KABUL, Afghanistan -- My 45-minute interview Tuesday with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was considerably less physically taxing than the last time we talked in person. While on a military base in Mosul, Iraq, in March 2007, I learned that Petraeus, then the commander of the Iraq war, was on his way there.
I put in for an interview request. The only time he had available was during early-morning physical training. Over two painful hours, I learned why Petraeus’ reputation as a fitness freak and champion runner is well deserved.
Once again, Petraeus is in charge of a controversial, faltering war. To learn how he intends to reverse U.S. fortunes in Afghanistan, I met Petraeus at his commanders’ compound, an elegant multistory building in a quiet, green spot of NATO headquarters in Kabul. From the way he discussed the challenges ahead -- both before and after the July 2011 date to begin a "conditions-based" drawdown of U.S. forces -- Petraeus' endurance will be tested in a marathon-length sprint.
A (lightly) edited transcript of our interview follows.
__Wired.com: __You’ve been asked every which way about July 2011. My question is: After July 2011, should we expect to see new major operations launched?
__Gen. David Petraeus: __With respect, it’s just really premature to ask about what we might see after July 2011 -- other than the initiation of a process that of transitioning of some tasks to some Afghan forces, at a pace that is based on conditions. President Obama has [called for] the beginning of a responsible drawdown of our surge forces [then].
Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I’ve said to this reporter or that reporter. I do support the [president's] policy. And obviously what we are doing is everything we humanly can do to achieve the conditions that will enable initiation of that transition with minimal risk.
Wired.com: Another thing that gets parsed a lot -- do you find that it’s a false distinction between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism?
Petraeus: Well, in fact, operations by counterterrorist forces -- in other words, by our special-mission-unit elements, which will remain nameless but which you know are absolutely part of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign. Not only are those [operations] not at odds with counterinsurgency, they’re a very important element in the overall approach. So are population-centric security operations -- to clear, hold, and build [areas with] conventional forces. So are, of course, similar operations in partnership with Afghan forces.
And now, [there's] the Afghan local police initiative, just signed by President Karzai yesterday. That will enable the establishment of village guard forces: local police, under the Ministry of Interior elements in that district. There have to be very careful safeguards to ensure that these are not militia nor warlord forces or anything like that.
But then, as you know, you cannot kill or capture your way out of a substantial insurgency. Clearly, politics are a huge part of that. So that is where reintegration of reconcilable elements of the insurgency comes in. And that is already ongoing.
Wired.com: Reintegration might be fine to launch first. But doesn't there need to be some kind of top-level political commitment?
Petraeus: Well, there will be that top-level political commitment -- in the form of the reconciliation-reintegration directive that President Karzai’s team is finalizing now for him. It will also have the national peace council that will be headed [by] individuals with significant stature, we believe –- and by no means all Pashtun.
'Every civilian’s death diminishes us, collectively. So the measure is not who killed them, it’s the fact that innocent civilians were killed.'__Wired.com:__When will the decree be signed?
Petraeus: You have to ask President Karzai’s staff. But because in fact they are having to deal with groups that are coming in from the cold. There are two reasonable groups in one northern province alone. One group of 40, I think it was, and then there’s another group of 80. And there are a number of groups in other locations as well that want to reintegrate.
There will be a support structure, there will be political commitments, there will be security guarantees. There will be a variety of programs for them, including, most likely, some job training, some literacy programs, and so forth. Then there is also the prospect of reconciliation -- another component of politics, needless to say. And then, of course, there’s just governance, period. So that’s all part of the development of governance that achieves legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
Obviously, it is a central element to any host nation effort to, to again win the people over to their side. Because, remember, this is not about us winning Afghan hearts and minds, this is about Afghan government officials and institutions winning Afghan hearts and minds.
Wired.com: What I've been hearing from people, particularly down south, is simply a weariness of 30 years of war.
Petraeus: Well there is a weariness - by the insurgents as well. Certainly the people are weary or war, without question, and of course that .. those wars have done enormous damage to Afghanistan and to the developments to develop human capital and so forth.
Wired.com: It was reported on Adm. [Michael] Mullen's recent trip down to Kandahar that he was starting to hear that the level of violence, even though the Taliban kill a lot more civilians than we do ...
Petraeus: Vastly more.
Wired.com: ... vastly more, as we’ve seen validated in UN reports. Nevertheless, the blame that the public starts to attribute [to NATO forces].
Petraeus: Well, I think its fair for the public to say that it’s the job of Afghan and coalition forces to improve our security.
