The Way of the Knife: the CIA, a secret army, and a war at the ends of the Earth by Mazzetti Mark

Author:Mazzetti, Mark [Mazzetti, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL040000, POL036000, HIS036000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2013-04-16T14:00:00+00:00

11: THE OLD MAN’S RETURN

“You remember the first rule of retirement, George? No moonlighting, no fooling with loose ends. No private enterprise, ever.”

—John le Carré, Smiley’s People

General David McKiernan had heard enough. It had been months since the top commander in Afghanistan had been told of a plan developed by two businessmen to deliver regular reports from a network of sources throughout the country, and across the border in Pakistan. McKiernan wanted to know why the effort had stalled. He had hoped that it would provide reliable information about Pakistan, in contrast with CIA dispatches that he suspected were spoon-fed by Pakistani spies. Somewhere in the Pentagon bureaucracy, he figured, faceless gnomes were delaying things.

“Who is the communist I need to kill in order to get this contract?” McKiernan barked to his staff, after learning that the funding for the information program had still not been approved.

Sitting alongside General McKiernan that day in fall 2008 was Michael Furlong, who had been shuttling between Kabul and San Antonio hoping to start a variety of information-operations projects for the generals in Afghanistan, from mapping the tribal structure in the south to conducting polls about Afghan attitudes toward the American military. The war was getting worse by the day. The Taliban had reclaimed large swaths of territory in the southern and eastern regions of the country, assassinated Afghan government officials, and set up shadow governments in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The 2006 peace deals in North and South Waziristan had allowed the Taliban and Haqqani Network to flourish and escalate their attacks from Pakistani villages on American outposts in Afghanistan. By the end of June 2008, the month that McKiernan took command, more American troops had died than during any other month since the war began in 2001.

When he arrived in Kabul, McKiernan was immediately convinced that he didn’t have enough troops. The Iraq war continued to be the Bush administration’s top priority, ensuring that the neglected conflict in Afghanistan remained what the Pentagon euphemistically called an “economy-of-force operation.” McKiernan’s predecessor, General Dan McNeill, had delivered a stinging indictment of the war strategy on his way out of the country, saying that American commanders needed more ground troops, helicopters, and intelligence units. During a congressional hearing, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”

General McNeill had also blamed the government of Pakistan for not doing enough to stem the flow of fighters crossing the border into Afghanistan. Indeed, Pakistan had become a favorite target for American generals complaining about the rise in violence in the country. As far back as September 2006, Lt. General Karl Eikenberry—who preceded McNeill—tried to get the White House’s attention by compiling a dossier on Pakistan’s inaction in the tribal areas. He traveled to Washington with a PowerPoint presentation alleging Pakistani complicity in fostering militancy there, even citing the fact that Jalaluddin Haqqani openly operated his madrassa in Miranshah (the same madrassa

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