History > 2014 > USA > International > Afghanistan (II)

Mission Ends in Afghanistan,

but Sacrifices Are Not Over

for U.S. Soldiers

DEC. 31, 2014

The New York Times

By DAVE PHILIPPS

KILLEEN, Tex. — Sgt. First Class Ramon Morris, a muscular dynamo and a father on his fifth deployment, was killed Dec. 12 in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan.

But in the state of New York, where he grew up in Queens as a Jamaican immigrant eager to serve, flags at government buildings were not lowered to half-staff until 10 days after his death — and only, his friends say, after they complained.

“They had forgotten. We had to call to remind them,” said Danielle Jones, a longtime friend of the sergeant. “The whole country has forgotten. People don’t realize we still have troops risking their lives out there.”

On Wednesday, as 2014 came to a close, the United States and allied forces formally turned over combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghans, officially ending the longest war in America’s history, and starting a new struggle for recognition among many military families who say they already feel forgotten.

The official end of the conflict, which began in October 2001, means little to many of the families on this sprawling installation, where anxiety and casualties have been routine for more than a decade. Despite President Obama’s urging American troops this month to be proud of bringing the combat “to a responsible end,” the wars that began after 9/11 remain ever-present at Fort Hood.

Many soldiers are still fighting physical wounds and mental trauma. Some are shipping out to train Afghan troops and protect the places where Americans remain, leaving behind spouses and children as the divide between military and civilian life in America keeps growing.

“They change the name of the mission, but the mission doesn’t change,” said Sergeant Morris’s fiancée, Christiana Strange, who must raise their 3-year-old daughter, Ariana, without him. “It still weighs very heavily on us, even if the rest of the country doesn’t pay much attention.”

The war in Afghanistan initially had strong support and a clear mission — to pursue Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban government that had given refuge to terrorists. But the length and cost of the war have long since overshadowed the initial goals.

The effort to rout the Taliban has, by some estimates, cost almost $1 trillion. As of Dec. 16, a total of 2,242 United States troops had died in Afghanistan and 19,945 had been wounded.

Even with the official end of combat, more casualties may still arrive. Operation Enduring Freedom, as the Pentagon called the war in Afghanistan, will now become Operation Resolute Support, a scaled-down mission involving about 12,000 troops who will indefinitely advise Afghan forces in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

For troops there, little will change. They will still qualify for hazard pay and combat decorations, as they did before combat operations ended.

“Not much has changed for us, we are still deploying all over the world,” said Meghan Killen, a former soldier who oversees family support services for Sergeant Morris’s unit. “We still have a job to do.”

Yet the sense of a grand mission has faded, and weariness about the war can be felt in the neighborhoods around Fort Hood, where almost everybody is somehow tied to the Army. The yellow ribbons and other overt displays of support that accompanied the start of the war are now rarely seen.

At Vida y Muerte, a tattoo parlor near Fort Hood’s main gate, Jason Siddoway, an Iraq War veteran who became a tattoo artist, said requests for military designs, once common, had become rare, even though the vast majority of customers are enlisted.

“It’s a different time in the Army,” he said. “It’s less pride about the big mission, more about just getting through the deployments.”

Jesus Jimenez, the owner of the tattoo shop and also a veteran, said he was not aware that troops were still in Afghanistan.

On the post here in Central Texas on Wednesday, the closest thing to a ceremony for the end of the war was a line of soldiers who silently marched out to raise the American flag high above the headquarters, commemorating the start of another duty day.

Sergeant Morris would have been familiar with the ritual. He served in the Army for the entire war, and like thousands of troops, he showed the wear of prolonged combat.

He moved from Jamaica to Queens as a teenager and enlisted after high school, in 1996. By the time he met Ms. Strange in a military cafeteria in 2007, he had deployed three times to Iraq and once to South Korea.

He was physically imposing but gentle and kind, and he often helped families when other soldiers were deployed, Ms. Strange said.

