The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

At an address to the United States Military Academy at West Point in December 2009, President Obama announced the surge of troops to Afghanistan, promising that he would do everything possible to limit the costs. However, given the tight timeframe for the surge and the still-limited reach of the Afghan government, the US ended up pouring enormous sums of money in a short amount of time, overwhelming the country’s limit capacity. Funds went to practically any project that might “win loyalty from the populace, with little concern for expense” (158), leading to redundancies, outright waste, and even greater corruption. Western contractors undertook large projects with little concern for local realities and then left them in the care of people who had no idea how to maintain them. In some cases, plans were made and money was allocated to projects that never translated into reality at all. One of the major projects was a hydroelectric dam north of Kandahar, which became symbolic of efforts to fend off the Taliban and deliver a project that met the needs of ordinary Afghans. The project ended up costing hundreds of millions of dollars, wildly disproportionate to any potential benefit and offering a big target right in the middle of enemy territory.

In June 2010, General Petraeus admitted to Congress that the US was indeed involved in “nation-building” despite frequent avowals to the contrary by the administration (163). Petraeus regarded civil infrastructure projects as key to his counterinsurgency strategy, but in the rush to get things done, civilians, military personnel, and subcontractors clashed with each other while often ignoring local wisdom. In one particularly illustrative instance, officials paid a local contractor to build a bridge, which his brother, a member of the local Taliban, would promptly destroy, after which the contractor would receive money for another bridge (165). Convinced that they had to do something, and fast, projects went forward even when those involved were well aware of their illogic. Such projects were supposed to provide quantifiable metrics of success, but any such calculation would take years to provide, and many did more harm than good. When one brigade “was so determined to improve public education that it promised to build fifty schools” (168), the number of schools so vastly outpaced the number of available teachers and students that the empty buildings were then used by the Taliban as bomb factories.

In November 2009, Karzai was celebrating another new term as Afghanistan’s president following a successful reelection, but “behind the scenes, Karzai and the Americans had angrily turned on one another” (170). Karzai’s election was blatantly fraudulent, and US officials were already tried of his rampant corruption. The US in turn infuriated Karzai by promoting alternative candidates and raising the number of troops, which was bound to intensify the fighting within Afghanistan and cause more civilian casualties. Karzai emerged as Afghanistan’s president because he was one of the few Pashtun (the country’s largest ethnic group) tribal leaders to have opposed the Taliban, but his support was always stronger among the international community than within Afghanistan itself. Only timely CIA intervention prevented his capture by the Taliban in the early days of the war, and he arrived at the November 2001 Bonn Conference establishing a new government as the Americans’ hand-picked favorite.

For his first term in office, Karzai had Zalmay Khalilzad as the US ambassador, a Pashtun whom Karzai had known for many years. When Khalilzad was dispatched to Iraq in 2005, “Karzai felt abandoned” (175), especially when his successors probed him about corruption in his inner circle, even as the CIA worked with those same corrupt actors. As a result, the US angered both Karzai and the population who was victimized by his allies’ corruption. Matters became even worse after a US airstrike accidentally bombed a wedding party, initially reporting it as “a large group of enemy fighters” (177). Karzai demanded a government investigation, but the US instead conducted its own investigation and never publicized the results. With every US attack that killed civilians, Karzai appeared like a hapless puppet of an oppressive foreign army while also angering his US sponsors. After his fraudulent electoral victory, US officials were trapped in yet another dilemma of whether to sideline a problematic figure or stick with him for fear of an even worse alternative.

The Obama administration was well aware of the corruption that dominated nearly the whole of the Afghan government and issued concerned public statements. But the administration was still loath to press their allies and took insufficient account of how they contributed to the problem by pouring money into the country. The US placed blame on Afghans for mismanaging money, but the CIA had set a precedent by bribing officials to secure favorable outcomes, and the US embassy was known to pay off lawmakers for their cooperation. By the time the US understood how corruption was undermining faith in the government and fueling support for the Taliban—and formed a small team to rein it in—they discovered a problem so vast that no one wanted to acknowledge it lest they pick a fight with the wrong power broker. They even estimated that “18 percent of the money went to the Taliban and other insurgent groups” through an intricate network of bribes (187).

In January 2010, US forces carried out a raid on a large bank that produced damning evidence of corruption at the highest levels of government. Within months, Karzai and his allies had managed to squash the inquiry, as well as another inquiry into the coverup. That same summer, the chairman of the Kabul Bank revealed to the US embassy how his bank had become an epicenter of money laundering, completely escaping the notice of Treasury Department officials and others dispatched to supervise Afghan finances. When the bank collapsed and was taken over by the government, factions within the government scrambled to maximize their share of its assets. The US helped limit prosecution to a handful of bank officials so as to dissuade Congress from turning on Karzai.