You know, this is a little bit like a play on For Whom The Bell Tolls. Remember, it went something like, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee, every mans death diminisheth me.” And that’s the same here: Every civilian’s death diminishes us, collectively. So the measure is not who killed them, it’s the fact that innocent civilians were killed.
Now, obviously, we have worked very hard to reduce civilian casualties over the course of our operations. As the United Nations report [notes], numbers attributable to our operations and Afghan operations have gone down by some 30 percent over the course of the last year. Which is quite significant [since] we’ve tripled the number of forces on the ground. Afghan forces have expanded substantially, and we have launched a number of offensives in which normally the enemy fights back very hard, and there is the possibility of loss of innocent civilian life in [those] operations.
But there’s understandable impatience on the part of the Afghan people, just as there is understandable impatience on the part of the American people, and the citizens of all of the 47 contributing nations.
Wired.com: Where does the campaign lead to? Building Afghan forces, degrading the Taliban to the point where they’re not relevant to regular people’s lives? Or to the point where they simply feel the need to negotiate or enter more fulsomely into these reconciliation deals?
Petraeus: I think it’s all of the above. But, obviously, success in this country is an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself, and doing that obvious requires security for the population, neutralizing the insurgent population by a variety of ways. Irreconcilables have to be killed captured or run off.
All those who can be reconciled, certainly there will be Afghan efforts to reintegrate them into society. [There will also be] the pursuit of reconciliation with those more senior leaders who accept the conditions that President Karzai has established.
Wired.com: When you look at those conditions, are there any that insufficiently coincide with US interests? Because we didn’t come here to build an Afghan government or to support a stable Afghanistan, we came here for clear counterterrorism goals.
'The Taliban said, "Hide your weapons, melt away and wait until they leave." But we are not leaving.'Petraeus: The national security imperative for the United States and most [of] the troop-contributing nations is, of course, that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for transnational extremists, as it was before the 9/11 attacks.
Recall that they were planned in Kandahar and the initial training of the attackers was carried out in Afghan training camps, before they moved on to Germany and U.S. flight schools. But the only way to achieve that goal is to have an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself.
Wired.com: But are there things that we can’t live within the three conditions that Karzai and the peace Jirga layed out? Would we be willing to accept provinces that had Taliban governance?
Petraeus: Those are clearly questions for President Karzai ...
Wired.com: Even though they’re about American national interests?
Petraeus: Well, his conditions are quite clear: that they reject Al-Qaida, that they support the constitution, that they lay down their weapons, and they essentially become productive members of society.
Wired.com: Would we need some form of guarantor to make sure that happens? Because it’s one thing [for the Taliban] to say, “Yes, I reject Al-Qaida,” and another thing to see it in practice.
Petraeus: Again, I’ll leave that to Afghan officials and policymakers.
Wired.com: When looking at the campaign plan, you've said that we were in a phase of execution and not a phase of redesign or readjustment. Looking at the conditions in both the south and the east, is there a need to?
Petraeus: I don’t know if I supported that characterization necessarily. Let me back up and just start by reminding you that [there's] a great focus on Afghanistan, really for the first time in some years. It was an economy of force effort for some time, as you know. [Then came this] new administration, looking at it with fresh eyes.
What we have worked on for the last 18 months is to get the inputs right: to get the right organizational structures in place, the right people in position to develop the right concepts and approaches and then, of course, to deploy the resources necessary. Keep in mind ... the U.S. is about 68,000 to 70,000 of that [force], somewhere around there. The rest is non-U.S.
By the end of August, really for the first time, we will have the inputs right. Meaning the structures, people, concepts and resources required to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign -- which is what is required to achieve our security interests here in Afghanistan.
Now, General McChrystal’s strategy goes back almost a year, now. And the fact is that he was going to look at it and make some refinements. And, in fact, that’s what I have to sought to do in the first six or seven weeks that I’ve been in command.
And as you know, I published counterinsurgency guidance, I’ve got a copy here free of charge. There have been refinements made to the tactical directive, the most important of which was: No subordinate commander can further restrict it.
The real issue is that you can’t have each level of a chain of command further restricting [the use of force]. I’m not saying that that was the norm by any means. But it appears to have been the case in a couple of situations -- less than a handful of them. And so the emphasis is fight hard, fight disciplined, fight in a disciplined manner, protect yourself and protect civilians.
We’ve got our inputs right. Now, obviously we have sought to achieve outputs along the way as we have had new forces. There has been progress in the central Helmand province – it’s not been without down-spurs. Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair. But the six central districts: You can walk in the market at Marja that was once controlled by the Taliban and the narcotics-industry bosses. They can’t do that.
