My Share of the Task(176)

                Less settling were words that I had heard repeated in the quiet offices of the senators and representatives whom I had visited in the previous weeks. In my confirmation hearing, I had spoken of the need to see progress in eighteen to twenty-four months. Those in Congress had a sharper view of things. In office calls on the Hill before departing for Afghanistan, congressmen had told me repeatedly that I had, at most, a year to show convincing progress. Representative Ike Skelton had set the bar clearly. “All you have to do is win,” he said.

                Easier said than done. It would require that we restructure, reorient, and reenergize the war coalition, and set it in pursuit of a sound strategy. To do so, the scale of change that we had made over the course of years in TF 714 would have to be done in months. That change would include building, staffing, and mobilizing a three-star command to run the campaign; running a thorough, countrywide strategic assessment to design that campaign; expanding the existing training command to a three-star operation that would be able to recruit, equip, train, and partner with the inchoate Afghan security forces that would continue fighting the insurgency after we left; renovating our detainee operations; shifting how our troops thought about and engaged with the enemy and population; and creating a cell to engage in reconciliation.

                I had six months to accomplish these tasks and more. So, one week before we boarded our flight, I’d gathered the initial members of my team in the basement of the Pentagon where we were getting organized, and explained what that meant for us.

                “By the end of this calendar year, our organization must demonstrate it is competent and credible,” I said, looking at the small group of men and women who would be critical to doing that in six months.

                “And in one year,” I continued, “we’d better demonstrate progress—something that we said was going to happen, happened—or political support, left and right, will evaporate.”

                Jeff Eggers, a brilliant SEAL whom the chairman had allowed me to pluck from his strategic advisory group, put the matter of time to me starkly in a dead-on assessment that I read that week: “This campaign may not end for a decade, but it will be decided within a year.”

                As we flew east toward the war, clocks were ticking.





| CHAPTER 17 |

                Understand

                June–August 2009



In the final minutes of an early-morning flight on June 13, 2009, rugged, nearly bare mountain peaks gave way to the fertile Shamali Plain, lush green with summer vegetation, stretching north from Kabul toward the famous Salang Pass. As the aircraft maneuvered to land, Kabul’s lights, flickering yellow in the creeping dawn and hovering smog, blanketed the sheer slopes of the foothills encircling the capital. The lights were evidence of the city’s dramatic growth since 2001, the population having tripled to over four million inhabitants. And yet I knew the picturesque sight was deceptive: Many of those lights, as well as the unlit homes on the higher ridges around the city, belonged to displaced Afghans, refugees from the war raging in their home provinces.

                The Gulfstream’s wheels touched the runway of Kabul International Airport a few moments later. It was my first time back in Afghanistan since May 2008, when I had made my last visit there as TF 714 commander. As the aircraft taxied, I reminded myself this experience would be very different, and very difficult.

                I pondered our mission. America’s aims and expectations had evolved in the preceding eight years. From President Obama’s decisions and speeches I understood his priority was to defeat Al Qaeda, which was primarily in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, our mission was to prevent the reemergence of terrorist safe havens by conducting an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy focused on the most threatened areas of the country. By any measure, it was a tall order that implied Afghan sovereignty, protected by Afghans. I would take some time to assess the situation and decide whether, and how, we could accomplish the mission.