Locked in Time – Looking at Afghanistan

Interview with Combat Journalist Michael Yon on the War in Afghanistan


While the political leadership of ISAF members and of Afghanistan recently met in Kabul to negotiate the future of the war-torn country, including a much-discussed pullout deadline, the hardships endured by soldiers and the Afghan population continues at the various military bases and in the scattered remote villages. One of the few independent journalists who regularly sheds light onto their daily lives and the challenges they encounter is combat journalist and author Michael Yon*. Having been embedded with US and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Michael offered his readers an in-depth perspective about both wars until he was disembedded in April 2010 and left Afghanistan. His travel to Thailand led him right into the midst of the turmoil during severe riots in Bangkok, which he covered with impressive photographs and noteworthy reports.

As Michael is again preparing for a new embedded tour with the troops in Afghanistan, Nicolas von Kospoth of defpro.com recently talked with him about the developing situation in Afghanistan and his assessment of what can be done under the given conditions on both the military and the civilian side.


NvK: You will be returning to Afghanistan soon after having been disembedded in April. Despite the short time, many things have changed. Do you expect to come upon a different situation and atmosphere among the troops?

Michael Yon: I do expect there will be some changes. The troops’ morale started to go down under General Stanley McChrystal. I don’t know if it has gone up under General David Petraeus, as I haven’t been there since and things take a long time to trickle down. Being down on the ground is like being on Mars while the Generals are on Saturn – these are two different worlds. In particular, the combat soldiers live on a day-to-day basis of life and death. Some of them are fighting seven days a week. And believe it or not, they often don’t know what is going on in the news. Seriously, I would imagine that there are some soldiers who did not realise that a change of command took place until long after it did. Combat soldiers judge actions, not words, as their lives depend on actions and not words. However, when I return, I definitely expect to see some changes.

NvK: The changes include new guidelines recently issued by the US Department of Defense on how to deal with the media. Do you expect to be treated differently by the military and, in particular, by press officers, or doesn’t this new guidance apply to your work as an embedded combat journalist?

Yon: For most correspondents that are travelling with the troops, the contacts are so deep and so wide-ranging that these memos really don’t mean much. We don’t usually go through the front door. I normally use a back door, a window or a personal contact. It may affect people who come from the outside. But regarding those who are already inside, it is probably too late. You have got to keep in mind that British and American – and certainly Canadians, as they disclose a lot of information – often will give you a lot of information. Sometimes it really is serious, personal stuff and sometimes it is operational information which they want to get out and they can’t through official channels. If they trust you to leave out their names, they will give you valuable information. As you can see from my work during the past years, I am often far ahead of the curve; and a lot of this is due to the many personal contacts.

NvK: Do you think counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts are being effectively carried out in Afghanistan or are these efforts going in the wrong direction?

Yon: Expectation management has been crucial and has failed in Afghanistan. In fact, it failed in Iraq as well, but we managed to turn the situation around, which is mostly due to the work of General Petraeus and his staff. But when it comes to Afghanistan, this is different. I’m sure that German soldiers, coming home from Afghanistan, will confirm that this is something like “Jurassic Park”. This is not something that will look much better in ten, twenty or thirty years – it will take a century. Therefore, expectation management is crucial. We’ve recently seen reports about pulling out until 2014 or at least about handing over responsibility to Afghan security forces by this time. In reality this is nonsense. This is not going to happen. Our involvement in making the Afghanistan operation successful is going to be measured in many decades, if not a century.

NvK: COIN is also a media war. Are the insurgents in Afghanistan currently winning the mainstream media war in the US and Europe?

Yon: I would say that, currently, they are rather winning it. In Afghanistan it is more a matter of fatigue. A lot of people in Europe and in North America don’t care about Afghanistan. It is simply not important to them. Why should it be important to them, other than the danger of terrorist attacks? Centuries have passed by without Afghanistan being of much importance to us, until it became important after 11 September 2001. The increasing expense of lives and of treasure is causing fatigue. I wouldn’t say that the Taliban and the associated groups are sophisticated media experts. Rather, we are just ripe to pullout and some of our “media experts” are incompetent.

NvK: To what kind of mindset is the Coalition confronted in Afghanistan?

Yon: The Afghans and many other people in the region consider time very differently than we do. The way we consider time is: “We’re going to be there at 08:00 sharp, not 08:01.” A lot of Afghans do not know when they were born. When the soldiers feed personal information of locals into our database systems, for which they collect fingerprints, iris scans and personal data, and ask how old they are, the Afghans often cannot give a precise age. However, they know what time of the year they were born. They would tell you that they had been born during the harvest time.

