THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS A secret history of the war STRANDED WITHOUT A STRATEGY Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war Both were destined to fail By Craig Whitlock Dec 9 2019    n the beginning the rationale for invading Afghanistan was clear to destroy al-Qaeda topple the Taliban and prevent a repeat of the 9 11 I terrorist attacks Within six months the United States had largely accomplished what it set out to do The leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban were dead captured or in hiding But then the U S government committed a fundamental mistake it would repeat again and again over the next 17 years according to a cache of government documents obtained by The Washington Post In hundreds of confidential interviews that constitute a secret history of the war U S and allied officials admitted they veered off in directions that had little to do with al-Qaeda or 9 11 By expanding the original mission they said they adopted fatally flawed warfighting strategies based on misguided assumptions about a country they did not understand The result an unwinnable conflict with no easy way out  Click any underlined text in the story to see the statement in the original document “If there was ever a notion of mission creep it is Afghanistan ”  said Richard Boucher who served as the State Department’s top diplomat for South Asia from 2006 to 2009 according to a transcript of what he told government interviewers in 2015 He added “We have to say good enough is good enough That is why we are there 15 years later We are trying to achieve the unachievable instead of achieving the achievable ”  In unusually candid interviews officials who served under Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama said both leaders failed in their most important task as commanders in chief — to devise a clear strategy with concise attainable objectives Diplomats and military commanders acknowledged they struggled to answer simple questions Who is the enemy Whom can we count on as allies How will we know when we have won Left Northern Alliance fighters in Chaghatay Afghanistan in November 2001 Lois Raimondo The Washington Post Right Damulla Mohammad Nazar 80 describes Taliban atrocities in Dasht-e Qalat in northeastern Afghanistan in October 2001 Lois Raimondo The Washington Post Their strategies differed but Bush and Obama both committed early blunders that they never recovered from according to the interviews After a succession of quick military victories in 2001 and early 2002 Bush decided to keep a light force of U S troops in Afghanistan indefinitely to hunt suspected terrorists Soon however he made plans to invade another nation — Iraq — and Afghanistan quickly became an afterthought James Dobbins a career diplomat who served as a special envoy for Afghanistan under Bush and Obama told government interviewers it was a hubristic mistake that should have been obvious from the start “First you know sort of just invade only one country at a time I mean that seriously ”  Dobbins said according to a transcript of his remarks “They take a lot of high-level time and attention and we’ll overload the system if we do more than one of these at a time ”  By the time Obama took office in 2009 al-Qaeda had largely vanished from Afghanistan But the Taliban had made a comeback  — Nicholas Burns a career U S diplomat who served as ambassador to NATO under Bush Obama tore up Bush’s counterterrorism strategy and approved a polaropposite plan — a massive counterinsurgency campaign backed by 150 000 U S and NATO troops as well as tons of aid for a weak Afghan government In contrast with Bush Obama imposed strict deadlines and promised to bring home all U S troops by the end of his presidency But Obama’s strategy was also destined to fail U S NATO and Afghan officials told government interviewers that it tried to accomplish too much too quickly and depended on an Afghan government that was corrupt and dysfunctional Worse they said Obama tried to set artificial dates for ending the war before it was over All the Taliban had to do was wait him out “There were a number of faulty assumptions in the strategy Afghanistan is ready for democracy overnight the population will support the government in a short time frame more of everything is better ”  Bob Crowley a retired Army colonel who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in 2013 and 2014 told government interviewers Over the past 18 years more than 775 000 U S troops have deployed to Afghanistan many repeatedly Of those 2 300 died there and 20 589 came home wounded according to Defense Department figures  Listen Left Marine Cpl Burness Britt is transported after being wounded by an IED in Helmand province in 2011 Anja Niedringhaus AP Right Spec Robert Lewis Warren wounded in a Taliban ambush months before shaves his head in Washington in 2010 days before undergoing surgery to repair his skull Marvin Joseph The Washington Post Today about 13 000 U S troops are still in Afghanistan The U S military acknowledges the Taliban is stronger now than at any point since 2001 Yet there has been no comprehensive public reckoning for the strategic failures behind the longest war in American history There has been no Afghanistan version of the 9 11 Commission which held the government to account for the worst terrorist attack on American soil no Afghanistan version of the Fulbright Hearings when senators aggressively questioned