Unwinnable wars afghanistan and the future of american armed statebuilding 1st edition adam wunische
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Financialization and the Future of the American Economy
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
UNWINNABLE WARS
Afghanistan and the Future of American Armed Statebuilding
The right of Adam Wunische to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
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Abbreviations
AAF Afghan Air Force
ANA Afghan National Army
ANSF Afghan National Security Forces
ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CAP Combined Action Program
CERP Commander’s Emergency Response Program
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIDG Civilian Irregular Defense Group
CORDS Civilian Operations and Revolutionary Development Support
DoD U.S. Department of Defense
DoS U.S. Department of State
FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
HKIA Hamid Karzai International Airport
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
NGO non-governmental organization
PRC People’s Republic of China
PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team
RED HORSE Rapid Deployable, Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer
SFA
Security Force Assistance
SFAB Security Force Assistance Brigade
SIGAR Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
USACE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
USAID United States Agency for International Development
1.1
Figures and Tables
2.2
2.3
2.4
3.1
3.2
6.7
6.8
Preface
This book started for me on September 11, 2001. Unsurprisingly, this eradefining event shifted the focus and directions of many lives, including mine. I was directionless before and singularly focused after. Afghanistan would quickly come to define nearly the entirety of my adult life. I deployed to Afghanistan for the U.S. Army in 2008 and 2009. I studied Afghanistan throughout my academic career, eventually giving lectures on Afghan history and military developments in the region. My first job after university was as a research fellow covering Afghanistan, and now I focus on Afghan security issues as an analyst for the U.S. Government. The U.S. war in Afghanistan has meant different things to me at different times. While in the Army, it was about a patriotic duty to serve my country. At university, it represented America’s place in a long history of failed interventions. And now, as an analyst, professor, and someone who witnessed the fall in 2021, I’m not quite sure what Afghanistan means to me anymore. Throughout each of these periods, one thing remains clear, someone can spend a lifetime studying a country, talking to its people, and dissecting its history and military affairs and still not know enough. My hope is that this book can contribute something, even if only a small amount, to advancing our limited understanding.
Much of this book identifies the structural and preexisting conditions that led to failure in Afghanistan. There are many books, papers, and articles that identify poor individual decisions and corrupt behavior as the cause of failure. My intent is not to excuse these decisions or minimize the impact of corrupt behavior, but simply to show that these decisions and behaviors are not distinct to Afghanistan. They consistently occur in every armed statebuilding operation and will occur again no matter how much we think we can get it right this time. After 13 attempts at U.S. armed statebuilding over 125 years and the only successes coming in the rare ideal conditions that existed in a historically unprecedented 10-year period following WWII, we need to ask not only
what went wrong in Afghanistan but why do operations like Afghanistan never go right?
Much of the commentary on Afghanistan and the wars and operations that followed 9/11 falls short of anything that could be considered consistent with analytic rigor or tradecraft. These commentaries and think pieces, sometimes written by those prominent individuals who have a personal or reputational stake in extricating their own culpability for what happened, will simply state their opinions, and call it analysis. But to call that analysis is disingenuous at best. This book seeks to be a work of honest analytic tradecraft and to do justice to the lived experiences of all those involved in the Afghan war.
Analysis should not torture the data and methodologies, or selectively pick convenient data to acknowledge or ignore, to produce a desired outcome. Analysis should be designed logically and scientifically, be grounded in sound methodologies, gather all available data, and accept the outcome – good or bad. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, especially when considerations of pride, ego, ignorance, or personal careers seep into the analytic process. Nowhere does this happen more than in the analysis of terrorism or counterterrorism operations. Terrorism is a tactic designed to induce fear, which runs counter to the objectivity necessary for good analysis. Fear induced by 9/11 was detrimental to the objective analysis of the international events that followed. This book is a collection of the most important dynamics and forces impacting outcomes of armed statebuilding. It does not seek to tell the convenient story, but a truthful story no matter how difficult or painful that may be.
I have many people to thank for supporting me and without whom I would not be in a position to produce this book. I’m forever indebted to the soldiers, civilians, diplomats, and Afghans who shared their stories. While studying in Thailand, I frequently heard a saying: “When the elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled.” Those that shared their stories were not the elephants, but the grass that had to live with the consequences of poor decisions. I hope I do their stories justice.
I’m grateful to my university advisors, Gerald Easter, Lindsay O’Rourke, and Peter Krause, who instilled in me the skills, knowledge, and insights to be able to produce anything even approaching a legitimate intellectual product. My ideas, and the skills required to formulate and test them, are ultimately the product of a long line of teachers and
mentors stretching as far back as my childhood – far too many to mention here, but all appreciated. I am thankful to my parents, Paul and Barb. No matter how absurd or outlandish my childhood ambitions, they were and are always supportive. Finally, I am forever grateful to Whitney Pfeifer. She inspires and challenges me, and I would have accomplished very little in life without her love and support.
Introduction: The Fall of Kabul
It was a few months from my 16th birthday on September 11, 2001. On the west coast of the United States, east coast occurrences are delayed by a three-hour time difference. So, while east coasters knew of some event occurring but did not learn the true nature of the event until after their day had begun, our day on the west coast began with the knowledge of it being a terrorist attack. I was barely aware of world events before that day. I was technically alive and aware for the fall of the Soviet Union, the Oklahoma City bombing, the first Gulf War, and the Bosnian Genocide; I have no recollection of what I was doing at the time or how I personally experienced those events. 9/11 was different. Some experienced the event firsthand and lost loved ones, but the collective American consciousness experienced the event almost entirely as one.
My parents were saving what little extra they had in a college saving account for me. The account would never be used. After that day, nothing could shake me off the path to the U.S. Army. I enlisted in 2004, shortly after I turned 18, into a delayed entry program that enlisted soldiers before their entry date and before they actually left for basic training. I signed up exactly 1 year before my basic training date because it was the absolute earliest I could do so. I could barely wait. So much so that I took summer classes so I could graduate high school early and leave sooner.
I enlisted the first opportunity I could get. I briefly considered other options for entry into the U.S. Army, going to college first and then commissioning as an officer, or becoming a warrant officer and flying helicopters. The problem was those paths took too long. It was 2004, involvement in Iraq had started a mere 12 months prior and I thought if I delayed my entry by even a few months that I would miss the war and it would have all just passed me by. I didn’t miss the war. I would be in training for nearly a year and a half. I came into my unit while they were already deployed, so I had to wait until the next rotation. I deployed twice between 2007 and 2008. I would leave the army in 2010 and go
to school for the next decade, giving lectures about Afghan political dynamics and history near the end of that time. I would start teaching at university, courses on terrorism, political violence, and military strategy. I would start a new job in 2020 analyzing the Afghan National Security Forces for the U.S. government. And in 2021, 17 years after I thought I would miss the war, I watched the armed statebuilding operation come to an end and the government it attempted to build collapse in nine days.
In the waning years of the U.S. attempt at armed statebuilding in Afghanistan, and likely in the decades to follow the ultimate collapse of that effort, books, policy papers, reports, and news articles tried to identify “lessons learned,” searching for mistakes so that they might not be repeated the next time. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published a grand culminating report after 14 years of reports submitted to the U.S. Congress saying, “Unless the U.S. government understands and accounts for what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how it went wrong in Afghanistan, it will likely repeat the same mistakes in the next conflict.”1 Many of these efforts that have already been published typically identify one strategy or policy they take particular issue with and argue that, if we are able to change how this was done for the next armed statebuilding war, we might just win it.
But what if changing one or two strategies does nothing to affect the outcome, or what if it is not even possible to change some of these strategies or limitations? If that’s the case, initiating these armed statebuilding operations is starting wars that cannot be won.
Why Did the U.S.-Backed Government Collapse in Just Nine Days?
Afghanistan was the most substantial and expensive armed statebuilding attempt ever, but the groundwork for the swift collapse was laid years in advance, if not decades. The withdrawal of U.S. forces was not a primary (not even a secondary) cause of the collapse of the Afghan government. It was a catalyst that accelerated many of the preexisting and uncontrollable forces that were inherent to the type of operation. Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Biden said at the time, “I refuse to continue a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national
interest of our people.”2 Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said during testimony before the U.S. Senate following the collapse that, “I think the end state would have been the same no matter when you [withdrew U.S. forces].”3
Nine Days to Kabul
By September 2021, Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan, had been under siege for days. Helmand, along with Kandahar province to the east, together constituted the traditional heartland of the Taliban; it’s where they started their march across Afghanistan in the 1990s and is the home to the ethnic Pashtuns that comprise the vast majority of the organization. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were stretched thin from years of high attrition. This was not the first time the Taliban had attempted to overrun a major provincial capital, but this time U.S. military power would not push it back.
The decision was made by then Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, to save Lashkar Gah at all costs. It was probably thought that the loss of a major city in the Taliban’s traditional heartland was too great a propaganda victory for the group to allow it to fall before the Americans had even completed their withdrawal. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the Soviet-supported regime survived for nearly three years after. Units and equipment from the Afghan special forces Commandos and the Afghan Air Force (AAF) were redirected from their postings throughout Afghanistan to Lashkar Gah. Commandos were airlifted into the sports stadium on the outskirts of the city, one of the few areas of the city still in government hands.
Several weeks prior, Herat City in the western province of the same name came under intense pressure from Taliban assaults. A video was posted on social media of Afghan civilians in that city chanting, “Allahu Akbar,” meaning God is greatest, in support of the ANSF defending the city. The chant became a rallying cry of support for the Afghan government and had the potential to be the first narrative shift of the war. For decades the Taliban owned the narrative of being a movement of the Afghan people to expel foreign invaders in the name of God. By chanting “Allahu Akbar,” the Afghan people were disrupting this Taliban
narrative, even if by a small margin. The chants went viral on social media and videos emerged from across the country of Afghan civilians chanting in support of the Afghan government. When the commandos landed at the stadium in Lashkar Gah, the ANSF posted a video of them in full gear marching into battle chanting the same phrase. It felt as if the momentum of the last 20 years could shift, but the feeling would not last. Both sides took heavy casualties in Lashkar Gah. After a brief pause by the Taliban as they cycled in fresh fighters, they launched new assaults in the heart of the city. After taking heavy casualties in the face of the highly competent commandos and AAF air strikes, the Taliban eventually pulled back from the city center. The city was saved for the time being, but there was a cost. The commandos were one of the few competent units in the whole of the ANSF, one of the only ones that could operate independent of significant U.S. support and planning. They comprised about 10 percent of the ANSF but accounted for more than 90 percent of the fighting.4 They had been stretched thin for years and the defense of Lashkar Gah weakened them further. The AAF was a potentially game changing capability for the ANSF, but a very nascent one and years of a high operational tempo and mismanagement was grinding them down. Lashkar Gah increased pressure on aircraft that were already being pushed far beyond their normal operating capacity. Assessments from early 2021 showed 15 of 34 provincial capitals were surrounded by the Taliban and easily cut off from ground resupply.5 The Taliban by this point had the luxury of choosing when and where to launch their assaults and as the ANSF shifted to shore up one city, the Taliban had 14 others to choose from to assault while the ANSF were distracted with, and concentrated in, the first.
With all eyes on Lashkar Gah, the Taliban pulled back from the city center, and with the government in Kabul feeling better about their prospects without U.S. support, a chain of events was initiated that would have the Taliban strolling through the streets of Kabul within nine days, Ghani fleeing the country in secret, and the United States discussing joint security responsibilities with the Taliban at Kabul’s main airport, Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). Lashkar Gah was saved, but it pulled the ANSF’s best and most capable assets away from cities that were also cut off and under threat of a Taliban assault. On August 6, reports emerged that the Taliban had taken Zaranj, the capital
city of Nimruz province 150 miles to the southwest of Lashkar Gah on the Iranian border, before any clear indication that fighting was even occurring there. Many were not even aware of where Zaranj was; Nimruz was a backwater province for the international mission in Afghanistan.
The next day, Taliban forces took Jowzjan province. The provincial capital had been in a precarious position for some time, but the capture of a northern province, the heartland of the anti-Taliban resistance (the Northern Alliance) in the 1990s, was strategically significant and effectively killed any prospects of a modern anti-Taliban resistance. The next day, on August 8, three more northern provinces fell to the Taliban. Four provinces fell over the next three days. On August 12, all hope of stopping the bleeding vanished with the capture of Afghanistan’s second and third most populous cities of Kandahar and Herat, along with the capture of the strategic Ghanzi City on highway 1, only 80 miles south of Kabul city. The next day, five more provinces fell, including the beacon of hope early in the initial push, Lashkar Gah. By August 14, some provincial capitals were being taken with little to no fighting, simply being handed over after local forces likely cut deals with the Taliban in exchange for their safety. The capital of the central Daykundi province, Nili, was reported to have been taken with only two gunshots heard in the city.6
After little more than a week of fighting, the Taliban controlled half of the Afghan population and had consolidated control of every power center from their traditional base of power in the south up through Highway 1 leading into Kabul. Little stood in their way of sending everything they had against Kabul. On August 15, Ashraf Ghani, who only a few weeks earlier said he would never abandon his country and author of a book entitled Fixing Failed States, boarded a plane bound for Tajikistan without the knowledge of most of his own security detail and senior cabinet members. He left so abruptly he reportedly did not have time to take his passport or even his own sandals.7 Later that day, residents spotted small groups of Taliban fighters roaming the city as they faced no real organized resistance, and 20 years of U.S. armed statebuilding in Afghanistan was over.
Costs
Could this outcome have been avoided if more money, troops, or time had been committed? In military strategy, the merit of any action is, or should be, determined by the potential benefit to be gained relative to the expected costs, as well as the probability of success and that those benefits will actually be realized. The costs in Afghanistan were substantial. A complete account of the costs of armed statebuilding in Afghanistan may not truly be known for some time (if ever), but an honest attempt must still be made. The operation was historically unprecedented, as was the speed of collapse in its final stage. Many costs are obvious, and their calculation is straightforward. Some of the costs are less clear. Other costs were obscured by standard practices, like the practice of enumerating uniformed U.S. military casualties while omitting those of civilian contractors serving beside them, often exposed to the same harsh conditions and experiencing the same combat, but their experience and contribution were often unrecognized and certainly not honored like those in uniform.
The United States lost over 6,000 uniformed and civilian personnel to combat deaths during armed statebuilding in Afghanistan.8 Killed in the war were also 67 journalists, 424 humanitarian and NGO workers, over 64,000 Afghan national police and army personnel, and over 43,000 Afghan civilians. When accounting for the amount appropriated, interests on loans, and total long-term care for veterans, the war in Afghanistan cost over $2.3 trillion. Billions more were spent on non-military projects, like aid and development efforts. The reconstruction costs in Afghanistan exceeded the Marshall Plan reconstruction of Europe post-WWII.
I was asked by a colleague shortly after the fall of Kabul, what it would have cost to win. The lack of a clear goal or objective that could be achieved aside, there was no amount of money that could have been spent to achieve a more favorable outcome. The large flow of money was itself one of the causes of failure. Large flows of money distort the local economy, engender corruption, and breed dependence, all of which cause major disruptions when that money is eventually withdrawn. A non-monetary option was to increase troop levels at various points in the operation, but foreign military presences cause resentment among the local population. There are similar effects from extending foreign
troop presences. The longer they stay, the more the local population will resist it. So, increasing troop numbers, or extending the length of the operation, would have increased pressure on the Taliban but also increased resistance from civilians. In military strategy, they say quantity has a quality all its own. Nowhere is that more false than in armed statebuilding.
Armed Statebuilding is Overdetermined for Failure
In this book, I argue that armed statebuilding in Afghanistan was overdetermined for failure, that the sheer weight of countervailing forces – most of them uncontrollable by the intervening power – negated any policy option or military strategy that could have secured a better outcome. Furthermore, I argue that these forces are present in nearly every armed statebuilding attempt, historical or future, and that initiating them is simply starting a war that cannot be won. They are, unwinnable. This book gathers the research of those that have studied these failed operations and the personal experiences of those involved and shows why armed statebuilding in Afghanistan failed, why nearly every other armed statebuilding attempt has failed, and why any future attempt will also fail.
Preexisting conditions and uncontrollable forces were so great in the U.S.’s armed statebuilding in Afghanistan that the ultimate outcome was essentially guaranteed the moment the operation began, and initiating it was starting a conflict that could not be won. These same forces were present in nearly every other attempt at armed statebuilding that ultimately led to similar outcomes and imposed similar constraints such that no viable alternatives existed. Finally, because these constraints and limitations are preexisting and uncontrollable by the intervening power, any future attempt would likely fail all the same. This is not to say that policy choices and strategies have no effect. They do. But in armed statebuilding, these choices are unlikely to overcome the overwhelming limitations imposed by preexisting and uncontrollable forces. In many cases, policy choices and strategies exacerbated the overwhelming limitations of these forces that, as Daniel L. Byman said about the Iraq war, “even within those narrow limits, the United States made many bad choices that further diminished the chances of success.”9
Alternative explanations for the outcome in Afghanistan consistently disappoint. While countless analysts, policymakers, and armchair strategists have offered their opinions, the counterarguments can be grouped into two unsatisfying arguments: poor choices and lack of commitment.
1. Analysts like Paul Miller argued that success in armed statebuilding simply needs to match policy and strategy to the conditions present in each case, and failure is the result of poor choices.10
2. Former U.S. commander in Afghanistan David Petraeus, argued in an op-ed one year after the collapse that the result was merely due to a lack of commitment by the United States.11
If it was simply about choices, why has nearly every case failed outside of the pristine conditions in the post-WWII cases? If poor choices are being made that consistently, the choices are probably constrained in some significant way. It cannot simply be about commitment; Afghanistan was America’s longest war ever and cost more than the U.S.funded reconstruction of Europe after WWII. These explanations fail to explain the outcome in Afghanistan, as well as other armed statebuilding attempts.
In social sciences, the term “overdetermined” is used to describe a situation in which so many forces are present that cause a particular outcome, that the fact that that outcome occurred is unsurprising, uninteresting, and of little scientific value. For example, if we know that fragile democracies, racially motivated economic inequality, previous occurrences of terrorism, and bordering a country with an ongoing civil war are each strong predictors of increased levels of terrorism within a country, studying a country in which all these conditions exist simultaneously is of little value. It is so painfully obvious that terrorism would be elevated in such a country that studying it would tell us nothing about the strength or accuracy of each of the variables independently. Armed statebuilding is similar. These operations contain so many causal forces pushing against success that the fact that success does not occur is unsurprising.
Imagine going for a swim in a lake. The water is calm. Every action you take to get from the beach to a buoy near the beach has the intended effect: you move your arm through the water and are propelled forward.
Now imagine swimming on an ocean beach and there is a slight current. Your actions still have the intended effect, but the effort needs to be increased in the current to have the same level of effect.
But if there is a rip tide, swimming against the rip tide is hopeless and swimmers are advised to swim parallel to the beach to exit the rip tide first before swimming back toward the shore. Strong currents in rivers overflowing with spring runoffs are some of the most powerful forces of nature and can submerge massive trees for miles before they are able to resurface. Swimming in these conditions will have almost no effect at all. You will go wherever the current pushes you.
Armed statebuilding is like trying to swim against a rapid current, at night, and trying to find your way back to a beach you cannot see 20 miles away.
Afghanistan was not lost because of poor decision making or strategic choices, but rather by unchangeable, overwhelming forces that were always going to be present and will always be present in similar types of operations. Any civilian or military leaders placed in the same position would have faced the same constraints, the same incentives, and the same dilemmas and paradoxes. Poor decisions made by those placed in charge, as documented by many,12 were also either motivated or constrained by these forces and conditions that are present in every armed statebuilding operation. Preexisting conditions in Afghanistan, timeline constraints, dilemmas of asking the military to perform non-military tasks, and the unintended consequences and tradeoffs of aid and development programs all served to make armed statebuilding in Afghanistan functionally impossible.
And Afghanistan is far from an aberration. In Paul Miller’s book on the topic, he identified 13 cases of U.S. armed statebuilding. Armed statebuilding is a type of intervention by one country into another target country “to compel failed or collapsed states to govern more effectively.”13 These operations are comprehensive undertakings that require substantial personnel and financial resources. Miller identified four successes and one shallow success, with the rest rated as failure or mitigated failure. In all these cases, only Haiti in the early 1900s and the post-WWII cases were marked as non-failures. Haiti has been plagued with state failure, corrupt and abusive governance, and human rights violations both before and after the U.S. intervention. The post-WWII cases occurred
Table 0.1 U.S. Armed Statebuilding Cases and Outcomes
Country Start Year Outcome
Cuba 1898 Failure
Cuba 1906 Failure
Haiti 1915 Shallow Success
Dominican Republic 1916 Failure
Nicaragua 1927 Mitigated Failure
Italy 1943 Success
Austria 1945 Success
West Germany 1945 Success
Japan 1945 Success
South Korea 1945 Mitigated Failure
South Vietnam 1962 Failure
Afghanistan 2001 Failure
Iraq 2003 Mitigated Failure
Source: Data from Miller, P.D. 2013. Armed state building: confronting state failure, 1898–2012. Cornell University Press.
in a historically unprecedented and unique set of global conditions that enable success in those rare circumstances, which are unlikely to ever occur again. Table 0.1 shows these cases and their outcomes according to Paul Miller, with the post-WWII cases highlighted. For Miller, failures did not achieve any of the goals of statebuilding. Success achieved all goals for more than 10 years after the end of the intervention. Shallow successes achieved stable liberal governance and no atrocities for more than 10 years but no political economic progress. Mitigated failure did not sustain liberal governance or avoid atrocities for at least 10 years but showed some economic and political progress. The inclusion of Haiti as a shallow success by this standard is questionable considering the U.S. marines were accused of human rights violations during the operation itself.14
Each of the limiting factors identified in this book are problems on their own, capable of causing armed statebuilding failure independently. They impose incremental costs at the local and tactical level, but across the entirety of the operating area and taken together at scale, they add up to exorbitant and unacceptable costs. They undermine the operation, impose costs on the occupiers, and induce friction at every turn. Taken together simultaneously, at the strategic level, they become an overwhelming and insurmountable obstacle to successful armed statebuilding.
The State and Armed Statebuilding
Although the terms country, nation, regime, and state are casually used interchangeably, there are vital differences between them. It is important to understand these differences in order to realize why the operations fail. Many refer to operations like Afghanistan as nation-building. This is objectively incorrect. A nation is an imagined community of people that construct a common origin story, usually tied to a common geographic location or language. The state is as an organization that successfully claims a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence or coercion within a given territory, meaning the state is an organization that is the only actor within a given territory that can legitimately make and enforce rules and engage in coercion, like arresting people that violate rules, collect taxes, and in some cases kill people. The difference between the state and a criminal gang is that the state is viewed as mostly legitimate, and the gang is not. Members of criminal gangs are arrested for engaging in coercion or violence, members of the state are not, and this is (for the most part) accepted as legitimate by most within that territory. U.S. operations were not trying to build nations, they were trying to build states.
Foreign-imposed statebuilding has increased significantly since the end of the Cold War. The primary intervenor has been the United States, but the Soviet Union and United Nations have also launched such operations. The reasons for the rise of statebuilding operations are primarily great power competition and the increasingly strong international norm of not changing borders through military force. States now, instead of being annexed into the conquering country, must be rebuilt, and returned to indigenous sovereignty.
Statebuilding can also occur internally without foreign intervention. The internal statebuilding process in Europe, where the state as an organization first appeared, was a very long and violent process.15
Armed statebuilding, then, is a military intervention in a foreign country that seeks to build a functioning state or the components of a state as part of a broader military/civilian effort during a time of war or immediately following hostilities. The U.S. military refers to the types of tasks involved in armed statebuilding operations as “stability operations” in official doctrine.16 According to this doctrine, the U.S. military should
be able to perform five tasks as part of stability operations: the delivery of humanitarian aid, the provision of security, the building of infrastructure, the building of local security forces, and the building of local governance organizations. Infrastructure, security forces, and governance are vital components of the state and thus are the statebuilding tasks the military recognizes it needs to be able to perform.
Structure of the Book
This book traces the most important forces that impose costs and prevent success in armed statebuilding and shows how these forces manifested in Afghanistan. I also draw parallels to previous armed statebuilding failures to show how Afghanistan was not an anomaly. Chapters 1–4 identify the overwhelming universe of constraints that impede and frustrate armed statebuilding options grouped by chapter into the preexisting conditions that exist in target countries; the ticking clocks that impose time pressures on everyone involved; the dilemmas faced by the military trying to do widely divergent tasks simultaneously; and, finally, the paradoxical actions that are intended to achieve aid and development objectives that unintentionally actively undermine those very objectives.
Preexisting Conditions
Regardless of strategy and choices, preexisting conditions encountered in countries selected for armed statebuilding severely limit the potential of the operation. Chapter 1 explores preexisting conditions, like rough terrain, economic deprivation, and ethnic division, and how these enabled Taliban safe havens, how they induced resentment against a foreign military presence, and how local leaders pursued their own selfish interests against the objectives of the United States and against the goals of the new system. The chapter also explores the post-WWII cases and what abnormal conditions were present that enabled successful outcomes. It also identifies why these cases were so unique and why those unique conditions are unlikely to ever occur again.
Ticking Clocks
On top of poor preexisting conditions, temporal myopia incentivizes poorly conceived short-term strategies at the expense of long-term success. Chapter 2 shows how intervening powers are pressured to exit quickly and local leaders are incentivized to undermine the operation (or at least undermine the successfulness of it) to keep the intervenor invested long term to help them stay in power. It also creates perverse incentives for civilian and military officials to alter assessments and measurements of the state of the conflict to show progress, even if conditions are deteriorating.
Dilemmas
On top of preexisting conditions and timeline pressures, the military is placed in an impossible position to conduct missions it does not train for, while continuing to train for the preferred mission of conventional combat against other states. Chapter 3 shows how the military prioritizes conventional missions over statebuilding tasks, even when pressured to prioritize statebuilding by policymakers. Those tasks that can be repurposed for conventional missions will receive sufficient funding and staffing, while those that cannot are chronically underfunded and quickly dismantled once the armed statebuilding mission ends. Similar patterns can be observed as far back as the ancient Roman Army.
Paradoxes
On top of preexisting conditions, timeline pressures, and the military’s dilemma, the aid and development programs designed to rebuild the state have unintended consequences that actively undermine the objective of exiting from a country with a functioning state that can stand on its own. Chapter 4 shows how massive flows of aid and development money created dependencies among local partners and disrupted the local economy, undermining the end goal of creating a sustainable Afghan government able to stand on its own. All these limiting factors laid out in chapters 1–4 do not operate in isolation, they operate simultaneously,
each exacerbating the effects of the others and exponentially increasing costs over time relative to benefits.
Avoiding Unwinnable Wars
Despite these prohibitive limitations, non-vital interests are still present in the outcomes of wars and conflicts around the world, even if they cannot be solved through armed statebuilding. Chapter 5 explores how similar problems and crises were addressed using measures short of comprehensive armed statebuilding. These options identify reasonable political objectives while minimizing costs and efforts relative to the expected benefits and the probability of success. The chapter also explores the advantages of pursuing smaller and less comprehensive armed statebuilding efforts, like in Iceland during WWII.
Wars Worth Fighting
The next few decades will probably be dominated by grey zone competition between great powers in which states compete indirectly and through proxy forces by intervening in smaller countries. This will be a tempting environment in which to initiate armed statebuilding in response to every crisis that emerges. Chapter 6 uses imaginative analytic methods to explore probable future scenarios and the potential options that could secure objectives, minimizing costs and maximizing probabilities of success. It also presents a framework for assessing the feasibility of any potential attempt at armed statebuilding.
Conclusion: The Long Road to Collapse
Scenes from the final moments of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan were traumatic and surreal. The state and security forces that the West spent 20 years building were scattered to the wind, cutting deals with the Taliban to save their lives in the face of inevitable defeat. Helicopters were ferrying the remaining U.S. personnel to evacuation flights. Tens of thousands of desperate Afghans flooded the gates of HKIA in the hopes of not being left behind. Some attempted to rush a U.S. military transport aircraft that tried to take off quickly but with people still trapped on
the outside of the aircraft and being dropped to their deaths. The final U.S. casualties of armed statebuilding in Afghanistan were 13 military personnel killed when a suicide bomber detonated outside Abby Gate at HKIA in a packed crowd trying to enter the airport.
Observers were shocked that such a total collapse of the Afghan government could occur within nine days. No insurgency has ever executed such a rapid final push to end a war. The nine-day march to Kabul was the culmination of over 15 years of Taliban advances and Afghan government setbacks. Most of these Taliban advances and the conditions that enabled them were caused by preexisting and structural constraints that made the outcome little more than a foregone conclusion many years before the final campaign. Commanders in Afghanistan had been giving statements of progress and “turning the corner” for 20 years.17 General Milley’s statement above said the outcome would have been the same regardless of when U.S. forces withdrew.18 If the end state would have been the same regardless of the withdrawal date, why continue? Why start the war at all?
Preexisting Conditions
I grew up in the mountains of North Idaho. Few people can distinguish the state of Iowa from Idaho, but those who experience the overwhelming majesty and presence of the Northern Rocky Mountains will never forget it. I then joined the U.S. Army and was sent to places that had very few mountains, like Georgia, South and North Carolina. I missed the mountains. So, I’ll never forget the moment when the back gate of the C-130 transport plane opened on Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for the first time and I could not even see the tops of the snow-capped mountains surrounding us. It’s difficult to understate both how significant this rugged terrain is in Afghanistan and the extent to which it frustrates countless military tasks required for effective statebuilding. Everything gets harder, slower, and many tasks become impossible all together.
It should go without saying that mountains are not movable. Engineering can produce some amazing feats, but some things are just not possible in the face of such forces. The forces that sculpted these mountains are truly grand and take millions of years to take shape. Something that powerful and established cannot simply be wished away. Afghanistan will be rugged and difficult for as long as it matters. These awesome and unchangeable forces inhibit everything one would need to do to be successful in armed statebuilding. And it’s not just the terrain; ethnic fragmentation, neighboring countries, resentment of outsiders, all these things are unchangeable and forces to be reckoned with.
John Byrnes was well acquainted with the limitations of these preexisting conditions. He deployed to Afghanistan as part of a police training mission. He was part of a 16-person team. Fourteen were members of the New York National Guard, about 10 had served together in Iraq in 2004, and almost all had been in or around New York city on 9/11. This was not his first time conducting such an operation.1 By the time Byrnes deployed to Afghanistan, it was his third failed state in which he was tasked with statebuilding missions. Each of these missions
ended in frustration and defeat in the face of unchangeable preexisting conditions.
Byrnes also deployed to Iraq in 2003, a mission that was expected to be mostly peaceful. Before that he took part in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992 as a combat engineer. Byrnes said this was yet another “disorganized shitshow.” Byrnes landed in Somalia on New Year’s Day and spent the first night in the rain.
Byrnes said Iraq was the “greatest foreign policy disaster in the last 50 years, and I’m still proud of my role in it.” Byrnes helped uncover evidence of an atrocity ordered by Saddam Hussein following his loss in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 in the Iraqi city of ad-Dujail. That evidence was used against Saddam in his trial following the U.S. operation in 2003 and ultimately led to his conviction and execution. Byrnes said he had to buy into the possibility that he could improve the countries he worked in because it was impossible to do the job otherwise.
Introduction: The Graveyard of Empires
Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. From Alexander the Great, to the Mongols, the British, the Soviets, and the Americans, Afghans have a history of expelling external powers. Afghanistan is unique in this regard, but not entirely an aberration among targets of armed statebuilding operations. Many countries have similar histories for similar reasons. Those countries share similar unchangeable preexisting conditions that make conquest and control exceptionally difficult. Even if great generals craft ingenious strategies, these conditions are ever present, unchangeable, and present a myriad of risks to armed statebuilders. Preexisting conditions can:
• increase the likelihood of the onset of ethnic conflict or insurgency;
• make terrorism more likely;
• decrease the effectiveness of counterinsurgency efforts or governance and democracy assistance;
• or even increase the society’s resistance to the foreign military presence.
There are a wide range of preexisting conditions that can undermine any type of foreign military operation. Those most consequential to
armed statebuilding are inaccessible geography and how easy it is for fighters resisting the state to hide, ethnic fragmentation or the number of ethnic groups that exist within a single country, and the resentment from the local population that will always manifest when foreign troops are present.
The physical space in and around Afghanistan provided the Taliban ample opportunities to carve out safe spaces away from the overwhelming military power of the United States and its coalition and local partners. Interest asymmetry and ethnic tensions in Afghanistan led to corruption and self-defeating policies from the Afghan government. The foreign military presence, intended to provide security and encourage the buy-in of local Afghans for the new system, quickly engendered resentment and animosity despite early enthusiasm, thus reducing their buy-in. These conditions will all be explored in detail in this chapter.
Additional, unchangeable factors worth mentioning that undermine these armed statebuilding operations are socioeconomic underdevelopment and how weak the foundation is that previously existed for the new order being imposed, and interest asymmetry and the divergence of incentives between the leader of target country and the preferences of the intervenor.
• Socioeconomic Underdevelopment: States, democracies, and free market economies, all the things that armed statebuilding attempts to initiate and build, are fragile if not built on a foundation of social and industrial conditions that take decades, usually centuries, to build and consolidate. When armed statebuilding intervenes in socioeconomically underdeveloped states, these foundations are not present and need to be built from very low levels – if they exist at all. Post-WWII cases like Germany and Japan had strong social and economic foundations for statebuilders to build on, because they were strong states before the war was initiated. Yet armed statebuilding almost always involves underdeveloped countries because weak states are common occurrences, while global wars between great power states is uncommon and thus great powers rarely end up rebuilding each other.
• Interest Asymmetry: Armed statebuilding attempts almost always result in interest asymmetry, or a divergence in interest between the intervening state and the leaders of the country they are attempting to rebuild. Neighboring countries will also likely have divergent interests from
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Title: The strange people
Author: Murray Leinster
Release date: May 1, 2024 [eBook #73515]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1928
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE PEOPLE ***
“The air was full of little flickering flames, which were knife-blades glitttering in the sunlight.”
THE STRANGE PEOPLE
By Murray Leinster
According to Cunningham’s schedule there was a perfectly feasible route to romance and to high adventure. It began wherever you happened to be and led to Boston. There you took a train to Hatton Junction and changed to an accomodation train of one passenger coach and one baggage car. That led you to Bendale, New Hampshire, and there you hired a team. Both romance and adventure were to be found somewhere around Coulters, which was eight miles from Bendale. Cunningham was sure nobody else knew this secret because he had found it in a highly unlikely place and almost anybody else who happened to look there would find only dry statistics and descriptions.
However, as he boarded the accomodation train he inspected his fellow passengers carefully. One upon a quest like Cunningham’s likes to feel that his secret is his alone.
At first glance the passenger coach was reassuring. There were a dozen or more passengers, but with two exceptions they were plainly people of the countryside. New England farmers. Two women who had been shopping at the Junction and were comparing their bargains. A swarthy French-Canadian mill-hand with his dark-eyed sweetheart. Odds and ends of humanity; the “characters” one finds in any New England village.
But even the two men Cunningham recognized as outsiders like himself were wholly unlikely to be upon the same quest. One had the solid, pleasant expression of a safe-and-sane man of business on his vacation, perhaps in search of a good fishing-stream. The other was a foreigner, immaculately dressed and with waxed mustaches, who was reading something that Cunningham could not see and exhibiting all the signs of mounting rage. Cunningham might have become curious about the foreigner at another time. He might have tried to guess at his race and wonder what reading-matter could fill any man with such evident fury.
But being upon the last stages of the route to romance, Cunningham thought of nothing else. As to whether the girl would be as attractive as her picture, he had no idea. Whether or not she had been married since it was taken, he could not tell. What reception he would receive at the end of his journey was highly problematical. He might be regarded as insane. He might—and he hugged the knowledge to him tightly—he might run a very excellent chance of being killed.
This was folly, of course, but Cunningham had an ample excuse. For ten years he had toiled at a desk. He had worn a green celluloid eye-shade and added up figures in a tall ledger, or made notes in a day-book, or duly pounded out, “Yours of the fifteenth instant received and in reply would state...” at the dictation of his employer. For eight hours out of the twenty-four, for eleven and a half months out of the twelve, he made memos or orders and payments and violations imposed and repairs made, and all connected with the business of a firm which installed and repaired elevators.
And now he was free. An uncle, dimly remembered, had died without any heirs but Cunningham. Cunningham had inherited fifty thousand dollars and within ten minutes after receiving the news had resigned his job and punched his employer’s rather bulbous nose.
Now he was in quest of adventure and romance. He considered that he had earned them both. Ten years of law-abiding citizenship in New York entitled him to all of adventure he could gather, and ten years in a boarding-house earned him at least one authentic romance.
Cunningham had in his pocket the picture of a girl who lived a mile and a half from Coulters, New Hampshire. The picture had been taken four months before and her name was Maria. She was a pretty girl and had smiled at the camera without self-consciousness. That was all that Cunningham knew about her, but he had built up dreams to supply the rest. And he was quite insanely confident that where she was, there would be romance.
But romance alone would not do. There must be adventure as well. And adventure was duly promised. The picture was in the Geographic Magazine which travel- and adventure-hungry folk devour. It was one of the illustrations of an article prosaically entitled Ethnological Studies in New Hampshire, which very soberly outlined the radical traits of New Englanders and the immigrants who are supplanting them. And Maria was a Stranger—one of a group of people who were a mystery and an enigma to all those around them.
They were two hundred people of unknown origin who spoke English far purer than the New Hampshireites around them and avoided contact with their neighbors with a passionate sincerity. They could not be classified even by the expert on races of men who had written the article. They were not Americans or Anglo-Saxons. They were not any known people. But whatever they were, they were splendid specimens, and they were hated by their neighbors, and they kept strictly away from all contact with all other folk. The New Englanders charitably retailed rumors that more than one inquisitive visitor among them had mysteriously disappeared. Strangest of all, they had appeared from nowhere just two years before. They had bought
ground and paid for it in new, rough gold. And they refused violently to give any account of themselves.
This was where Cunningham was going. Where the prettiest girl in the world had smiled unconsciously at a camera just four months before. Where a magnificent unknown race was represented in the hodgepodge of New England’s later day. Where inquisitive strangers might mysteriously disappear, where certain hostility awaited too much questioning—and where the prettiest girl in the world might possibly be induced to smile.
Cunningham knew it was foolish, but he considered that he had earned the right to be a fool.
Then he looked up. The solid-looking man just opposite him had unfastened his suit-case and taken out a sheaf of magazine pages, neatly clipped together. He began to go through them as if they were totally familiar. Cunningham caught a glimpse of a picture among them, and started. It was the same article from the same magazine that had sent him here.
Then he heard a snarl, as of one who has contained himself until he can do so no longer. His head jerked around and he found himself staring at the foreigner who had seemed so angry. The man had the Geographic Magazine in his hand. It was open at the page— the very page—on which the girl was pictured. But the foreigner was looking at the type. Otherwise Cunningham as one in quest of romance and adventure would have felt it necessary to interfere an instant later. Because the foreigner glared at the page as if he had read something that infuriated him past all possible control and suddenly ripped the sheet across and across again, and threw the magazine upon the floor and stamped upon it in a frenzy of rage.
He saw eyes fixed upon him, some startled and some slyly amused. He sat down quivering with wrath and pretended to stare out of the window. But Cunningham saw that his hands were clenching and unclenching as if he imagined that he had something in his grasp which he would rend to bits.
The accommodation train made innumerable stops. It stopped at “South Upton.” It puffed into motion and paused at “East Upton.” A little later it drew up grandly at “Upton.” Then it passed through “North Upton.”
The comfortable-looking man opposite Cunningham looked across and smiled.
“Now, if we stop at West Upton,” he suggested, “we can go on to a new name.”
Cunningham nodded and on impulse pulled the Geographic Magazine out of his pocket and held it up.
“Same trail?” he asked.
The other man frowned and looked keenly at him. Then his face relaxed.
“I belong to the lodge,” he admitted. “Here’s my copy.”
Cunningham jerked his head at the third man.
“He had one too. He just tore it up. It seemed to make him mad.”
“That so?” The other looked steadily back at the foreign-seeming man, who was staring out of the window with his face pale with fury. “Let’s ask him.”
He caught the foreigner’s eye an instant later and held up the magazine, opened at the article on the Strange People.
“How about it? You going there too?” he asked pleasantly.
The foreigner went purple with fury.
“No!” he gasped, half-strangled with his own wrath. “I do not know what you are talking about!”
He jerked himself around in his seat until they could see only his profile. But they could see his lips moving as if he were muttering savagely to himself.
“My name’s Cunningham,” said Cunningham. “I want to see those people. They sound sort of interesting.”
“And my name’s Gray,” said the other, shifting to a seat beside Cunningham. “I’m interested, too. I want to hear them talk. Dialect, you know. It’s my hobby.”
“But they’re supposed to talk perfectly good English——” began Cunningham, when he stopped short.
The train had halted leisurely at a tiny station and the conductor was gossiping with an ancient worthy on the station platform. A single passenger had boarded the coach and entered the door. He looked unmistakably unlike the other natives in the car, though he was dressed precisely in the fashion of the average New Englander. But as he came into full view at the end of the aisle he caught sight of the foreign passenger Cunningham had puzzled over.
The newcomer turned a sickly gray in color. He gave a gasp, and then a yell of fear. He turned and bolted from the train, while the foreign passenger started from his seat and with the expression of a devil raced after him. The newcomer darted into a clump of trees and brushwood and vanished. The well-dressed passenger stood quivering on the platform of the day-coach. The conductor gaped at him. The other passengers stared.
Then the well-dressed man came quietly back inside and to his seat. Veins were standing out on his forehead from fury and his hands were shaking with rage. He sat down and stared woodenly out of the window, holding himself still by a terrific effort of will.
Gray glanced sidewise at Cunningham.
“It looks,” he observed in a low tone, “as if our trail will have some interesting developments. That man who just ran away was one of the Strange People. He looks like the pictures of them. It ought to be lively up in the hills when our friend yonder arrives. Eh?”
“I—I’ll say so,” said Cunningham joyously.
He talked jerkily with Gray as the train finished its journey. Without really realizing it, he told Gray nearly everything connected with his journey and his quest. Cunningham was busily weaving wild theories to account for the scene when the first of the Strange People appeared before the third passenger. Otherwise he might have recognized the fact that Gray was very cleverly pumping him of everything he knew. But that did not occur to him until later.
Gray looked more at ease when the train reached Bendale and he and Cunningham sought a hotel together. They saw the third man sending a telegram and, again, arranging for a horse and buggy at a livery stable. He ignored them, but his lips were pressed together in thin, cruel lines.
Cunningham was very well satisfied as he arranged for his room and for a team to take him to Coulters the next day. Ostensibly he was going to try for some fishing, though nothing larger than minnows would be found in that section. But Cunningham considered that the route to romance and adventure was beginning to offer promise.
Still, next morning both he and Gray were startled when the hotelkeeper came to them agitatedly.
“There was three strangers on the train yesterday, wa’n’t there?” he asked in a high-pitched voice that trembled with excitement.
“Yes,” said Cunningham. “Why?”
“D’ye know the other man?” asked the hotelkeeper excitedly. “Know who he was or anything?”
“No, not at all,” Cunningham answered alertly, while Gray listened.
“Would ye recognize him if ye saw him?” quavered the hotelkeeper.
“Of course,” said Cunningham. “Why? What’s the matter?”
Gray had struck a match to light a cigar, but it burned his fingers as he listened.
“He rented a horse an’ buggy last night,” quavered the native. “He drove off to Coulters way, he said. An’ this mornin’ the horse came back with him in the buggy, but he was dead.”
“Dead!” Cunningham jumped and found himself growing a trifle pale.
“Yes, dead, that’s what he is!” said the innkeeper shrilly. “Them Strange People done it! Because it looks like he was beat to death with clubs an’ maybe fifty men was on the job!”
The route to romance led through Bendale to Coulters, but now there was a dead man in the way. It had taken youth and hope and several other things to set out as Cunningham had done in the first place. The quest of a pictured smile among a strange people in unfamiliar country is not a thing the average young man can bring himself to. He will be afraid of looking foolish. But to continue on the quest when one has just seen a dead man the girl’s own people have killed, more courage still is needed.
Cunningham was not quite so joyous now. He had gone with Gray to identify the foreigner. He had turned sick at the expression on the man’s face. He had promised to stay within call for the inquest. And then he and Gray had gone on to Coulters.
Cunningham was not happy. Here was adventure, but it was stark and depressing. And romance. The pictured face was no less appealing and no less ideal. But the picture had been taken four months before In the interval what might not have happened? Many people were concerned in the killing of the foreigner. Did the girl of the photograph know of it? Was she in the secret of the death that had been dealt out? Did she know who had killed the man, or why?
“You’d a lot better have stayed behind, Cunningham,” said Gray, as their team jogged over the country road to the summer boardinghouse where they were to stay. “I don’t think this is going to be pleasant from now on. No place for a romance-hunter.”
“You’re not staying back,” Cunningham observed. “And you’re just following a hobby.”
“Umph. That dialect business. Yes,” said Gray. His lips twitched grimly. “But a hobby can be as exacting as a profession. Still, I didn’t expect to come up here and run slap into a first-class murder.”
Gray puffed on his cigar and slapped the horses with the reins.
“The pleasantest part,” he added, “is that we shall probably be just about as unwelcome as that chap was last night.”
Cunningham did not answer, and they drove in silence for a long time.
Discomforting thoughts assailed Cunningham. He knew as clearly as anyone that it was absurd to grow romantic about a girl merely from a picture. But though it may be absurd, it is by no means uncommon. The obtaining of autographed photographs from Hollywood ranks with radio as a national occupation. Cunningham was not disturbed by the comparative idiocy of traveling several hundred miles and running into some danger just to see a girl whose picture haunted his dreams. But the thought of finding her involved in such an unpleasant mess as the killing of the foreigner; that was different.
A tidy-minded person would have abandoned the quest at once. He would have abandoned the clearly marked trail to romance and high adventure and gone home. A man who acted upon sober common sense would have done the same thing. But such persons do not ever find romance and very rarely even the mildest of adventures. It takes folly and belief to come at romance!—such folly as enabled Cunningham presently to see his duty clear before him.
Maria needed someone to protect her. She was a Stranger, and the native New Hampshireites hated the Strange People cordially. Cunningham had heard enough at the police station that morning to know that the investigation of the foreigner’s killing would be close to a persecution. But if Cunningham were there, near enough to protect the girl who had smiled so shyly yet so pleasantly at the camera, why——
Gray grunted suddenly.
“There’s our boarding-house,” he said, pointing with the whip. “I suppose the Strange People live up in the hills yonder.”
Cunningham stared up at green-clad giants that were tumbled here and there and everywhere in inextricable confusion and grandeur. Hill and valley, vale and mountain, reared up or dipped down until it seemed that as far as the eye could reach the earth had once been a playground of Titans.
A four-square, angular building of typical New England build lay beside the road at the foot of the hills.
“They came here,” grunted Gray, waving his whip. “They had gold, rough gold, to buy ground with. Where did they come from and why did they pick out this part of the world to settle in? The soil’s too thin to grow anything much but hay. The ground’s so rough you have to sow your fields with a shotgun. The biggest crops are stones and summer boarders.”
“I’m wondering,” said Cunningham, whose thoughts had wandered as his eyes roved the heights, “I’m wondering were they knew that chap that was killed.”
“Where they knew him?”
“The Stranger on the train recognized him at first glance. But that chap had a copy of the Geographic Magazine and he’d found where they were from that. He had learned about them just as we did.”
Gray frowned. Then he looked respectfully at Cunningham.
“You’re right. They knew him somewhere, a couple of years ago. But where?”
Cunningham shrugged.
“The article says nowhere.”
And the article did. According to the writer, the Strange People were an enigma, an anomaly, and a mystery And they had just proved that they could be a threat as well.
The livery team drew up before Coulters’ solitary building. It was a crossroads post-office and summer hotel with a dreary general store tucked under one wing.
A man was sitting on the porch, smoking. He was watching them intently and as they alighted he rose to greet them.
One glance made Cunningham exclaim under his breath. This man was the counterpart of the foreigner on the train—the one who had been killed. The same olive skin, the same keen and venomous eyes, and even the same too-full lips with their incongruous suggestion of cruelty. He was dressed, too, in the same immaculate fashion from meticulously tailored clothes to handmade boots.
“How do you do?” he said politely. “I’ve been hoping to find you here. You reached Bendale on yesterday’s train?”
Gray’s face was quite impassive.
“Yes,” he admitted.
The foreigner exhibited half a dozen magazine pages. They were the ones containing the article on the Strange People which had brought both Gray and Cunningham to the spot.
“I believe you recognize this?”
Gray nodded, watching the man keenly.
“Before you arrange for rooms,” suggested the foreigner, smiling so that his teeth showed unpleasantly, “I would like to speak to you a moment. My brother saw you on the train. He telegraphed for me to meet you here. I may add that I had myself driven all night over very bad roads to get here, and I probably ruined a car in trying to meet you.”
“Well?” asked Gray shortly.
The foreigner reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wallet. He opened it, and an incredible mass of yellow-backed bills was exposed to view.
“In the first place,” he said pleasantly, “I would like to offer each of you a present—let us say, five thousand dollars apiece—just to go home and forget that you ever saw that magazine article or ever heard of the Strange People in the hills up there.”
Gray turned to the buckboard and began to hand down his suitcases. The last of them was on the ground before he spoke.
“I’m afraid we can’t do business,” he said without expression. “I am here on a matter of scientific interest. I want to study their dialect. By the way, have you had any news from Bendale this morning?”
The foreigner shook his head impatiently.
“News? No. But if I make it ten thousand——”
“I’m afraid not,” said Gray pleasantly. “I’m not in a money-making business. My friend Cunningham may be willing to take you up.”
But Cunningham tossed his own suit-cases down.
“No,” he said contentedly. “I came here for fun. For adventure, if you choose to put it that way. And anything I’m offered so much to stay out of must be too much fun to miss.”
