[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-166]
DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JUNE 16, 2010
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-824 PDF WASHINGTON : 2010
___________________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer
Contact Center, U.S. Government Printing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or
866-512-1800 (toll-free). E-mail, gpo@custhelp.com.
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas California
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ADAM SMITH, Washington W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California ROB BISHOP, Utah
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania DUNCAN HUNTER, California
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
GLENN NYE, Virginia THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina CHARLES K. DJOU, Hawaii
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
SCOTT MURPHY, New York
WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
JOHN GARAMENDI, California
MARK S. CRITZ, Pennsylvania
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
DAN BOREN, Oklahoma
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia
Paul Arcangeli, Staff Director
Mike Casey, Professional Staff Member
Aileen Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Megan Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Developments in Afghanistan............ 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, June 16, 2010......................................... 61
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2010
DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services........ 3
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Flournoy, Hon. Michele P., Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,
U.S. Department of Defense..................................... 5
Petraeus, Gen. David H., USA, Commander, U.S. Central Command.... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Flournoy, Hon. Michele P..................................... 70
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 67
Petraeus, Gen. David H....................................... 78
Skelton, Hon. Ike............................................ 65
Documents Submitted for the Record:
Opening Statement by Gen. David H. Petraeus to the Senate
Armed Services Committee, 16 June 2010..................... 87
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[The information was not available at the time of printing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Critz.................................................... 94
Mr. Heinrich................................................. 93
Mr. Kissell.................................................. 92
Mr. Loebsack................................................. 91
Mr. Owens.................................................... 94
Mr. Rogers................................................... 92
DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 16, 2010.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:03 p.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The Chairman. Good afternoon.
Today, the House Armed Services Committee meets to receive
testimony on developments in Afghanistan. Our witnesses today
are two old friends, the Honorable Michele Flournoy, the Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy, and General David Petraeus,
Commander of the United States Central Command.
And we welcome you both, and we thank you for being with
us.
First, let me take the opportunity to thank the many brave
men and women serving under General Petraeus in Afghanistan,
Iraq, throughout Central Command, for their outstanding
service.
I know I speak on behalf of all the members, General, when
I convey to you our heartfelt thanks to those soldiers,
sailors, airmen, and Marines for all that they do. And we are
truly blessed to have such heroes working on behalf of our
Nation under your command.
The recent weeks' reports from Afghanistan have been
largely negative. We heard that operations in Marjah are not
going as expected and the Taliban has begun a campaign of
murder and intimidation, the Kandahar operation has been
postponed while the Taliban have been assassinating local
government officials.
U.S. and coalition casualties are increasing, and in some
cases, the United States has been contracting with the very
warlords who intimidate the people of Afghanistan and undermine
our efforts.
To some, these reports reflect what they have always
suspected, that our efforts in Afghanistan are futile. I do not
share that view.
Last fall, I advocated for a counterinsurgency campaign as
the course most likely to prevent al Qa'ida from re-
establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan. And I still believe
this to be true. While we face many challenges in that country,
the type of challenge we face now were largely expected. As we
surge troops, there will be hard fighting and many setbacks,
and I believe that this is the dark before the dawn.
Let me be clear: We face serious challenges in Afghanistan.
But after many years of neglect in Afghanistan, there are
positive signs, as well.
General McChrystal has reported that security is no longer
declining. Local populations are increasingly pointing out
improvised explosive devices. And while we desperately need
more trainers from NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization],
the recruiting of new personnel for the Afghan security forces
is ahead of schedule.
Increased cooperation with key nations in the region during
the past year has also shown signs of success. Our Pakistani
allies have arrested senior members of the Taliban leadership,
while Afghan government and our forces have had great success
targeting the local shadow governors.
Further, we must remember that not all of our forces are
deployed yet, which must happen before we rush to judgment. I
do not doubt that we can face down the insurgency on the field
of battle.
While our troops are tired from many deployments--and they
are--those same combat tours have made them into the best
counterinsurgency force in history. What concerns me is the
capacity of the Afghan government to sustain the military
success provided by U.S. and Afghan troops. Ultimately, it is
this ability that will convince the Afghan people to stand
against al Qa'ida and against the Taliban.
In recent weeks, we have seen mixed signals about this
capacity. President Karzai forced out two of his most competent
and highly regarded ministers. Media stories repeatedly bring
home examples of corruption undermining our efforts.
And yet at the same time, the Afghan government has forced
out and prosecuted a number of government officials for
corruption, including the former border police chief for
Kandahar. Further, data suggests that the Afghan people are
showing increased confidence in their local governments and an
increased confidence that their national government is headed
in the right and correct direction.
While small and not irreversible, these significant signs
give us some hope of progress.
This December, the President has promised to review the
progress of his strategy in Afghanistan. I hope our witnesses
can help us understand what this review will entail and set
some expectations for us.
December is a reasonable time to review progress. All the
surge troops will have arrived on the ground and been
undertaking operations for several months.
But I hope our witnesses can help the members here
understand more about what we expect to see before December,
particularly in Kandahar, which is so critical in the
forthcoming months. What progress do they expect to see among
the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government? We all
know Afghanistan will not become peaceful and successful
overnight, but what signs are reasonable to expect and would
represent enough progress to suggest we should continue our
present course?
And I hope our witnesses today can help us with these
questions. We, again, thank both of you for being with us
today. We appreciate your service and your testimony, as well.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the
Appendix on page 65.]
I turn to my good friend, the ranking member, gentleman
from California, Buck McKeon.
Mr. McKeon.
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
holding today's hearing on Afghanistan.
I think this hearing is especially timely, and I agree
wholeheartedly with all of your comments about the troops that
General Petraeus commands. And I send my best to them and to
their families.
While the Senate passed its version of the wartime
supplemental measure prior to Memorial Day, consistent with the
Department's request, the House has yet to mark up this
legislation in committee, let alone bring the matter forward to
a vote for the full House.
I hope today that we will hear from you regarding the
urgency of this funding and the consequences of delay when it
comes to our military operations, particularly those in
Afghanistan.
I would like to welcome back Under Secretary of Defense
Michele Flournoy and the Commander of Central Command, General
Petraeus. Neither of you are new to this committee, nor to the
ongoing discussion about Afghanistan. I want to take a moment
to thank each of you for your service to our Nation and for
being here with us this afternoon. I look forward to a candid
discussion.
Over the last several months, I have been vocal in
expressing my support for the President's strategy and his
decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. forces to
Afghanistan. Many of us believe, Republicans and Democrats
alike, that failure in Afghanistan is not an option. The stakes
are too high.
If we do not succeed in our mission by working alongside
our Afghan and international partners, the result will be the
re-establishment of a pre-9/11 sanctuary for al Qa'ida
terrorists and the Taliban extremists. This is not an end state
that any of us should be willing to accept.
I look forward to our witnesses providing their assessment
of where security and stability in Afghanistan and the region
stands today.
Now, turning to my concerns. As you both know, I have been
just as outspoken in sharing my apprehensions with what I have
called a minimalist approach advocated by some in Washington
when it comes to resourcing our efforts. General Petraeus, at
CENTCOM's [U.S. Central Command] posture hearing in March, I
shared with you my concern that we were not applying lessons
learned in Iraq to address the indirect fire threat to U.S. and
coalition forward operating bases in Afghanistan.
Under Secretary Flournoy, at our Afghanistan hearing in
May, you heard similar concerns, as well as my fear that a real
or perceived troop limit was forcing tradeoff decisions between
combat troops and key enablers.
I would like to thank our chairman and my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle for taking a strong stand on this issue
in the House-passed version of the defense bill. We will work
with the Senate and the Department of Defense to ensure that
the United States devotes all necessary resources for success
in Afghanistan and that U.S. force levels are not limited in an
arbitrary manner that would hamper the deployment of critical
combat enablers, including force protection.
Over the course of the last six months, I have spoken out
against the President's announced July 2011 date to begin
withdrawing U.S. forces. In my view--and I am not alone--this
decision was based on the Washington political clock, not the
Afghan operational clock.
While some will argue that the scope and the pace of that
withdrawal remains undecided, I believe that setting a date
certain risks undermining the very counterinsurgency mission
which is based on winning the support of the Afghan population
that our troops and their civilian counterparts are executing.
July 2011 is not the only date that has warranted my
attention. As you both know, we are quickly approaching the
pending December 2010 strategic review. Nearly six months ago,
I questioned the timing of the review, given that it would
occur within three months of all the surge forces arriving in
theater.
I was also skeptical whether by December 2010 we would be
in a position to fairly evaluate whether or not we should begin
a transition by the summer of 2011. I support assessments. They
are absolutely necessary to measure progress or the lack
thereof.
And I am confident that General Petraeus, General
McChrystal, and the entire chain of command are constantly
assessing our military operations and progress in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and elsewhere around the world. Additionally, I am
confident that Ambassador Eikenberry is doing the same on the
civilian side.
My concern, then, which has been strengthened recently, is
that events on the ground usually evolve in such ways that they
don't align perfectly to political deadlines put in play in
Washington. Based on recent press reports, it appears there is
an effort to manage expectations for that review and what it
means in terms of assessing our progress in Afghanistan.
I think the process and nature of the review deserve some
discussion this morning. I continue to doubt that we will be
able to fairly assess this, this December, just 90 days after
all the surge forces arrive in theater, if General McChrystal
and our troops are going to succeed in Afghanistan or be in a
position to determine whether we are on track to begin
redeploying U.S. forces by July 2011.
While the additional 30,000 U.S. forces are arriving in the
south, we recently learned that our operations are taking
longer than originally expected. How will the upcoming December
assessment be used by the President and this Administration to
determine the pace and scope of our redeployment?
Last week, General McChrystal acknowledged that our
military is using lessons learned from its efforts in the
Helmand River Valley, called ongoing operations a ``deliberate
process,'' and recognizing that it takes time to convince
people.
When asked about upcoming operations in Kandahar, General
McChrystal stated, ``It will happen more slowly than we
originally anticipated. I think it will take a number of months
for this to play out, but I don't think that is necessarily a
bad thing. I think it is more important that we get it right
than we get it fast.''
I absolutely agree with General McChrystal. It is more
important that we get this done right. The President's
determination on how and when we move forward should be based
on events on the ground, not imposed timelines that are often
artificial and can be counterproductive.
Do the assumptions underlying the President's December 2009
decision to begin redeployment in July 2011 still hold true
today, more than six months later? Did the Administration
underestimate the time it would take to get the surge forces
into the fight? Did we also underestimate how long it would
take to set the conditions to begin and complete the operations
in Kandahar?
Do timelines reinforce our long-term commitment to the
Afghan government and its people, as well as Pakistan and our
international partners? Or do they alter behavior in such a way
that makes our strategy more difficult to achieve?
Once again, thank you for being here this morning, and I
look forward to your testimonies and having my concerns and
questions addressed. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 67.]
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman from California.
And we, again, welcome you, Madam Secretary. You are on.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHELE P. FLOURNOY, UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Secretary Flournoy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
McKeon, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting us
here to testify today.
I would like to give you an update on our recent progress
and remaining challenges in Afghanistan. As you know, President
Obama announced a number of key refinements to our Afghanistan
strategy last December, including the deployment of 30,000
additional troops. Today, over 19,000 of these additional
troops have deployed, and most of the remainder will be in
place by the end of the summer.
Our own troops will be joined by over 9,000 international
troops. Approximately 60 percent of the NATO and partner troops
are currently in place in Afghanistan, and more will arrive in
the coming months.
Currently, the main operational effort for ISAF
[International Security Assistance Force] and our Afghan
partners continues to be in the central Helmand River Valley
and in Kandahar. Our focus in these operations is protecting
the population and fostering Afghan security and governance
capacity.
So far, we believe that we have been making gradual, but
important progress. The coalition is contesting the insurgency
more effectively, in more places, and with more forces. But
this insurgency is both resilient and resourceful.
In both April and May, we have seen insurgent activity
resume in Marjah and in much of central Helmand. However, local
Afghans in the region have also shown an increased willingness
to report suspected IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and
insurgent weapons caches, which suggests growing pockets of
confidence among ordinary people and a willingness to support
ISAF and Afghan efforts to establish much needed security and
governance.
In Kandahar province, we are, indeed, taking a deliberate
approach, gradually expanding our efforts to improve local
governance in key districts and as the coalition and ANSF
[Afghanistan National Security Force]--as those operations
improve the security situation.
Some in Congress have expressed concern about the impact of
local power brokers on our efforts in Kandahar, and we share
this concern. We also recognize that there are ways in which
our own contracting practices have had unintended consequences,
concentrating wealth among a relatively small number of Afghans
who control companies large enough to procure contracts.
General Petraeus and Admiral Mullen have recently created a
two-star task force to examine our contracting practices, with
a view to reducing these unintended consequences. When we have
evidence of corruption, we will also work with our Afghan
partners to prosecute those who have violated the law.
Let me turn to our efforts to increase the strength and
capability of the ANSF. Building effective Afghan National
Security Force capacity remains key, both to the long-term
security and stability of Afghanistan and to our ability to
transition security responsibility and eventually draw down our
own forces as conditions allow. While we are still short about
450 institutional trainers, we have brought the instructor-
trainee ratio from about 1 to 80 down to 1 to 30.
The ANA [Afghan National Army] is on schedule to meet the
goal of 134,000 troops for fiscal year 2010, and nearly 85
percent of the ANA is now fully partnered with ISAF forces as
they operate in the field.
As far as the police, the ANP [Afghan National Police] is
on track to reach its goal of 109,000 police by the end of the
fiscal year. We have increased the capacity to conduct ANP
training by 400 percent over the last 12 months, and follow-on
training has been provided for Afghan uniformed police in 83
key districts, as well as to the Afghan border police.
Recent salary and benefit initiatives have addressed pay
disparities between the ANA and the ANP, and these initiatives
appear to be improving retention and reducing attrition.
Literacy programs have also proven to be a positive
incentive. Further, we believe that rising end-strength numbers
and newly instituted unit rotation schedules will further
reduce attrition. Consequently, we believe that ANSF end-
strength goals for 2011 are achievable.
Needless to say, the purpose of these efforts is to ensure
a gradual transition of security responsibility to the Afghan
government. And as we told President Karzai and 14 members of
his cabinet during our strategic dialogue last month,
transition does not--does not--mean abandonment or withdrawal.
We are committed to supporting the Afghan people over the long
haul, and we will not walk away from this commitment.
Nonetheless, we cannot and should not remain in a combat
role indefinitely. As the international military presence
begins to shift from a lead combat role to an advise and assist
role, it will be absolutely vital to ensure a robust and long-
term security assistance program, as well as an international
civilian assistance effort focused on capacity-building,
governance, and development.
We are working closely with the Afghan government to plan
for this transition process. At the Kabul conference in July,
the Afghan government will present plans for achieving further
progress in governance and development across four ministerial
clusters. We will also expect to hear from President Karzai
regarding actions to be taken with regard to corruption, as
well as plans for reconciliation and reintegration.
Let me say a few words about the latter, since I know it is
an issue that has generated a lot of interest. All parties to
the conflict in Afghanistan recognize that, in the end, some
political resolution will be required to bring the conflict to
a close. This recognition has driven the Afghan government to
begin to develop plans to reconcile insurgent leaders and
reintegrate low-level fighters.
In early April, President Karzai presented his interim
plans for reintegration. And in May, a consultative peace jirga
gave President Karzai a conditional mandate to pursue
reconciliation.
The U.S. supports an Afghan-led process that seeks to bring
back into society those who cease violence, break ties to al
Qa'ida, and are willing to live under the Afghan constitution.
Let me conclude by underscoring our overall assessment that
we are heading in the right direction in Afghanistan. Of the
121 key terrain districts identified by COMISAF [Commander of
International Security Assistance Force] in December 2009, 60
were judged as sympathetic or neutral to the Afghan government
at the time. By March of this year, that number had climbed to
73.
This and other indicators suggest that we are beginning to
regain the initiative and the insurgency is beginning to lose
momentum. That said, the outcome is far from determined, and
these are still early days for the Administration's new
strategy.
When I testified before this committee six weeks ago, I
said at the time, inevitably, we will face challenges, possibly
setbacks. Even as we achieve successes, we need to recognize
that things may get harder before they get better. And I stand
by that assessment.
None of what we are doing in Afghanistan involves quick
fixes. These are long-term problems, and their solutions will
require patience, persistence, and flexibility, but we are
making progress, sometimes slow, but we believe steady, and we
are confident that General McChrystal will be able to show
further progress by the end of this year.
We greatly appreciate this committee's steadfast support
for our efforts, from OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] budget
requests to our supplemental request. And as was stated, this
is indeed an urgent matter, and we look forward to rapid
passage of that bill.
In particular, we appreciate your support for full funding
of the Afghan National Security Forces Fund, for the extension
of coalition support funds to reimburse key coalition partners,
and for your support for the Commander's Emergency Response
Program [CERP]. The CERP is a critical tool in this
counterinsurgency fight, and we hope that you will support the
full request that the Department has made.
Thank you again for inviting us here today. Appreciate your
support. And we look forward to your questions and comments.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Flournoy can be found
in the Appendix on page 70.]
The Chairman. I certainly thank you.
General Petraeus, we, again, welcome you, and we appreciate
your testimony.
STATEMENT OF GEN. DAVID H. PETRAEUS, USA, COMMANDER, U.S.
CENTRAL COMMAND
General Petraeus. Mr. Chairman, Congressman McKeon, members
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide an
update on the situation in Afghanistan and our execution of the
comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign that is
being conducted there.
I might note that it is a pleasure to do this with Under
Secretary Michele Flournoy, who I might note was a contributor
to the conference at Fort Leavenworth in January 2006 that
launched the effort to draft the Army and Marine Corps
counterinsurgency manual.
I will begin with some brief context. As you will recall,
soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by
the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat
the Taliban, al Qa'ida, and other associated extremist groups
in Afghanistan.
In the years that followed, however, members of the Taliban
and other extremist elements gradually reconnected in the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions and rebuilt the structures
necessary to plan and execute insurgent operations.
In recent years, these groups have engaged in an
increasingly violent campaign against the Afghan people, their
government, and ISAF forces, and they have demonstrated
symbiotic relationships, ambitions, and capabilities that pose
threats not just to Afghanistan and the region, but to
countries throughout the world.
In response to the threat posed by these extremists, ISAF
forces and our Afghan partners are engaged in a campaign
intended, above all, to prevent re-establishment of
transnational extremist sanctuaries in Afghanistan, like the
ones al Qa'ida enjoyed there when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan
prior to 9/11.
To achieve our objectives, we are working with our ISAF and
Afghan partners to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and
other insurgent elements, to improve security for the Afghan
people, to increase the quantity and quality of the Afghan
National Security Forces, and to support establishment of
Afghan governance that is seen as legitimate in the eyes of the
people.
Over the past 18 months, we and our ISAF partners have
worked hard to get the ``inputs'' right in Afghanistan. We have
worked to build the organizations we learned in Iraq are needed
to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency
campaign.