the war in Vietnam no Afghanistan version of the Army’s official 1 300-page introspective history of the war in Iraq In 2014 a small federal agency created by Congress decided to try to fill the void The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction known as SIGAR launched an $11 million project — titled “Lessons Learned” — to study the war’s core mistakes After interviewing more than 600 people agency researchers published seven reports that recommended policy changes Exclusive A secret history of the war in Afghanistan revealed  17 36 Video by Joyce Lee The Washington Post To avoid controversy SIGAR sanitized the harshest criticisms from the Lessons Learned interviews and omitted the names of more than 90 percent of the people it spoke with It also scrapped plans to publish a separate report on deficiencies in the Afghan war strategy After a three-year legal battle The Post obtained notes and transcripts as well as several audio recordings from more than 400 of the interviews In stark language the documents reveal that people who were directly involved in the war could not shake their doubts about the strategy and mission even as Bush Obama and later President Trump told the American people it was necessary to keep fighting “What were we actually doing in that country ”  an THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS unidentified U S official who served as a liaison to NATO said in a government interview “What are our objectives Nation-building Women’s rights  It See the documents More than 2 000 pages of interviews and memos reveal a secret history of the war was never fully clear in our own minds what the Part 3 Built to fail The United States has wasted billions on nation-building Jeffrey Eggers a retired Navy SEAL and White House Responses to The Post from people named in The Afghanistan Papers established goals and timelines were ”  official under Bush and Obama said few people paused to question the very premise for keeping U S troops in Afghanistan “Why did we make the Taliban the enemy when we were attacked by al-Qaeda Why did we want to defeat the Taliban ”  Eggers said in a Lessons Learned interview “Collectively the system is incapable of taking a step back to question basic assumptions ”  Boucher a career diplomat who also served as chief State Department spokesman under Bush said U S officials did not know what they were doing “First we went in to get al-Qaeda and to get al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan and even without killing bin Laden we did that ”  Boucher told government interviewers “The Taliban was shooting back at us so we started shooting at them and they became the enemy Ultimately we kept expanding the mission ”  WHAT THEY SAID IN PUBLIC March 28 2002 “The only thing you can do is to bomb them and try to kill them And that’s what we did and it worked They’re gone ” — Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld on the Taliban and al-Qaeda MSNBC interview R umsfeld's premature declaration was the first of many times that senior U S leaders mistakenly assumed they could end the war on their terms The Taliban was beaten down but hardly gone Lulled into overconfidence by the apparent ease of conquering Afghanistan the Bush administration refused to sit down with defeated Taliban leaders to negotiate a lasting peace — a decision U S officials would later regret The Taliban was excluded from international conferences and Afghan gatherings from 2001 to 2003 that drew up a new government even though some Taliban figures had shown a willingness to join in Instead the United States posted bounties for their capture and sent hundreds to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba TURKMEN UZBEK TAJIK “A major mistake we made was treating the Taliban the same as al-Qaeda ”  Barnett Rubin an American academic expert on Kabul Afghanistan who served as an adviser to the AFGHANISTAN United Nations at the time told government Kandahar HELMAND PROV interviewers “Key Taliban leaders were interested in giving the new system a chance PAKISTAN but we didn’t give them a chance ”  IRAN INDIA 100 MILES The Taliban was not involved in the 9 11 attacks none of the hijackers or planners were Afghans But the Bush administration categorized Taliban leaders as terrorists because they had given al-Qaeda sanctuary and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden While the Taliban was easy to demonize because of its brutality and religious fanaticism the movement proved too large and ingrained in Afghan society to eradicate Alleged Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees await transfer at the Shiberghan prison in northwestern Jowzlan province in 2004 Emilio Morenatti AP “Everyone wanted the Taliban to disappear ”  Rubin said in a second Lessons Learned interview “There was not much appetite for what we called threat reduction for regional diplomacy and bringing the Taliban into the peace process ”  An unnamed U N official agreed telling interviewers that it was the biggest missed opportunity of the war “At that moment most Hizb-i-Islami or Taliban commanders were interested in joining the government ”  the U N official said referring to another Afghan militia that fought U S troops “Lesson learned If you get the chance to talk to the Taliban talk to them ”  the official said Belatedly U S officials came to realize it was impossible to vanquish the group Today Pentagon officials say the only way to end the war