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The leaked documents outline a growing insurgency and an under-resourced US-led campaign that took a backseat to the Iraq war. The documentation ends in December 2009, when President Obama announced a new strategy to try to shift the tide of the war. The much advertised Kandahar campaign is a key part of that new strategy. And despite delays, it’s finally beginning to take shape. Ben Gilbert recently got a tour with one of the architects of the campaign. (photo: Ben Gilbert) Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: The WikiLeak release of military documents ends in December 2009, when President Obama announced a new strategy to try to shift the tide of the war. That strategy includes beefing up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. An early test of the Obama plan is expected to take place in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. A much-anticipated offensive there is finally beginning to take shape. The World’s Ben Gilbert sets the scene.
BEN GILBERT: Kandahar province contains around a million people. About half of them live in the densely populated capital, Kandahar City. The other half lives in rural farming districts. US troops are flooding into the province this summer as part of Operation Hamkari, or “cooperation.” Major General Nick Carter, commander of the US-led International Security Force’s regional command south, says the operation will include two phases, controlling the hinterlands that serve as Taliban safe havens, and securing the city itself.
NICK CARTER: It’s much more about very weak governance capability and capacity, about a lack of representation for the people, a poor quality of security, predominantly police efficiency and competence, and structures and systems. And it’s about really bringing order to what is a very disorderly environment.
GILBERT: To begin doing that, the US military is beefing up the number of military police training Afghan police in the city. The Americans are also building an outer ring of thirteen checkpoints around the city. Brigadier General Ben Hodges takes weekly tours of Kandahar and its environs. He’s one of the architects of Hamkari.
BEN HODGES: What we are trying to do is separate the insurgent from the population, so there are filters, and separate the insurgents from population is one of the tenets of counterinsurgency.
GILBERT: Today, the General visits Checkpoint 710 on the busy Highway 1 on Kandahar’s dangerous western approach. Lt. Colim Kelly of the 82nd Airborne division is here training the Afghan national police, who are replacing the local police because they were considered too corrupt.
COLIM KELLY: They inspect the licenses and registration, and if they see anything suspicious or they don’t have a license or registration, then they’ll search that vehicle, have all the occupants get out, and we’ll enter them into our biometrics program. So control the flow of traffic into and out of Kandahar City.
GILBERT: The Afghans lined up in their vehicles tell The World they like the new security. Only one, a gardener named Walid who lives in Kandahar, ventures to say he dislikes it.
PASHTO SPEAKING
GILBERT: “The checkpoints are good for security,” Walid says. “But we don’t like waiting in line.” The reluctance of Afghans to criticize the checkpoints is less a sign of how popular they are than an indication of how afraid people are of the government, police and military institutions here. Waheed is a former Afghan newspaper editor and General Hodge’s personal translator.
WAHEED: They afraid, they say, later on Afghan police, they will come to them and they will hurt them. Honestly, they are afraid.
GILBERT: As Hodges and his entourage leave the checkpoint, someone in a passing car fires a burst of bullets. Then, the day after Hodges visits the checkpoint, the Taliban attack the main headquarters of the Afghan national police, killing four US paratroopers and six Afghans. The incident and the growing insecurity here are on the agenda when General Hodges attends the governor’s security meeting.
HODGES: This is the Kandahar provincial security meeting, takes place every other week, and you have representatives from all the Afghan security forces meet with the governor, and just talk through various security issues and updates, that sort of thing.
GILBERT: Hodges says this meeting is part of the other side of Hamkari, building the capacity of Kandahar’s government and bureaucracy. Torryalay Weesa is governor of Kandahar Province.
TORRYALAY WEESA: We need judges, we need prosecutors, we need financial people, we need census, like the statistical office. It will be difficult to have all these people at once.
GILBERT: Finding people to fill those positions is difficult. Kandahar Mayor Ghulam Hayder Hamidi attempts to govern the city of 500,000 with a staff of only 65. He says there aren’t enough qualified graduates from local universities to fill the jobs.
GHULAM HAYDER HAMIDI: We don’t want to hire some employees which they never went to school, and only they are hired by tribes, by the warlords. We are looking to hire good people.
GILBERT: Another reason: the increasing number of assassinations and intimidation by the Taliban. Hamidi lost his deputy this spring when he was killed as he prayed in a city mosque. Still, other qualified workers have been snatched up by the better paying international organizations in Afghanistan. General Hodges recognizes the challenges, but he says the Kandahar operation builds on lessons from this winter’s operation in Marjah. There’s no point in clearing an area if you’re not ready to hold it. Right now he says Kandahar is in a building phase on areas already held. Later this summer and fall will come more violent clearing operations in Kandahar’s Arghandab and Zhari districts. For the World, I’m Ben Gilbert in Kandahar City, Afghanistan.
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