We have put the best military and civilian leaders possible
in charge of those organizations. We have refined and, where
necessary, developed the plans and concepts needed to guide the
conduct of a comprehensive effort. And we have deployed the
substantial additional resources--military, civilian, funding,
and so on--needed to implement the plans that have been
developed.
And I note here that the deployment of the final 30,000
additional U.S. troopers announced by President Obama last
December and their equipment is slightly ahead of schedule.
Nearly 21,000 of the additional 30,000 are now in Afghanistan.
And by the end of August, as we committed, all the additional
U.S. forces will be on the ground, except for a headquarters
unit that is not required until a month or so later.
Meanwhile, the efforts to increase the size and capability
of the Afghan National Army and police are also now on track,
though there clearly is considerable work to be done in that
critical area and to sustain the improvements that have been
achieved in recent months.
Even as we continue the effort to complete getting the
inputs right, the actions taken over the last 18 months, which
include tripling the U.S. force contribution and increasing
similarly the U.S. civilian component, have enabled the
initiation of new efforts in key areas in Afghanistan.
As the Under Secretary noted, the initial main effort has
been in the central Helmand River Valley, and U.S. and U.K.
forces have made progress there, though, predictably, the enemy
has fought back as we have taken away his sanctuaries in
Marjah, Nadi-Ali, and elsewhere.
And I might note that I walked the market in Marjah a
couple of months ago, something that would not have been
possible when I appeared before this committee for my posture
hearing several months back.
The focus is now shifting to Kandahar province, where the
effort features an integrated civil-military approach to
security, governance, and development. In the months ahead
there, we will see an additional U.S. brigade, from the great
101st Airborne Division, deploy into the districts around
Kandahar City, together with an additional Afghan army brigade,
with which they will partner.
There will also be the introduction of additional Afghan
police, both uniform and national civil order police, and U.S.
military police, to secure the city, along with other U.S.
forces and civilians who will work together with the impressive
Canadian provincial reconstruction team that has been deployed
in the city for several years.
As you have heard General McChrystal explain, the concept
is to provide the Kandaharis a rising tide of security, one
that will expand over time and establish the foundation of
improved security on which local Afghan governance can be built
and that will enable improvements in the provision of basic
services and other areas, as well.
There will, as the Under Secretary noted, be nothing easy
about any of this. Indeed, I noted several months ago during my
annual posture hearing that the going was likely to get harder
before it got easier. That has already been the case, as we
have seen recently.
But it is essential that we make progress in the critical
southern part of the country, the part where, in fact, the 9/11
attacks were planned by al Qa'ida during the period when the
Taliban controlled it and much of the rest of the country.
Central to achieving progress in Afghanistan--and to
setting the conditions necessary to transition security tasks
from the international coalition to the Afghan government--is
increasing the size and capacity of the Afghan National
Security Forces.
To that end, with the assistance of the Afghan Security
Forces Fund, Afghan security forces are now on track to meet
their targeted end-strength objectives by the end of this year,
based on improvements that have been made in recruiting and in
reducing attrition.
In January 2009, the ANSF numbered 156,000; today, there
are over 231,000 Afghan National Security Force members. And to
help achieve greater quality as well as greater quantity,
General McChrystal has directed much greater partnering with
the ANSF, an emphasis that is now on display daily in
operations throughout Afghanistan.
Considerable progress has been made in getting the concepts
right for developing the ANSF and also in developing the
structures needed to implement those concepts. Improving the
ANSF has been facilitated considerably, for example, by the
establishment last November of the NATO Training Mission-
Afghanistan, the organization created to help the ANSF expand
and professionalize.
It is worth noting that the NTM-A [NATO Training Mission-
Afghanistan] Commander for the last six months, Lieutenant
General Bill Caldwell, assessed that in NTM-A's initial period,
NATO and Afghan security leadership have made progress in
reversing adverse trends in the growth and professionalization
of the ANSF.
Nevertheless, as General Caldwell has also observed, there
is much work remaining to reduce attrition further and to
develop effective leaders through considerably augmented
partnering, training, education, and recruiting, and
initiatives are being pursued in each of those areas.
In all of our efforts, we and President Karzai continue to
emphasize the importance of inclusivity and transparency on the
part of the Afghan government and its leadership, especially in
linking nascent local governing structures to the decision-
making and financial resources in Kabul.
Needless to say, innumerable challenges exist in all areas
of governance, and much more needs to be done to help the
Afghan government assume full responsibility for addressing the
concerns and needs of its citizens.
The National Consultative Peace Jirga held in Kabul earlier
this month was a constructive step in this effort, providing an
opportunity for President Karzai to build consensus, to address
some of the political tensions that fuel the insurgency, and to
promote reconciliation and local reintegration as means that
can contribute to political resolution of some of the issues
that exist.
The shura council that President Karzai conducted on Sunday
in Kandahar furthered this process and the effort to set the
political conditions for progress in Kandahar.
Another critically important part of our joint civil-
military campaign in Afghanistan is promoting broad-based
economic and infrastructure development. We have seen that
improvements in the Afghan government's ability to deliver
basic services, such as electricity, education, and basic
health care, have positive effects in other areas, including
security and broader economic development.
We have worked closely with the international community and
the Afghan government to support robust strategies for water,
energy, education, health, and road programs. And we are now
embarking on a project jointly developed by the government of
Afghanistan and various U.S. government agencies to
dramatically increase production of electricity in the Kandahar
area and parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan.
To complement this effort, we also promote agricultural and
economic programs to help Afghans bring licit products to
market, rather than continuing to grow the poppy.
Again, none of this is easy or without considerable
challenges. However, the mission is, as the members of this
committee have noted, hugely important to the security of our
region--of the region and our country. In view of that, we are
obviously doing all that we can to achieve progress toward
accomplishment of our important objectives in Afghanistan.
And in closing, I want to thank the members of this
committee once again for their unwavering support and abiding
concern for the more than 215,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen,
Marines, and coast guardsmen deployed throughout the CENTCOM
AOR [area of responsibility], and for their families, as well.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of General Petraeus can be found in
the Appendix on page 78.]
The Chairman. General, thank you very much.
General, would you agree with me that our combat troops
today are the best counterinsurgency force in history?
General Petraeus. I would, Mr. Chairman. They are superb.
And, in fact, I think they deserve the title that Tom Brokaw,
among others, has given to them, as well, as the new greatest
generation of Americans.
The Chairman. It is really interesting to note, in visiting
with them wherever one visits with them, either at a post like
Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri or in Afghanistan, the positive
attitude of the young troops toward their mission, whether they
be active duty or they be National Guard. And in signing up,
they know full well that they are going to be deployed.
To what do you attribute the positive state of our military
today, that those of us on this committee encounter when we
visit with them?
General Petraeus. I think there are several factors, Mr.
Chairman. And, in fact, you may recall--I have talked to you
about the re-enlistment ceremony one time of 1,215 soldiers,
sailors, airmen and Marines at the headquarters of Multi-
National Force-Iraq in the Fourth of July 2008, and actually
asking myself that question. Why are these individuals all
raising their right hands in a combat zone, knowing that by
doing that they will likely return to a combat zone for at
least one more tour in their next enlistment?
And I think there are several factors. I think there is
certainly a sense that they are serving a cause larger than
self, performing a mission of enormous importance to our
country. They believe they are doing it with other like-minded
individuals. And as you know, when the going gets tough, what
keeps them going most of all is that fierce desire not to let
down their buddy on their right and left.
And then I think another hugely important factor is the
sense of support of our fellow citizens. Occasionally people
say, jeez, the rest of America doesn't know what is going on,
in terms of those who are in uniform. I don't think that is the
case. I think that there has been an outpouring of support for
our men and women in uniform and for their families, and there
is nothing that means more particularly to those who are
serving in harm's way than a sense that those back home
appreciate the sacrifices that they and their families are
making.
The Chairman. Let's look at the Afghanistan police, if we
may. Over a year ago, when in Afghanistan, we got a pretty
negative report on their progress. Tell us what progress, if
any, they have made within the last year and where--what is the
status of them today?
General Petraeus. Well, there has been progress, I think,
first of all, that was very important in terms of inputs, in
terms of ensuring that the model is right for the Afghan
police, because in one important respect, it was not. The model
used to be that an Afghan policeman was recruited and then
assigned immediately and then trained when they got to it, and
that obviously is not a model for success, if you are facing a
difficult insurgency.
So General Caldwell has changed that, and it is now
recruit, train, and assign. And moreover, there is help for
recruiting, because for the first time, the Ministry of
Interior has a recruiting command that goes out, and that will
also help to try to achieve a more broad representation of all
of the different ethnic and sectarian groupings in Afghanistan.
In particular, the Pashtun are generally underrepresented in
the ANSF compared to some of the others, though there is
certainly representation of that.
Moreover, the ratio of trainers--just broadly speaking--in
the Afghan forces has been reduced from 1 trainer for every 80
trainees to 1 trainer for every 29 or 30 trainees,
notwithstanding the continued shortage of some 450 trainers
overall, and then hundreds more that are pledged by coalition
governments--have yet not arrived, but improvements in all of
those different areas.
On the ground, I think it is important to note that Afghan
forces are in the lead, in Kabul, for example, far and away
Afghanistan's largest and most significant city, and, by and
large, are doing competent work there. They are also in the
lead in a variety of other areas and in mission sets, such as
escorting convoys and so forth.
But having said all that, with respect to the police, there
are two considerable concerns that still are being confronted.
The first is that, in an insurgent area that is difficult
because of the insurgent activity, the local police are the
first to be the most vulnerable, intimidated, assassinated, or
have their families threatened.
Moreover, one of the solutions to the local police
challenge or the uniform police challenge, which has been the
use of the ANCOP, the Afghan National Civil Order Police, which
are units and have the resiliency that comes from that, the
challenge there has been that they have been used so hard and
so frequently and at a pace that their attrition rate has been
unsustainable.
So where there has been reduction overall in the police and
army attrition below the level for the last three months that
is necessary to sustain meeting the end-strength goals at the
end of this year, there are still components within those
forces that have an attrition rate that is too high, and the
ANCOP are among them.
The Chairman. General, from time to time, I will receive
comments to the effect that, well, the British couldn't do it
in Afghanistan, and the Russians couldn't do it in Afghanistan,
what makes you think we can do it in Afghanistan, trying to
point out the difference? But could you answer that question
that I often get?
General Petraeus. I could. First of all, I think, as you
know, as a fellow history lover, the fact is the British did
succeed in Afghanistan for sustained periods of time, and then
they would be defeated again, but they had quite significant
periods during which they prevailed.
Now, they did it through a variety of different mechanisms
and deals, as did Alexander the Great, who you will recall, at
least, the history records had to take an Afghan wife to
solidify the links there, and we are hoping that that won't be
necessary for General McChrystal or myself. [Laughter.]
But it is accurate----
The Chairman. Will you invite us to the wedding?
General Petraeus. We have to hold a shura council first. It
is accurate that, again, Afghanistan regarded as the graveyard
of empires, and it--in that regard, I think it is very
important to draw a distinction between the character of the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the character of certainly
what we are trying to do in Afghanistan.
The Soviet occupation was quite brutal. They employed very,
very harsh tactics, leveled half of an entire city in the west,
sowed the fields with toys that blew up when the kids picked
them up; very, very harsh tactics, techniques, and procedures,
and ultimately, of course, repelled the population rather than
winning it to the side of the Afghan government that they were
trying to establish.
We have worked hard not to do that. In fact, as you know,
among the directives developed first by General McKiernan and
then refined by General McChrystal was one, as an example, to
reduce to an absolute minimum the loss of innocent civilian
life by the way that we employ these largest casualty-producing
weapons, bombs, indirect fire, various forms of attack
helicopter, close air support.
The fact is, I want to assure the committee that we will
drop a bomb anywhere at any time if our troopers' safety is in
jeopardy. But what the directive is designed to do is to ensure
that our troopers have the recognition that our normal impulse
of closing with the enemy, of pressing the fight, can sometimes
result in dropping a bomb on a house that you are not sure who
is inside, as opposed to breaking contact and keeping it under
observation and trying to track the bad guys who have been
shooting at you, if the fact is that you are going to kill a
bunch of innocent civilians inside that house.
And that is the kind of awareness that is essential for
counterinsurgents. And as you noted, our troopers are superb
counterinsurgents at this point in time, and we believe that by
working hard with those who train them in the states, prepare
them for deployment, and then command them downrange, that,
indeed, we can both reduce innocent civilian life and not
jeopardize the safety of our soldiers. That is just one
example, if I could.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Petraeus, from your perspective, can you describe
the nature of the review that will be undertaken by the
Administration this December? And do you think it could lead to
a strategic overhaul for our efforts in Afghanistan?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, Congressman, as you
rightly noted, we do reviews all the time. We are constantly
doing assessments. I think you get at least a quarterly review.
We do monthly assessments. General McChrystal has some new,
even now unclassified monthly assessments that are all very
useful.
I would not want to overplay the significance of this
review, which as you rightly noted will only be three or four
months since the full deployment of all of the surge forces and
will be six or seven months prior to the point at which--July
2011, which the President has described as the point at which a
process begins, based on conditions on the ground, to
transition some tasks to Afghan forces and officials and a
process of the beginning--again, pace to be determined by
conditions on the ground--of a responsible drawdown of the
surge forces.
Mr. McKeon. So we should probably not be overly emphasizing
the December report that will be issued. Do you think that that
will be used by the President and the Administration to
determine the pace and scope for the redeployment of our U.S.
forces?
General Petraeus. I think that is probably too far out to
be making those kinds of judgments, Congressman. I think that
we will have to do that much closer to the point at which we
have a sense of the real conditions.
And, again, keep in mind that July 2011, in the first
place, is based on projections made all the way back last fall
during the decision-making process. And so, again, I think--we
would not make too much out of that. So I think your
characterization is correct, and I don't know if the Under
Secretary wants to----
Secretary Flournoy. I would confirm that that is my belief,
as well, sir. The December review is simply the fact--we have a
President who wants to keep abreast of what is going on. He has
a monthly review as it is. December will be a bit of a deeper
dive. How are we doing? Where do we need to adjust strategy,
resources, et cetera, to achieve our objectives, given the
vital interest at stake?
I expect there will be further review before we get to the
point of actually making decisions about the scope and pace of
what happens after July 2011.
Mr. McKeon. Right.
General, is it your best professional judgment that the
assumptions underlying the President's December 2009 decision
to begin redeployment in July 2011 still hold true today more
than six months later, and after we are seeing that operations
in the south are taking longer than originally expected?
General Petraeus. I think so, Congressman. Again, I will--I
explained this to the Senate Armed Services Committee this
morning--as we get closer, you can be assured that I will
provide my best and most forthright professional military
advice to the Secretary and to the President on the way ahead
as we start to get greater clarity on July 2011.
I know that that is what the President expects and wants.
And I know that that is my obligation--sacred obligation to our
troopers out there on the ground, as well.
Mr. McKeon. I just want to reaffirm some of these same
things, because all of us weren't at the Senate hearing. But
Senator Levin asked you ``whether or not you continue to
support the strategy of the President and continue to support
that July 2011 date for the start of a reduction in U.S. forces
from Afghanistan.''
General Petraeus. Maybe--if I could, Congressman, if you
can indulge me, I will just read what I gave, because I try to
be very precise in this. And what I said this morning was that
I did support and agree at the end of the President's decision-
making process last fall, with the July 2011 date described by
the President as the point at which a process begins to
transition security tasks to Afghan forces at a rate to be
determined by conditions at that time.
I also agreed with July 2011 as the date at which a
responsible drawdown of the surge forces is scheduled to begin
at a rate to be determined by conditions at the time.
And I did believe there was value in sending a message of
urgency, which is how I interpreted the July 2011, as announced
at West Point, as well as the message of substantial
commitment, the considerable additional forces that the
President ordered, as well as additional civilians,
authorization for extra ANSF, and additional NATO forces, as
well.
But it is important that July 2011 be seen for what it is,
the date when a process begins, based on conditions, not the
date when the U.S. heads for the exits.
Moreover, my agreement with the President's decisions was
based on projections of conditions in July 2011. Needless to
say, we will do all that is humanly possible to achieve those
conditions, and we appreciate the resources provided by
Congress to enable us to do that.
Of course, we will also conduct rigorous assessments as we
get closer to next summer, as we do periodically in any event,
to determine where adjustments in our strategy are needed.
And as July 2011 approaches, I will provide my best
professional military advice to the Secretary and the President
on how I believe we should proceed based on the conditions at
that time, and I then will support the President's ultimate
decision.
I do believe that providing one's forthright advice is a
sacred obligation that military leaders have to our men and
women in uniform. And, again, I know that that is what the
President expects and wants his military leaders to provide, as
well.
Mr. McKeon. You also paused and said, ``In a perfect world,
Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines.'' And
I think, as I just heard again, you said the July timeline is
not when we head for the exit, but rather we begin a process.
In Iraq, we have a timeline of August that all the
warfighters will be out, and we will be down to 50,000, and
then December of 2011, we will be totally out of Iraq. We do
not have a final timeline, my understanding, as to when we will
be out of Afghanistan in total.
General Petraeus. That is correct, Congressman. If I could,
I would just clarify one item there about the characterization
of the forces.
We will have combat forces in Iraq, but they will have been
re-missioned, if you will, and also literally re-organized to
perform in advise and assist mission. And so the real change
beyond the reduction of our forces down to 50,000, which is
still a considerable number and considerable capability,
especially as it consists of almost all of the special
operations forces of all types that we currently have on the
ground still, but it will also be that a mission change takes
place from a mission where we occasionally lead operations,
although, frankly, we have--candidly, we have long since
transitioned.
But officially, we will go to an advise and assist mission.
And the last of the units that deployed configured as brigade
combat teams will have reconfigured into advise and assist
brigades, so there is sort of a nuanced description there, I
think, that is important.
And I guess the Under Secretary is reaching for the
microphone, too.
Secretary Flournoy. I just wanted to clarify that you
asked, sir, a very important question about the assumptions
underlying the July 2011 beginning of a responsible drawdown
process that is conditions-based. And there are two key
assumptions. One is that there will be some provinces that are
ready for transition to Afghan lead, with us presumably still
in support in some ways as necessary, and that there will be
ANSF units who are ready to take a lead combat--you know, the
lead combat role, the lead security role, with international
support.
Those are the sort of two critical assumptions. And I think
if you look at the--where we have come in the last year--and we
recognize that there is still another year to go, with
additional resources coming into play--I think those two
assumptions, the expectation that those two assumptions will
still hold, I think, is still there.
Mr. McKeon. General, you stated that we are assuming we
will have those kinds of conditions that will enable--by the
time in July--enable that by the time in July 2011. That is the
projection. And that is, again, what we have supported. And
both of you mentioned that this is based on conditions, not
just on a date on a calendar.
General Petraeus. Correct.
Mr. McKeon. General, what are the conditions you project
will be in place by 2011 to begin a transition to the Afghan
security forces? How are they different in the east versus the
south, such as Helmand and Kandahar?