His deployments left him uneasy around crowds, and he avoided supermarkets and restaurants, said Ms. Strange, who is in the Army Reserves. He loved time spent playing with his daughter, she said.

Despite several close calls with roadside bombs in Iraq, she said, he felt untouchable and enjoyed the rush of combat missions. “Others were hurt all around him, but he never had a scratch,” Ms. Strange said. “He joked that he had the hand of God over him.”

The tours left him with an injured back. He had a Purple Heart, but would never tell his fiancée how he had earned it.

His injuries could easily have helped Sergeant Morris avoid another deployment, Ms. Strange said, “but he never complained.”

“He had too much pride and he loved what he did,” she added. “He felt it was wrong to complain when he was alive and others weren’t. There was work to do, and he wanted to be there for his soldiers.”

Sergeant Morris’s unit, the Third Cavalry Regiment, arrived in Afghanistan in June to close down American bases and turn them over to the Afghan government. He led a platoon that patrolled a buffer zone to combat frequent Taliban rocket and mortar fire, while other soldiers packed up from a decade of war.

In small ceremonies this fall, the regiment turned over bases to the Afghans. The unit took over security of the buffer zone around Bagram Airfield, one of the few bases that will continue to house American troops.

In interviews this week, officers in Sergeant Morris’s unit expressed confidence in the growing ability of the Afghan forces to maintain stability. But before turning bases over to Afghan security forces, troops cleared anything that could later be used by the enemy, cutting most of the wiring into four-inch lengths so it could not be used in improvised explosive devices.

“Some provinces had more enemy than others, but they were all dangerous,” Col. Cameron Cantlon, commander of Sergeant Morris’s regiment, said in an interview from Afghanistan. “There are no shortage of people who want to do us harm.” During this effort, the long days searching for roadside bombs began to wear on Sergeant Morris. He told Ms. Strange that the work was becoming dangerous and that he had a bad feeling. Deployments felt different now that he had a child, he told her.

In an email the day before his death, Sergeant Morris told his fiancée that he expected to be home soon, adding, “I’m tired and stressed out with this place and want to be home.”

A roadside bomb hit the sergeant’s armored vehicle on a paved road a few miles from the airfield, killing him at 37 and Specialist Wyatt Martin, 22, of Mesa, Ariz., and injuring three others. Officially, they were the final casualties of the 13-year war.

Dorothy Lewis, the wife of one of the sergeants wounded in the blast, said in an interview at her home near Fort Hood that the war had moved so far from people’s minds that her extended family sometimes forgot that her husband was deployed.

Above the fireplace, her husband’s empty Christmas stocking hung with four others.

Over three deployments, Mrs. Lewis, who has three children, endured not by focusing on the big questions of war, but by organizing potluck meals and meet-ups and performing other small acts of kindness. Her husband, Christopher, walked away from the wrecked military vehicle with a few cuts and a concussion, she said. Even though two of his colleagues died that day, he decided to keep doing missions with his unit.

“The war isn’t over for them,” Mrs. Lewis said. “And when they come home, others will replace them for I don’t know how long. I’m sure the fact that combat operations are over means something to somebody somewhere, but not us.”
 

Andy Lehren contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on January 1, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mission Ends, but Sacrifices are Not Over.

    Mission Ends in Afghanistan, but Sacrifices Are Not Over for U.S. Soldiers,
    NYT, 31.12.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/us/
    mission-ends-but-sacrifices-are-not-over-for-us-soldiers.html

Backsliding in Afghanistan

DEC. 6, 2014

SundayReview | Editorial

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

The decision by Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, to lift the ban on night raids imposed by his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, could also push American troops into direct fighting. The Afghan special operations forces, which are to resume night raids in 2015, could bring along American advisers, backed by American air support. While military officials say night raids are an effective tactic, enabling the Taliban to be seized in their homes, such intrusions are offensive to many Afghans and likely to provoke a new wave of anti-American sentiment.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.

