Thomas O’Neil grew up in the Delaware Valley of New Jersey, where organized crime was simply part of the landscape. Legitimate businesses and labor unions often sat close to the Philadelphia underworld.
His father’s industrial roofing company operated in that world. O’Neil himself never became a criminal. He played college football, graduated with a business degree in 1998, and took a job as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley.
In the spring of 2000, while attending sales training inside the World Trade Center, the 26-year-old walked out of class, told his instructors he was sick, and went straight to the Marine Corps recruiting office in Manhattan. Commissioned in April 2001, he was ordered into the infantry by a captain from 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (3/7) who saw potential in the former college quarterback.
Two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, O’Neil graduated The Basic School and headed to the Infantry Officer Course; He then joined 3/7 at Twentynine Palms.
As the weapons platoon commander and fire support team leader with Lima Company, O’Neil led the bombardment of the Iraqi border town of Safwan on the opening day of the 2003 invasion.
His team became one of the most lethal fire support elements in the 1st Marine Division. After the fall of Baghdad, the battalion moved to Karbala for stability operations. There, O’Neil used the sales skills he learned at Morgan Stanley to build relationships, restart the local police department, and serve for a month as the de facto police chief.
Redeployed to Al Qaim in Al Anbar Province, he was handpicked by his battalion commander to lead negotiations with the governing sheikh. He was wounded by an al-Qaeda IED that was likely buried just inches away from being fatal.
After the death of his close friend, First Lieutenant Ron Winchester, O’Neil decided he had had enough. He left the Marine Corps at the end of his obligation.
Back Into the Fight
In early 2005, O’Neil was hired by Globecomm Systems as country manager for large World Bank and USAID telecommunications contracts in Afghanistan. The company was building two national networks for the Ministry of Communications.
The local partner was Watan Telecom, controlled by a powerful businessman who was a cousin of President Hamid Karzai, a former drug trafficker, and one-time Taliban spokesman.
The moment O’Neil met the man at a Chinese restaurant in Kabul, the recognition was instant. “This guy’s a gangster, and this is a mafia power structure,” O’Neil recalled in an interview with Military.com. The New Jersey background that had never drawn him into crime suddenly became useful. “I thought back to growing up around those guys,” he said.
It was time to play the mafia game.
O’Neil became a trusted associate inside the organization, briefly served as CEO of Watan Telecom during the project’s critical phase, and sat on the board of the larger Watan Group.
In December 2005, Karzai commissioned both networks. O’Neil credits the success almost entirely to how carefully he managed the relationship. “Playing the mafia game enabled the United States to have a major geopolitical achievement,” he said.
Consigliere to a Warlord
Over the following years, O’Neil remained in Afghanistan and Central Asia. He helped pioneer the Northern Distribution Network, the alternative surface supply routes through Central Asia designed to reduce Pakistan’s stranglehold on the traditional ground line of communication from Karachi. He also began supporting U.S. intelligence agencies, first on counterterrorism work and later on counterintelligence.
In 2011, his reputation inside the Popalzai tribe and his combat record as a Marine infantry officer brought him to the attention of General Matiullah Khan, the powerful pro-NATO warlord who controlled much of Uruzgan Province. Matiullah had fought alongside Marines years earlier and already trusted the Corps. He brought O’Neil into his inner circle.
Matiullah was a complicated figure. He commanded thousands of fighters funded in part by opium profits and was considered vital to Joint Special Operations Command and NATO success in the south. He was also close to Karzai. O’Neil stayed at the warlord’s compound near a key U.S. Special Forces base in Tarin Kot and became, in effect, his consigliere.
The relationship mirrored other uneasy partnerships U.S. forces formed with local power brokers during the war. In Kandahar, for example, coalition units relied heavily on police chief Abdul Raziq. O’Neil’s experience with Matiullah was another chapter in that same story: Americans who understood they had to work with the men who actually held power on the ground.
When Matiullah faced serious human-rights accusations, he asked O’Neil whether he had contacts at the International Committee of the Red Cross who might help. O’Neil declined. Instead he arranged positive media coverage, bringing in a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and photographer. The resulting Los Angeles Times profile in December 2012 portrayed Matiullah as “America’s go-to man” in Uruzgan.
Shortly before the story was published, O’Neil received a warning from his handler at NATO headquarters in Kabul that his life was in danger because of the closeness of the relationship. He left Afghanistan.
Not long afterward, Matiullah was assassinated. O’Neil said the official account of the killing was completely fabricated. The real story, he said, involved a foreign intelligence agency. He plans to detail exactly what happened in an upcoming book.
Getting One’s Hands Dirty
Looking back, O’Neil is clear about what made him effective. His combat reputation as a Marine infantry officer mattered. So did the simple fact that he always paid people on time and treated them with respect. But the decisive advantage, he said, was the informal education he received growing up around organized crime figures in New Jersey.
“I’m not sure there are too many Americans who can say they had the type of experience I had over there,” O’Neil said. Most Americans, he added, never saw the seedy underbelly of the Afghan power structure that actually determined outcomes on the ground.
Official strategy papers and PowerPoint briefings rarely captured it. Working inside that world required getting one’s hands dirty and understanding the unwritten rules of a different kind of game.
I had to do the dirty work. I had to get my hands dirty.
O’Neil has presented his experiences at the United States Military Academy and the Virginia Military Institute. He is now working with retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Asad “Genghis” Khan on a book that will expand on the story.
For a generation of Marines and soldiers who spent years in Afghanistan, his account offers a rare, unfiltered look at the human networks that often mattered more than firepower.
Wars are ultimately decided by people. Firepower matters. Understanding culture, building trust, and navigating complex human networks often matter just as much.
Read the full article here