is with a political settlement in which the Taliban reconciles with the Afghan government Last year the U S government opened direct high-level peace talks with the Taliban for the first time  — James Dobbins a career diplomat who served as a special envoy for Afghanistan under Bush and Obama Five of the Taliban’s negotiators are former U S prisoners of war who each spent a dozen years in captivity in Guantanamo The lead U S envoy is Zalmay Khalilzad an Afghan American diplomat who served as U S ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and later as ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations In a Lessons Learned interview in December 2016 Khalilzad acknowledged that by refusing to talk to the Taliban the Bush administration may have blown a chance to end the war shortly after it started “Maybe we were not agile or wise enough to reach out to the Taliban early on that we thought they were defeated and that they needed to be brought to justice rather than that they should be accommodated or some reconciliation be done ”  he said A year after Khalilzad’s Lessons Learned interview Trump pulled him back into public service by tapping him as the U S envoy for negotiations with the Taliban Federal officials redacted extensive portions of Khalilzad’s interview before releasing a transcript to The Post in June saying it contained classified information In a court filing the Justice Department said disclosure of the classified material “might negatively impact ongoing diplomatic negotiations ” The Post has asked a federal judge to review whether Khalilzad’s remarks were properly classified A decision is pending In Lessons Learned interviews other officials said the Bush administration compounded its early mistake with the Taliban by making another critical error — treating Pakistan as a friend  Listen An army battalion graduates in Kabul after completing training in 2004 Dudley M Brooks The Washington Post Pakistan’s military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf had given the Pentagon permission to use Pakistani airspace and let the CIA track al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistani territory As a result the Bush White House was slow to recognize that Pakistan was simultaneously giving covert support to the Taliban according to the interviews “Because of people’s personal confidence in Musharraf and because of things he was continuing to do in helping police up a bunch of the al-Qaeda in Pakistan There was a failure to perceive the double game that he starts to play by late 2002 early 2003 ”  Marin Strmecki a senior adviser to Rumsfeld told government interviewers “I think that the Afghans and President Hamid Karzai himself are bringing this up constantly even in the earlier parts of 2002 ”  Strmecki added “They are meeting unsympathetic ears because of the belief that Pakistan was helping us so much on al-Qaeda  There is never a full confronting of Pakistan in its role supporting the Taliban ”  WHAT THEY SAID IN PRIVATE Oct 21 2014 “Your job was not to win it was to not lose ”  — A former National Security Council staff member on how Afghanistan was eclipsed by the war in Iraq Lessons Learned interview B y late 2002 Afghanistan had become yesterday's war in the eyes of the Bush administration It was already preparing for a much bigger invasion that of Iraq On Oct 21 after spending several hours at the White House in meetings about Iraq even Rumsfeld seemed taken aback by how much Afghanistan had receded from Bush’s mind according to a previously unpublished memo that the defense secretary wrote later that day Just before 3 p m Rumsfeld got a few minutes alone with the commander in chief Rumsfeld asked Bush whether he wanted to arrange a meeting with Army Gen Tommy Franks the head of the U S Central Command and Army Lt Gen Dan McNeill who had been serving as commander of U S forces in Afghanistan for the past six months Bush was perplexed “He said ‘Who is General McNeill ’ ”  Rumsfeld wrote in the memo “I said he is the general in charge of Afghanistan He said ‘Well I don’t need to meet with him ’ ”  The memo was obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the National Security Archive a nonprofit research institute based at George Washington University which shared it with The Post For his part McNeill told government interviewers that he was given little strategic guidance He said the Pentagon mainly cared about keeping a lid on the number of U S troops “There was no campaign plan in the early days ”  he said “Rumsfeld would get excited if there was any increase in the number of boots on the ground ”  At the time McNeill commanded about 8 000 troops — a tiny fraction of the number that would ultimately go to Afghanistan A few contrarians in the Bush administration pushed to do more Rumsfeld right with aides Victoria Clarke and Larry DiRita in September 2002 David Hume Kennerly Getty Images Richard Haass a senior diplomat who served as the Bush administration’s special coordinator for Afghanistan after the 9 11 attacks told government interviewers that he floated a proposal to deploy 20 000 to 25 000 U S troops alongside an equal number of allied forces But he said his plan was shot down “I couldn’t sell the idea There was no enthusiasm There was a profound sense of a lack of possibility in Afghanistan ”  Haass said in a Lessons Learned interview “I was never talking about 100 000-plus people I was talking about a very narrow mission