The New York Times interviewed Gen. John. R. Allen on Sunday, a week before his scheduled departure from Afghanistan after 19 months as the commander of the American and allied forces.
Following are some of General Allen’s comments. Brief explanations have been provided in brackets.
On his relationship with President Hamid Karzai:
“I wanted him to understand that he was always going to have my loyalty and I was always going to work with him. In fact, I said a number of times, ‘I’m proud to have served you at the same time I served my own leadership, whether it’s a NATO leadership or U.S. leadership.’ Now, I wanted him to believe it because it happened to be true. I think our personalities meshed in that regard.”
“Now, we’ve had some tough times. This has been a time of really dramatic change for the campaign. When I got here, I measured success in how well we and how often we were fighting. Today, it’s a very different environment. The Afghans are virtually entirely in the lead across Afghanistan.”
“This is what I’ve learned about the president. If you listen to him, he’s got some pretty good ideas, and often the controversy that has arisen in the relationships hasn’t been because necessarily you disagree with the ideas. It’s because you haven’t listened to them early enough.”
“And sometimes it’s been strained. I don’t think he ever believed that actions that I have taken were ever intended to disadvantage him as the president, or not do everything I possibly could for the Afghan people. I told him, I’m prepared to die in this country on behalf of his people. I take that very seriously.”
On civilian casualties:
“I’ve met with the families of the casualties that we’ve inflicted. I’ve flown to the villages to personally apologize for the casualties, and do what I can to do the right thing for those families. I’ve taken measures with respect to the employment of certain kinds of fires.” ["Fires” is common military shorthand for a variety of munitions, from bullets to missiles to mortar shells.]
“We had a couple of pretty rough incidents where Afghans were killed by the delivery of aviation fires. I eventually said to President Karzai that civilian structures, tents, potential areas where civilians might be either taking refuge or hiding or living, I’m not going to deliver any more fires on those structures unless my troops are pinned down, can’t move, and the only option they have is to deliver fires on these structures, or I decide, the senior leader out here, I decide to deliver fires on these structures.”
“The civilian causalities as a result of air fires plummeted immediately. It was probably a decision I could have made long before that and none of our forces were put at risk, or at greater risk because of this.”
On the aftermath of the burning of Korans at Bagram Air Base:
“I have to tell you, I thought this could be it for the relationship.
“I immediately got on the phone to a number of Afghan media outlets, immediately cut a video apologizing for this as sincerely as I could possibly appear and sound because this was going to be bad, it could be really bad. I called the president, I went to see him, apologized to him for this. It was completely inadvertent but this culture deserved that apology. We were in their home, so to speak. We are guests in their home and even though it was an accident, even though it was not intentional, we had made a bad mistake, a real error and the people deserved my apology, the president deserved my apology.
“He accepted it and I think in many respects, the personal nature of our relationship was what tempered the language coming out of the palace, the releases, his own engagement with the media and so on. Because of both of our actions, both of them supporting each other, we were able to keep this from being the result of a bad mistake from being something that could have really fractured the relationship.”
On the fallout in March after an American soldier killed 16 villagers in the southern Afghan district of Panjwai, which he first heard about when he was in the United States to testify before Congress:
“The first phone call was something of the effect of — we’ve got mixed reporting from Panjwai. We think an American soldier maybe shot some people and my response was, ‘All right. Let’s develop the situation quickly. Tell me what we got in front of us because we’ve got to make the Afghans in the loop on this.’ ”
“Then the phone calls started coming in and the numbers started going up and pretty quick and this is as bad a circumstance as you might have imagined.”
“I called President Karzai from home and we had a long conversation about it. I promised him once again that we would take all steps, measures, take all actions necessary to get to the bottom of this and we would do a full and complete investigation and those people necessary would be held accountable.”
“This was still unfolding. Was it one shooter? Was it multiple shooters? There were wild rumors associated with things that he had done in addition to shooting. So the information environment was wide open at this point. And both for the purposes of internal stability in Afghanistan and for the purposes of preserving our relationship we were working very, very hard to confirm what we knew to be the facts and try very hard to get after the rumors that were just flying.”
“Once again, when he could have been angry, when it could have been a very negative conversation, I mean, he was tutorial. He explained to me why this is bad for the relationship, why this is bad for the campaign, and why this will shake the confidence of the Afghan people, his personal gesture of measured conversation with me. He wasn’t angry.”