General Petraeus. Well, the conditions will be in a variety
of different areas: improvements in security, improvements in
the Afghan National Security Forces contributing to that
security, and improvements in governance. And those are the
components--just very broadly speaking, without getting into
too much of a deep dive--that we are obviously looking for in
those districts and provinces that can be transitioned and from
which we can begin to thin out our forces in a process similar
to what we did in Iraq, noting that it is thinning out, not
handing off, that is the technique that produces success in
this kind of effort.
Mr. McKeon. You say improvement in those three areas. But I
imagine you have some baseline that you will expect them to be
at, improved to at least a certain point. If those conditions
don't exist by July 2011, will you make the recommendation that
we delay the redeployment of the U.S. forces?
General Petraeus. Well, as I have said, Congressman, I will
provide my best professional military advice. And if that is
what is necessary, that is what I will do.
Mr. McKeon. And what would you tell members of the
congressional body, in terms of being careful of timelines?
General Petraeus. Well, I think that we have to be very
clear with July 2011. I have tried very hard to explain this
to--in fact, to President Karzai, to Afghan leaders, to
Pakistani partners and leaders, other regional governmental
leaders, and to our allies and to even audiences in the United
States, that the message that President Obama was conveying at
West Point was one of urgency, not that July 2011 is when we
race for the exits, reach for the light switch, and flip it
off.
What he was trying to convey to various audiences, some of
them in Kabul, I think, that we have to get on with this, some
perhaps to some NATO partners, again, greater sense of urgency,
perhaps some of us in uniform, and others, that we have to get
on with this, we must produce progress while we have the
opportunity, and that was the key behind the July 2011 date,
not, again, that that is it or anything else.
In fact, as Senator Lieberman reminded the SASC [Senate
Armed Services Committee] this morning, I thought very
importantly, the President used the word ``vital national
interest'' in his speech at West Point, and that is--as you
know, that is a code word that means a great deal.
And that is why, when I heard the speech at West Point--and
I was privileged to be there--I, again, took from it these two
messages, one of enormous additional commitment, again,
recognizing that we will have more than tripled our forces
since he took office, basically, and tripled civilians and
added more funding and authorization of ANSF and a variety of
other activities, and then some complementary activities on the
other side of the border, of course, with the Kerry-Lugar-
Berman bill, to show sustained, substantial commitment to our
Pakistani partners, as well. That is all the commitment.
And then there was the urgency piece, and that is what July
2011 conveys.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ortiz [presiding]. Thank you.
Secretary Flournoy, again, I want to thank you for
appearing before our committee today.
And, General Petraeus, thank you, sir. Good to see you. And
you are looking well today. Welcome.
General Petraeus. Remember my squad leader's advice--you
are supposed to hydrate.
Mr. Ortiz. Yes, sir. You know, recently, General McChrystal
expressed concern over the number of private security
contractors in Afghanistan, and he suggested that the
contractors should be replaced by the United States military.
General, do you agree with General McChrystal's assessment?
And has a request been made for additional troops to replace
the contractors? If so, when will those troops be deployed to
Afghanistan?
You know, and I can understand--I mean, with the increased
violence reported between the United States forces and the
private security contractors, in Afghanistan and with the
majority of these contractors being Afghanistan nationals, I
want to have a better feeling--and I think the committee, as
well--I mean, how are these individuals vetted? I mean, how do
they apply to become security guards or security forces to help
our troops?
I mean, do they go through a written test? Do they speak
the same language that our soldiers need to be able to
communicate with them? Are they tested? How do we go about--
because this is very, very serious. I mean, we are concerned
with the safety of our soldiers.
And not only that, when these convoys move, you know, they
are bringing a lot of equipment, merchandise, ammunition, and
whatever they might have to take to our troops now. Is this
something that we are going to be able to see in the future,
that they are going to be replaced by contractors because of
what is happening?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, Congressman, there
are different categories of contractors, of course. There are
contractors that we have hired--and I think we are somewhere in
the 15,000 to 20,000 range in Afghanistan, private security
contractors, under DOD [Department of Defense] contracts. And
then there are other private security contractors that secure
any number of different legitimate Afghan businesses,
activities, some of which we are contracting and others of
which are, again, legitimate Afghan efforts or other countries'
efforts, as well.
The first category, if you will, those that we have hired
to perform tasks that are related to our operations and
missions, logistics, convoys, what have you, again, in concept,
a great idea, I think, to have our forces do those. In reality,
of course, that would mean replacement with a like number.
And there is a reason that we contracted these out in the
first place. It is either that at various times the tempo of
our forces was so high or the cost of our forces is
considerably higher or what have you.
The fact is, I contracted out my own security in Iraq when
I was a three-star because we didn't have enough military
police and other security forces. I was standing up the train
and equip mission, enormous organization, but we didn't have
the kinds of existing structures. We weren't in an existing
headquarters with security. We were just a bunch of individuals
brought together. And to go downtown, to go out and do our
missions and so forth, we needed security.
So I was finally given a military police company for me and
a couple of the senior folks. I said, well, heck, I am
important enough, I can contract out my security, someone will
actually pay for that, and you can take the MP [military
police] company and whatever else we can cobble together and
use that to secure other members of the headquarters.
That is how we end up in this kind of situation. And I am
not sure that we are at a position where I think I would want
to take forces from other combat roles to perform these private
security contractor missions.
Now, having said that, we do need to get them--and we are
working on this--and we learned these lessons, some of them the
hard way, in Iraq--to get them more integrated into our
situational awareness tools, and command and control, and
common operational picture, and the like, to make sure that we
de-conflict their activities to make sure there is not
fratricide, they are not interfering with one another, and so
forth. And I think there has been progress in that regard.
Beyond that, we have got to come to grips with the issue
that is created where, in some cases, we are trying to train
Afghan forces, we invest in their human capital, and then we
hire them away from the Afghan forces--or not we do, but other
private security contractors or others hire them away to use
them for these other functions.
That is an issue that extends beyond private security
contractors, by the way. It is one that Ambassador Holbrooke
and I discussed with President Karzai when we were out there a
couple of months ago for the civil-military review of concept
drill. And, again, that is yet another issue that we have to
work out, and the Afghan government has to help us with that to
make sure that there is a policy at the least that is similar
to what we have.
You know, when the Army sent me to graduate school, I had
to pay back three years, if you will, of additional active
service obligation for each year that I was in graduate school.
They don't have that. We have got to get that kind of policy,
and President Karzai is working on it.
Mr. Ortiz. But going back to the vetting process, I mean,
15,000 security guards, that is a big number. How do we know
what we are getting? I mean, how do we know they can be
trusted? I mean, there has been incidents with their--and I
don't know whether they are rumors or real facts--that
sometimes they are shooting at our troops. So my concern is,
how do we get to hire these people?
General Petraeus. Well, this is, again, the piece that I
was talking about with respect to, in some cases, also, using
the authorities that you all gave us in the defense
authorization act several years ago, when it comes to
contractors working for DOD. We have authorities over them, in
some respects, if they are Americans. And a number of these are
at least in the upper echelons.
And then laying down the requirements to them for the
vetting, for the de-confliction, for the situational awareness,
and for the coordination of their operations, because that is
how we minimize the cases of fratricide that you alluded to.
Mr. Ortiz. Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you. Thank you both for your service.
I want to ask two questions related to addiction. The first
is the West's addiction to oil, and the second is the Afghan
addiction to the revenues from poppies.
It is my understanding that 10 percent of all of the
dividends that British investors receive come from BP. That
means that this company is enormously important in the economy
of England. If we push too hard and jeopardize the financial
stability of BP, I think we put at risk the strength of the
coalition and the British participation.
Are you all at the table when decisions are made of how
hard we are going to squeeze in this area?
Secretary Flournoy. The Defense Department is certainly
represented at the interagency process in decision-making on
handling the oil crisis, yes.
Mr. Bartlett. Do you have any concern about the strength of
the coalition relative to the politics of what is going on now
in this gulf crisis?
Secretary Flournoy. Sir, my judgment is that the President
is focused on holding BP accountable for its responsibilities
in this disaster. I also believe that, based on Secretary
Gates' recent interactions and others with our British
counterparts, the new government there, that their commitment
to Afghanistan remains quite firm and remains so even in the
face of tremendous economic pressures that they have already
experienced.
Mr. Bartlett. I hope that you are right, and I hope that
pushing too hard will not jeopardize the financial stability of
BP, which I think may very well result in some cracks in the
coalition.
My second question has to do with the addiction of the
Afghans to the revenues from poppies. Obviously, there are some
considerations we have there which are in tension.
First of all, the revenues from poppies, we know, largely
funds our enemy there. We also know that if we destroy poppy
fields, that it makes recruiting of additional personnel for
both the Taliban and al Qa'ida much easier.
How are we doing at straddling these two problems? On the
one hand, it is kind of damned if you do and damned if you
don't. If we push too hard, we are driving these people into
the arms of al Qa'ida and the Taliban. And if we don't, we are
just helping to create more revenues for the enemy. How are we
doing?
Secretary Flournoy. Sir, I think, because of the risk that
you just framed, our strategy toward counternarcotics in
Afghanistan has shifted over the last year, year-and-a-half,
away from a real focus on eradication and more focus now on
crop substitution, support to farmers to make the switch to
licit crops, support to the sort of systems of systems that get
the crops, you know, planted, harvested, to market, et cetera.
Eradication still is ongoing. It is an Afghan lead. But we
have focused our efforts more on enabling Afghan farmers to
make different choices away from poppy and doing it in a way
that doesn't drive them into the arms of the insurgency.
General Petraeus. And also targeting the industrial
narcotics kingpins much more, making them the focus, rather
than the little guys.
Mr. Bartlett. I understand that highly ranked people in the
Afghan government have meaningful ties to the poppy trade. Are
we handling that well?
General Petraeus. First of all, we have to have the kind of
intelligence that can be sufficiently hard to really convince
people that this is the case. And, second, even better, of
course, is if we can turn that into evidence.
In those cases where that has been possible, there have
been. In fact, as the chairman mentioned, there have been some
recent cases prosecuted generally revolving overall corruption
and narcotics trafficking together.
The challenge is a great deal of hearsay and much less in
terms of the very hard intelligence that can enable you to go
after these. If we get hard intelligence, we will go after them
with our Afghan counternarcotics partners, as military
operations, as well, because of the connection that you
mentioned earlier between the Taliban, which receives about a
third of their funding from illicit narcotics activities, a
third from general criminal activity, taxes and so forth, and
then a third from outside remittances.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman [presiding]. I thank the gentleman.
Dr. Snyder, please.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for being here.
Secretary Flournoy gave a speech just last week at the
Center for a New American Security on my mother's birthday, by
the way, Secretary Flournoy, and I am going to direct a
question to you, General Petraeus, but I am going to quote from
a part of the speech in which the Secretary said the following.
``To put it bluntly, we are still trying to face 21st
century challenges with national security processes and tools
that were designed for the Cold War and with a bureaucracy that
sometimes seems to have been designed by the Byzantine Empire,
which as you recall did not fare so well.''
``We are still too often rigid when we need to be flexible,
clumsy when we need to be agile, slow when we need to be
responsive, focused on individual agency equities when we need
to be focused on the broader whole-of-government mission.''
Last week, our subcommittee had a hearing on some of these
interagency issues. And the GAO [Government Accountability
Office] testified on a report from September 2009, which they
just reconfirmed, and this is what they said: ``In our prior
work, we have identified situations in which the lack of
interagency collaboration has hindered national security
efforts. For example, we have previously reported and testified
that, since 2005, multiple U.S. agencies, including the State
Department, USAID [United States Agency for International
Development], and DOD, led separate efforts to improve the
capacity of Iraq's ministries to govern without overarching
direction from a lead entity to integrate their efforts.''
``We found that the lack of an overarching strategy
contributed to U.S. efforts not meeting their goal of key Iraqi
ministries having the capacity to effectively govern and assume
increasing responsibility for operating, maintaining, and
further investing in reconstruction projects.'' That is the end
of the GAO statement.
General Petraeus, my question is, how much do the Byzantine
processes that Secretary Flournoy refers to hold you back in
Afghanistan? Can you give us some specific examples of how? And
should this issue of interagency reform be a much higher
priority for the Congress than it is now?
General Petraeus. Well, if I could just start off by saying
that I thought that that was a characteristically elegant and
incisive analysis by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Dr. Snyder. I agree with you.
General Petraeus. There was a reason that, as I noted
earlier, she was part of the counterinsurgency conference that
began the whole process that resulted in the--I think it was
the fastest production of a field manual by any service, in
this case, two services together, probably in our history, and
a fairly meaningful one, at that.
I would like to think that we did over time integrate the
efforts in Iraq considerably. I think that certainly by the
mid-2007 timeframe, Ambassador Crocker and I had forged a
partnership, developed a civil-military campaign plan that was
so civil-military, in fact, that the mission statement
frustrated both of our respective chains of command when it
went further up, because it was seen as too civil on my side
and too military on his side of the chain of command.
Having said that, I felt that, again, over time, we were
able to integrate what it is that we were doing. And, frankly,
I have described the same process with respect to Afghanistan
in this effort to get the inputs right, a component of that,
key component has been to forge the kind of civil-military
effort and integration, in this case, one that has got a much
greater component of NATO, of course.
In fact, General McChrystal's operational hat is his NATO
hat, and he has a NATO senior civilian rep who is part of his
Ryan Crocker, as he also has the U.S. Ambassador, Karl
Eikenberry, and then the U.N. SRSG [United Nations Special
Representative of the Secretary-General].
I am sure that if we looked at various aspects of
interagency reform, that there would be some fertile fields to
till there. I know that there have been efforts to do this in
the past. I remember all the way back--I think when the Under
Secretary was a mere Deputy Assistant Secretary--PDD
[Presidential Decision Directive] 56, I think it was, talked
about addressing complex interagency scenarios or something
like that. It was hugely impressive as a document, as a
concept, but it was very difficult to implement.
Again, it is flat hard to bring them together. We have seen
it in the intelligence community, certainly, as well, I think.
So I do think, as she described, there are some fertile fields,
and I was going to ask if she might provide supporting fires,
but our time is up.
The Chairman. General, thank you very much.
Mr. Thornberry, please.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, a few months ago, General Flynn published an
article that was critical of intelligence in Afghanistan. I am
sure it is a lot better partly because he is in charge of
improving intelligence in Afghanistan. I am sure it is a lot
better particularly in those areas where he talked about the
deficiencies, culture, who is the tribal leaders, and so forth.
But I would be interested in your views as to how--or what
it says about us, I guess, in a way, that we could be in
Afghanistan for eight years and be so deficient in
intelligence. I mean, if there is a kind of bedrock concept, it
seems to me, in the counterinsurgency manual, it is that we
have to be learning, adaptable organizations.
And yet we were there eight years with deficiencies that he
describes, and I guess, obviously, where that leads us is, how
do we know we are getting better and learning the lessons we
need to learn now for the future, that we are not locked into
some mindset that is going to make it harder for our troops to
accomplish what we ask them to accomplish?
General Petraeus. I think the short answer to that,
Congressman, is that, frankly, we under-resourced the effort.
In fact, when I took over Central Command, as any commander
does when he takes over a new organization, you do a strategic
assessment. We did that, got a bunch of big ideas out of it
that were hugely important to guiding me as I took on the new
position.
And one of the biggest of the big ideas was that we did not
have--we had neither the intelligence capability, nor the
intelligence capacity needed in Afghanistan and Pakistan to
carry out the kind of comprehensive, civil-military
counterinsurgency campaign that was necessary.
In fact, one of the earliest meetings that I had after new
appointments were made with the new administration was with
Admiral Blair to ask him to appoint--there was not even a
mission manager in the DNI [Director of National Intelligence]
structure for Af-Pak [Afghanistan and Pakistan], much less a
deputy--associate deputy director. He actually ultimately
appointed an associate deputy director, not just a mission
manager.
Central Command did not have the adequate structure. We
created the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence. In fact,
we took the same intelligence individual, senior intelligence
service civilian who did this for me in Iraq, and he is now
doing it for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and doing it
magnificently, Derek Harvey.
And as you noted, one reason that Mike Flynn was in
Afghanistan was to fix the very challenges that he perhaps
almost too eloquently described. You know, when you use a word
like ``clueless,'' that is probably a little bit too
rhetorical.
But at the end of the day, it was a forthright assessment,
and that is why he was there, was, indeed, to come to grips
with that. And in the meantime, we have devoted considerable
additional resources.
I could enumerate a number of different initiatives that we
have pursued. Among them would be important would be not only
the proliferation of greater numbers of human terrain teams
that were so helpful in Iraq and are now so helpful in
Afghanistan, but also the development of what we call a human-
terrain database, and we have a variety of different systems,
applications so that we can constantly build.
What we did previously, to a degree--this is an
overstatement to say that, you know, we fought Afghanistan for
seven years in seven one-year increments, but the fact is that
we didn't capture, we didn't develop the sufficiently granular
understanding of the areas, and that is what this all depends
on.
Every insurgency is local. Therefore, every
counterinsurgency has to be local. And you have got to
understand the dynamics of each village and city.
And I have seen in recent months what we call deep dives--I
have participated in them--for, for example, certain areas in
the Kandahar area. I have been on the ground in three of the
most important districts of Kandahar and the city itself. And
there is, indeed, a much greater knowledge.
But we still have work to do in that regard. You can't fix
something like that without, again, devoting the kind of
resources that have been part of getting the inputs right on
the resource side, which as I noted included tripling the
military, but also considerable additional devotion of
resources from each of the different intelligence agencies. And
I have talked to the heads of each of the intelligence
agencies, as well, CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], NSA
[National Security Agency], DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency],
and so forth.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you both for being before us again.
General Petraeus, I have a couple questions for you. I want
to talk a little bit about Iraq for a minute, since you also
have some jurisdiction over that.
I remember in one of my first trips to Iraq, at the time, I
believe, General Odierno was a two-star, and I asked him at the
time how many insurgents he thought we still had left to take
care of in Iraq. I think it was maybe the winter of 2003 or
2004, as I recall. And at the time, he told me 536. He said we
were done, we were just around the corner, we had turned the
corner, we are getting this done.
So many, many years later, we have a President who has a
drawdown schedule, as you said. We are going to draw down to
50,000 troops, and I don't know what the picture looks like
after that for Iraq, but maybe about a month-and-a-half now, I
saw General Odierno, now a four-star, commanding out there in
Iraq, and he gave his estimate that the Afghan army and customs
and police, et cetera, would not be ready to take over and
really secure their country for at least 5 to 10 years.
General Petraeus. General Odierno was talking about the
Afghan army?
Ms. Sanchez. Yes.
General Petraeus. Or the Iraqi army? Or the Iraqi army?
Ms. Sanchez. I am talking about Iraq.
General Petraeus. Okay, the Iraqi army. Okay. Got it.