The idea of a pullout in 2014 is a Western idea. The Afghans just plant the corn, raise the corn, pick and eat the corn, wait until the winter is gone and repeat the process. A lot of soldiers will tell you that being in Afghanistan is like living in the 13th or 14th century. By the Afghan calendar it is the year 1389; so the pullout will be in 1393. I have travelled through a lot of countries; Afghanistan is certainly one of the most primitive countries that I have seen. It is not primitive in the sense of a lack of culture. They have a very strong culture and are very smart in their own way; they memorise entire books. But most of their knowledge is locked in a certain period of time.

What the soldiers deployed to Afghanistan have experienced is the way these people learn. They don’t learn through experimentation in the same way that we do. When one Taliban leader has done something in a certain way and gets killed, the next one does things a little bit different. They evolve as people die.

NvK: Are these aspects which the military must understand to effectively carry out the training of Afghan forces and is this being considered in the training process?

Yon: Americans have learned a hard lesson in Iraq. We learned lessons a bit slower in Afghanistan, but you learn lessons quickly when you are bleeding. Our troops are always trying new combinations and do realise that culture is crucial. But you have to consider that there are many different cultures in Afghanistan. Therefore, you have to know where you go in Afghanistan before you start to study the local culture.

NvK: In early July, General Petraeus assumed his new command in Afghanistan. Only few journalists know Petraeus as well as you do. Do you think he will be able to apply the lessons he learned from Iraq in his new command and will this contribute to accomplish the mission?

Yon: General Petraeus is a brilliant individual and he realises that this is a completely different war. Certainly, nobody will have to point this out to him; in fact, he will be the first to point it out to others. An important thing about counterinsurgency operations is that they are all very different but also have commonalities. To really operate in this sort of environment you have to be an artistic thinker. One part of your mind has to be willing to kill the enemy in all senses. Yet, there is another side of it where that is what you try to avoid. This side includes many social aspects and tools. You need people who are able to see what is necessary and to carry it out.

General McChrystal was not good at this at all; he was completely out of his element. That doesn’t mean that he is not a great warrior. If you are trying to kill bad guys he’s the one for the job. But he doesn’t have this artistic side of his mind that is required for this type of war. That also applies to Brigadier General Daniel Ménard (Canada) who was constantly tripping over his own feet and has recently been fired and now is facing a criminal charge. There is a huge difference between this kind of war and a conventional force-on-force conflict.

One thing we have to learn is not to make the same mistakes over and over again, which includes throwing money at the problems. Money is important – General Petraeus will also tell you that money is ammunition in this fight. But it has to be done intelligently. When the German forces lost several soldiers in the attacks in April, the political leadership announced that they would send more heavy equipment to Afghanistan. But they just don’t seem to get the point. The insurgents will take any armoured vehicle made on this planet and blast it into the clouds.

NvK: Indeed, these attacks and their consequences have been a major issue in Germany, also leading the German Defence Minister to speak of a war-like situation in Afghanistan for the first time.

Yon: We’ve seen the same with Americans in Somalia: the refusal of top political leadership to acknowledge that we are in a serious fight and that our soldiers need adequate equipment. Our soldiers there needed armour and suffered for lack of armour. We’ve seen it with the British in Basra, Iraq, and now we see it in Afghanistan. When I was with the British last year, they kept pointing out to me that we’re not in a war. But I kept saying: “If this is not a war, I don’t know what is! We’re being attacked every single day. We’re fighting seven days a week.” And now we’re seeing the Germans doing the same thing with their armoured vehicles.

When I was with British soldiers in Basra in 2007, one of their tanks was hit very hard and I reported it. The British apparently thought that their tanks were invulnerable or couldn’t be penetrated. Meanwhile, our tanks and armoured vehicles were being blown to pieces. Massive tank parts were laying a hundred meters away after an explosion. There still is this idea that armour is the solution. But it doesn’t matter how much armour you’ve got; they will just make the bombs bigger, which is quite easy. Sometimes you need armour, sometimes just boots.

Another problem are the rules of engagement. When reported in twelve different articles in 2006 that we are losing the Afghan war and that it has every potential to get worse than Iraq, nobody believed me. I received huge flak in the United States for these reports. The fact that we are losing the war is also because of the rules of engagement (ROE). On the one hand, the ROE have to be tightened, as every time we kill civilians we pay for it. At the same time, these ROE should have been changed back in 2004 because it’s hurting the morale of the troops as they don’t feel they can effectively defend themselves.