But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

That is not to say that Mr. Ghani, a former World Bank executive, should not be supported. He shows more promise, energy and purpose in dealing honestly with his country’s staggering challenges — including the insurgency and a weak, corrupt economy — than Mr. Karzai did.

Since Mr. Ghani was declared the winner in September of the disputed election and formed a power-sharing deal with Abdullah Abdullah, the new chief executive, there has been progress, including the signing of a security agreement with the United States, a reopened probe into the corrupt Kabul Bank and an initiative to repair relations with key countries, including Pakistan. Last Thursday, Mr. Ghani laid out a thoughtful, if incomplete, vision for reforming the economy and tackling corruption to a conference in London of Afghanistan’s international donors, including the United States and Britain.

Still, Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have struggled to make other important decisions, including the appointment of a cabinet, which they promised would be done before the conference and now say will take several weeks more. Given Afghanistan’s perilous security situation, the country’s leaders and political factions might be expected to put aside their differences, but that hasn’t happened yet.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan to have the remaining troops focus on training and advising the Afghan army and going after Al Qaeda. Realistically, that seems the most the American-led military coalition can achieve.

A version of this editorial appears in print on December 7, 2014, on page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Backsliding in Afghanistan.

    Backsliding in Afghanistan, NYT, 6.12.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/backsliding-in-afghanistan.html

In a Shift,

Obama Extends U.S. Role

in Afghan Combat

 

NOV. 21, 2014

The New York Times

By MARK MAZZETTI

and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban — and that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda.

But the military pushed back, and generals both at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan urged Mr. Obama to define the mission more broadly to allow American troops to attack the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other militants if intelligence revealed that the extremists were threatening American forces in the country.

The president’s order under certain circumstances would also authorize American airstrikes to support Afghan military operations in the country and ground troops to occasionally accompany Afghan troops on operations against the Taliban.

“There was a school of thought that wanted the mission to be very limited, focused solely on Al Qaeda,” one American official said.

But, the official said, “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

On Friday evening, a senior administration official insisted that American forces would not carry out regular patrols or conduct offensive missions against the Taliban next year.

“We will no longer target belligerents solely because they are members of the Taliban,” the official said. “To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide direct support to Al Qaeda, however, we will take appropriate measures to keep Americans safe.”

In effect, Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.

The matter of the military’s role in Afghanistan in 2015 has “been a really, really contentious issue for a long time, even more contentious than troop numbers,” said Vikram Singh, who worked on Afghanistan policy both at the State Department and the Pentagon during the Obama administration and is now at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

American officials said that while the debate over the nature of the American military’s role beginning in 2015 has lasted for years, two issues in particular have shifted the debate in recent months.

The first is the advance of Islamic State forces across northern Iraq and the collapse of the Iraqi Army, which has led to criticism of Mr. Obama for a military pullout of Iraq that left Iraqi troops ill-prepared to protect their soil.

This has intensified criticism of Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, which Republican and even some Democratic lawmakers have said adheres to an overly compressed timeline that would hamper efforts to train and advise Afghan security forces — potentially leaving them vulnerable to attack from Taliban fighters and other extremists in the meantime.

This new arrangement could blunt some of that criticism, although it is also likely to be criticized by some Democratic lawmakers who will say that Mr. Obama allowed the military to dictate the terms of the endgame in Afghanistan.

The second factor is the transfer of power in Afghanistan to President Ashraf Ghani, who has been far more accepting of an expansive American military mission in his country than his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.

According to a senior Afghan official and a former Afghan official who maintains close ties to his former colleagues, in recent weeks both Mr. Ghani and his new national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, have requested that the United States continue to fight Taliban forces in 2015 — as opposed to being strictly limited to operations against Al Qaeda. Mr. Ghani also recently lifted the limits on American airstrikes and joint raids that Mr. Karzai had put in place, the Afghan officials said.