Ms. Sanchez. The Iraqi army. So----
General Petraeus. I am--with respect, I am not familiar
with that assessment. If I could just----
Ms. Sanchez. That was on TV, so----
General Petraeus [continuing]. Interject right here----
Ms. Sanchez. So--you know, so we are in 2010. We are in
Iraq. We are trying to get down to 50,000 troops, costing me an
arm and a leg to have these people out there, our troops who
are, by the way, doing a great job, but it is costing us money.
When do you think we are really out of Iraq? And if I can--
after that answer, I would like to hear what you think of your
assessment in your professional military judgment, if it looks
that you conclude that additional troops are needed to
successfully accomplish the mission in Afghanistan right around
December 2011, will you ask the President for additional
troops? And how long do you really think we are going to be in
Afghanistan?
General Petraeus. Well, let me answer the last one first,
if I could. If, in my best professional military judgment I
think we need more troops, then I think I have an obligation to
the President and to our troops and to you, the American
people, to ask for more troops. That is what we do. And I know
that he expects us to give him our best professional military
advice and then also to support the policy when the decision is
made.
With respect to Iraq, we will get down to 50,000 by the end
of August. We are on track to do that. The decision has been
made, and we are, indeed, executing that decision. And that is
the responsible drawdown plan.
Beyond that, as you know, our mandate, if you will, runs
out at the end of 2011, so our remaining troops, barring some
further agreement with the Iraqi--the new Iraqi government,
which still has to be formed, of course, would be--at the end
of that year--would pull out.
Having said that, there are reasonable expectations--in
fact, actually, some of the Iraqi leaders have at various times
even publicly stated that they would like to have an enduring
security assistance relationship with us. The fact is, they
want to buy F-16s. They have signed a letter of request. They
have bought a variety of other hardware. They have bought
billions of dollars already of foreign military sales.
Ms. Sanchez. Before my time runs out, General, when do you
think we will really be out of Iraq? And when do you think we
will really be out of Afghanistan?
General Petraeus. Well, we will really be out of Iraq with
combat forces, again, by the end of 2011. That is the----
Ms. Sanchez. Even if----
General Petraeus. That is the agreement. There are nearly
700,000 Iraqi Security Force members in that country now,
Congresswoman. They have been in the lead in operations for
months, if not a year or more at this point in time, by varying
levels----
Ms. Sanchez. No, I have no doubt, but the commanding
general there said, you know, he thinks 5 to 10 years before
they will be able to secure.
General Petraeus. With respect, I am just not familiar with
that assessment, nor is the Under Secretary, and that is
generally our line of work, so I am a little bit surprised with
that. We do video teleconference with him all the time, so----
Ms. Sanchez. I was surprised, too, when I saw him on TV
saying that.
General Petraeus. Now, again, it may be a more nuanced
thing that implies that, you know, they might need some kind of
air cover for a number of years or something like this. The
fact is, they don't have front-line fighters, if that was the
issue. And there are some other capabilities that will take
years to develop that you just can't go out and buy an F-16
Block 52, which is what they have asked for, and, you know, get
it into the country, put a guy in the cockpit, and have him be
proficient. So in that sense, it may be that that was what he
is referring to.
More importantly, I think, is just the security assistance
role. We have robust security assistance arrangements, as you
know, with many countries in the region. In fact, the United
Arab Emirates last year alone purchased nearly $18 billion
worth of foreign military sales and foreign military finance,
and a good bit of which goes to California, I think, as well.
So, again--and we have that with many of the countries.
Ms. Sanchez. I understand that, but we also don't have
100,000 troops----
General Petraeus. And that is the kind of relationship----
The Chairman. The----
Ms. Sanchez [continuing]. Or 50,000 troops in most of those
countries.
General Petraeus. Well, 50,000 by the end of August, but
going down to a security assistance relationship, again, by the
end of 2011, I think.
The Chairman. The----
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, General.
General Petraeus. And that is probably where we are headed.
Great to see you again.
The Chairman. Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Madam Secretary, thank you for being here.
General Petraeus, thank you so much, both of you, for your
service. I am very grateful, General, as a parent. I have had
two sons serve in Iraq under your command. We are joint
service, Army-Navy, and I have a nephew that just concluded his
service serving in Iraq in the Air Force. And I know of your
capabilities. And as a parent, I am just so appreciative of you
looking out for our troops and protecting our country.
Additionally, I am very grateful that, as a veteran, for
your service. I am a former member of the 218th Brigade. For a
year, they served in Afghanistan, led by General Bob
Livingston. We were very proud of their service. And their
relationship with the Afghan army and police developed into a
great appreciation as Afghan brothers.
And so I know firsthand the achievements that are being
made, and I know that those of us in South Carolina are very
grateful for our adjutant general, Stan Spears, who has
commanded our troops, and the largest deployment from our
state, 1,600 troops, since World War II.
So thank you. I know firsthand.
General Petraeus. Congressman, can I just very quickly not
only thank for what your sons and your nephew have done, but
also say how proud you and all South Carolinians--heck, the
whole country--can be of the 218th Brigade and General Bob
Livingston, who as you know then came and joined the Central
Command staff. We reluctantly allowed him to return to his home
state for further duties.
But, again, he is a great leader, and we were delighted to
have him there as part of CENTCOM nation.
Mr. Wilson. And I want to commend Fort Irwin, the National
Training Center. It was 10 years ago this month that we went
out for our desert training----
General Petraeus. Yes.
Mr. Wilson [continuing]. In the summer of 2000 and helped
the brigade get prepared, so I know what the training can be.
General, I am concerned with the number of IED attacks, the
increase in Afghanistan. I am very concerned that the Army and
Marine high-mobility, multipurpose wheeled vehicles do not have
a sufficient fire suppression system. What is being done to
counteract that threat, to reduce the just gruesome fire
injuries?
General Petraeus. Well, Congressman, first of all, let me
just say that the new MRAPs [mine resistant ambush protected
vehicles] that we are working hard to get into Afghanistan, to
my knowledge, they do have a sufficient fire suppressant
system. Let us confirm that, please, and get back to you.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
General Petraeus. But the all-terrain MRAP, which the
Secretary ordered production, you all funded on an urgent
basis, and industry has produced at record speed--because we
have moved this to--this is a case where we are way ahead of
schedule. We originally thought we would not have all the MATVs
[military all-terrain vehicles] out there until sometime next
spring. It now looks as if we will not only have them out
there, but all of them in the hands of our troopers by the
November-December timeframe, and that is an extraordinary
accomplishment by, again, transportation nation, as well as
industry and with you all's funding.
So that will go a very long way. That will get just about
everybody else out of up-armored Humvees, because some of the
original MRAPs, as you know, are too large for some of the road
structures, quite a bit of the road structures in Afghanistan.
Mr. Wilson. And I appreciate you expediting the new
technology. And in fire suppression, that needs to be done. In
fact, I point out that the equipment we used 10 years ago was
all now in a museum because of the improvements.
Secretary Flournoy, I support the funding for the Afghan
Security Forces. It is an increase of almost 50 percent. But to
avoid corruption in the security forces, where people are
desperate because of the low pay, supporting their families,
this needs to be addressed.
With the additional funds, can this be executed? What
capabilities will be developed by the additional funding?
Secretary Flournoy. Sir, the additional funding goes for a
range of things, from pay and benefits to infrastructure,
equipment, training, sustainment.
But very importantly to your point about corruption, it
used to be that the members of the ANSF were not paid a living
wage in Afghanistan. And so they sought other ways to support
their families, and that engendered a great deal of corruption.
One of the major reforms that has taken place is an
increase in the pay of both and a reduction in the disparity
between the two, army and police. That, plus additional
benefits, looking to their ability to support their families,
house them, et cetera, should make a big difference, in terms
of lessening corruption in the force.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Madam Secretary.
General, thank you very much for your service and being
here, of course, today.
I want to follow up on a question regarding the police
force that the chairman asked, and just more specifically, as
we focus on Kandahar. The New York Times just ran the article
that there really are only about 800 to 1,000 police officers
trained, Afghan police officers trained out of 100,000 in the
country in Kandahar.
And what do you think it really is going to take in order
to have the numbers there to facilitate the kind of operation
and the kind of, really, development that we are looking for in
Kandahar? And how long is it going to take us to get there?
General Petraeus. Well, in fact, the approach is going to
be the deployment of additional forces, and not just additional
local police trained, but also use, again, here of the Afghan
National Civil Order Police, in addition to the recruiting,
training, and then assigning of additional police.
Importantly, a large number--I think over half of the 1,000
who graduated from the latest Afghan police officer course, are
being assigned to the south. And this--and, by the way, the way
that the Afghan National Military Academy assignments were done
this year, which was by lottery, basically, as opposed to by
who you knew or what your family tree is, these are important
advances in that regard.
Now, in Kandahar, we are also going to add additional U.S.
Army military police who will partner with a greater density on
those police that are there, even, as I said, that the training
capacity and assignments are increased, as well. And then that
will be augmented by the Afghan National Army and our forces in
the districts around the city.
Mrs. Davis. One of the things that we know, of course, is
that they are being targeted. And I would suspect--and we
certainly heard this on our trips--is that one of the concerns
is the recruitment, but then who protects those forces? Is
there sufficient capability there to really support them so
they know that----
General Petraeus. The only--and this comes to what I talked
about earlier. When you are conducting counterinsurgency
operations, the first and most vulnerable forces are the host
nation local police forces.
And in Iraq, there were entire swaths of the country in
those areas that were dominated by al Qa'ida or other Sunni
insurgents or, in some cases, the Shia militia extremists, in
which there were no police whatsoever. They could not survive.
And the only antidote to that, the only solution is that
you must clear that area of the insurgents, reduce the
insurgents, but in many cases--and this will be the case in
Kandahar--you are not going to see a Marjah-like operation.
Marjah had a huge concentration of insurgent infrastructure,
Taliban headquarters, IED manufacturing factories, basically,
car bomb makers, explosive experts, medical facilities,
everything, and also in there, substantial numbers of the large
industrial narcotics bosses, and their infrastructure and
supplies.
That had to be cleared. And that was a conventional
clearance operation. It was actually done in a skillful way
that avoided some of the casualties that I thought, frankly,
were going to take place and avoided a lot of the damage to the
village. It was not destroyed to save it, as the saying goes.
Kandahar will be different from that. In Kandahar, you
don't find huge concentrations. You find intimidation,
assassinations----
Mrs. Davis. General, is it true, as well, that there in
Kandahar--and certainly in Zabul province and in others--we are
just having trouble really identifying the insurgents? That is
what our special forces are telling us. And, of course, on the
one hand, people are suggesting that a lot of them are
homegrown. They were young kids who were there at 10 years old,
and now they are--you know, they are fighting us, basically.
General Petraeus. I think, again, one of the other
increases--and this comes back to the intelligence question
earlier. It is very much related to that. You have to be able
to understand the enemy networks in a very granular fashion, as
well.
And the elements taking that on are our high-end special
mission units, which we have tripled the numbers of those
elements and their assault elements on the ground, as well, and
their analysts and other supporting enablers, and we have done
the same with some of the other elements.
So they are getting their hooks into the enemy. You may
have seen--we don't announce it all the time, but there was an
important Taliban leader killed very recently, for example, in
the Kandahar area. And we think we do have a much better
understanding of the network itself.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
General, are we winning in Afghanistan?
General Petraeus. Mr. Chairman, defining winning as making
progress, then I think we are winning in Afghanistan. It is a
roller coaster ride, however. It is very much an experience
that has setbacks, as well as modest successes.
It is a tough process. And it does get harder before it
gets easier, even when you are making progress. The way you
make progress is you have to take away from the enemy his
sanctuaries, his safe havens, his leaders, his explosives,
caches, and all the rest of that.
There is nothing easy about that. But, again, I think that
we have got the inputs largely in place, we are seeing the
beginning of the outputs. That is progress, and therefore, that
is winning.
The Chairman. I thank the general.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for being here. General, yesterday, when you
were testifying before the Senate, as has been referenced
several times in this hearing, you were asked about the issue
of timelines, and your answer was that we have to be very
careful with timelines.
And I understand your answer to being one that there are
risks and that there are issues that we must be concerned with
that evolve separate from timelines.
General Petraeus. There can be benefits, too, if I could. I
mean, again, what I have pointed out is that July 2011, with
respect, is a message of urgency. It is not a message of,
``This is when we go home.''
Mr. Turner. Great. And I appreciate that you had made that
point. And that is, I think, a very good one, because it
certainly motivates everyone.
But I know, also, as you look to a timeline, you look to,
you know, the to-do list of what we are to accomplish, what
type of standards or evaluations might occur as we approach
those timelines.
One of which that I am very concerned about is opium
production in Afghanistan and the narcotics trade. There has
been several questions. I asked you about that. But I have a--I
have a chart that I like to hold up in our hearings.
And this is a chart from CRS [Congressional Research
Service]. And it shows the opium production in Afghanistan from
1981 through 2009. And what I like about this chart is that if
you fold it exactly in half, you get a picture that shows you
that, in fact, what we have had is an opium production surge, a
narcotics surge, if you will, in Afghanistan.
And, in fact, the last four years, years in which we have
been there, are--you know, if you will, if you look at this
chart, extraordinarily increases in opium production.
Now, we all know that when you fold this in half, you say,
well, maybe that is like the historical production of opium,
and you look at those last four years, where things have been
more difficult for us in Afghanistan. We know that this trade
is supporting insurgency. We know that this trade is supporting
the Taliban.
And my question is, is that we begin to approach those
deadlines of July 2011, as we look to the issue of our surge
and our troops, which we are facing an opium or narcotics
surge, what should we expect to see in these lines? Are we
going to see them go back to the beginning of when we were
there, or are we still going to be at a time where we have an
opium or narcotics surge?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, just to update the
slide, if I could, Congressman, in this year, what we have seen
is another substantial reduction in poppy production. And that
results from a number of different reasons.
One is that there has been continued effort to provide crop
alternatives. There has been some eradication, although as the
Under Secretary explained, we have reduced that in favor of
going after the narcotics kingpins, and that has been another
reason that there has been some downturn.
There have been a number of initiatives in what is called
AVIPA [Afghanistan Vouchers for Increased Production in
Agriculture], which is an AID [Agency for International
Development] program that funds a variety of different seeds,
fertilizers, and other implements to enable the production of
either wheat or saffron or other substitutes.
There have been some environmental issues, and there has
been a continuation of the poppy blight that has caused
problems, as well. And then some local Afghans, because of
programs that have incentives connected to them--I am talking
Afghan governance now--have incentives connected to being
poppy-free and so forth, have really gotten quite energetic
about that, as well.
So you really have a situation now where, for the last four
years, counting this year, there have been significant
reductions after, as you note, quite a considerable increase,
about four or five, six years ago.
I think that trend will continue. It is certainly our goal.
We waited in the case of Helmand province until the poppy was
harvested before pursuing some of these additional initiatives,
and we will have to see how the fall crop goes, because I think
that will be a canary in the mine shaft, as for indicating
that.
Mr. Turner. I appreciate you making that a priority,
General.
General Petraeus. Absolutely.
Mr. Turner. I had the opportunity to meet with you in Iraq
three times, once when you were in Mosul----
General Petraeus. Right.
Mr. Turner [continuing]. Once when you were with the Iraqi
troops in training----
General Petraeus. Right.
Mr. Turner [continuing]. And then another time after the
surge.
General Petraeus. Right.
Mr. Turner. And, of course, it was here when you were in
Cannon after the surge for Iraq and the enormous room that was
filled with so many people scrutinizing your answers, I
appreciate that today you come forth with a credibility----
General Petraeus. Privileged to do it.
Mr. Turner [continuing]. That has a little less attention,
but nevertheless still great importance. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Flournoy, General Petraeus, thank you for your
testimony today. And, particularly General Petraeus, thank you
for your service, and I hope you will again convey our
appreciation to all the men and women in uniform under your
command who serve. We are grateful for their patriotism,
dedication, everything they do for our Nation.
General Petraeus. I will do that, Congressman. Thank you.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you.
I obviously want our Nation to succeed in our effort in
Afghanistan. And yet I look at where we are and the cost in
blood and treasure. I look at the strategy. I know that we
have--under General McChrystal's recommendation, we are
pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy versus counterterrorism
strategy. And I think the jury is still out as to whether it is
going to work. Of course, I am reserving judgment, still
supportive of the overall effort in Afghanistan.
But I do question, why is it that, in other areas of the
world, in Yemen, for example, other areas where we are
concerned about growth of terrorist groups like al Qa'ida, why
they are we are pursuing a counterterrorism strategy and in
Afghanistan we are pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy? Why
one place, not the other? And why are you so convinced that
counterinsurgency is going to work, versus counterterrorism,
which would rely on less troops and more targeted strikes on
terrorists' training camps or strongholds?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, counterterrorism
strategy is a component of a counterinsurgency strategy,
without question. Again, that is a very important element of
it.
We worked hard to kill or capture or run off, as an
example, in Iraq, the al Qa'ida leaders, and even their rank-
and-file. You may recall when I testified in September 2007 I
had something called the Anaconda strategy. And what I sought
to explain with that, though, is that you don't deal with a
terrorist organization just with counterterrorist forces. It
takes a whole-of-government approach.
Now, the difference in Yemen is that there are Yemeni
governmental elements, Yemeni forces that are capable of
carrying out some of these operations, and, in fact, the bulk
of the operations, without question. We are helping them to
develop their capabilities further. We are helping them with
equipment, with your 1206 funding, and a variety of other
assistance. We are helping them with intelligence-sharing, both
ways, I might add, because al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula
is also tied into the extremists in Somalia and all the way
over into the Arabian Peninsula and up into Pakistan, as well.
If I could, I think Pakistan is instructive in this regard,
because what you see in Pakistan is a combination of a
counterterrorist strategy. You see extremist leaders being
killed in a campaign, but you don't see in some cases their
sanctuaries or safe havens being taken away, and therefore,
they can regenerate, they can replace themselves, and so forth.
It doesn't mean that it is not hugely important to take
out--I think Vice President Biden noted one time, on the
record, that some 12 of a constantly updated list of top 20
extremist leaders in the Pakistan border regions have been
killed in the last 18, 24 months. That is hugely significant.
Obviously, it puts enormous pressure on the network. It
disrupts them considerably. But it doesn't put a stake through
their heart.
The only way you put a stake through their heart is by
taking away ultimately their sanctuaries, their safe havens,
and beyond that, even the reasons why those areas are fertile
grounds for extremist activity in the first place, for the
planting of seeds of extremism.
And so, ultimately, again, it comes back to a whole-of-
governments--with an ``s'' on the end--approach. That approach
is necessary, because you just don't ever kill or capture your
way out of these kinds of significant problems that we have.
If the problem is very discrete and small--and
interestingly, in Iraq, al Qa'ida in Iraq now, distinguished
from Naqshbandi and the resistance, is more of a strictly
terrorist problem now and can be handled much more with
strictly counterterrorist forces.
We have, with our Iraqi partners, for example, killed or
captured 34 of the top 42 al Qa'ida in Iraq leaders in the
course of the last 6 months or so. That is hugely significant.
