“Yeah,” Graeme responded, “tell me one man in this room that doesn’t have blood on his hands. We’re drenched in the damn stuff.”
In between these meetings, Graeme, Anne Meree, John Christian, and the other members of their team met weekly with Ray’s trusted staff. Graeme had a powerful ally in Emma Sky, Ray’s political adviser. A brilliant Brit who had started as a bitter critic of the war, Emma became nearly inseparable from her boss, Ray, during his time commanding in Iraq. It was a testament to Ray that he kept close and relied on such an outsider whose unvarnished critiques of the Coalition’s campaign could be uncomfortable but necessary antidotes to the too-often insular world of military high command.
But even as FSEC made its case, Graeme instructed the team never to sugarcoat or obscure the crimes of the men they proposed releasing. So when it came time to propose releasing Abu Mustafa, John laid out all the details of his crimes in their presentation at the Friday meeting at the Water Palace: among others, masterminding the deaths of twenty-two Americans and twelve Nepalese construction workers, one of whom was beheaded.
Dave’s style took into account the emotions these releases could rile. When it came time for a decision, he turned to his right. “Ray, what do you think?” Ray would give his piece. “Stan?” I would give mine. And so it happened for Abu Mustafa. With our accession, Dave approved his release.
Five months after the release of Abu Wail, the religious emir, we saw him resurface on the outside. On May 2, 2007, three insurgent groups announced that they had come together under a new breakaway coalition, the Jihad and Reform Front (JRF). Although intensely anti-American, the group’s announcement set it in opposition to AQI, explicitly declaring its goal to avoid killing innocents. In addition to the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahedeen Army, the faction included a new group called the Sharia Committee of Ansar al-Sunnah—led by Abu Wail. Reports indicated that Abu Wail had sought to lead Ansar into this new coalition, but only a faction came with him. Abu Wail’s actions earned him the ire of Ansar’s members, who accused him of collaborating with the United States. Soon thereafter, AQI began to target the leaders of the new Jihad and Reform Front. Some reports indicated that JRF, as it clashed with AQI, petered out. Others saw it survive, continuing to cause dissension within Ansar’s ranks.
All of these measures had a half-life, and creating a durable competitor to AQI was not the goal. Instead, when the U.S.-led Coalition had everything on the table, Graeme looked for a way to nudge the dynamics in our direction, to create a spurt of momentum in our favor. Doing so would add to the momentum gathering elsewhere, through the quiet work of the CIA, enterprising Marine commanders in Anbar, and then–Brigadier General John Allen, who deftly negotiated deals with Iraqi sheikhs who were residing in Jordan.
At the end of July, two months after Abu Wail’s faction appeared on the Internet, Graeme’s tour ended and he returned to Scotland. It’s unclear whether either Abu Wail or Abu Mustafa survived the war.
* * *
I had moved my flag to Iraq during the uprising in Fallujah in April 2004, but during these years I still devoted roughly a quarter of my energy and focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, as Iraq showed fragile indications of improvement during the summer of 2007, the bigger and more worrying war in Afghanistan increasingly drew my attention.
Until 2006, TF 714 had limited its role in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to pursuing Al Qaeda leaders. Given the reconstitution and growing strength of the Taliban, I directed our task force in Afghanistan, in careful coordination with the NATO military coalition—the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—to begin targeting Taliban leaders.
The initial routing of the Taliban in the fall of 2001 had not so much destroyed it as fragmented it. The less ideologically extreme members of the movement returned home to wait and see how the new government of Afghanistan would perform, while the hard-line factions melted into Pakistan. There, under the direction of Mullah Omar and others, they began to turn themselves from a dislocated government into a full-fledged insurgent movement.