The new Afghan president has already developed a close working relationship with Gen. John F. Campbell, the allied commander in Afghanistan.

“The difference is night and day,” General Campbell said in an email about the distinction between dealing with Mr. Ghani and Mr. Karzai. “President Ghani has reached out and embraced the international community. We have a strategic opportunity we haven’t had previously with President Karzai.”

American military officials saw the easing of the limits on airstrikes imposed by Mr. Karzai as especially significant, even if the restrictions were not always honored. During the summer, Afghan generals occasionally ignored Mr. Karzai’s directive and requested American air support when their forces encountered trouble.

Now it appears such requests will no longer have to be kept secret.

One senior American military officer said that in light of Mr. Obama’s decision, the Air Force expects to use F-16 fighters, B-1B bombers and Predator and Reaper drones to go after the Taliban in 2015.

“Our plans are to maintain an offensive capability in Afghanistan,” he said.

The officer said he expected the Pentagon to issue an order in the next several weeks detailing the military’s role in Afghanistan in 2015 under Operation Resolute Support, which will become the new name for the Afghanistan war.

The Pentagon plans to take the lead role in advising and training Afghan forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan, with Italy also operating in the east, Germany in the north and Turkey in Kabul.

But by the end of next year, half of the 9,800 American troops would leave Afghanistan. The rest would be consolidated in Kabul and Bagram, and then leave by the end of 2016, allowing Mr. Obama to say he ended the Afghan war before leaving office.

America’s NATO allies are expected to keep about 4,000 troops of their own in Afghanistan in 2015. The allies are expected to follow the American lead in consolidating and withdrawing their troops.

The United States could still have military advisers in Kabul after 2016 who would work out of an office of security cooperation at the United States Embassy. But the administration has not said how large that contingent might be and what its exact mission would be.

And it remains unclear how the continuing chaos in Iraq — and Mr. Obama’s decision to send troops back there — will affect the administration’s plans for an Afghanistan exit.

As the president said in the Rose Garden in May, “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.”
 

Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 22, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat.

    In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat,
    NYT, 21.11.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/us/politics/
    in-secret-obama-extends-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html

The Truth About the Wars

 

NOV. 10, 2014

The New York Times

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

By DANIEL P. BOLGER

AS a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, I lost 80 soldiers. Despite their sacrifices, and those of thousands more, all we have to show for it are two failed wars. This fact eats at me every day, and Veterans Day is tougher than most.

As veterans, we tell ourselves it was all worth it. The grim butchery of war hovers out of sight and out of mind, an unwelcome guest at the dignified ceremonies. Instead, we talk of devotion to duty and noble sacrifice. We salute the soldiers at Omaha Beach, the sailors at Leyte Gulf, the airmen in the skies over Berlin and the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and we’re not wrong to do so. The military thrives on tales of valor. In our volunteer armed forces, such stirring examples keep bringing young men and women through the recruiters’ door. As we used to say in the First Cavalry Division, they want to “live the legend.” In the military, we love our legends.

Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.

The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The surge legend is soothing, especially for military commanders like me. We can convince ourselves that we did our part, and a few more diplomats or civilian leaders should have done theirs. Similar myths no doubt comforted Americans who fought under the command of Robert E. Lee in the Civil War or William C. Westmoreland in Vietnam. But as a three-star general who spent four years trying to win this thing — and failing — I now know better.

We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population. We didn’t understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies. We’re made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam. As a general, I got it wrong. Like my peers, I argued to stay the course, to persist and persist, to “clear/hold/build” even as the “hold” stage stretched for months, and then years, with decades beckoning. We backed ourselves season by season into a long-term counterinsurgency in Iraq, then compounded it by doing likewise in Afghanistan. The American people had never signed up for that.

What went wrong in Iraq and in Afghanistan isn’t the stuff of legend. It won’t bring people into the recruiting office, or make for good speeches on Veterans Day. Reserve those honors for the brave men and women who bear the burdens of combat.