I was told in 2009 by a very well-connected Afghan that the insurgents were specifically going to target the Germans and to start interdicting routes in the German area of responsibility. That was part of the next iteration of their strategy, which clearly has started to happen. When they lose more and more friends this will increasingly affect the German troops’ morale. I can assure you that these attacks are traumatic. Gunshots are one thing (even if seeing someone being shot is serious stuff), but it’s nothing like bombs. Bomb attacks are incredibly traumatic events. Once they start seeing these things happen to their comrades or are themselves involved in bomb attacks, it will be hard to persuade them to follow these rules of engagement. Only the most disciplined soldiers will do it.

In fact, it is contradictory to immediate survival. What the ROE are telling the soldiers to do is to endanger themselves for soldiers deployed in the future. Meanwhile, the soldiers in Afghanistan today are paying – at least in part – for what soldiers may have done in 2002 or 03 or 04 or... Mistakes have a cumulative effect and especially so in Afghan society where there is a strong culture of revenge. Our soldiers and the British are superbly disciplined and trained but the inevitable mistakes add up.

NvK: That is also something which is difficult to make people at home understand. Do you still see enough support and patience in the population to go all the way, considering the many voices in Europe and North America calling to pull out as soon as possible?

Yon: I think there will only be patience if we start to see progress. If I start to see demonstrable progress, I will be the first to report it. There is no question that there is progress in some areas, including within the Afghan National Army and other Afghan security forces. But when you add everything up and get down to the bottom line, I would say that at this point there is no overall progress.

However, let’s rewind the tapes back to Iraq in 2006. We were losing the war at that time. When Petraeus took over in January 2007 it was looking dicey and I was very worried about the outcome. But we then saw the situation turn around.

NvK: So what about support and patience within the population in Afghanistan?

Yon: In Afghanistan there are indications that it may also turn around. You have got to keep in mind that many or most Afghans still hate the Taliban. I received several private e-mails from Afghanistan about a young man who was recently kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban. They cut off this kid’s fingers yesterday. These kind of things don’t happen every once in a while; they happen every day. These are things that make the population hate the Taliban.

But just compare it to Iraq: many people there didn’t like Saddam Hussein. But they knew the rules of how to survive within this system. They wanted him dead, but they preferred him to what came with the war. You will find the same thing among Afghans. They want consistency – we are not providing that. In their eyes, we are not providing justice, while the Taliban do. Afghans joke that the Taliban provide justice cheaper and faster. It’s not always what they want, but at least they have a decision and can get back to their normal lives. It’s hard to fight against that.

It’s difficult to say how many villages there are in Afghanistan. I have seen an official figure stating that there are about 40,000 villages. In many of these villages the people have never met any Coalition soldiers. If they met a German soldier tomorrow, they might think he is Russian, although the war has already lasted for more than eight years. So these villagers don’t see that our forces are really effective. Iraq was an urban war with major cities such as Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Fallujah, etc. Afghanistan is mostly “out in the sticks” with only a few big cities and 80 per cent of the people living in small villages.

NvK: In your book “Moment of Truth in Iraq” you described what you call the “Awakening of Anbar.” Considering the current situation and conditions, would this uprising of the population against the insurgents be possible in Afghanistan or is this already happening in some places?

Yon: From an anthropological point of view, despite some similarities, the tribes in Afghanistan are very different from the tribes in Iraq. There already had been an “awakening” by the Afghans against the Taliban when we invaded the country in 2001. They really hated the Taliban and helped us beat them fair and square. They helped us beat the weeds in their garden and then we ran off to fight in the garden in Iraq and stopped paying attention to Afghanistan, allowing the weeds to grow back. In fact, some commanders in Afghanistan say that it is literally like cutting weeds, as the insurgents grow back so fast. And it’s true. We have been in the war since 2001. Kids who were eight years old then are now at the full fighting age of 16 and grew up with fighting around them.

The amount of Coalition troops is too few to show the necessary presence. Some provinces have almost no troops in them, such as the Ghor Province or the Bamiyan Province. The leadership is now talking about turning some of these provinces over to Afghan control in July 2011. That is going to be smoke and mirrors. In reality, places like Bamiyan are already turned over because we’re not there. We’ll only have to pull out the few troops from Ghor Province in central Afghanistan and will be able to say that we pulled out there as well. You will probably hear from politicians in mid 2011 that we pulled out of several provinces. But these will be provinces in which we never have had many troops.

