[Senate Hearing 109-917]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-917
FROM COALITION TO ISAF COMMAND IN AFGHANISTAN: THE PURPOSE AND IMPACT
OF THE TRANSITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
36-091 PDF WASHINGTON : 2007
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)
512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202)512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BARBARA BOXER, California
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire BILL NELSON, Florida
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska BARACK OBAMA, Illinois
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Chaffe, Hon. Lincoln, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island............. 23
Dodd, Hon. Christopher, U.S. Senator from Connecticut............ 14
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.......... 24
Hagel, Hon. Chuck, U.S. Senator from Nebraska.................... 17
Jones, Gen. James L., Jr., USMC, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
(SACEUR), Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, Mons,
Belgium........................................................ 3
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Kerry, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts................ 20
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Rubin, Barnett R., Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center
on International Cooperation, New York University, New York, NY 29
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Sarbanes, Hon. Paul R., U.S. Senator from Maryland............... 43
Voinovich, Hon. George V., U.S. Senator from Ohio................ 26
(iii)
FROM COALITION TO ISAF COMMAND IN AFGHANISTAN: THE PURPOSE AND IMPACT
OF THE TRANSITION
----------
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G.
Lugar (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, Voinovich,
Sarbanes, Dodd, Kerry, and Feingold.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S. SENATOR FROM
INDIANA
The Chairman. This meeting of the Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
Today the committee meets to discuss the situation in
Afghanistan and the role being played by NATO's International
Security and Assistance Force, ISAF. We are honored to welcome
our good friend, General Jim Jones, Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe, to share his insights on NATO's operations in
Afghanistan. General Jones has testified several times before
our committee, most recently in February of 2006. As always, we
look forward to engaging him on a topic of critical importance
to United States national security.
Recently Taliban attacks in Afghanistan have occurred with
greater frequency and coordination. They have extended well
beyond the south and east, where most of the fighting has been
located. Although the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists continues,
the primary threat to the stability of Afghanistan is Taliban
insurgents who are challenging NATO forces in greater numbers,
sowing dissent among Afghans, cooperating with narcotics trade,
and complicating security efforts in ways that inhibit the rule
of law and reconstruction.
The Afghan people suffered under the Taliban. Most Afghans
have welcomed the advances in personal freedom, political
participation, and educational opportunities that have come
during the last 5 years. The recent increase in violence in
Afghanistan clearly is not evidence of a popular uprising, but
to the degree that there is discontent, disillusionment, or
fear among the Afghan people due to their security situation,
trust in the Afghan Government and NATO will dissipate.
Insecurity stemming from insurgent activity by Taliban
forces also causes Afghans in some regions to seek the
protection of tribal leaders and warlords, which in turn
undercuts the authority of the Afghan Government and increases
the risk of civil conflict between tribal factions.
Given these dynamics, we must dispel any doubts about the
commitment of the West to Afghans' emergence as a stable and
free society. With this in mind, it is imperative that NATO
countries fulfill their commitments to Afghanistan. NATO is
assuming increasing responsibility for this difficult mission.
NATO has long provided security in the north and west of
Afghanistan. Last month ISAF added the critical southern region
to its responsibilities. The eastern sector of Afghanistan is
scheduled to be turned over to ISAF by year's end.
However, the recent reluctance in NATO capitals to meet the
requests of alliance leaders for troops and resources has
complicated this process. Following many months of intensive
discussions with allies, last week General Jones publicly
called for an increase in NATO forces in Afghanistan. His voice
was echoed by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who
commented, and I quote: ``I want to ask nations to do what they
promised, and we're not there yet.'' End of quote.
General Jones estimated that an additional 2,500 NATO
troops would be needed for ISAF. Thus far Poland's offer of
1,000 initial troops is the only concrete response to that
appeal.
There should be no doubt that Afghanistan is a crucial test
for NATO. The September 11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda still operates there and the fate of the country
remains symbolic. If the most prominent and successful alliance
in modern history were to fail in its first operation outside
of Europe due to lack of will by its members, the efficacy of
NATO and the ability of the international community to take
joint action against the terrorist threat would be called into
question. Moreover, Afghanistan has a legitimately elected
government and a long-suffering people, both of which deserve a
chance to succeed without the threat of violent upheaval.
The time when NATO could limit its missions to the defense
of continental Europe is far in the past. With the end of the
cold war, the gravest threats to Europe and North America
originate from other regions of the world. This requires
Europeans and North Americans to be bolder in remaking our
alliances, forging new structures and changing our thinking. We
must reorient many of our national security institutions, of
which NATO is one of the most important. To be fully relevant
to the security and wellbeing of the people of its member
nations, NATO must think and act globally.
I believe strongly that NATO is capable of meeting those
challenges in Afghanistan. NATO commanders have demonstrated
that they understand the complexity of the mission. They know
that success in Afghanistan depends on the attitudes of the
people, the progress of reconstruction, and the development of
the economy as much as it depends on battlefield successes.
The NATO commanders must have the resources to provide
security and they must have the flexibility to use troops to
meet Afghanistan's most critical security needs.
Beyond NATO, it is vital that the Afghan Compact which was
signed by 60 members of the international community and the
Afghan Government be fully funded and implemented. This compact
established a relationship whereby donors would sustain support
for the Afghan Government while it implements its national
development strategy.
We look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how
NATO is responding to recent Taliban tactics. We also would
like to learn how NATO forces are coordinating with
independently led United States troops and the Afghan army.
What role will U.S. forces and the coalition play when ISAF
takes over the final sector? We are also interested in how NATO
is addressing the challenges of accelerating reconstruction and
contending with the growing drug trade.
After the testimony of General Jones, we will hear from a
second witness, Dr. Barnard Rubin, Director of Studies and a
Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New
York University. Dr. Rubin is a leading expert on Central Asia
and state-building. Among other roles, he has served as special
advisor to Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations Special
Representative of the Security General for Afghanistan. United
States Senators have had the benefit of his counsel through the
Aspen Institute program very recently.
We welcome our witnesses. We look forward to an
enlightening discussion. I would just simply say, General
Jones, we are so pleased that you are here. We are hopeful this
will not be your last appearance as our General in charge of
this situation. If it is, why, it is a very special time. But
would you please proceed. Your statement will be made a part of
the record in full and please proceed in any way that you wish.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL JAMES L. JONES, JR., USMC, SUPREME ALLIED
COMMANDER, EUROPE (SACEUR), SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, ALLIED POWERS
EUROPE, MONS, BELGIUM
General Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. As you
know from our long association, this is really a personal
pleasure as well as a professional responsibility to be here. I
thank you and the committee for giving me this time to talk
about NATO's most ambitious undertaking perhaps in the history
of the alliance, certainly one of the most interesting ones and
one of the most challenging ones.
Just by way of opening comments, Mr. Chairman, may I just
call your attention to the slide that I have put up there just
to introduce what NATO is doing operationally in this very
dynamic and interesting new century. Out of area for NATO now
means considerably more than it ever did in the past. We have
38,000 NATO soldiers deployed today on three different
continents, from the Baltics, where we do an air policing
mission, to a 16,000-man unit keeping a safe and secure
environment in Kosovo under KFOR, with three NATO headquarters
elsewhere in the western Balkans, a very--Active Endeavor, a
very important mission called Active Endeavor in the
Mediterranean--which is NATO's only Article 5 mission, a
counterterrorism mission, very successful in keeping the
Mediterranean as free as possible from terrorist activities and
asymmetric threats that face us all; a small mission, but
helpful mission, in support of the African Union in Darfur,
where we do capacity building and strategic lift of African
troops into that sad region; a very helpful mission in Iraq,
where we not only train aspiring Iraqi officers in an academy
setting, but also provide a very helpful mission in equipping
the Iraqi army and helping coordinate the education and
training of and assistance to Iraqi military in different
capitals around the world in the alliance.
We also have a NATO response force that is arguably NATO's
most transformational operational capability coming into being
this year, strategic reserve forces and operational reserve
forces on standby. This brings us full circle to ISAF in
Afghanistan.
The ISAF mission, as you know, started in 2003 with our
situation in the capital, a small footprint. We expanded to the
northern region in 2004, then to the west in 2005, and on 1
July of this year we took responsibility for the southern
region from the coalition. In the not too distant future, I
feel confident that NATO will also expand to the eastern
region, which will complete the circle, if you will, in a
counterclockwise manner, and NATO will have responsibility for
stability and security through the totality of the land mass of
Afghanistan, with a very special relationship with Operation
Active Endeavor, which will be the United States-led coalition
that will keep a separate and distinct mission at the higher
end of the counterterrorist operation. While the rest, all of
us in Afghanistan, have to practice counterinsurgency, the
counterterrorism mission, which is more kinetic and mostly
focused along the borders, will continue under a United States-
led coalition under the leadership of General John Abizaid of
the United States Central Command.
I might point out that in getting to this state we have had
nothing but good relations and great teamwork between NATO
forces and the United States Central Command and all of its
subordinate commands in achieving this state of affairs and the
situation that we currently find ourselves in in Afghanistan.
It has been a model of teamwork, cooperation, of comrades in
arms working together to solve very difficult problems, and I
am quite confident that it will continue that way in the
future.
Over the last 60 days since the transfer of authority to
NATO of the southern region, opposing militant forces have
tried to test NATO to see if we have the will and the
capability to stand and fight, and the evidence is in. The
overwhelming answer is yes. This past weekend we concluded
Operation Medusa, which was an operation that was necessary in
order to not only defeat the insurgents located in the vicinity
of Kandahar, but also necessary to do so in order to establish
the conditions of reconstruction and development activities to
move forward in the province. This was a multinational
operation in southern Afghanistan, involving forces from
Canada, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Romania, the
United States, Denmark, and Estonia, and Poland--I am sorry,
and Portugal. They have performed extraordinarily well.
We always pause to honor the ultimate sacrifice that our
soldiers make on the battlefield and this battle was no
exception. There were casualties. There were NATO soldiers
wounded and killed, and we would like to express our
condolences to the families and to the countries who provided
such gallant, gallant young people who willingly went to this
distant land to try to make matters better for people who have
not had much hope and not had much opportunity. Their sacrifice
makes us want to redouble our efforts to make sure that we do
achieve success in Afghanistan so that their sacrifice will
have been worth it.
While we have been engaged in offensive operations in the
southern region since the beginning of our responsibility
there, I believe that the reason this happened was simply
because this was a region where permanent troops had never been
seen before, and as NATO has committed to put 6,000 troops on
the ground and is in the process of doing that we found that in
this particular region, which is the traditional home of the
Taliban, a sector of the country where opium production,
narcotic trafficking, is at the epicenter of the effort, it is
a region that was defined by criminality and lawlessness, many
ineffective or corrupt national leaders at the regional level,
ineffective police, and lack of presence of the Afghan army.
In short, this was a part of the country that had not seen
the benefits of reconstruction and the people who have an
appetite for such reconstruction I think were very happy to see
the force come in. But before we could start the reconstruction
we had to engage in this test I think that NATO was subjected
to, and that they passed brilliantly and successfully.
I do believe, Mr. Chairman, as you and I have talked
before, that ultimate success in Afghanistan is not simply a
military one. We are working with the international community
and the Karzai Government to make sure that our military
efforts are immediately followed very quickly with
reconstruction and development activities in order to meet the
expectations of the Afghan people, who have demonstrated in two
national elections, one for President and one for parliament,
that they overwhelmingly understand this effort and they are
overwhelmingly anxious to see the benefits of their new-found
freedoms and opportunities.
It is clear from the outset that progress in education,
agriculture, economic development, public services, and health
has to go hand-in-hand with providing a stable and secure
environment. The
Afghan authorities and ISAF are now focusing on the key tasks
of ensuring that reconstruction and development can take place
in accordance with the priorities identified by the local
authorities themselves.
I would like to put up a third slide just to briefly
capture the effort that nations are making in Afghanistan. We
have 37 nations involved in this mission, approximately 20,000
NATO troops committed. Most of it is under the command and
control of NATO, with a small percentage remaining under
national control, and these would simply be the national
support elements.
But I think 37 countries, united in this manner to do this
very important mission at this particular time in NATO, is
extremely impressive, and we can only celebrate this coming
together of nations to do this very important task. And I am
quite confident that we are going to be successful.
One of the most important aspects of the long-term security
in Afghanistan is the development of the Afghan national
security forces, both the Afghan national army and the Afghan
national police. By far the Afghan national army is the most
successful pillar of our reconstruction efforts to date. I
would like to move to another slide and show you essentially
five of the main pillars of security sector reform and say a
few words about each one if I might.
Today the Afghan national army is about 30,000 strong and
playing a pivotal role in the security of Afghanistan. Our
commitment is to produce an army of approximately 70,000
soldiers. I believe, we believe, that this is the essential
goal and we are on our way to achieving it.
NATO nations recognize the importance of this mission and
have begun fielding NATO operational, mentor, and liaison
teams, or OMLTs, that are similar to and will augment the U.S.
embedded training teams. Currently NATO has 15 such teams
offered by troop contributing nations, with 7 of them
completely fielded and 17 more remaining to be fielded.
Additionally, NATO is working on a proposal to provide
additional equipment and training to the Afghan national army.
This effort will be similar to our efforts in Iraq and will be
an additive to the United State's ongoing efforts to train and
equip the Afghan national army. The more rapidly we can build a
capable and sufficiently robust Afghan national army, the
faster we will have conditions for success.
On this score, may I say that it is evident to me and to
soldiers in the field that the Afghan people are proud of this
developing army. They identify with it and the Afghan army has
not done anything but contribute to its reputation as an
emerging strong and capable institution in Afghanistan.
The ISAF contribution to the Afghan national police
training remains within means and capabilities, as detailed in
our operations plan. While we are making some progress, it is
my judgment that much more needs to be done in the training of
police forces to make sure that we bring adequate equipment,
adequate training, sufficiency in numbers, adequate pay, we
fight against corruption. We need more emphasis on this very
important pillar.
With regard to judicial reform, judicial reform is not a
NATO task in Afghanistan, but it is so important to everything
that is going on in Afghanistan. I must emphasize that judicial
reform is one of the pillars that needs probably the most
attention in the shortest amount of time. Some progress has
been made, but the courts and prosecution remain distrusted,
overly corrupt, and resource starved. One of the problems with
judicial reform is the low pay of prosecutors, which makes them
susceptible to corruption.
I recently had a meeting with the attorney general of
Afghanistan, who told me that prosecutors' average pay was $65
a month. By comparison, an interpreter working for the United
Nations makes 500 euros a month. This is simply a situation
that cannot be allowed to stand if we are serious about
judicial reform.
A top Afghan judge earns less than $100 a month and that is
less than it costs to rent an apartment in Kabul, which now
averages about $150 to $200 a month, considerably less than
Taliban are paying local youths to support their military
operations, which is estimated at $250 a month. With such
disincentives, the temptation for corrupt practices will
continue. So along with police reform and much more effort,
judicial reform to me stands out as one of the key pillars that
needs to be reenergized.
Finally, perhaps the overarching problem and the one that
worries me the most is the problem of narcotics. Afghanistan
does not need to be a narcostate, but it is unfortunately well
on its way. The parts of Afghanistan which are currently
producing the largest poppy crops are not those that are
traditionally known for the growth of such a product. We need
to find the right means to ensure that farmers can economically
grow and sell legal produce, in addition to developing an
overarching and understandable way ahead in the overall fight
against narcotics.
Ninety percent of the narcotics products find their way to
European capitals, are sold in the European markets. The money
comes back to Afghanistan and other places where terrorism is
evident and manufactures the IEDs and kills or wounds our
soldiers.
U.N. estimates suggest that the crop this year will exceed
previous levels by as much as 59 percent. So this is a problem
and a situation that is going in the wrong direction.
If I could make just simply one wrap-up statement, that
training the police forces, jump-starting the judicial reform,
and developing an effective counternarcotics program are hand-
in-hand three of the most important things that need to be done
in Afghanistan in the near future.
There is a need for ever-closer cooperation and
coordination between NATO and the Government of Afghanistan,
the other nations involved in security sector reform, as well
as governmental and nongovernmental organizations operating in
the country. President Karzai has recognized this and created a
policy action group to act as a key policy and decision making
body. This body is Afghan-led and chaired by the president. It
strives to coordinate the actions of the government, the
international community, in an effort to achieve mutual support
and much greater effect than was achieved previously.
The policy action group is designed to reach down to the
provincial, district, and community level in order to provide
integrated programs to implement policy and serve the interests
of the Afghan people. We believe that this policy and this
group has a good chance of succeeding and will contribute to
the enhanced cohesion and coordination that thus far has been
absent in the delivery of international relief.