On why the United States should stay engaged in Afghanistan:
“I put it in the context of this has been worth it. This is bigger than anyone of us. It’s bigger than the president. It’s bigger than the president of Afghanistan, because this isn’t about today. This is about tomorrow. This is about doing all we can to facilitate President Karzai with his desire to be successful. But it’ll be about doing all we can do to set up his successor for success.”
On overcoming the skepticism of officials in Washington, who often express frustration with Mr. Karzai:
“For this president, at this moment of its history, Afghanistan’s history, to be able to hold together these tribes and these ethnic groups with these kinds of challenges has got to be one of the hardest jobs going. And so I try to paint the context of the challenges that he faces, the history from which he originates and how, conceivably, he will interpret our actions. He may not understand what we are trying to do, or may misinterpret what we’re trying to do or say. And frankly, one of the great things about our democracy is also one of the hardest things about our democracy: That is, we don’t always speak with the same voice.
“So he’ll hear a voice from one part of the government, it will be different for another part of the government and he’ll seek to square the differences. It’s not a criticism, it just is who we are. The farther you are away from Kabul, the farther you are away from the palace, the farther you are away from the history of this country in the complexities of society, the easier it is to generalize, frankly.”
On the need for the Afghan government to better serve its people and stamp out corruption within its ranks:
“We’ve worked very hard, obviously, to build a capacity in those. But when your ability to survive the night, or put food on the table was — well, for many years are a function of what tribe you were part of, or what group you were part of. And those patronage networks undertook economic opportunities which made them some respect, criminal patronage networks.
“They can only survive because institutions of governance are weak. And so now, we find ourselves in a death grip here — at this very moment when the future of the country relies on the strength of institutions. The criminal patronage networks recognize that their future, their survival can only be sustained by keeping these institutions weak. That’s the moment we find ourselves in, and the presidential directive on any anti-corruption and government reform and the Mutual Accountability Framework that came out of Tokyo.
“These created very helpful, very useful, both domestic and international expectations for reform. So we need to see us moving past the written word and the spoken word and start moving towards action. I think the president, if he were sitting here would tell you that they have achieved some good action, good results in his presidential decree. The Mutual Accountability Framework is constantly being audited to see that there’s progress on reform. But again, we’re still pretty fresh in the process and we’ve got to let this play out some more.”
On the future of the war and Afghanistan:
“Let me make sure I’m clear on this. Nothing is sure in a post-conflict society. But I think the indicators, as far as I’m concerned, are that we’re on the right trajectory. What you have to understand, what people have to understand is some of these reforms take a very long time. In an environment where human rights were crashed under multiple different invasions or civil wars or the Taliban, creating once again the kind of bias for human rights that we would all expect in the Western society, just doesn’t come easily to this country.
“Nothing will happen in this country without security. And that security is being purchased every single day by the Afghan National Security Forces. And then, on the platform of that security, this president has announced a program or platform that he intends to follow. Now, he’s moving forward in some areas, he’s having resistance in others, but we just have to expect this is going to take time. That’s where huge patience has to come in. That’s where the decade of transformation comes in.”
On the surge of “insider attacks” against Westerners that took place in 2012:
“The losses became to this particular means of attack became very troubling, very significant, and tragic. And while on the tactical level and on the operational level, we were able to deal with the problem. This was becoming a strategic crisis — a strategic crisis in capitals, a strategic crisis for the alliance — and the Taliban saw this. They knew this. They saw that. They saw that the future of the A.N.S.F. relied on our being close, partnered and advising inside the Afghan formations.
“We were very careful in our reaction to insider attacks. Not to wall ourselves off from the Afghans and create distance. I used to tell them, you may not be able to do anything about the linear distance that you have to deal with but there’s a lot you can do about your proximity and the closer you all feel to each other, the more secure you will be. And that’s in an environment where we’re transitioning to being advisers almost entirely across Afghanistan. That has to be one of the operative principles for philosophically how we’re going to live with the Afghans. You treat them like brothers. You live with them like they’re family. That reduces the unknowns, it reduces the potential for cultural affront, and it makes you more secure.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to keep a close eye on the environment. We still have these people called Guardian Angels because there are enemies in the ranks and they’re waiting to take that shot.”
“We took a lot of measures and the numbers are down. But I don’t in any way want anybody to become complacent about the number being down. I don’t want anyone to lift up on the security measures that they’re taking or reduce the attentiveness that they have to the environment around them. So, I want everybody to be attentive and we’re going to periodically refresh our training both at the very lowest levels and for the units coming in. So, we’re not going to give up on this.”
