diverged, winding us so far down the roads, that it is hard to see that first fork.

At the end of “Road Not Taken,” Frost wrote:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference

Will there be a point when we say that we took the road that “has made all the difference?”

September 11, I posted a guest blog, from Michael Brandon McClellan, titled “Knowing When to Stop, or Learning how to Win?” It was written in response to George Will’s much-debated Washington Post op-ed “Time to get Out of Afghanistan.”

You should also check out General Charles Krulack’s much-discussed e-mail response to Will. The e-mail is posted on Small Wars Journal. Check out the e-mail, as well as Paul Yingling’s commentary, and the comments following it.

Fouad Ajami’s Wall Street Journal op-ed “9/11 and the ‘Good War’” also ran September 11^th. Ajami wrote:

The road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack Obama. But he returned to 9/11 as he sought to explain and defend the war in Afghanistan in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Ariz., on Aug. 17. “The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight and we won’t defeat it overnight, but we must never forget: This is not a war of choice; it is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda could plot to kill more Americans.”

 

This distinction between a war of choice (Iraq) and a war of necessity (Afghanistan) has become canonical to American liberalism. . . .

 

But it will not do to offer up 9/11 as a casus belli in Afghanistan while holding out the threat of legal retribution against the men and women in our intelligence services who carried out our wishes in that time of concern and peril. To begin with, a policy that falls back on 9/11 must proceed from a correct reading of the wellsprings of Islamist radicalism.

The day before, Stratfor ran the article “France, Germany, U.K.: Trading Troops for an Exit Strategy.” From the Summary of the article:

European leaders are considering an increase in troops to Afghanistan in anticipation of a future withdrawal and exit strategy. Leaders of the U.K, Germany and France hope to train up Afghans to fend for themselves as soon as possible. A meeting, dubbed the “exit strategy summit,” is planned for December to discuss Afghan issues.

At DODDBuzz, in his article “Worst Case Unfolding in Afghanistan?” Greg Grant asked:

What if the entire U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is based on a flawed premise?

He ends with:

The best chance for success in Afghanistan had been the hope of cleaving away parts of the population, the proverbial fence sitters, from the more extremist Quetta shura Taliban. That required the people buy in, on some level, to the Afghan central government. It’s difficult to see how that happens now given the results of the election.

Over at Foreign Policy, you’ll find “The Ultimate AfPak Reading List”, compiled by Peter Bergen. Bergen notes that the list is:

. . . an amalgamation of syllabi from classes I’ve taught at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. I’ve included a variety of reading, from books I’ve found particularly insightful on the topic to significant reporting on everything from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to al Qaeda’s media strategy.

Also over at Foreign Policy: The AfPak Channel. This is a special project of Foreign Policy and New America Foundation. Make sure you check out Artemy Kalinovsky’s article “Afghanistan is the New Afghanistan.” Kalinovsky wrote:

In a recent ForeignPolicy.com article, Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason argue that Afghanistan is the new Vietnam. They are right, but there is another historical parallel which is both more obvious and less discussed: the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

 

U.S. government officials have understandably avoided the comparison. For one, the United States supported the other side: Afghan “freedom fighters” who later became enemies. Further, the Soviets became bogged down in a costly and bloody decade-long quagmire before Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ultimately pulled the plug and withdrew. Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan and its attempt to create a working central government in Kabul is broadly (if somewhat inaccurately) deemed a failure.

 

It’s a failure the United States apparently has no intention of repeating — to the extent that it doesn’t even seem to study it. The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual does not mention the Soviet experience once. One analyst told me that when she suggested including the conflict as a way to inform current policy, Pentagon officials seemed to have little awareness about what Moscow had been trying to do there or for how long.

With so many disagreeing over strategy, staying or leaving, the roads taken have become muddy, without a clear route moving forward, or a trail left from behind. What can be done now, to make all the difference?

A guest blog by Michael Brandon McClellan

[Mike McClellan is a graduate of Yale and Georgetown Law and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. His articles on politics and foreign policy have appeared in the WSJ, the Weekly Standard and on TCS Daily.  It's our pleasure to welcome him as a contributor.]

A few months ago I sat in awe in a Santa Monica hotel ballroom. George Will had been speaking for an hour and still held the audience spellbound. In a relaxed conversational tone, he addressed a dozen subjects, deploying dates, anecdotes, and quotations with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Never once in the seventy-five minutes did he consult a note. It was classic George Will, and it was impressive.