There’s been progress. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still fighting back very hard. But, in the meantime, we’re pushing the security bubble out further. There’s an extension into Sangin district and up in the Musa Qala -- again enemies fighting back, but that’s ongoing.
The shaping operations began in Kandahar about four months ago and these were the targeted operations, and more recently in the last several weeks. Up to 11 and 13 checkpoints are now established -- and these are industrial-strength checkpoints. I mean these are big, robust, fully force-protect[ed] check points.
Operations have been ongoing in Arghandab to clear and hold in that district. Again, [it's] been a tough fight. The Afghan and U.S. forces there have taken tough casualties, but they have also cleared important areas, and they’re now holding them.
And we have had intelligence from various sources that the Taliban said, “Hide your weapons, melt away and wait until they leave. “ But we are not leaving. We’re clearing and holding.
Wired.com: When should we start to see outputs in Kandahar? It's not a D-Day style operation. So how will we know when the "rising tide" of security has ridden? How do you measure that?
Petraeus: You’re looking at areas in which there has been a security bubble created. That is the case in portions of the Arghandab. It’s the case in some of the less difficult districts -- certainly significant portions of the city, not all -- and [in] areas just to the west of Kandahar.
But, clearly, further operations are required there. We’re not going to say when and where, um, for operational security reasons. Ultimately, over time we want to expand these oil spots and eventually link them up.
An area that I have given greater interest to is the Kabul oil spot - that security bubble. Of course the Afghans carried off impressive security [operations here].
It’s the Afghans who are in the lead for security in all but one of the districts. In fact, we went down to Wardak the other day to talk about ways in which the Afghan government can help the governor and security forces there extend the security bubble, particularly down along Route 1. Then well look at doing to same in Logar province.
Wired.com: Well, I actually wanted to ask about that because I had a chance to talk to [eastern regional commander Maj. Gen. John] Campbell last night. He described that you’re still seeing what he called the “rat lines” from the Torkham gate [crossing point with Pakistan].
It was striking to me, because I heard the exact same briefing two years ago. Do you think there’s sufficient emphasis on the east? Is there a realistic chance of closing those rat lines down? They seemed to lead to around Kabul, which was a bit worrying.
Petraeus: Touch wood, but security in Kabul has been really quite good. I mean, compare Kabul to Baghdad in March of 2007, when there were three car bombs going off on average every single day and killing dozens of Iraqis in each blast. Plus, 40, 50, 60 attacks in the city each day, I mean it was like being in a boxing ring and just sort of getting pummeled all day long.
I happened to be the commander of MNF-I at that time. It was a gruesome experience. I remember when we’d fly back and forth to the embassy. You'd know it was a good day if, as you were flying in, you didn’t see the plume of sort of oily gray smoke going up from a car bomb.
*'We’re on the offensive, we’re taking away areas that matter to the enemy -- safe havens and sanctuaries.'*You just don’t have that in Kabul. Yes, there are periodic sensational attacks. And yes, there’s a threat stream right now, and there has been really the whole time I've been here, although, a number of those have been disrupted or defeated. There’s no question that the Haqqani network wants to orchestrate attacks in the city. They tried to during the conduct of the Kabul conference and were unable to do so.
Wired.com: But do you think its possible to secure those roads, shut the rat lines down, or reduce the rat line’s influence?
Petraeus: Look, I don’t think we shut down rat lines in Arizona. What you do is you reduce, you disrupt. What you’re trying to get to a level of violence below a certain level.
At which, commerce can go on, people go about their daily lives without enormous intimidation. Basic services can improve, governments can develop, security forces –- particularly local police -- can carry out their duties without the imminent fear of intimidation, assassination, family members being kidnapped and so forth.
I would argue that that’s the point we reached in Iraq, although clearly there’s been some violence in Iraq of late. But when we reduced the violence in Iraq by some 95 percent down to a level somewhere around 15 attacks per day on average, life flourished. Pipelines were repaired, electrical towers were re-erected, re-established, rebuilt and outside investment came in, schools were refurbished, medical clinics were expanded.
Wired.com: But Iraq started from a higher baseline of violence than existed in Afghanistan.
Petraeus: No question about it, sure. But it was on the verge of a civil war, if not right on the precipice of a civil war, if not already in it, in certain neighborhoods.
Wired.com: But if we can’t shut those rat lines down ...
