[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-107]
AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES ON U.S. STRATEGY, PART 3
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
NOVEMBER 17, 2009
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM COOPER, Tennessee TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
GLENN NYE, Virginia DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
Drew Walter, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Trey Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, November 17, 2009, Afghanistan and Iraq: Perspectives on
U.S. Strategy, Part 3.......................................... 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, November 17, 2009....................................... 41
----------
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2009
AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES ON U.S. STRATEGY, PART 3
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 1
WITNESSES
Clark, Gen. Wesley K., USA (Ret.), Chairman and CEO, Wesley K.
Clark & Associates............................................. 2
Dorronsoro, Dr. Gilles, Visiting Scholar, South Asia Program,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace..................... 8
Kagan, Dr. Kimberly, President, Institute for the Study of War... 6
Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., President, Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments.......................................... 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Clark, Gen. Wesley K......................................... 48
Dorronsoro, Dr. Gilles....................................... 67
Kagan, Dr. Kimberly.......................................... 55
Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F.................................... 79
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 45
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES ON U.S. STRATEGY, PART 3
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, November 17, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:03 p.m., in
room 210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman of
the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. The hearing will come to order.
I am going to dispense with any statement of my own so we
can get right to the witnesses. Mr. Wittman, anything you would
like to say?
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wittman. No, Mr. Chairman, I would do the same. I would
ask unanimous consent for my comments to be entered into the
record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 45.]
Dr. Snyder. Your statement will be made part of the record.
All of the witnesses' written statements will be made part of
the record, including the two articles by Dr. Kagan, two
articles by Dr. Kagan, correct?
Dr. Kagan. Correct.
Dr. Snyder. And we are very pleased today to have you all
here with us. This is our third in a series of hearings on
directions in Afghanistan, of course in relationship with what
is going on in Iraq also.
Our witnesses today are General Wesley Clark, a retired
United States Army General, Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark
& Associates; Dr. Kimberly Kagan, the Founder and President of
the Institute for the Study of War; Dr. Gilles Dorronsoro,
Visiting Scholar at the South Asia Program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace; and Dr. Andy Krepinevich,
the President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments.
We appreciate you all for being here. As some of you may
know, Wes Clark lives like one block from me, and this is the
only time I see him is when he is testifying in Washington.
We will turn the five-minute clock on for your oral
statements, but more to give you an idea of the time. If you
have more things you want to tell us, even when you see the red
light go on, that is fine, too.
So, General Clark, we will begin with you.
STATEMENT OF GEN. WESLEY K. CLARK, USA (RET.), CHAIRMAN AND
CEO, WESLEY K. CLARK & ASSOCIATES
General Clark. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much,
distinguished members of this committee. It is a pleasure to be
here with you to talk with you about the important questions of
national strategy and our military endeavor in Afghanistan. I
have given you a prepared statement. Let me just summarize the
key points from it.
First of all, I want to say up front I am greatly in
sympathy with the military commanders, especially General
McChrystal, who has asked for more troops. He needs them to
provide for security for the population, to train the Afghan
forces, to impede and constrain Taliban reinforcement and
replenishment along the border with Pakistan. If I were in his
position, I would have undoubtedly asked for more troops.
But that is not the principal question we should be
addressing here today, however great the outcry is demanding an
answer. What we should be talking about here is the purpose of
our engagement, our specific mission, the strategy and its
requirements for success in diplomatic, political, economic,
and military terms. And only after these requirements have been
established are we able to get into the specific troop
requirements.
I want to say at the outset that I am very proud of the
Obama Administration, because I think they are taking the time
that is required to do the kind of in-depth strategic review.
And this is not, as best I can determine, just a strategic
review that is a bunch of number crunching and budget
calculations and in and out between the Pentagon and across the
Potomac. I think this is a searching examination of the basis
for U.S. policy in the region and a thorough exploration of
alternatives. I don't know when it is going to be concluded, I
am not a part of that, but everything I see about it gives me
assurance that we are asking the kinds of fundamental questions
that need to be asked.
The legacy of Vietnam, and as someone who fought there and
came home on a stretcher and who was deeply involved in
thinking about the policy for my entire military career, it is
particularly painful to me to see where we are in Afghanistan.
I recall from the early- and mid-sixties similar issues being
talked about when we were escalating our presence in Vietnam.
The same pleading for more troops. The same diplomatic
constraints hindering cross-border operations.
There was never any doubt the source of the war was North
Vietnam, its military, its political leadership. And yet we
were self-deterred from taking the kind of appropriate actions
against that, and we tried to fight the war in South Vietnam.
We tried to balance military needs, strategic concerns outside
of Vietnam, and political support in the United States. And in
the case of Vietnam we mostly did it wrong. When we could have
used decisive military means early on, we were self-deterred.
When we piecemealed and gradually reinforced, we lost public
support anyway. And when we finally attempted to use decisive
force, it was too late strategically.
Now every conflict is different, and Afghanistan is not
Vietnam, but we got to learn from our experiences there. There
are some worrisome similarities in both conflicts, including a
local government that lacks legitimacy and of course the whole
bureaucratic politics of military escalation, U.S. public
support, that have changed little in 40 years.
So you have to begin by asking, ``What is the purpose in
Afghanistan?'' Well, it is not to defeat al Qaeda because they
are largely not there. It is not to create a functioning
Western-style democracy, because that is clearly beyond our
means in a nation that is 90 percent illiterate, imbued with a
much different value system. So it must be something less. What
it seems to me that we seek there is to prevent the emergence
of a terrorist state that would physically harbor al Qaeda and
use its diplomatic and legal authority as weapons against the
very international system of which it is a member.
Now these are minimalist objectives. They could be met by
diplomacy, by promoting economic development, regional economic
integration, acting through allies, threats, preemptive
strikes, and limited incursions. And of course you can
strengthen your defenses at home. In principle our purpose
there does not require the reconstruction of Afghanistan any
more than reconstructing Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and other
locations where terrorist are or have found shelter.
We should have declared the war in Afghanistan over when we
broke the back of the Taliban force and captured Osama bin
Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, but of course we didn't
take Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. He and the
senior leadership of al Qaeda remain a threat, and so now
together with our NATO allies we have about 100,000 troops, we
are in Afghanistan, and we simply cannot abruptly reverse U.S.
policy. We can't abandon government in Afghanistan. We can't
withdraw promptly our forces there, however much we might want
to, without having adverse consequences far beyond Afghanistan
and especially impacting on the government of Pakistan.
We can see experience after experience with this. Al Qaeda
would claim credit, terrorist recruitment would surge,
subversion within states allied and friendly with us would
intensify, Pakistan's stability would be further undercut, and
U.S. power and prestige would wane. We would be dramatically
increasing the threat.
But on the other hand, the longer we stay, the larger our
force, the more resistance and resentment that we might create
by disruptive influences, by the casualties we inflict
accidentally. We are a foreign element in a culture which
doesn't tolerate diversity. However appealing it is to us to
say that we have got to be strong enough and resolute to stay
there, that is not our problem. The United States is one of the
most resolute of countries. Our problem is that we are dealing
with an Islamic revival, a struggle to cope with the spiritual
impact of modernization and globalism, and that revival draws
energy from the antagonisms our presence creates.
So we need to find a way out, we need to seize credit for
the successes we have achieved and then continue to deal with
the region.
So the approach I am recommending is focused on
understanding an exit strategy and working toward it. The best
exit strategy would be after we have taken down the complete
leadership of al Qaeda in Pakistan. Now I know we have the
number three guy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, going on trial in New
York and he claims he is responsible for everything. If that
were true, that would be great. I am not sure if it is true,
but we do believe that there is still substantial al Qaeda
leadership in Pakistan.
The discussion of this has been publicly suppressed and
probably should remain so, but I hope it will be foremost in
the minds of the Administration.
In the meantime, in Afghanistan we have to build an exit
strategy around four factors: Attempting to reduce the level of
violence by seeking a political amelioration of the conflict;
greater assistance to the government of Pakistan in dealing
with al Qaeda and the Taliban remaining in Pakistan; economic
development in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and developing a more
capable security structure for the Afghans.
Just to highlight some of the details, I think you have got
to provide incentives to create a more representative, more
legitimate government there.
You could frame these incentives around individual leaders,
you could you talk about specific structural changes in the
government, you could provide economic development
opportunities. These could be positive or negative incentives.
They have got to be worked, it has got to be a process. This is
not about simply going to Hamid Karzai and say, ``Oh, that's
it, Mr. Karzai, here is the five things you got to do and you
got 24 hours to get them done.'' So but he should be--he has to
take the lead one way or another in this.
Your military strength, your reinforcements or your
withdrawals, maybe that is an inducement to various parties,
but I would say that additional troop reinforcements in spite
of the strategy are not unreasonable. And if I were the
commander I would sure be asking for them. You cannot achieve
what you want to achieve there if you are forced off the
battlefield. You have got to have a platform of military
success to achieve the rest of it.
So as the political process moves forward, maybe you talk
about an exit date, maybe you have it conditioned, maybe it is
a specific timeline. I don't rule anything out on the process.
Maybe you have an outside presence like a United Nations
umbrella as we did in Haiti in 1994-1995 with a U.S. Government
advisory and assistance mission that works in parallel with
that, but you have got to find a way to deal with the process
in some way politically.
You have got to help Pakistan. They have got to be leased
the additional hardware, provided access to intelligence,
intelligence collection systems, given appropriate incentives
to deal with al Qaeda. They have got to have the systems to
strengthen their internal security. And at the same time we
should be focusing on a very strong Pakistani economic
development effort, and we should take credit for it publicly.
One of the things that Pakistanis always tell me is, ``You all
don't leave any monuments, you try to make your assistance a
secret, why don't you build a monument and advertise what the
United States has done there.''
But we must encourage and demand that Pakistan take direct
action again the al Qaeda leadership. That won't be easy
because there must be someone in Pakistan who must believe that
if it weren't for al Qaeda being there, that we would be
totally aligned with India. And so somehow we have got to
disabuse the government of Pakistan of that suspicion. And it
has got to be driven down through the ranks and we have got to
have their wholehearted support to clean up their own internal
security problems. For them it is not just a matter of teaching
the Taliban a lesson and making them skedaddle back into the
frontier areas, but it is a matter of their taking care of our
principal threat for us so we don't have to.
Afghan economic development needs to be promoted in the
agricultural sector through providing an enhanced market for
Afghan crops. If you don't outbid the price for opium, you
can't compete in this market. Afghanistan should be a world
granary for wheat and we should pay a premium to have the
Afghans grow wheat, and we should export it. There are a lot of
places in the world that need it. We should be encouraging and
developing mineral and hydrocarbon resources in Afghanistan and
promoting a long-range gas pipeline that connects India and
Pakistan to Central Asian gas resources.
As far as security is concerned, we have got to give them
the additional security forces they need, primarily the police
and the militia that they need. We are never going to be able
to walk away from U.S. responsibilities for the support for the
intelligence, intelligence collection, the logistics. We tried
to do it in Vietnam, and it failed.
So here are four elements of an exit strategy, and it is a
dynamic process. I believe that what we have to do is work
within these four elements and construct the exit strategy for
Afghanistan. It is a multiyear effort, it may or may not entail
at this point setting up the conditions or the timeline to do
it, but the strategy has to be pointed towards getting us out
of this conflict because there is no long-term, lasting role
for Western military forces there.
These aren't easy measures and there is no guarantee of
success, but I think what we have to do is face the reality. We
have done a lot already. We have been really pretty tough and
pretty effective against the leadership of al Qaeda, but they
are still around. Our obligations to Afghanistan are limited.
