The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey Through a Turbulent World

383 Pages·2016·7.99 MB·English

by  Zalmay Khalilzad

THE ENVOY
FROM KABUL TO THE WHITE HOUSE, MY
JOURNEY THROUGH A TURBULENT WORLD
ZALMAY KHALILZAD
St. Martin’s Press
New York
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Photographs
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PREFACE
FROM KABUL TO BAGHDAD
KABUL, JUNE 20, 2005
Ascending the gray, metal staircase toward the cockpit, I was invited to take a
spot in the second row of seats, just behind the captain. Behind me, the cargo
hold loomed, completely empty, cavernous, big enough to carry an M1 Abrams
tank.
Previously when I hitched rides on C-17s, I traveled in the company of
gigantic earthmoving equipment or combat vehicles on their way to
Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase or Kandahar. It was my last day as a special
presidential envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan, and this plane had been sent
to transport me to my new post as ambassador in Baghdad. Its flight, in fact, was
probably the first one ever between the two war-ravaged capitals. It was an
especially emotional departure for me since the place I was leaving behind was
the nation of my birth. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, I
wondered if I would ever return. Then I had come back as a senior diplomat after
the attacks of 9/11. Now I was leaving again, with business very much
unfinished.
Was I letting Afghanistan down? Certainly, the U.S. ambassador does not
determine the fate of a nation. But I had spent the past three years helping
Afghan leaders construct and strengthen a fragile government after a quarter
century of revolution, occupation, and civil war. I had mediated disputes among
warlords and induced them to cooperate with the national government. I had
helped Afghan leaders put down the foundation of national institutions, such as
the Afghan National Army. I had confronted the challenges posed by plotting
neighbor states. Afghanistan, as well as the United States and other friendly
powers, was struggling with a reemerging Taliban insurgency. We had made
progress—more than many thought possible—but we certainly weren’t finished.
I had been asked by President George W. Bush to move on to Iraq, a country
falling into sectarian conflict. I was needed there, my superiors had said, right
away.
The giant plane taxied down the runway. Before us were the peaks of the
Hindu Kush, some still covered with snow even in late June. As we climbed, I
looked down on a country that over the centuries had been the seat of great
empires, occupied by armies of conquerors such as Alexander the Great, and
afflicted by tyrants and turmoil. It also was the birthplace of the Persian Sufi
mystic and writer Rumi and the home of poets, the world’s earliest glassmakers
and miners, and agile merchants on a bustling way station of the Silk Road.
I reflected on the historical drama that had brought me back to Afghanistan.
Even as a young person, I had perceived the rise of what I called the “crisis of
Islamic civilization”—a crisis grounded in the collapse of the civilization’s
dominant position in the world in the fifteenth century and the failure of all
subsequent empires and national governments to deliver for their peoples. As a
young visitor and an immigrant to the United States, I saw that other countries
had found a better path. In my early career, I had warned that this crisis was
producing a wave of violent Islamist extremism. It ultimately resulted in the
attacks of 9/11.
I could not sit still or get the sleep I needed. Instead, I paced the hollow belly
of the C-17, and let my thoughts wander to my youth.
I recalled my first glimpse of the presidential palace—more recently the site of
my negotiations and meetings with Afghan politicians—when I was still a young
boy recently arrived in Kabul from my birthplace in Mazar-i-Sharif. It was then
still the royal palace of King Zahir Shah. It had been only a short stroll from
Independence Square, with green spaces adorned with sculpted shrubbery and
flowerbeds.
I had been dazzled by the palace’s huge walls, the honor guards posted
outside, and the historic black cannons that stood as monuments of the Afghan
victory over the British in the nineteenth century—a testament to the fact that
my people had fought for independence and defeated the greatest empire on the
planet. An enormous Afghan national flag flying from the central tower above
the main gate had given the structure an added sense of grandeur. The architects
had achieved their intended effect: I had felt awed by their physical embodiment
of the Afghan state. It seemed as enduring and formidable as Afghanistan’s
mountains.
In the 1950s, there were no serious security issues, no bombs exploding, and
no insurgents. Ordinary citizens could walk right up to the palace gates. Those
were, in the familiar American expression, “the good old days.” But, as seemed
to be my homeland’s fate throughout the centuries, they were not to last.
The Soviet Union’s bitter, decade-long occupation, coupled with American
disengagement and neglect after the Soviet withdrawal, left the country to the
tender mercies of fractious leaders of armed internal factions and acquisitive
regional powers such as Pakistan, Iran, and Russia. Instability in Afghanistan
produced toxic results: proxy warfare among regional powers, an explosive
escalation in the opium trade, massive refugee populations in neighboring
countries, energized militant Islamist ideologies, the rise of transnational
terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, and the victory of the Taliban. The Taliban
regime imposed a cruel tyranny and an unending civil war against the anti-
Taliban groups in the north and entered into an alliance with Osama bin Laden,
who plotted the 9/11 attacks while living in Afghan territory.
My last three years, shuttling back and forth between Washington and
Afghanistan, had been an exhausting, difficult process of helping to make
Afghanistan a “normal country.”
My last meeting with President Hamid Karzai had occurred just an hour or so
earlier in his office. Though we joked with each other as we had done in
hundreds of previous meetings we both felt mixed emotions. On the one hand,
Afghanistan was now on a better trajectory. The Afghan people as a whole were
optimistic about the future and supportive of their government and the U.S.
presence. The economy was growing, and progress was occurring in a wide
variety of areas. After the presidential elections in October 2004, insurgent
violence almost entirely dissipated. We had reports that senior Taliban leaders
viewed the high turnout in the national election as a strategic defeat. Some
leaders took the view that the insurgency was no longer viable and that
reconciliation with the Afghan government was the right course of action. On
the other hand, we were uncertain about whether this hopeful state of affairs was
permanent or just a pause in the fray.
I was leaving Afghanistan because of a call between President Bush and Iraq’s
president Jabal Talabani. Iraq was approaching a deadline for the drafting of its
constitution. Progress was slow. Near the end of the conversation, Bush had
asked whether he could do anything else for the Iraqi leader. Talabani had
replied, “Yes, send Zal.”
Talabani was a fascinating leader. His easy-going manner belied his reputation
as a tough, lifelong Peshmerga fighter and shrewd political operator. His request
was flattering. And I could understand that he wanted a partner, someone with
whom he could work out the difficult issues over countless cups of tea. He
wanted an American ambassador whom he trusted and who he knew could get
things done, in both Baghdad and Washington.
The last time I had seen Talabani was two years earlier, in April 2003, in
Baghdad, shortly after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. I had been
tasked with convening conferences across Iraq to identify leaders who would be
able to work with exile groups to form an interim government. Sovereignty was
to be transferred to this new administration as soon as possible. But the process
had been suddenly abandoned when President Bush announced that Paul Bremer
would be going to Baghdad instead, to head the Coalition Provisional Authority,
which would serve as the U.S. occupation government in post-Saddam Iraq.
A few hours after the announcement, Bush had called me. He hoped I
wouldn’t take this 180-degree turn personally. In his typical laid-back style, he
said, “We all love you, Zal. We think the world of you.”
I appreciated the compliment, but I responded that I did not understand why
we were shifting from a plan to devolve power as quickly as possible to the
Iraqis themselves to a plan that would amount to us being an occupying force
like the one that had ruled defeated Japan after World War II.
The president explained it all in narrow personal and administrative terms. The
problem was that if both Bremer and I went to Baghdad, Bremer would be
reporting through the Department of Defense to Donald Rumsfeld and I would
be reporting through National Security Council Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
Rumsfeld and Rice were not working well together. You couldn’t have two
senior officials in the field responding to principals in Washington who were at
odds with each other. The president needed the Department of Defense to be in
the lead, and that meant Bremer.
There seemed to be little understanding of just how consequential it would be
to shift from self-government to occupation. I raised my concerns with Rice and
her deputy, Stephen Hadley, but they told me that it was too late.
To make matters much worse, the Iraqi national army was dissolved soon after
the occupation decision. Also, the purging of the old regime—de-Baathification
—was taken too far, affecting many Iraqis who were not complicit in Saddam’s
crimes. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, experienced at warfare and governance,
were now jobless, displaced, resentful, and without a future. They filled the
ranks of the insurgency. We had scored, as my sons might have said, an own-
goal.
Looking back, my greatest regret is that I was unable to reverse the decision. It
was inevitable that an American-led occupation, however benign its intentions,
would lead to armed opposition. Arab nationalism, bitter memories of European
imperialism, ethnic and sectarian enmities, and the vast weaponry and materiel
from Saddam’s armories were a precarious combination. And it was not long
before the country was ablaze.
Interrupting my pacing in the C-17, I reached into my pocket and unfolded a
note I had received from my family. The paper was an elegant piece of
stationery with perforated edges, left over from the birth announcement of our
older son. It had a four-leafed clover pasted on the page along with messages of
support and love from my children and my wife, wishing me luck in Iraq. The
lucky clover was one we had found on our last carefree family outing to a
swimming pool.
Near the clover my wife, Cheryl, inscribed a message. Referring to an idyllic
park set on the banks of one of the tributaries to the Danube River near the
apartment where we had once lived in Vienna in our first years of marriage, she
wrote, “Let this remind you of the Gaensehaeufl and cool sunny days and good
ice cream and those who love you just for you. And let it bring you luck and God
bless you and we are here for you.”
We were about to land. I was handed an armored vest—something I had never
worn in Kabul—and reflected that I would need all the luck a four-leafed
Austrian clover could convey.