All In (34 page)

Campbell was scheduled to visit the Sarobi District Center at 1:00
P.M.
to attend a “validation” ceremony there for the six new ALP detachments that the Special Forces in the area had helped create, building on their earlier Village Stability Operations. On the brief flight to Sarobi, Campbell told an aide to find out the latest from FOB Gamberi, which was reeling from the suicide attack that morning that appeared to have been carried out by an Afghan insider. Six, maybe nine, were dead. Many were wounded, but there was still confusion at the base. Had an Afghan soldier conducted the attack, or had an insurgent infiltrated and stolen a uniform in order to penetrate security? It sounded as if the suicide bomber was recognized by other Afghans in the room. How many more of these could the command expect? Campbell had ordered all units to be on guard for this type of infiltration attack, but completely preventing such attacks was hugely difficult. Intelligence warnings from earlier in the year indicated that the insurgency's focus this fighting season would be on infiltrating the Afghan military and police.

Once the helicopter landed at Sarobi, it quickly lifted off to avoid small-arms fire. The security situation, while improved, was not good enough to allow for the “birds” to stay on the ground long. Campbell and his aides walked briskly toward a white concrete walled structure while his security team set up a hasty perimeter. It was the district center for local governance, and nearly all three hundred new members of the Afghan Local Police were present for the ceremony. If Petraeus was to have any hope of keeping the Taliban from reasserting control over this area, these newly minted village constabulary units constituted an important part of the blocking force. Campbell exchanged handshakes and placed his hand over his heart in the traditional Afghan gesture of respect and thanks. A few elders greeted him, but there were long, awkward silences.

The ceremony had been moved inside a large community room in the district's central building because of the rain, and all of the Afghan elders crowded inside. Campbell and the other Americans and ISAF officials waited outside the main room. This was an Afghan ceremony, run by Afghans for Afghans. The expanding security inkblot, as Petraeus liked to call it, was slowly spreading in this area, thanks to the new local police units. “We are in the beginning stages of this, but I believe this will be a game changer here in Afghanistan,” said Campbell.

Campbell then flew to FOB Gamberi, one part of which was in ruins after that morning's attack. He spoke quietly to all the survivors who had been in the room when the attack happened and pinned Purple Hearts on those in the base aid station who had been wounded. It had been another long day in America's longest war.

In spite of the additional forces deployed and the tactical victories his soldiers had achieved in the forbidding mountains of eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border and in the rolling hills closer to Kabul, Campbell's sector remained an “economy of force” area. The “surge” of an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan had raised the total U.S. forces to 100,000. But Afghanistan was vast and had been swallowing up foreign troops for centuries. Taliban could still easily travel through Paktika and other eastern provinces bordering Pakistan along footpaths, unchecked roads and ungoverned valleys with relative ease. There was still only a nascent border plan for this part of Afghanistan. It was hard to claim that 5,000 additional ISAF troops, mainly Americans, sent to Paktika over the past year accomplished much more than displacing insurgents. An Afghan Paktika protection-force concept was under way; until those Afghans could conduct sustained security operations at a higher level, or until additional ISAF forces were stationed in the area—which was not likely—no one was certain the gains would hold.

THAT NIGHT,
back at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Petraeus spoke by secure phone to the commander of the Sustainment Brigade whose soldiers had been killed in the infiltration attack at Forward Operating Base Gamberi. Such a loss inevitably brought him to a moment of assessment. “It was a tragic, very tough event out there for the Lifeliners,” Petraeus reflected, his voice cracking slightly. “Very tough.” He thought for a long moment when asked how he handled soldiers dying. “You just keep it all in,” he said. “You bite your lip.” There would certainly be more to come in the months ahead as the Taliban returned to the battlefield and fighting resumed, given what Petraeus was anticipating—“key-leader attacks, suicide attacks, tough fighting.” As he summarized conditions on the ground, he focused on expanding the security bubble around Kabul. In addition to the gains made in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, conditions were still touch-and-go in Logar and Wardak provinces, to the south and southwest of Kabul, and more effort was being focused there. The same combination of conventional and Special Operations Forces, along with Afghan special forces, was achieving results in Laghman Province, east of Kabul. This layered defense forced the Taliban into valleys where they could be tracked, if not directly through ISAF checkpoints.

