Chapter 1. Sisyphus: Pacifying the Capillary Valleys
 
According to Greek mythology, the gods punished prideful King Sisyphus by forcing him to endlessly push a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back each time. When the American Army encountered the towering mountains of northeast Afghanistan, they came to appreciate the Sisyphean task. When American soldiers trekked up the mountains, the insurgents fled, returning after the Americans left.  Like ocean waves, the Americans rolled in, and out, and in again.
 
The Korengal Valley became the symbol of that frustration, if not the metaphor for the war. Although abandoned in mid-2010, the American outpost in the Korengal was not a memorial to a clueless military. Far from it – and far more sobering – the Korengal was key to a diligent, thoughtful strategy. The notion that “true counterinsurgency” began with President Obama’s surge strategy in 2010 was incorrect. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan began four years earlier, with decidedly mixed results.
 
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The Terrain
 
From the capital of Kabul, a wide valley stretches 30 miles eastward to the Khyber Pass, the main crossing point into Pakistan. North of the Khyber, the high mountain passes are snowbound during winter. The four provinces northeast of Kabul are of little commercial value, inhabited by insular tribes resentful of outsiders. Beginning in 2002, Special Forces teams and Army and Marine battalions pursued the terrorist bands hiding in Nuristan, Nangarhar, Konar and Laghman, or N2KL.
 
Konar consists of bundles of forested mountains sliced by capillary valleys and riverbeds. In ...