Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [369]
In June 2005, the tours of Khalilzad and Barno were over. Khalilzad was sent to Baghdad to become the new U.S. ambassador there. Five months before Khalilizad’s departure, I had asked the President that I be involved in the decision on his replacement. Typically deciding on diplomatic representation was a matter between the White House and the State Department, but to my thinking, Afghanistan was a different matter given the Defense Department’s deep involvement there. “We suffered not getting Zal in earlier than we did,” I wrote, referring to the unfortunate selection of Khalilzad’s predecessor, a career Foreign Service officer who had had little success in advancing the political process for much of 2002 and 2003. “We need to have someone who can carry [Khalilzad’s] level of representation forward without a hitch.”22
For forty-five days after Khalilzad left Kabul for Baghdad, the United States was without an ambassador in Afghanistan. Rice and the State Department eventually announced the selection of Ronald Neumann, a career Foreign Service officer, to replace Khalilzad, without any discussion with the Defense Department. I expressed my displeasure to Steve Hadley.23 In the months after Khalilzad’s departure, ominous signs began to appear on the horizon.
By early 2006, a reorganized Taliban insurgency had emerged in Afghanistan’s east and south. Increasing numbers of Taliban fighters traveled into Afghanistan from Pakistan and retreated back across the border whenever coalition forces tried to engage them. It was likely the Taliban would be mounting an offensive in the summer months of 2006 against coalition and Afghan forces.
Disturbed, I asked Dr. Marin Strmecki, an erudite and longtime student of Afghanistan whose previous analysis in the Pentagon’s policy shop had impressed me, to return to the country on a fact-finding mission in early spring and report back to me.24 That August, Strmecki briefed me. He didn’t sugarcoat anything. The bottom line, he told me, was we faced a “deteriorating security situation” caused by a Taliban escalation and weak or bad governance in southern Afghanistan that created “a vacuum of power into which the enemy moved.”25 The Taliban had in fact created a shadow government in towns across southern Afghanistan. If we did nothing, it was possible that the southern city of Kandahar could return to Taliban control.
I made an effort to get Strmecki’s report circulated around the administration and encouraged my colleagues to get his briefing. As I noted in a memo to Vice President Cheney and Steve Hadley, “Given the new level of the insurgency there, [Strmecki] has a new strategy for Afghanistan, which I think merits our careful thought and attention.”26 After four years of relative dormancy, the Taliban was poised to mount a serious offensive. Strmecki’s recommendation was that if we were to meet the Taliban’s escalation, we needed to mount a counterescalation. It would “not require more U.S. or international military forces but does require new diplomatic initiatives visà-vis Pakistan, renewed energy and urgency in shaping the U.S. partnership with the Afghan government, and more resources for security and development programs,” Strmecki advised.27
The central problem was the sanctuary Pakistan provided for the insurgents. I had repeatedly pressed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the issue. Pakistan’s largely autonomous western regions were home to many Islamist radicals, some influential in its government’s intelligence organization—the ISI—and the military. The thought of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling under the control of Islamist extremists or their terrorist allies was nightmarish.
We were also still working to