We are not required to make them eligible for statehood. There
will never be a complete and wholly satisfactory solution.
And so we have to meet our own security needs, and the
principal security need in this region is to reduce the
continuing threat of al Qaeda, which is reportedly based
principally in Pakistan. It is their decisive defeat that we
must seek.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Clark can be found in
the Appendix on page 48.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, General Clark. Dr. Kagan.
STATEMENT OF DR. KIMBERLY KAGAN, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR THE
STUDY OF WAR
Dr. Kagan. Mr. Chairman, committee members, it is a great
pleasure to talk with you today about Afghanistan and the
strategy that the United States needs to adopt going forward.
The mission of U.S. forces and indeed U.S. diplomatic
engagement in Afghanistan is clear. We do need to disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and see to it that neither the
Taliban nor any other enemy group within Afghanistan is able to
provide sanctuary and safe haven for the kinds of terrorist
groups that threaten not only the United States, but also the
region--Pakistan, India, and the countries surrounding
Afghanistan. And our role in Afghanistan therefore is to
neutralize the Taliban, perhaps to defeat the Taliban, to see
to it that that organization which has historically been
extremely supportive of al Qaeda is actually not capable of
considering itself any longer the legitimate government of
Afghanistan. And that is how the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah
Omar sees itself. And that is how al Qaeda sees Mullah Omar: as
the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan, the leader of the
caliphate that is rightful and rightfully guided in terms of
its vision of the Islamic tradition.
What we face inside Afghanistan, however, is more complex
than simply al Qaeda or a Taliban group. Rather we face an
indigenous insurgency within Afghanistan; that is to say, the
people of Afghanistan are dissatisfied with their government
and are fighting their government in order to establish some
sort of alternative that suits them better than what it is that
the government of Afghanistan is providing them. It is a
classic insurgency. And when I say indigenous, I mean that most
of the people fighting in Afghanistan are Afghans; they are not
Pakistanis coming across the border but rather residents of
Afghanistan with Afghan leadership, which happens to be
sometimes dwelling in Pakistan as a government in exile.
That means that in order to succeed in Afghanistan we
actually have to defeat the insurgency, neutralize it, reduce
its capability to be effective within Afghanistan and create
the conditions whereby some form of legitimate government can
actually take root and ensure that that government does not
support the Taliban, does not support al Qaeda, and does not
support the network of insurgent and terrorist groups that are
linked into al Qaeda and other groups and cells working in the
Pakistani region.
How do we do this? Well, first, it is actually important to
recognize who the enemy is and actually engage that enemy
decisively. This is why more forces are required in
Afghanistan, and not just a few more forces, a decisive amount
of force, because in fact neither the United States nor its
coalition partners have been able to engage the enemy
decisively in key terrain; that is to say, terrain that is
important to them, to the government of Afghanistan, and to us.
Places like Kandahar, where we have essentially two battalions
of Canadian forces and one battalion of U.S. forces operating
in the spiritual heart of the Taliban insurgency, its location,
its stronghold, and the spiritual capital of the Pashtun
region.
We need in fact to engage in order to not only prevent the
enemy from launching attacks against us, but to prevent the
enemy groups from actually intimidating the population of
Afghanistan, compelling the population of Afghanistan in key
areas such as Kandahar, Helmand, or Khost to deter them from
actually participating and actively supporting enemy groups and
to persuade those groups--those groups that they cannot win,
and to persuade the population that we are there to safeguard
them and support them.
I have been to Afghanistan twice this year on battlefield
circulations, and I can assure you that there are very few
places in Afghanistan where we have the kind of force ratios
that would allow the population to be protected from al Qaeda,
to be protected from the Taliban, to be protected from the
Haqqani network, and therefore the United States and its
coalition partners are failing in Afghanistan in their
fundamental mission of counterinsurgency.
And here we have many lessons that we can draw from our
experiences in Iraq, not just our experiences in Vietnam, where
we were successful at reducing an indigenous insurgency through
decisive use of military force and also through a comprehensive
civil-military program in which we actually reduced the malign
capabilities of the government, reduced their bad behavior, and
fundamentally increased the kinds of services that the
population actually needs.
We do not need to build a modern state in Afghanistan, but
Afghanistan does have a history of governance, and what the
people of Afghanistan want is something that we can build. They
want security, and they want the provision of justice,
particularly in dispute resolution, and those are services that
can be provided by engaging intensively in a counterinsurgency
campaign, using all instruments of U.S. and coalition power and
leverage in order to jump-start local government, to connect
the people with their government, to reduce the malign
behaviors of government, those that actually accelerate the
insurgency, and to develop an Afghan national army that is
actually capable of securing the population of Afghanistan and
meeting the national security needs of this important country
situated as it is amongst great powers, many of whom have
nuclear weapons, and many of whom in the instance where
Afghanistan is insecure will continue to wage proxy engagements
against one another in order to see to it that they have
leverage and they have control.
This is something that the United States can do with its
coalition partners. It is something that requires more force,
it is something that requires a different kind of engagement by
our civilian leaders. But it is something that we have to do,
it is something that we have to do soon, and it is something
that we have to do in order to meet our overarching strategic
objective of preventing a kind of terrorist state from
regaining control of Afghanistan, something that is dangerously
close to transpiring right now.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kagan can be found in the
Appendix on page 55.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Kagan. Dr. Dorronsoro.
STATEMENT OF DR. GILLES DORRONSORO, VISITING SCHOLAR, SOUTH
ASIA PROGRAM, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Dr. Dorronsoro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will address
three points. One, the counterinsurgency strategy is not
working in Afghanistan currently. My second point will be about
what we should do; that is to say, a more focused strategy. And
the third point will be about resources, what kind of resources
we need to avoid the further deterioration of Afghanistan.
But the first point, the current shape, clear, or build
strategy in Afghanistan requires that we control the territory
and separate the insurgents from the population. As we have
seen in Helmand Province, the strategy is not working for
several reasons. The first reason, the relationship between the
Taliban and the population is not what is generally said. The
Taliban are local. It is impossible right now in the context of
the south and east of Afghanistan to separate the insurgency
from the population. Furthermore, there is no Afghan structure
there to replace the coalition forces once the Taliban have
been removed.
The coalition forces are not accepted locally. Actually
they are quite unpopular in places where they are fighting,
such as Helmand, Kandahar, Kabul, and so on. This is a key
problem, the more we are sending troops, the more we alienate
the local population.
The population's association with soldiers is
counterproductive. Since they do not speak the language, they
are constantly targeted by these ambushes, and they cannot do
the kind of work for the population that could be a real
counterinsurgency.
Moreover, Pakistan doesn't control its border. I don't
think it is possible to defeat the Taliban when the old
Pakistani-Afghan border is quite open and when the Taliban have
reached support in Pakistan where they have a sanctuary.
The current offensive in Waziristan and the one before in
Swat and the one before in Bajaur Agency were not directed at
the Afghan Taliban. They were strictly directed against the
Pakistani Taliban. So at this point I don't see any sign that
the Pakistani Government is changing its policy of supporting
the Afghan Taliban. That is a key element, and I don't think
that we can defeat an insurgency in these conditions.
What should we do? What are the priorities? I think that in
the longer perspective on exit strategy we should now focus our
limited resources on urban center and strategic course. The
poorest population in Afghanistan lives in urban centers, and
sadly you don't see practical results of the Western presence
in Afghanistan since many years now in the cities; for example,
Kabul. Kabul, not a lot of development, and after the billions
of dollars we sent to Afghanistan I think it is a very sad
result.
Those cities are key because first, as I said, the poorest
of the population lives there. Second, the Taliban are
frightening more and more the cities. They are inside in city
of Kandahar, inside most of the cities in the south and also in
the east. I am thinking about Khost, Gardez, large parts of the
towns in Lowgar Province. This is a natural strategic fight,
because if we want to build Afghan institutions, it will be in
the cities. It is not going to be in the countryside.
So what the United States, and marginally the coalition,
should do is to define three areas. First area: strategic
zones, where the coalition should have total military control.
It doesn't mean that you don't have some incidents from time to
time, but it is under control. Main roads, cities, most of the
towns when it is possible, it is not always possible, and that
is where we must send most of our resources to protect this
area.
Second area is what I would call a buffer area around the
cities and the towns. In this area the idea is to have a place
where the military intervention is focused avoiding civilian
casualties and, whenever possible, to probably to use militia,
mostly not tribal militia because tribal militia are very
difficult to manage, but local militia in the village. There
are a lot of caveats, some dangerous, but basically it is
doable.
I would say that in the last territory, the opposition
territory, that is the mountains, a large part of the
countryside in the south and in the east. We don't have the
resources to roll back. We don't have the resources to push the
Taliban outside these territories. So the only thing to do is
to have different strategy in the sense that the idea is not to
put this under military control, but the proactive one in the
sense that the U.S. forces must deter the opposition from
launching operations outside these places against the strategic
zone.
What are the advantages of this strategy? First: time. We
need time to build an Afghan army that is able to defend at
least the cities. We need probably more than 5 years, between 5
and 10 years. Currently the Afghan army is probably around--the
real number is around 60,000. To double that number, to go,
let's say, to 150,000 we need minimum 5 years. We don't have
officers. We need--it is a very long-term project to build
officers, petty officers as they are called, you know.
Second, we cannot go with this level of casualties. From
2008 to 2009 we are more than 50 percent increase in casualties
for the coalition. So we are going from a little under 300 to
probably this year over 500. If we do the same thing, if we
extend the strategy we had in Helmand, to all south of
Afghanistan it is going to be 700 or 800. I don't think it is
politically doable.
Another element, of course you have seen the results of the
election in Afghanistan. We are now in the first democratic
Afghanistan. People are cynical and I think they are right to
be cynical about the current government, about the election,
about the political process. We need a lot of time to build
again some kind of Afghan regime able to survive the withdrawal
of the Western countries. It is not doable with a high-level
casualty strategy.
My third point is about resources. First, I don't think we
are suffering from underfunding, but there is a strikingly
better location of resources in Afghanistan.
Should I stop?
Dr. Snyder. No, we have a series of votes coming up, but if
you can finish up in a couple or three minutes and give Dr.
Krepinevich his time, then we will go vote and come back and
start questions. As it were, we will just pick up where we
left. Go ahead.
Dr. Dorronsoro. Contrary to what is often said, it is not a
problem of underfunding, but bad location of resources. First,
we are sending resources mostly to places that we do not
control. Actually drugs are not the first source of finance for
the Taliban. We are financing the Taliban because we are giving
money to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who are working
the countryside. They are obliged to pay the Taliban when we
are sending trucks from Karachi to Peshawar. They have to pay
from Peshawar to Kabul, they have to pay from Kabul to
Kandahar, they have to pay again. And this money for large part
is going to the Taliban. So we have to focus aid on places
where we have control, some provinces in the north, the cities,
and so on.
Second, the troops are over-focused in the south. It was a
major strategic mistake. Twenty thousand men in Helmand is
exactly the kind of thing that is going to victory to the
Taliban. We have lost control of Kunduz Province. We have lost
control of part of Baghlan Province. We have lost control of
Badghis Province. That is in the north, and the city of Herat
is now directly threatened by the Taliban. We cannot spend all
our resources in the south when the north is becoming the
major, major problem.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Dorronsoro can be found in
the Appendix on page 67.]
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Krepinevich.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR
STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS
Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In summarizing my
remarks, I will speak primarily to Afghanistan but also to
Iraq, and then finally to our overall strategic posture.
