All In (22 page)

The operation marked a turning point for joint interagency operations, especially relations between the Special Operations community and the CIA. After the Hollywood Hotel raid, the combined team conducted operations that led to the arrest of terrorists and individuals linked to nongovernmental organizations suspected of links to terrorist organizations. One of them, Benevolence International Foundation, a Chicago-based religious organization, was using its tax-exempt status as a charity to raise funds for transnational terrorists. At its offices in Bosnia, the Joint Interagency Task Force uncovered documents that established direct communication between Benevolence and an al-Qaeda lieutenant, which the FBI used to put Benevolence International Foundation's leader behind bars in Chicago on perjury charges. By August 2002, according to one of its analysts, Captain Jeanne Hull, “intelligence and open-source reporting indicated that some armed groups were looking to avoid Bosnia rather than use it.”

While Special Mission Unit teams continued to pursue war criminals, their main mission became counterterrorism. It was a formative period for Petraeus that built on his peacekeeping experiences in Haiti and his time on General Shelton's staff, where he had first been exposed to the mission in Bosnia and the Special Mission Units there. Because of his time in Bosnia, he better understood the importance of “unity of effort,” working at both the strategic and tactical levels with U.S. and coalition military and civilian partners, international organizations, foreign embassies and host-nation officials. He worked to merge the combined efforts of Special Mission Units and Special Forces teams on the war-criminal and counterterrorism missions, and he learned from the intelligence-gathering techniques the Special Mission Units used to locate high-value targets. The interagency task force that he helped establish to pursue terrorist suspects would be a blueprint he would again use in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Perhaps most important, he carried with him a blueprint for a Multi-Year Road Map for the comprehensive nation building he had first experienced in Haiti and now implemented in war-torn Bosnia. He left Bosnia in 2002 after learning that he would be promoted to major general and given the job of his dreams, commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Word at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was that the Screaming Eagles were ticketed for Iraq.

IN AFGHANISTAN,
Petraeus cherished his time in the field with units from the 101st Airborne. On December 20, he flew to Kandahar to visit Flynn's battalion, touching down in a Black Hawk helicopter in a barren brown field near the site where the Battle of Bakersfield had been fought in July. Flynn led the general to a bridge where his men had fought the days-long battle. Flynn asked Petraeus to pin a Silver Star on the chest of Sergeant First Class Kyle Lyon, an Army meteorologist by training who had led a platoon through the Battle of Bakersfield. Petraeus promised he would look into Lyon's request to reclassify as an infantryman. He awarded medals to seven other soldiers as well, noting that the opportunities to recognize heroic troopers were among his greatest pleasures. Flynn had given Petraeus the basic facts of the fighting that had taken place as they walked to the bridge from the landing zone, and Petraeus repeated them verbatim in his remarks to the troops. Flynn was impressed by his memory and thought the personal remarks he had made to each soldier were eloquent.

After the ceremony, Flynn led Petraeus and the members of his traveling party inside Combat Outpost Stout, where he briefed them on his battalion's tactical operations and reconstruction efforts. Flynn explained that they measured success by counting the number of farmers working in fields, the willingness of potential informants to be recruited, and the number of villagers willing to take part in “cash for work” programs and various other indicators. Flynn's converted artillerymen were conducting the kind of intensive counterinsurgency operations normally performed by the infantry and Special Forces. Petraeus later told Major General James Terry, commander of the Regional Command South in Afghanistan, that he wanted a similar approach followed in the south.

Flynn shared other insights as well. He understood Petraeus's intent—the Afghan Local Police were intended to promote local security and supplement the growing Afghan security forces, including uniformed and border police. Adding the Afghan Local Police to the mix would help achieve something closer to the 1-to-20 troop-to-population ratio prescribed in U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine, when both ISAF and Afghan forces were included. A similar bottom-up defense initiative in Iraq, the Sons of Iraq, had been one of the tipping points for greatly improved security. Could it work in Afghanistan? Could conventional forces assume part of this training mission? Special Operations forces promoting the Village Stability Operations were spread thin as it was. Petraeus had asked his Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) to study whether conventional forces were up to the task. Flynn clearly thought that they were.