A mission not much different than what we have now Training and arming in a limited role ”  He added “It was seen as too much and that is ironic given where we ended up In retrospect it looks like a bargain ”  By keeping troops to a minimum in Afghanistan the Bush administration was looking to claim swift victories on two fronts at the same time On May 1 2003 while standing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier Bush declared an end to “major combat operations” in Iraq On the very same day Rumsfeld visited Kabul and announced an end to “major combat activity” in Afghanistan In 2003 Bush and Rumsfeld make major announcements on wars in Iraq Afghanistan  0 25 Both declarations backfired spectacularly Iraq descended into civil war Meanwhile as the U S government fixated on Iraq the Taliban steadily regrouped Nicholas Burns a career U S diplomat who served as ambassador to NATO under Bush said the administration lost sight of the big picture in Afghanistan at a pivotal time “After 2003 and 2004 I can’t remember us ever saying should we still be there Are we being useful Are we succeeding ”  he told government interviewers “I think we would have done better if we had made some more specific strategic assumptions ”  Burns said “Yes we’re here open-ended We think that might be 10 to 15 to 20 years Or no we’d like to bring American engagement you know to an end I don’t remember us asking that very tough question ”  Of the hundreds of people interviewed by SIGAR Burns was one of the few who accepted personal responsibility for his role in the war’s failures “At the time but especially in ensuing years I’ve often wondered did we make a mistake — and I’m part of this obviously so I have to own part of it — in not deciding strategically if there was going to be an endpoint ”  he said “I fault myself and you know we probably should have asked those  questions more consistently by 2005 and 2006 ”  By the time British Gen David Richards took charge of NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2006 the Taliban was giving U S and allied troops all they could handle in the eastern and southern parts of the country Richards said the alliance failed to adapt Left British marines run toward a Taliban position in Helmand province in 2007 John Moore Getty Images Right A U S soldier rests at the Restrepo outpost in the Korengal Valley in Konar province in 2007 Tim A Hetherington Magnum Photos “We were trying to get a single coherent long-term approach — a proper strategy — but instead we got a lot of tactics ”  he told government interviewers “There was no coherent long-term strategy ”  In his Lessons Learned interview Richards recalled having a tense encounter with Rumsfeld in 2006 The Pentagon chief asked the NATO commander why things were deteriorating in the south Richards replied that it was because he did not have enough resources “And Rummy said ‘General what do you mean ’ I said ‘We don’t have enough troops and resources and we’ve raised expectations ’ He said ‘General I don’t agree Move on ’ ”  The next year NATO forces in Afghanistan got a new commander McNeill the general whose name Bush had once forgotten McNeill was ordered back to Afghanistan to take command a second time as the Taliban launched a wave of suicide attacks and began planting bombs all over the country By March 2007 the number of U S and NATO troops in Afghanistan had climbed to 50 000 Despite the increase McNeill said nobody in charge was able to articulate a clear mission and strategy “I tried to get someone to define for me what winning meant even before I went over and nobody could Nobody would give me a good definition of what it meant ”  he told government interviewers “Some people were thinking in terms of Jeffersonian democracy but that’s just not going to happen in Afghanistan ”  “There was no NATO campaign plan — a lot of verbiage and talk but no plan ”  McNeill added “So for better or for worse a lot of what we did we did with some forethought but most of it was reacting to conditions on the ground We were opportunists ”  WHAT THEY SAID IN PUBLIC Dec  1 2009 “As your commander in chief I owe you a mission that is clearly de ned ” — Obama in a speech to Army cadets at the U S Military Academy at West Point N Y announcing he would send 30 000 more troops to Afghanistan E ven before the new commander in chief moved into the White House U S military leaders recognized they needed a fresh war plan Years of hunting suspected terrorists was getting them nowhere The Taliban kept gaining ground “At the time I was looking at Afghanistan and I was thinking that there has to be more to solving this problem than killing people because that’s what we were doing and every time I went back security was worse ”  Army Maj Gen Edward Reeder a Special Operations commander who deployed to the war zone several times before retiring in 2015 told government interviewers U S military leaders wanted to double down on a counterinsurgency strategy The objective was to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people by protecting them from the Taliban limiting civilian casualties and building popular support for the new Afghan government The new strategy would require far more troops and far more aid for the Afghan government A similar approach — dubbed “the surge” — had seemed to work in Iraq In August 2009 Army Gen Stanley McChrystal then-commander of U S and NATO forces wrote a classified 66-page assessment of the