Afghan Lessons

Culture, Diplomacy, and Counterinsurgency

Fernando Gentilini

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780815724230
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780815724247
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Fernando Gentilini served nearly two years as the civilian representative of NATO in Afghanistan, running a counterinsurgency campaign in the wartorn nation. Afghan Lessons is the fascinating story of his mission, a firsthand view of Afghanistan through a kaleidoscope. He explores Afghan history, literature, tradition, and culture to understand some of the most basic questions of Western involvement: What is the purpose? What does an international presence mean, and how can it help?
Highlights from Afghan Lessons
""This is a book about different worlds, different realities. The reality of everyday life in an unreal world. People that need to be looked after, jobs that need to be done, a country that needs to be restored, all from within the necessary confines of an armed camp. And this in the middle of another reality, which we do not understand, full of things forgotten under decades of war. The keys to this reality lie in the past, perhaps lost."" —from the Foreword by Robert Cooper
""To tempt me to explore their country, the Afghans kept repeating that there were three different Afghanistans: 'The first is the one you Westerners imagine; another coincides with the city of Kabul; the third is the country of remote provinces, far away from the cities, and of the three, this is the only real Afghanistan.'""
""'There can be no development without security and no security without development.' ... Everyone said it over and over again, both the civilians and the military, but depending on whether it was said by the former or the latter, the emphasis was placed on the first or second part of the slogan. In all honesty this seemingly obvious concept concealed two contrasting ways of seeing things.""

ONE

HOW I ENDED UP IN AFGHANISTAN

FEBRUARY–JULY 2008

I WAS APPOINTED NATO's senior civilian representative for Afghanistan in early May 2008. It was sheer chance really, a combination of events. With the fall of the Prodi administration in February, I had to look for another job after two years as deputy diplomatic adviser to the prime minister. At the same time, NATO's secretary general was looking for a new personal representative in Kabul, and the Italian Foreign Ministry had decided to put forward one of its diplomats for the position, so that secured me a place on the list of candidates. I was keen; I was looking for a new challenge to sink my teeth into, and I looked forward to the interview.

Afghanistan had always fascinated me and, more than ever, it was now at the center of the international stage. Moreover, the role of civilian representative of the leading organization (even if it was military in nature) present in the country promised to be interesting, especially since the international community was relentlessly demanding a political solution to the crisis.

My father encouraged me and this was of fundamental importance; in the past we had never discussed my choice of overseas postings, and I had simply informed him when it was all decided. This time, however, leaving Italy would be different because he had just been diagnosed with a form of stomach cancer and had been given a very poor prognosis.

In some aspects, my father was like my grandfather, and in turn my grandfather was like all those who had experienced a war and its aftermath. Work for my father and generations before was virtually the be-all and end-all, and when a big opportunity came your way, you grabbed it with both hands without giving it too much thought. My father made me understand this while we were having dinner together, the evening after he'd started his chemotherapy. We were talking about skiing, as we always did, when out of the blue he told me he was sure they'd offer me the job, and that I'd be doing the right thing if I accepted it.

IN EARLY APRIL I was selected for an interview with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, secretary general of NATO. We spoke for half an hour; I was very frank and to the point, mainly because I felt the “right chemistry” was there. I told him I knew very little about Afghanistan, but I did have good multilateral experience and I knew the mechanisms used by the international community in crisis situations. I also told him that a few years earlier, in the Balkans, I'd already met Kai Eide, the Norwegian diplomat who had begun to coordinate international civilian activities on behalf of the United Nations and with which NATO would be working in Kabul.

De Hoop Scheffer knew that I'd had a similar assignment in the Balkans a few years before, working for Javier Solana, high representative for European Union common foreign and security policy. He was also hopeful that an Italian diplomat would have more of a chance of winning Afghan trust, since—as I later discovered—NATO was struggling in that respect, to say the least.

A couple of weeks later I got a call from Ambassador Giampiero Massolo, the Italian Foreign Ministry's secretary general; he confirmed that I'd been given the assignment and it was time to start packing.

That afternoon I went to browse the bookshops in the center of Rome. In the evening I had dinner with my mother, and then I went to the cinema with my partner, Francesca, to see The Kite Runner, a movie based on Khaled Hosseini's bestseller. Francesca had hoped for a different decision and wasn't at all happy about a relationship that in a few days' time would be conducted on Skype.

Before we went into the cinema, I texted Kai Eide in Kabul to tell him I'd got the job and how happy I was that we'd be working together. When the movie was over, I turned the cell back on and found his reply, “We'll make a good team!” which sounded encouraging and was an incentive to prepare myself as best I could.