It put an enormous dent in them.
So when you can whittle the problem down--but we got to
that point by a whole-of-governments approach that involved the
Iraqi government, our forces, and other coalition forces, that
included politics, fostering the awakening, reconciliation,
getting it codified in legislation, hiring the Sons of Iraq,
and addressing the basic reasons why, again, some of those
areas were fertile grounds for extremism in the first place,
among a host of others.
And I will get the Anaconda slide to you, again,
Congressman, because I think it is quite illustrative of why
you have to do this.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
General Petraeus. In Pakistan, where the Pakistanis have
gone after with counterinsurgency operations in Swat Valley,
eastern-south Waziristan and elsewhere, they have kept those
free of extremists of all flavors. In the areas where that has
not yet been possible, even though the leaders might be killed,
they are still going to regenerate. And that is the Achilles'
heel of a counterterrorism approach.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, General. Again, thank you for your
service.
General Petraeus. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Hunter, please.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for your service. I remember saying last
year, General, that having you and General McChrystal on the
ground was like having Belichick and Brady, had the dream team
working over there. Just glad that you are there. Thanks for
your leadership and for what you are doing for our military.
General Petraeus. Well, and thanks for what you did
downrange, Congressman.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
As you know, IEDs have gone up about 236 percent in the
last year. And my question is--this was anticipated. We knew it
was going to happen as we surged in troops. I know it has been
one of our top priorities, not only yours, but this Congress's,
this committee's. It has been one of our top priorities.
But when we talk about metrics and how we gauge success, I
think the greatest metric that we can use is the number of
casualties or KIA [killed in action] taken from IEDs, how many
IED caches that we find, how many IED emplacers that we kill.
And, one, I am just wondering if you have any information
like that or that you use as a metric to gauge maybe this
compared to Iraq. That is my first question.
And following up on that, you have already spoken--Mr.
Langevin touched on this--Admiral Olson, who we all know,
special ops, highest special ops commander in the U.S.
military, he said, ``he fears that counterinsurgency has become
a euphemism for non-kinetic activities. The term is now often
used to describe efforts aimed at `protecting populations.' He
said counterinsurgency should involve countering the
insurgents, and he calls our COIN [counterinsurgency] an
oxymoron.''
So on one hand, we have him saying--this was May 26th, I
believe--we have him saying this in kind of direct conflict
with what you are saying here now, and correct me if I am wrong
and that is not true, and what General McChrystal's strategy
is.
But specifically, my question is, is our COIN strategy
having any effect on our inability to counter IEDs,
specifically the emplacers of IEDs, because we are not taking
kinetic action against them, rather, we are waiting to exploit
the network, to back track, to follow them, track them down,
and that kind of thing? Is our failure in cracking down and
stopping the IEDs a result of our strategy over there?
General Petraeus. I certainly don't think it is,
Congressman. I think, in fact, doctrinally, counterinsurgency,
according to a reasonably good field manual that was published
in late 2006, states that counterinsurgency operations are a
mix of offensive, defensive, and stability and support
operations.
And the challenge is always to get the mix right and, more
importantly, to know in a sense where you are locally with
respect to what that mix should be, because at any given time
in a country--I remember--of course, as an Army officer, to
communicate, we use PowerPoint, and we produced a PowerPoint
slide that showed the mix throughout the country at a
particular snapshot, and then we zeroed in on a province, and
then went in further, to show--in that case, we wanted to show
how versatile our leaders needed to be.
In other words, they need to be capable--they need to be
pentathlete leaders, capable of not just offense and defense,
the traditional operations, and now with much greater enablers,
in terms of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as
you know firsthand, but also able to do the stability and
support tasks, where you do, indeed, sit down and drink many
cups of tea and, indeed, support the civil aspects of the
effort, because they in a certain case, once you reach a
certain security threshold, can be every bit as important as
kinetic operations, but not----
Mr. Hunter. But specifically the IEDs?
General Petraeus [continuing]. But not if you are in a
kinetic mode. And so if you are going after the IED networks,
indeed, there is certainly not a hesitation to pull the trigger
against somebody who is planting an IED, have seen to be
planting an IED, unless--I mean, occasionally, we do make a
tactical judgment.
Let's see if this guy is going to--let's follow him back to
where he came from. Let's see if we can get something more than
just the low man on the totem pole. Let's see if he tracks back
to where his cell leader might be, where his weapons cache
might be, and so forth. We did this a lot in Iraq, where you
don't kill the guy who is shooting at you with a mortar right
then. You want to track him back to where he got the mortar
rounds from and see what else is there.
There is no question that the improvised explosive device
numbers have gone up there. One reason they have gone up is
because they don't want to take us on frontally. They do not
want to get in direct firefights the way they used to back,
say, in 2004 or 2005, even 2006. More recently, there was
guidance explicitly put out that we are aware of that told the
Taliban to avoid direct firefights and, indeed, to use the
indirect approach, which means IEDs and some indirect fire use,
as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Shea-Porter.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you very much. And thank you both
for being here.
General Petraeus, are we nation-building? I heard you talk
about education, roads, health care, agriculture, electricity.
Are we nation-building here?
General Petraeus. We are, indeed. Now, we are enabling. We
are supporting. In some cases, we are doing. People have asked
me, for example, what was the first big strategic decision you
made in Iraq early on? This is when I was a division commander.
And the first big strategic decision was--which I announced to
all of our battalion commanders and brigade commanders,
gathered them all together, and I said, hey, fellows, you know
what? We are going to do nation-building----
Ms. Shea-Porter. But let me just say that----
General Petraeus [continuing]. Because there is nobody else
around to do it.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Well, let me just say that I have heard
over and over again that we are not nation-building, that we
are here, you know, in Afghanistan for a different reason, in
that----
General Petraeus. Well, we are there for a different
reason, but to accomplish the--again, you can't keep extremists
from re-establishing sanctuaries if you don't carry out a
comprehensive campaign, one component of which clearly can be
described as nation-building. I mean, I am just not going to
evade it and play rhetorical games.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I appreciate that.
General Petraeus. That is not our principal mission.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I appreciate that. But in the interest----
General Petraeus. The reason we are there is not nation-
building.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Right. In the interest of time, though,
Richard Barrett--it was reported in the Financial Times that
Richard Barrett, the head of a United Nations team tracking the
Taliban and al Qa'ida, was quoted as saying that our large-
scale effort in Kandahar will actually drive the people into
the arms of the Taliban.
He is the former head of counterterrorism for the Secret
Intelligence Service for England. And I have great concerns
about that. I know that our intentions are very good, but here
is somebody who certainly knows this area, knows how things
work, and he says that our efforts are actually driving the
people to the Taliban.
In addition, we had Karzai suggesting that America launched
a rocket grenade attack on the peace conference that they had.
General Petraeus. That is--Congresswoman, that is hearsay.
That is not something as far as I said, I can assure you.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay, thank you. Okay, then.
General Petraeus. That is from an individual who, frankly,
had some reason to be somewhat angry at President Karzai at
that moment in time.
Ms. Shea-Porter. But Karzai has been making comments about
the United States, negative comments. I think we all agree that
we have heard some negative comments.
So my question is, is Richard Barrett right?
General Petraeus. Well, I don't think so. I don't know how
you get rid of extremist elements if you don't go in and get
rid of extremist elements. I am at a loss.
I read that, I must confess. I don't know Richard Barrett,
I don't think. Although I have had quite a few dealings with
the SIS [Secret Intelligence Service], that name doesn't ring a
bell.
But, again, I don't know how you get rid of insurgents if
you don't kill, capture, or run them off, or reintegrate or
reconcile with them. I mean, there is only a variety of ways
you can do that.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I certainly----
General Petraeus. And we are going to try all of those, by
the way.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Well, I certainly recognize that we have
to have some kind of footprint in Afghanistan, but there has
been a lot of concern lately that we are actually increasing--
as we apparently did in Iraq--increasing the number of people
who were local insurgents who were joining up out of
frustration, out of rage, out of, you know, a number of reasons
for that, so I have a lot of concern about----
General Petraeus. I take issue within Iraq. There may have
been periods in Iraq where we contributed to it, both by
policies as well as actions, especially early on. We learned a
lot about counterinsurgency, and we learned about the
importance to test every policy by the question, will this
policy produce more individuals with a stake in the success of
the new Iraq or less? And if it is less, you probably should
think twice about it or not.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Well, again----
General Petraeus. Over time in Iraq, if I could, over time
in Iraq, because our soldiers did some exceptional work, and I
don't want it on the record that I agreed or accepted that our
soldiers made more enemies----
Ms. Shea-Porter. No, I--this is----
General Petraeus [continuing]. Than they did not, because,
in fact, it was our soldiers who went and went into the
neighborhoods----
Ms. Shea-Porter. General Petraeus, in the interest of
time----
General Petraeus [continuing]. In the sectarian violence--
--
Ms. Shea-Porter [continuing]. It is not our soldiers. It is
not our soldiers at all. The soldiers have been absolutely
fantastic. It is a question of whether our policy is correct or
incorrect. And I am concerned, when----
General Petraeus. Well, I think we have got the right
policy there, too, if you will. And I think the results----
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay. But it is not our soldiers.
General Petraeus [continuing]. Speak for themselves.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I think we both agree our soldiers are the
best. But my concern--General McChrystal said that Marjah is a
bleeding ulcer.
General Petraeus. He didn't say that, ma'am. He said that,
in the eyes of the outside world, Marjah is a bleeding ulcer.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay.
General Petraeus. It is very important that we get these
things precise----
Ms. Shea-Porter. I agree.
General Petraeus [continuing]. Because there have been a
lot of these, if I could, and they get repeated and repeated.
And so that is why, with respect, I have interjected.
Ms. Shea-Porter. In Congress, we certainly understand that,
as far as being repeated.
General Petraeus. Oh, never. It has never happened to you,
has it, Congresswoman?
Ms. Shea-Porter. Not ever. Okay. But the tribal elder in
the same article said that, by day, it is the government, and
by night, it is the Taliban. Now----
General Petraeus. There are some cases like that. This is
counterinsurgency and insurgency. I mean, this is a war. And
that is what takes place, and we had that in Iraq, as well. And
over time, what you are trying to do is to create situations in
which, as many people as possible have an incentive in seeing
the new structure, the new local governance, provincial
governance, national governance succeed, rather than fail, and
that is really the objective.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay. And one last question. Do they
respect Karzai's government?
Mr. Taylor [presiding]. Ma'am, ma'am, you are over your
time.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay, thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Taylor. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Petraeus, Ambassador Flournoy, thank you so much,
first of all, for your service. In 2006, I was the civil
affairs officer with the United States Marine Corps in the
Western Euphrates River Valley----
General Petraeus. I remember it.
Mr. Coffman [continuing]. In an area that had a lot of al
Qa'ida influence, and it was very difficult to encourage the
population to cooperate with us because of fear for what--just
the intimidation factor of what al Qa'ida might do to them or
would do to them if, in fact, they were caught doing so.
Now, in Afghanistan right now, there are media reports
that--the President's speech at West Point, where he talked
about a date for which we would begin the process of drawing
down our forces, that that has filtered down to the Afghan
people and has had an influence whereby they are less
cooperative because they see that our presence is limited,
where the Taliban's is not.
I wonder if you can comment on that, General Petraeus.
General Petraeus. There may well be a case where that is
the situation, but I don't think it is throughout the country.
I mean, what they are seeing right now is an enormous increase
in our forces. Remember, when President Obama took office in
January 2009, this was an under-resourced effort, at the end of
the day.
I mean, what I have explained is what we have done over the
last 18 months to try to resource it properly and to get the
inputs right. And what they are seeing is a threefold--more
than threefold increase, from 31,000 to 98,000, just U.S.
forces, I think 8,000 or 9,000 additional NATO forces, and now
in the process of growing another 100,000 Afghan National
Security Forces.
So, again, there is an enormous additional commitment, a
president who has labeled this a vital national security
interest, indeed, has used a date to convey a message of
urgency, as I have explained--and if you weren't here earlier,
I will give you my statement, because I felt it important
enough to put that on the record with the Senate Armed Services
Committee and then did the same thing here today.
And I think that is what is hugely important. This is not a
date when the United States races for the exits and turns off
the light switch. It is a date at which a process begins that
is based on conditions that govern a pace of transitioning of
tasks to Afghan forces and officials and governs the beginning
of a responsible drawdown of our surge forces.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, General Petraeus. I hope that the
Afghan people realize that. We certainly do.
To both of you, I am very concerned about the governance
piece, that there are certainly reports in Marjah that the
kinetic operations went well, certainly by our forces and
Afghan forces, but there wasn't the governance piece as a
follow-on by the Afghans to, in fact, do that piece.
And without a reliable partner, it doesn't matter at the
end of the day how successful we are in terms of tactical
operations, we are not going to go anywhere unless they can
fill that void, after we provide security.
General Petraeus. Well, there is no question that that is
the long pole in the tent in any counterinsurgency effort. As
you experienced again, also, in the Euphrates River Valley,
where it was very difficult--we could clear a town, and there
was nobody to take it over from us, there was no transition,
and there was certainly not a sheikh willing to stand up and be
part of the new Iraq government at that time because the ones
who did, out in western Anbar, as you will recall, got their
heads chopped off, until we really got the sustained Anbar
Awakening to take root, but we had to protect them. That was
the key.
With respect to Marjah, indeed, the clearance operation
really was quite commendable, I think. The Marines that were
engaged in that did very impressive work, U.K. up to the north
of it, other areas of Nadi-Ali, as well, did not destroy the
place to save it. They cleared it. They went over a lot of it,
as you will recall, and then came back and took the enemy from
behind, and so forth.
And the governance piece, as always in these efforts, is
difficult, especially in Afghanistan, where human capital does
not lie around in abundance after 30 years of war and where
contractors pay more than the government does.
There is, however, a district governor there. For what it
is worth, I walked through the market of Marjah with him. We
went and bought bread from the local bread vendor. Yes, we had
security around us. I didn't have body armor or Kevlar on in
this case, but also had dozens, if not hundreds, of Afghans all
around us, as well, and wanting to chatter with us and
everything else.
We also visited a school that had reopened. Again, I think
there are 80 teachers in the Marjah area alone that have come
back. The Taliban didn't permit that. There is reconstruction
of a variety of other basic services and so forth.
None of this easy, but it is taking place.
Secretary Flournoy. If I could just----
Mr. Taylor. Please.
Secretary Flournoy [continuing]. Very brief, on your very
important point about communicating to the Afghan people, our
enduring commitment, when President Karzai and 14 members of
his cabinet came in May for our strategic dialogue, we spent a
lot of our time not only talking about where we are today in
the campaign, but also the longer-term relationship, 5 years,
10 years, and beyond, and what kind of work we want to do with
Afghanistan on security assistance and education, in economic
development, and so forth.
And we are actually beginning to work on a strategic
framework for the long-term relationship, that we will be
coming and talking to you more about as that develops, as well.
But I think as that becomes more public, it communicates, I
think, that, you know, there may be contours in the nature of
our involvement there, but this is an enduring commitment. This
is an area of vital interest, and we will stay committed to the
people of Afghanistan and to their assistance.
Mr. Taylor. The gentlewoman from Massachusetts, Mrs.
Tsongas.
Ms. Tsongas. Thank you, and good afternoon to you both.
I have to say, I have been sitting here, that I am a
skeptic. And I made my first visit to Afghanistan in January of
2008, soon after I was first elected to Congress. At that
point, I think the general feeling was that we had sort of
dropped the ball by diverting our resources to Iraq, but that
once we came back and engaged, it would be fairly
straightforward. In fact, I can remember speaking to one of our
generals who said it would be a piece of cake.
A year later, I went back to Afghanistan, we had a newly
inaugurated President who had revisited it and was committing
17,000 soldiers, and, again, taking a longer time to consider
going forward what was needed. And I felt a sense of hopeful
optimism, especially with the civic-military sort of dual-
headed effort there.
And yet I came back with a lot of questions, because
essentially I felt the situation had become quite different in
the intervening year and that we were facing a new war effort,
not a continuation of what had taken place earlier, but given
the dynamics in Pakistan, the re-emergence of the Taliban, that
it was a wholly different effort and needed a wholly different
thought process.
And then we went back again this year, roughly a year
later, and again you could see the impact of our great build-up
there, and yet I didn't come away feeling particularly
confident for all the reasons we know, the many questions we
have around the Karzai government, the issue of corruption, the
challenges we have had training the police and the national
army, better with the army, but extraordinary challenges with
the police, and all the huge economic issues that the country
as a whole faces.
So I remain very skeptical, although I have to say, I do
very much appreciate the extraordinary efforts of our military,
and particularly the young soldiers who are serving on our
behalf.
We did meet with Afghan women as part of--they had a small
shura. We were in Qalat, which is north and east of Kandahar.
And, you know, there was some reassurance there. A PRT
[Provincial Reconstruction Team] there had brought them
together. They talked about having better health care, better
education. There were some women who had essentially been
beggars, talking about the small modest economic opportunities
for them.
But they also said how fearful they were for accessing all
the things that we have tried to put in place so that we could
deal with the capacity-building and the civic side.
And so I have a question that is sort of related to that,
that, yes, we are making these extraordinary investments, but
they are not yet really reaching the people in the way that we
need. Anyway, I came across a study that was done post-
Operation Moshtarak, and it really did try to sense the local
Afghani perceptions of the operation.
It was done by the International Council on Security and
Development. And it interviewed over 400 Afghan men from
Marjah, Lashkar Gah, and Kandahar in March, and the research
results are very concerning. The research revealed that 61
percent of the men interviewed feel more negative about NATO
forces now than before the military operation and that 95
percent of the men believe more young Afghans have joined the
Taliban in the last year.
If one of the main goals of the counterinsurgency strategy
is to win the hearts and minds of the local population, it
appears we are not doing well, at least according to this
research.
Also, the research stated 59 percent of those interviewed
believe the Taliban will return to Marjah after the operation,
67 percent did not support a strong NATO-ISAF presence in their
province, and 71 percent stated they wanted the NATO forces to
leave. Again, these are the results of an on-the-ground survey.
So tell me both, General Petraeus and Secretary Flournoy,
what benchmarks are you using to measure the effectiveness of
the new counterinsurgency strategy? What specific quantitative
and qualitative assessments are you using? You are testifying
that our operations are producing slow, but steady improvements
in security, stability, and capacity for governance, yet it
seems many Afghanis don't share that opinion.
And I have to say, given my very first encounter with one
of our generals in that first visit, I am just very cautious of
overly optimistic statements in the face of all the
extraordinary challenges that we face to achieve our goals.
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, Congresswoman, I
don't think you have heard any over-optimistic statements from
me. In fact, I specifically won't use the term optimism, nor
pessimism, for that matter. I use realism.
The Chairman [presiding]. Go ahead.