Petraeus was now fluent down to the district level, from Herat Province in the west, on Iran's border, to governance challenges around Kandahar, where the Taliban had been effectively cleared. In his own assessment, there was fragile progress to report. He was pleased with the “hold”-phase actions of conventional Afghan and ISAF forces in the south and with the still-burgeoning effort to build Afghan Local Police units in villages across the country, as well as with Brigadier General H. R. McMaster's work fighting corruption. Karzai was accepting McMaster's ideas—he'd even fired his surgeon general, Ahmad Zia Yaftali, for selling medical supplies donated by the international community and relieved the leadership of the Afghan Military Hospital. But working with the international community, Petraeus observed, introduced a whole new level of complexity and occasional frustration. The coalition was now forty-nine nations (plus Afghanistan), and persuading all to “make way together” took considerable energy, engagement and determination—all of which Petraeus had in spades and committed to this aspect of his responsibilities.

What seemed to worry him most, though, was not conditions on the ground but the adjustments that would be necessary with the drawdown of forces in July and the inevitable transition in the war effort. “Transition is, in some respects, a philosophical issue,” he said. “But it's hugely important. Big ideas matter. The mission is not transition. The mission is to achieve conditions in security and governance and development that enable irreversible transition. If the mission becomes transition, we can do that—we can hand off—but we may not achieve the goals of the U.S. or NATO forces. I'm very sensitive to this,” he explained, recalling the situation in Iraq in 2004 and in 2006, when the mission seemed to become precisely that. “Commanders thought they'd be judged based on how well they did with transition readiness,” he said. “Some people kept telling the commander they were going to be able to transition, when the situation was going south.” By late 2006, with violence escalating in Iraq, the mission paradoxically seemed even more focused on transition. “We stopped that when I took command—we stopped transition,” he noted.

In Afghanistan, he observed that, “even with commencement of the drawdown, enough troops and civilians will remain in Afghanistan to pursue all the campaign plan's lines of operation—protecting the people, dismantling insurgent networks, building Afghan forces, aiding local government, fostering development, attacking corruption. Progress still needs to be made in all of those areas before transition is possible in additional areas.” Clearly, as troops “thin out,” Petraeus explained, more and more emphasis will need to be placed on helping the Afghan government build its capacity to deliver services and provide security. “If transition is the mission, well, we can hand the ball to these guys and step off the field now,” he said. But, he clearly implied, the mission was to accomplish more than that: The intention was to hand the Afghans a situation they could sustain.

PETRAEUS HAD BEEN TOLD
by a Fox News reporter, interviewing him in his office, that Obama would give him the CIA job as a way to muzzle him, although Petraeus did not believe that to be true. The reach and capability possessed by the agency in the global war on terror clearly intrigued him. “They should use me,” he said to a close friend about those in the Obama White House. “I've been their most loyal guy for quite a while; sure, I haven't hesitated to provide forthright advice . . . but that's what a commander in chief should want.”

The Fox News interview eventually touched on Petraeus's family. Holly was in Oklahoma, speaking in her new role as assistant director of the government's new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, heading the Office of Servicemember Affairs. “The Dude,” as Petraeus referred to his now–1st lieutenant son Stephen, was getting ready for his Expert Infantryman Badge test before going to Jumpmaster School and possibly off to the Rangers. His daughter, Anne, continued in graduate school, her blog attracting more and more readers—with her dad commenting on it nearly every day.

At the end of the interview with the reporter, there was a long pause in the conversation. Finally, Petraeus said, “You know . . . in Iraq, there were days when you asked yourself, ‘Is this going to work in the time we need it to work?' You know, tough days,” he shared as he explained the fallout from the suicide attack that Major General Campbell's unit had experienced that day. The higher up you got, the heavier the weight fell, the more responsibility rested on your shoulders. “And at the end of the day,” Petraeus reflected, “there is only one guy in charge in a theater.”