That said, those who served deserve an accounting from the generals. What happened? How? And, especially, why? It has to be a public assessment, nonpartisan and not left to the military. (We tend to grade ourselves on the curve.) Something along the lines of the 9/11 Commission is in order. We owe that to our veterans and our fellow citizens.

Such an accounting couldn’t be more timely. Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there.

As a veteran, and a general who learned hard lessons in two lost campaigns, I’d like to suggest an alternative. Maybe an incomplete and imperfect effort to contain the Islamic State is as good as it gets. Perhaps the best we can or should do is to keep it busy, “degrade” its forces, harry them or kill them, and seek the long game at the lowest possible cost. It’s not a solution that is likely to spawn a legend. But in the real world, it just may well give us something better than another defeat.
 

Daniel P. Bolger, the author of “Why We Lost,” retired from the United States Army last year as a lieutenant general.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 11, 2014, on page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Truth About the Wars.

    The Truth About the Wars, NYT, 11.11.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/opinion/
    the-truth-about-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan.html

Afghanistan’s Moment of Reckoning

 

AUG. 25, 2014

The New York Times

The Opinion Pages | Editorial

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Afghanistan faces ever deepening security and political crises. As American troops withdraw, Taliban military advances are threatening entire districts, and government coffers are dwindling.

NATO leaders are scheduled to hold a summit meeting next week that is supposed to reaffirm the alliance’s commitment to keep supporting Afghanistan’s security forces, which, like the rest of the government, are heavily dependent on international aid. It will be very hard to justify continued assistance if Afghan politicians are unable to form a government with a new president in Kabul.

Yet, Afghanistan’s rival presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah are putting the country’s stability at risk in refusing to agree on a winner two months after the disputed election to replace President Hamid Karzai. And the emboldened Taliban is taking advantage of the political chaos.

Although Mr. Karzai’s successor was supposed to have been sworn in on Monday, the country’s Independent Election Commission still has not completed a United Nations-supervised audit of 8.1 million disputed ballots. Mr. Abdullah won the first-round voting in April, but Mr. Ghani came out ahead in a preliminary count after the final round in June, prompting Mr. Abdullah to accuse Mr. Ghani and Mr. Karzai of colluding to rig the vote.

While Mr. Ghani and Mr. Karzai have denied the charges, few doubt there was substantial fraud. On Sunday, The Times’s Carlotta Gall reported that interviews with Afghan and international officials support some of Mr. Abdullah’s most serious claims, including ballot-box stuffing and a campaign by government officials to manipulate the outcome.

The Americans gave the candidates a way to ease the sting of defeat by brokering a deal that would have the rival camps create a national unity government. Under this plan, which both candidates accepted, the winner would become president and the loser, or his designee, would fill a new post of chief executive. But the powers and duties of that new job are also still in dispute.

The political climate has become so poisonous that a group of powerful government ministers and officials with strong ties to security forces have threatened to seize power in a sort of “soft coup” if the candidates cannot find a way to compromise, according to a report by Matthew Rosenberg in The Times last week. Advocates of this scheme say it may be the last chance to prevent violence and would be a stopgap measure to stabilize the country until democracy can be reinstated at some future point. But that is a fatuous argument, which has rarely proved to be true in other countries that underwent coups. Such a move would seriously undermine the Afghan Constitution.

A new, stable government is also important to the United States, which viewed a peaceful political transition as crucial to its plans to reduce its military presence to about 10,000 troops by the end of this year, and half that by the end of 2015, with an even smaller number after that. President Obama has repeatedly insisted that any post-2014 troop commitment was dependent on the new Afghan president signing a security agreement with the United States. However, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, amid concerns about potential violence among political factions, said on Monday that it may be possible for American forces to remain for a time even without the security agreement.