To begin, I think if we are going to talk about strategy it
is important to note that strategy in its basic terms is how
you apply the means at your disposal to achieve the ends you
seek. And as the definition suggests, the means to be employed,
which include levels of troop strengths for example, are an
integral part of crafting a strategy.
Clausewitz said the first and foremost thing that any
leader needed to do before contemplating war is to understand
the character and the nature of the enemy and the war that they
were about to engage. I think in its March 2009 white paper,
the Obama Administration demonstrated that it does have a good
appreciation for the character of the war in which we are
engaged and the nature of the threat--I didn't know I was going
to bring my theme music with me today.
Second, to have a strategy it is necessary to set an
objective. And in fact the Administration has: to disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and
to prevent their return to either country in the future.
The President, I think in line with this, improved--
approved rather wisely a strategy that emphasizes traditional
counterinsurgency principles.
I would say if you look at General McChrystal's leaked
report a lot of the themes that are expressed in that are
similar to the themes that Dr. Dorronsoro just mentioned: an
emphasis on security and on improved governance.
Based on the President's statements as recently as August,
he views the risks of failing to achieve our war objectives as
quite high. He has declared this not a war of choice but a war
of necessity and stated that if left unchecked the Taliban
insurgency will make an even larger safe haven from which al
Qaeda will plot to kill more Americans.
The core issue at present doesn't seem to be a debate over
the objective necessarily or the strategy for how to achieve
it, but levels of troops that we are dispatching to
Afghanistan, specifically General McChrystal's request for
40,000 troops over and above what he currently has to implement
the strategy.
I will offer six observations or suggestions on how the
committee might view that request. Three have to do with risk.
Obviously there is a risk associated with not supporting the
troop request. There is also a risk associated with sending
those 40,000 additional troops.
One potential risk, and of course we have heard it, is the
risk of--the term is ``breaking the army.'' In fact our Army
will so be overstretched and--so overstressed that it risks
becoming a nonfunctioning combatant force.
I would just offer two things here. One, it would appear
with the ongoing drawdown in Iraq that even if we get to 30 to
40,000 troop level in Iraq, that combined a 40,000 troop
increase in Afghanistan would still leave us significantly
below the troop levels we had deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq
during the surge. First point.
Second point is that thanks to the efforts of the previous
Administration and this Administration over the past few years
there has been an authorized increase in Army end strength of
65,000, plus 8,000 in the Reserves, 27,000 additional Marines,
and then more recently an additional 22,000 temporary plus-up
in the Army's end strength. So you are not only talking about
relatively lower troop levels than what we saw during the
surge, but also a larger ground force component by a
substantial margin.
There is also the risk that such deployments might leave us
unprepared for other contingencies. So that is sort of my
second point. And again I think the questions here you have to
address are, are these other contingencies likely to occur? If
they did, for example in Korea or Iran, would we have a higher
risk of failure? If we did fail would the consequences of
failure be greater than those of failing in Afghanistan and
Iraq? My only personal estimate, as outlined in my testimony,
is that again those risks I think are workable right now, but
again different people interpret risk differently.
I would say the third area having to do with risk is
whether or not General McChrystal is, to use a phrase,
``padding the force.'' Is he requesting far more troops than he
actually needs to begin to engineer a decisive turnaround of
the kind that Dr. Kagan and Dr. Dorronsoro talked about?
His report, the one that was leaked, indicates that he is,
for example, not looking to secure the entire country at once,
but progressively over time, which is very consistent I think
with the Administration's strategy and with traditional
counterinsurgency strategy.
I do think though that it would be wise to find out
specifically how the force is going to be used, what
constitutes a decisive shift, what the campaign is, what the
phases are, and how we would measure progress.
Apart from the risk of deploying this force is also the
matter of the strategy itself, and there are three issues that
relate to this. One is one might want to undertake a review of
one's strategy very shortly after one had put it in place if
there were some dramatic change in the situation. There may be
some dramatic change we are not aware of. I am not sure the
Afghan elections really constitute that in the sense that to
the extent there is corruption in Afghan that has pretty much
been a known factor for some time now, almost since the advent
of the Karzai administration.
Second, I think you might want to review your strategy if
it was a failed strategy. Yet the strategy really hasn't been
fully implemented yet, and so it seems to me it is premature to
say we have a failed strategy on our hands.
And the third would be is there a better strategy out
there, one that was not evident to us when the Administration
set its strategy in March that is now available. I think there
is one that goes by the name the counterterrorism strategy with
emphasis on over-the-horizon air strikes, special forces,
covert operations, and a focused attempt to kill terrorist
leaders, insurgent leaders.
My feeling here is we have tried this before, it has
failed. The character of the conflict doesn't really lend
itself to kinetic kinds of operations. The current term for it
is ``whack-a-mole,'' going after and using kinetic strikes to
kill key leaders. In Vietnam we tried it on a broader scale. It
was called ``search and destroy.'' Go find the enemy; kill the
enemy. Kill enough of them, kill their leaders, and eventually
we win. It was tried to some extent in the late 1990s. We had
the cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan. Some people called
it ``therapeutic bombing,'' others, ``antiseptic warfare.''
Obviously that didn't do the job. We tried it early on in Iraq
where the term ``whack-a-mole'' really originated in this
iteration. And to a certain extent we tried in Afghanistan the
last few years with our drone operations and our special forces
operations.
We have succeeded in killing a lot of leaders of the
Taliban and al Qaeda and other related groups, but as we have
pretty much acknowledged here, the situation really hasn't
gotten better by emphasizing these kinds of operations. To make
matters worse, they tend to alienate the population, which is
the war's center of gravity.
Final point on Afghanistan is: does a protracted review
matter? Does it really matter? Obviously there is an advantage
in taking your time and thinking things through carefully,
getting all the facts, getting all the data. But there is also
a down side, and the down side is that there are a lot of fence
sitters, in this kind of war. Lawrence of Arabia once said that
insurgencies are made of 2 percent of the population being
active and 98 percent passive. To defeat them you need to
mobilize the population on your side.
If there is a sense that we are not serious or a sense that
we are waffling back and forth, I think that creates problems
for us. In a sense it is almost ironic that some things, some
of the problems we are really trying to tackle, the
Administration is really trying to focus on to some extent are
undermined by a protracted strategic review in a sense that, if
you want Karzai to seriously crack down on corruption, what he
needs I think is a strong expression of American support. But
it is support with conditions. The absence of that support
really encourages him to strike deals with the locals, many of
whom have to be paid off in forms of patronage and corruption.
Similarly the Pakistanis, their attitude is that they, at
least some elements of the Pakistani Government, view the
Taliban as their hedge against an American withdrawal from
Afghanistan and Indian ascendance in that country. They
essentially accept the United States and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) as the dominant external power in
Afghanistan but are very reluctant, I think, to go after the
Taliban if the feeling is that we may leave the path open for
Indian ascendance in Pakistan.
With respect to Iraq, just a couple of points. One is the
drawdown is continuing. I think we have to look at a
significant residual force. General Clark talked about the need
for such a force in Afghanistan. I think we also need one in
Iraq. In terms of Iraq also I think we do need to have a sense
of what happens the day after the drawdown to a minimum force.
We never really thought through the day after we pulled down
the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. I think it would be a
mistake to assume that the situation there is inevitably going
to remain as stable as it is now without some serious effort on
our part.
My final point is to look at the broad picture. Again I
commend the committee for taking a serious look at the strategy
in Afghanistan and links in terms of the regional perspective.
I would point out that if you look out over the coming decades
and you look at key trends, whether they are economic,
technical, demographic and so on, it is difficult to conclude
otherwise than that the challenges to our security are
increasing, they are going to continue to increase, the threats
are going to become significantly more dangerous. And our
ability to address them I think is eroding rather dramatically,
not only in terms of the treasure we have poured into this
conflict but our rather seriously eroding economic foundation
and the similar difficulties that longstanding allies are
experiencing in the same way.
So in closing, let me applaud the committee's determination
to both raise the level of awareness on these important issues
and also its efforts to raise the quality of the discourse as
to how we might best resolve them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich can be found in
the Appendix on page 79.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
We have four votes. We hopefully won't be gone very long,
and we will take up questions when we get back. We have been
joined by Mr. Coffman, who will participate. We are in recess.
[Recess.]
Dr. Snyder. We will come back in session.
Mr. Wittman will be joining us here shortly, and we will
put ourselves on the five-minute clock.
I think, General Clark, you have to leave 4:00-ish is that
correct? And we will try to get a round at least once with all
of the witnesses and then additional time with whoever is left.
The first question I wanted to direct is to General Clark
and Dr. Dorronsoro.
Dr. Dorronsoro, at the end of your written statement, which
I don't think you mentioned in your oral statement, your very
last sentence you said is, ``The only solution to this problem
is a political negotiation and the awareness of what is really
at stake here: the credibility of NATO that is a military
alliance.'' And I met with a European diplomat a few weeks ago,
I guess a couple weeks ago, who also espoused the view that the
world's perception of NATO's success or failure should be an
important consideration of what we do.
I would like to hear, General Clark, your response to that
or what you think about that?
And, Dr. Dorronsoro, to amplify on that.
General Clark. It sounds like something that would have
been in my statement.
Dr. Snyder. It did. I saw it, but it was in his.
General Clark. But it wasn't.
Dr. Snyder. It wasn't.
General Clark. NATO is a problem because it is a, it is a
one-strike-and-you-are-out organization. It has been successful
thus far. We took it into Afghanistan without NATO demanding of
us an effective strategy. And were we to simply fold our tent
and go home, I think we would have a problem with NATO.
I think it is incumbent upon us to create an effective
strategy that brings us success and an exit, and I think NATO
can participate in that. But I think that the emphasis on troop
contributions from other NATO countries has been a little
misplaced over the years.
It is going to take a lot more than simply troops for NATO
to be successful in Afghanistan. And I think we should be
looking for economic contributions, police training
contributions, that are broader. And we should do the best we
can to require NATO countries to cough up the other
contributions when they say they can't provide those extra two
helicopters that we wanted.
Rather than simply doing the pressure on the two
helicopters give them some alternative means of contributing.
We do need more contributions from all the NATO members right
now. I don't see this as--I see what we have to do is create a
success strategy that is premised on leaving. And I think if
you can build a strategy that is clear, that has some clear
turnover points in it, that it is possible to keep NATO on
board, give NATO the sense of success it needs and provide the
sense of resolution that you need to resolve the problem on the
ground in Afghanistan with the Pakistanis.
I know I am asking for a lot. But that is why I think that
the Administration is doing the right thing by taking the time
to get the strategy right. Because there is a lot of seemingly
contradictory pieces that have to be put in place to make the
strategy work.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Dorronsoro.
Dr. Dorronsoro. I think, first, that we think is that NATO
is failing as a major alliance in Afghanistan. It is a clear
failure. It is a dangerous failure, and I am not sure that NATO
could survive this kind of war.
Now, what to do about it. First, to be true, it is going to
be extremely difficult for especially European governments to
send more troops in Afghanistan. You have now over 70 percent
of the British population who are supporting an exit from
Afghanistan right now. So we are, politically speaking, on the
verge of a real political point for all European governments.
The second--and I would say, why? Because there is no
perception of threat, perception of threat from Afghanistan.
European populations do not perceive Afghanistan as a threat.
That is a very general thing, and that is important.
The second thing is, what to do about it. I would suggest,
first, the truth that, in certain places, non-U.S. troops are
not trying to do counterinsurgency or to do war. They cannot
accept, for a political reasons, casualties. And we have a
situation like Kunduz in the north or Mazar-e-Sharif, where the
German army is not only inefficient against the Taliban but
mostly counterproductive. I think we should offer an exit to
the German troops, a means to use the German troops to train
the Afghan army or to do something else. But I would prefer
from my point of view to have 200 Marines in Kunduz than 5,000
or 6,000 German soldiers.