NvK: Karsai recently stated at the Kabul Conference that he wants Afghanistan to look after its security on its own as early as 2014 and received international support for this plan. Is this a realistic deadline considering ongoing problems of corruption, drug issues, lack of training, etc.?

Yon: It is not realistic at all. I don’t know when we will really be able to turn over all Provinces. It may take as long as twenty to thirty years, but certainly not in 2014. That’s like planting an acorn and saying that it will become a fully grown oak tree by 2014 – you simply can’t do it unless you’ve got some kind of science or magic up your sleeve. It will take a hundred years. Just look at the German Army, which today is one of the finest armies in the world. The German Armed Forces were not built in twenty years. It takes generations to build up a non-commissioned officer corps. It takes a very long time to create competence, to train soldiers and to build up institutions – there is so much to running an Army. Also, in Afghanistan we are not rebuilding but, rather, building from scratch. The term “rebuilding” is misused by seemingly every involved country.

Of course the United States and other ISAF members have expeditionary armies which can project force. Afghanistan doesn’t need to worry about having a large air force or assets to protect against ballistic missiles or similar exterior threats. But they are still a long way from being capable of projecting force within Afghanistan. If I’m correct, it took Iraq until 2008 to start to project significant force within its own territory. You also have to keep in mind that the Iraqis were more advanced than the Romanians were fifteen years ago. You couldn’t swing a cat in Iraq without hitting somebody with a master’s degree or a Ph.D. Their education system was very good with many great schools all over the country. I can’t remember having ever seen someone studying the Koran; they studied mathematics or even English. In Afghanistan you sometimes feel like Fred Flintstone will be coming around the corner any moment being chased by a Tyrannosaurus. In most places, the idea of a school is just a dream.

NvK: Recently, a paper by former Harvard professor Robert Blackwill presented the idea of separating Afghanistan into a “safe” Northern Afghanistan and a troublesome Southern Afghanistan. Given the conditions that you described, do you support such an approach or wouldn’t this rather lead to new, perhaps even more complicated problems? Afghanistan is not Central Europe of the 1950s.

Yon: That is something about which I talked quite a lot with Afghans and with foreigners who have lived for a long time in Afghanistan. It is interesting, as in 2005 the same discussion came up in Iraq and the Americans thought about splitting up Iraq into three parts: a Sunni, a Shia and a Kurdish part. People I talked to in Iraq asked me if we were crazy. Most of the Iraqis thought that it was a ridiculous idea.

However, in Afghanistan this is different. There are many Afghans who think that it is probably a good idea to split up. A lot of Afghans and some foreigners who have lived there for longer periods of time believe that Afghanistan is inching towards a civil war. There already have been civil wars in Afghanistan before and after the Soviet invasion, so many people think that this could happen again. I don’t have a personal opinion on the idea of splitting Afghanistan into parts, yet. I think that within the next year I will form one as I travel the country and talk with people. But from what some people, including Afghans say, the idea seems to be more feasible in Afghanistan.

NvK: From what you have seen from the units you have been embedded with in Afghanistan, are the troops adequately equipped to do their job and do you see vital differences within the Coalition in terms of equipment and capabilities?

Yon: There are huge differences. The US troops are typically very well outfitted. Practically the only thing that the soldiers have been complaining about is that the M16 and the 5.56 ammunition are weak – insurgents are hit and keep on running. But that is something practically everybody knows. Except for that, the US soldiers are well equipped and resourced. Naturally, there are many units at remote bases that may run low on ammunition supplies. But that is something normal in a war. The British forces, however, are not as well equipped. It is almost as if they treat the British soldiers like civil servants. I have high respect for British soldiers and so to see them under-equipped upsets me, even though I am American. The lack of helicopters for the British forces in Afghanistan is mind-boggling. When you don’t have enough troops to operate in such a large country and in this kind of environment you need to be able to quickly move around the ones you have and make them virtual troops. The British soldiers are very courageous, very well trained and insufficiently equipped.

NvK: The lack of transport helicopters and adequate fire support, as well as political pressure, force soldiers to patrol in heavily armoured vehicles and, thereby, to lose the direct contact with the population which they had in the early years of the operation. You described in your book that this direct contact has been a very important aspect during counterinsurgency operations in Iraq.