The best available solution is for Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani to cooperate fully with the ballot audit, accept the results (which were never going to be fraud-free, given the immaturity of the democratic system) and quickly form a functioning government that reflects the country’s diversity. If they manage to do that, there might be some hope that they could, in time, restore voter trust and put Afghanistan on the path to a real democracy.


A version of this editorial appears in print on August 26, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Afghanistan’s Moment of Reckoning.

    Afghanistan’s Moment of Reckoning, NYT, 25.8.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/opinion/afghanistans-moment-of-reckoning.html

Slain General in Afghanistan

Was Quietly Effective Leader,

Known for Technical Skill

 

AUG. 5, 2014

The New York Times

By ALAN RAPPEPORT

and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — To Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, video games were simply another tool for soldiers headed to the battlefield, a way to rehearse for combat.

General Greene, 55, was one of the Army’s gadget gurus, an engineer by training whose missions usually did not involve guns and grenades. Instead, his goal was to integrate smartphones, video conferences and even virtual worlds into a military culture that often prized hardware rather than software.

It was the sort of technology that General Greene, who was killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday, used in frequent talks with his family back in the United States.

“One of the things he worked on over the years is the type of communications we use now,” his father, Harold F. Greene, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday night from his home in Guilderland, N.Y. “We conversed every week over videophone.”

A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, said that a suspected Afghan soldier shot up to 15 people, including an American general who was killed, at a military training academy in Kabul.

General Greene’s last promotion came earlier this year when he was sent to Afghanistan to help complete the military transition from American to Afghan control as the United States prepared to withdraw. He was advising Afghan military officers on how to buy weaponry, how to staff battalions and how to acquire technology.

Unlike many high-ranking Army officers, General Greene, who was born in Albany and raised in upstate New York, did not go to West Point. He graduated in 1980 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he received a full Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship, before receiving his commission as an engineer officer. He went on to earn a master’s degree in national security policy studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., and a Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Southern California.

In more than 30 years in the Army, General Greene had not seen combat before being sent to Afghanistan. Among members of the acquisitions and engineering staff, he was known for his interest not only in technology but also in more mundane matters.

“If you gave me one thing to fix tomorrow, it would be to rip out those godawful windows and put in state-of-the-art thermal windows and get some light in here,” he said in a 2011 speech as he was leaving his post as senior commander at the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts.

His is a military family. General Greene’s wife, Col. Sue Myers, also served in the Army, and his son — he also has a daughter — is an active-duty soldier. And his father served in World War II.

“You’re talking about a guy who did his job, did it well, but not with a lot of noise,” one American military official said of General Greene, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to talk about the matter.

After working his way through the ranks — including posts in Athens and Istanbul, as well as in Fort Monmouth, N.J. — General Greene was promoted from colonel to brigadier general in 2009. At his promotion ceremony, Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army’s deputy chief of staff at the time, called General Greene “somebody who has that singular ability to display wisdom” and “the rare abilities to make others better.”

General Greene’s military evaluations, his father said, praised him for inspiring others to work harder by fostering a collaborative culture that was not always the norm in the military.

“Their input was just as important as his,” Mr. Greene said of how his son worked with soldiers of lower rank.

General Greene’s collegial style and technical expertise helped him win another promotion in 2011, when he was assigned to be the program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors. He said in an interview after that appointment that improving night-vision devices and infrared technology would be crucial steps in helping soldiers.

When General Greene was finally tapped to go to Afghanistan this year, he did not hesitate.

“He felt it was part of his job,” Mr. Greene said. “He knew that what happened is a potential that goes with the job.”
 

A version of this article appears in print on August 6, 2014,

on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline:

A Quietly Effective Leader Known for Technical Skill.

    Slain General in Afghanistan Was Quietly Effective Leader,
    Known for Technical Skill, NYT, 5.8.2014,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/
    us-general-killed-in-afghanistan-a-quietly-effective-leader-
    known-for-technical-skill.html