war that called for a “properly resourced” counterinsurgency campaign and laid out his proposed strategy in meticulous detail In the Lessons Learned interviews however U S and allied officials said McChrystal and the Obama administration glossed over two basic questions Whom were they fighting And why Left British and American troops watch pallets of water bottles dropped by NATO at a base in southern Afghanistan in 2008 David Guttenfelder AP Right Gen Stanley McChrystal commander of the coalition forces in Afghanistan reviews a map of Helmand province during a visit to Forward Operating Base Delhi in 2009 Peter van Agtmael Magnum Photos Obama had repeatedly declared the goal of the war was to “disrupt dismantle and eventually defeat al-Qaeda ” But the first draft of McChrystal’s strategic review did not even mention al-Qaeda because the group had all but disappeared from Afghanistan according to an unnamed NATO official involved in the review “In 2009 the perception was that al-Qaeda was no longer a problem ”  the NATO official told government interviewers “But the entire reason for being in Afghanistan was al-Qaeda So then the second draft included them ”  Another jarring disconnect was that the United States and its allies could not agree on whether they were actually fighting a war in Afghanistan or doing something else the NATO official said “There are big implications with calling this a war ”  the NATO official added “Legally under international law that has serious implications So we checked with the legal team and they agree it’s not a war ”  To paper over the problem McChrystal added a line in his report that said the conflict was “not a war in a conventional sense ”  Newly installed town leader Hagi Zahir top left meets with elders in Marja in Helmand province shortly after a U S -Afghan offensive to drive out the Taliban Moises Saman Magnum Photos The official description of the mission was even more convoluted The long definition stated that the objective for U S and NATO forces was to “reduce the capability and will of the insurgency support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces ANSF and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population ” After months of debate at the White House Obama approved the counterinsurgency strategy In his December 2009 speech at the U S Military Academy he announced he would deploy 30 000 more U S troops to Afghanistan on top of the 70 000 that he and Bush had previously authorized NATO and other U S allies would increase their forces to 50 000 But Obama added a last-minute wrinkle that caught many of his senior advisers by surprise He imposed a timeline on the mission and said the extra troops would start to come home in 18 months Cadets at the U S Military Academy at West Point N Y listen on Dec 1 2009 as Obama details his plans for a U S troop surge in Afghanistan Christopher Morris VII Redux “The timeline was just sprung on us ”  Army Gen David H Petraeus head of the U S Central Command at the time said in a Lessons Learned interview “Two days before the president made the speech on a Sunday we all got called and were told to be in the Oval Office that night for the president to lay out what he would announce two evenings later And he laid it out there it is ”  “None of us had heard that before ”  Petraeus added “And we were then asked are you all okay with that He went around the room and everyone said yes And it was take it or leave it ”  Barnett Rubin the Afghan expert was serving as an adviser to the State Department at the time He told government interviewers he and other U S officials were “stupefied”  when they heard Obama reveal the timeline during the West Point speech All the Taliban had to do was lay low until U S and NATO troops left He said it was understandable that Obama wanted to put the Afghan government on notice that the Americans wouldn’t fight forever “But there was a mismatch between deadline and strategy ”  Rubin added “With that deadline you can’t use that strategy ”  WHAT THEY SAID IN PUBLIC July 27 2010 “We’re going to have to break them irreconcilable from reconcilable If they’re irreconcilable we will neutralize them ” — Then-Marine Gen Jim Mattis on the Taliban during a Senate hearing L ike the Bush administration Obama lacked an effective diplomatic strategy for dealing with the Taliban In public the Obama administration called for “reconciliation” between the Afghan government and insurgent leaders But the Lessons Learned interviews show his advisers disagreed strenuously over what that meant Rubin who favored talking to the Taliban told interviewers that some hard-liners defined reconciliation as “We’ll be nice to people who surrender ”  In particular he said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “very reluctant to move on this ”  because of her presidential aspirations “Women are a very important constituency for her and she couldn’t sell making a bargain with the Taliban ”  Rubin said “If you want to be the first woman president you cannot leave any hint or doubt that you’re not the toughest person on national security ”  Other diplomats argued that trying to deal with the Taliban was a waste of time “I never believed that the negotiations with the Taliban conducted by whomever were going to lead anywhere significant ”  Ryan Crocker who served as Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012 told government interviewers “I felt at the most it might be possible  to