Kosh was the first and only Afghan to work full-time in the ISAF headquarters building. It was a necessary cultural change, but was not as easy as it should have been. Although he was an important symbol of a new level of partnership and trust, inside the headquarters Kosh often received suspicious looks or requests for identification papers. I watched him closely, impressed that he intuitively understood the importance of his role and handled the friction with impressive maturity. In his shoes, I would have been less good-humored.
After a few such trips on the C-130s with everyone including the president strapped in, we requested and received a “pod,” a small capsulelike room that sat five or six people and could be loaded inside a C-130. Although President Karzai had never complained about riding on normal nylon seats in the cargo bay, the pod was quiet enough that we could have substantive conversations while traveling to and from our various destinations. On several occasions, two Afghan government ministers, my NATO civilian counterpart Mark Sedwill, President Karzai, and I were able to frame key issues during uninterrupted flights in a way that hectic palace schedules often prevented.
Despite his often one-dimensional depiction in the media, outside the palace President Karzai was gifted at retail politics. Once on the ground in the various locales we visited, his ability to communicate with local leaders, his “presence,” and his natural empathy with his countrymen seemed to resonate in a way that surprised many westerners. In such environments, I was struck anew by his courage and self-discipline.
On one trip north over the Hindu Kush to Kunduz, a rocket attack forced us to forgo our planned return to Kabul by C-130 aircraft. Instead we flew in German MH-53 helicopters ninety-nine miles west to Mazar-e-Sharif. En route, a haboob engulfed the MH-53s in a soupy fog of suspended dust. Sitting next to Karzai, I began to envision the impact on our mission of losing Afghanistan’s president in the crash of an ISAF chopper and was irritated at my failure to have asked hard questions about the weather before adopting this plan. I smiled to myself when I remembered that if the aircraft went down, at least I wouldn’t have to be the one to explain to President Obama how I’d lost his counterpart. President Karzai likely sensed my frustration but maintained his calm poise and never once, then or later, mentioned anything about it.
The more travel we did, the more I believed that the visits had value. The trips deeply affected President Karzai, as they would any leader exposed to what we called “ground truth.” Firsthand contact with the people and the realities of insecure and corruption-racked areas produced thoughtful conversations on our return flights to Kabul.
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Such presidential reflection was evident three weeks after Moshtarak began, when on, March 7, I sat quietly, legs crossed, on the floor of Marjah’s main mosque. Though the troops I commanded had become the dominant feature of Marjah’s landscape for the past three weeks, here I was a guest, a listener. The humble mosque just outside the bazaar was a low box of clay, with rough timber ceiling supports and cracked beige plaster walls inside. Mark Sedwill was next to me. Amrullah Saleh and Minister Wardak sat a few feet away, quietly watching as well. From our position at the front of the room, we saw the crowd that now filled the rug-covered floor. Some two hundred local elders sat cross-legged and still. Quarters were tight, and everyone sat touching. The men a few feet in front of me had significant beards, and sun-darkened faces. Past them I could see the tops of swirled fabric, a sea of thick turbans. As the initial commotion quieted, all gazes were directed to our left. There, President Karzai stood at a small wood podium, topped with a clump of microphones angled toward him.
“I’m here to listen to you, to hear your problems,” the president said. This was his first visit to Marjah.
The words came to me, delayed a few seconds, through my translator’s voice in an earpiece. The elders sat remarkably still. No uncomfortable shifting or side conversations. On occasion, their work-worn fingers rubbed weathered chins, or silently fingered white beards. With flat faces, they listened with attentive respect. This was the first time in memory such a senior figure from the distant Kabul government had visited their district. Karzai was welcome here, as was I. But this was not scripted theater, and the small space soon got loud when it was the crowd’s turn to address him.