Petraeus listened intently to Flynn's briefing, which gave him a snapshot of what his unit had achieved in their seven months in country and an analysis of the enemy. Flynn described his current lines of effort, including efforts to promote local governance and development. Petraeus said the Taliban senior leadership was concerned by the expansion and effectiveness of the ALP, which he felt would have real impact on the Taliban's popular support, communications and safe havens. He still hoped that the ALP would spread like a chain-link fence across key terrain districts that lacked sufficient numbers of soldiers and police.

Petraeus continually reiterated the value of, and his aspirations for, the ALP initiative at his morning stand-up briefings. He had asked Brigadier General Scott Miller, the commanding general of Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan, to update him weekly on its expansion as the initiative was being implemented by Miller's Special Forces detachments. Miller's command was cautious about other efforts to train and equip local police, in part because of the importance of maintaining ties to the Ministry of the Interior and control over the dispersal of weapons—tasks that his teams explicitly oversaw. Miller, however, recognized that conventional forces had to take part in order to achieve the desired ratio of troops to villagers. There simply weren't enough Special Forces detachments to do the job at the pace that was necessary to halt the insurgency's momentum.

After Flynn's briefing, the entourage set off on foot to Tarok Kolache so that Petraeus could see the development there for himself. Flynn was worried that he wouldn't see anyone he knew, after emphasizing his close relations with villagers during the briefing. But the first man they ran into was Abdul Baqi, a homeowner eager to see his house rebuilt. He greeted Flynn warmly. Soon there were others, including village maliks who told Petraeus that they didn't want Flynn to leave. At one point, as a small crowd gathered at the site of the demolished Tarok Kolache mosque, Petraeus discussed the need for reconstruction so that villagers could once again live in peace and prosperity. Mark Howell, the security chief who accompanied Petraeus, knew how much Petraeus enjoyed visiting these onetime Taliban strongholds. “I saw a light in the boss's eyes I saw in Baghdad after the Battle of Sadr City in March '08,” Howell recalled. “The light that said, ‘I've got you now, and there's more where that came from.' Joe Taliban has an interesting winter ahead of him, and those that are left standing come April may be a little more open-minded.” Major General Terry later passed a quote from Petraeus to Flynn: “Best day that I've had since I've been in Afghanistan.”

That night, after Petraeus returned to ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Major Fernando Lujan briefed the commanding general. Lujan had seen Flynn's battalion during their initial operations back in July, when he and his colleagues from the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team embedded with Flynn's unit. But tonight's topic wasn't Flynn or his troops. It was the future of the CAAT itself. At the start of his tour back in July, Lujan had been assigned by the CAAT's commander, Colonel Joe Felter, to build a team that could take the CAAT concept inside the Afghan military, which would at some point be inheriting the war from the Americans and their NATO partners. Lujan was well suited to create an Afghan CAAT, or A-CAAT. In addition to being a Special Forces officer, he was in a special program created by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the “Afghan Hands.” Those in it trained in either Dari or Pashto and spent three years rotating back and forth between Afghan-related billets in Afghanistan and the United States. All of this was designed to build language fluency, cultural expertise and country knowledge. The A-CAAT took shape almost coincidentally, when Lujan was joined in Kandahar by two other Afghan Hands who also spoke Dari, an infantry officer and a Defense Department contractor. They spent the fall on eight combat embeds advising Afghan forces on best counterinsurgency practices.

In a conference room at ISAF headquarters filled with Petraeus aides and three Special Forces colonels, Lujan said the vision he and Felter shared was for the A-CAAT, over time, to essentially supersede the CAAT and become an increasingly important contribution to the campaign as ISAF forces thinned out and turned the war over to the Afghan troops. But the only way to expand the A-CAAT so that it had three separate regional teams, in the south, southwest and east regional commands, Lujan argued, was for the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to assume responsibility and provide staffing. Only with SOCOM support could enough Afghan Hands be assigned to carry on the mission. By the summer of 2011—when the drawdown of U.S. forces would begin—Lujan envisioned having five A-CAATs—one for each regional command. While Lujan and Felter had heard that the Special Forces colonels were there to try to keep the Afghan Hands out of the A-CAAT expansion, they kept their mouths shut after Petraeus responded enthusiastically to the A-CAAT expansion. “‘We need command-track guys for these Afghan Hands billets, not guys who didn't have any career options,'” Lujan later quoted Petraeus as saying. “You need the best.”