General Petraeus. I have done that for a number of years,
actually. I wish you had talked to me a couple of years ago, in
fact, or go back and look at my statements on the record since
taking command of Central Command. I have never believed that
this would be straightforward. In fact, I have stated on the
record on numerous occasions that, in certain respects, not
all, because this is nowhere near the level of violence of
Iraq. There are some other big issues.
But in certain respects, this will be harder than Iraq, due
to the lack of human capital, damaged after 30 years of war,
illiteracy, lack of infrastructure, and so on. But as you
noted, education, health care, roads, and electrification
projects, a lot of the basic services have increased.
Now, having said all that, we are still very much getting
the inputs right. We are getting toward the end of that
process. Studying Marjah within a couple of months of the
operation is not, candidly, a productive analysis, in the view
of this counterinsurgent. I mean, it takes many months, if not
years, to see the results of progress in these kinds of areas.
Furthermore, the truth is, we are not trying to win hearts
and minds for ourselves. We are trying to win hearts and minds
for legitimate Afghan governance. Now, that is a long pole in
the tent, as well, without question, but again this is not
about--we would love to have hearts and minds. We would love to
be loved. And we said that in Iraq, as well.
But at the end of the day, what we really wanted was for
our Iraqi partners to gain the support of the people, and it
was a case of promoting them, occasionally even letting them
lambaste us in front of some crowd or other to enable them to
make points, if that helped them win hearts and minds for
themselves.
So I am not completely surprised at all by the results of
the survey. Again, having said that, I walked the streets of
Marjah. I have been in Nadi-Ali. I would love to have some--you
know, you ought to go downtown in Nawa, which is a place where
we have devoted resources now for well over a year, and where
you can see the kind of progress that is possible, not just in
terms of establishing a security foundation on which you can
build, but then actually building on it, with, again, more
schools, with clearing of canals.
As you know, the whole Helmand River Valley was really
created by USAID some--I think more than 50 years ago now, back
in the 1950s. And actually refurbishing that area and so forth
is a hugely important component of what it is that we are
trying to do. Same thing, again, with basic health care and a
variety of others.
So, again, I would be happy to temper anyone's optimism
that you find with my realism. Having said that, I personally
keep coming back to the fact that this is a hugely important
mission. We believe this is the right approach, strongly, to
accomplish that mission. And, again, that is a pretty important
bedrock conclusion, I think, that one keeps coming back to.
We talked about, you know, can you do counterterrorism
versus COIN? Well, first of all, they are both entwined. But it
is--as Ryan Crocker, the great ambassador Ryan Crocker, world's
finest diplomat, my wingman in Baghdad, used to say about Iraq,
it is all hard, and it is hard all the time. And that is
reality.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the general.
Before calling Mr. Conaway, the same question of you, Madam
Secretary. In your experience, in your opinion, are we winning
in Afghanistan?
Secretary Flournoy. I would define winning similarly to
General Petraeus, in the sense of, are we making progress? And
I think if you--granted that counterinsurgency is always one
step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back,
it is full of progress and setbacks simultaneously.
But if you look overall at the trend lines, I think we are
heading in the right direction, we are on the right trajectory.
And I do look at polling results in Afghanistan. But I also
take them with a grain of salt, because it is an extremely
difficult thing to do, conduct an objective poll in such a
contested and hostile environment.
That said, what I try to look at is actions, behaviors. Are
people in the area cooperating more? Are they taking risks for
the sake of a more secure and stable environment? Are they
participating in governance? Is there more legitimate economic
activity? Are they accepting and participating in Afghan
governance? Is there some reduction in violence and casualties?
Those sorts of things that I think are more concrete.
And, again, I think, as General Petraeus said, you know,
there are many challenges. The picture remains mixed. Are we
there yet? Absolutely not. But I think when you look at where
we were a year ago, the strategy we have put in place, the
leadership we have put in place, the resources we have put in
place, and the progress that has started to be made, that we
are heading the right direction and we need to give the
resources and the strategy a bit of time to make further
progress in a way that is more definitive.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Conaway.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Flournoy, General Petraeus, thank you for your service,
and thanks for being here this afternoon and tolerating this
inquisition.
Iraq has oil, land, arable land, and water, resources that
can support an economy and a form of government that makes
sense for them. Up until Sunday, I had the same impression of
Afghanistan, in that I expected the world's communities to be
financially supporting the military there for a long time in
order to get that done.
The New York Times article in which you were quoted,
General Petraeus, some trillion dollars' worth of value of
minerals, copper, gold, somebody called it the Saudi Arabia of
lithium, that is a game-changer. From a $12 billion annual
economy, $1 trillion is natural resources that can be properly
and safely and environmentally friendly exploited, could lift
an awful lot of folks out of poverty, address the issues that
drive much of the problem that the country has in stabilizing
itself.
Can you--and one final point. The article went on to say
that the Pentagon has been aware of this since 2007 and has, in
effect, let it languish somewhere on a shelf. Can you talk to
us about--both of you, talk to us about the broader context of
what this means for that country?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, we need to be
measured in our expectations about how quickly Afghanistan can,
indeed, capitalize on what is truly extraordinary mineral
blessings and also timber blessings and some other very
exploitable resources that it has. The fact is that----
Voice. That is why we are in Afghanistan----
The Chairman. The lady will remove--the lady will remove
herself. Order. Order. The lady will remove herself. The lady
will remove herself. Please remove her. That is all right.
Voice. It is mass murder----
General Petraeus. If I could just comment on a point that
the woman made that--you know, the fact is, if we wanted Iraq's
oil, we could have bought it for the next four decades with
what we spent probably in a couple of years.
The Chairman. Exactly.
General Petraeus. And as you know, the mineral wealth is--
as you noted, I think an awareness of that grew probably in
recent years, but it just so happened that Deputy Under
Secretary Paul Brinkley, the head of the Task Force for
Business Stability Operations at the Pentagon, who did
magnificent work in Iraq bringing businessmen back to that
country, back when no one else was coming to Iraq.
And we helped him. I was his partner in this. We
transported them, housed them, fed them, secured them, and
everything else to try to do anything to get people re-
interested in a country that we knew had incredible potential,
but which at that time was seen as just so violent as to be
impossible in which to do business, even for the so-called
adventure venture capitalists.
And in the case of Afghanistan, he has engaged here. We are
supporting him here, as well. In fact, I asked him to go to
Afghanistan some months back. He has already made several trips
out there. He has been impressed by the potential that he has
seen in a host of different areas, actually, and now the
question is how to enable the Afghan government to develop the
kinds of legal regimes, in addition to the security foundation,
but then also the legal regimes, the infrastructure, the
capital investment, the training of a workforce, and all the
rest of that, to enable them to extract these mineral resources
and get them to a market somewhere in the world.
That will not be one of those that will be coming soon to a
theater near us, but it is something that, as you noted, holds
out a prospect that is entirely different from the perception
that many of us had for years, that Afghanistan was, in a
sense, going to be a ward of the court that would always be
subsidized to a substantial amount by the outside world, trying
to help it deal with its extremist problems.
Michele, did you want to----
Secretary Flournoy. I just wanted to add that, I think,
since the U.S. geological initial survey was done, this has
caused us to really focus a lot of attention on building
capacity in key areas like the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry
of Finance, the sort of Afghan wherewithal to begin to put an
Afghan plan in place for how they are going to manage this
potential.
The Pentagon did not sit on these results at all. I think
Mr. Brinkley has been hard at work and working very intensively
with our folks downrange in the embassy and with Afghan
partners for quite a while now.
General Petraeus. And, in fact, one of the recent trips,
when I was in Afghanistan about two or three ago, I ran into
him in Kabul, and he had some of these adventure venture
capitalists with him. That was, obviously, good to see.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Ms. Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, for
being with us today and for your great service to this country.
We greatly appreciate that, and I want to say at the offset how
much I appreciate the hard work and sacrifice of our troops,
particularly representing the state of Maine, where we have a
high proportion of people who have served in the military. We
are grateful for their work and their sacrifice and the
sacrifice of their families.
Like a couple of my previous colleagues, I guess I want to
take issue with a little bit of your perspective on this and
elaborate a little bit on how I feel about that. I disagree
with you basically on the premise that our continued military
presence in Afghanistan actually strengthens our national
security.
Since the surge of troops in southern and eastern
Afghanistan started, we have seen only increased levels of
violence, coupled with an incompetent and corrupt Afghan
government. I am of the belief that continuing with the surge
and increasing the level of American forces will have the same
result, more American lives lost, and we will be no closer to
success.
In my opinion, the American people remain skeptical that
continuing to put their sons and daughters in harm's way in
Afghanistan is worth the price being paid. And I think they
have good reason to feel that way.
It seems that increased military operations in southern and
eastern Afghanistan have resulted in increased instability,
increased violence, and more civilian casualties, some of which
we have already discussed today.
Meanwhile, pulling out of an area not only reduces the
level of violence, the local Afghan leaders sometimes end up
turning against the Taliban. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Brown,
Commander of a U.S. Army unit that came under attack in
Kamdesh, described what happened when his company was ordered
out of the area. Colonel Brown said, ``If you pull out the
coalition forces, you open up the natural seams between the
traditional leaders and the Johnny-come-lately Taliban.''
According to Colonel Brown, his patrolling troops were just
providing a recruitment tool for the insurgency.
The chair alluded to this same kind of sentiment earlier,
but I want to repeat a remark of the former Russian ambassador
to Afghanistan, who was a KGB agent in Kabul when the Soviets
were occupying the country. He said the USA has ``already
repeated all of our mistakes and has moved on to making
mistakes of their own.'' He said the single biggest mistake the
Soviets made was letting their military footprint get too
large.
We are now on track to have more troops in Afghanistan than
the Soviets did at the height of their occupation. So can you
comment on this? Was Lieutenant Colonel Brown correct? Has the
escalation of U.S. forces increased the insurgency? And was the
former Russian ambassador correct that the presence of our
forces is fueling the violence in Afghanistan and strengthening
the insurgency?
Thank you.
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, Congresswoman, with
respect to the Lieutenant Colonel, there may be cases where you
pull out of an area and serendipity results in the form of
local leaders who stand up to the Taliban.
I am hard-pressed to think of cases where that has taken
place, though, and I will have to see where it was that his
element was deployed. In many cases where we have pulled out
for one reason or another over the years, if it is a Pashtun
area--and that is where we tend to be deployed--the Taliban
will fill the void, together with the illegal narcotics
industry, and they will revive the poppy crop, and, indeed,
become a stronghold for the insurgency.
Again, it is a fact that the Taliban controlled that entire
part of the country, of course, Kabul and much of the rest of
the country, as well, and that is where the 9/11 attacks were
planned. That is why we are there, to prevent that from
becoming an extremist safe haven again.
The fact is that, when we do go into an area, in many
cases, the violence does go up, and that is because we are
taking away sanctuaries and safe havens from the Taliban, which
is why we have to go into those areas.
The campaign focuses on the major population centers. They
have to be provided greater security. It is not just about
stability. I mean, if you want--if all you want is stability,
and you don't care who is in charge of that stability, then,
again, you can give that to them, but then you obviously don't
have control over what it is that takes place in that ``stable
region.'' It may be that Kandahar was stable at the time of the
Taliban controlling it, but the fact is that you also had al
Qa'ida's senior leadership in there, hatching plots such as the
9/11 attacks and others.
So, again, you know, you have cited a couple of different
isolated incidents and so forth, and I can probably cite as
many isolated incidents in return, or perhaps even some
firsthand accounts----
Ms. Pingree. In the interest of time, I know I am going to
run out here, so I will just say, I appreciate it, and I
appreciate it from the start that you and I disagree. I wanted
to put the sentiment out there that I do think increasingly the
American public is concerned about the expense, the loss of
lives, and I think all of us are concerned with our lack of
success. But thank you very much for your service.
General Petraeus. If I could just relate one, because this
is important, I think, to this body. One of your members came
out. She had just been elected. This was when I was in Iraq,
and it was in the--probably still in the early months of the
surge, and it was a very tough time.
And she forthrightly, right before Ambassador Crocker and I
could even open our mouths, she wanted me to know that she was
a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus. And I said,
``Congresswoman, so am I.''
And so, I mean, in the sense that I share your concerns
about getting out of there from a number of different
perspectives--I will explain some of those later, perhaps--I
share the concerns about the cost, about the stress on our
force, about the sacrifices that our young men and women and
their families have made and are making.
But I also share a concern about the security of our
country. And I don't share the idea that our presence does not
strengthen our national security.
I do think the reason we are in Afghanistan is very, very
clear. And, again, it is about how we can accomplish that core
objective that the President has articulated that is, I think,
the real essence of the debate. But----
Ms. Pingree. And I will just say, again, I appreciate your
service. We have a strategic disagreement here.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
General Petraeus. And I appreciate yours, as well.
The Chairman. Mr. Kissell.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Madam Secretary and General.
And, by the way, I am not sure anybody has wished you happy
birthday, 235 years.
General Petraeus. Well, actually, it is the Army's
birthday. My goodness. You are exactly right.
Mr. Kissell. So----
General Petraeus. We will be celebrating that later this
week in Tampa, I want you to know.
Mr. Kissell. So happy birthday. General, this is my first
term in Congress, but I recently got back from my third trip to
Afghanistan, because I think it is important to our Nation. I
think it is important for us to not only be aware of what is
taking place on the ground, but to listen to the leadership,
listen to the Afghans, listen to all our soldiers that we come
in contact with.
Myself and some of our friends here, we were the first
congressional delegation to be asked to come into Kandahar
City. I think you guys were in the week before we were, so I
didn't do the 40 steps. I understand you all did. So--some of
our guys did, too.
General Petraeus. I was going to ask you your time in the
40 steps, as well. If you do that, please bring a stopwatch.
Mr. Kissell. I was the one that strategically decided not
to. One of the things that General McChrystal mentioned to us
in a briefing is that we were desperately in need of linguists,
translators. And it surprised me a little bit. You know, if we
are desperately in need of that--and I sent a letter to the
chairman and to Secretary Gates to that effect--what are we
doing about that?
General Petraeus. We have a pretty comprehensive effort in
that regard. We are, first of all, training linguists at the
Defense Language Institute out in Monterey, California, and in
some other service-provided locations, as well.
We have had a full-court press on to recruit Afghan-
Americans and other Afghan native speakers and those who speak,
again, Dari and Pashto and the other languages.
In the United States and, frankly, elsewhere throughout the
world, there has been recruiting of them in Afghanistan itself,
and that has been problematic in some cases. And, in fact, that
is a conundrum that we have, frankly, that in some cases, we
are hiring away from the Afghan government individuals who were
educated by the Afghan government to serve in the Afghan
government and then we are taking them away from--in some
cases, we are taking doctors who make more working for us as
translators than they do working as doctors for some Afghan
hospital.
So we have got to come to grips with that. But I think that
is the broad outline of what it is that we have done, and we
have expanded that in every respect. But when you triple your
forces on the ground in the course of about 18 months, there is
no way--you know, it takes at least a year to train a linguist,
at least, and probably more than that to be adequate----
Mr. Kissell. And, General--and is there anything more we
can do? Any resources that you need that we could provide
toward that effect?
General Petraeus. Sir, I don't know. I have been out of
that business since I was a three-star out at Leavenworth, and
we actually oversaw the Defense Language Institute. I just
don't know what the capacity is at this point in time. I
haven't personally sat down and compared our demand signal,
which I know, but we, frankly, feed that to the services and to
Joint Forces Command, and they then satisfy that demand.
And I don't know how it is that they are producing at this
point in detail, so----
Mr. Kissell. Well, if there is----
General Petraeus [continuing]. It is a service question, I
think.
Mr. Kissell. You know, once--if there is anything, just let
this committee know, because this committee always has
responded well.
General Petraeus. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Kissell. Just two or three real quick things. I
recently wrote to the folks back home after being over the
third time that I am realistically optimistic about what we are
doing, because I believe that it is important to our Nation, I
believe the leadership has the right plan, but it is awfully,
awfully tough.
I have also had General Arnold Fields in my office three
times to talk about those things that we need to do better in
all regards and to make sure we don't make some of the mistakes
that we have made before and that we continue to do things that
would help the Afghan people.
The distribution of resources, especially in Kandahar, I
think is real important because they are going to just a few
people and sometimes that warlord-type person that has exerted
the type of influence that we want to counter. I think that is
very important.
Electricity in Kandahar, we heard from the governor there
and the mayor there and the police chief there, when the city
goes dark at night, the Taliban has freedom of movement.
And one thing that struck me very interesting is we were
helicoptering out of Kandahar, out of the city. There were
streets laid off to the east. It looked like something you
might see in the American Southwest, you know, coming soon,
Shangri-La or something. There is anticipation of business and
commerce there, if they have the electricity, and a lot of
places have moved out because of a lack of electricity.
But I was impressed in Kandahar, the fact that there--you
know, beautiful flowers, beautiful commerce, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman, but, you know----
General Petraeus. I walked the streets, bought bread there,
too. And if I could just very quickly, we have a program--it is
at the Office of the Secretary of Defense--to increase
substantially electricity production in Kandahar City and also
for the eastern and southern parts of the country.
It would use CERP funds. That is a different use of those,
but those funds are available, they are adaptable, they are
accessible. Our understanding is that it meets the policy on
the governing and the law. But, again, we would just ask your
support if it comes to that, because this is one of those game-
changers, if you will. Like you said, if you can turn on the
lights, turn on the businesses, and turn on security, then you
have really made some progress.
The Chairman. Thank----
General Petraeus. The Taliban cannot produce electricity.
They can do a lot of other things, but they can't produce
electricity. Only the Afghan government can. And, again, that
would be quite significant.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Heinrich.
Mr. Heinrich. General Petraeus, Secretary Flournoy, I want
to welcome both of you and thank you for all the hard work you
have put into this effort.
I was in Kandahar City with my colleague just two weeks
ago. I don't want to give you my time on the 40 steps. It
wasn't very impressive, but I did make it to the top.
General Petraeus. You did do the 40 steps?
Mr. Heinrich. I can't--I did.
General Petraeus. I have got a coin for you, Congressman.
Mr. Heinrich. That is a deal. I can't say strongly enough
how much I support your response on the electricity issue. I
think it is absolutely critical for what we saw on the ground
there, and I really appreciate my colleague bringing it up.
One of the other issues that, you know, we dealt with
directly and got to see firsthand was the Afghan national
police, the nature of the partnership we have there now, and
one of my concerns with your testimony yesterday has to do with
our NATO partners and the pace at which they are making their
commitments, in terms of trainers.
And I would like you to touch on that, if you would, and
tell us, you know, why aren't we--why isn't that pace coming
together more expeditiously?
General Petraeus. Well, again, there are national reasons
for that. In each case, they vary. The fact is, though, that we
are short about 450 trainers, and then there are another
numbers of hundreds that have been pledged that are not yet on
the ground.
And so notwithstanding the gains with respect to the ratio
of trainers to trainees, which has gone from 1 to 80 to 1 to 29
or 30, which is significant, we still have a good ways to go.
And, in fact, as we increase capacity, that need may grow
further.