I think we are in the wrong way. We are putting always the
political regiment first in NATO, and we are killing NATO in
the long term because NATO is losing the war. We should be
clear even if it is creating a political crisis inside NATO. We
have to ask the question, why the Germans are not doing their
work in the north? What is happening with the Italians in
Herat, and so on and so on?
And I would say the last point, quickly, is that NATO is
not working because there is no unified strategy in
Afghanistan. You know, there is always this question how the
Taliban is a unified movement. But honestly, if I had a very
theoretical choice between leading the Taliban and leading the
NATO, I would prefer to lead the Taliban. Much more simple, you
know. NATO is really not able to produce a clear-on strategy at
the national level in Afghanistan.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman for five minutes.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you members of the panel for joining us today. We
appreciate your patience and your indulgence with us as we move
back and forth between votes.
General Clark, to begin with you, you made a statement in
the beginning saying you are very proud of the Administration
and the time they are taking to be very deliberative in this
decision-making process. I want to kind of put that into
perspective on the timeliness issue. I know there has been a
lot of focus on the timeliness of a decision. Obviously, we
want to make sure we get the decision right, but I am
wondering, at what point does timeliness become a significant
element in that decision-making process?
I know I have heard from a number of our men and women in
uniform who are starting to get a little anxious about this. I
am wondering what you see as the effect on our combatant
commanders, men and women in uniform, and our allied partners
as a decision continues to move on and on and on, and where do
you think we are as far as the impact of timeliness on the
effect on the effort there in our partners?
General Clark. Well, I don't know that there is any hard
deadline. Obviously, everyone wants a decision sooner rather
than later. I believe that we are getting much closer to a
decision. And I am not on the inside of this process.
As I see it work from the outside, what I am looking at is
a process in which all of the strategic actors are engaged,
including the foreign governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan
that we are working with. So I would go back to my own
experience with things like the Dayton Agreement in which there
was a war going on. We didn't have our troops on the ground at
the time. But people were impatient for an agreement. And yet
the trick was to be able to use the impending decisions as
leverage in producing the overall process outcome that you
sought.
And as best I can see, the Administration is in fact doing
that. So there is a lot of impatience about this. I know the
troops want to know what is going on. I know the military
leaders are concerned about planning. But that should not drive
the process. In fact, I think as best I can see, there is a lot
of good coming out of this in terms of the work through the
nations in the region. And that work cannot be done in a series
of quick overnight phone calls, position papers. And I don't
think it is being done that way.
I think it is being done through back-and-forth over a
period of weeks with the host nation governments. And I think
that is a constructive process. So I think we should be
patient. I think the Administration is going to wrap this up
pretty quick. But I think it has been a very productive
process, and I commend them for it.
Mr. Wittman. Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. I disagree.
I do believe that there is a role for strategic
deliberation, but I also believe that the extent and the time
being taken for the strategic deliberation does actually impose
risks within the theater of war, and we need at least to be
cognizant of the risks that are being taken as this discussion
protracts.
First and foremost, I do not actually agree with General
Clark that it is possible or wise to use a decision about force
levels as leverage, either with our allies or with our enemies
or with the government of Afghanistan.
On the contrary, what we learned from Iraq and from other
counterinsurgency efforts is that commitment and a strong
statement of commitment early on is actually what changes the
balance of calculations among political actors and among the
population. And so what the people of Afghanistan are looking
for and what the government of Afghanistan is looking for and
what Pakistan is looking for is the statement of commitment and
having that statement backed up with action.
Secondly, I do believe that we are starting to see a degree
of pressure being put on our NATO allies, who are trying to be
responsive to whatever the strategy is and will be but, because
of the indeterminate nature of this process, are not being able
to allocate the forces and the resources because they will be
guided not by their own assessment of their objectives but by
the U.S. lead.
Thirdly, there are forces available for Afghanistan that
could have been on the way and should be on the way by now. In
particular, there could be a decision to commit the Ready
Brigade of the 82nd. There could be a decision to accelerate
the training of Afghan army and Afghan security forces, the
funds committed in order to do that. All of those things could
be under way.
And the delays that are now ongoing do shift the ability of
our commanders on the ground to conduct decisive operations in
2010. In fact, I would say that, in fact, it is unlikely that
our commanders on the ground will be able to accomplish a set
of decisive operations in 2010, nor do I think that they will
meet the 12- to 18-month turnaround timeline that President
Obama initially gave to General McChrystal as sort of the
bellwether for how fast he wanted to see results in
Afghanistan. So we have to acknowledge those risks.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis, for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to all of you for being here.
Dr. Krepinevich, in your written remarks, you state that
President Karzai should understand that our support is
conditional on his willingness to remove ineffective or corrupt
administrators. And I wonder if you could address, what if he
doesn't? I mean, what do you think we should be looking for,
and others as well, and what if this doesn't happen? I mean,
there are a lot of people who just don't believe that, even
with what has occurred in terms of the election, that that is
likely to change.
Dr. Krepinevich. Again, I think if you look at, at least
what the Administration's strategy is, if you look at what
General McChrystal has proposed to do, a significant part of
that was not just helping the Afghan national army or the
Afghan forces; it was beginning the work in a sense of
embedding ourselves in the Afghan government, not only to help
them to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of
governance but also as a good means of identifying those
individuals who are competent or incompetent, corrupt or
honest, and who are loyal or who have a different agenda.
And I think President Karzai has got to understand that,
you know, that is a condition of our involvement. It serves his
interest. It serves the interest of the country. And also
conditional is our recommendations about people when we
identify them as corrupt or incompetent or disloyal, that he
has got to remove them. I think the incentive on his part goes
up if he feels like the United States is engaged over time and
that he has less of an incentive or less of a need to cut deals
and to grant patronage, which of course is one step away from
corruption, in government to play off different factions, one
from the other.
Ultimately, I think if that fails, then what you are left
with is a decision about whether the situation in Afghanistan
is hopeless or whether Karzai is hopeless, and whether, in
fact, there are other leaders within Afghanistan who can better
represent the needs of the people and be more legitimate. I
think we are a long away from that point, especially if we get
buy-in on the conditions that the Administration and General
McChrystal seem to be intent on setting.
I would also say, a colleague of mine, Dr. Strmecki,
testified I guess a few weeks back, and his point--he spent a
lot of time over there early on after the Loya Jirga and the
elections and so on. There are a number of things that have
worked with Karzai in the past. And again, I think that
involves not only commitment on our part but also a very
effective country team. And at that time, we had a country team
that seemed to be able to get productive output from Karzai.
And I suspect it is not a lost cause.
And given the stakes that the President has said we have at
risk here in terms of a war of necessity and concerns about not
only instability in Afghanistan but a nuclear-armed Muslim
state, Pakistan, and then in the broader region, and as General
Clark says, the implications for the alliance and so on, I
certainly think that it is worth a try, but again, I think it
has got to be conditions-based.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
I don't know if anyone else wants to comment, especially in
terms of any economic incentives or lack of thereof that you
would like to address.
I guess the other piece just really quickly, because I
think what you are saying, we need to depend on some type of a
military-civilian partnership, and that also, I think, would
involve certainly a certain number of troops.
And perhaps, General Clark, you could comment on that as
well.
Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. Thank you very much.
The question of how it is that we use our leverage, vis-a-
vis Karzai and the Afghan government, is really what is at hand
right now, because we do have a lot of leverage. And that
leverage comes in troops. It comes in money that the
international community provides for the government of
Afghanistan. It comes in terms of the training and support that
we provide for the Afghan security forces, through our support
of NGOs and other international elements working in
Afghanistan.
That is to say, troops are one source of leverage; money is
another. We have a lot of leverage that we can bring to bear.
The question is allowing our country team to bring that
leverage to bear in the most productive way and in the most
gentle way, or sometimes in the most effective way. And I
really--I really do think that we have a lot of lessons that we
have learned from our experience in Iraq in terms of how to
apply that leverage. And I also think that it is essential that
we not look at conditioning the troop levels going in as the
only source of leverage.
Mrs. Davis. I appreciate that. Thank you. I think the
chairman is going to gavel you down. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Jones for five minutes.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me read a paragraph and then I have got a couple of
questions. `` `Yesterday,' reads the e-mail from Allen, a
Marine in Afghanistan, `I gave blood because a Marine while out
on patrol stepped on a pressure plate and lost both legs. Then
another Marine was hit with a bullet wound to the head and was
brought in. Both Marines died this morning.' '' This is from
the column by George Will, September, ``America's Unwinnable
Afghan War.''
My question to General Clark as well as Dr. Kagan, two
parts, is Afghanistan in our vital national security interest?
Second, I will be glad to repeat, if it is, what is our
goal, secondly, our objective, the end state? What are we
seeking?
General Clark.
General Clark. Congressman, I think what is in our vital
interest is the defeat of al Qaeda. And it is also in our vital
interest not to be, not to have been defeated in Afghanistan.
So, in my testimony, what I have tried to lay out is a somewhat
realignment of our attention to where al Qaeda is primarily.
They are primarily in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan must
do more. It must be incentivized and assisted to do more. And
what we must do is take the fight to al Qaeda.
Now, principally al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan. But as a
necessary but not sufficient component of taking the fight to
al Qaeda, we have got to clean up the mess in Afghanistan. That
means building the Afghan security forces; not getting forced
off the battlefield; creating a more legitimate government that
reduces conflict; and leaving behind something that can sustain
and prevent--sustain itself and prevent the takeover of the
Afghan government by a group that would use the organs of state
and the rights of a state to promote international terrorism.
Those are pretty minimalist objectives when they are stated
that way. They don't require us to bring statehood conditions
of probity to Afghanistan, but they do require a sustained
commitment there for some period of time, and they require a
lot more attention by the government of Pakistan on its
responsibilities.
Mr. Jones. Before Dr. Kagan, very quickly, how much longer
can the military continue to go at this pace before we start
seeing, because I have Camp Lejeune in the district, the number
of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases have gone up
astronomically? And how much longer can we keep going without
an end point to what we are trying to achieve militarily? Do
you have any idea?
General Clark. I can't give you a time zone on it. But I
would tell you this: that it is manifestly unfair to the men
and women in uniform to have been sent back again and again and
again on repetitive tours. So they are owed by their national
command authority a strategy for success. That strategy hasn't
yet been adequately defined for the context of the region.
And that is why I am hopeful that the Obama Administration
will do that now. And I think it will, and I think that is the
purpose of the delay. And that involves intensive work with
both the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And then I think it is up to the--it is up to Congress to
provide adequate support, including the right manning levels
for the men and women in uniform so that we have a national
security apparatus that can do that which we believe it is
asked to do. And if we are not prepared to do that, then we as
a nation have to adjust our objectives.
We don't have enough men and women in the Army and Marine
Corps to sustain the kind of commitment that--if we put the
same number of troops in Afghanistan that we had in Iraq for
the next 10 years we are going to break this force. So that is
not an option, not under the current conditions. Something has
got to the give.
Mr. Jones. General, thank you.
My time is about up. Dr. Kagan, I will go a round with you
if we have another round.
But I wanted to say I am one of the few Republicans that
have thanked the President for taking time to figure out what
our policy should be.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. As I indicated earlier, we have been joined by
Mr. Coffman, who is not a member of the subcommittee but a
member of the full committee, and recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It appears already, and let me preface this with, I think
there were nine soldiers recently lost in northeastern
Afghanistan in a small forward operating base where it was hit
fairly aggressively by the Taliban in a remote area that was
pretty isolated. The tragedy is I think that they already had
orders where they were going to withdraw in the next couple of
days and abandon that particular forward operating base.