To sum up, Mr. Chairman, there has been dramatic progress
throughout Afghanistan over the past 5 years. Through the
efforts of the international community, Afghans should no
longer be considered a failed state, but rather a fragile
state. Even with this progress, though, efforts must be
significantly increased if we are to ensure long-term success.
As NATO takes responsibility for the security of all of
Afghanistan, the leadership and resources role of the United
States remains as important as it has ever been. With this
continued support, I believe that NATO will ultimately set the
conditions for Afghanistan to continue in its path toward
development.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks and I would be
happy to answer any questions you might have.
[Editors note.--The slides mentioned were not reproducible
in this hearing but will be maintained in the committee's
permanent record.]
[The prepared statement of General Jones follows:]
Prepared Statement of General James L. Jones, Jr., USMC, Supreme Allied
Commander Europe (SACEUR), Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe,
Mons, Belgium
Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, distinguished members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee
today in order to provide you with an update on NATO's role and mission
in Afghanistan.
Before I begin my remarks on NATO's current operations in
Afghanistan, I would like to highlight several major operations in
which the alliance is currently involved and in doing so, provide you
with the strategic context and background against which all of our
efforts in Afghanistan are balanced. Today the alliance is engaged with
some 38,000 troops deployed in missions and operations on three
continents.
nato operations
NATO continues its mission in the Balkans, notably in Kosovo, where
we expect the United Nations Status Talks to produce recommendations in
the future. We retain strong and capable forces (16,000) in the
province in order to ensure we maintain a safe and secure environment
during these potentially volatile political negotiations.
Operation Active Endeavour, NATO's only Article 5 mission, is our
primary antiterrorism operation in the Mediterranean. This operation
aims to disrupt, deter, and defend against terrorism on the high seas,
and over the past 4 years, it has proven a credible deterrent. This
week, NATO achieved the historic integration, under NATO command and
control, of the Russian Federation warship Pitliviy into NATO's
maritime operations.
In Iraq, NATO continues its training and equipping mission in
support of Iraqi Security Forces. Our main effort remains the training
of army officers inside Iraq. From the basic officer commissioning
course to War College classes, NATO is engaged in training the future
leaders of the Iraqi armed forces. The second aspect of our mission in
Iraq is to assist in the equipping of the armed forces and to date,
NATO nations have provided arms and equipment ranging from small arms
ammunition to T-72 tanks. Finally, the alliance continues to provide
training opportunities for Iraqi security force personnel outside of
Iraq at national training facilities or NATO institutions such as the
NATO Defense College in Rome and the NATO school at Oberammergau,
Germany.
In Africa, we retain a small training mission in support of the
African Union in Ethiopia in order to build capacity among African
forces headquartered in Addis Ababa and Darfur. NATO will continue to
provide strategic lift into and out of Darfur for the nations
committing forces to the African Union mission in Sudan.
Finally, we continue the development of the NATO response force,
which is unquestionably the most transformational, operational
capability we have in the alliance. In preparation for the NATO
response force's full operational capability, we recently completed a
major deployment exercise to the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast
of Africa as a proof of concept that NATO can rapidly deploy and
execute operations in austere conditions at strategic distances. While
we have made great strides in transforming the forces assigned to the
NATO response force, long-term force generation for the NRF has not
been fully resourced by the alliance. As such, we may not be able to
declare full operational capability by 01 October as envisaged at the
Prague Summit in 2002.
Turning to Afghanistan, NATO's International Stabilization
Assistance Force (ISAF) is the main effort of the alliance, and is
composed of 19,500 soldiers from 37 nations (26 NATO and 11 non-NATO
nations). Today, approximately 1,300
personnel assigned to ISAF are from the United States. This number will
grow significantly when the final stage of ISAF expansion--stage 4--is
complete. Multinationality is a key characteristic and strength in ISAF
and partner nations are a significant presence and bring considerable
experience.
international security assistance force (isaf)
As previously discussed with this committee, NATO's involvement in
Afghanistan is not new. Beginning in 2003, with NATO's assumption of
responsibility for Kabul, NATO has assisted the Afghan Government in
the maintenance of security; facilitated the development of government
structures and extension of its control; and assisted the Government of
Afghanistan with reconstruction and humanitarian efforts.
LTG David Richards (U.K. Army) is currently the commander, ISAF
(COMISAF) and the senior NATO military commander on the ground. COMISAF
is responsible for commanding all of the NATO forces in Afghanistan and
works very closely with the Afghan Minister of Defense, the Afghan
national army and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan national police. The
position of COMISAF is scheduled to rotate in February 2007 to the
United States lead.
The NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan is the NATO
secretary general's personal representative. The SCR's role in working
with the Government of Afghanistan and the international community to
ensure adequate attention is being given to nonsecurity issues. Both
COMISAF and the SCR play a very close role in coordinating with the
international community, including the United Nations, European Union,
and non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan.
international security assistance force (isaf) operations
As NATO has expanded throughout Afghanistan, we have established
regional commands, forward support bases, and the provincial
reconstruction teams or PRTs throughout the country. These teams enable
NATO to increase ISAF presence and operate primarily on a permissive
basis, concentrating on stabilization through the provision of a secure
environment, allowing the international community (IC) to reconstruct
areas that might otherwise be inaccessible to them. The Government of
Afghanistan has welcomed ISAF expansion and the tangible stability and
reconstruction the PRTs bring to provinces.
Since I last appeared before the committee, NATO has assumed
responsibility for the southern region. Aware of the volatile security
conditions in the southern region, NATO nations moved into this region
with robust rules of engagement and more forces than had previously
been present under the coalition.
With the transition of authority for Region South at the end of
July, NATO's efforts have shifted from the primarily reconstruction and
development-oriented activities as found in northern and western
Afghanistan to operations focused on counterinsurgency operations. Over
the last 60 days, the opposing militant forces appear to be testing
NATO to see if it has the will and the capability to stand and fight,
and the evidence so far is that the answer is overwhelmingly ``yes.''
This past weekend, NATO concluded Operation MEDUSA, an operation
designed to defeat insurgents located in Kandahar Province in order to
establish the conditions for reconstruction and development activities
to move forward in the Province. The countries involved in operations
in southern Afghanistan (Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom,
Romania, the United States, Denmark, Estonia, and Portugal) have
performed extraordinarily well.
While we have been engaged in offensive operations almost
continuously since assuming responsibility for Region South, I am
convinced that the solution in Afghanistan is not a military one. We
are working with the international community and the Karzai Government
to make sure that our military efforts are matched very quickly with
reconstruction and development activities in order to meet the
expectations of the Afghan people. It has been clear from the outset
that progress in education, agriculture, economic development, public
services, and health care has to go hand-in-hand with providing a
stable, secure environment. The Afghan authorities and ISAF are now
focusing on the key task of ensuring that reconstruction and
development can take place, in accordance with the priorities
identified by the local authorities themselves.
afghan national army/afghan national police
One of the most important aspects of long-term security is the
development of Afghan national security forces--both the Afghan
national army and the Afghan national police.
The Afghan national army (ANA) is about 30,000 strong and is
playing a vital role in the security of Afghanistan. The U.S.
commitment to produce 50,000-70,000 ANA is essential. NATO nations
recognize the importance of this mission and have begun fielding NATO
operational mentor and liaison teams or ``OMLTs'' that are similar to
and will replace U.S. embedded training teams (ETTs).
Currently, 15 NATO OMLTs have been offered by troop contributing
nations (TCNs) with 7 completely fielded. Additionally, NATO is working
on a proposal to provide additional equipment and training to the ANA.
This effort will be similar to our efforts in Iraq and will be in
addition to the United States' ongoing efforts to train and equip the
ANA. The more rapidly we can build a capable and sufficiently robust
ANA, the faster we will set the conditions for success.
ISAF's contribution to Afghan national police training remains
within means and capabilities as cited in our operations plan. Progress
continues to be made on ANP pay. A trial ANP salary payment program
seems to have been a success; with all police officers being paid 100
percent of their salary at an Afghan-operated banking facility. The
intention is to expand the program where the banking capacity exists.
This has, in our opinion, had a positive impact on the ANP.
judicial reform
Closely linked to ANP development is judicial reform. While
judicial reform is not an ISAF task, ISAF cannot be successful unless
the rule of law is seen as working effectively and swiftly. Although
some progress has been made in judicial reform, the courts and
prosecution remain distrusted, corrupt, and resource-starved. One of
the problems with judicial reform is the low pay of prosecutors, which
make them susceptible to corruption. Currently, a top and considerably
less than the Taliban are paying local youths to support their military
operations. With such disincentives, the temptations for corrupt
practice will continue.
counter narcotics
Finally, we must tackle the problem of narcotics. Afghanistan need
not be a narco-state. The parts of Afghanistan currently producing the
largest poppy crops are those that traditionally did not grow poppies.
We need to find the means to ensure farmers can economically grow and
sell legal produce.
Preliminary results of the 5-year counter-narcotics program for the
2005-2006 growing season indicate a dramatic increase in opium
production and hectares under cultivation. The headline figures show a
rapidly deteriorating situation, particularly in the southern
provinces. The figures produced by the U.N. support warnings from 12
months ago that the drug trade in the south, and particularly in
Helmand, was increasingly aligning itself to the insurgency.
As well as being able to use the opium issue as a means of gaining
support from farming communities, there was a clear financial
imperative for the insurgency. Potential revenues will have given their
cause a considerable boost, considering that indications show that
money is the primary motivation for their fighters and allows the
insurgents to purchase arms and ammunition.
The Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MoCN) has established five
counter narcotics (CN) working groups in an attempt to
``operationalize'' the Afghan National Drugs Control Strategy (NDCS).
Headquarters ISAF staff is represented on four of these working groups.
While the National Drug Control Strategy is aligned with the
Afghan National Development Strategy (ANDS), is clear that the
Government of Afghanistan must do better in combating drugs. The
Alternative Livelihoods (AL) program should go hand-in-hand with the
efforts in eradication and the Poppy Elimination Program (PEP).
Although many programs are ongoing, farmers complain of inadequate
compensation which undermines the program's credibility. More ``cash
for work'' projects must be started, new agriculture techniques should
be implemented, and infrastructure for irrigation must be available,
together with material resources. For the counter-narcotics initiative
to succeed the Alternative Livelihoods program must be connected to the
wider development efforts in support of the ANDS and given greater
priority. Simply replacing one crop for another may not be sufficient
to give a previously narcotics-based local economy the support
structure needed to fully develop or even survive without extensive
assistance.
international cooperation
There is a need for ever-closer cooperation and coordination
between ISAF, the Government of Afghanistan, the other nations involved
security sector reform, as well as governmental and nongovernmental
organizations operating in the country.
President Karzai has recognized this and created a small policy
action group (PAG) to act as a key policy and decision making body.
This body is Afghan-led and chaired by the President. The PAG strives
to coordinate the actions of the government/international community to
achieve mutual support and much greater effect than could be achieved
independently. The PAG is designed to reach down to the provincial,
district, and community level in order to provide integrated programs
to implement policy and serve the interests of the Afghan people. We
believe that with the full and active support of the international
community, this initiative can have a positive and long-lasting effect.
conclusion
In conclusion there has been dramatic progress throughout
Afghanistan over the past 5 years. Through the efforts of the
international community, Afghanistan should no longer be considered a
failed state but rather a fragile state. Even with this progress,
efforts must be significantly increased if we are to ensure long-term
success. As NATO takes responsibility for the security of all of
Afghanistan, the leadership role and the resourcing role of the United
States remains as important as it has ever been. With this continued
support, I believe that NATO will ultimately set the conditions for
Afghanistan to continue its development.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my comments.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, General Jones.
We will now have questioning by members. We will have a 10-
minute question period for each one of us. Let me begin the
questioning by noting, as you pointed out, the overall poverty
of the people of Afghanistan, which I suspect is recognized by
most Americans as we think about the country, but perhaps not
in the same way that you have so graphically illustrated. For
instance, the salaries of the prosecutors and the judges, the
problems of substitution for narcotics that really have not
worked very well.
Let me just ask, as all of this is sketched out and members
read more and more about Afghanistan, the problems become so
daunting that there is a feeling, not of confusion or
frustration, but almost of general despair as to how all of
these objectives are ever to be met in an area of the world
that has not seen much peace, with conflict forces, not just
Afghans but other powers.
What I would like for you to try to describe just
organizationally is, granted that progress has been made--you
noted a 30,000-man army, progress being made on police--at the
same time most critics of the whole situation would say on the
development front the ability of people to find jobs, find
legitimate income, is really suffering. This is due in part,
some critics would say, to our own contribution to this.
Appropriations have been much less than was required from what
we saw. But they likewise have not led to a great deal of other
generous donors, for what would appear to be a very, very
expensive project.
If there were a business plan for Afghanistan, for example,
the question is who would fund it? And, I suppose, second--who
would administer it at this point, given the problems of the
central government and its outreach? It is obviously the cross-
section of security, in which the aid of the warlords is sought
and some would even say the aid of the Taliban is sought, as
opposed to there being anarchy or wholesale criminality in
various areas.
In other words, who is in charge of some comprehensive way
in which more income comes, more development? If there is to be
substitution for the drugs, who really provides the planning
for this and the execution of the plans? Finally, what level of
generosity or development funds should we expect that we are
going to need, over what period of time, if this is not to be a
situation in which people finally say, well, we gave it a try
and in essence people are better off, but on the other hand we
have many other objectives, we have got to move on, and there
are lots of other people in need?
We heard, for instance, in the Lebanese situation in this
committee last week, an estimate by a very well-informed
witness that $5 billion might be required simply to repair the
country after the damages of the recent war, with $230 million
coming from our country, but some of that reprogrammed, even a
hint that some of the reprogramming might be coming out of
Afghanistan.
We are trying to organize our thoughts as to how this is
going to get done at the development level as well as the
security level and how much money it is going to cost and what
kind of anticipation should we have for support.
General Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question. I
am a little bit at a disadvantage because my NATO role is to
oversee the efforts to stabilize and provide the environment
under which reconstruction can begin. NATO does not have,
beyond the administering of provincial reconstruction teams, of
which we have 14, the coalition has 9, 23 total in the country,
the reconstruction and aid package from nations is actually
funneled through the United Nations Afghanistan mission.
If you would look at that slide and imagine the blue top to
those pillars as being a U.N. organization, U.N.-led, that is
the overarching coordination body that is designed to
coordinate and direct the international relief aid.
The Chairman. Is that also judicial reform, that the United
Nations does that in addition to the economic reconstruction?
General Jones. Yes, sir. You will see in the pillars there
under ``Counternarcotics,'' United Kingdom lead; ``Judicial
Reform,'' Italy; ``Disarmament, Demobilization, and
Reintegration,'' Japan; ``Training the Afghan National Army,''
United States; and ``Training the Police Force'' is Germany.
These countries have agreed to be the lead nations. That
does not mean that they do it all by themselves, and I have a
feeling that sometimes, particularly in the area of
counternarcotics reform, such a comprehensive and complex
problem, that there has been a tendency to kind of say, well,
that is the United Kingdom's problem. It is not and it cannot
be solved by any one nation.
In my opening remarks I tried to illustrate where those
five pillars are. The roof on the pillars seems to indicate
stability in the pillars, but actually the only pillar that is
really doing well in my view is training the Afghan national
army. No. 2, I think, is the Japan-led DDR pillar, which is
doing reasonably well. I would say that the other three are in
need of strong support and should be producing more than they
are producing or more than they have produced to date.
The Chairman. Who at the U.N., then, is coordinating these
five situations? Who is in charge at the top of this?
General Jones. Well, there is a representative of the
Secretary General of the United Nations who runs the UNAMA,
United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, and he is the titular
head of the U.N. and provides the overall framework for nations
and nongovernmental organizations and relations with the Karzai
Government to coordinate the international aid and relief
effort in the country.
The Chairman. Well, how do we gain some responsibility from
him? In other words, who is he accountable to? We probably
cannot call him before a committee like this, but on the other
hand we probably should. As you point out modestly, the United
States is leading the way in training an army, but there are
five pillars. As you say, you get the impression that this roof
is held up, but if three or four pillars are almost nonexistent
or faltering the whole thing collapses.
So this is, I think, not well understood by any of us. That
is why I am trying to draw this organizationally. Who is
responsible and how do we bring some accountability to this
whole process? Absent that, the contributions by other nations
are likely to continue to falter and their general interest in
any of this likewise is going to be negligible in some cases;
the British particularly with the narcotics. One would say, my
goodness, were you born yesterday; half of the GNP is in this;
how do you expect us to resolve this?
And as you say, it is not just the British. Others ought to
be helping them on counternarcotics. They are the lead group.
But who pushes anybody to help the British? Who in the U.N. is
in charge, so that we finally get some cohesion in all of this?