IN THE WEEKS before my departure, just like anyone else given an international assignment of any importance, I embarked on the crucial “tour of the capitals,” visiting the key countries of the Atlantic Alliance to gather suggestions on how to proceed once I got to Kabul and to seek the required political support.

I went to Washington, Ottawa, Paris, London, and Berlin. I also went to Ankara, to meet the former Turkish foreign minister, Hikmet Çetin, who had held the position I was about to take over a few years earlier and had maintained a close relationship with President Hamid Karzai and many other Afghan leaders.

In Paris I made my first appearance at the side of NATO's secretary general during the international Afghanistan donor conference of June 12, 2008. Immediately afterward I spent a week at NATO headquarters in Brussels, meeting my new co-workers. It was a frenetic time, during which I tried to absorb as much information as possible, establish contacts, and make an inventory of important issues: how I was going to get International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) military to co-exist with United Nations and European Union civilian staff; how to achieve the gradual empowerment of Afghans for the management of reconstruction projects; how to support the political process for the upcoming 2009 presidential elections that were supposed to confirm the country's democratic consolidation, and so on.

Despite the crazy schedule, I was as euphoric as I always am when I'm getting ready to leave. I didn't feel responsible for anything. I was in a kind of limbo, and suddenly it was as if everything else in life was no longer my concern. The mere prospect of crossing a border and settling in a distant country had swiftly erased the duties and concerns of everyday life. Not that I'd be lacking for responsibilities in Afghanistan. If anything, there would probably be more. Yet there was a sense of lightness that floated over the preparations for my departure, as if the venture wasn't really directly related to me, or perhaps it was too immense for me to relate it directly to myself. I suspect my face betrayed my satisfaction, because in the days leading up to the trip, my colleagues at Palazzo Chigi kept repeating that I looked like the cat that had lapped up all of the cream. I have to be honest. I was pleased with this opportunity, although perhaps those around me did not feel the same.

My mother had begun to focus and was concerned by the alarming news she was hearing about Kabul. She said I was reckless, that I needed to grow up and lacked any inkling of what it feels like to be a parent.

Francesca observed it all from her own perspective, but said more or less the same. She too thought I was being totally selfish, and said it was as if I didn't care about the two of us at all.

My father saw it differently. Every day he got weaker from the cancer and the chemo, but the evening before I left, he insisted on inviting friends and family to Casina Valadier, a well-known venue for parties and receptions in downtown Rome, so I could say goodbye. He'd lost a lot of weight and it was clear he wasn't well, yet his face seemed strangely youthful, looking as he had in our summers together of thirty years back. Would he recover? Would I see him back on his feet? Or was this to be our last time together?

TWO

SIGNALS

1968, 1979, 2001, 2007

FOR YEARS I'd been sure that sooner or later I'd end up in Afghanistan. Traveling as a tourist, on business, or just by chance. I don't remember the exact moment when this conviction took shape or why it did, but I felt it was there and that I wouldn't have to do very much to make it happen. At some point, fate would pack me off to Kabul.

I'd heard the name Afghanistan for the first time when I was six, in the kitchen of my paternal grandparents. Uncle Roberto, my father's younger brother, was back from a trip to Persia and was showing my grandmother some photographs. He'd gone there with Mara, his girlfriend, who was soon to become my aunt, and they were saying that they'd wanted to go to Kabul, but there was a cholera epidemic and the closed borders forced them to rethink their plans.

My uncle was sorry he'd missed out because he'd heard from other travelers that Afghanistan was stunning and had to be seen before mass tourism got there. So they'd already decided to go back the following year, on the “magic bus” that started off in London and reached Kabul in a couple of weeks. During this second trip they were going to cross the Persian Desert, heading for the Hindu Kush, confronting raiders, eating whatever they could find, and drinking water from streams at high altitudes.

I listened open-mouthed, and that place at the top of the world already seemed different from all the others I'd heard about before then. To tell the truth, I didn't even understand where Afghanistan was, and when we finished looking at the photos, I dashed to my room to check in the atlas.

ON DECEMBER 19, 1979, I was skiing on Monna dell'Orso, on the Apennine range where I was born. It was a beautiful morning. It had been snowing until just a few hours before and the slopes were iced with the sort of sugary flakes that are as close as you get to bliss when you feel the skis sink in.

I remember it like it was yesterday, although years have passed. I was going up on the ski lifts with one of my friends on the seat behind me, and at one point he asked me if I'd heard the news on the radio. When I said no, he replied that World War III was about to start: the Russians had just invaded Afghanistan and the Americans certainly wouldn't stand on the sidelines.