And it seems that General McChrystal has already come to a
conclusion that we ought to have a bifurcated strategy of
counterterrorism with counterinsurgency; with counterinsurgency
in the populated areas, and counterterrorism in the rural
areas. I wonder if you all could comment on, number one, do you
think that that is accurate, and number two, how effective
would that strategy be?
General Clark, why don't we start with you?
General Clark. Well, I haven't spoken to General McChrystal
about the strategy. I am not on the inside of this debate.
I am worried about surrendering the border to the Taliban.
You have got to maintain as tight a grip on the border region
as possible. It is just that it is too big in relation to the
forces. And I don't mean just forces on the ground; I mean the
artillery that needs to be there in support, the Apache
helicopters that come in. As one officer said to me, ``this is
fast-mover country.'' I mean, you have got have fighter planes
in the air all the time to deliver ordinance because this is a
big country.
So, you know, I really felt bad when I heard about the loss
of the outpost, and I know that maybe there are tactical issues
here that have to be worked, and maybe that was in the wrong
place, and maybe it was going to be readjusted. But I hope that
in the strategy we don't surrender that border to the Taliban.
That will be a mistake.
And one of the things we have got to do is we have got to
give the commander the resources he needs to fight and win. If
we are going to hold him responsible for winning, we have got
to give him the resources. So I don't know what the right
number is. I don't know if it is 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 or
80,000. I do know that at this period of the war in Vietnam,
when we were searching for objectives, we piecemealed the
reinforcements. And we didn't provide enough to the military,
and the military didn't ask for enough.
So I hope General McChrystal has asked for everything he
has needed. But he is not the final authority. That is the
President of the United States. And he has got to put together
the whole strategy. And again, I want to underscore, that is
why it is important that we have taken the time to try to get
this right.
Mr. Coffman. Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. In order to understand where to put our forces
and how to use them, we have to understand where the enemy is
and how it functions. And although we can talk very much about
the enemy groups operating within the cities and the cities as
being important to Afghanistan, what we actually see when we
look specifically at the way the enemy behaves is that actually
the enemy fights in and operates in essentially the suburban
areas around cities, suburban perhaps is an overstatement, and
uses safe havens in those areas to project force into cities,
precisely because, in fact, fighting within cities is not a
culturally acceptable way of conducting a campaign.
Therefore, although we can talk about the need to secure
important cities, such as Kandahar or Khost, we have to be
careful to differentiate between securing the cities and
placing forces inside the cities, because the best way to
secure an area such as Kandahar may be actually to deploy
forces in the surrounding areas.
And the reason I raise that is that we have had a lot of
conversations here in Washington about exactly where to put our
forces and how to use them. And it is actually important to
give the command some degree of leeway about where actually to
use forces in a way that maximizes their contribution to the
fight rather than prejudging where the enemy is, how the enemy
is operating, and whether we should put our forces in cities,
countries, or on the border.
Secondly, on the border issue, we need to mitigate risks on
the border which is too large for our forces to protect by a
strong set of outposts through the use of special operations
forces, other national assets, other technological assets. But
the border is only one component of our strategy. We have an
indigenous insurgency, and that is why, in fact, we need to be
focusing on population centers within the country rather than
trying to protect Afghanistan from infiltration from Pakistan.
Mr. Coffman. Would anyone else like to comment?
Dr. Dorronsoro. Yeah quickly, maybe. The border is out of
control, and we don't have the resources to control the border
with Pakistan. It is absolutely impossible to control. It is a
very long border. The terrain is absolutely terrible. So you
are not going to make it anyway.
So what is happening is a more general phenomenon. The
Taliban are now strong enough to--more than ambushes; it is
really frontal attack on the isolated post. So it is a good
idea to evacuate this kind of outpost. I think it is a good
decision. And there is no way you can control Kunar and those
places.
The second point is that here we have something that----
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Dorronsoro, I need you to get to your
completing comment here.
Dr. Dorronsoro. It is a general phenomenon that Western
outposts are totally isolated, cut from the population. It is
through everywhere in Afghanistan. Ask the Spanish forces in
Badghis, the same thing. German in the north, same thing.
French, same thing. So people they control what they see and no
more.
Dr. Snyder. We have also been joined by Dr. Steve Kagen who
is not a member of the Armed Services Committee, but wanted to
participate today. Dr. Kagen for five minutes.
Dr. Kagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I really appreciate the opportunity to sit in with you this
afternoon on this very deadly serious subject.
I welcome General Wes Clark, who I have become friends with
over a long period of time since he was moving from the
military ranks into the civilian civil servant--well, he almost
did. I appreciate your many years of service, and I appreciate
your testimony.
I think perhaps the most pressing comments are in the
statements that have been submitted. And Dr. Kagan presents us
with this sentence, ``the fact that we have not been doing the
right things for the past few years in Afghanistan is actually
good news at the moment.'' I think I am just going to accept
that statement from you to be agreeable to the idea that we
really have not been doing the right things.
I have just three questions. Whatever the strategy is going
to be, it must answer these questions.
First, will it work?
Secondly, can we afford it?
And thirdly, is it the right thing, is it the ethical thing
to do?
I don't see how the United States of America, without the
full cooperation in every sense of the term from NATO, will be
successful by anyone's definition of what success is going to
look like.
I am concerned, General Clark, because in a way you are
expressing the Cheney philosophy that what he was seeking in
Iraq was a ``stable government that could take care of itself
and its people.'' Is that really what we are trying to do in
Afghanistan? Are we trying to establish a government that can
take care of itself and its people by training up some police
and other military forces?
And to follow up on that, do you really believe that a
military solution is possible within that region?
General Clark. Well, Congressman, in my opening statement,
what I called for is a strategy based on an exit. And I did not
call for a military solution. I called for a balanced strategy
that required economic, diplomatic, and other work, and more
emphasis on the government of Pakistan.
But I don't think you are going to persuade the governments
of NATO to suddenly mobilize and send tens of thousands of
troops to Afghanistan simply because we ask it. So I think it
is incumbent upon the Administration to craft the right
strategy that can succeed, to explain it, to get the support of
the American people, and to do it within a means that is
affordable for us.
If I were in General McChrystal's position, I probably
would have asked for a lot more troops than he asked for, and I
hope he has asked for enough to do the job. I think that amount
is affordable within the context of the armed forces. But it
won't succeed on the basis of military action alone.
And in particular, I hope that we will reverse course from
the Bush Administration, which wanted to ignore the presence of
al Qaeda, or largely ignore it, in Pakistan. Look, the people
that attacked this country are in Pakistan. They are primarily
not in Afghanistan. And so we are asking our Marines to fight
and our Army people to fight a supporting battle in
Afghanistan, while the Pakistanis and our Predators take the
main fight to al Qaeda. Something is a little bit wrong with
the distribution of resources, and something is wrong with the
understanding of this.
I realize the government of Pakistan is terribly conflicted
about this, but on the other hand, so have we been. So I think
we need to get our objectives thought through. We need to put
the emphasis where it is. I was delighted to see that the
Administration, according to the press, has put more pressure
on the Pakistanis. I hope we will give them the kind of leased
military equipment, intelligence support, training, and
economic assistance they need. And I hope that we will get al
Qaeda out of there.
As for the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is a military
component and a security component to dealing with it.
So I am not sure what the Cheney solution ever was to Iraq,
sir, but I can't associate myself with it.
Thank you.
Dr. Kagen. Thank you.
Dr. Krepinevich.
Dr. Krepinevich. I do think the--you have the three
questions. Can it work? I think, yes, it can work. Can we
afford it? Yes, I think we can afford it. Is it ethical? Again,
I am not quite sure how to answer that question.
With respect to whether the priority should be Afghanistan
or Pakistan, I think we have a situation now where, through a
combination of efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have
reduced the core of the problem to areas in western Pakistan.
I would agree with General Clark that it is not one or the
other. There has to be an effort in both areas. It has to be a
significant effort. I think a critical part of that effort is
not just the current troop levels. I think there has to be some
sense of an American commitment.
And of course, people in this part of the world remember
that when we thought our commitment had been met in 1989 when
the Soviets began to withdraw, we essentially abandoned that
area after having operated very successfully to get the Soviets
out. We set the conditions for the Taliban to come into power,
for instability in Pakistan.
Again, the Pakistanis look at the Taliban, at least some of
them do, as their hedge to have an influence in Afghanistan if
we pull out to preclude an Indian ascendency in Afghanistan.
You know, Karzai looks to dealing with warlords and other
corrupt elements as his hedge against our pulling out
precipitously.
So I do think that part of our demonstration that, yes, we
have a workable strategy, yes, we have a way, a path to
victory, which I do think enables us to withdraw, as General
Clark says, I think that is important.
But again, why do we have troops in Afghanistan? Well, we
know why. Because of 9/11. Our troops have not been invited
into Pakistan, and they won't be, and I don't think we should
send any. However, if you solved the problem in Pakistan and
did not solve the problem in Afghanistan, they would just
migrate back to where they were prior to 9/11. So really you
need a holistic approach, and I think that is one of the
reasons why Congressman Snyder is saying, let's not just look
at Afghanistan in isolation; let's look at the larger issue.
And I just want to make one final point. In terms of this
issue of the border/not the border, I think General
McChrystal's strategy to me makes a lot of sense. If you look
at the essence of insurgency warfare, it is all about
intelligence. When I was in the Army in the Cold War, we always
worried, do we have enough tanks, do we have enough artillery
to stop the Soviets in Europe? We don't worry about firepower
with these guys. We don't worry about our ability to win any
battles. It is all about intelligence. If we know who these
people are and where they are, we win.
Okay, who has that information? Primarily in Afghanistan,
it is the Afghan people. How do you get them to give you that
information? I think some of my colleagues will point out, it
is going to take awhile. But it all starts out with security,
providing an enduring level of security so you can enable
reconstruction that can be sustained over time that shows these
people that they have a better life, that shows them that local
government officials aren't corrupt; they can actually provide
justice and adjudicate disputes.
And that is what General McChrystal is saying; I need these
40,000 troops to begin to jump start that effort and gradually
expand and essentially backfill with local Afghan police,
Afghan national army. Over time, they are taking on greater and
greater responsibility.
With respect to the sort of counterterrorism campaign, that
is an economy of force. That is what people in the Pentagon
call a cost-imposing strategy. That is not going to win the war
for you. But, if by using drones, if by using special forces,
we force more of al Qaeda's leaders and the Taliban leaders to
spend more and more of their time and energy worrying about
surviving as opposed to planning, organizing, and executing
attacks in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, that is a worthwhile
economy of force use.
With respect to controlling the border, in a sense, we have
been at this rodeo before. We tried to control the border in
Vietnam, didn't have enough troops; tried to control the border
in Iraq, didn't have enough troops; found out in both cases,
the enemy was really inside, not outside, primarily. And again,
if you can deny them access to the population, it is like
denying them oxygen in this kind of war. If you can convince
the people that you are on their side, that they have a
brighter future ahead of you, that they have a legitimate
government, and that you are going to win; that is when they
start providing the intelligence, that is where we really began
to get the tipping point going in Iraq.
So, again, I think General McChrystal really has a good
handle on things. Again, based on his report, it just makes a
lot of sense in looking back over the history of insurgency
warfare and a lot of our recent experiences, not just in
Afghanistan but also in Iraq.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask, I think, General Clark, you
are about to slip out, and we may lose Dr. Dorronsoro here,
too. But before you leave, I wanted to ask the following
question. And I have asked this of other panels. We went into
Afghanistan in October of 2001. We all made some pretty strong
statements as a country and as a Congress about, we would not
abandon the Afghan people again.