General Jones. Well, Mr. Chairman, you put your finger on
it. I think the structures are generally there and we simply
need to find the ways to make sure that, No. 1, there is
sufficiency in the aid. The estimate, the Afghan estimate over
what is required for 5 years, I am told is about $27 billion
over a 5-year period. To date $13 billion has been accounted
for and committed and $11 billion has been disbursed. About 30
percent of that is U.S. donations.
So in terms of the requirement of $27 billion, the money
raised is about $13 billion, so we are about halfway there. So
clearly you cannot, at this rate you cannot do everything that
you want. It does not mean that you cannot do some really good
things.
My observation after almost 4 years of watching this
problem is that we need more focus and we need to find ways,
for example, to make sure that the government that we are
trying to help is also doing what it can, is also doing what it
can to, for instance, attack corruption, to begin to put a plan
in place, that has to be Afghan-led, but to fight the narcotics
problem.
The international community has to support this and has to
get behind it. But when we figure out how to do that, when we
get more cohesion and we get the international aid focus to do
the four or five really important things that need to be done,
then I think the road to success in Afghanistan will be clear.
I deeply believe that this is not a military problem and
there is not a military solution here. The military plays an
important role, just as we did in the south just recently to
establish the conditions. But there has to be an immediate
effect of the fight to show the people of Afghanistan that they
are--we can deliver on the promises, the government is going to
be able to have outreach throughout the country.
Strategic communications from the government to the people
in my view should be enhanced and we should to better. I
believe that we should, to the extent that we can, provide
guidance and advice to the young ministries that support this
government. In some cases, in terms of their department of
defense, we are doing reasonably well. In some others we are
not.
But it is the cohesion of the effort that I think needs to
be enhanced. I am hopeful that this policy action group and the
development of Afghan development zones, which is another
effort to focus the aid to where it does the most good at the
right time, at the right place, will be successful.
But I guess to the extent that there is good news, this is
doable in my view. It is achievable. It is not about more
troops, it is not about raising armies. I think the troop
levels are satisfactory and if we can fix some of these basic
problems and focus the international aid effort and have some
metrics by which we measure our progress each year, instead of
having to come in and report that we are losing grounds in the
war on narcotics every year, which is the Achilles heel in my
view of the reconstruction, overall reconstruction effort in
this country, then I think we can make some progress.
So I am optimistic these are solvable and I am sure that
people are working on it right now.
The Chairman. Thank you, General.
Let me just mention that the General will need to leave us
at 11 o'clock. There is ample time for each one of us at this
point, although sometimes folks join us during the course of
that time. But we will do the best we can.
Senator Dodd.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER DODD, U.S. SENATOR FROM
CONNECTICUT
Senator Dodd. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am going
to ask consent to have an opening set of comments be made a
part of the record if that is appropriate.
The Chairman. It will be made a part of the record.
Senator Dodd. General, it is good to see you. I am a fan of
General Jones. We have known him and worked with him on a
number of issues over the years and we are fortunate indeed to
have you doing the job you are doing. So I thank you for your
efforts.
I want to thank the chairman again. These are very valuable
and important hearings and I thank the chairman immensely for
giving us the chance to raise some of these issues.
Let me if I can, General, sort of tie this in. I was
looking at the numbers in Europe, the support for NATO. There
has been some decline of popular, public support for the
institution. I know the requests are outstanding for some
additional troops that you have made and I want to raise that
with you as well. We are watching, obviously, a significant, at
least maybe, if you would use the word, significant upsurge in
insurgence, Taliban insurgent activity this year, and a lot of
at least similarities between the kinds of activities we are
watching now in Afghanistan that we have witnessed in Iraq.
The question I want to raise with you, because I think it
is impossible to stovepipe these issues in the sense of sort of
separating out what is the reaction, why are we not getting
more support, and to what extent do you attribute the
difficulties in Iraq we are experiencing with what you are
encountering in Afghanistan? Share with us, because you are
dealing with your colleagues all the time in the European
community, who I presume are sharing some of the attitudes and
reflections? And I suspect that what you are getting in
reaction to what our requests are with regard to Afghanistan is
reflected by what is occurring in Iraq, the lack of the kind of
support that we have seen there.
Could you share with us, how is that going on and to what
extent is there any linkage between what is happening in the
activities in Afghanistan and Iraq?
General Jones. I think there is genuine support, political
support across the 37 countries that find themselves in
Afghanistan. That support for Afghanistan has existed almost
from the outset. So in that sense it is a little bit different
than the difficulty we went through internationally in the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the debate with regard to
Iraq.
I think one of the things that makes it difficult for
countries is the fact that during the last 4 or 5 years, as the
political appetite to do more has gone up, to do more in
Afghanistan, to start a mission in Iraq, to maintain the Kosovo
troop levels at 16,000, to embark on Operation Active Endeavor,
to train and equip and NATO response force--all that has been
very good and symbolic of a NATO that is developing and
changing and growing.
At the same time, it has been accompanied by a
corresponding decrease in the budgets of many of the countries
in NATO, budgets for national security. The average budget in
NATO percentage of GDP for national security is now 1.7 percent
of GDP across the 26 nations. The agreed-upon target, the
minimum that was agreed upon at the Prague Summit in 2002 was 2
percent of GDP. So we are actually going the wrong way. We have
more missions and less resources.
The Afghanistan situation or the Afghanistan development is
interesting because it does have some strong points in terms of
unity. The question of the generation of troops actually has
taken a turn for the worse--I am sorry, for the better--since
the last couple of weeks with Poland's announcement of sending
the battalion and special forces. The Romanians have let us use
an operational reserve battalion. The Canadians are going to
augment their forces. We are looking to lift some of the
national restrictions on the troops that are in Afghanistan,
which restricts the commander's ability to use the troops the
way he would like to. We have a few other nations that I
cannot, I am not at liberty to mention yet because they have
not made the national decision, but we have others that are
coming on line.
So in the last 10 days or so we have been moving in a very
positive direction. But I think that the countries that are
providing their forces and their money want obviously to see
that it is going for the right thing, and they want to see
reconstruction, they want to see development, they want to see
the promises that were made to the people come to pass. I think
there will be support for this mission in Afghanistan for quite
a while within the alliance. As a matter of fact, we still have
one more section to bring in under NATO, the eastern section of
the country, which will happen in the not too distant future.
But if we can focus our energies on the things that
absolutely need to be done, then I think the investment in
Afghanistan will pay off quicker and we will be there for a
shorter period of time.
Senator Dodd. Let me try this again. I am curious as to
whether or not there is any spillage in terms of political
reaction, whether or not there is any correlation you see at
all between the kind of activities that have increased with the
Taliban in Afghanistan and the kind of activities we have
watched for a longer period of time in Iraq. Is there some
relationship there?
While I have asked that question, let me also--I know there
are some differences about the rules of engagement and some of
our allies are requesting, I gather, certain rules of
engagement regarding their troops in Afghanistan. To what
extent is that posing a difficulty?
But I want to come back to this Iraq-Afghanistan issue,
because my sense is these numbers in Europe of popular support
for the role of NATO declining has some correlation between the
attitudes about Iraq, and I am curious whether or not you agree
with that.
General Jones. It would be hard for me to make the
correlation. I think if there is a correlation it is simply
because of the amount of money that is going to support both
missions, plus national missions. So I think the publics are a
little bit unclear as to what NATO is and what it is doing. We
have not done a good job of explaining ourselves.
I do not know that there is a political spillover between
the two. My belief is that Afghanistan is well understood and
well supported.
You had another--oh, the rules of engagement. The rules of
engagement for Afghanistan are very clear, very adequate,
agreed to by all 26 countries. So that is not an issue. What is
an issue for me sometimes and for commanders is nations provide
their forces, but they also have a list of restrictions on how
we can use those forces. We call them caveats. I think caveats
are very limiting. I think they actually make our problems more
difficult and they actually contribute to--countries whose
troops have excessive number of caveats project weakness and
make them more vulnerable. So I am fighting to remove as many
caveats as possible.
Senator Dodd. I should have mentioned, by the way, and I
apologize for not doing so, how deeply all of us, how
appreciative we are of the role that U.S. forces are playing
there and the sacrifices they are enduring. None of us are
unmindful of the fact that about 340 of our fellow citizens
have lost their lives in Afghanistan and many more injured in
the process. I think any discussion should always begin by
thanking these troops for the tremendous sacrifice that they
paid.
Tell me about the Taliban. Is there any correlation between
what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of the
military activities? They look like there are some very--are
these copycats or is there some connection between what is
happening in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is there some connection
that we ought to be aware of?
General Jones. I think there might be some copycat
connection, but I think the reason, part of the reason for the
uptick in violence, particularly in the south, is because until
recently we have never had any permanent forces in that part of
the country. When the coalition led--the U.S.-led coalition was
operating in the country, these operations in the south were
mostly short-term duration special forces, very kinetic, and we
did not have the mass to simply occupy a part of that
territory.
This time, with 6,000 NATO troops there who come into these
provinces and are going to stay there and they are going to do
the reconstruction that is worthwhile, it is the first time we
have had that permanent presence. What has happened I think,
particularly in the south, is the home of the Taliban
traditionally, the home, the epicenter of the narcotics
production, there has been criminality, there has been corrupt
governance, lack of police. This is the first time that we have
had a permanent presence.
So we have gone through the tough period here, at least in
this part of the province. We have been successful fighting the
Taliban, causing him to retreat. Actually the Taliban adopted
tactics we had not seen. They actually chose to stand and fight
in a conventional way. They paid a huge price for that. I do
not think we will see them trying that again.
But it was a major turning point, at least--I will not say
in terms of Afghanistan, but in terms of that particular
region. A major statement was answered, and we are going to get
on with it.
Senator Dodd. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Dodd.
Senator Hagel.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEBRASKA
Senator Hagel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, General Jones. I suspect this may be your last
formal appearance as our NATO commander before this committee
and I, I am sure as well as all my colleagues, want to express
our deep appreciation for your service, your leadership. You
are one of the preeminent military leaders of our time, but
your reach is far beyond the military dynamic of our
geopolitical interest in the world, and for your wide-lens
understanding of the issues we appreciate it. You have made us
a far stronger country and you have made NATO a much better
institution because of your leadership. Please convey our
thanks to your colleagues, some seated behind you, but also as
well in Brussels and across the scope of NATO's reach. Thank
you, General Jones.
I would like to go to the eastern border of Afghanistan and
if you could explain what role Pakistan is playing in
supporting ISAF's efforts, in particular along the eastern
border, and then I want to go a little deeper into that as
well.
General Jones. Senator Hagel, I just returned from a visit
to Islamabad, my second one as the NATO commander, and had a
good opportunity to talk with the senior military of the
Pakistani armed forces. They explained to me in detail their
assessment of the recently completed arrangements with the
tribal regions. If the words that they used actually come to
pass, then things could be much better along the borders. The
tribal authorities have decided that they would expel
foreigners, for example, limit cross-border crossings, respect
the territorial integrity of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the
border itself.
If all of those words are backed up and agreed to, then we
should see a positive development. I intend to go back in about
30 days to Islamabad. We are watching very closely to see what
happens along the border over these next--this next month, and
then we will have another discussion when I return on what we
see on the Afghan side.
I must say that I was impressed by the willingness of the
Pakistani military authorities to want to have a more developed
and heightened relationship with NATO, particularly on border
issues. Pakistan is a member of the Tripartite Commission along
with Afghanistan and NATO and COC-Alpha to discuss military
matters affecting the border. So we are building the network
between the Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now NATO to better know
each other and to better understand exactly what it is that
needs to be done on both sides of the border.
So my initial meeting was encouraging. The words I heard
were good and now we need to see if we can back up the words
with demonstrated performance.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Do you agree with the assessment of some that the Taliban
headquarters is somewhere in the region of Quetta?
General Jones. That is generally accepted, yes, sir.
Senator Hagel. Give us a little bit of your response to the
assessment, of the recent agreement that Pakistan has signed
with the tribes in that part of Pakistan, and specifically the
Waziristan region?
General Jones. Well, as I said, my assessment is that if
all the elements of the agreement are in fact lived up to by
the signatories, then the situation on the border should
improve. The question is now, is to observe. What we are doing
now is observing, watching, recording, so that when we go back
in 30 days to Islamabad we can have a more focused discussion
as to what we see in fact on the ground.
This is measurable. You can tell what is going on on the
borders. You can tell by what is going on in Afghanistan
whether there is any change. We will be able to observe that.
We will be able to have some dialog with the Pakistani
authorities, and then we can take it from there.
Senator Hagel. Would you consider this agreement by the
Pakistani Government as significant in regard to the
commitments that were accompanied in that agreement, especially
commitments to NATO and to our efforts to deal with the
Taliban?
General Jones. Well, I think the words are significant in
the agreement. For example, the tribes have agreed that there
will be no foreign troops in the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas, there will be no cross-border operations, they will not
challenge the Pakistani Government's authority, they recognize
the territories--the territorial boundary of Pakistan, and
there will be no Talibanization of the Federally Administrated
Tribal Areas. They also have agreed that, as I mentioned, no
foreign troops--by that I mean foreigners--will be expelled.
If they are able to live up to the terms of those
agreements, the border should be a much quieter region. We are
in the process now of observing very closely what is going on
and what the effect is on the Afghani side of the border, and
we will know that in probably the next month or so.
Senator Hagel. Included in your graphic here that you have
presented, and you engaged each of the five pillars in your
testimony--the fifth, train police forces, led by Germany, you
did not spend a lot of time on that issue. You were, if I
interpret your comments correctly, rather positive in your
analysis and assessment of the training of the Afghan army.
There are, as you know, significant reports about corruption,
the inability or unwillingness of the Afghan police to do their
jobs, not unlike the same problems we are facing in Iraq in
trying to build the police forces there.
I would appreciate your assessment of that effort, if we
are going to be required to put more resources into that
effort. How would you assess it? Obviously that is a
significant problem that we are going to continue to face, not
unlike again what I said is happening in Iraq.
General Jones. Yes, sir. I think the three pillars that
need much more energy than they already have is the police
reform and training, judicial reform, and counternarcotics. The
three are somewhat linked. The counternarcotics and the
dependency of Afghanistan on the opium trade fuels all of the
problems elsewhere in the society, from corruption of the
judicial process, corruption of the police force, corruption at
the highest levels in the society, in addition to fueling the
insurgency with cash.
So that is clearly--those three pillars are clearly
important and worthy of the international community's attention
as a matter of the highest priority. Failure to address those
three pillars will mean that we will be in Afghanistan for a
much longer period of time than is necessary.
The United States has contributed a lot of money to
training the police pillar to assist the German-led efforts
there. Much more needs to be done. There is not an adequate
number of policemen, and there is even quite a substantial
portion of the police force that is underpaid and cannot
compete with the $250 or so that the Taliban is willing to pay
to offset their numbers and to compensate them for the money
they do not have to support their families.
Senator Hagel. Do you believe, General, that the Afghan
Government is going to have to be far more aggressive in
prosecuting drug dealers, others who it is my understanding
that the government is looking the other way and allowing a lot
of this to happen? It is obviously risky. But unless the Afghan
Government is willing to do more--or is that interpretation
correct?
General Jones. I think it is a correct interpretation. I
think the Afghan--the new government has to show that, on
corruption, that it is uncompromising and that it is willing to
go after the narcotics cartels and to prosecute and convict
those who are guilty and to be severe with the punishment they
award. That is something that has got to be hand-in-hand
accompany--that has got to hand-in-hand accompany any infusion
of effort that the international community comes up with to
institute those reforms.
The Karzai Government does have a prominent role to play
and that message, when they start doing it on a regular basis,
will go a long way toward signaling to the people that this
is--we are serious about this. But until we start it, it is not
going to be recognized as serious. Words are hollow in this
particular, in these particular efforts right now. We need
action.
Senator Hagel. General, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Hagel.
I am pleased that we have been joined by more Senators as
you have been continuing your testimony. Our predicament for
Senators who have joined us is that the General has travel
assignments and he will need to leave by 11 o'clock. So I hope
I will not infringe on anyone's right in suggesting maybe an 8-
minute limit for the four Senators that we have remaining. If
you need more time, why, please proceed. But for the moment,
why, do the best you can.
Senator Kerry.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN KERRY, U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS
Senator Kerry. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General, thanks. Welcome. Thanks for the job you are doing
and thank you also for the time to visit the other day on the
telephone. I appreciate it very, very much. I see the five
pillars here and it is part of the public testimony.
I have always felt that Afghanistan is the real center of
the war on terror, not Iraq. And it is troubling to me that we
have seven times the numbers of troops in Iraq that we do in
Afghanistan and that suicide, suicide attempts I think are up
triple. Roadside bombs are up double. You yourself have said,
General, that narcotics is at the core of everything that can
go wrong in Afghanistan if not properly tackled. But we are not
making progress. We are losing ground.
President Karzai has said that our approach to narcotics,
counternarcotics, has failed, and the U.N.'s top
counternarcotics official said yesterday that NATO forces have
to somehow help the Afghan army to fight the opium trade.
When I was in Afghanistan and met with President Karzai
earlier in the year, I asked him about the narco situation and
whether or not Afghanistan is now a narcoeconomy, and he said
yes, he agreed. I think our experts agree. I think you would
agree, it is a narcoeconomy.
At what point does it become a narco state? And if our
efforts have currently failed and that is the center of
everything that can go wrong, what is going to change?
General Jones. I do not know what the tipover point is, but
when 50 percent, over 50 percent of your economy is tied to the
narcotrafficking portion of it, you are well on your way. I do
not know exactly when you become a narco state by definition.
But it is clear that the influence of narcotics on all organs
of Afghan society, emerging Afghan society, is there. It fuels
the insurgency, it contributes to the corruption. It is
omnipresent and it is something that, frankly, the family of
nations ought to be worried about.
I think one of the things I mentioned to you in our
conversation was that 90 percent of the products are sold in
European capitals.
Senator Kerry. Well, with all of the troop level that we
have there, what is the problem in engaging in a massive crop
destruction effort? Are they afraid of the instability that
will occur in the population, so they are in a sense locked?
General Jones. It is a vicious circle, because I think what
is needed is a comprehensive international plan that everybody
signs up to that is multifaceted. If we simply focus on crop
eradication, then you are affecting the livelihood of a
significant portion of the country. So you have to have crop
substitution. You have to have means of getting alternate crops
to the markets, which means you have to build roads that may
not exist.
There is a whole series of dominoes that line up. But
absent a clearly defined, well thought out, agreed upon,
financed and resourced plan, you wind up doing a little bit of
everything and nothing very well.
Senator Kerry. That is what really concerns me, General.
Here we are, President Karzai said, quote: ``The same enemies
that blew up themselves''--that is his quote--``in the Twin
Towers in America are still around.'' The plot against these
airliners that was stopped in London was hatched in
Afghanistan. Yet the center of changing this is to have
economic success and reform success. And yet 40 percent of the
Afghan population is unemployed right now, before you even do
crop destruction.
Ninety percent lack regular electricity. And yet this
administration has appropriated nearly four times more in
reconstruction funds for Iraq than Afghanistan, and in fact aid
money was cut by 30 percent this year. So I would assume that
greater construction efforts and greater focus in pulling
together this comprehensive eradication or substitution plan
would significantly bolster your efforts of our troops on the
ground.
General Jones. I completely agree. I think that the
military aspect of what we are doing is important, but the
long-term reconstruction is tied to how well we do in those
pillars.
Senator Kerry. So if the stakes are as high as everybody
says, if the President says this is a battle for civilization
and so forth, why are we not doing this?
General Jones. I think that--I think we are doing, we are
doing quite a bit. Just to put a positive spin on this, we have
6 million Afghan children that are going to school today. Two
million of them are girls. We have rebuilt over 3,000
kilometers of roads. Now, 80 percent of the Afghan people have
access to some form of health care. There are interesting
measures of progress out there.
Senator Kerry. Can I just interrupt for one second. I do
not mean to cut you off at all, but the time is limited. I
agree and I want to pay tribute to that. I think you and
efforts on the ground have really been quite remarkable in a
lot of respects. But what you are telling us, what President
Karzai is telling us, what experts are telling us on the
ground, is that all of that--and it is good--is at huge risk
because of what is happening with the three pillars of the five
that are affected by the narcotics, by the criminality, by the
lack of judicial reform, the lack of competency within the
police force.
I think you said you have something like, is it, 40,000
troops now?
General Jones. There is 20,000 NATO troops and----
Senator Kerry. No, of the Afghan army, trained.
General Jones. Oh, I am sorry. About 30,000, yes, sir.
Senator Kerry. So 30,000 now. That is not going to be able
to do what is necessary if your economy is lost to this other
effort, correct?
General Jones. That is correct. I think you do need an
Afghan army. I think you need the internal police force. That
has got to be fixed. Judicial reform, you have got to be able
to prosecute the people who are causing these difficulties in
the narcotics. To me, I think that talking about this is
important. I think it will have the effect in the international
community to focus those people whose jobs it is to bring this
about.
I appear today as a NATO commander. My NATO
responsibilities stop at stability and security and the
management of the provincial reconstruction teams. There is an
entire other sector that I talk about, but I do not have an
assigned mission, in for instance, judicial reform. But I know
that if we do not have judicial reform the security of the
country is going to be jeopardized. So we have to talk about
it, and I think we have to bring more international focus and
energy to it.
I must say that if we do that I am optimistic that this
will be a success story. So I am optimistic about where
Afghanistan can be in a few years.
Senator Kerry. If we do this now?
General Jones. If we do this, if we do this, and if we are
successful at doing this. If we are not successful----
Senator Kerry. What about the effort on Osama bin Laden?
The Waziristan deal seems really troubling and a lot of people
seem troubled by it, and most believe that, while some things
are stated about what will happen, the expectations are
considerably lower than that.
Are you satisfied that you are able to do everything that
you want to do, would like to do, believe is necessary to do to
capture or kill Osama bin Laden?
General Jones. This is the delicate part of my appearance
here. As a NATO commander, my mission from the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization is to assist the Government of Afghanistan
in providing a safe and secure environment for reconstruction.
Senator Kerry. I know CENTCOM is doing that.
General Jones. And that is why I need to make that
distinction, that the ISAF mission and the Operation Enduring
Freedom mission, led by CENTCOM, that is the one that has the
kinetic, the more kinetic counterterrorist mission. So I am not
involved in the active border participations. NATO's focus is
more on security, stability, and reconstruction, which is not
to say that if we ever came across Mr. bin Laden that we would
not apprehend him. We would. If we had indications that he
might be in one of our areas, would we go try to get him? We
probably would.
Senator Kerry. And you do not want to venture to share with
the committee just from your experience and judgment whether or
not you think we are able to do all that is necessary or we
would like to do?
General Jones. Well, I can tell you that I know John
Abizaid, General Abizaid, has spent a considerable amount of
time working with the Pakistani authorities. We have large
numbers of troops up in the border areas and we have done
everything we can to--I think we are doing everything we can to
locate him and locate other leaders and to discourage the
border from being a sieve through which Taliban fighters come
across to Afghanistan and contribute to the problems that we
have there.
So I think that over the next 30 to 60 days, while we give
the Pakistani authorities a chance to test their new agreements
in the border regions, I think the next 30 to 60 days will be
interesting to see how effective we are going to be.
Senator Kerry. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Kerry.
Senator Chafee.
STATEMENT OF HON. LINCOLN CHAFEE, U.S. SENATOR FROM RHODE
ISLAND
Senator Chafee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
General Jones, thank you for your testimony. I associate
myself with Senator Hagel's praise and gratitude for your
service.
Following up on the narcotics issue, you testified that the
poppy growing is in areas where it has not grown before,
particularly the southern regions. Why is that?
General Jones. Simply it is the cash crop of choice. Our
lack of ability right now to discourage the producers, to alter
the behavior of the cartels, is indicative. Until we meet with
more success and find alternate means of people earning a
livelihood and find a way in which we can turn the economic
situation around in some parts of the country, this is going to
continue to be a problem.
Senator Chafee. Why has it changed, that the south did not
grow poppies, now they are? Is there any particular reason?
General Jones. I think it is simply, simply a function of
demand and the ability of these farmers to get money in advance
of the planting season from the cartels, for example. And until
we find the means to discourage that, punish it, prosecute it,
limit it--and I think beyond the borders of Afghanistan, by the
way, I think the European markets, which is the destination
point, should be very concerned about the amount that is
actually getting onto the streets of European capitals.
But until we find the international solutions to bring this
to, not a stop immediately, but to start reversing the trend, I
think we are going to continue to have difficulties.
Senator Chafee. I am just curious as to--I understand the
big problem, but why the south? Is it more conducive to
lawlessness or more Taliban in the south?
General Jones. Well, I think the south, the southern part
of the country, has been one of the parts of the country where
we have not had a permanent presence of any large number of
troops. Most of our activities there have been small,
temporary, special forces-type activities. This is the first
time that roughly 6,000 troops have moved into the area, with
more to come. The Afghan army is down there now. We are
cleaning out the corrupt governance. We are trying to get good
police chiefs. We are going to start reconstruction with an
impressive amount, starting virtually as we speak.
So this is a part of the country that did not have a lot of
presence. So as a result the narcotics had a safe haven, just
as the Taliban was able to live there quietly, and now they
cannot. So we are going through this period of tension. We are
doing quite well in terms of asserting ourselves and our
authority. So I hope that good things will start happening in
the south.
Senator Chafee. Is there an issue that this is, the
Pashtuns are more conducive to the Taliban as opposed to the
north might be, the Tajiks are less?
General Jones. This is more of a traditional home of the
Taliban than other parts of the country, and the infiltration
routes come to this area.
Senator Chafee. To go to another subject, is there any
influence of Iran in anything that is happening in Afghanistan?
General Jones. The Iranian influence in Afghanistan has
mostly been along the border and is mostly economic. Most of
the contacts that have been had along the border have to do
with economic issues and actually an expression on the part of
the Iranian border guards concerning the drug trade. Of course,
one of the major drug routes goes through Iran, but it also
goes up in other directions as well. So it is a problem for all
of the countries surrounding Iran--I am sorry, surrounding
Afghanistan. So there are some common problems here that could
be worked on.
But it is an economic relationship in the west, notably
around Herat.
Senator Chafee. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Chafee.
General Jones. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Feingold.
STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, U.S. SENATOR FROM
WISCONSIN
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
important hearing.
General Jones, thank you for appearing in front of the
committee and for your tremendous service. I know you are busy,
so let me get to a couple of comments.
First, I would like to second Senator Dodd's comments and
take a moment to express how thankful I am and we are for the
dedication and professionalism of the many Americans serving in
Afghanistan. We have some of our best men and women serving in
the U.S. military and the State, NATO, USAID, DEA, and other
critical departments and agencies that, I agree, are trying to
make and are in many cases making a true difference. I hope you
will pass that message along to them.
I have some questions, but first I would like to note the
fact that I think we are getting two very different pictures
from Afghanistan right now. We are seeing signs of progress,
important political developments that include a new parliament
and a new role for women in government, and an exponential
increase in the number of children attending schools, which you
mentioned.
But we are also seeing some very troubling trends: The
comeback of the Taliban and the destabilizing of southern
Afghanistan. Opium production levels are up to the highest
levels ever, despite significant efforts to reduce them, and
violence is creeping back into Kabul, as we saw with the deadly
car bomb very close to the United States embassy last week.
These recent developments are disturbing. I believe we need
to reevaluate our current strategy in Afghanistan and reassess
the level of resources needed to invest there to achieve long-
term stability and security. As we all know, Afghanistan does
have the potential for being a flagship success in the
international fight against terrorist networks. It could also
easily become, I am afraid, another long-term engagement in
which the U.S. Government has no discernible strategy for
success. We absolutely have to avoid that, as I know you agree.
But General, I want to ask you a couple of questions that
sort of relate to the five pillars here that you have
established and try to connect up the reconstruction with the
security situation. Senator Chafee was getting at this. I am
particularly interested in learning from you what has and has
not been effective in our reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan, particularly in the south.
The United States and the international community have
provided a significant amount of development and humanitarian,
economic, and other forms of assistance there for the last few
years. But what does the resurgence of the Taliban in the south
suggest about the actual effectiveness of our reconstruction
efforts? What is working and what is not?
General Jones. The southern region, Senator, has been one
of the regions where we have had the least amount of presence
and therefore the least amount of reconstruction. It is a
region that has been, not only been characterized by the
absence of permanent security forces, but also poor governance,
corruption, ineffective police forces, and generally a presence
of Taliban or Taliban sympathizers, until a few months ago when
NATO put in, is starting to put in a force that will total
about 6,000-7,000 troops.
This is the first time we have done that in this part of
the country and, not surprisingly, we met with some resistance.
Operation Medusa, which recently concluded successfully for
NATO, was the first almost conventional ground combat mission
that NATO has been involved in in many, many years. The Taliban
chose to stand and fight and paid a high price for that
tactical error.
We are now following up really in the south with a very
comprehensive package of reconstruction. Between May and
September of this year in the south we will have spent--we have
85 projects in many sectors of reform, from agriculture to
capacity-building, education, energy, environment, governance,
health, security, completion--working on the ring road, $62
million scheduled for that, over $100 million going into
another section of the road and a dam construction.
But before we get on with things like that, we have to set
the conditions under which they can be successful, and that is
what this recent upsurge in fighting was about, to establish
without question that we have the capability of doing this and
that we are going to get on with making reconstruction reach
this part of the country as well.
Compared to the other parts of the country, this has been
lagging. We are now there to try to jump start it.
Senator Feingold. I appreciate your mentioning some of the
reconstruction efforts. I just wanted to follow up by kind of
looking at it the other way around, the way in which
reconstruction, one would hope, would help stability, as
opposed to the other way around. So I am wondering, are our
reconstruction efforts being evaluated for their overall
effectiveness in reducing stability?
If you take one metric that you and I both have talked
about here--the number of Taliban attacks in the south--it
seems that things are not going so well in terms of that. Is it
fair to connect these two things and what are we doing to
reorient or redesign our efforts, or is it simply a question of
having enough troops to create a scenario where that can work?
General Jones. I think you cannot have, in this case, you
cannot have security without reconstruction. You cannot have
reconstruction without security. So in our theology with the
NATO forces the two go hand-in-hand.
In the south we had to establish the security and now we
can have reconstruction and we can start. But this section of
the country does lag behind the others in terms of economic
investment for the reasons I tried to mention, the fact that it
is an area where we have not visited and we have not been. We
are there now. With the expansion of the Afghan army, if we can
get the police force up and operating, if we can conduct
judicial reform and attack the narcotics problem, I think you
are going to see a very quick turnaround in how people will
perceive who is going to win this battle.
I think somewhere along the line there are maybe 60 or 70
percent of the people of Afghanistan just simply trying to eke
out an existence and want, they genuinely want peace and an
opportunity for their children to lead a better life than they
did. They are going to go with whatever side they perceive is
going to win, and I think that this is still winnable. We are
not losing this, but there are some things that I think we
could do in the international reconstruction effort with more
focus, more clarity, more dedication, and more rapidly which
will allow us to have an exit strategy that will become more
visible quicker.
Senator Feingold. I really appreciated your comments about
this. I noticed your call for additional troops. I want you to
know that I support that. I saw that there was some
announcement today with regard to this. I also just want it
noted for the record that no one that I know of has called for
a timetable to withdraw our troops from this place, as I have
done with regard to Iraq, because I do believe this is a
situation that can succeed and we need to do what we can to
make it succeed.
I thank you, General.
General Jones. I agree.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold.
Senator Voinovich.
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, U.S. SENATOR FROM OHIO
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, General.
General Jones. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Voinovich. I recall that when we met in Brussels we
talked about lots of things and one of them, as you know, that
is on my heart and mind is what is happening in Kosovo. From
the information that I have received, there are militia,
Serbian militia, gathering in the north, in Mitrovica and the
northern towns, and have said that if Kosovo is declared
independent that they are going to secede from Kosovo. We are
concerned that we could have an outbreak there. Also there is
some concern about some of the enclaves in the southern part,
where they are concerned that they may be the victims of some
extremists on the Kosovar side.
I would hope that you are looking at that and making sure
that we have the troops that are necessary so everyone knows
that if you try and do something in this regard it is going to
be put down immediately. I have also talked with Secretary
Rumsfeld about it in terms of the Defense Department's
commitment to it. So that is one thing.
Second, we are going to be getting together here in
November with the NATO interparliamentary group, and I think it
would be really helpful to us if we got an appraisal from you
of where we stand in terms of their participation in their
GDP--you have mentioned it already, but other things that we
ought to be doing in NATO that are not being done, so that we
can fulfil our obligations.
So often what happens is the ministerials never talk to the
parliamentarians, and the parliamentarians really are the ones
that are charged with the budgets and doing some of these
things. So it would be really good if we can get that
information to these folks.
The other thing that I was impressed with is your approach
to dealing with this new enemy that we have out that flies
under no flag. In other words, we have an unconventional enemy,
and your concept of thinking outside of the box and how to deal
with this enemy. I have to say, at least from my perspective,
and I know other Members of the Senate, we are uneasy about
whether or not we are fighting this war in the correct way.
If I recall, when we talked, it was about a question of
allocation of resources, about getting the Defense Department,
the State Department, USAID, and all of these together to think
about some kind of a strategy on how we can be more effective
that may be unlike some of the things that we have done in the
past.
I note that you have these provisional reconstruction teams
now in Afghanistan and I would be very interested to have you
share with us how effective they are and how that fits in with
this concept of maybe doing things differently. If you look at
the chart here, we are talking about counternarcotics, we are
talking about judicial reform. Japan has disarmament,
demobilization, reintegration. A lot of these things have got
nothing to do with armament. They have got to do with some
other things. I would be interested in your sharing with us how
you think they are coming along and how we can enhance that
approach.
General Jones. Senator, thank you very much. A quick word
on Kosovo. We have 55 maneuver companies deployed in all of
Kosovo, 16,000 troops in total. I believe that this force is
much better trained, much better equipped, fewer number of
caveats than ever before. We have troops north of the Ivar. We
are talking all of the time with not only the Kosovar Serbs but
the Albanians as well. We are working very closely with
developing the human rapport that we need on the ground to try
to minimize any outbreak of violence.
All I can say is that I think we are as prepared as we can
be and we are trying to do those things that we can do as KFOR
to minimize that possibility of violence. So I think we are in
as good a position as we can be and we continue to work this
problem every day.
I would be very, very happy to do anything to support the
interparliamentary group. I think it is extremely important
that parliamentarians understand not only what NATO is doing,
but what the new NATO is like, what it does, what it stands
for, and why should our publics be as interested in the NATO in
the 21st century as it was in the 20th century.
I believe that NATO is a very healthy, growing organization
that is only going to become more important in time. There are
certain things that I think we should do to help NATO in its
transformation. There is no question in my mind that one of the
things that we must do better than we are doing is to explain
the value of NATO to our people on both sides of the Atlantic,
because it is a unique organization and it deserves to be
supported.
With the question of the new enemy and how to combat the
new enemy, I think that one of the premiums in terms of shaping
and affecting the areas where we wish to see a certain outcome
has to do with the integration of essentially the interagency,
that the solution set against these enemies is not just a
military solution, but it is actually how well do we bring all
instruments of national power to focus simultaneously in an
orchestrated way to bring about the desired effects.
One of the examples of a success story I think is the
United States' PRTs in Afghanistan--provincial reconstruction
teams. What makes these reconstruction teams so effective is
that they are empowered. These commanders of these PRTs,
usually at the rank of lieutenant colonel, have money, have the
independent authority as to how to allocate that money, and
they bring about immediate effects in the region to build a
bridge, open a school, dig a well, turn on some electricity,
pave a road, coordinate local government officials, help the
training of the local police, and give a sense of comfort and
reassurance out in the hinterlands where some day the
government will be able to get out there and replace the PRTs.
We will know we are reaching a success point in Afghanistan
when the government says we do not think this PRT is necessary
any more--we have got it. But until that day happens, those
PRTs and those commanders and those people that are working out
there, sometimes at significant risk, are really worth--I think
a PRT is worth a battalion. Those 60 to 80 to 100 people that
are working out there are worth 5,000 troops.
Proactive engagement is always cheaper than reactive
engagement. I would rather have 100 people dedicated, doing a
certain thing every single day for 365 days, than 10,000 troops
for 60 days.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Chairman, I want to say thank you
very much for your service. I know that you are going to be
tipping your hat one of these days and I would like to say to
you, General, that I hope--I am sure that you have been working
within the system to get your thoughts across about how we deal
with this new enemy, but I would hope that once you leave that
you are not reluctant to speak out and perhaps do some white
papers to try and get your message across to Members of
Congress and to the American public, because I think it is
really needed at this time.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your service.
The Chairman. I join my colleague, Senator Voinovich, once
again, General, in thanking you. I just have to recall--and I
hope you are not embarrassed by the recollection--that we
toured Europe together in the early 1980s. You were then a
major, not a four-star general. I was a very young Senator. We
are a bit older now, but your service has been just remarkable
and we just so much appreciate your coming today.
We thank you for your comment that our hearing might in a
small way provide a conversation that others might listen to,
including folks at the United Nations, people in other
countries, people in our own government who are trying to
coordinate. That was our purpose in asking you and Mr. Barnett
to come today, so we could have this focus and have a wider
audience through C-SPAN and other media efforts that will also
engage in the topic.
General Jones. Senator, if I could also thank you for not
only our long-term relationship, but also just for the energy
that you have brought to NATO as well with your personal
commitment to reexplaining NATO and getting people to
understand why NATO is, although a different organization in
this new century, is one that potentially can make just as
great a contribution as it did in the 21st century. Your voice
has been very supportive and very helpful. It is felt on both
sides of the Atlantic and we definitely appreciate the support
you have given us. It has meant a lot and we thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you for that encouragement.
We will now let you head off in your travel plans with best
wishes.
We welcome now Dr. Barnett Rubin. Dr. Rubin is the author
of the Council on Foreign Relations special report entitled
``Afghanistan's Uncertain Transition From Turmoil to
Normalcy,'' which was published in March of this year. He has
recently revisited Afghanistan, July 29 through August 8, to
supplement information from that report and hopefully to
supplement our information today about this very important
country and our mission and the mission of other countries.
Dr. Rubin, we welcome you. Your statement is a remarkable
document and will be made a part of the record in full, and you
may proceed however you would like to, either in summary or in
delivering portions of the statement.
STATEMENT OF BARNETT R. RUBIN, DIRECTOR OF STUDIES AND SENIOR
FELLOW, CENTER ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NY
Dr. Rubin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing and for inviting me to take part. I appreciate it.
I will make some remarks on a few themes that I would like to
highlight, and as I was listening to the exchange with General
Jones I also made a note of a few points that were raised by
the Senators here and by him that I could elaborate on some.
First, let me say that, while my statement and my summary
here are full of somewhat somber prognostications and analyses,
none of this is meant to denigrate the accomplishments that
have occurred and the sacrifices made, I should note, not only
by soldiers, but also by civilians who have given their lives
in this effort, both Afghan and international.
In fact, one of the people I saw on my trip, Governor Hakim
Taniwa of Paktia, was assassinated by a suicide bomb just about
10 days ago, and I wrote an article about that that appeared in
the Washington Post last Sunday, quoting him primarily.
I think the point is that, rather than asking whether a
glass is half full or half empty, we should be concerned first
about how stable the table is on which it is standing. While we
have accomplished a lot, at the moment the base in Afghanistan
is extremely weak. Partly that is because of some of the
effects of Iraq, partly it is for other reasons which I will
discuss.
First, overall people in the region, both those who would
like to work with us to some extent and those who are working
against us, make an evaluation of how serious and committed we
are, that the United States is. Overall most people in
Afghanistan and around the region in my estimation do not
believe that succeeding in Afghanistan is a very high priority
of the United States. The basis for that is not what we say,
but what we do. It is based on their observation that we have
put 10 times as much effort into the war on Iraq, that we have
undercut--that we have very much underspent on Afghanistan,
that, as General Jones said, we did not put troops into the
very areas that were the heartland of the Taliban, and in
general indicated that we were not committed there. They have
acted as a result of that analysis.
Second, I wanted to emphasize what also came up, that
Afghanistan is extremely poor. But let me--I think perhaps we
do not appreciate how poor Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is the
poorest country in the world except for a handful of countries
in sub-Saharan Africa, like Burundi and Sierra Leone. Now, when
I mention those two countries that indicates how such extreme
poverty leads to violent conflict.
The fact that the country is so extremely poor translates
into an extremely weak government. The total revenues of the
Government of Afghanistan are approximately 5 percent of its
minuscule legal GDP. Therefore, when we talk about the
Government of Afghanistan taking strong measures to do
something or other, like arresting some of the most powerful
people in the country, we must bear in mind what resources it
has and how little assistance we have given it in doing that.
When we talk about the Government of Afghanistan, for
instance, not taking strong measures against drug traffickers,
we must bear in mind that many of those drug traffickers were
empowered by the United States, who provided them with
assistance to come into effective power, and that even in cases
when President Karzai wanted to remove some of them from power
his hand was stayed by some agencies of the United States
Government who still found those people useful. So there is
more of a picture than sometimes is presented.
The next point is this problem in Afghanistan--I cannot
emphasize this too much--is not a problem in Afghanistan,
besides the fact that of course it is connected to global
terrorism. It is a joint problem of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The global center of terrorism now is in Pakistan. That is
where the plot in Britain was hatched. That is where Osama bin
Laden is.
I would also draw your attention to something very
important that General Jones said very briefly in response to a
question by Senator Hagel. Senator Hagel asked him, is it true
that the headquarters of the Taliban is in Quetta. General
Jones said that is generally accepted. Now, what does that
mean? It means the headquarters of the Taliban is in the
capital city of one of the four provinces of Pakistan. The
headquarters of the Taliban is not in a mountain cave
somewhere. It is not along the border. It is in the capital of
one of Pakistan's provinces, and the Government of Pakistan,
according to the unified assessment of the security agencies,
Afghan and international, in Kabul, is that the Government of
Pakistan has done virtually nothing to disrupt the command and
control of the Taliban, which is based in Pakistan.
Now, I recently received, in anticipation of this
testimony, a message from a very senior diplomat from a NATO
troop contributing country who is in Kabul. He said the
following to me. As you know, next week President Bush is going
to meet with President Musharraf and President Karzai together.
President Musharraf I believe is in Washington today.
Now, this diplomat wrote to me: ``All eyes are now on the
27 September meeting in Washington and the bilateral talks that
will precede it. Without the use of overwhelming diplomatic
force by the U.S. President against President Musharraf, little
progress can be expected. There needs to be rapid arrests of
the top 50 Taliban commanders in and around Quetta, full stop.
Anything less will not do. Pakistani protests that they lack
the capacity are spurious.
``The Iran issue and Pakistani domestic politics argue
against the United States using the big diplomatic stick, but
we need it now. Otherwise, a slide''--meaning the slide in
security and stability in Afghanistan--``will continue.''
Mr. Chairman, the fact that the Taliban have their
headquarters and command and control in Pakistan and a safe
haven there is not the only reason there is an insurgency in
Afghanistan. There are massive failings on the part of the
Government of Afghanistan, as is only to be expected since it
is the weakest government in the world. But no insurgency has
been defeated when it has a safe haven abroad. So shutting down
this safe haven is the key to addressing those massive internal
problems in Afghanistan.
On internal security, I fully endorse what General Jones
said about the importance of the rule of law, police, and
judiciary. If I may note, there is a general problem in U.S.
policy with regard to post-conflict nation-building or state-
building which transcends this administration, though perhaps
it is more serious in this administration, which is we tend to
focus on democratization, that is on elections, a constitution,
and so on. We very much neglect the building of state
institutions which are needed to make that relevant.
It does not matter, if you freely elect your legislators,
if there are no institutions to enforce the laws that they pass
or through whom the executive can assure that those laws are
faithfully carried out. So without police, judiciary, and so
on, democracy is a hollow and meaningless shell, and that
increasingly is how people in Afghanistan perceive it.
Next, on narcotics. I would like--sometimes when people
call for a stronger counternarcotics policy, which I fully
endorse, they focus on crop eradication as if crop eradication
were the central point of counternarcotics. I would submit that
that is an error. First, we have to be clear about what is the
goal of our counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan, where does
the harm come from. We are not trying to or we should not be
trying to solve the world's problem of drug addiction in
Afghanistan. If we, with all our capacity, cannot stop drug
addiction in the United States, we are certainly not going to
use law enforcement successfully to eliminate half the economy
of the poorest and best armed country in the world.
Therefore we must focus on the real harm which comes from
drug money. Now, 80 percent of the drug money inside
Afghanistan, regardless of the--90 percent of the total income
from drugs goes outside of Afghanistan. Inside Afghanistan, 80
percent of the drug money is in the hands of traffickers and
warlords, not farmers. When we eradicate crops, the price of
poppy goes up and the traffickers who have stocks become
richer.
Therefore we should be focusing on the warlords and
traffickers, on interdiction and so on, while we are helping
the poor farmers. That is also consistent with our efforts,
with our political interests of winning the farmers over and
isolating those that are against us.
Furthermore, it is a mistake to consider the drug problem
in Afghanistan as something that is isolated in the major
poppy-growing areas. For instance, now there is fighting in
Helmand Province, which is the major poppy producing area in
the world. Because you cannot--because there is fighting going
on, it is not possible to implement a counternarcotics strategy
in Helmand. We need to implement rural development throughout
Afghanistan, especially in the areas where there is no poppy,
in order to show people what is possible and build an
alternative economy.
Finally, a word about Iran. Iran, of all the countries
around Afghanistan, is making the strongest counternarcotics
effort. We have a very strong common interest with Iran in
making that counternarcotics effort. That, among other things
in Afghanistan, are areas where we have common interests with
Iran, which I submit we should be pursuing just as we
simultaneously pursue those areas where we have conflict of
interest with Iran.
If I may issue a warning, anyone who tries to sell you
intelligence reports that Iran is destabilizing Afghanistan is
misrepresenting the facts. The destabilization of Afghanistan
insofar as it is coming from abroad is coming from Pakistan,
regardless of the fact that President Musharraf speaks good
English, wears a suit, and says things that we like to hear.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Rubin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Barnett R. Rubin, Director of Studies and
Senior Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York
University, New York, NY
``The pyramid of Afghanistan government's legitimacy should not be
brought down due to our inefficiency in knowing the enemy, knowing
ourselves and applying resources effectively.''--Saleh, 2006.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ A. Saleh, Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan,
National Directorate of Security, Kabul Afghanistan, May 2006. I
obtained a copy of this document from a U.S. source in Washington, DC.
In the past 6 months, a number of events have raised the stakes in
Afghanistan and further threatened the international effort there. The
handover of command from the United States-led coalition to NATO means
that Afghanistan is now not only the first battleground of the so-
called ``war on terror,'' but a testing ground for the future of the
Atlantic alliance. The Taliban-led insurgency based in Pakistan has
shown new capabilities in the south and east, challenging both the
United States and NATO, while suicide bombings, unknown in Afghanistan
before their successful use by the Iraqi insurgents, have sown terror
in Kabul and other areas as well.\2\ A particularly daring attack on a
Coalition convoy killed 16 people, including two United States
soldiers, close to the United States embassy, in one of the most
heavily defended areas of Kabul on September 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Hekmat Karzai and Seth Jones, ``How to curb suicide terrorism
in Afghanistan,'' Christian Science Monitor, July 18, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 29, in Kabul, an accidental crash of a United States
military vehicle that killed an Afghan sparked a riot in which 17
people were killed. Rioters, who chanted slogans against the United
States, President Karzai, and foreigners in general, attacked NGOs,
diplomatic residences, brothels, hotels and restaurants where they
thought alcohol was served, media offices, businesses, and the
parliament. These riots exposed the incapacity of the police, many of
whom disappeared, and the vulnerability of the government to mass
violence, even in the capital. This event exacerbated ethno-factional
tensions within the governing elite, as the President accused
opposition leaders of exploiting acts of violence by demonstrators
largely from Panjsher, home of the leading group of the Northern
alliance, charges that Panjsheri leaders denied.\3\ The riots showed
violent opposition to the government and the United States, not from
the Taliban, but also from members of a group that had led the
resistance to the Taliban.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The accident occurred in Khairkhana, an area of Kabul largely
populated by Tajiks from regions north of the capital.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
With many trends pointing in the wrong direction, it is time to
rethink strategy and significantly increase both the level of resources
available and the effectiveness of their use. As the largest troop
contributor and aid donor, the United States has to lead this
transformation. For decades United States policy makers of all
administrations, however, have underestimated the stakes for the United
States and the world in Afghanistan, and they continue to do so today.
Contrary to the analysis of the Bush administration, whose response
to September 11 wandered off to Iraq and dreams of a ``New Middle
East,'' the main center of global terrorism is in Pakistan, especially
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. In the words of one military
commander, ``Until we transform the tribal belt, the United States is
at risk.'' Far from achieving this objective, in 2001 the United
States-led coalition pushed the core leadership of al-Qaida and the
Taliban out of Afghanistan into Pakistan without a strategy for
consolidating this tactical victory. Thereafter, while the Bush
administration focused on unrelated or overblown threats elsewhere, it
failed to provide those Taliban who did not want to fight for al-Qaida
with a way back to Afghanistan, instead adopting a policy of
incommunicado detention in Guantanamo, Bagram, and ``black sites,''
making refuge in Pakistan a more attractive option. Drawing in part on
such fugitives and in part on newly minted recruits from militant
madrasas and training camps that continued to operate without
impediment, the Taliban reconstituted their command structure,
recruitment networks, and support bases in Pakistan, while Afghans
waited in vain for the major reconstruction effort they expected to
build their state and improve their lives. As a result, a cross-border
insurgency is now exploiting the weaknesses of an impoverished society
and an ineffective government to threaten the achievements of the last
5 years.
The frustration of those on the ground is palpable.
A Western diplomat who has been in Afghanistan for 3 years opened
our meeting with an outburst: ``I have never been so depressed. The
insurgency is triumphant,'' he said, accusing the United States and the
entire international community in Afghanistan of ``appeasement'' of
Pakistan, from where Taliban leaders direct the insurgency and
terrorist attacks. ``Things are looking very dark,'' wrote an Afghan-
American woman who is risking her life working in one of the most
dangerous areas of southern Afghanistan, where the burgeoning opium
trade supports insurgency, criminality, and lawlessness. An elder from
Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan said that government efforts
against the insurgency are weak because communities will not share
information with the authorities: ``The people don't trust any of the
people in government offices.'' An unemployed engineer who lives in
Kabul and an elder from the northern province of Baghlan echoed the
sentiment: ``The people have totally lost trust in the government,''
said the former; ``the people have no hope for this government now,''
said the latter. ``There is a big distance between the current system
and Islamic virtues,'' said an elder from Paktia in eastern
Afghanistan, citing the bribery of judges.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ I would like to thank Hamed Wardak for organizing meetings with
elders through his movement, Fidayini Sulh (Sacrificers for Peace).
Wardak did not attend the meetings and bears no responsibility for the
views expressed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A former minister, now a leader in the parliament, commented, ``The
conditions in Afghanistan are ripe for fundamentalism. Our situation
was not resolved before Iraq started. Iraq has not been resolved, and
now there is fighting in Palestine and Lebanon. Then maybe Iran. . . .
We pay the price for all of it.'' ``So many people have left the
country recently,'' recounted a U.N. official, ``that the government
has run out of passports.'' An elder from the southern province of
Uruzgan, who had sheltered Hamid Karzai when he was working underground
against the Taliban, told how he was later arrested by Americans who
placed a hood on his head, whisked him away, and then released him. He
shrugged off the indignity: ``I understand that in this country if you
do good, you will receive evil in return. This is our tradition.'' He
added, however, ``What we have realized is that the foreigners are not
really helping us. We think that the foreigners do not want Afghanistan
to be rebuilt.''
Yet no one advocated giving up. The same elders who expressed
frustration with the corruption of the government and its distance from
the people also said, ``We have been with the Taliban and have seen
their cruelty. People don't want them back.'' Fruit traders from
Qandahar who complained that, ``The Taliban beat us and ask for food,
and then the government beats us for helping the Taliban,'' also said
that President Karzai was the country's best leader in 30 years--a
modest endorsement, given the competition, but still significant. One
military leader opined, ``My working assumption is that the
international community needs to double its resources. We can't do it
on the margins. We have no hedge against domestic and regional counter-
forces.'' But, he concluded, ``It's still ours to lose.''
intensified threats
With access to a safe haven for its leadership, training, supplies,
funding, and recruitment in Pakistan, with additional funding from Arab
donors in the Persian Gulf, the Taliban-led insurgency has increased
its effectiveness and both broadened and deepened its presence. The
government and international forces have prevailed in virtually all
tactical engagements. The weakness of the government and the
reconstruction effort, however, has often prevented consolidation of
tactical gains, while the failure to deny the insurgency its safe haven
in Pakistan has blocked strategic victory. The invasion of Iraq under
false premises and the United States' unstinting support for Israel's
staggering reprisals against Lebanon have handed the insurgency
additional propaganda victories, further weakening the United States'
allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The increased tempo of suicide
bombings and attacks on school buildings even outside the insurgency's
main area of operation has spread insecurity into Kabul itself. One
suicide bomber was stopped in Kabul by police during my visit; and a
major attack on September 8 killed 16 people in the most secure area of
the city.
The Taliban's recent offensives were partly responses to changes
initiated by the international forces. The United States-led coalition
has handed off command of the southern region of Afghanistan to NATO,
which was already in charge in the north and west. The NATO force has
deployed to areas, notably Helmand province, where the coalition had
neither ousted the Taliban nor made substantive efforts to stem the
drug trade (Helmand now produces about half of the world's total supply
of opium). The Taliban offensives in the south have aimed to press
public opinion in the principal non-United States NATO troop
contributing countries (the United Kingdom, Canada, and the
Netherlands) to force a withdrawal. This is NATO's first military
operation, the success of which is essential to the future of the
alliance; as one United States official put it, ``The failure of NATO
in Afghanistan is not an option.''
The Taliban have increased the size of their units, their
maneuverability, and their intelligence capabilities to establish a
large and resilient presence in the rural areas of the south. The
resiliency of their presence, the effectiveness of some of their
institutions, and their ruthless retribution against those charged with
collaboration has neutralized much of the population. They have
established a parallel administration in some areas and they
occasionally take control of outlying districts. Though some of their
officials (such as provincial governors) are based in Pakistan, people
are increasingly patronizing Taliban courts, seen as more effective and
fair than the corrupt official system.
International military officials in Afghanistan state that
intelligence confirms that the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) is providing aid to the Quetta shura (council), the
main center of Taliban strategic command and control in southern
Afghanistan. Quetta is the capital of the province of Baluchistan,
where Pakistani military dealt a blow to a Baluch ethnic nationalist
insurgency and killed one of its key political leaders, the 79-year-old
former Governor Nawab Akbar Bugti, while leaving the Taliban command
center untouched.
In Kabul on September 7, General Musharraf virtually admitted these
charges. According to the New York Times, ``General Musharraf said that
his government had rounded up al-Qaeda supporters in Pakistan's cities
and had pursued foreign fighters in the frontier tribal areas, but he
said the focus has now shifted to dealing with the Taliban. . . . `We
have to see where their command structure is, who is their commander,
and we must destroy the command structure','' [said General
Musharraf].\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Carlotta Gall, ``Pakistani Leader Admits Taliban Cross Into
Afghanistan,'' New York Times, September 7, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another Taliban shura, directing operations in eastern Afghanistan,
is based in the Pakistani tribal agencies of north and south
Waziristan. It has consolidated its alliance with Pakistani Taliban, as
well as foreign jihadi fighters from Uzbekistan and elsewhere. Just one
day before Musharraf's statement in Kabul, Pakistani authorities signed
a peace deal with the local Taliban in north Waziristan. The Taliban
are expected not to cross over into Afghanistan to attack United States
and Afghan forces and refrain from killing local tribal leaders, while
the foreign militants (Uzbeks, Chechens, and Arabs affiliated with al-
Qaida) are expected to either live peacefully or leave the region in
peace. Within hours of the signing ceremony, a legislator from the
region told media that there never were any foreign militants in the
region. In neighboring south Waziristan tribal district, similar peace
deals in 2004 empowered the Taliban to the extent that they now control
the region. The agreement was widely perceived as a confession of
failure by the Pakistani military that conceded the Taliban a haven in
return for a face-saving agreement that will not be implemented.
Further north, veteran Islamist leader, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a
favorite of the ISI since 1973, operates from Peshawar and the Bajaur
and Momand tribal agencies adjacent to northeast Afghanistan.
The insurgency cannot be explained solely by its sanctuary in
Pakistan, but few insurgencies with safe havens abroad have ever been
defeated.\6\ While bad governance and corruption are indeed rampant in
southern and eastern Afghanistan, conditions are no better in northern
and western Afghanistan, where poverty, narcotics, corruption, and
criminality have bred insecurity and violent clashes over resources,
but not an anti-government insurgency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Seth Jones, Averting failure in Afghanistan, Survival, Spring
2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While ending foreign sanctuary for the Taliban is necessary, it
will not be sufficient to stabilize Afghanistan. The state and economy
need urgent reform and assistance. While no statistics are available,
people in Kabul and throughout the country complain that crime is
increasing, and that the police are the main criminals. The formation
of the Afghan National Army, a professional force now approaching
35,000 men, has been one of the success stories of the past 5 years.
One reason for the army's professionalism has been that nearly all
infantry are fresh recruits. Many of the over 60,000 men who have been
demobilized from militias have joined the police, private security
firms, or organized crime, and sometimes all three. One former
mujahidin commander who became a general in the ministry of the
interior is widely reported (including by his former mujahidin
colleagues) to be a major figure in organized crime, who was
responsible for the murder of a cabinet minister in February 2002. He
is also a partner in the local branch of a U.S.-based firm, which
provides many international offices with security guards, most of them
fighters from this commander's militia and subsequently his employees
in the ministry of the interior.
Researchers on narcotics trafficking report that, as commanders
demobilized from the ministry of defense have found positions in the
ministry of the interior, the latter became the main body providing
protection to drug traffickers. Positions as police chief in poppy-
producing districts are sold to the highest bidder; the going rate was
reported to be $100,000 for a 6-month appointment to a position with a
salary of $60 per month.
Such a corrupt police force, which also lacks training and basic
equipment (batons, tear gas, water cannons, plastic shields, secure
communications) utterly failed when confronted with a few hundred
rioters. In combination with his continuing contention with the
chairman of the lower house of parliament, Muhammad Yunus Qanuni, a
major figure from the leading faction of the Northern alliance whom
President Karzai suspected of exploiting the riots, the President
appointed members of a rival Northern alliance group to key police
positions, including police chief of Kabul.\7\ In order to do so, the
president overrode the ranking of candidates based on merit that the
new process of MOI reform required for high-level police appointees. He
did so with the assent of U.S. officials, who claim that they needed to
gain approval of others on the list in order to improve security in
insurgency-affected areas of the south and that they lacked information
on the new appointees. President Karzai argues that he is forced into
such unpalatable balancing acts because the international community
failed for years to respond to his requests for adequate resources for
the police. Whatever the reasons, many Afghans interpret the
appointment of Amanullah Guzar as police chief of Kabul and Basir
Salangi as police commander of Nangarhar, as placing organized crime in
charge of both the security of Kabul and the capital's key supply route
from Pakistan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Some of the rioters, who appeared to be mainly from Panjsher,
carried pictures of the late Ahmed Shah Massoud and chanted anti-Karzai
slogans. Qanuni firmly denies any involvement and states that the
rioters also tried to attack the parliament. The new appointees, while
previously allied with Massoud, came from the Shamali plain between
Panjsher and Kabul and assured Karzai of their loyalty during the
riots.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afghan traders and elders reported several kidnappings of rich
businessmen or their sons, in some cases leading to the payment of
large ransoms, and in other cases ending in the murder of the captive.
Most report that the kidnappers wore police uniforms and used vehicles
with blackened windows like those used by officials. On August 24,
robbers wearing police uniforms robbed a bank van of $60,000 in cash
within easy walking distance of the MOI headquarters in Central Kabul.
Such incidents have led to the departure of Afghan investors,
contributing to an economic slowdown that is aggravating unemployment
and discontent.
One difference between Iraq and Afghanistan has been that, while
Iraq has suffered an economic collapse as a result of the United States
invasion, Afghanistan averaged real non-drug annual growth rates over
15 percent. The country was so poor (the world's poorest country
outside of sub-Saharan Africa) that the expenditures of foreign forces
and organizations combined with the end of a drought, a relatively
small amount of aid, and narcotics profits could power a recovery from
a 23-year war.
But as a World Bank official put it, ``It has not been reliable,
sustainable growth.'' Afghans emphasized how unemployment feeds
conflict: ``Those Afghans who are fighting, it is all because of
unemployment,'' said a fruit trader from Qandahar. And this year the
bubble economy has been punctured. Real estate prices and rents are
dropping in Kabul, and occupancy rates are down. Fruit and vegetable
sellers report a decline in demand of about 20 percent. Construction
workers and members of the building trades in Kabul reported a decline
in employment, leading to a drop in wages by about 20 percent. A
drought in some parts of the country has also led to displacement and a
decline in agricultural employment, for which the record opium poppy
crop only partially compensated.
A major economic issue that is aggravating relations between
Afghans and the international community is the supply of electricity to
Kabul. In the past 5 years, no major power projects have been
completed. A plan to bring power to Kabul from Central Asia is 2-3
years from completion. As the city's population expands toward 5
million (up from 2.3 million 5 years ago), Kabulis today have less
electricity than they did 5 years ago. While foreigners and the rich
power air conditioners, hot water heaters, high-speed Internet, and
satellite TV with private generators, average Kabulis are now ending a
summer without fans, and fearing a winter without heaters.
For the past 2 years, Kabul got through the winter with power
supplied by diesel generators, whose fuel was purchased by the United
States. This year the United States made no such allocation, claiming
that Afghanistan did not ask for it. Regardless of who is at fault,
without the purchase of diesel, Kabul will have even less power in the
next 2 years than in the past.
The narcotics economy, however, is booming. According to the U.N.
Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), production of opium poppy with a
record crop of 6,100 metric tons this year surpassed last year's by 49
percent, overtaking the previous record crop of 1999, before the
Taliban ban.\8\ This massive increase in production belies the claims
of progress made on the basis of a 5 percent decrease last year. The
Taliban exploited the counterproductive policy of crop eradication
pressed on an unwilling Afghan Government by the United States. They
gained the support of farmers in Helmand and elsewhere by providing
protection against eradication. As I have argued elsewhere, eradication
before significant economic development is ineffective and
counterproductive.\9\ While the Taliban protect small farmers and
sharecroppers from eradication, not a single high government official
has been prosecuted for drug-related corruption, though many known
traffickers occupy high office.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Carlotta Gall, ``Opium harvest at record level in
Afghanistan,'' New York Times, September 2, 2006.
\9\ Barnett R. Rubin, Road to Ruin--Afghanistan's booming opium
industry, Center on International Cooperation and Center for American
Progress, October 7, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
recommendations
For several years, the United States responded to President
Karzai's repeated warnings about the Taliban's sanctuary in Pakistan by
assuring him that Pakistan was cooperating, that public statements were
counterproductive, and that the United States would soon take care of
the problem. Assurances that the United States would soon mop up the
``remnants'' of the Taliban and al-Qaida have proved false. Nor did the
United States or others respond with adequate resources or programs to
strengthen the Afghan state and its relations to the communities in a
way that would make Afghanistan more resistant to the Taliban.
President Karzai's strategy of temporizing with corrupt and abusive
power-holders has also weakened the state building effort, but he
claims he has had inadequate support and resources to undertake a
stronger policy. New approaches and more resources are required on both
fronts.
ending sanctuary in pakistan
Western and Afghan officials differ over the extent to which
Pakistan's aid to the Taliban is ordered or tolerated by the highest
levels of the military, but they have reached a consensus, in the words
of one senior military leader, that Pakistani leaders ``could disrupt
the senior levels of [Taliban] command and control,'' but that they do
not do so. President Musharraf virtually admitted in Kabul that they
had not even tried. Disruption of command and control is the key to
strategic victory, not control over infiltration, a tactical issue to
which Pakistan consistently tries to divert discussion. A recent
agreement by Afghanistan and Pakistan to conduct joint patrols on the
Durand Line (which Afghanistan does not recognize as a border) to
combat infiltration may help build the relationship, but it will not
end the sanctuary in Pakistan.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Ron Synovitz, ``Afghanistan: U.S. Reports `Breakthrough' on
Afghan-Pakistan Security Cooperation,'' RFE/RL, August 25, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The failure by Pakistan even to try to disrupt the Taliban's
command and control in Quetta is a major threat to international peace
and security. But pressure to stop these activities is not enough. The
Pakistani military's alliance with Islamist militant groups is a
response to perceived threats, a way of managing an outmoded border
regime, and the basis of the domestic legitimacy of the state.
To confront the immediate threat requires serious pressure. The
first condition for serious pressure is to convey a consistent message.
There is no need to berate Pakistan in public, but United States
officials should at least stop congratulating Islamabad for something
it has not done. CENTCOM Combatant Commander General John Abizaid, for
instance, stated in Kabul on August 27 that he ``absolutely does not
believe'' that Pakistan is helping the Taliban.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Fisnik Abrashi, ``Abizaid; Pakistan not aiding Taliban,'' The
Associated Press, August 27, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Efforts are already under way by the four troop contributors in
southern Afghanistan (the United States, United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, and Canada) and by NATO as a whole, to devise a common
demarche. This effort should be expanded to include Russia and China as
well. The central message of this demarche should be that failure to
take forceful action against the Taliban command in Baluchistan--at
least as strong as the action taken against the Baluch ethnic
insurgency, which led to the killing of former Governor Nawab Akbar
Bugti--constitutes a threat to international peace and security as
defined in the U.N. Charter. Pakistan, whose leaders seek parity with
their rival, India, in part by acting as a full participant in the
international community through contributions to U.N. peacekeeping
operations and the fight against al-Qaida, will seek to avoid such a
designation, with the various consequences that might flow from it.
Pakistan should not benefit from United States military assistance and
international aid and debt relief while it fails even to try to
dismantle the command structure of the Taliban.
Threats, explicit or implicit, are not enough. A realistic
assessment of Pakistan's role does not require moving Pakistan from the
``with us'' to the ``against us'' column in the war on terror account
books, but recognizing that Pakistan's policy derives from its leaders'
perceptions, interests, and capabilities, not from ours. The haven and
support the Taliban receives in Pakistan derive in part from the
hostility that has characterized relations between Pakistan and
Afghanistan for as long as both have existed. That hostility, in turn,
is partly driven by century-long grievances of Afghanistan, the threat
that Pakistan perceives from India, and the precarious nature of
Pakistan's national unity, especially the dissidence of the Pashtun and
Baluch, which Afghanistan has often supported.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Rubin and Siddique, ``Ending the Afghanistan-Pakistan
Stalemate,'' USIP Special Report, September 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The unified front that all major powers must show to Pakistan in
opposition to its harboring of the Taliban command centers must be
matched by offers to recognize the country's international status in
return for accountability for past nuclear proliferation, and to
address its conflicts with its neighbors. The United States, NATO, and
others should encourage the Afghan Government to initiate a dialog over
the domestically sensitive issue of recognition of the Durand Line
between the countries as a border, in return for secure trade and
transport corridors to Pakistani ports. Transforming the border region
into a frontier of cooperation rather than conflict will require
political reforms and development efforts in the tribal territories,
which will require further assistance, but, to repeat one United States
senior leader's words, ``Until we transform the tribal belt, the United
States is at risk.'' The United States should also weigh in with India
and Afghanistan to assure that they make extra efforts to assure
Pakistan that their bilateral relations will not threaten Islamabad.
Such a shift in United States policy toward Pakistan requires a
transformation from supporting President Musharraf to supporting
democracy. Pakistan's people have shown in all national elections that
they support centrist parties, not the Islamist parties on which the
military has relied. The killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti by the army has
sparked revulsion throughout the political spectrum, weakening the
military's position and strengthening calls within Pakistan to resolve
internal and external disputes through political means, rather than
violence. The reassertion of the civilian political center, as well as
of Pakistan's business class, which is profiting from the
reconstruction of Afghanistan, provides an opportunity to move beyond
the United States' history of reliance on military rulers toward a more
stable relationship with a Pakistani nation moving toward peace with
its neighbors and with itself.
strengthening the state
Creating a reasonably effective state in Afghanistan is a long-term
project that will also require an end to major armed conflict, economic
development, and the gradual replacement of narcotics by other economic
activities. Recent crises, however, have exposed internal weaknesses
that require both long-term programs and transitional measures.
The two fatal weak points in Afghanistan's Government today are the
ministry of the interior and the judiciary. Both are pervaded by
corruption and lack basic skills, equipment, and resources. Without
effective and honest administrators, police, or judges, the state can
do little to provide internal security.
Within the last year, Coalition military forces have devised a plan
for the thoroughgoing reform of the MOI. The Coalition estimates that
this plan is 3 years behind the similar program for the ministry of
defense, and that it will take at least a year before Afghans see any
effects on the ground.
In Afghanistan, the president and minister of interior appoint all
administrative and police officials throughout the country. The
Afghanistan Compact requires the government to establish, by the end of
September, a mechanism to vet such appointments for competence and
integrity. Finding competent people willing to risk their lives in a
rural district for $60-$70 a month will remain difficult, but such a
mechanism should help avoid appointments such as those hastily made in
June.
Government officials have identified the biggest gap in the
administration as the district level. Elders (community leaders) from
over 10 provinces agreed, repeatedly complaining that the government
never consults them. Some ministers have proposed paying 5 to 10 elders
and ulama (learned clergy) in each district to act as the eyes and ears
of government, to be brought to meet governors and the president, to
have authority over small projects, and influence what is preached in
the mosques. They estimate the cost of such a program at about $5
million per year.
These leaders could also help recruit 200 young men from each
district to serve as auxiliary police. They would receive basic police
training and equipment to serve under a police commander who has gone
through the reform process. Unlike militias, auxiliary policeman would
be paid individually, and the commander would be a professional from
outside the district. The elders would be answerable for their
behavior.
Courts, too, may require some temporary auxiliary institutions.
Community leaders complained constantly about judicial corruption. Many
demanded the implementation of shari'a law, which they contrasted not
to secular law, but to corruption. As an elder from Paktia said,
``Islam says that if you find a thief, he has to be punished. If a
murderer is arrested, he has to be tried and executed. In our country,
if a murderer is put in prison, after 6 months he bribes the judge and
escapes. If a member of parliament is killed, as in Laghman, his
murderer is released after 3-4 months in prison because of bribery.''
Lack of law enforcement undermines the basic legitimacy of the
government. Enforcement by the government of the decisions of Islamic
courts has always constituted a basic pillar of the state's legitimacy
in Afghanistan, and failure to do so brands a government as un-Islamic.
The August 5 swearing in of a new Supreme Court, which administers
the entire judicial system, will make judicial reform possible, but
training a corps of prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers will take
years. The only capacities for dispute resolution and law enforcement
that actually exist in much of the country consist of informal village
or tribal councils and mullahs who administer a crude interpretation of
shari'a. During the years required for reform, the only genuine
alternatives before Afghan society will be enforcement of such
customary or Islamic law, or no law. The Afghan Government and its
international supporters will therefore have to find transitional ways
to incorporate such procedures into the legal system by recognizing
them and subjecting them to judicial or administrative review. Such a
program would also put more local Islamic leaders--over 1,200 of whom
have been dropped from the government payroll this year--back under
government supervision.
Attempts to inject aid into the government have met a major
bottleneck: Last year the government managed to spend only 44 percent
of money it received for development projects. The ministry of rural
rehabilitation and development accounted for nearly half of the
government's development spending, while key ministries like
agriculture, energy and water, and public works could not execute their
budgets. According to the ministry of finance, donor countries spent
about $500 million on poorly designed and uncoordinated technical
assistance, to little effect. The World Bank is designing a facility
that will enable the government to hire the technical advisors it
needs, rather than trying to coordinate advisors sent by donors in
accord with their own priorities and domestic constituencies. The
United States should support this initiative as well as a major crash
program to increase the implementation capacity of line ministries.
the economy and narcotics
Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world except for a
handful of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Policy makers focusing on
``killing terrorists'' or ``holding democratic elections'' too often
ignore this fundamental fact, which affects everything we try to do
there. As numerous studies have documented over the years, Afghanistan
has never received the investment of resources needed to stabilize it.
International military commanders, who confront the results of this
poverty every day, estimate that we need to ``double'' our resources.
Doubling the economic resources going to Afghanistan would still leave
it far behind Iraq, and such aid would be far more productive in
Afghanistan. Major needs are accelerated road building, purchase of
diesel for immediate power production, expansion of cross-border
electricity purchase including deals with Pakistan for the south and
east, investment in major water projects to improve the productivity of
agriculture, development of the infrastructure needed for mineral
exploitation, and a massive program of skills building for both the
public and private sector.
Afghanistan desperately needs to take on the threat from its
narcotics economy in a way consistent with its overall struggle for
security and stability. United States policy consisted first of aiding
all commanders who fought the Taliban, regardless of their involvement
in drug trafficking, and then, when the domestic war on drugs lobby
raised the issue, to pressure the Afghan Government to engage in crop
eradication. To Afghans this policy looks like rewarding rich drug
dealers and punishing poor farmers, a perception skillfully exploited
by the Taliban.
The international drug control regime, which criminalizes
narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits
for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect
them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies. As long as
we maintain our ideological commitment to a policy that funds our
enemies, however, the second-best option in Afghanistan is to treat
narcotics as a security and development issue. The total export value
of opiates produced in Afghanistan has ranged in recent years from 30
to 50 percent of the legal economy. Such an industry cannot be
abolished by law enforcement. The immediate priorities are massive
rural development in both poppy-growing and nonpoppy-growing areas,
including roads and cold storage to make other products marketable;
programs for employment creation through rural industries; and
thoroughgoing reform of the ministry of the interior and other
government agencies to root out the major figures involved with
narcotics, regardless of political or family connections.
News of this year's record crop is likely to increase pressure from
the U.S. Congress for eradication, including aerial spraying. Such a
program would be disastrously self-defeating. If we want to succeed in
Afghanistan, we have to help the rural poor (which is almost everyone)
and isolate the leading traffickers and the corrupt officials who
support them.
is the glass half-full?
Some policy makers and observers claim that critics of the effort
in Afghanistan have excessive expectations and focus on challenges
rather than achievements. They want to talk about how the glass is
half-full, not half-empty. As this analysis shows, the glass is much
less than half full. In any case, it does not matter how full the glass
is, if someone manages to tip it over or pull out the table on which it
is resting.
The Afghan intelligence analysis quoted at the head of this report
referred implicitly to the saying of Sun Tzu: ``Know your enemy, know
yourself; One hundred battles, one hundred victories.''
United States policy makers have misjudged Afghanistan and
misjudged Pakistan; most of all, they have misjudged their own capacity
to carry out major strategic changes on the cheap in an area they do
not understand. While the Bush administration has sown war and
strengthened Iran while claiming to create a ``New Middle East,'' it
has failed to transform the region where the global terrorist threat
began and persists. If the United States wants to succeed, we need to
focus on this core task. To repeat once again, ``Until we transform the
tribal belt, the United States is at risk.''
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Rubin.
We will have once again a 10-minute period of questioning
by Senators who are present.
Let me just say at the outset that you have placed a high
focus, and deliberately so, on Pakistan and the thought that
there may be as many as 50 leaders that are in that area that
might be apprehended according to the communication that you
receive. What is the basis of your intelligence or other
reports that would lead you to believe that Quetta, in fact, is
the headquarters, that there are that many persons of authority
who act as a basis for destabilization of the neighboring
country?
Dr. Rubin. The statement I read to you is not my analysis.
It is a statement of a senior western analyst from a NATO troop
contributing country that has access to all intelligence
reports of all agencies. Without--I cannot divulge some
confidential communications that I have had with people in
Kabul. Let me just say that while I was in Afghanistan I met
with President Karzai, the commander of the coalition, the
commander of NATO, the head of the NATO intelligence agency,
the U.S. ambassador, the U.N. special representative of the
Secretary General, and many other people, and I did not find
anyone who disagreed with that assessment.
The Chairman. Now, you mention in your paper that even if--
and this is a big if--the destabilization created by this nexus
of al-Qaeda in Pakistan could be eradicated or even controlled,
then you move to the basic point you made, that Afghanistan is
one of the poorest countries in the world, rivaling at the
bottom in per capita income only in some sub-Saharan African
countries. Then as a part of that, I think you said only 5
percent of the gross national product, which is a very small
figure, is apparently utilized by the government. That is the
budget that President Karzai and his legislature have. Is that
correct?
Dr. Rubin. Well, their actual budget for expenditure is
somewhat larger because of foreign assistance. But basically,
out of their own resources they have enough money to buy
everybody in the country a case of Coca-Cola and then there is
nothing left for schools, defense, and so on.
The Chairman. So there really is a huge dependency upon
these foreign funds, from whichever sources they may come. We
have talked a little bit with General Jones about the
insufficiency of those contributions, although he mentioned a
$27 billion budget request to the international community over
a 5-year period of time, indicating maybe $13 billion of that
has been identified, maybe even $11 billion already expended.
I raise this point because it seems to me most Americans
taking a look at Afghanistan would not know just off the top of
the head how poor the country is, how limited are the resources
of this democracy that is now charged with providing services,
and how dependent upon the international community, which we
found in our previous testimony has rather fractionated chains
of command.
This is not meant to be terribly confusing because it arose
from Enduring Freedom, the military operation of the United
States. That continues. Now we have the ISAF operation of NATO
involving the 37 countries that General Jones mentioned. But
then also, as he pointed out in his chart, this overall ceiling
and roof which is the United Nations command, has apparently
administrative responsibility for each of the five pillars,
only one of which the United States has a major responsibility
over, although we contribute to each of the others.
But there are at least three different situations there
with which this Government in Afghanistan must cooperate or
contend, as the case may be. Because of deficiencies in the
training of police or security, as you say, it is very hard to
eradicate drugs in an area in which conflict is proceeding,
with maybe a reliance of some Afghans upon, if not Taliban,
others, warlords or what have you, that provide security that
the legitimate forces are not providing.
Into all of this then, in your paper you mention that there
is a severe shortage of electricity. This has been mentioned in
Iraq frequently as very, very demoralizing.
But describe, if you can, just that factor alone, keeping
the lights on in the country?
Dr. Rubin. Well, first, Mr. Chairman, if you like I can
provide a little bit more background on the general
reconstruction situation very briefly.
The Chairman. Good.
Dr. Rubin. First, the figures--let me clarify the figures
that I had passed to General Jones. The estimate of $27.6
billion is the estimate of the Government of Afghanistan, aided
by international financial institutions, for its reconstruction
needs looking forward for the next 5 years.
The Chairman. I see.
Dr. Rubin. There are some pledges for that. The $13 billion
is the amount of funds that have been committed, that is
contracts signed, since the government of President Karzai came
to power. That is looking backward. So far, $11 billion of that
has actually been disbursed.
Now, much of that, first of all, was not spent on
reconstruction. Much of it was spent on postwar humanitarian
operations. That is the reason that we have had no new power
plants, that we have very late start of road construction,
relatively few road constructions, no major water projects in a
country where water is the most scarce input into agriculture,
which is the major economic activity, and so on. That is, the
reconstruction funds are inadequate.
Second is the efficiency of the way those reconstruction
funds are used is very poor. Part of that I have to say is due
to U.S. legislation which requires that our aid funds be spent
on U.S. contractors, and that tremendously inflates the cost
because U.S. contractors are not really able to operate in
Afghanistan. So they spend a lot of money on overhead and then
they just do subcontracting.
As far as coordination is concerned, I will not go into
some technical details. There is a fund through the World Bank
to provide a trust fund--budgetary support--for the Afghan
Government. As you know as members of our national legislature,
one of your most important functions is passing the budget and
oversight of public expenditure. That is your basic function
actually. When a public expenditure is appropriated and carried
out by foreigners, the legislature has very little to do
actually.
So it is important that, even if it is being funded by
foreign aid, to the extent possible it be put through the
budgetary mechanism so they can develop accountability and the
capability of implementation. Again, some of our legislation
prevents us from appropriating funds in that direction. We have
made an international commitment in the Afghanistan Compact to
try to move more in that direction and I hope we will do that.
As far as electricity is concerned--oh, let me just say
also, the model for coordinating this now, it is not under U.N.
administration. Since the Government of Afghanistan is now
fully established and has a constitutional structure and all
three branches operating, if not particularly well, they are
now in charge and there is a joint international Afghan body
called the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board, which is in
charge of all this theoretically.
Now, on electricity, there is a severe shortage of
electricity. Some of the major cities purchase it from abroad,
Herat from Iran, Mazar-e Sharif from Uzbekistan. On the one
hand, Kabul city, the capital, which is the real political
problem, will according to plan get electricity in 2 or 3 years
via transfer from Central Asia, where there is a lot of
hydropower. In the period until then, the only way to keep the
lights on will be to continue to purchase diesel to run some
very inefficient power plants.
The United States was doing that. We have cut back on that
this year. We have to get that money there this month or there
will not be fuel for this winter. I do not have up-to-date
information on where that stands, but that is key. There were
riots in Kabul May 29. If there is no electricity this winter
there could be much more severe riots.
The Chairman. Well, you have clarified a little bit the
chain of command. But with this government plus the
coordinating group, say from the U.N., is there some overall
business plan for how these five pillars General Jones
described and that you have touched upon are to be
administered? Is there some way in terms of our oversight that
we could understand who is supposed to do what?
Dr. Rubin. Well, the Afghan Government--and I actually
worked on this project as an advisor--has issued its interim
Afghan national development strategy----
The Chairman. I see.
Dr. Rubin [continuing]. Which was submitted to the London
conference last January. That is available online. I can assist
you in seeing that, and there is an implementation strategy
attached to that. It still needs to be much better developed,
but it is there for you to look at.
The Chairman. And funded, so we have some idea.
Dr. Rubin. Yes. It has been costed approximately. But I
should note that it is difficult to estimate the costs because
the cost depends on the mechanism of delivery. A school built
by USAID costs $125,000. A school built by the Afghan
Government costs $40,000 to $50,000.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Sarbanes.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL R. SARBANES, U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Sarbanes. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Rubin, we are very pleased to have you here. I have
long held the view that we diverted our attention and resources
away from Afghanistan far too early and that we are
increasingly paying a price for that. It seems to me that they
have put a government into place. They have chosen a leader
through a constitutional process, which commands some
credibility, and we need to provide stronger and continuing
support in order to try to make a success out of it, and I am
very much worried about what is taking place.
Let me ask you, to what do you attribute the significant
upsurge in Taliban insurgent activity that we have seen in
recent times?
Dr. Rubin. Thank you, Senator.
The Taliban were not defeated; they were displaced, and
they went to Pakistan. In Pakistan, they have reorganized
themselves with very little hindrance, both in the tribal
territories and in the areas they originally organized
themselves. The Taliban were always a joint Afghan-Pakistani
operation. As General Musharraf said in Kabul last week, the
Government of Pakistan supported the Taliban. They helped
create them and fund them. Their base--and in fact they have
more political support in Pakistan than they do in Afghanistan.
In addition--and of course, the United States focused
solely on a narrowly defined, or mainly on a narrowly defined
counterterrorism mission, namely looking from time to time for
the top leaders of al-Qaeda, did not hold Pakistan's feet to
the fire about harboring the Taliban.
Now, in addition, the war in Iraq has created a new
terrorist safe haven, a new proving ground and testing ground
for tactics and strategy, and we have seen, even in news
reports, as well as people tell me in intelligence reports,
that there has been an exchange of information and knowledge
between the two fronts, which has resulted in the use of
improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, the astronomical
increase in them and of suicide attacks, and also the strategic
objective of attacking non-American NATO troop contributors in
order to weaken their political will, which worked to some
extent in Iraq because of the lack of support, but is not
working in Afghanistan.
Senator Sarbanes. Well, if you were put in charge of the
Afghan policy of our government, what would be your five-point
plan to try to address this situation? What should we be moving
to do to address this situation, which I think is of growing
dimensions and growing concern?
Dr. Rubin. Well, first I should say that I believe that the
war in Iraq is not related to the war--has no relationship to
the attack on us on September 11. I am mentioning this because
the fact that our government has projected it as part of the
war has unfortunately had a contaminating second order effect
on the real theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in that
unfortunately it has radicalized the Taliban and pushed them
closer to global jihadis, with whom they had a troubled,
somewhat troubled relationship in the past.
So first I would try to refocus on the real politically,
militarily, and in every way on the true source of global
terrorism, which is in that region, and change our policies in
the Middle East. That would have an effect in the area there.
Second, within the theater itself I would confidentially--
so perhaps I should not say it here--but I would confidentially
explain to Pakistan that it is very difficult for us to
continue to give them military assistance and debt relief while
they are harboring the people who are killing our troops, and
that they have to be at least as active in taking down the
Quetta shura as they were in combatting the insurgency, the
Baluch nationalist insurgency in the same province, which
resulted in their killing of a respected civilian leader, Nowab
Akbar Bukti.
I would overall at least double the amount of resources
that we are spending on reconstruction in Afghanistan and
explore how we could put more of those through the government
budget.
Third, I would--and here I want to commend the coalition
for now having developed a coherent plan for reform of the
police, but that will take several years before effects are
really seen on the ground. I would develop an interim plan for
both strengthening the police and strengthening the judiciary
on an emergency basis by using as a transitional basis certain
community institutions in Afghanistan, which would require a
relatively small amount of funding--I spell this out in my
paper--in order to support the creation of community policing
and community-based dispute resolution and other kinds of
justice mechanisms, which could then be linked to the judicial
system.
Fifth, fourth, I would focus on--I would work with the U.N.
Office of Drugs and Crime to develop an internationally
accepted list of drug kingpins and major drug traffickers in
Afghanistan, have that adopted by the U.N. Security Council,
and issue sanctions against them, combined with a political
initiative within Afghanistan offering a conditional amnesty if
they will bring their money into legitimate investment and make
some kind of restitution, in a way analogous to transitional
justice measures after a period of war on conflict when you do
not seek to punish every crime, but have some kind of measures
of reconciliation and restitution.
Then finally, I would focus a great deal of the increased
reconstruction assistance on the basic elements of
infrastructure for employment creation and rural development.
Senator Sarbanes. That all suggests to me that in your
judgment the structures that are there to try to remedy the
situation are acceptable or workable, because you have talked
about moving more resources through the Government of
Afghanistan, the coalition effort, and so forth. Is that a
correct perception on my part?
Dr. Rubin. In part. Of course, you limited me to five
points. Of course all of those, in particular the Afghan
Government requires major reform measures. I might note there
is a document, the Afghanistan Compact, which the United States
played a very important role in drafting and agreeing to, as
well as the United Nations and 60 other countries and
institutions, which lays out a program for the next 5 years,
including detailed benchmarks on this reform.
So the overall chapeau, the overall theme, I would say, is
implementing the Afghanistan Compact. But obviously there are
some things that need to be prioritized and those are the ones
in my opinion that I mentioned.
Senator Sarbanes. What is your reading on the coalition
forces and how they are proceeding and their capabilities?
Dr. Rubin. Of course I am not a military analyst. In my
view, while we made serious errors in the beginning, analogous
in a way to errors made in Iraq of not having enough forces and
also not having the right mandate--we had no mandate--no force
had the mandate to provide security for Afghans afterward. That
has changed, I think largely due to the initiative of our
commanders on the ground, who came to understand the situation
better than some people in this town.
At the moment, the coalition has shifted to a more
appropriate type of footing, and of course is also handing off
to NATO. I think both the coalition and NATO commanders would
agree, and I think General Jones said this, that at this point
the major task is not a military one. It is political and
economic. The military can help
create some of the conditions for that, but if the civilian and
diplomatic efforts are not there to follow through then the
tactical victories of which he spoke recently will not be
translated into strategic success.
Senator Sarbanes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Sarbanes.
Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
From a strategic point of view, would you have delayed
going into Iraq, understanding that it might take the attention
away from Afghanistan? In other words, if we had a decision to
make, we could have gone any time we wanted to, the WMD came
along, people got hyperventilated, we got to go in there, we
got to do the job--as I look at it, if you step back, that
could have been done some other time.
So, in your opinion, was that a mistake to go in there,
because it dissipated our resources and took the focus off of
Afghanistan?
Dr. Rubin. First, of course, I do not have a vote on the
record to document what I thought at the time, but I believed
that containment was working and there was no need to invade
Iraq at any time, nor was there a legitimate reason to do so. I
believe that when you are waging a war in which your national
security is at stake you must identify your enemies very
carefully.
When we were attacked by Japan in 1941, we did not declare
general war against totalitarianism and attack the Soviet Union
at the same time. We were allied with the Soviet Union, which
was not a particularly nice or democratic regime.
Senator Voinovich. The answer to that is that you would not
have done it under either WMD reasons or under change of
regime. Okay.
Dr. Rubin. May I add one other point?
Senator Voinovich. Yes.
Dr. Rubin. Which is, we are engaged in a political battle
for our legitimacy as the leader of the world, and part of what
has weakened us and has undermined for instance success in NATO
is that our prestige and credibility is now at an all-time low.
That is particularly the case in the Muslim world, where at the
moment Osama bin Laden is more popular than our President in,
for instance, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Now, that means that--and part of the reason for that is
many people, including Muslims, accepted that we had a
legitimate right to attack, to counterattack against the people
who attacked us, but when we then attacked a country that had
nothing to do with September 11, but that had a lot of oil and
that was in a sense a strategic opponent of us on some
political issues, in a sense we were carrying out, we were
implementing the image of us that al-Qaeda was trying to
project, and that caused us to lose a great deal of credibility
and, frankly, it makes the administration's rhetoric about what
we are trying to accomplish in the world not credible to the
overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world and
elsewhere.
Senator Voinovich. Second, you made it very clear that if
we are going to be successful against the Taliban that
President Musharraf and the Pakistanis are really going to have
to cooperate with us and get serious. What argues against their
not doing that? In other words, is Musharraf fearful that if he
really gets in and does the job against the Taliban that he is
going to jeopardize his life or his future, political future,
on the one hand? On the other is, what incentive does he have
to go in there and do what we want him to do?
Dr. Rubin. I thank you for asking that question, because I
would not like to, under the pressure of time, leave the
impression that I am broadly against Pakistan or against
President Musharraf. I believe that President Musharraf is
personally courageous and he is not influenced by fears of what
might happen to him personally. But Pakistan's national
interest is much more complicated than sometimes we understand.
Pakistan has been, ever since its inception, locked in a
conflict with India, a country which is eight times larger and
more economically dynamic and also a fellow owner of nuclear
weapons. In addition, Afghanistan has never recognized the line
separating Afghanistan from Pakistan and there has always been
a hostile relationship between the Governments of Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Even the Taliban refuse to recognize that border
between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan's key internal problem has been integrating the
ethnic minorities that live along the border with Afghanistan,
the Baluch and the Pashtuns, and it fears that--and Afghanistan
has at times in the past, sometimes with Soviet assistance,
stirred up trouble in that area.
For all of these reasons, Pakistan has used the funding and
support of mujahedin, jihadi groups, and what we call
terrorists as an instrument, as a force multiplier. They have
managed to keep 700,000 Indian troops tied down in Kashmir,
away from the border with Punjab, at a very low cost by use of
these groups. Similarly, they imposed a high cost on the Soviet
Union and so on.
Therefore this is something that has become very well
integrated into their foreign policy because of some real
security concerns that they have. We have to help them address
those security concerns with regard to both India and
Afghanistan.
Senator Voinovich. I take it from what you have said that
you feel that the resources that are really needed coming from
the United States ought to be redoubled in terms of
reconstruction to indicate a real seriousness about really
making a difference in Afghanistan.
Then, how important is it to our allies--I am pleased that
they have been able to join us there and send their troops, but
how urgent is it for them in terms of their own economic or
their own security interests to be there and that it be
successful? Or is this just something they are doing to show
their colors and they are not as committed to seeing that
Afghanistan be successful?
Dr. Rubin. Well, I appreciate that question as well because
it enables me to clarify something. What I actually meant is
the total international resources devoted to Afghanistan should
be doubled. That would mean doubling our contribution, but it
would mean doubling everyone else's as well, not just ours.
I think if you look at the overall foreign policy
commitments of many of our allies there, you will see that it
is a much higher priority for them than it is for us, relative
to other things. For instance, Afghanistan is by far the
largest international commitment of the Government of Canada,
both in terms of foreign assistance and in terms of troops. The
same is true for the Netherlands. The same is true for the
United Kingdom with the exception of Iraq. I believe it may
also be true to some extent for Germany. Certainly it is one of
the largest military operations that they have, though it is
small. So it is important for them.
Senator Voinovich. It is important. And why is it important
for them?
Dr. Rubin. I think mainly it is important to them because
of their relationship with us, because they see that--they
believe that a secure United States is essential to their own
security. And despite the very strong disagreements that many
of them have over Iraq and other aspects of our policy, they
really very much do want to stand with the United States
whenever they can.
Some of them also have been attacked, of course.
Senator Voinovich. Also they--do you think that they are
going to stay at the wheel on this when they start encountering
deaths and so forth? Some of them I think thought they were
going over there and do a little peacekeeping and now they are
in areas where this is real serious and they are losing troops
there. Do you think they are going to have the willpower, the
staying power, to say we are going to stay in there in spite of
the fact that we are losing people and maybe back home it might
be unpopular?
Dr. Rubin. Certainly there is controversy over it in some
countries. But--and I have traveled to many of these countries.
I should also say Spain, it is very important for them. The
governments in these countries are making very serious efforts
to explain the importance of this to their people. That is why
President Karzai is addressing the Canadian parliament today.
My impression is that, while I cannot predict exactly what
will happen, that the governments and the majorities there are
firmly--the governments are very firmly committed to doing
this. The people do not always understand exactly the reasons
for it, but the governments are making efforts to explain it
because it is an important commitment to them.
Senator Voinovich. I will be interested. As I mentioned, we
will be at that NATO parliamentary meeting. It might be good to
look at an aspect of which countries are there and talk to
their parliamentarians and try to get a feel for how committed
they are to this and do they understand the importance to their
respective countries.
Dr. Rubin. Well, I have addressed the NATO
interparliamentary assembly actually on two occasions, and I
have found that there was a rather high level of commitment,
though they had a number of questions quite similar to the ones
that you have posed today.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
Dr. Rubin. Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Voinovich,
for your questions, and likewise for your service on the
interparliamentary work with NATO. I would add that, as we all
know, there will be a summit of NATO nations in Riga in the
latter part of November in which my understanding is this is
likely to be a part of the agenda. We have been having some
informal meetings to try to think through what ought to happen
at that meeting.
But one thing that will happen, I suspect, is the
discussion that General Jones alluded to this morning, and that
is that the military budgets total of many of our NATO allies
have continued to diminish as a percentage of their gross
national product, and that is not a new factor. This has been
adrift for a while. So even when there is commitment to do some
things, the resources, particularly with expeditionary forces
that can go outside the borders of the country, are still very,
very limited. This is a predicament for NATO as an
organization, quite apart from its commitment in Afghanistan.
But I appreciate the point you have made in response,
because it is a very important one in terms of the continuity.
The thing that keeps running through my mind as I listen to
this, and I do not want to be adhering simply to the budget, is
that it is the most important aspect, but the needs are so
tremendous here in terms of money and, as you have said, beyond
that, how the money is spent organizationally, how it actually
hits the ground in Afghanistan, how it buttresses the self-
government of that country and its fledgling democracy and the
sophistication of that distribution.
You have mentioned an overall plan coming from the
Government itself, of Afghanistan, which you have referenced
today. But it would seem to me this is going to be a very
important aspect of our continuing debate. Otherwise we are
likely to have debate on the floor or hearings in which we
lament certain parts of what we have talked about today--lack
of training of police or security people, why the warlords are
still playing such a role, whatever happened to the al-Qaeda,
and so forth. These are very, very important items, but
underlying all of this has to be the institution-building that
is going to require money, and from a country, as you started
out with, that is extremely poor and that has from its own
resources so little to deal with, although we all hope that
will grow. I think in your paper you mention you can have
exponentially large rises in the percentage of GNP in a country
when the base is that small. So that is an encouraging factor.
But I thank you very much for your paper and your
testimony. They have been most informative and helpful to us.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Chairman, could I just ask one last
thing?
The Chairman. Of course.
Senator Voinovich. You alluded to the issue of the drug
problem in the United States and I got the impression that some
of these drugs are coming into the United States.
Dr. Rubin. Well, I perhaps should have said the developed
world. I believe actually the bulk of the narcotics produced in
Afghanistan are consumed in Iran and Pakistan.
Senator Voinovich. So that is why the Iranians are so
interested in making sure it stops.
Dr. Rubin. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. The reason I bring it up is I just had
our local FBI director visit with me from Cincinnati and he
said, ``Senator, the issue of terrorism is one that we are
gravely concerned about.'' But he said, ``The biggest issue
that we have got here in the United States that we are not
paying attention to is the drug problem, and that our resources
are being kind of spread out and we really have got to look at
that.'' It is still there and we need to deal with it and we
are not directing our attention to it.
I think you remember the other hearing we had a year or so
ago where we had the folks in here and they were talking about
how active the Russian mafia is in the United States and seemed
to be doing about whatever they wanted to do because we do not
have the resources to deal with that problem.
So from my perspective you are saying the biggest market is
in those countries you just mentioned.
Dr. Rubin. That is in physical quantity. The biggest market
in money is in Europe and of course in the United States.
If I may add, if you do not mind my mentioning something
that I heard in the other house yesterday, Dr. Walt, a
Republican from Texas, mentioned at the hearing yesterday that
in his view we had failed to learn the lessons of Prohibition,
which of course provided the startup capital for organized
crime in the United States, and that in effect by turning drug
use into a crime we are funding organized crime and insurgency
around the world, and it may be that we need to look at other
methods of regulation and treatment.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. It is a
fascinating thought that you just imparted, that although the
bulk of the drugs may be utilized by Iran and Pakistan, that
the greatest value for those that are not imbibed by these
countries comes from Europe and the United States. Why? Because
the people surely do not receive it for free, but what is the
distribution? Why are Pakistan and Iran so afflicted by drugs?
Dr. Rubin. Well, they are closer. Basically, the price--the
cost of production is a negligible portion of the price of
narcotics.
The Chairman. So it is transportation.
Dr. Rubin. No, no. It is risk because it is illegal. If it
were not illegal it would not be--it would be worth hardly
anything. It is only its illegality that makes it so valuable.
The Chairman. Another fascinating topic.
Well, we thank you again for your helpfulness, Dr. Rubin.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]