chip away individual Taliban figures and bring them over to the government side but that would be an incremental issue  I never thought there was an upside ”  Eight years apart Bush and Obama on the Afghanistan war  1 38 In the Lessons Learned interviews Obama officials acknowledged that they failed to resolve another strategic challenge that had dogged Bush — what to do about Pakistan Washington kept giving Pakistan billions of dollars a year to help fight terrorism Yet Pakistani military and intelligence leaders never stopped supporting the Afghan Taliban and giving sanctuary to its leaders “The Obama administration just thought if you just hang in there Pakistan will see the light ”  a former White House official told government interviewers in 2015 In a separate interview in 2015 another unnamed official complained that the Obama administration would not let U S troops attack Taliban camps on the Pakistani side of the border “And still today we wonder what the problem is ”  the official said “I talked to General Petraeus and I was saying that if I were a general and a bullet came and hit my men I would follow it And Petraeus said yeah well go talk to Washington ”  Crocker who also served as U S ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007 told government interviewers that Pakistani leaders did not bother to hide their duplicity Gen David H Petraeus then-commander of coalition forces in Iraq at a House Armed Services Committee hearing 2008 Melina Mara The Washington Post He recounted a conversation he had with Gen Ashfaq Kayani who was then Pakistan’s intelligence chief in which he “was getting on him again”  about the Taliban “And he says ‘You know I know you think we’re hedging our bets You’re right we are because one day you’ll be gone again it’ll be like Afghanistan the first time you’ll be done with us but we’re still going to be here because we can’t actually move the country And the last thing we want with all of our other problems is to have turned the Taliban into a mortal enemy so yes we’re hedging our bets ’ ”  In his December 2016 Lessons Learned interview Crocker said the only way to force Pakistan to change would be for Trump to keep U S troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and give them the green light to hunt the Taliban on Pakistani territory “It would allow him to say ‘You worry about our reliability you worry about our withdrawal from Afghanistan I’m here to tell you that I’m going to keep troops there as long as I feel we need them there is no calendar ’  “ ‘That’s the good news The bad news for you is we’re going to kill Taliban leaders wherever we find them Baluchistan Punjab downtown Islamabad We’re going to go find them so maybe you want to do a strategic recalculation ’ ”  WHAT THEY SAID IN PRIVATE Feb  2 2015 “Tactics without strategy is a good way to fail ”  — Unnamed German official Lessons Learned interview A t first hopes were high that Obama's strategy would turn the tide But military and civilian officials interviewed for the SIGAR project said it soon became clear that lessons learned from one war zone did not necessarily apply to the other An unidentified Special Forces officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 said all the conventional forces there thought it would be just like Iraq “They were constantly referring to it ”  he said but “just because the villagers are wearing robes and speaking derka derka doesn’t mean it’s the same country ”  The officer told government interviewers the new counterinsurgency strategy was rushed with the troops receiving scant direction from above “We were given no documents that instructed us how to do our job We were given the commander’s vague strategic priorities but that generally amounted to ‘go do good things ’ Both at the strategic and operational level doing it right took a back seat to doing it fast ”  Others said the strategy was based on buzzwords and lacked substance U S military leaders adopted an approach they labeled “clear hold and build ” in which troops would clear insurgents from a district and remain until local government officials and Afghan security forces could stabilize the area with an influx of aid U S Marines in Helmand province moments before an IED was triggered in 2009 Peter van Agtmael Magnum Photos Because they were operating on a tight timetable U S commanders first tried to clear areas where the Taliban was deeply entrenched such as Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan The approach backfired when U S officials lavished aid on districts that remained supportive of the Taliban yet neglected peaceful areas that sided with the government in Kabul In a Lessons Learned interview a senior official with the U S Agency for International Development said friendly governors from stable provinces would come to Kabul and ask “What do I have to do to get love from the Americans blow some shit up ”  “We needed to go first where the fence-sitters and low-hanging fruit was and reward good behavior ”  the USAID official said adding that the Americans and their allies needed to “reinforce people who are cooperating with the government so we can demonstrate success then create a demand for it in insecure areas But this takes time as it should and we didn’t have time or patience ”  In 2014 as evidence piled up that Obama’s plan was faltering a senior State Department official told government interviewers that the mission had been unfocused from the