General Keane testified, and he was there at the time, I
think number two in the Army, that toward the end of 2002,
resources began being pulled out of Afghanistan and that the
war has been under-resourced ever since, severely under-
resourced. But my question is, given what we said for that
first year and prior to going in and after we were there and
the encouragement we gave to a lot of Afghan people to assist
the coalition, where should the concept, the moral
responsibility to the Afghan people, fit into this discussion?
And we will begin with you, General Clark. I know you have
to leave fairly soon.
We will give each of you a chance to comment on that
question.
General Clark. Well, clearly we have a responsibility to
the people who threw their lot in with us. Those are the people
who are identified and committed and publicly committed to the
United States. We have had that responsibility in every case
where we have operated in insurgent-counterinsurgent warfare.
But I think our primary responsibility is to our own
national security interests and to the men and women who serve
in combat to meet those interests. And so we have got to get
the strategy right. So I couldn't in good conscience look at
young men and women and say, you should join the Army because,
and serve this country because we have a moral obligation in
principle to the government of Afghanistan.
We did, we are doing and are going to do the best we can
do, I think, and I think this Administration will do that. And
we have a personal responsibility to the people that committed
themselves to us. But our obligation is to get the strategy
right and to take care of our own men and women in uniform and
preserve our armed forces for the good of the country. So that
is where I would put the priority on that.
Dr. Snyder. And, Wes, I know you have to leave.
Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. This is a circumstance where the moral
responsibility and the moral obligations that the United States
has to the people of Afghanistan align with our national
security interests, and so I do not actually think that we have
a tradeoff here. We have a situation where, in order best to
suit U.S. interests, to secure Afghanistan, to create an
opportunity for it to be governed, to create an opportunity for
it to survive as a state in a dangerous neighborhood, we need
to conduct a counterinsurgency strategy. That is a strategy
that helps the population of Afghanistan, protects them from
intimidation, and uses our presence, the presence of our
forces, as a way of conferring safety, security, and benefits
to the people.
And so although I agree with General Clark that we have to
ask the question about whether our national security interests
and our moral responsibilities align, since in this case I do
believe that they do, the ethics of the situation are very
clear; the United States needs to continue to be involved in
Afghanistan and needs to conduct a counterinsurgency strategy
in accordance with its stated objectives and its stated
objectives since 2001.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Dorronsoro.
Dr. Dorronsoro. I would say that the first moral
responsibility is to be sure that conducting the war, the
United States and the coalition are reasonably fair. For
example, avoiding civilian casualties, treatment of prisoners,
and so on. That would be the first thing: how we do the war in
Afghanistan. And there has been a lot of progress the last few
months.
But let's remember that, let's say between 2002 or 2001 and
2006, there has been a perfect disaster. And in a lot of places
people are hearing very bad stories about the behavior of the
Western forces in Afghanistan. That would be my first remark
about the moral responsibility.
Second, there are things we should absolutely not do. For
example, to encourage people like Rashid Dostum or the warlords
who are potentially extremely dangerous in Afghanistan. We
should never play with ethnic groups, creating the condition of
an ethnic conflict in Afghanistan. That is a huge moral
responsibility.
And if the situation is worse next year, and I think it is
going to be worse next year, a lot of people will say, ``okay,
we should arm the tribes; we should end the creation of the
condition of an ethnic conflict.'' And in the longer term, I
would say the people in Afghanistan are extremely divided about
the presence of the Western coalition. Note, you have a small
minority, a small minority, supporting more troops in their own
country, more foreign troops in their own country. I think that
is a point we should think about. And there is a limit between
foreign forces here to help and foreign occupation. And we
should very well cross this border if we are sending more
troops in Afghanistan.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Krepinevich.
Dr. Krepinevich. Again, I think we do have a moral
obligation to the people of Afghanistan. I think that moral
obligation holds until such time as either we accomplish our
objectives, or we see that it is impossible under the
circumstances to accomplish our objectives, or the situation is
such that our commitments that we have made to the U.S. people,
to people in uniform, and also to other allies and partners
around the world, that those become so compromised that we have
to make a difficult choice.
In the past when we have had to make that choice, we have
taken the people that General Clark said who have thrown their
lot in with the United States, and we have done our best to
make sure that they were able to leave the combat area and be
resettled.
I just would like to say something very quickly. We have
heard the phrase, ``get the strategy right,'' over recent
months. And I must say, at some point, you begin to wonder
about the strategic competence of the U.S. Government. And I
don't mean this particular Administration. It took us arguably
four years to get the strategy right during the Vietnam War. It
took us from 2003 to 2007 to get the strategy right in Iraq.
How long have we been in Afghanistan?
Can you imagine President Roosevelt, halfway through 1942
in World War II, and we still don't know what our strategy is?
Or President Truman, in the wake of the invasion of South
Korea, saying, well, give me eight months and I will get the
strategy right?
If you look at President Truman, as a matter of fact, the
famous National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) strategy
that lays the foundation for the entire Cold War was done
between January and April of 1950. Eisenhower's famous Solarium
Strategy was done six weeks.
And again, this isn't Republicans or Democrats; this is the
U.S. Government. Somewhere, somehow, along the way, we seem to
have lost the facility for doing strategy. And there is a real
issue here because time is a resource, just as well as bullets
and soldiers and allies and so on. And it is not clear to me
based on what has been said today that time is on our side. And
so if this is a precious resource and if it is not on our side
and if we are spending time, as we try to come up with the very
best strategy we can, on the one hand, that is to be applauded,
but on the other hand, I think it makes me scratch my head from
time to time.
Dr. Snyder. Maybe we don't have enough solariums, Dr.
Krepinevich. Maybe we all need more solariums.
Dr. Krepinevich. Probably just one more.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
An observation, we talked a lot over the past month in this
committee with our folks that have come to testify before us
concerning the strategy and what does that mean, increased
troop presence. I think we all realize that whatever we are
going to do, it is going to be increased contact with the
Taliban, increased military activity, increased casualties, and
in the end, that is going to create some negative impact here
with the American public.
And we all know the issues we have gone through
historically, as casualties begin to mount, the public's
appetite for conflict tends to wane. And I think that is
certainly a potential with this particular scenario as we ramp
up presence there if that is the course of action the President
chooses.
Let me ask this. In that scenario, how do we as best we can
counter that? In other words, how do we keep the American
public engaged? How do we make sure that they know that the
effort that it is going to take there is worthwhile, whether it
is in resources, whether it is in human sacrifice, all those
list of things that we know it takes to be successful there?
How do we engage the public in a way to make sure that they are
knowledgeable about that sacrifice and then again that we
convey to them that there is a worth to that sacrifice? And
that is really where the discussion boils down to. I would like
to hear your thoughts on that.
Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. Congressman, I think that we have to recognize
that, in a democratic country, obviously public opinion plays a
role in shaping the way our leaders make decisions.
But we also have to acknowledge the fact that our leaders
play a role in shaping public opinion. And I think that as we
pursue whatever strategy the President should choose in
Afghanistan, the President has a responsibility to explain to
the American people what course he has chosen, why he has
chosen that course, what the likely results are of that course
of action on the ground, and how it is that he thinks that the
campaign in Afghanistan will proceed, so that American
expectations are correctly shaped on the basis of reality.
I am quite concerned that, in the formulation of this
strategy, an overemphasis could be placed on what it is that
the American people believe is the best course of action. We
have strategic decision-makers to evaluate what is the best
course of action in a military engagement and in our foreign
policy. So in order to go forward, the President has to take
leadership over his strategy and really explain it to all of us
so that we can support it in the ways that we can and so that
we can evaluate it in ways that are credible.
Mr. Wittman. Dr. Dorronsoro.
Dr. Dorronsoro. I would say that the first thing is that
there is no credible narrative about Afghanistan right now. We
cannot say, cannot explain that we are fighting for a new
democracy in Afghanistan. That is not credible after the
election of August, you know. So we have to define the
narrative in a very narrow manner. It is a potential threat
because al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan, so it has become
extremely difficult to explain.
The second thing is that we have to lower the level of
casualties. So we have, for example, to go from 500 this year
to 400 next year, and to show people that we are building
something that is an exit, that is a responsible exit. In the
sense that we are taking our time, we should not, absolutely
not negotiate with the Taliban while taking our time, while
building Afghan army, but we are leaving. It must be sure. And
doesn't mean that we are not going to support the Afghan state
for decades, and I mean decades, 50 years, possible, you know,
but not with fighting troops.
And that is the only way to build a consensus, because if
you ask people what are you--okay, you don't want this war
because of too many casualties, but what do you want to do? And
then people are obliged to say, okay, we have to exit, but on
the other hand, we have to protect the Afghan people. That is
the moral responsibility. And it means that we have to be clear
about an exit strategy.
Mr. Wittman. Dr. Krepinevich.
Dr. Krepinevich. Again, I think the Administration has some
really strong factors in its favor. As I said, I think the
Administration has correctly diagnosed the character of the
conflict. I think it has set clear objectives, and I think it
has a strategy that can move you towards accomplishing those
objectives.
We have a President who is a very persuasive, dynamic
speaker, so the ability to convey this message to the American
people is certainly there, a person to explain the narrative,
as Dr. Dorronsoro says, to the American people.
And then I think, of course, one thing I mentioned earlier
is, and this is something I think the committee ought to be
interested in, is, okay, if we buy into this, if we buy into
the 40,000 troops or whatever and the strategy, how do we know
that we are moving toward achieving our objective and we are
moving forward at a reasonable rate? And again, I think there
are metrics.
In most counterinsurgency wars, there is the, they call the
stoplight chart. You have got green for areas that are secure,
yellow for areas that are contested, and red for areas that are
controlled by the insurgents. Well, what does that snapshot
look like today? What does it look like 6 months from now, a
year from now, 18 months from now?
And I think, again, the President, and he has already said
this, he preaches patience, you know, this isn't going to turn
around in a day.
Other issues. What about economic growth in the country?
What about employment in the country? Are people being removed
from office because of issues of corruption? Are they being
prosecuted? What about Taliban defectors? You know, we are
beginning to see more and more defect from the ranks of the
Taliban.
Are the Pakistanis becoming serious about cracking down on
the Taliban? I mean, I have spoken to many American senior
policymakers. They go to Pakistan, and it is almost routine; a
day or two before they get there inevitably some Taliban guy is
arrested and it is, ``Aha, look, we are really cracking down.''
And then you leave, and they would go back to business as
usual.
The ring road, is the ring road secure? How often is the
ring road attacked, is that becoming an avenue of commerce and
an integrating function for the nation? Where are we in terms
of substituting a different crop in a different economic base
from the opium crop?
So again, I think, again, we have a President who is a very
effective communicator. He has got a good strategy. There are
metrics I think that the American people can understand and
certainly the Congress can understand. So again, you are right
to be concerned; this is going to cost more both in terms of
lives and resources. People, I think, are willing to accept
that cost as long as they can see a payoff and progress.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I mean, this is really difficult. It is really
tough. I think that is why we are struggling. It is obviously
why the President is struggling as well.
The last time I came back from Afghanistan, having had an
opportunity to actually sit down with women in the villages,
which was quite impressive actually to hear their sense of even
a possible future, I came away believing that if we provide
that space, as you mentioned, that eventually, over time,
training the troops, changing governance, that something that
is defined as success with certain metrics, and I certainly
have always wanted them to involve the building of some kind of
civil society, not going as far as nation-building perhaps, but
doing that.
