Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [200]
Bush was informal, his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. At one point he lit a cigar as he listened to Franks and Dailey. The President’s black dog, Barney, ambled around the room.
As Franks prepared to outline his initial concept, I reminded President Bush: “You are not going to find this plan completely fulfilling. We don’t.”
Bush said he understood that this was a work in progress.
Franks and Dailey led the briefing. Bush would need to be working with them closely in the months ahead, and I thought it important that the Commander in Chief get to know them early on.
A key element of Franks’ plan involved linking American special forces teams with Afghan forces. This was a departure from the first concept that had been outlined at Camp David, which focused on using conventional U.S. military might. Wolfowitz and I encouraged Franks to take full advantage of our special operators.4 General Dailey briefed the President on targets that could be handled by the elite squads.
The President asked how soon a campaign could begin. Franks responded that under this type of plan, his forces could begin to attack in the following two weeks.5
Bush liked that answer. He ended the meeting saying that he would continue to counsel patience to the American people. We were all aware that passions were running high.
While the imminent operations in Afghanistan would be challenging, we did have some advantages. An active opposition movement—the Northern Alliance—had been trying to liberate the country from the Taliban and al-Qaida for five years. Joining up with these opposition forces would ally us with seasoned local fighters who knew the languages and the terrain. But this approach also had risks. For years these fighters had been unsuccessful. Some intelligence officials, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan in particular, cautioned that if America allied with the Northern Alliance militias, which were dominated by ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara fighters, we ran the risk of uniting the ethnic Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan against us and planting the seeds of a north-south civil war. This was one reason some recommended a continuing role for the Taliban in postwar Afghanistan.
Franks and I looked for opportunities to manage those risks. Though we understood well the need to also reach out to anti-Taliban Pashtuns in the south, the Northern Alliance, comprising some twenty thousand Afghans, remained the most credible and best-organized opposition force in the country. At first glance they appeared to be a ragtag band of unsuccessful, poorly armed guerrilla fighters on the verge of defeat. But they were also tough, motivated, and battle hardened.
For years the Northern Alliance had been led by the “Lion of Panjshir,” Ahmad Shah Massoud. Through his audacious combat against Soviet forces during the 1980s and his force of personality, Massoud commanded the respect of millions of Afghans, and he had pulled together several ethnic groups under the banner of his leadership. To this day Massoud’s image, with his signature woolen pakol hat and checkered scarf, remains emblazoned on posters, tapestries, and murals in homes and public places across much of Afghanistan. Massoud struggled to keep his outnumbered Northern Alliance forces in the fight against the Taliban. He had repeatedly asked Western countries for military and financial support. The United States had been less than forthcoming. As a result, the Northern Alliance had an arsenal that was a small fraction of the Taliban’s. During the Clinton administration, CIA officers advised Massoud not to kill bin Laden if the oppurtunity arose. “You guys are crazy,” Massoud reportedly