“To the great people of Afghanistan, salam alaikum,” I said in a recorded statement, which was soon dubbed in Dari and Pashto and distributed on Afghan television. “Friday morning, the International Security Assistance Force launched an attack against what we believed to be a Taliban target in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan. . . . I take this possible loss of life or injury to innocent Afghans very seriously. . . . I have ordered a complete investigation into the reasons and results of this attack, which I will share with the Afghan people.”
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If our submission of the strategic assessment on August 30 seemed to end the first phase of my tour at ISAF, the Kunduz civilian-casualty incident seemed to begin the second. The air strike was a clear mistake, and a setback. But I recognized that the tragic event was salutary: After the call with President Karzai, I felt as though our relationship had just taken a step, albeit a small one, from being polite and correct toward something closer to genuine trust. If so, such a development cut against the grain of larger forces in the backdrop. Relations between the United States and President Hamid Karzai were rapidly deteriorating, and had been for the past two weeks since the presidential elections. The postelection controversy of widespread fraud by the Karzai campaign and pressure for a runoff election between Karzai and his strongest rival, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, were producing bad feelings all around.
From a Western perspective, signs of outright fraud, including stuffed ballot boxes and other irregularities, were damning. Combined with increasingly detailed accounts of widespread corruption, they undermined arguments that Karzai’s government was a credible partner. Such determinations were crucial for the United States. The key period of the policy-review and the decision-making process had begun ten days after Afghans cast their votes, when I submitted my strategic assessment. That document, soon accompanied by the associated recommendation that additional forces be deployed, provided a point of reference and debate for the strategy sessions the Obama administration convened over the next three months. From the seats inside the White House Situation Room, as the Afghan elections looked bad, so too did a long-term, large-scale engagement in the country.
Afghan views varied, but President Karzai frequently raised with me his frustration at what he interpreted as Western efforts to find and support other candidates to supplant him. Although I felt much of his frustration stemmed from misinterpretation and misunderstanding, watching events as they unfolded, I could appreciate how he arrived at his perspective. Combined with long-held dissatisfaction over how international forces and agencies operated inside his country, President Karzai strained against what he felt was improper meddling. I reminded myself that my view of what had happened in the elections, even if accurate, must be informed by an appreciation of how Afghans viewed it. This proved to be critical on most issues.
As President Obama began a necessarily rigorous and deliberative review of our strategy, and the election controversy grew more heated, the war meanwhile continued apace. Against that backdrop, we worked to lay a foundation for the way ahead, using the strategic assessment to clarify the challenges and the necessary changes.
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“We can win this war,” I told the command on September 14, as part of the normal morning update that included personnel at ISAF headquarters and other locations by teleconference. “But we can only win one war. We need to stop fighting multiple wars.”
Three months into my command, we still waged an uncoordinated campaign. In some areas of Afghanistan, ISAF soldiers conducting autonomous operations and those advising Afghan forces worked for different commanders and reported up separate chains. So too did Special Forces building local capacity, and special operating forces conducting precision raids against the Taliban. And within those different elements I saw varying interpretations of our mission, strategy, relationship with Afghan security forces, and use of firepower. Our disjointed military effort was complicated further by similar misalignment on the civilian side. It was a recipe for failure.
Secretary Gates’s decision to create IJC was a significant step toward redressing this. A strong operational headquarters, empowered with robust communications and intelligence assets, helped foster long-needed synergy. Further, Rod and I pushed relentlessly to achieve “unity of command,” the simple military concept that a single person should be in charge of every significant mission.