But I have also had a chance lately to speak to some people
who have really been on the ground and just believe, I think,
that there are some ancient divisions there that we just can't
overcome, that are difficult to do that. And I think that we do
talk strategy, which is appropriate, to try and understand
that.
But the difficulty is that there may not be a real
opportunity for reconciliation, that we are talking about
people dividing along societal lines, longstanding Pashtun and
non-Pashtun, et cetera, et cetera. And I just wish you would
comment on that, and are we understanding that enough? Do you
all understand that enough? I mean, do we know enough to really
know how to respond in some way?
Dr. Dorronsoro, please go ahead.
Dr. Dorronsoro. There are three main divides I am thinking
of in Afghanistan. The first is an ethnic one. And obviously,
the Pashtun, most of the Pashtun don't feel very comfortable
with Karzai. They have the feeling that they are alienated from
the government. Plus the majority of the fight is in their
region, so they are losing civilians, of course, property
destruction and so on. So this part of the population clearly
has a major problem with the way it is working in Kabul. Even
if Karzai himself is a Pashtun. And this divide is, I mean, it
is back to the 1980s, I mean, or the 1990s at least.
The second divide is a social one between people who are in
the cities and people who are in the countryside. Kandahar is
not really a city. It is something very special, but most of
the cities, Jalalabad, Kabul, Mazar, Herat, have a special
culture that is more open to foreigners, to modernity, and that
is the only social asset we have in Afghanistan, basically.
That is where we can have some kind of success that is not
military.
But in the countryside, let's say that people react very
badly when they see foreigners with guns. And the idea that we
are going to protect the population is somewhat naive. You
know, you do not protect the Pashtun people. That is not
historically what has been done. You can make a deal with them,
but it is better to stay outside.
And the third divide is an ideological one between, first,
people who welcome us and now are working with the coalition,
and fundamentalist people who are sometimes working with the
coalition but not very clearly, and of course the Taliban. So
you have a very deep ideological divide.
And the fundamentalist movement is extremely strong in
Afghanistan and is not committed to the Taliban. You have
fundamentalist people in Kabul working with Karzai. You have
fundamentalist people in the north. And that is why it is so
difficult. You can speak with a woman in the village, you know,
but at the same time, let's be clear, the real social order in
villages is not exactly what we would like in terms of the
woman's role and place in society. We cannot go against that.
We cannot go because we are not very credible, speaking about
human rights, for different reasons. And we just don't have the
control of the countryside. And we cannot enter their houses.
It is very difficult to do something.
So, yes, we have all these divides in the Afghan society.
And we must be extremely careful to play with it carefully so
the situations don't get out of control. I am thinking about
the ethnic divide. If we are not careful, if we are giving arms
to the wrong people----
Mrs. Davis. If I could just interrupt, I think part of the
question is the ability, the capacity, in many ways, to do
that, whether or not you can do it without the kind of civilian
and, really, international kind of support that we have been
seeking. That needs to be done on a whole different level than
what it has done before.
Dr. Dorronsoro. We don't have the resources to send
civilians in the villages. We don't have the resources to do
that. It is clear that we tend to portray the Afghans as some
kind of passive people. No, no, they are taking charge of
things. And the idea that we can remodel the Afghan society is
wrong. We have to play with what we have. And we don't have a
very good hand.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I guess my question is, let's assume that the President
gives General McChrystal the resources that he requires to have
a high probability of success in Afghanistan. Can you give me
an estimate of where you think what I would call the tipping
point is?
In other words, in Iraq we had the surge in 2007, along
with other factors, that led to success. And then, in 2009, we
started a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq. Clearly, what we
want is--we don't want to win the war, we want the Afghan army
to win the war.
And so, can you tell me--I mean, can any of you give an
estimate on where would that tipping point be where we would
start being able to phase out our presence in Afghanistan?
Dr. Kagan.
Dr. Kagan. Congressman, thank you.
The complexity of Afghan society makes it more difficult
for our command to deal with and means that we will not
necessarily see in Afghanistan a grand bargain or a huge
systematic effect as quickly as we saw in Iraq, where the
combination of the troop surge, the new civil-military team,
and the new strategy and the extraordinary engagement with the
people of Iraq truly had a transformative effect in a short
time, such that, in early 2007, we wouldn't know what a Son of
Iraq was and, by July, we were meeting them left and right in
our visits to Iraq.
We can't imagine that there is going to be a crescendo of
sudden change in Afghanistan. So we have to set that
expectation aside. Nevertheless, we can expect large change in
Afghanistan and systemic change, just more slowly. What we
ought to look for is, first and foremost, the securing of key
areas such as Kandahar, Helmand River valley, Khost, in order
to contain and, ultimately, neutralize the enemy systems.
The second thing that we ought to be looking for is a
substantial increase, an exponential increase, in the size and
capability of the Afghan national security forces. It is one of
the reasons why we need more U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Because hitherto we have not had the kind of relationship, the
partnering relationship, with the Afghan army that we have had
with our counterparts in Iraq.
I have been to Iraq eight times since May 2007. And, since
July 2007, I have rarely, if ever, met a U.S. battalion or
brigade commander without his Iraqi counterpart. In
Afghanistan, in my two visits this year, including with General
McChrystal's assessment team, I did not actually have the
opportunity to meet an Afghan counterpart to a battalion or
brigade commander. That tells you something about how we are
doing our partnering and how we are increasing the size of the
Afghan army.
So what we actually have to do is create a decisive
situation on the ground. And I think that that will take
several years. And it will also take several years to increase
the strength of the Afghan army and the size of the Afghan army
enough to be able to start handing over responsibilities to
them.
That is to say, we should not expect a sudden change in
2010 the way we saw a sudden change in 2007 in Iraq. Rather, we
should expect a two- to three-year process if General
McChrystal gets what he wants, if those forces come into
theater in a timely fashion, and then, finally, if those forces
have the effect that he believes that they will have.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you so much.
I am short of time. Dr. Krepinevich, let me go to you next,
because I had Dr. Dorronsoro, I think, before. So go ahead.
Dr. Krepinevich. Just very quickly, I agree with Dr. Kagan.
I would also add that, again, to a great extent, it is not
just what is going on internal to Afghanistan; it is,
obviously, also what is going on in Pakistan. To the extent
that the Pakistanis take a more active role in this effort,
that could accelerate progress in Afghanistan.
Also, I wouldn't rule out the consequences of what happens
in Iraq. If, for some reason, our position in Iraq really
begins to erode, I think that makes things just all the more
difficult in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And there are some metrics. Again, I think as Dr. Kagan
said, you should be looking for some of the things I mentioned
earlier: increased role on the part of the Afghan National
Army; you know, what percentage of the overall effort has been
assumed by them.
I think one intriguing metric that we looked at during the
operations in Iraq were what percentage of contacts with the
enemy are initiated by our side. And if that percentage is
growing over time, what that means is we are getting better and
better intelligence about who the enemy is and where the enemy
is. And so that is one surrogate for identifying whether or not
you are winning the intelligence war, which is a surrogate for
where the center of gravity, the population's disposition is.
But, again, as Congresswoman Davis said, it is difficult.
And I think, whether you like Rumsfeld or not, his phrase,
``long, hard slog,'' just keeps coming back again and again to
mind.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Kagen.
Dr. Kagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just preface my questions with my own personal
experience as a physician, having treated our veterans in
military hospitals and Veterans Affairs hospitals (VAs) and my
own clinics for a number of decades. And there is no greater
national treasure than our veterans who have served. And for
those that have come back damaged, not just mentally but
physically, it is really hard to put Humpty-Dumpty back
together again. Not just the soldiers, both men and women, but
their families, their communities, the businesses that they had
or that they worked for. So this is a deadly serious
conversation that we are having, and I would like to share with
you that perspective.
So, what the soldiers have told me for 33 years as their
doctor about the region we are talking about is it is real easy
to get into Afghanistan and real difficult to get out. It is
easy to get in, and it is hard to get out.
And the Russians found that out when they went in. And when
they left, they were being shot in the back end. And what did
they win? What victory was theirs? Two thousand three hundred
years ago, when Ashoka conquered the region, Ashoka turned to
become a pacifist because of the carnage and the destruction
that he had led his people into.
So, is it possible for the United States--because that is
who we represent--to align our own national goals with the
existing tribal entities and groups that are present on the
ground and allow those tribal entities to share their values,
their goals with our strategic values about pushing back
against and eliminating al Qaeda?
Dr. Krepinevich. That one is for me?
Dr. Kagen. Take all three.
Dr. Krepinevich. I would say that, in a sense, there are
cross-cutting goals. Obviously, the tribes in Afghanistan do
not share every goal that we have, you know, given our
different role in the world from theirs. I do think that there
are some goals in common. I do think, if you look at the period
immediately after 9/11 when we went into Afghanistan, the
population there was very happy to be rid of the Taliban.
And I think, in an insurgency, you know, there is the old
phrase, ``You have to win the hearts and minds, but if you have
to choose, win the minds.'' In other words, it is more
important to convince the population that you are going prevail
than it is to convince them that they ought to like you.
Because, whether they like you or not, they are going to have
to make their peace with whoever prevails in the conflict. So I
think that is an important element.
I think that, to a certain extent, we squandered a lot of
the gains we made in the first couple of years. Their
expectations were low, and we failed to meet them. In a sense,
a very gradual slope, hoping things would get better. And, in
effect, as was pointed out, resources were withdrawn toward the
end of 2002, not only----
Dr. Kagen. I would like to extend your answer also to the
Pakistan region, because these are also--it is a mutual area;
it is ``Pashtunistan,'' in my view.
So how do we align their interest with ours so that we
don't have to waste our national resources and our men and
women?
Dr. Krepinevich. Again, I think you are talking on a much
broader plain over a much deeper or longer period of time. I am
no expert on Pakistani ethnic groups, but, certainly, one area
that has to be an area of enormous concern is the rise of
madrassas that form a ready recruiting center for a lot of the
young people who turn to radical Muslim agendas and so on.
And, you know, how do you cut that pipeline? Is it a case
of where parents in Pakistan, if given a choice between sending
their child to a madrassa or to a public school that gives you
an education that you can really use in modern Pakistani
society, if they had that choice to make, you know, which way
would they make it, I guess.
There are huge issues in that country with respect to, for
example, water resources. And I think solving that is key to
essentially avoiding an even greater disaster and then
potentially radicalizing even more people.
So, you know, this cuts so wide and cuts so deep. And,
again, Congresswoman Davis's point about, you know, this is
certainly very difficult. I keep coming back to President
Kennedy's speech that he made down at Rice University in 1962.
He talked about the Cold War, in general, and the space race
and so on. He ended up saying, ``We choose to do these things
not because they are easy but because they are hard.'' And a
sense that each generation is defined not by the easy
challenges they surmount but the difficult and hard challenges
that they are willing to take on and prevail in. Of course, the
$64 question here is, is that challenge possible to prevail in?
Dr. Kagen. Dr. Dorronsoro.
Dr. Dorronsoro. I would say that the values are very
different between the Afghan people, generally speaking, except
a few in the cities, but the values, our values, are very
different.
The second point is that a minority of the population is
tribalized in Afghanistan. So the tribes are not that
important. You have two different things. People can have a
tribal identity, but it doesn't mean that they are organized
with tribal institution. And the only place where you have
tribal institution is in the east, actually, functioning tribal
institution.
And there it would have been possible in 2002, 2003, 2004,
to do something, but it is lost now, because the Taliban have
undermined the tribal system in Afghanistan. They are
revolutionary in local terms, and they are fighting the tribes
very much but not enough to create the kind of social program
you have in Iraq.