I've always been impressionable: as a child I was terrified of infectious diseases; when I was eleven or twelve I worried I would stop growing; in my teens I dreaded that a nuclear war would put an end to the wonderful life I was lucky enough to lead, in which skiing was a central feature for at least six months of the year. So that chat did worry me a tad, even if my concern lasted just the time it took to get to the top of the slope and ski back down off-track.

The rest of the day was as carefree as any that a seventeen-year-old spends with friends on snow-covered slopes, and not even the news of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was going to spoil that.

ON THE EVENING of October 15, 2001, I was in Skopje. After 9/11, everyone was expecting news of a U.S. attack on Afghanistan, but when CNN began broadcasting the first images of the bombing of the northern front, I got goose bumps, as if this was something that would soon involve me personally.

At that time I was working for Javier Solana, “Europe's Foreign Minister,” and I'd been in Macedonia for six months. During the summer we'd defined a peace agreement that had avoided a civil war, and I was involved in the subsequent parliamentary ratification process, working with a couple of colleagues. Then we were to uproot ourselves and get back to Brussels.

The EU staff stayed in a South Korean–owned hotel and we shared an entire floor with the NATO folks we'd worked with all summer to manage the crisis. Usually we had breakfast together in the morning, and I remember that in the aftermath of the attack there was heated discussion among us about what would happen next in Afghanistan. Some thought the country was a trap, mainly because of its terrain, and the only chance of success was a lightning campaign to oust the Taliban, put in place a decent government, and get out without getting bogged down like the Russians had. Others said that this time the international community in Afghanistan would be there a while, to avoid making the same mistakes of the early 1990s, when the Taliban had free rein precisely because of the West's indifference toward the civil war that broke out after Soviet withdrawal.

The call from Christoph Heusgen, the German director of Solana's policy unit, came a few weeks later, just as I was about to return to Brussels. He asked if I'd like to go to Kabul once I was done in Macedonia, since they needed someone who could back up the European envoy about to open up an office there. I was tempted to accept and I nearly said yes, as usual without too much thought. But then Solana intervened—he wanted me for other actions in the Balkans—and after a few weeks I was moved to Belgrade, and the Afghanistan trail petered out.

I DID MANAGE to see Kabul just once before NATO deployed me there. It was Christmas Eve 2007 and I accompanied the Italian prime minister on a flying visit to the Italian military contingent that was part of the International Security Assistance Force. I remember it was snowing. An icy wind was blowing and the presidential palace, where we went to meet Hamid Karzai, seemed like another planet, away from the city and everything else that was happening (which in itself explained a lot of things). Recently, security had deteriorated and suicide bombers and rocket attacks were frequent. We traveled from the airport to the NATO base by helicopter, and from there by convoy to the presidential palace. An aerial view of the city showed a mass of houses scattered haphazardly and gave everyone a bad impression. Everyone except me. I was as excited as a child. We only stayed in Kabul a few hours, and after our meeting with Karzai we moved to Herat, where the bulk of the Italian contingent was stationed. Finally we left for Abu Dhabi on an Italian Air Force C130 and, from there, took a flight back to Rome. At home I spent the Christmas holidays mulling over Afghanistan, because it had been so cold there I'd come down with bronchitis. Never could I have imagined that I'd be back so soon, but the Italian government fell a few months later, I went for that interview with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and in the blink of an eye I was packing to leave.

THREE

DUBAI, TERMINAL 2

JULY 13, 2008

DUBAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT'S Terminal 2 is a remote outpost. A waiting room for the hopeless, the final frontier before the journey into the ailing heart of Asia. Post-9/11 Afghanistan starts here, in this gloomy pavilion without signage or billboards, just a few miles from Terminal 3's marble and crystal at the service of the Emirates airline. Covering the short distance between the two buildings is like a journey from day into night, from sterile organization to pollution and disease.

I left behind spas, sushi bars, jewelry stores, Ferraris displayed in front of Gucci or Hermes boutiques, and entered a strange chaos zone, without signage, where it was suddenly impossible to understand anything except that in order to succeed in boarding a flight, I had only myself to fall back on. In this respect, Terminal 2's departures hall is a perfect metaphor not only of the contemporary world, but also of the place where I was headed. A world, in other words, where everything depends on chaos control, and if the chaos escapes control, then order and civilization vanish.

Even Dubai taxi drivers know this. They're almost all Pakistanis and have plenty of experience in hellish places. So when you get in one of their cars and tell the driver to take you to Terminal 2, he asks you first what your job is and where you left your family; then, when you pay the fare, he wishes you good luck. Which is precisely what you're going to need.

