War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier

348 Pages·5.327 MB·English

by  Carter Malkasian

WAR COMES TO GARMSER
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War Comes to Garmser
Thirty Years of Conflict on the
Afghan Frontier
CARTER MALKASIAN
1
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 2013 by Carter Malkasian
Published in the United States of America by
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Published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Malkasian, Carter, 1975–
War comes to Garmser : thirty years of conflict on the Afghan frontier / Carter Malkasian.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-997375-0 (alk. paper).
1. Malkasian, Carter, 1975– 2. Helmand (Afghanistan)—History, Military. 3. Afghan War,
2001—Campaigns—Afghanistan—Helmand. 4. Afghan War, 2001—Personal narratives,
American. 5. Postwar reconstruction—Afghanistan—Helmand. 6. Helmand (Afghanistan)—
Politics and government. 7. Helmand (Afghanistan)—Ethnic relations. 8.Taliban—History.
9. Afghanistan—History—Soviet occupation, 1979–1989. 10. Helmand River Valley
(Afghanistan)—Social life and customs. I.Title.
DS371.412.M333 2013
958.104′71092—dc23
[B]
2012045788
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
List of Maps vii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Preface: Small Places xv
1. Grand Plans 1
2. The Jihad 17
3. Civil War 41
4. The Taliban Regime 53
5. Victory into Defeat 71
6. The Second Taliban Regime 103
7. Pushing Farther South 127
8. Wakil Manan, Mian Poshtay, and the Riots 159
9. The Alizai Return 181
10. The Taliban Counter-offensive 195
11. Winning the Peace 221
Conclusion: The End or the Intermission? 263
List of Names 275
List of Tribes and Political Entities 281
Glossary of Terms 283
Notes 285
Bibliography 307
Index 311
v
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LIST OF MAPS
MAP 1: Helmand province (Sebastian Ballard), [Verso front
endpaper].
MAP 2: Tribes of Garmser (Sebastian Ballard), [Recto front
endpaper].
MAP 3: Afghanistan (Sebastian Ballard). xxv
MAP 4: Garmser district center (Mike Markowitz). 25
MAP 5: Garmser’s civil war (Mike Markowitz). 43
MAP 6: Assault of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit on
Hazar Joft and Amir Agha (Mike Markowitz). 122
MAP 7: British and Afghan outposts, September 2008–June
2009 (Mike Markowitz). 130
MAP 8: The surge in Garmser (Sebastian Ballard). 146
MAP 9: The Garmser riots (Sebastian Ballard). 168
MAP 10:Taliban Intimidation Campaign, spring and summer
2010 (Sebastian Ballard). 197
MAP 11:Marine, Afghan army, and police posts in Garmser,
c. January 2011 (Mike Markowitz). 218
vii
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FOREWORD
In 1972, Jeffrey Race published War Comes to Long An, a first-person
analysis of the war in Vietnam. It was a stunningly original work on war,
observed from the inside by an American who was deeply embedded in
the language, culture, and politics of the province. Race was a former
Army officer who lived in Long An for four years conducting research
that became his doctoral dissertation. The book he published is cited as
a classic in the 2006 US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field
Manual; for forty years it has had no equal in the depth of understand-
ing it provided of an internal struggle for the soul of a very small place.
Carter Malkasian has followed in his footsteps. Malkasian came to
Afghanistan’s Garmser District in 2009 as a political officer for the U.S.
State Department. Like Race, Malkasian had previous experience of war;
his doctoral dissertation on Korea and Vietnam was closely followed by
years of service as a counterinsurgency adviser to the Marine Corps in
Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent nearly two years in Garmser during the
“surge” of US civilians to Afghanistan, teaching himself Pashto and
getting to know local leaders from the provincial level down to village
elders. But wars have at least two sides, and like Race, Malkasian also
became well acquainted with leaders of the insurgency that threatened
his province, enabling an intimate understanding of the dynamics of the
local conflict.
The most important difference between the two books is that Race
sought to understand the war in Long An as an academic exercise, albeit
one in which he was immersed. In Garmser, Malkasian’s search for
knowledge was of immediate practical importance as he worked to cob-
ix