Yon: It is counterintuitive to think that you are safe behind armour. One thing you will hear American or British soldiers say is that the thicker the armour is, the least likely you are to get out of it. They just hate to have to get out of their tanks quickly. It seems far safer inside the armour than to be on the outside. However, in reality, it can often be much safer to dismount from the armour. The vehicles may be important to help you get somewhere or to get out of somewhere, but often the last place you want to be is inside a vehicle.

The soldiers of a Stryker unit which I was with in Iraq got out of the vehicles and walked, keeping the Strykers behind them. That is something which the Germans learned in World War II, and the Russians more recently, about operating with tanks: let the infantry go in first because they spot things. You can’t see these things from within the armoured vehicle and will get blown up. Furthermore, you have ten soldiers inside one vehicle who may all die when the vehicle hits the big bomb. When they are outside as individuals only two or three are killed. What is very important: you spot bombs far more often. US soldiers learned in Iraq that many of the local people would tell you where to find bombs. They would not jump in front of a tank to stop and tell you that. But when we were walking, people would come and tell us where to find bombs all the time.

Not only that you will not spot bombs, but you also become an irritant when you’re driving through the streets. Just in late July some Americans had another vehicle accident in Kabul and there was yet another riot. You can’t walk everywhere; we’d never get anything done. Often you just have to drive, but it comes with a cumulative cost all the way around.

Direct contact is better than counter-IED technology and techniques. If the local people don’t want you to get blown up, you won’t get blown up. If they want you to get blown up, there is a high chance you are going to die. So the natural idea is to get into the vehicles as soon as people around you start to get blown to pieces. A lot of that comes from political decisions. It is a hard lesson and the German soldiers might go through the same learning curve that the US soldiers have gone through in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NvK: Many talk of merely training the Afghan soldiers and security forces – German politicians often enough present this approach as a universal remedy. Is this approach sufficient or is the example of leadership, courage and reliability in the field required, as you described being a precious lesson from Iraq?

Yon: Building the Afghan government is our only ticket out that includes success as an end-state. Insofar as building the army, teaching combat skills is often focused on technical skills. Anybody who is physically fit, is motivated, and has a sufficient amount of brains and courage can be trained to become a combat soldier.

But there is more to forming a capable combat soldier than just training. Our soldiers have to go into combat with them, also because we need to know what they need to know. We have to see if our training is effective. And in many cases you have to drop your whip on them and discipline them. That is something that we experienced with the Iraqis in the beginning and it is the same with the Afghans: You can do all this great training and then, when they go out on a mission and you stop watching them, they start to be sloppy. During some of the last missions I went on with Afghan forces they were doing crazy things. The very first thing Iraqis and Afghans did every time we came to a road was to walk down this road. So we had to teach them again and again that walking down the road is how you are most likely to be blown to pieces. Therefore, you have to be out on the missions with them to see if they learn important things like that.

NvK: Often, it is by asking the simplest questions that you come the closest to solving a problem. From what you have experienced in your contact with the Afghan population, which are the questions that the Allies should ask Afghans to effectively help them in solving their problems?

Yon: “How can we help you and how can you help us to help you?” Iraqis and Afghans are just like many other people: when you give them something, they want more. You give them a desk and they ask for a chair, you give them a chair and they ask for a lamp, you give them a lamp and they want a computer. Therefore, it has to be a mutual process and it has to be done at grassroots level.

The large projects, such as the third turbine for the hydro-electric Kajakai Dam in the north of Helmand Province – an operation led by British troops – let Afghan people believe that things would change quickly. They thought they would receive electricity soon, but many people nearby still don’t have any electricity. Problems with these large projects make expectation management difficult, whereas smaller projects around the individual villages are very important too. That is where you need to dig in and ask people what can be done at the village level. We are not going to solve all the problems of Afghanistan at once. We have to start to realise that even fifty years from now many people out there will probably never have had electricity in their homes. That is just the way it is going to be.

So when it comes to the questions to be asked, it should be: “What can we do with the resources that are available on the local level in your village in order to help you and how can you help us? Because we’re not going to make it for you, you have to contribute.”

NvK: Thank you very much, Michael and good luck on your next trip to Afghanistan.

(This entry is an interview I originally made for the defence news site defpro.com in July 2010. A German translation of the interview can be read in the German edition of Propylon. For a list of all interviews I made, please click here.)

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* Michael Yon is a former Green Beret and a native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael’s dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work has been featured on “Good Morning America,” The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets around the world. Michael is also the author of the book “Moment of Truth in Iraq” which is packed with exciting and heart-rending tales from the battlefields. His dispatches, complemented by scores of great photographs from his trips, can be followed at www.michaelyon-online.com.