start “I am sick of Obama saying ‘We’re sick of war ’ ”  the senior diplomat said “Only 5 percent of Americans are involved in the war it doesn’t affect most Americans ”  “If I were to write a book its cover would be ‘America goes to war without knowing why it does ’ ”  she added “We went in reflexively after 9 11 without knowing what we were trying to achieve I would like to write a book about having a plan and an endgame before you go in ”  Left Afghan soldier Masiullah Hamdard who lost both legs and his left forearm in an explosion in Kandahar province takes his first steps using his new prosthetics in Kabul in 2013 Javier Manzano for The Washington Post Right Army Lt Joshua Pitcher in his living quarters at Camp Spann in northern Afghanistan after a mission in 2014 He returned to his unit two years after an injury in Kandahar province that cost him his leg Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post Dozens of U S and Afghan officials told interviewers that the problems reflected a much deeper flaw Despite years and years of war the United States still did not understand what was motivating its enemies to fight The Taliban’s presence “was a symptom but we rarely tried to understand what the disease was ”  an unnamed USAID official said in a Lessons Learned interview in 2016 In a separate interview that year an Army civil-affairs officer said “In order to clear you need to know your enemy You don’t know your enemy — you’re just tearing things down and pissing people off ”  Shahmahmood Miakhel a senior Afghan official who now serves as governor of Nangahar province told interviewers there was a simple way to tell whether the U S strategy was working U S soldiers in 2011 at an observation post in Konar province near the Pakistan border John Moore Getty Images “I told Petraeus that in the counterinsurgency in which you don’t know your friend you don’t know your enemy and environment you are going to fail ”  Miakhel said “I told him to check your list of people to be killed and captured and see has this become longer or shorter If it has increased that means that your strategy has failed ”  In March 2011 when he was commander of U S and NATO forces Petraeus estimated there were “somewhere around 25 000 Taliban ” according to testimony he gave to Congress Today the U S military estimates the number has more than doubled — to about 60 000 If you have information to share about The Afghanistan Papers contact The Post at afghanpapers@washpost com afghanpapers@washpost com Were you or one of your family members involved in the Afghanistan war Tell us about your experiences Share your story Craig Whitlock Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter who specializes in national security issues He has covered the Pentagon served as the Berlin bureau chief and reported from more than 60 countries He joined The Washington Post in 1998 PART 1 PART 4 INTERVIEWS AND MEMOS At war with the truth Consumed by corruption Explore the documents U S officials constantly said they were making progress They were not and they knew it The U S flooded the country with money — then turned a blind eye to the graft it fueled Key insiders speak bluntly about the failures of the longest conflict in U S history PART 2 PART 5 POST REPORTS Stranded without a strategy Unguarded nation ‘We didn’t know what the task was’ Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war Both were destined to fail Afghan security forces despite years of training were dogged by incompetence and corruption Hear candid interviews with former ambassador Ryan Crocker and retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn PART 3 PART 6 THE FIGHT FOR THE DOCUMENTS Built to fail Overwhelmed by opium About the investigation Despite vows the U S wouldn’t get mired in “nationbuilding ” it has wasted billions doing just that The U S war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2 000 pages of interview records MORE STORIES A visual timeline of the war • Interviewees respond • Share your story about the war About this story Design and development by Jake Crump Armand Emamdjomeh and Matt Callahan Editing by David Fallis and Jeff Leen Photo editing research and document illustration by Nick Kirkpatrick Graphics by Laris Karklis and Leslie Shapiro Copy editing by J J Evans Video by Joyce Lee Senior video production by Tom LeGro Audio editing by Ted Muldoon Digital operations by María Sánchez Díez Audience engagement by Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn and Ric Sanchez Project management by Julie Vitkovskaya Share   More stories ‘It’s a hard problem’ Inside Trump’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan    139 Comments Most Read 1 Confidential documents reveal U S officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan After years of criticizing the war the president was convinced by military leaders to stay the course 2 He’s commander in chief so how does he understand war U S officials failed to devise a clear strategy for the war in Afghanistan confidential documents show 3 The Afghanistan Papers Confidential documents reveal a secret history of the war in Afghanistan 4 The five best lightsaber battles in Star Wars history 5 Wasteful spending and halfbaked ideas U S officials reveal how massive rebuilding projects in Afghanistan backfired Barack Obama’s wartime policies and actions are among the things he may be criticized most soundly for during his presidency Follow Post Graphics   