So we have employed a variety of bridging solutions. The
Marines--the Commandant of the Marine Corps provided hundreds
of trainers on an interim basis. The U.S. Army, we diverted an
entire battalion to do this, as well. And that also has had an
important bridging effect.
But the bottom line is that this has not been adequate, and
the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe today put out
another request to the nations for the trainers that are
required, and we will have to see what comes out of that----
Mr. Heinrich. That is great.
General Petraeus [continuing]. Given that Secretary Gates
just highlighted that need during the recent defense
ministerials of NATO.
Mr. Heinrich. And I think that is absolutely critical. I
want to switch gears real quickly. You used the phrase
``Pakistani partners'' a little while ago, and I want to talk
for a few minutes about Pakistan. I think whenever we talk
about Afghanistan, we have to think regionally.
As you know, there was an April 2010 report on progress
toward security and stability in Afghanistan that said one of
the weaknesses of this insurgency is their over-reliance on
external support. And I think that finding reinforces the need
for eliminating that support, regardless of where it comes
from.
This last weekend, we saw another report that was prepared
by the London School of Economics that indicated that
Pakistan's main intelligence agency continues to provide
financing, training, sanctuary to certain Afghan Taliban
insurgents, and exerts a greater influence over the Taliban
than we previously thought.
If we were to marginalize this group in Afghanistan and
achieve greater security throughout the country, how do we
address the issues with Pakistan to make sure that, while they
are cracking down on Pakistan Taliban in places like Swat and
east Waziristan, they seem to be sort of playing both sides of
this game?
General Petraeus. Well, first of all, I don't want to imply
that I would accept the London School of Economics study or the
individual who wrote that for them, his conclusions in all
respects.
Having said that, there is no question but that there are a
variety of relationships there, some of which date back decades
from when we used the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] to
build the Mujahideen, who were used to push the Soviets out of
Afghanistan.
And some of those ties continue in various forms, some of
them, by the way, gathering intelligence. You know, again, you
have to have contact with bad guys to get intelligence on bad
guys. And so it is very important, I think, again, to try to
have this kind of nuanced feel for what is really going on.
Now, what is indisputable is that, as you noted, the
Pakistanis have carried out impressive counterinsurgency
operations against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistani and their
affiliate, the TNSM [Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi],
and some of the other organizations in the former North-West
Frontier province and in a number of the agencies of the
Federally Administered Tribal Area.
Beyond that, they have also had attacked in a variety of
ways a number of the other elements there. And, of course,
there has been another campaign going on that I mentioned Vice
President Biden alluded to in his comments about the more than
12--and that was before number 3 was announced--senior al
Qa'ida and other extremist element leaders, transnational
extremist organization leaders out of an updated list of top
20, killed during the last 18 months or so.
The combination of that has been important. Having said
that, I do believe that the Pakistanis recognize--the people,
the leaders, the clerics, and the military all recognize that
you cannot allow poisonous snakes to have a nest in your
backyard, even if the--you know, the tacit agreement is that
they are going to bite the neighbor's kids instead of yours,
because eventually they turn around and bite you and your kids.
And so I think there is recognition of the problem. What do
we do about it? I think we have to continue what is slowly
being seen by our Pakistani partners--and I say that word with
sincerity--is as a sustained, substantial commitment. That is
what they are looking to see.
There is history here. Three times before, including after
Charlie Wilson's war, we left precipitously after and left them
with holding the bag, if you will. They have enormous
challenges, not just in the security arena, but in the economic
arena, social, political, you name it.
And it is hugely important that we be seen--again, we be
seen as partners by them and seen to be working to help them.
They are doing the fighting. We are doing the enabling, if you
will, with equipping, with funding, some of it coalition
support funds to reimburse them for efforts that they exercise
to secure our lines of communication through their country, and
so on, some training, intelligence exchanges, and the rest of
that.
And I think, again, the key is the development, again, of a
strategic relationship. And they also have recently been to
Washington, as have the Afghan leaders, and that is the key to
the way ahead, in my view.
Mr. Taylor [presiding]. The gentleman from Pennsylvania,
Mr. Critz.
Mr. Critz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Petraeus, Secretary Flournoy, thank you very much
for being here, and thank you for your service to our country.
My question is involving the provinces of Wardak and Logar,
south of Kabul, and we have seen an improvement in the security
situation there, and partly due to the presence of local
militias. And the militias don't have really any formal tie to
the Afghan national army. They are under the supervision of a
local police chief.
Can you elaborate on this a little specifically, and if
there has truly been significant improvement in security due to
the militia? And is there any plan to replicate these militias
elsewhere in the country?
And then, going further, is there plans to bring the
militias under the supervision of the army? Or is it going to
remain under the guise of the police chief? Thank you.
General Petraeus. That is a great question, Congressman,
because we are very much taking a comprehensive approach to
this from a security perspective, all the way in the high end
from targeting with our special mission units, and then with
our partnered commando units, and so forth, all in the soft
world of mid-level, if we can get them high-level, Taliban
leaders, through conventional forces, together with Afghan
elements that are clearing and then holding and building and
getting ready for transition, on over to these local security
initiatives.
And there are several of these. One of these is what has
been carried out in Wardak and Logar, the Afghan Public
Protection Force--APPF is the acronym--they actually are tied
into the Ministry of Interior, indeed, through local police
chiefs, but they are paid by the Ministry of Interior.
One of the issues right now that I have had to dialogue
with General Caldwell on, in fact, is that they are not paid at
the same rate as local police. And so that is one issue that
does need to be dealt with, but they are, indeed, paid. They
actually were trained before they went on the street by our--
our special forces elements who retain a partnership with them.
And they are not really militia, per se. They are local
security forces that do have a tie to the government. And that
was a point of insistence by President Karzai and the then-
Minister of Interior, Hanif Atmar, when this program was put
together.
There are also village security programs where our special
forces teams go out into small villages, live with those
villages, and they are authorized to establish a small security
force that, again, has a link back to a more robust quick
reaction force as required from the Afghan National Security
Forces.
Again, this is linked through the Ministry of Interior.
There is real potential here. There are also real concerns
here. The Afghan national leaders are concerned that this could
give--in a sense, legitimize warlord militias coming back to
life after working very hard to demobilize those in the first
few years after liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban.
And so I think it is prudent to be cautious. But, frankly,
you also have to take some risk in this effort, especially when
you are trying to produce progress as rapidly as is possible,
because of a sense--understandable sense of urgency.
And so these programs are being continued. They will be
expanded. And, indeed, General Caldwell, General McChrystal and
others are working with the Afghan government to fix some
shortcomings that they have and to get the policies in place
that can allow further use of them, where appropriate, and with
the recognition that there are some risks that you take in
establishing these forces, as well.
Mr. Critz. Thank you, General. That is all I have.
General Petraeus. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Critz. I yield back.
Mr. Taylor. Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York,
Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, sir.
And thank you, General and Secretary, for being here again
today.
Two points I was hoping to touch on. One, when I was in
Afghanistan most recently, we were stuck a little bit in a
catch-22, and the Secretary has addressed this before, but I
would be curious to get the update, of--we are providing the
money for rebuilding and for other things that people need, and
so they kind of come to us, and it effectively infantilizes the
Afghan government, but we are hesitant to give the money to the
Afghan government because of corruption problems.
And I am curious how we are doing on that. I know it is a
big initiative that we are continuing to push on, and I would
love to just get the kind of current state of affairs there in
summary form.
Secretary Flournoy. Okay. We have set a goal of trying to
move more and more of our assistance through the Afghan
government. What that requires is a process of certifying each
ministry for financial accountability and absence of
corruption.
It is a painstaking process. The good news is, three of the
key ministries have already passed. We have another three or
four in the works. And we have a prioritized list that we are
working through to get there. So we are aware of this dynamic
and trying to address it.
Mr. Murphy. So we have three currently, and three or four
more that are in process?
Secretary Flournoy. I think it is three or four, and
another--and then there is another tranche after that that we
will be starting very soon.
Mr. Murphy. Great. The second question I have relates to
the same--similar issue, in terms of transitioning to Afghan
government control over things. And I have been hearing from a
number of people in the near past that the constitutional
structure is a problem for us.
We kind of know Afghanistan is very decentralized
historically, culturally, in terms of these local areas, but
the way the constitution got put together, for a whole host of
reasons, it is very much that it kind of comes from the top
down, and Kabul appoints the governors and the deputy
governors.
And I am curious how you are seeing that impact us on the
ground, as we are trying to work in these local areas, in
particular in the Marjah operation and trying to help build a
successful local government. And is there a way to work in that
construct? Or is this--I mean, obviously, we can't change their
constitution, but is that something that really needs to change
for us to get to where we have local elections and a locally
driven thing?
I mean, we get frustrated with it here in Washington,
because the guys locally yell at us for spending too much money
and then ask us to send them the money, but it is a process
that works here. And I am curious where you see that going.
Secretary Flournoy. I think, you know, what we have seen
happening is a blending of the governance structures set up by
the constitution and the more traditional social structures. So
a lot of what is happening is you will establish, for example,
a district governor and a district council.
But he will basically use the traditional shura process
with local tribal leaders to sort of advise him and the council
on how to distribute resources, how to prioritize projects, et
cetera.
So my sense is that the constitution is not a barrier at
this moment to really building the basic governance--putting
the basic governance pieces in place. Whether down the road
they want to make tweaks to the constitution, you know, that
may be something that they want to address. But I don't think
we are seeing it as a real barrier to making some of the
progress that needs to happen, particularly at the local
levels.
Mr. Murphy. Would you agree with that----
General Petraeus. Very much so. In fact, what has to happen
is there has to be a working from the bottom up even as there
is also a working from the top down. And the bottom up means
traditional local organizing structures. There is good use made
of those. And the idea is to mesh those at about the district
level, which is the lowest level typically that the central
government might appoint officials, and then to have that
district governor and other national officials at district
level mesh with the local shura councils who are ideally are
representative of the entire spectrum of tribes and other
elements in a particular area.
And that is actually happening. Now, it is problematic in
some places where--just take Arghandab as an example. You may
have two-thirds of Arghandab district represented in the shura
council, but there still might be a third or a quarter that for
reasons of Taliban intimidation or other reasons is not
represented. And that is obviously problematic and has to be
dealt with over time.
And, indeed, that is one of the efforts that is part of the
greater Kandahar province security effort.
Mr. Murphy. But so in Helmand and in Kandahar, we are
seeing those local shura councils meeting and working well with
those district governors and subdistrict governors?
General Petraeus. We are. And, again, in the Marjah area,
as an example, you can trace the security envelope or umbrella
by how far out you have shura council representatives, because
where you run into the areas beyond which the Taliban might
have influence, then you don't have representatives on the
shura council.
In some cases, there are a couple of tribal elders who have
announced their intention to join the shura council, but noted
that they need a little bit more time and a little bit more
security before they can do it.
So, again, if the incentives are there, they will join the
shura council, and they will work with the district governor,
because there is reason to do that.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
Mr. Taylor. General Petraeus, I am curious. Are there any
parts of the nation of Afghanistan that are off-limits to
congressional delegations?
General Petraeus. That are off-limits?
Mr. Taylor. Yes, sir.
General Petraeus. Not that I am aware of, no, sir.
Mr. Taylor. Okay, so if I wanted to go visit the
Mississippi Guard, I am getting your permission in advance to
go see them, no matter where they get sent?
General Petraeus. Absolutely. Sir, with all the years of--
all the Army courses and classes you have spoken to, we will
get you on a helicopter somewhere and get them out there. But,
no, I mean, any place that our troopers are, certainly in the
past we have put congressional delegations--you know, unless
just the sheer logistics of it overwhelm the operation.
Mr. Taylor. I liked your first answer better.
Okay, Mr. Platts.
General Petraeus. Please withdraw from the record my
subsequent comments.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and
apologize having to step out to be on the floor for a while,
and so don't want to ask questions you have already answered.
First, just want to convey my sincere thanks to each of you
for your leadership, and especially, General Petraeus, you and
all on your staff and our courageous men and women in uniform.
It has been a couple months since my last trip to Afghanistan,
and I come home every time inspired.
And adding to the gentleman from Mississippi's comments,
when we are given those opportunities to be out, truly out, you
know, as far as possible, the insights we get are invaluable,
as a policymaker back here, and then being able to take that
message back to our constituents at home of the heroic work of
these courageous men and women. So we appreciate your first
answer, and when we are over there, helping to get us out there
with our soldiers and Marines and others.
General Petraeus. Congressman Taylor, if you run into some
perhaps bureaucratic response that initially is not in line
with--perhaps you can alert me to that, and we----
Mr. Platts. I am sure the gentleman won't hesitate.
General Petraeus. He never has in the past.
Mr. Platts. The one question that you did highlight in your
testimony before I had to leave--and just want to, I guess,
emphasize the focus--and I know General Caldwell is doing great
work, and the leadership--is the importance of that----
General Petraeus. Right.
Mr. Platts [continuing]. Short-, but especially long-term,
for our long-term, you know, drawdown is that Afghan National
Security Force effort. And I know we are in good hands with
General Caldwell.
And did I understand that the goal on ANA and ANP is that,
by the end of this year, we are going to hit the training--I
mean, the goals for up--you know, fully staffed out?
General Petraeus. On the current glide slope that we are on
now and have been on, really, now for about three months or so,
so we are hesitant to declare this a sustainable trend, but it
is certainly in the right direction, we are on track--we are
actually slightly ahead of track to meet the goals by the end
of fiscal year 2010.
Mr. Platts. Okay.
General Petraeus. And that then continues on out, of
course, to the end of 2011.
Mr. Platts. Right, so by 2011, you know, we are----
General Petraeus [continuing]. 2011 is when we will have
added the additional 100,000 that were authorized as part of
the President's policy and that you funded----
Mr. Platts. And we are on that track now, if I understood
that correctly?
General Petraeus. Right now. Again, there are many months
to go, so----
Mr. Platts. Yes.
General Petraeus [continuing]. In the spirit of realism
rather than----
Mr. Platts. Right. Well, I appreciate that. And please
convey my best to General Caldwell, and my interactions with
him has--when I have been over there, as well as here before he
was sent over, that that aspect of the mission is so important
for our absolute success.
General Petraeus. Absolutely.
Mr. Platts. So, again, thanks for both of your leadership
and service.
I yield back.
General Petraeus. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you very much.
We are getting near the witching hour. And we told you we
would get you out of here. And I think we have three more
folks, if we can squeeze them all in. If not, raise your hand.
And right now, Ms. Giffords, you are under the wire.
Ms. Giffords. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Petraeus, welcome back to committee.
And, Madam Secretary, thank you, as well.
Hailing from southern Arizona, I am glad you are staying
hydrated. It is very important, something that we know out in
the desert. And on behalf of the men and women of Fort Huachuca
and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, we just want to thank both of
you for your service.
And, unfortunately, we lost two of our airmen, actually,
associated with Davis-Monthan, Senior Airman Benjamin White,
who was 24, and also Tech Sergeant Michael Paul Flores, 31,
were both based at Davis-Monthan and were part of the Rescue
Command. Very sad. Very much brings home, you know, what we are
asking of our men and women.
There has been a lot of attention back here in the United
States on what is happening with the BP oil spill. And as we
all know, the largest user of energy on the planet is actually
the United States Air Force. And the DOD is the largest user of
energy in the United States.
And I really want to commend the work done on behalf of DOD
and also what is happening in the field with our energy. But it
is an area that I just really want to focus on, and I know a
lot of questions have been asked, but during the last three
years, supply lines have increasingly threatened--have been
threatened either by enemy action or through international
places.
And in places like Kandahar, where we have a large
presence, we have been plugged into a very unsustainable and
really incapable grid system. We know that a major part of the
upcoming Kandahar offensive will include some serious repairs
and upgrades to the energy system, which will include small-
scale solar and hydropower systems, and also some solar-powered
streetlights.
I am just curious whether or not there are plans to utilize
any of those same technologies at our bases around Afghanistan.
And wouldn't that greatly reduce our need for fuel?
General Petraeus. I pause, because there are a couple of
different components to what we are trying to do with respect
to energy reduction, if you will, and that is really what it is
about. And there is, again, a fairly comprehensive effort in
that regard.
We don't have hydropower, obviously, access to that on the
bases, but there has been a significant effort which has
reduced very substantially, actually, what we have needed for
the cooling and heating of our workplaces and living places.
And that is sometimes as simple as pumping extra insulation
into the roof and walls of these fairly rudimentary temporary
buildings that we have, sometimes even the tents.
And it is interesting, because we were exchanging e-mails
today with an individual who is involved in that effort, and we
believe there have been actually billions of dollars of savings
in this effort, if you look at what we did in Iraq first in
that regard, and have now been pursuing in Afghanistan.
If I could, I might note that the supply lines actually
have worked well--the lines of communication through Pakistan.
Yes, there periodically are attacks, and there was one a week
ago, but that followed a period of months and months, if not a
year or so, since the last significant attacks. And it is much
less than 1 percent of all of the cargo that goes in through
Pakistan that is affected by these various attacks.
And we are up now to some 70 percent of all supplies, not
necessarily all materiel, but all supplies coming through the
north through this carefully constructed northern distribution
network that we have been able to establish over the course of
the last year, in close partnership with U.S. Transportation
Command and the State Department, that enables us to bring
items through Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and into
Afghanistan, and then even through some of the other countries,
there are other routes, including one that comes out of Iraq
through Turkey and then turns east.
And we do use solar power in some cases, again, where that
provides a benefit to us. We did that in Iraq, as well, by the
way, I might point out, quite considerable use of that. And,
again, that is the case in Afghanistan, as well.
If I could add one final item, we are about to send you the
new commander of Fort Huachuca, Brigadier General, promotable,
Steve Fogarty, has been a stellar military intelligence chief
at Central Command over the last two years, has time in
Afghanistan, former special mission unit intel chief, and so
forth, and I think you will really enjoy him and his wife, by
the way, once they get out there.
Ms. Giffords. And we are looking forward to it.
The Chairman. We are going to have to cut you a few seconds
short so Ms. Bordallo and Mr. Nye can ask questions here before
our witnesses turn to pumpkins.
Ms. Bordallo, go ahead.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, I would like to
thank you both for your exemplary service to our country.
And to you, General, and all the commanders in Iraq and
Afghanistan, I have always been very privileged to visit my
servicemembers from Guam while I am there.
I also fondly remember when I first met you. You were in
charge in Mosul, and I knew then there was great expectations
for you.
General Petraeus. It was the all-woman delegation, as I
recall.
Ms. Bordallo. That is right. Unfortunately, I am sad to say
that Guam lost another son in battle last week in Afghanistan,
and we have lost far too many of our own in combat, either in
Iraq or Afghanistan.
Now, the mission in Afghanistan remains critical, I
understand, and I appreciate the Obama Administration for
focusing attention on the operations in Afghanistan.
However, I do have some concerns about the impact the long
war has had on our servicemembers. It can be for either one of
you to answer, but I would like to know what we are doing to
reach out to ensure that women play an important role in Afghan
political and economic society.
