Simone Ledeen
When I deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 as the Senior Treasury Representative to ISAF, I believed we could still turn the tide. General Stanley McChrystal inspired confidence as a leader, not just because of his own abilities but because of the strong team he built around him. I had worked with then-Major General Mike Flynn in the past, and he was a key part of the strong team McChrystal built. His intelligence expertise and strategic thinking were second to none, and knowing I would be serving under both of them made me eager to be part of their command. Together, they created an environment of trust and clarity that pushed everyone to perform at their best. For a while, it seemed like this team might succeed in untangling the mess we had built for ourselves.
But hope didn’t last long.
McChrystal pushed my colleagues and me to uncover two critical mysteries during that tour: the truth about Afghan-American power broker Ahmed Wali Karzai, and the Taliban’s primary revenue streams. Both efforts revealed not just the limits of our strategy but the deep cracks in our entire approach to Afghanistan.
Ahmed Wali Karzai: The Mob Boss of Kandahar
In Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai loomed large—President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother and a critical power broker in southern Afghanistan. Rumors painted him as both a CIA asset and a drug lord, a man who controlled Kandahar’s narcotics trade while supposedly advancing U.S. interests. McChrystal said he wanted the truth. He ordered us to dig.
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