So I don't see which tribe is going now to work with the
United States against the Taliban. It is too late. One of the
last tribes that wanted to do that, on the border, is not in a
neutral position. So they do not attack anymore the Taliban
when they cross their territory. So we have lost the tribal
potential ally, you know. That is dead.
On the Pakistan side, I don't see how we can really align
our interests with Pakistanis' interests, being the Pakistani
army is totally obsessed by India. So their only problem is
with India. So they want us out of Afghanistan and the Taliban
back in Kabul for one reason, is that if the Taliban are back
in Kabul, India will be no more in Afghanistan. And they think
it is going to be good for their strategies there. At the same
time, we can have other ideas about what would be the
consequences on Pakistan if the Taliban are back in Kabul, but
whatever.
So I don't see any possibility to align our interests with
Pakistan on this subject. But fighting al Qaeda could be a
common interest with Pakistan--the Pakistani army, Pakistani
Government. That is not a big deal. The big deal is the Afghan
Taliban, specifically.
And let's think, if we think about Pakistani tribes on the
Pakistani side the border, it is hugely, hugely anti-American.
I mean, it is just crazy. So there is absolutely no possibility
to do anything on this side of the border.
Dr. Kagen. Thank you.
Dr. Kagan. Congressman, I think we need to look at this
question at a micro-level and then at a macro-level.
We, at the Institute for the Study of War--I have a team of
analysts who work with me doing open-source analysis--have been
preparing a report on Kandahar city and its environs and,
really, what the history of U.S. coalition force engagement in
Kandahar has been and how that has interacted with local tribal
family political structures. And we hope to release it next
week.
What is very interesting, as we start looking at the most
localized dynamics, is that the United States and its coalition
partners have not gone out of their way to support those
individuals, families, and tribes that have historically been
pro-government or anti-Taliban. Rather, we have not really
taken into consideration the leanings of a tribe, a family, or
an area as we have deployed our forces and given our resources.
As a result, the Taliban has consistently been able to
undermine those tribes, families, leadership structures that
either actively support the government or actively detract from
the Taliban; the Arghandab district of Kandahar Province being
one key example that we explore in our paper.
So, at a microscopic level, what we can see is that the
allocation of forces to specific areas can change the dynamics
of the power structures at a local level and, actually, do so
in ways that have national political ramifications. For
example, because the Karzai family is from Kandahar, the effect
that our troops will have in the Arghandab River and region
will have an impact on how it is that the Karzai family is able
to use its power not only within Kandahar but nationally.
And I think, as we start to look at the McChrystal
strategy, we have to, again, be aware that these kinds of
nuances, they are the kinds of nuances that our commanders on
the ground make when they actually allocate the resources that
they are given to objectives.
But when we ask the question at a macro level, can we align
the interests of the government of Afghanistan with U.S.
interests, or the government of Pakistan with U.S. interests, I
would remind all of you that, of course, there are different
interest groups within these governments, and they compete with
one another.
Certainly, we have an opportunity under way in Pakistan
right now, as a constituency within the Pakistani Government
has decided actively to pursue common enemies, particularly the
Pakistani Taliban, in not only Bajaur, Swat, and Waziristan,
but that has ramifications, of course, in Afghanistan writ
large. We have opportunities to harness these particular and
somewhat transient alignments that are now under way.
But we do not actually have to align all of the government
factions and all of their interests with ours. We just need to
create an alignment that allows us to achieve the kinds of
narrow objectives that we have. For example, a functional
government in Kabul that can secure Afghanistan through its use
of force, that can regulate disputes, and that probably won't
get in the way of the average ordinary person much more than
that.
So we can't, certainly, align all of our interests, but we
can see to it that we accomplish those objectives by aligning
those handful of interests that we really need to compel our
friends and foes to put up with.
And I think, as Dr. Krepinevich stated earlier in this Q&A
session, the best way to do that is through strength. You can
try to persuade people that their interests have something in
common with yours, or you can try to persuade them that it is
not useful for them to have other interests right now. And that
is one of the roles that force plays in a counterinsurgency
conflict.
Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Most congressional hearings, as they proceed through the
hour or two that they endure, we gradually lose members. I
think this is the first time I have been in one where we have
gradually lost witnesses. But we appreciate the two of you
being here.
I actually want to end, Dr. Krepinevich, with two military
personnel-related questions for you, if I might have you put on
your old Army hat.
At the end of--about a year ago, this subcommittee put out
this report, ``Building Language Skills and Cultural
Competencies in the Military: DOD's Challenge in Today's
Educational Environment.'' I will just read the first couple
sentences from the executive summary.
``There is no doubt that foreign language skills and
cultural expertise are critical capabilities needed by today's
military to face the challenges of our present security
environment. But only a small part of today's military is
proficient in a foreign language. And, until recently, there
has been no comprehensive, systematic approach to develop
cultural expertise.''
I was reminded of our report, the unclassified version of
General McChrystal's assessment. On page 1-2, he says, ``As
formidable as the threat may be, we make the problem harder.
International Security Assistance Force is a conventional force
that is poorly configured for counterinsurgency, inexperienced
in local languages and culture, and struggling with challenges
inherent to coalition warfare.''
That phrase, ``inexperienced in local languages and
culture,'' what does it say--maybe this is a bit related to the
solarium question. What does it say, after eight years in a
country fighting a war, that we still have to say one of the
things that is holding us back is inexperience in local
languages and culture? What does that say about us and how we
are going about doing things?
Dr. Krepinevich. I think one aspect is the work of your
committee and the fact that the services--I have talked to
people in the Army and the Marine Corps. They really are
beginning to emphasize issues like cultural awareness, in
particular, and also language proficiency.
What it says, I guess, from my own observation, is that I
think, for a number of years, some of the military services,
the Army and Marine Corps probably most, were in kind of a
state of denial. You know, there was this issue of, A, we just
didn't understand. You know, the Army had gotten out of the
counterinsurgency business after Vietnam.
When I went down to Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)
in 2003, they said, ``We don't have any counterinsurgency--we
have this old thing that nobody ever read. And we are going to
have to sit down and start rethinking it.'' This was General
Byrnes and his staff. They were very candid, and at least they
recognized the problem.
So, not even understanding what kind of conflict they were
in, asking him, ``Well, what is our campaign plan in Iraq?''
And it was, well, brigade commanders--it is kind of the jazz
era; brigade commanders kind of doing what that brigade
commander thinks he ought to be doing. So I think there was
this lag in understanding just what the problem was.
And then came the issue--and I think it is one of the
reasons why you didn't see Mine Resistant Ambush Protected
Vehicles (MRAPs)--that this was a one-off. I mean, the strategy
was, as President Bush said, as they stand up, we will stand
down. Well, we are training these guys. If they are going to be
ready to go in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, we don't need MRAPs. By
the time we get them, we are going to be out of there. So there
was this, ``Well, we are getting out of town here, and this is
really kind of a one-off.'' And I had an Army general tell me,
``Look, we have had our hand on the stove for a while now,''
meaning we have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. ``Once we take
our hand off the stove, and it isn't going to be long, we are
not going to do this again. The American people won't tolerate
it. Look at all the dissension it is causing.''
So I think there was a combination of just not knowing what
we had gotten ourselves into. We had gotten out of that
business, in a sense. And so there was a lag in understanding
what exactly the requirements were. And then I think there was
a bit longer of a lag as a consequence of a belief, at least on
the part of many, that this was kind of a one-off. You know,
``Okay, we understand what we are in, but we really aren't
going to be in it much longer. We are going to turn it over to
those guys, and then we will go back to business as usual.''
And, you know, there is always the institutional
resistance, you know, officers, noncommissioned officers
(NCOs), trying to acquire these skills. I talked to Marines,
and their attitude was, ``Well, yeah, we will do it, but each
Marine is going to do it on his or her time. We are not going
to put any of this in''--you know, because Marines are just too
darn busy. Well, you have to make that a priority. And so that
became an issue.
So, again, it is very encouraging to see people like
yourself and the Members pushing this issue. I know Congressman
Skelton has been a long-time advocate of the importance of
military education. And it is also encouraging to see some kind
of a payoff. Because, obviously, when people like General
McChrystal highlight it and are really banging the table on it,
I think we have finally turned a corner.
Dr. Snyder. The second question I want to ask--and any of
you should feel free to punt on this one since you had no--this
was not in McChrystal's report. But you mentioned earlier the
increase in the size of the Army and the increase in the size
of the Marine Corps. And I think all of you in some way have
discussed the stress on the force and the numbers, that a large
deployment can cause stress on the military families.
One of the issues that has been discussed through the years
by the American people and this Congress is the role of women
in the military. And they have played such an important role in
both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have some very convoluted and complex statutory
restrictive language that, I would think, would be difficult
for the military to comply with, although they assure us that
they do, with regard to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Is it time just to get rid of that legislative language and
tell the Department of Defense that they need to do with the
personnel what is in the best interest of the military,
assuming there will be some units that they may conclude they
are not going to have women in or there may be some military
occupational specialties (MOS) they may conclude--but is it
time just to say it needs to be up to the military to make that
decision rather than Congress?
Dr. Krepinevich. Again, I am no expert, but my gut tells me
that your gut instinct right.
I was out on an aircraft carrier a couple years ago.
Admiral Stavridis invited me out. And you see these planes
coming in. It is amazing, these 19- and 20-year-old kids
basically running the entire operation. And this one Marine jet
lands, F-14, this pilot gets out, and I think, ``That is one
heck of a small pilot.'' The pilot takes her helmet off, and it
is a ``her.'' And it is just--I mean, I have spent most of my
life in the Army; it was dominated by men.
And you come to realize that, in so many jobs, combat and
noncombatant jobs, that you don't have to be a pro wrestler in
order to do the job. If you are physically fit, you are
probably qualified. And a lot of it involves mental agility and
technical expertise. And that is not the domain, you know,
purely of men, if it is in their domain at all. Sometimes I
wonder. The other aspect is, obviously, there are a lot of
women who are more physically fit than men, so the notion that
only men can do this, I think, has certainly been proven wrong.
I would say the only concern--and it would certainly fall
within the parameters of what you just defined--is anything
that would be detrimental to good order and discipline. And I
guess we are going to get a test when we have females on
submarines. That is a very tough environment to be in, very
closed, constricted, long periods of time.
But, again, I think you are right. I mean, if we try and
eliminate common sense and the needs of the service out of this
by being overly restrictive, I don't think we help the soldiers
and the other service members, I don't think we help our
military, and I don't think we help our country. And, again, I
am a big fan of common sense in those situations.
Dr. Snyder. I think all of us have participated in welcome-
home events and award ceremonies, and the number of women that
have been indispensable in the success of the missions has been
very impressive.
And I think it has probably been brought home, just in the
last two or three weeks. I think it may have been The New York
Times that had the wonderful photograph of the four Marines
sitting down taking a break, doing a classic military thing,
which is a boot off and a sock off, trying to figure out what
the hell is going wrong with that foot. And they were all four
women Marines in Afghanistan.
Dr. Krepinevich. Well, the other thing is that, you know,
there really are, in these wars, no front lines, no rear lines.
It is not as though, if you are here, you are safe.
Dr. Snyder. Which makes it--and that is the beginning of my
question. The difficulty, I think, the difficulty of trying to
comply with the kind of statutory restriction we put on them
that may make sense in a Cold War scenario with a potential for
a hot war, but I think it makes it very convoluted.
We appreciate both of you still being here. Thank you.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:48 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
November 17, 2009
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
November 17, 2009
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