Petraeus promised Felter and Lujan that the CAAT would remain based at ISAF headquarters, in close proximity with Petraeus and his staff. “‘As long as I am COMISAF, you will always report directly to me,'” Lujan remembered him saying. “That will never change.” Lujan said in an e-mail he fired off to his CAAT brethren back in Kandahar when the briefing was over,
“We literally got every single thing we asked for. We are hereby institutionalized. Expect big influx of resources and people over the next few months. We have the charter to create a new paradigm out here.”

“We'll do everything possible to ensure the CAAT remains a relevant and effective asset both now and in the years ahead,” Felter wrote to Petraeus. “It's really a privilege to serve with this great group and for us to have the chance to support you and ISAF at this critical time in the fight.” Petraeus responded later that night: “Actually Joe, I thank you. In truth, my ‘direction and guidance' were pretty fuzzy! The idea was to allow for max initiative. But my support should have been very clear. The CAAT is a true force multiplier, and it's been great to see what you and the team have done to develop it. Thanks for all that you've done!”

Three days later, Flynn convened a meeting between his staff and representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development and Afghan government agencies to discuss the rebuilding of Tarok Kolache. He estimated that the cost to replace the buildings and compensate the farmers for the revenue lost from pomegranate sales would total well over $500,000. As they had walked days earlier in Tarok Kolache around the bulldozed site, Petraeus had directed him to spend what was needed; if he had to, “spend a million,” the ceiling allocated for funds through a program called CERP, for Commander's Emergency Response Program. “Blame the CERP ceiling restrictions on that darned former Central Command commander,” Petraeus joked, referring to himself in his old job as head of Central Command. Petraeus and Flynn felt a deep obligation to rebuild what had been damaged or destroyed. Construction of a new mosque was scheduled to begin in late December. Shortly thereafter, landowners would be paid for assisting in the reconstruction of the village. Building—or, in this case, rebuilding—was by far the hardest stage of the clear-hold-and-build process.

At the same time that his unit engaged in the rebuilding of Tarok Kolache, Flynn had begun talks with villagers from Charqolba Olya on establishing an ALP force there, the site of one of three nascent ALP units in his area. Charqolba Olya had previously been infiltrated by the Taliban, and the villagers had been displaced to Kandahar city and other nearby villages by the time Flynn's unit had arrived in the Arghandab River Valley in June. By January, villagers were starting to move back into their homes. Flynn's team was helping to rebuild damaged properties, and he was eager to help them defend what they rebuilt.

One challenge Flynn faced was the territorial feeling that the Special Operations community had about its Village Stability Operations, the forerunner of the ALP program. Many Special Forces soldiers felt conventional units were simply unqualified and incapable of working closely with villagers to win their trust and build a local security apparatus. Flynn agreed that it took mature soldiers to run an ALP program and thought conventional forces had to be selective in choosing the right leaders to do it. He knew conventional forces had been successful in raising indigenous forces in Vietnam and in Iraq. Also, conventional forces had a green light from Petraeus to launch ALP initiatives in accordance with guidelines he established.

Providing the local citizens with arms, however, also proved to be a complicating factor. The Afghan government understandably feared that they were arming warlords and militias to face off with each other and the central government in Kabul. Petraeus issued guidance saying that U.S. forces must not arm the ALPs; the weapons had to come from the Ministry of Interior as part of the official ALP program. This was among the guidelines established with Karzai. But the program was not always as agile as needed, and weapons were very important to the Afghans. Flynn tried to talk to some of his villagers about community watch and reporting on Taliban activity, and the first response they always gave was, “I need a weapon.” Afghanistan was awash in AK-47s, RPGs and other weaponry, and with heavily armed insurgents marauding across the countryside, a local security force member's power emanated from the barrel of a gun. It was that simple.