I just made another trip on Mother's Day with Speaker
Pelosi and four members of this committee, all women, and we
visited with the Afghan women, and we found they are very
passionate to take on the work that they are created for. Some
of them were midwives and educators and health officials. But
they are so afraid of the security in their country that they
are not being able to carry out these chores.
So I am just wondering, are you working with the Afghan
government to encourage them to promote women to take on
leadership roles?
Secretary Flournoy. There are a number of efforts ongoing,
everything from encouraging adequate female representation in
some of the more important shuras, the decision-making bodies,
the jirgas, and so forth, but also paying particular attention
to implementation of the part of the constitution that really
speaks to women's rights and women's roles.
So I think, on the military side, there has been a number
of innovative steps taken to reach out to women. There is a new
group of young women Marines that there have been some articles
written about recently who are seeking to engage Afghan women
much more fully as we go into new areas and districts. We have
also done a lot in terms of reaching out on women's health
issues.
So I think it is sort of woven throughout different aspects
of our strategy, from the highest levels of discussions with
President Karzai down to what some of the innovative approaches
that our small units are employing in the field.
The Chairman. I hate to----
Ms. Bordallo. I have one more question, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Very quickly. Very quickly. We are trying to
squeeze Mr. Nye and Mr. Sestak in----
Ms. Bordallo. This has to do with the suicide rate,
General. I just received a memo concerning May suicide data
from the Army. We lost 9 active-duty soldiers to potential
suicide and 12 potential suicides among reserve component
soldiers. What are we doing? Do we have outreach programs? And
how successful are they?
General Petraeus. We have enormous programs, downrange and
back in the United States. The Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
personally is seized with this in a host of different ways.
And, in fact, I would perhaps suggest that you have--ask
General Chiarelli and perhaps his counterparts from the other
services to come over and lay all these programs out to you.
They are very extensive.
And we think we have had some successes with this, but some
of the numbers seem to fly in the face of that at times. We
think that we start to make progress, and then you see it
again. We thought recently that we had begun to turn the
corner, and then we have seen a number again recently.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Nye.
And very quickly, Mr. Sestak.
Quickly, Mr. Nye.
Mr. Nye. Okay. General, thank you for your service. I had
an opportunity to work with your MNF-I [Multi-National Force-
Iraq] team in 2007 out in Baghdad as a member of USAID.
One quick question. I will be satisfied with a pretty brief
answer on it. A lot of members have mentioned the importance of
Pakistan and our ability to be successful in our mission in
Afghanistan. Do you feel like our policy in Afghanistan has
allowed the Pakistanis in their internal decision-making
process to reach that tipping point where they are more likely
to help us achieve our mission than be more concerned with
their longer-term ties with Afghan Taliban and related groups?
General Petraeus. I think--again, being absolutely
forthright--that there are probably still calculations being
made. This is why I have made the point that there needs to be
a sustained substantial commitment. There needs to be a
recognition that we are seized with this, that we are with them
for the long term, that we will not do what we did to them, as
I mentioned several times before, including after Charlie
Wilson's war.
There has been impressive positive action against some of
the extremists, principally those that threaten the internal
writ of governance of Pakistan. There have been some operations
against others, as well, again, including Mullah Baradar and a
number of others.
There is a greater awareness, I think, again, that you
can't allow extremists of any flavor to set up camp in your
backyard. The problem has been one of capacity. And, again, we
are working hard to enable that capacity and to be partners
that they can count on, so if they go in and take care of some
of these, that we are there for them, not doing the fighting--
that is being done by their forces--but to assist them as much
as we possibly can.
And the funding that was in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill,
the coalition support funding, the Pakistani Counterinsurgency
Capability Fund and others are essential to that effort.
The Chairman. Mr. Sestak, quickly.
Mr. Sestak. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Just two quick questions. Madam Secretary, if al Qa'ida
were not in Pakistan, would we be pursuing this strategy in
Afghanistan and----
Secretary Flournoy. It is hard for me to answer a
hypothetical, but this President has been very clear that our
vital interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in the region is
disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qa'ida and its
affiliates, that there is a real threat to the United States
and U.S. security from that region, and that is the principal
reason why we are engaged.
Mr. Sestak. So if----
General Petraeus. Can I add to that, Congressman? Because
the fact is that al Qa'ida is not the only transnational
extremist organization that has its senior leadership in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. You also do have Tehrik-i-
Taliban Pakistani, which, of course, is the group to which the
Times Square bomber was linked. You have Lashkar-e-Taiba, which
carried out the Mumbai attack and has greater ambitions, as
well. And, indeed, some other organizations, the Haqqani
network has, again, transnational ambitions beyond its regional
activities, which are already quite significant.
Mr. Sestak. Thanks, General. And my second question,
which--the reason I asked is, Madam Secretary, I thought that
the President said, as you said, we are worried about al
Qa'ida. These other ones are around, but as you expressed it,
it is al Qa'ida. So my question had been, if they----
Secretary Flournoy. Al Qa'ida and its affiliates----
General Petraeus. And its affiliates, that is right.
Secretary Flournoy [continuing]. That pose a threat to us.
Mr. Sestak. So----
General Petraeus. And these are the affiliates. And that is
why I added on, if I could. I know you were about to do the
same thing, sorry.
Mr. Sestak. But back in the 1990s, the national security
strategy of engagement always had an exit strategy. It was
articulated, and they were specific benchmarks measuring
success and failure for what your goal was. So if failure is
more costly than success, you knew as warriors to exit to an
alternative strategy.
My question had to do with al Qa'ida, because they are not
in Afghanistan. Do we have specific--and I have gone through
your various reports--benchmarks for an exit strategy that
actually measure quantifiably the ability to measure what is to
be the removal of al Qa'ida, which is totally in Pakistan, and
some of the other affiliates that, as you say, General----
The Chairman. Can you give a brief answer?
Secretary Flournoy. Brief answer is, we have provided
fairly extensive reports that we will continue to update to
Congress on metrics. But I think that the core idea here is
that we want to reduce the capacity of al Qa'ida, its
affiliates, which include many of the insurgents fighting
against us, both us and our Pakistani partners--and while
simultaneously increasing the indigenous capacity in
Afghanistan and Pakistan to be able to deal with the threat
that remains.
Mr. Sestak. But I didn't see quantifiable metrics. Do you
have those? I mean, I saw the----
Secretary Flournoy. I think there are many of the metrics
that are quantifiable, but perhaps we can have a further
discussion on the metrics.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman, and I thank the
witnesses very, very much. I realize you are pushing it for
your next appointment. Thank you for your service.
[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
June 16, 2010
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
June 16, 2010
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
June 16, 2010
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
June 16, 2010
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LOEBSACK
Mr. Loebsack. Later this year, the Iowa National Guard will deploy
approximately 2,800 Soldiers to Afghanistan. They will focus on
training the Afghan National Security Forces and will also mobilize an
Agribusiness Development Team, two missions which I believe are
absolutely critical to the mission in Afghanistan. General Petraeus,
can you please provide me with an update on the work of the ADTs in
Afghanistan and how agriculture assistance is being coordinated with
security operations and counternarcotics operations?
Secretary Flournoy. Currently there are nine Agribusiness
Development Teams (ADTs) operating in support of fourteen provinces in
Afghanistan. The National Guard will continue to source nine teams
through FY11 and four to nine teams in FY12. ADTs partner with the
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and civilian agriculture
development specialists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The
interagency partners on the Agriculture Policy Working Group in Kabul
are developing a plan, to be released by the end of 2010, that would
ensure a seamless transition of ADTs to civilian experts as National
Guard sourcing of ADTs decreases.
Based on the needs of the individual province, ADTs work to build
sustainable growth and capacity to the agriculture sector and
agriculture governance through the Provincial Director of Agriculture
Irrigation and Livestock (DAIL). ADTs typically begin with
infrastructure projects, e.g., irrigation improvements, demonstration
farms, processing facilities, and roads. Once the appropriate
infrastructure is in place, ADTs train local farmers in more productive
techniques, establish agriculture schools, and develop links to U.S.
universities. Finally, ADTs build the capacity of the DAIL and the
DAIL's staff to sustain growth and an environment for future
agribusiness success.
All development and capacity building efforts of the ADTs are
coordinated with the other members of the U.S. Government Civilian
Military Provincial Team. These include the PRT; the Brigade Task Force
Commander; and the leads from the Department of State, USAID, USDA, and
other international and non-governmental partners.
Security issues are coordinated directly with the Brigade Task
Force Commander for that Area of Operations. Counternarcotics (CN)
efforts are the responsibility of the Afghan Provincial Government. Any
coordination by U.S. forces, including ADTs, with CN efforts would be
administered through the Brigade Task Force Commander and the PRT.
Mr. Loebsack. I have been concerned since the President announced
his strategy in December that we do not have a clear set of goals and
metrics for dealing with the cross-border violence and insurgency in
Pakistan. Given that the attempted Times Square bombing apparently has
roots in Pakistan, this lack of a clear strategy is increasingly
troublesome. Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, can you please
explain to me how we are addressing the threats emanating from Pakistan
and how our strategy for Pakistan is being coordinated with the mission
in Afghanistan?
Secretary Flournoy. In March 2009, the President presented the U.S.
Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was based on a policy
review that he requested upon taking office. The goal of the strategy
is to disrupt, defeat, and dismantle Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and
Pakistan and to prevent their return to either country. The strategy
initiates a regional approach by linking Afghanistan and Pakistan in a
common fight against violent extremists.
The National Security Council Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP)
was released in July 2009 and provides a series of supporting
objectives for implementing the U.S. Strategy for Afghanistan and
Pakistan. The plan also includes measures of effectiveness to track
progress in achieving the objectives. The SIP ``metrics'' are one of
several means we use to evaluate progress, and they are an excellent
example of precise, quantifiable information requirements that are
continually collected and evaluated by our military and civilians in
the field.
Coordinating our efforts in Pakistan with those in Afghanistan is a
challenge, but it is one in which we have effective offices and systems
in place. The Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan has
formed an effective partnership with the Commander of United States
Central Command. These two organizations serve as the primary hub
through which information travels up, down, and across the interagency.
Additionally, commanders at the battalion, brigade and task force
level from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF),
Afghanistan National Army (ANA) and the Pakistan military (PAKMIL) are
in frequent contact. These leaders hold regular border coordination
meetings to ensure that cross-border activities are transparent, and
that both Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to develop their own
information sharing. ISAF, ANA and the PAKMIL also use these meetings
to coordinate their operations with friendly forces on the opposite
side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Mr. Loebsack. Later this year, the Iowa National Guard will deploy
approximately 2,800 Soldiers to Afghanistan. They will focus on
training the Afghan National Security Forces and will also mobilize an
Agribusiness Development Team, two missions which I believe are
absolutely critical to the mission in Afghanistan. General Petraeus,
can you please provide me with an update on the work of the ADTs in
Afghanistan and how agriculture assistance is being coordinated with
security operations and counternarcotics operations?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Loebsack. I have been concerned since the President announced
his strategy in December that we do not have a clear set of goals and
metrics for dealing with the cross-border violence and insurgency in
Pakistan. Given that the attempted Times Square bombing apparently has
roots in Pakistan, this lack of a clear strategy is increasingly
troublesome. Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, can you please
explain to me how we are addressing the threats emanating from Pakistan
and how our strategy for Pakistan is being coordinated with the mission
in Afghanistan?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ROGERS
Mr. Rogers. I know that DOD employs hundreds of canines in Iraq and
Afghanistan. How many of those canines are owned and operated by
contractors?
Secretary Flournoy. A total of 595 contractor-owned dogs are used
to support the military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: 479 such dogs
are used in Iraq and 116 in Afghanistan. The number of dogs in
Afghanistan will grow to 324 over the next three months to meet
requirements to support Forward Operating Base (FOB) force protection
missions.
Mr. Rogers. Does the Department have a set of minimum standards
that contractors are required to meet in order to field an individual
canine? If so, what are they?
Secretary Flournoy. All contracted canines meet military
certification standards prior to deploying to theater. Army Regulation
190-12 and USCENTCOM Military/Contract Working Dog Policy outline the
specific requirements each contracted canine must attain prior to
entering the Area of Responsibility (AOR). During the course of their
deployments, all contracted working dogs are certified by a military
certification authority and monitored and validated by the Military
Working Dog program manager.
Mr. Rogers. I know that DOD employs hundreds of canines in Iraq and
Afghanistan. How many of those canines are owned and operated by
contractors?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Rogers. Does the Department have a set of minimum standards
that contractors are required to meet in order to field an individual
canine? If so, what are they?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. KISSELL
Mr. Kissell. In response to a question from Congressman Kissell,
General Petraeus mentioned a program he submitted for approval to
address the electricity needs of Kandahar. The program will use
Commander's Emergency Response Program funds to provide electricity.
Please provide details of the program, the benefits, and the projected
cost.
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. HEINRICH
Mr. Heinrich. Roadway Security: With respect to freedom of
movement, what is the status of security on the main highways in
Afghanistan? Specifically, what threat do IED's and small arms pose to
`goods & services' movement? Furthermore, are these movements plagued
or subjected to extortion, by Afghan National Police, Taliban or other
extremist groups? If so, what is being done to prevent it in the
future?
Secretary Flournoy. Roadway security continues to be a major
problem in Afghanistan. Violence is the primary impediment to freedom
of movement, with 69 percent of attacks since January 2008 occurring
within one kilometer of roadways. The majority of attacks continue to
occur in the southeastern part of the country.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has limited
information on details of illegal or compromised checkpoints along
major roads; however, polling data suggests that illegal checkpoints
remain a concern for the population. Reports that food prices at the
local markets have increased beyond the normal seasonal fluctuations
indicate that farmers may be experiencing greater difficulty or risk in
bringing their products to market.
The ISAF Campaign Plan is intended to secure major population
centers in order to create a safe environment for governance and
development efforts, and to improve the freedom of movement for the
Afghan population. Ongoing and future operations are expanding the
security zones around population centers and increasing freedom of
movement and commerce. Recent operations in Kandahar, for example, are
improving the security along Highway 1 for the Afghan people.
ISAF continues to increase the size, operational capability, and
professionalism of the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF). As
part of the growth and development of the ANSF, ANSF personnel are
trained on the conduct of checkpoint operations.
Mr. Heinrich. Mineral Discovery: A recent New York Times article
highlighted the nearly $1T in untapped mineral deposits located within
the borders of Afghanistan. This discovery stands to be a tremendous
asset to the Afghan people. How do we leverage this discovery and
ensure that Afghanistan and its people reap the benefits?
Secretary Flournoy. Increasing capacity within the Government of
Afghanistan's ministries is key to facilitating more effective and
transparent management of the country's mining resources, which, in
turn, will encourage domestic and foreign investment in Afghanistan's
mineral industry. The U.S. Government assists these efforts through
interagency engagements involving, among other agencies and offices,
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. Department of Defense's Task
Force Business Stability Operations (TFBSO).
Mr. Heinrich. Local Governance: One of the strategic linchpins of
the Afghanistan campaign is the bolstering of local governance. On June
15, 2010, a governor from a southern district in Afghanistan was
assassinated. According to Ben Rowswell, Chief of the Canadian-led
provincial reconstruction team, ``I don't think it's a coincidence that
there have been attacks on government officials . . . That's what you
would expect from an insurgency that feels threatened by efforts to
connect the people to their government.'' What are we doing to ensure
the safety and security of Afghanistan's government officials?
Secretary Flournoy. One objective of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign Plan is to secure and link
Afghanistan's major population centers to create a safe environment for
governance and development efforts. Ongoing and future operations are
increasing the physical security and freedom of movement for Afghan
Government officials. In rural areas, the Afghan Local Police/Village
Stability Operations programs will bring greater security for Afghan
officials where Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) and
Coalition forces have little or no presence. The increased security for
Afghan officials will allow the Afghan Government to expand its reach
and improve its ability to deliver basic services to the Afghan people.
Mr. Heinrich. Roadway Security: With respect to freedom of
movement, what is the status of security on the main highways in
Afghanistan? Specifically, what threat do IED's and small arms pose to
`goods & services' movement? Furthermore,
are these movements plagued or subjected to extortion, by Afghan
National Police, Taliban or other extremist groups? If so, what is
being done to prevent it in the future?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Heinrich. Mineral Discovery: A recent New York Times article
highlighted the nearly $1T in untapped mineral deposits located within
the borders of Afghanistan. This discovery stands to be a tremendous
asset to the Afghan people. How do we leverage this discovery and
ensure that Afghanistan and its people reap the benefits?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
Mr. Heinrich. Local Governance: One of the strategic linchpins of
the Afghanistan campaign is the bolstering of local governance. On June
15, 2010, a governor from a southern district in Afghanistan was
assassinated. According to Ben Rowswell, Chief of the Canadian-led
provincial reconstruction team, ``I don't think it's a coincidence that
there have been attacks on government officials . . . That's what you
would expect from an insurgency that feels threatened by efforts to
connect the people to their government.'' What are we doing to ensure
the safety and security of Afghanistan's government officials?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. OWENS
Mr. Owens. With the understanding that Afghanistan's mineral
deposits are unlikely to affect American operations in Afghanistan in
the short-term, is there a plan in place to help Afghanistan use these
resources to grow and promote economic stability in the long term? In
addition, is it reasonable to assume that these resources could be
tapped to assist post-war reconstruction efforts and facilitate
stronger economic ties with other nations?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CRITZ
Mr. Critz. It is my understanding that the Government of
Afghanistan is taking in approximately $1.3 billion in revenue each
year, mainly from customs duties. The rest of their budget, including
standing up the Afghan National Security Forces, comes from the United
States and coalition partners' aid. What are we doing to build greater
revenue-intake capacity for the Afghan government to get them on track
to paying more of their own budget commitments?
Secretary Flournoy. Economic development is generally the role of
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Within the
Department of Defense (DoD), efforts are underway to assist with
customs and mining revenue.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is working with
the Afghan Government to increase customs revenue at its borders.
Security at the borders is increasing as Afghanistan National Security
Forces' (ANSF) capabilities improve. Over the past few months, longer
operating hours have facilitated a greater intake of cargo into
Afghanistan and have yielded greater revenue.
There are over 20 agencies within the Afghan Government working on
border control and management. To coordinate efforts across these many
organizations and improve unity of effort, the ISAF Borders Issues
Working Group is helping the Afghan Government develop a comprehensive
border policy.
Mining may be one long-term solution to increase revenue. The DoD
Task Force on Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) estimates that
up to $1 trillion (U.S.) in mineral reserves exist in Afghanistan.
Interagency working groups are investigating this option as a viable
source of revenue for Afghanistan.
Mr. Critz. It is my understanding that the Government of
Afghanistan is taking in approximately $1.3 billion in revenue each
year, mainly from customs duties. The rest of their budget, including
standing up the Afghan National Security Forces, comes from the United
States and coalition partners' aid. What are we doing to
build greater revenue-intake capacity for the Afghan government to get
them on track to paying more of their own budget commitments?
General Petraeus. [The information referred to was not available at
the time of printing.]
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
