The Role of Fate and Abandonment in Afghanistan

The history of Afghanistan—or at least its contemporary reality—may have been decided by a few feet.

On December 5th, 2001, when a 2000-pound smart bomb fell from the sky, Hamid Karzai was standing in an Afghan schoolhouse. He was not yet the President of Afghanistan, a subject of consternation from American diplomats, or the reported recipient of tens of millions of dollars from the C.I.A. He was simply the leader of a meager force of perhaps 120 Afghans trying earnestly to defeat the Taliban.

A device carried by an American soldier accompanying Karzai malfunctioned, and called a strike on its own location.  Karzai was lucky when the bomb hit — he only suffered a cut when a mirror fell from a wall. Nearby, 40 were wounded or killed and a man was decapitated. Had Karzai been standing in a different position, he would have been unable to answer the phone call the next day telling him him he had been elected chairman of Afghanistan’s Interim administration. Soon, Karzai became President.

This anecdote is one of many in 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary, which chronicles Robert Grenier’s time as CIA Station Chief in Pakistan before and after 9/11. The book focuses on Grenier’s effort to drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Kandahar in the 88 days after the attacks in New York and Washington.

What makes Grenier’s memoir unique is that it depicts the war in real time. Like the incident with Karzai, successes often come down to luck and tragedy is decided at random. The book provides a useful reminder that inevitable victories are actually decided by slim and sometimes arbitrary margins.

Readers of 88 Days to Kandahar can’t help but to hypothesize what might have happened had one or two details changed. For example, if Karzai had been killed in the airstrike, who would have led Afghanistan? Painfully, one of the biggest “what ifs” in the book might have avoided war all together, saving thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Just days after the twin towers fell, Grenier flew to the Baluchistan province to meet with Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, the Taliban commander of Southern Afghanistan. Mullah Osmani was the Taliban’s de facto second in command and Grenier tried to convince him that the group should expel Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan. Osmani was ready to do it  but couldn’t convince his boss, Mullah Omar. Grenier went for broke, urging Osmani to depose Mullah Omar. Amazingly, Osmani agreed. But the coup never happened. Osmani later changed his mind.

What would have happened if Osmani had followed through on his bid for power and ejected Bin Laden from Afghanistan? It would have certainly changed the course of the war, and perhaps the contemporary reality of the entire region.

Grenier’s stories like this one strike both wonder and fear in the hearts of readers. The line between one profound fate and another—as Grenier lived and recounts it—is paper-thin.

In Grenier’s estimation, the best spies — the ones who operate in the shadows — are those who understand what drives individuals. For some it is money, for others it is respect. It is from this perspective of human desires and needs that 88 Days to Kandahar is highly critical of U.S. government policy in Afghanistan. The United States overwhelmed a primitive country with a tribal culture, Grenier says. We became the latest occupier in a country that had seen many of them, and somewhere along the way we forgot what was best for Afghans.

He pulls no punches with decisions he views as politically motivated, calling the surge and subsequent pullout of American troops in 2009 “criminal.” Instead, Grenier says, the United States should have committed a small number of troops to stay in Afghanistan in the long-term. This strategy seems politically unrealistic—even Grenier points out that Americans do not have the patience for long wars. They prefer to win decisively and then get the hell out.

This tension between Washington’s politics and Afghanistan’s realities is a narrative woven throughout the book. But even if his suggestions may be politically untenable, that doesn’t mean they are wrong.

This week, a piece of Afghanistan came to the United States, as the new Afghan president Ashraf Ghani visited Washington D.C. Ghani appears to be more politically savvy than former President Karzai, but that won’t guarantee smooth sailing. President Obama has committed himself to ending the war in Afghanistan before he leaves office in 2016. Ghani has called for a re-examination of the timeline, and many others are opposed to it. In the book, Grenier calls the pullout of troops an “abandonment.”

Another narrative theme Grenier teases out in 88 Days is that Afghans have been abandoned repeatedly and subjected to be a cycle of war and departure. It is notable that back when Grenier was trying to convince Mullah Osami to take control of the Taliban, he used the exact word, “abandonment.”

“We realize we made a big mistake when we abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviets left. We will not make that mistake again,” he told Osami.

When I think of how spies seek to capitalize on what motivates human beings to take action, I wonder if Grenier didn’t choose this word “abandonment” purposefully, giving it extra emphasis. Is abandonment what drives Afghans like Osami? If it is, than future spies and policy makers will be well suited to read 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary. Unless current policy shifts America will leave Afghanistan behind in 2016, and the cycle of war could potentially be reborn.