In Marjah, uncontested Taliban control required shaping operations, followed by a dramatic initial seizure, before the lengthy process of erecting a local government could truly begin. Kandahar would need shaping, and this shura was part of that. But operations would involve little drama. Instead, we planned deliberately to increase security-force density and effectiveness in the city, and to clear then hold the strategic environs.
The distinction between our concept for Kandahar and more traditional military operations was critical. Much as the residents of Marjah had expressed their fear we would destroy their district to liberate it, Kandaharis trembled at the thought of full-force battles. The term “operation” brought anxious looks, and triggered memories of a nasty time in their history. In 1986, the Soviets began the decimation of Kandahar, and nightly the sky would erupt with tracers and flares and fires from aerial assaults and blanket bombing runs. By 1987, they reduced much of the city to ash and rubble, and when they moved inside, they conducted urban patrols with punishing tanks. “Operations” there devastated the city’s population, which dispersed from two hundred thousand down to about twenty-five thousand in less than two years. Through that lens, most Kandaharis I met viewed the Taliban threat as significant but not overwhelming. When asked about it they nodded, “Yes, security must be improved,” but then went on to highlight issues of governance and corruption as equally important. The meeting here was meant to soothe their fears, and gauge their sentiment.
One corner of the basement had a platform about twelve inches high that had been furnished with flowers and lined by several large wooden chairs. Beneath a large photograph of President Karzai, Mark Sedwill and I were in two of the chairs. We sat self-consciously, fearful of looking like feudal lords above the sea of Kandaharis. A podium rested on the edge of the platform closest to the assembled audience. The crowd was like earlier shuras I’d attended, but larger. Rows of impressive looking elders sat cross-legged on carpets laid for the occasion, and I could see them craning their bodies to see around the television cameras interspersed throughout the hall. Despite the hall’s size, the overflow gave the gathering an unexpected feeling of intimacy.
When Karzai walked in, people stood and applauded. Had “Happy Days Are Here Again” erupted from a waiting band it would have felt like an old-fashioned campaign rally. Someone in the audience threw flowers, and the president took his seat on the stage. As he did, Dr. Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, rose to welcome everyone. Wesa was a soft-spoken man who had grown up in Kandahar. An accomplished academic who helped found Kandahar University in 1991, serving as its first president, Wesa had returned to Afghanistan after fourteen years abroad, most recently living in British Columbia, Canada. Governor since 2008, he and Nick Carter had done extensive work to “shape the environment” in the preceding weeks.
Wesa was representative of a group of highly educated, honest, and patriotic Afghans I’d met who accepted leadership positions in the years after 2001. Talented but often outclassed in the bare-knuckle power struggles of places like Kandahar, most found themselves unable to wrest real control from local personalities. In Wesa’s case, that personality was a quiet man with an almost obsequious manner. Ironically, as Wesa spoke that day I could watch his nemesis moving around at the very back of the crowd—far from any position of overt prestige or influence. Yet Ahmed Wali Karzai—the president’s forty-nine-year-old brother, leader of the Popalzai tribe and chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council—was the essential power broker for Kandahar.
After Wesa’s remarks, President Karzai moved to the podium, and asked the camera crews to move. He wanted a better view of the people, he said, though I suspect he really wanted them to have an unobstructed view of him. He was glad to be face-to-face with them, Karzai said, including his sisters, and began his remarks. I sat and listened, with simultaneous translation of his words coming into the earpieces Mark and I wore.
The shura came after a difficult week between Karzai and the United States. Still sensitive from his belief that the international community had unfairly accused and then undermined him during the lengthy election process and its contentious aftermath, Karzai had made recent remarks that brought new controversy. He’d reportedly told a group of Afghans that if pushed too far by the United States, he would join the Taliban. His words became public a mere month before a planned visit for him to the United States, and the White House indicated his remarks put that trip in jeopardy.