The foreigner gnawed at his fingertips as they started for the hotel.
“Wait a moment,” he said urgently. “Perhaps we can still come to some agreement. You wish to study dialect? You wish to find adventure? We may still work together.”
“How?” Gray put down his suitcases to light a cigar, while he gazed abstractedly at the foreign-looking man.
“I—I—er—my name is Vladimir,” said the foreigner nervously. “I will promise you five thousand dollars each and all assistance in your separate desires. You”—he spoke to Gray—“you will have all opportunities to hear them talk and study their speech. And you, er, you shall have all the adventures the hills afford. If only you will, er, help us to maintain a certain, er, discretion.”
Cunningham found himself disliking this man extremely.
“Discretion?” he demanded. “You mean keep our mouths shut?”
Vladimir beamed at him.
“Ah, yes! You are a young man. Adventure? There are pretty girls in the hills. I will give them orders. You will find them fascinating. And five thousand dollars in addition to smiles——”
“Suppose you talk plainly,” said Gray shortly, before Cunningham could speak.
“You will find my brother among the Strangers,” Vladimir told them eagerly. “You saw him on the train. Find him and tell him of the bargain I have just made with you. And he will tell you just what you may repeat or speak of what you see. And if you agree to work with us I will give you more money. Ten thousand dollars!”
“But what is the work you are planning?” asked Gray, again before Cunningham could reply. Cunningham was seething.
“It would not be wise to say. But the sheriff of the county has agreed to work with us—for a gift, of course—and will assist us with the full force of the law. If he does so, there can be no objection to your aiding us.”
“Oh,” said Gray gently. “The sheriff’s in it too?”
“To be sure. He—he will guide you to my brother,” offered Vladimir eagerly. “Do not go inside the hotel. Let the sheriff take you to the hotel where my brother waits. Talk to my brother. And you will earn ten thousand dollars each!”
Cunningham’s head began to whirl. Vladimir hadn’t heard of the death of his brother. But he had some plan to the detriment of the Strange People, and so obviously of Maria. Otherwise he would not have found it necessary to bribe the sheriff. And yet, both Vladimir and his brother had been at a long distance the day before. They had hurried here on learning where the Strange People were. The Strange People knew them and feared them; might even be hiding especially from them! But why?
Cunningham could not explain it, but he knew that he had not mistaken the route to adventure. Coulters was on the way. But there was a mile and a half still to go.
Gray moved suddenly.
“Cunningham, if you want to take up this proposition—”
Cunningham picked up his bags and moved toward the hotel.
“I can’t fill the contract,” he said shortly.
“But it is so simple!” protested Vladimir. “Simply talk to my brother ——”
Gray was already up on the porch.
“Can’t do even that,” he said grimly “You evidently haven’t heard. You’d better get Bendale on the ’phone and find out. Your brother was on the train with us yesterday, it’s true. He went up to the village of the Strangers last night. But his horse brought his body back this morning. They’d killed him.”
Vladimir gasped, and went ashen. Sheer incredulity flashed across his features. Then he believed and was stunned. But there was no grief whatever to be seen on his face. Instead there was a terrible wrath, a rage so beastly and cruel that Cunningham shivered when he saw it.
“They killed him, eh?” he said very softly, like a cat purring. “They dared to kill him, eh? Ah, when I am through with them they will go down on their knees and beg me to kill them! Beg me!”
His eyes were fixed and glassy with fury. Cunningham instinctively looked for the foam of madness to appear upon his lips. But he turned and went softly within the hotel.
“Charming example of family affection,” said Gray. “Why didn’t you take his money?”
“I wouldn’t miss this,” Cunningham told him, “for ten times five thousand. What in blazes is up in those hills?”
“I suggest,” Gray said dryly, “that we go and see. Got a gun?”
Cunningham nodded.
“There’s no time like the present,” grunted Gray. “The sheriff was over here, busily being bribed, when that killing was discovered. Let’s get up in the hills before it’s overrun with deputies. It won’t take a second to get our rooms.”
As a matter of fact it was nearly an hour later when they strode out of the hotel and made abruptly for the mountain-slope.
For another hour they scrambled up stiff slopes among thorny brushwood and small trees. Cunningham was already trying to sort out the hodgepodge of events. Adventure—or mystery at any rate— crowded about him. Romance must inevitably follow. That seemed so certain that he was almost able to discount it. He was sure by now that Gray was not in the hills for any study of dialects, and he contentedly ran over the list to date. A killing and the offer of a bribe.
A corrupted sheriff and the threat of ‘unspeakable revenge. And Gray
Cunningham, you see, was following a definite route which cut across common sense and sanity. Therefore he kept his eyes open more widely than Gray And therefore he was tingling all over with a not altogether pleasant thrill when Gray turned on him suddenly.
“Cunningham,” he said sharply, “tell me the truth for once. Why did you come up here? Who sent you?”
Cunningham grinned, casting little side-glances at the trees about him.
“Nobody,” he said joyously. “I came up here for adventure and for romance. And I’m finding them. For instance, there are half a dozen people hiding behind those trees and watching us.”
“The devil!” Gray stopped short and stared about him. It was a creepy feeling to realize that they were being spied upon from the woods. Suddenly he saw a furtive movement as a blurred figure slipped from behind one trunk to another. Its figure was that of a man, but he could see nothing else about it. “Creepy, eh?” said Gray grimly.
“There’s a girl with them,” Cunningham told him. “The girl. Maria.”
But Gray rushed suddenly at a clump of brushwood as if to seize something hiding there. A human figure started up and plunged away. And then something came flicking through the air, glittering, and stuck fast in a tree-trunk with a dull “ping!” It was a long-bladed knife, and it had missed Gray’s throat by inches.
And without a word or a sign the air seemed suddenly full of the little flickering flames which were knife-blades glittering in the sunlight. And which, also, were death.
Cunningham flung himself down on the ground. His revolver came out instinctively, but he shouted, “We’re friends, you idiots! Friends!”
There was no answer, but the knives stopped their silent rush through the air. It seemed as if the hidden men in the forest were debating in whispers, and the stillness was deadly. Cunningham lay still, gradually worming his revolver around to a convenient position for firing. He was tingling all over, but he found himself thinking with a supreme irrelevance that he thought he had seen the girl whose picture crackled in his breast pocket as he moved. He was quite sure of it.
He stood up suddenly and began to dust himself off. It was taking a chance, but it was wise. A young man stepped out from among the trees near by.
“You are our friends?” the young man demanded skeptically. “We have no friends.”
His speech had but the faintest of slurs in it, a teasing soft unfamiliarity which pricked one’s curiosity but could never be identified in any one syllable, much less put down in print.
Cunningham felt an abrupt relief, and quite as abruptly wanted to swear. He knew that this was the end of the route to romance and that the girl, Maria, was peering out from the tangled underbrush. And he had dived head foremost into a patch of loam and looked most unromantic. Therefore he said wrathfully, “If we weren’t your friends, don’t you think we’d have plugged into you with our gats? We saw you. You know that!”
The young man stared at him and Cunningham tried to rub the dirt off his nose and look dignified at the same time, thinking of the girl behind the trees.
Then the young man said skeptically, “What is a gat?”
“A revolver. A pistol. A handgun,” snapped Cunningham. “We’d have wiped out the lot of you.”