Last week, however, Will reminded me that brilliant men can err, and even err substantially, when he wrote a column titled “In Afghanistan, Knowing When to Stop.” Implying that the lives of some of America’s finest young men would be squandered if the US does not withdraw, Will declared Afghanistan to be essentially not winnable, and perhaps more importantly, not worth winning. Citing the present failure of America’s nation-building and democratizing mission after eight years of effort, Will offered the following policy prescription:

Forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

On its face this must sound tempting to a wide audience. Such a policy would save the lives of Marines and soldiers on the ground, save tax-payers the expense of deploying 68,000 troops, and use air-power to play to American technological strengths. The problem with this thinking is not only that it has failed before, but that it has failed before in Afghanistan. Less than twenty years ago, the United States abandoned its mujahideen allies after a decade of arming them against the Soviet Union. We know who filled that vacuum.

George Will argues that Afghanistan is underdeveloped, has a tiny GDP, and is not worth American blood and treasure. To emphasize the point, he asks whether the US should also nation-build in “Somalia, Yemen, and other sovereignty vacuums.” Proponents of withdrawal made the same arguments twenty years ago. They declared that the US had helped the Afghans enough and it was time to leave them to “sort it out.”

Of course a fractured nation such as Afghanistan does not easily “sort it out” when shrewd geopolitical players like Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are waiting to step in and tip the scales in favor of their preferred partisans. In the aftermath of the Red Army withdrawal, many of the heroes of the war against the Soviets were left facing ruthless warlords armed with foreign money and weapons. The vacuum created by American withdrawal left Afghanistan open to outside manipulation that was in direct opposition to American interests and security. Today, to that list of outside players may be added China and Russia, larger and more powerful than any of the previous three and possessed of substantial ambitions in Central Asia.

The Taliban takeover was not inevitable in the 1990s. Most of the Afghan freedom fighters were not Islamists or jihadists but proud tribesmen defending their land as had their ancestors for generations. Neither did most Afghans desire a continuance of the corrupt, chaotic, and violent rule of the warlords. Backed by foreign money and arms, the Taliban emerged with promises of stability. The stability they brought was that of Wahhabi repression of indigenous Afghan Islam–and of alliance with and sponsorship of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

America reaped the fruit when unmolested jihadist training camps, hosted by the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, produced hardened fighters who brought down the World Trade Center and blew a hole in the Pentagon. I was two blocks from the White House that day and watched the black smoke billow across the Potomac, before the Secret Service, with weapons drawn, made us get off the roof, and we joined the throngs leaving downtown via Connecticut Avenue. As is true for many Americans that witnessed these events either in person or on television, such things are seared on my mind.

That said, if the lesson of 9/11 is not that bad things happen when Afghanistan is left as a vacuum for regional players to fill with anti-American radicals, then what is?

While violence is escalating, and the war in Afghanistan is at a tipping point, the war is not lost. There are tribal leaders who understand the value of American and NATO assistance, and they want peace, freedom, and prosperity for their people. They desire neither Taliban nor warlord domination and they are furious with the corruption and ineptitude of the Karzai government. They are also outraged when their people are killed by missiles seeking Taliban targets.

Equally important, there are American officers who understand the need to win the confidence of the tribes and to enlist them, as tribes, in the cause of the greater nation. They recognize that the Afghan warrior will not be won over by a foreign superpower that declines to put its own young men into the field or that refuses to meet him with respect.

An “offshore” war as Will prescribes has the potential to create the opposite result of engagement with the tribes. Mistakes inevitably happen with missiles, hardening opposition among the tribes in whose midst the Taliban must hide to survive and carry out their war. Moreover, as one Afghan chief has told me, for the cost of a single missile, a whole group of local tribal fighters could be recruited to clear their own valleys and villages of Taliban and warlord forces alike. But such a strategy at its most fundamental level requires engagement, not disengagement.

George Will quoted a Dutch officer saying that walking through a southern province of Afghanistan is “like walking through the Old Testament.” Perhaps in such a statement there is an unintentional lesson. The Afghans have indeed been a proud, fierce, and honorbound people since the time Esther was influencing Xerxes to better treat the Israelites. As the Afghans are still such a people, we can look to history for instruction. In that blank page of the Bible that separates the Old Testament from the New, and the Persian Empire from the Roman, Alexander the Great figured out that if you win the tribes, you can win Afghanistan; lose the tribes and you face intractable insurgency. Two millennia later, Disraeli’s Britons and Gorbachev’s Soviets would surely concur. Given the strange consistencies of Afghanistan over time, and the disastrous ramifications of withdrawal two decades ago, we should recognize that knowing when to stop is not nearly as important as learning how to win.