THE TOUGH NEWS
would continue. Two days later, an insurgent in an Afghan National Army uniform got inside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry, in Kabul, and killed two soldiers before he himself was shot and killed. A Taliban spokesman said the attack had been aimed at Afghan defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Gérard Longuet, the visiting French defense minister. French dignitaries were in Kabul to visit Afghan leaders and to present Petraeus with the Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur. In accepting the award, Petraeus thought how proud Holly's father, General Knowlton, would have been. Knowlton had also been a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur.

Petraeus's days were a kaleidoscope of events and emotions. He and Command Sergeant Major Marvin Hill, along with a congressional delegation headed by House Speaker John A. Boehner, attended a memorial ceremony for the six soldiers killed at FOB Gamberi by the Afghan soldier. Petraeus put his commemorative coins by the boots in front of the upside-down rifles and Kevlar helmets of the fallen troopers. Boehner added his coins, too. It was a tough moment but also a moving one for Petraeus, who felt the strength of U.S. soldiers was once again on full display.

As Petraeus was receiving his honor that day from the French, Flynn was awarded the Silver Star by Lieutenant General David M. Rodriguez at Forward Operating Base Wilson, in Kandahar, the Strike Brigade's headquarters, for “exceptionally valorous conduct in the face of a determined enemy.” The recommendation for the award, submitted and signed by six of Flynn's men, began by citing Flynn's actions during the Top Guns' battles in the Arghandab. While Flynn was on leave in January, his operations officer, Major Brendan Raymond, had asked the brigade commander for his endorsement on the award, and he agreed. Raymond had submitted other troopers in the unit for valorous award nominations, but while writing them up he reflected back on the significant impact that he felt Flynn had had on the unit, their civilian and Afghan partners, the Afghan people and the Taliban.

“The award was intended to recognize the unparalleled courage that [Flynn] demonstrated during the arduous fight last summer,” Raymond shared in an e-mail. “We had many heroes in our ranks, and I think that we did a good job recognizing their efforts with valorous awards. But, as in all fights—leaders are often overlooked. I felt it was my responsibility for seniors, peers and subordinates to acknowledge LTC Flynn's acts of valor. He, more than any soldier in our TF, deserved this award. Soldiers identified with him throughout the train-up and recognized his courage in combat; and because of this, they followed him without question. He shared every hardship and inspired his men and women to greatness.”

Flynn was eloquent five days later at Forward Operating Base Terra Nova as he handed authority over to Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kirkpatrick, commander of the unit replacing the Top Guns. “Our task force . . . defeated the Taliban in the Arghandab District, rebuilt mosques and homes in villages used as enemy sanctuaries . . . and, most importantly, provided hope for a peaceful and prosperous future for the Afghan people that is closer in sight now than at any time in the past six years. The price was paid in blood spilled by our soldiers.” The final toll suffered by the Top Guns and the Afghan battalion with which they fought shoulder to shoulder: eight killed in action and 104 wounded, including more than twenty amputees. “Notwithstanding our success, this war is not over, and there is much to be done still in the Arghandab,” he said. “Our collective optimism is cautious, and the gains are certainly fragile as we see the Taliban begin to reseed the district.”

Flynn felt a weight in his stomach flying out of Terra Nova a short while later. He found himself wondering how he would ever get through all of the memorials back home when the families of the fallen troopers arrived.

THE DAY AFTER
Flynn left, the Taliban engineered a massive jailbreak from Sarposa prison, in Kandahar, with an estimated 476 prisoners escaping through a tunnel dug beneath the Kabul-Kandahar Highway. Just two days earlier, Gates had called 2011 a “critical year” in Afghanistan and said that by the end of the year it was possible that the United States and its allies may have “turned a corner” in the country. On many days, that seemed like an ambitious statement.