I GOT IN the security line behind seven bruisers, all dressed alike—as if they were part of the same football or rugby team—in tight T-shirts, military pants, sandals, and with shaved heads and tattooed arms. Seven would-be John Rambos aged somewhere between thirty and sixty, with muscles pumped by hours of gym workouts, their expressions so stiff I couldn't help but think of deep-sea fish. One was sipping beer from a can, and after each sip he massaged his neck with it. Another had a bottle of mineral water, which he splashed over his feet every now and again, in an attempt to cool down. A third was texting and rolling his eyes heavenward at every reply, muttering “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

At one point the bruiser standing next to me pulled a magazine from his backpack and began to browse through it. I saw it was the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune, the mercenary monthly published in the United States, a shopping cart of guns, rifles, daggers, helmets, uniforms, and anything else required by those who choose this second oldest profession in the world. I shifted, without being too obvious, so I could get a better look. You could buy everything online if you had a credit card, and there were even sales and special offers. You earned points with every purchase and there were prize draws.

These third-millennium soldiers of fortune are called “contractors” and work for private security companies. They're part of a huge business that revolves around wars in central Asia. International soldiers are a rare commodity: there are never enough to go round. Thus, especially in times of state cutbacks, there is little alternative but to call in private enterprise to meet security demands in the planet's hot spots.

I knew that the Afghan government, international organizations, and multinationals were using contractors to control roads, warehouses, and offices, and that meant thousands of men. What I didn't expect was that they'd appear out of the blue, before I'd even reached Afghanistan and, above all, that they'd look so unprofessional, with nothing of the soldier about them. A lack of style, I thought, that would have the mercenaries of the past—like Bob Denard—turning in their graves. (Denard had been the legendary French mercenary who fought in several African civil wars during the 1960s and was involved is four coups in the Comoro Islands between the 1970s and the 1990s.) If this was the human material, I mused, it was no surprise that in Iraq some of them had gone on trial charged with panicking and opening fire on a crowd.

Luckily I hadn't heard anything like that about Afghanistan, but it wasn't enough to comfort me. The more I looked at the faces of those strange traveling companions of mine, the more I couldn't help but think how foolish it was, in a stabilization mission, to use people who had everything to gain from hoping a situation was permanently unstable.

Lost in thought, I failed to notice that the mercenary with the magazine had started to look me up and down. Maybe he was wondering who I was and what I had to stare at, or he was simply pondering how the hell I was coping in a jacket and tie.

It was actually three o'clock in the morning and the blistering heat was smothering all of us. At the back of the room, a small man at the top of a tall staircase was gesturing unmistakably that the airport's ventilators were pumping out hot air!

THE GOONS WEREN'T the only ones in front of me in the line. In front of them was a small crowd of at least twenty Arab merchants, also all dressed alike. They didn't look like they were feeling the heat in their full white robes, turbans, sunglasses, and pointed Aladdin-style slippers. Some of them were holding walking sticks, others colored prayer beads. Two more talked feverishly with a policeman by the metal detector and it was clear that something was amiss. After a few minutes things started to get heated and one of them was shouting so loud that the situation seemed to be getting out of hand. Meanwhile, the rest of the group smacked their foreheads, gave disapproving grunts and, from the lines parallel with ours, other merchants—also in white robes, turbans, and slippers—crowded over. They obviously wanted to get involved even though I couldn't figure out where they found the energy in that heat.

These merchants were holding up the line for at least half an hour, their merchandise crammed into cartons so large that it was ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1: How I Ended Up in Afghanistan, February–July 2008
• 2: Signals, 1968, 1979, 2001, 2007
• 3: Dubai, Terminal 2, July 13, 2008
• 4: Kabul
• 5: A Small Travel Library, I
• 6: The First Steps
• 7: “What? they've Surrounded Kabul?”
• 8: Winning
• 9: The Neo-Taliban
• 10: A Word of Advice from a Princess
• 11: “The Insubstantial State”
• 12: Arg
• 13: Civilian Casualties, I
• 14: What there was, what there should have been
• 15: To Coordinate—Or to be Coordinated
• 16: A Small Travel Library, II
• 17: ISAF
• 18: Khyber, 1842, 1878, 1919, 1928
• 19: Indian Holiday
• 20: Snow
• 21: Clear, Hold, and Build
• 22: Civilian Casualties, II
• 23: Obama and Af-Pak, March 29, 2009
• 24: Awkward Neighbors
• 25: A Small Travel Library, III
• 26: A Dream
• 27: Karzai
• 28: Bird's-Eye Views
• 29: Kandahar
• 30: Coin—The Counterinsurgency Manual
• 31: Civilian Casualties, III
• 32: Shia Family Law
• 33: Women
• 34: A Small Travel Library, IV
• 35: Death in August
• 36: The Presidential Elections
• 37: A Way to Reconciliation
• 38: The Future of Af-Pak
• 39: Leaving Kabul, February 2010
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover