All In (20 page)

Night raids proved highly effective in eliminating mid- and high-level Taliban leaders, who seemed incapable of staying off the communications grid for long. They also became a significant source of intelligence, since most of the targets of these “kinetic” raids were captured without a single shot fired, so that they could be interrogated and, in some cases, turned. Yet some Afghan citizens despised the night raids, because it was terrifying to have American and Afghan commandos breaking down the doors of neighbors' houses in the dead of night. In certain cases, until Petraeus directed changes to the conduct of the raids, men were carted off in handcuffs without any explanation to the locals at all. On occasion, when the raids went wrong and Special Operations Forces found themselves under attack, innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire and killed.

To mitigate these effects, district governors were informed of and even invited to accompany the SOF elements on operations as often as was possible. The missions often began with helicopter insertions, leaving troops to walk the final leg—anywhere from half a mile to five or even ten miles—to their targets. The raids could go one of two ways: The Afghan special operators would do “callouts” in an attempt to get the insurgent out on the street so they didn't have to do a forced entry, or the forces could enter a compound by either blowing off the door or knocking it down. In each case, ISAF paid for damage to any facilities. Sometimes, Special Operations soldiers waited days near the target, stealthily watching and developing “pattern of life” analysis to supplement the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets they'd focused on the target location before the operation. Once they had eyes on the target, they executed a rapid entry and got in and out in a matter of minutes. Typically, Special Operations Forces were used against “high-value” commanders whose capture would disrupt insurgent operations and, often, yield valuable intelligence.

PETRAEUS FELT HE HAD
a good grasp that fall on operations in Helmand and Kandahar provinces and elsewhere in the south, where troops were continuing to expand their footprint and connect growing secure areas. In the east, he pushed Campbell to focus on hammering insurgent networks, building on recent momentum and still working hard to improve his understanding of that area. He thought he had a reasonable feel for conditions in western Afghanistan, where the battlespace was relatively calm, and he had a clear sense that ISAF needed to do more in Baghlan and Kunduz, in the north, where ISAF had increased its force levels and operational tempo, to some effect. But for now, the priorities had to remain in the south and southwest, the traditional Taliban strongholds.

The surge had increased the ratio of troops to civilians in these areas, and the numbers reflected both the priority placed on the south and the still relative economy of force, given the number of soldiers required for a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. There was one ISAF soldier for every nineteen Afghans in Helmand Province and one for every thirty-three Afghans in Kandahar, the two provinces where forces had been concentrated to clear the Taliban from its strongholds. But in the mountain provinces of the east, where three of the four brigade combat teams from the 101st Airborne were fighting, the ratio was one to ninety-one Afghan citizens. In the northern provinces, the ratio was just one to 192.

As certain as Petraeus was about the ability of U.S. and Canadian forces to clear key areas in Kandahar, he knew the “hold” phase, when gains were consolidated, would likely be more challenging. Progress in the hold phase, to a considerable degree, depended upon establishment of effective local governance and local security, which the nascent but growing Afghan army—meeting its recruitment goals but beset by high AWOL rates—did not yet have enough troops to help provide. There was also still much work to do at the village level, coaxing villagers to return; rebuilding their homes, bazaars and mosques; and recruiting and training enough Afghan Local Police capable of standing up to the Taliban once they returned after the winter. Petraeus expected the enemy to fight back and try to regain ground that was important to them tactically and symbolically. “We will be staying in these areas to resist them, and that is new,” Petraeus said. “We will not know the true impact of these operations until next year. . . . Ultimately, when you take away their safe havens, they will fight to come back.”

He preached caution to his staff when it came to “chest pounding” about successes in Kandahar. He wanted his officers even to avoid claims of “cautious optimism” as they dealt with the media. Stick to the facts, he advised; just state them and let members of the press draw their own conclusions. But with a heavier conventional-troop presence and active operations across Kandahar Province, many of the Taliban had beat a tactical retreat—to redoubts across the border in Pakistan, where they were beyond the reach of American forces.
A headline on the front page of the
New York Times,
“Coalition Routs Taliban in Southern Afghanistan,” triggered a counterattack by members of the antiwar class in Washington. Some saw the article as evidence of how skilled Petraeus was at spinning reporters. He responded that the
Times
piece had caught him by surprise and noted that it was written by a woman who had spent years in Afghanistan and was known as a hard-edged reporter.

Doug Ollivant was circumspect about whether U.S. forces had, indeed, devastated the Taliban around Kandahar. “We just don't know,” he said. “It's like the blind men with the elephant. We don't know if what we are seeing is the start of a trend or an anomaly. Be very, very careful.” The Pakistan safe havens, he knew, kept Petraeus from being able to attack “the Afghan insurgency at its root.” U.S., coalition and Afghan forces controlled much ground that had previously belonged to the Taliban. But if a single factor could undo Petraeus's counterinsurgency doctrine, it was the sanctuaries in Pakistan.

For all the caution he counseled his officers to use when dealing with the media, Petraeus was constantly engaged. While he never talked about winning, he often moved the narrative by communicating, via e-mail, with numerous reporters and columnists, sometimes on the record but also on background, which, as was customary, was not attributed directly to him. He also opened his fighting units up to hosting embedded journalists, because he knew that the easiest way to win over even the most hard-bitten reporters was to have them spend time with U.S. forces, especially ones in combat.

Beyond the success of Operation Dragon Strike in Kandahar, media reports also appeared regarding nascent peace talks. Petraeus shared with the
Washington Post
what senior Afghan officials had told him: that “several very senior Taliban leaders” had reached out to the Afghan government. But Petraeus cautioned that this overture “certainly would not rise to the level of being called negotiations.” Privately, he wasn't sure that some of the secret talks—those set to take place in the Maldives and in a Gulf state, in particular—were yet all that significant, seeing some of them more as “reconciliation tourism.” Consequently, Petraeus struck a cautionary note with the
Post
similar to the one he used during his stand-ups. “Should these reports of Taliban holding peace talks with [the Afghan government] prove true, we cannot expect any favorable outcome for some time,” he told his staff one morning in mid-October. “Additionally, the Taliban do not speak with one voice, and these talks will create strains within the Taliban senior leadership as they try and work out who is talking to whom. If talks are occurring, then I am not surprised, given the enormous pressure we are placing on the network: This pressure will only increase over the months ahead. Finally, do not make more of these talks than there is—it is more speculation than fact at this time.”

Seeing the gains by conventional forces, coupled with the successful night raids by Special Operations Forces, some speculated that Petraeus had shifted strategy away from McChrystal's counterinsurgency approach.
A story line emerged that Petraeus was moving away from classic counterinsurgency tactics in favor of the ironfisted night raids and greater reliance on air strikes, which increased dramatically during his tenure. Some in the media speculated that he was trying to bomb the Taliban to the negotiating table. Others speculated that Petraeus realized that counterinsurgency alone wasn't working, as Taliban influence spread to areas that had been peaceful. Petraeus continued to explain that a comprehensive counterinsurgency approach
included
counterterrorism strikes as well as all the other lines of operation in the overall strategy, but the nuance was lost on many journalists.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and a confidant for Petraeus and McChrystal, cited a paradox in comparing the commands of the two men. “I would underscore that there was more continuity than change,” O'Hanlon later shared. “What I noticed was their shift in public relations strategy: Petraeus was willing to talk about killing bad guys more than McChrystal.” McChrystal had largely been responsible for pushing for the increase in Special Operations Forces and associated enablers early in his command—with support by Petraeus at Central Command—but he was reticent to announce it in the press. Petraeus was eager that fall to discuss progress, and the Special Operations Forces efforts were among those that seemed to indicate progress. He would later regret somewhat having raised the profile of night raids, but he was eager to share an indicator, and Special Operations Forces were the moneymakers at the time.

When Colonel Gunhus sent Petraeus a blog post by
Time'
s Joe Klein citing this pivot from counterinsurgency to a more violent strain of counterterrorism, the general was “exercised,” Gunhus relayed, using Petraeus's expression for “irritated.” Petraeus told Rear Admiral Greg Smith, his chief of strategic communications, to tell Klein and David Ignatius of the
Washington Post,
who had made a similar point in a column, that they had completely missed what was going on. He hadn't just increased counterterrorist force operations—he'd increased everything! His war strategy was a
comprehensive
civil-military campaign without silver bullets. Progress required all civilian and military efforts working in concert, albeit in different combinations, depending upon where in the country they were based.

The following morning in his stand-up, Petraeus was still perturbed. “The key point to stress is that we are doing more of
everything
. We have certainly increased the tempo of SOF operations. We have also increased the clear-hold-and-build operations conducted by conventional forces. We have increased our training effort with the ANSF, local security initiatives, and reconciliation and reintegration,” Petraeus stated. “We've also increased support to local governance and development, increased information operations and so on.” Petraeus called the overall approach “the Anaconda strategy,” the same title he'd used to describe the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach in Iraq during the surge there, but modified for Afghanistan.

Petraeus first publicly unveiled a PowerPoint slide depicting the Anaconda strategy in Iraq before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2007. He had been refining it ever since. The diagram, which Petraeus routinely showed to staff and visiting delegations in Afghanistan, depicts seven central thrusts simultaneously aimed at the enemy. Named after the giant snake that squeezes its prey to death, the Anaconda strategy for Iraq was designed to squeeze the life out of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni insurgents, as well as the Shia militia extremists. In Afghanistan in the summer of 2010, it featured seven categories of activity: kinetic operations, politics, intelligence, detainee operations, information operations, international engagement and non-kinetics, by which Petraeus meant programs for jobs, education, rule of law and development. Only one of the seven—kinetic operations—involved predominantly military action. McMaster's anticorruption task force was part of the “politics” thrust. Martins's Rule of Law Field Force fell under the heading of “detainee operations.”

“If it appears on the Anaconda slide, then it has been ramped up,” Petraeus would say during briefings, aiming a laser pointer at the Anaconda diagram. His seven categories were broken down into twenty-six tasks. The general might have been the only person on his staff capable of tracking them all at the same time amid the chaos of war.

Petraeus's reliance on “kinetics” for dealing with the “uncertainty, challenge, risk, danger and competing agendas” in Afghanistan came straight from Iraq, where he relentlessly attacked al-Qaeda and other extremists through night raids during the surge as his forces conducted large operations to clear AQ from safe havens. But, as in Afghanistan, Petraeus oversaw increases in clear-hold-and-build operations, as well as initiatives to negotiate with Sunni and Shia militants willing to lay down their arms and work with the Americans. Petraeus's focus on “protecting the people” did not imply a reticence in the use of force; as he would put it, he was just against
counterproductive
use of force. Indeed, he had always been firm that his counterinsurgency tactics include ironfisted counterterrorist operations by counterterrorist forces. The counterinsurgency guidance he issued on August 1 made it clear that killing the enemy was very much part of the plan:

 

PURSUE THE ENEMY RELENTLESSLY.
Together with our Afghan partners, get our teeth into the insurgents and don't let go. When the extremists fight, make them pay. Seek out and eliminate those who threaten the population. Don't let them intimidate the innocent. Target the whole network, not just individuals.

 

FIGHT HARD AND FIGHT WITH DISCIPLINE.
Hunt the enemy aggressively, but use only the firepower needed to win a fight. We can't win without fighting, but we also cannot kill or capture our way to victory. Moreover, if we kill civilians or damage their property in the course of our operations, we will create more enemies than our operations eliminate. That's exactly what the Taliban want. Don't fall into their trap. We must continue our efforts to reduce civilian casualties to an absolute minimum.