Petraeus: Well, you reduce them. In fact just the other day, Special Operations forces killed some 25 members of a Haqqani network at a training camp in the [Khost-Gardez Pass] area. Uh, and that’s the second such operation in the last six weeks.
So again, what you are seeking to do is obviously interdict the rat lines. There are going to be people for sometime who will want to try to carry out attacks in Kabul and certainly in other places in this country, and the task is to reduce the incidents of violence sufficiently, so that normal life can go on.
I'm sure you’ve driven around Kabul. We would go around Kabul the other night, and I mean the city was beyond bustling. I mean we could barely get through the traffic. The wedding halls are something out of Times Square or Las Vegas in their lights and garish decoration.
I mean we had to go through it, we went to see the speaker of the parliament, lower house -– Wolesi Jirga -- and I think we were 30 minutes late because of the traffic, I mean it was that bad, reconnaissance had told us that we’d be able to make it on time. It was just so crowded, so packed with people in the markets and everything else.
Wired.com: We're seeing IED incidents go way up since last year. I spent some time with [counter-IED units] Task Force ODIN and Task Force Paladin.
It struck me that their operations against IEDS are a lot less kinetic than when ODIN was in Iraq and what Paladin used to be. They’re talking about, particularly in Paladin’s case, taking the approach that when you have information about [a bomb], convene a jirga, talk to the elders. Do you think we’ve gone further away from kinetics than perhaps we should in this case?
Petraeus: I think we’ve taken a lot of kinetic activities against them, actually.
Wired.com: Can you talk about some of them?
Petraeus: I don’t know if there’s an incident a day, but certainly very close to it where our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets are detecting a [bombing] group. [It] maybe not Task Force ODIN, by the way. There are lots of others that are out there -- lots of other elements ... detecting individuals planting IEDs and killing or capturing them.
Certainly you want to protect the force by killing or capturing those at the point of planting the IED. But what you really want to do is go after the network, and that’s what we have sought to do, and that has been very very kinetic.
Wired.com: Then whey are we still seeing the incidents rising?
Petraeus: Well, again a variety of different reasons, we think. One is of course that we’re on the offensive, we’re taking away areas that matter to the enemy -- safe havens and sanctuaries. We’ve discovered some safe havens that appear to have been in existence now for some six or perhaps even seven years.
Wired.com: Where are we seeing those?
Petraeus: There’s some in Kandahar province. And in Marja -- it was very, very important. Obviously, Arghandab was important to them. The way they counter this is: They don’t want to us on directly. They don’t want to get in a sustained firefight. What they do is employ the indirect approach and use improvised explosive devices or hit-and-run attacks.
So that’s certainly one reason [for the escalation in IEDs] -- that when you take away something that matters to the enemy, he fights back. And the same was the case, by the way, in Iraq, as you may recall, in the surge.
I mean, the highest level of violence in Iraq was June 2007, it was that late, and then it started to come down. And then the development of governance lags a bit, confidence lags a bit.
There are still, without question, sanctuaries from which they draw support, explosives. You may have seen an Afghan police element in Kandahar, yesterday I think it was, interdicted a massive amount of homemade explosives, and it clearly came from, it clearly came through [a] border crossing [with Pakistan].
Wired.com: So when do you expect the actual incidents to go down?
Petraeus: I don’t hazard predictions on that kind of thing.
Wired.com: It could become a little bit of an epistemic problem when you’re looking at the same measurements and say, "Well this just means were fighting back harder, so they have to fight back harder."
Petraeus: That’s fair enough.
Wired.com: So how do you guard against that in your own thinking?
Petraeus: Well, you know I mean you’re just constantly trying to get at -- I mean this is about the feel-you-know fingers -- Fingerspitzengefühl -- the German word for the “fingertip feel.” That's what you’re constantly trying to achieve as a commander. And so you devour intelligence, all day every day. I mean, you start your day with an intelligence book that you pore over, and you go to an intelligence briefing, and you’re constantly trying to get that sense of why is something happening.
Wired.com: On that note, we just had an enormous transference of ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] assets from Iraq into Afghanistan.
Petraeus: I wouldn’t say we just had, I mean it's been ongoing.
Wired.com: Over the past 18 months, let’s say.
Petraeus: There has been substantial increase to Afghanistan, some portion of which came from Iraq -- but by no means all. Some is just an absolute increase.
Wired.com: Are you finding that you have the ISR capabilities you need in order to get the granularity and the "fingertip feel?"
Petraeus: There is not a military commander alive today who is genetically predisposed to say that he has enough ISR and assets, and particularly not in the Central Command theater. And actually there is more ISR coming.
'We’ve got a lot of months of fighting, and a lot of work to do before July 2011.'Wired.com: What’s coming?
Petraeus: There’s more ISR coming, a fair amount more. Now, I mean some of it’s manned, some of it’s unmanned. Some of it’s optics -- optics on towers, optics on blimps, more blimps, more towers, more unmanned aircraft of various types, more manned aircraft of various types, more intelligence tools of various types in all of the different disciplines of intelligence: imagery intelligence, signal intelligence, human intelligence.
Wired.com: When should we expect to see those flow in?
Petraeus: They have been flowing in, and they will continue to flow in. Again, there’s no commander in modern history who will ever concede that he has enough ISR. Ask Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates about the insatiable appetite for his commanders –- particularly his combatant commanders' - appetite for ISR.
Now, having said that, there has been a fairly significant increase here. Uh, and but keep in mind that it’s not about platforms, actually. It’s about the so called PED, which stands for processing, exploitation, and dissemination. So it’s about the 150 to 200 people who are needed in order to keep a Predator line up -- one system full-time, and that means multiple platforms.
It’s not just the pilot, the payload operator, the ordnance specialist, the maintenance personnel. It’s also the people that do the downlinks, that may exploit whatever package [the Predator] has in terms of signals, imagery or other intelligence. And [the intel specialists] are all over the world, literally.
As you know, it’s all confederated. What’s actually seen might be on a big screen like that right there, but what’s underneath it will be another screen which has a chat room. And you have one of those for every [Predator], about 150 to 200 people do[ing] that full time -- seven days a week, 24 hours a day -– do[ing] whatever is necessary to exploit and disseminate and analyze and operate and maintain those platforms.
Wired.com: You’ve been dealing with the Pakistanis a great deal. How have we regularized interactions with the Pakistani military? We go in hot pursuit, is there a hammer and an anvil?
Petraeus: All the way from the tactical level to the strategic level there are links. There are liaison procedures, there are border coordination centers. I've got a Pakistani liaison officer here.
There's a trilateral group of the chief of army staff, chief of the general staff and myself who meet. We just met, in fact, last week, and those meetings are fairly regular.
Then General Campbell meets with his counterpart. They’re called border meetings.
So there’s a good deal of contact between commanders and staffs. And there is real-time communication as required to de-conflict if, for example, we’re shot at by indirect fire from across the border .
Wired.com: Is this in our muscle memory yet, and how low down does it go?
Petraeus: It goes all the way down to the level at which you would shoot back, having cleared.
Wired.com: So we're talking platoon?
Petraeus: No, we're talking company commander -– at that level. But again it is at tactical level that you can clear indirect fire back in the other direction: Just as if they received it from this side of the border, they can clear it coming this way.
Wired.com: Do they ever request of us, if they might be in pursuit? That we have something?
Petraeus: There have been coordinated operations, but I don’t want to go into more detail than that.
Wired.com: When it comes to transferring elements [out of and around Afghanistan], how granular to you get? Are you going down to the district level, or are you staying up at the province level?
Petraeus: That’s going to be done by those who know it best, and that is well below my level. Free of charge also you can have a copy of the transition process, and most importantly, the big ideas that will guide that process.
As you can see, it starts at the district, in most cases. There will be some provinces but most of it’s going to start at the district.
Wired.com: So we should we expect to see transfers started at the low level -- organic, district centers -- as opposed to entire provinces moving out.
Petraeus: You’ll see all of that. You’ll see both. [I'm being] careful not to project too far. We’ve got a lot of months of fighting, and a lot of work to do before July 2011.
But in the tough areas, it will probably be district-level. In the more autonomous areas, it can be province-level. We’ll transition institutions as well as geographic areas, because we have substantial forces helping Afghan institutions: training, equip, build.
Wired.com: Say a logistics element within an ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] unit?
Petraeus: Basic training. There's typically somewhere approaching 30,000 Afghan security force members in training at a given time.
Wired.com: Is that what we mean by "thin out" in that case?
Petraeus: "Thin out" means that. Say there’s a battalion of you and there’s a battalion of them. They’re doing better, the situation is better, you can reduce your forces. But you thin out. You don’t just hand off. In other words, the whole unit doesn't just leave. You take one company and send it somewhere else or maybe send it home. We want to reinvest some of the transition.
Wired.com: Meaning we should expect elements moved through theater, not necessarily all go home?
Petraeus: Not necessarily all go home, but again some of them certainly. But, again, this is really very premature.
Photo: Defense Department
See Also:
