[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 110-108]
ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AND THE WAY
AHEAD
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JANUARY 23, 2008
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Tenth Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina DUNCAN HUNTER, California
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
ADAM SMITH, Washington California
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California JEFF MILLER, Florida
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia TOM COLE, Oklahoma
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam ROB BISHOP, Utah
MARK E. UDALL, Colorado MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
DAN BOREN, Oklahoma JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
NANCY BOYDA, Kansas PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut THELMA DRAKE, Virginia
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
KATHY CASTOR, Florida
Erin C. Conaton, Staff Director
Julie Unmacht, Professional Staff Member
Aileen Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Caterina Dutto, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2008
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, January 23, 2008, Assessment of U.S. Strategy and
Operations in Afghanistan and the Way Ahead.................... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, January 23, 2008...................................... 47
----------
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2008
ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AND THE WAY
AHEAD
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Barno, Lt. Gen. David W., USA (Ret.), Director, Near East South
Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University. 5
Inderfurth, Ambassador Karl F., John O. Rankin Professor of the
Practice of International Affairs, George Washington University 8
Rubin, Dr. Barnett R., Director of Studies, Center on
International Cooperation, New York University................. 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Barno, Lt. Gen. David W...................................... 51
Inderfurth, Ambassador Karl F................................ 62
Rubin, Dr. Barnett R......................................... 78
Documents Submitted for the Record:
Letter from Anthony H. Cordesman, Burke Chair in Strategy,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, dated
January 16, 2007, on strategy in Afghanistan, submitted by
Mr. Skelton................................................ 97
Afghanistan Map.............................................. 107
Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Questions submitted.]
ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AND THE WAY
AHEAD
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, January 23, 2008.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The Chairman. Good morning. Today we meet to continue our
discussion on Afghanistan, but I would be remiss if I didn't
welcome back our ranking member to our ranks and we look
forward to continued work with him.
And, Duncan Hunter, you have our friendship and our
admiration, and we thank you for being back with us today.
Mr. Hunter. Mr. Chairman, it is good to be back at my day
job.
The Chairman. We thank you very much for your
contributions, and we know they will continue.
We have an exceptionally qualified panel of experts on
Afghanistan today. We welcome Lieutenant General David Barno,
who is now with the National Defense University; Ambassador
Karl Inderfurth, with the George Washington University; and Dr.
Barnett Rubin, New York University.
We really appreciate your being with us. This is a very
important subject and a very important hearing.
Recently, our committee held a hearing with Secretary Gates
and Admiral Mullen on this same subject matter. And in his
opening testimony, Admiral Mullen emphasized that our main
focus militarily in the region of the world right now is
rightly and firmly in Iraq. That is his quotes. And he said it
is simply a matter of resource and capacity.
``In Afghanistan,'' he said, ``we do what we can. In Iraq,
we do what we must.'' And it gave me some trouble, and I
believe that we currently risk a strategic failure in
Afghanistan, that we must do what it takes to avoid a
disastrous outcome.
We want to be discussing this with you gentlemen this
morning, and we must reprioritize and shift needed resources
from Iraq to Afghanistan. In my opinion, we must once again
make Afghanistan the central focus on the war against
terrorism.
The President's recent decision to deploy additional troops
to Afghanistan this spring is encouraging. Some 3,200 Marines
will help train the Afghan national security forces as part of
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and, also, strengthen the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led international
security assistance force (ISAF).
However, this deployment is largely a short-term effort to
fill the gap in NATO requirements which remain unfilled by our
allies. It falls far short of the long-term strategy that is
necessarily for lasting success in that country. And it appears
there will still be a significant shortage of trainers and
mentors for the Afghan national security forces.
At the same time, there are predictions of explosive growth
in Afghanistan's poppy fields this year. Economic development
continues to lag. Official corruption is still widespread. The
authority of the central government remains limited. And
terrorist safe havens in Pakistan continue to thrive, at a time
when internal instability in that country has been on the rise.
Challenges in all these areas contributed to a record level
of violence in Afghanistan last year. If not handled more
effectively, I am afraid the security situation in Afghanistan
will continue to deteriorate.
Be clear, there have been some truly impressive gains made
since 2001. However, any gains could quickly vanish if we don't
capitalize on them.
While our NATO allies and our partners must certainly do
more, the U.S. must lead by example. We cannot expect our
allies to step up if the United States itself does not
demonstrate a strong commitment to the success of the
Afghanistan mission.
The U.S. effort needs to be commensurate with the
importance of our goal to ensure that the Taliban and al Qaeda
in Afghanistan are destroyed for good and Afghanistan will
never again become a safe harbor for terrorists.
Gentlemen, we look forward to your testimony. This could
very well be one of the most important hearings of the year and
we are anxious to hear what you have to say.
We must do our best to make things better and to make
things successful in Afghanistan. We need to hear your thoughts
on that.
Ranking Member Duncan Hunter, welcome back.
STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Chairman,
thank you for holding this very, very critical hearing. This is
an area that you have focused on for an extended period of
time, and lots of other members of this committee, and one
which is becoming increasingly crucial to the American mission.
This hearing builds upon testimony that this committee
received from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen last month, and it is
especially timely considering the President's recent decision
to deploy 3,200 U.S. Marines to Afghanistan to support
counterinsurgency operations and train the Afghan police and
army.
I would like to recognize our witnesses, who each bring a
unique perspective to today's hearing. So, gentlemen, your
testimony offers an important outside assessment of the
security challenges and opportunities facing Afghanistan.
Now, in 2001, the United States and our allies from around
the globe came together under Operation Enduring Freedom to
take the fight to our common terrorist enemy and, in
particular, deny al Qaeda safe haven.
Today, in Afghanistan, approximately 11,000 U.S. military
personnel continue to serve under the Operation Enduring
Freedom banner and are responsible for conducting special ops
missions and training the Afghan military.
Additionally, 15,000 U.S. troops serve as part of the
International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, which is a NATO-
led coalition of 41,000 forces from nearly 40 countries,
responsible for conducting nationwide security and stability
operations.
And, Mr. Chairman, those figures are important because they
reflect that even with the operations in Iraq and the continued
leadership, world leadership of the United States in the war
against terrorists, even with those burdens, we are supplying
roughly half the forces of the free world in the Afghanistan
operation, and, personally, I think that reflects an anemic
response from America's allies.
Over the last six years, our collective efforts under OEF
and ISAF, along with those of the Afghan people, have produced
tangible results. A nation that suffered from war and economic
deprivation for nearly three decades now has a democratically
elected government in which women are represented.
Better access to health care is now there. Signs of
improved infrastructure, such as newly constructed roads and
education facilities are manifesting themselves. And, today, I
am interested in hearing your thoughts on how we sustain and
expand these gains.
A stable and modern Afghanistan is important to the Afghan
people, America and the international community, but achieving
that end state has been hampered by distinct challenges.
During the last year, the security situation has declined,
particularly in the south. The insurgents have altered their
tactics, increasing their use of suicide and roadside bombings.
Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters continue to find sanctuary in the
hostile terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, allowing
for cross-border infiltration.
Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan continues to rise,
reaching its highest levels last year. So I am also interested
in your perspectives and recommendations to improve the
international effort to mitigate these challenges.
Also, General Barno, given your experience serving as the
commander of the U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan
between 2003 and 2005, and I am interested in your thoughts
regarding the evolution of counterinsurgency operations,
particularly in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Some consider U.S. troops to be capable of conducting
counterinsurgency, while NATO forces are not capable of these
very same operations. It is my understanding, however, that
U.S. conventional troops, such as U.S. Marines in Al Anbar
province, hone their counterinsurgency skills by executing, by
doing, by what you might call on-the-job training.
And, therefore, it is my belief that our NATO and coalition
partners must not shy away from engaging in the
counterinsurgency fight. In fact, joining the counterinsurgency
battle is the only way for NATO to build this important
capability.
Finally, I want to express my strong concern about the
apparent unwillingness that I mentioned of some of our NATO
allies to uphold or increase their military commitments to the
NATO-led ISAF mission. Also, some allies restrict their forces
from certain geographic and operational missions in
Afghanistan, effectively hamstringing our commanders on the
ground and forcing them to waste time and energy in developing
cumbersome workarounds in order to get the job done.
Our 25 NATO partners must seriously consider the possible
adverse impacts of heavily caveated commitments. Also, I note
that two-thirds of our allies do not commit two percent of
their gross domestic products to defense, and two percent is
supposed to be the minimum level of defense spending for NATO
membership.
So it seems to be that not meeting this minimum requirement
and not providing sufficient or sufficiently flexible forces to
Afghanistan should have some consequences for these nations.
NATO, as an alliance, is capable of doing more and should
be doing more. Toward that end, I recently wrote a letter to
all 25 ministers of defense, encouraging them to identify and
provide the maximum number of troops, military resources, and
civilian support to Afghanistan or risk losing access to
defense contracts offered by U.S. taxpayers.
It is my hope that our partners will step up to the task at
hand.
In closing, success in Afghanistan, defined as a stable and
moderate nation, is vital for Afghanistan and for the common
security interests of the U.S. and our allies. NATO nations and
our other international partners should join the U.S. and make
every effort practical to give the people of Afghanistan the
foundation and tools they need to maintain security and
stability.
And, last, Mr. Chairman, to go back to this fact that while
NATO allies seem to have a problem in cumulatively all together
coming up with enough forces to meet that 3,000 troop
requirement in southern Afghanistan, they have no problem in
marshaling their lobbyists to come over here and try to get
pieces of American defense contracts that otherwise would be
undertaken by American workers, the very workers who send on
the average of 1,000 bucks a year out of their paychecks in
taxes for the defense function of government that supports the
defense of the free world.
And, you know, gentlemen, we continue to hear the term
``interoperability'' as a compelling reason for allowing our
NATO allies to have big pieces of the U.S. defense budget, so
that we can interoperate. And, yet, when we have an opportunity
to interoperate, it appears that sending troops becomes mission
impossible for a number of the NATO allies.
So I would like to have you comment on that, whether this
interoperability is really something that exists or simply
exists in rhetoric as a prelude to the acquisition of defense
contractors by our NATO allies.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A very timely hearing and I look
forward to the testimony.
The Chairman. Thank you so much.
At this moment, I submit for the hearing record a recent
letter, dated January 16, from Dr. Anthony Cordesman, with the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, to our
committee on the subject presently before us.
Without objection, that will be made part of the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
The Chairman. Before calling and starting with General
Barno, I must express my deep concern, and I hope you gentlemen
will address it. Should there be a failure in Afghanistan,
heaven forbid, but should there be a failure in Afghanistan,
and it be apparent that it be NATO's fault or lack of stepping
up to the plate, what happens to NATO thereafter?
I have had various conversations with various people,
including our counterparts in Great Britain, and I think they
have the same concern that I have. And if you would hopefully
touch upon that, each of you, briefly, I would appreciate it.
General Barno, we will begin with you. And we thank each of
you for taking the time and being with us. You are the experts
in this country on that country. So we thank you.
General.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. DAVID W. BARNO, USA (RET.), DIRECTOR,
NEAR EAST SOUTH ASIA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, NATIONAL
DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
General Barno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Skelton,
Ranking Member Mr. Hunter, and members of the Armed Services
Committee, thanks for your very kind invitation to speak today
on a subject close to my heart--our efforts in Afghanistan.
I would note to the committee up front that I remain a
member today of the U.S. Defense Department in my capacity as
the director of the Near East and South Asia Center for
Strategic Studies at our National Defense University here in
Washington, but my views that I present today are my own.
After 19 months of service in Afghanistan, I remain
crucially involved, professionally and personally, in working
to ensure the success of our long-term undertaking there.
In my judgment, our efforts today in Afghanistan stand at a
strategic fork in the road. We have important choices to make
this year, choices which will ultimately determine the outcome
of this noble and worthy mission.
I should also note a few brief comparisons between Iraq and
Afghanistan for the committee. Afghanistan is a landlocked,
mountainous agricultural country, with less than 30 percent of
its population living in urban areas. It is among the world's
poorest countries, with few to no natural resources.
However, in size, it is nearly 50 percent larger in land
mass than Iraq, 647,000 square kilometers to Iraq's 437,000.
And Afghanistan also contains 4 million more people than Iraq,
with a population of 31 million to Iraq's 27 million.
That is important as we look at our relative commitment in
each of these countries and the size and the demands of the
geography and the population involved in each place. Clearly,
Afghanistan, a larger country, larger population.
We entered Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11
attacks to destroy al Qaeda, to overthrow their Taliban allies,
and to help Afghanistan return to the community of nations as a
democratic state.
We remain in Afghanistan today to secure these goals, but,
also, in recognition of the strategic importance of the region
centered around Afghanistan. Our presence there, with our NATO
allies, forms a vitally important and stabilizing influence on
a volatile part of the world.
Afghanistan stands at the center of an immensely important
strategic region. To the [east] is Pakistan, the world's second
largest Muslim state and one possibly armed with several dozen
nuclear weapons. Its current crisis should give us pause as we
reassess our mission in Afghanistan, a mission with
implications that extend well beyond Afghanistan's borders.
On the northeast border of Afghanistan is China, a power
with growing regional energy and transportation interests.
To the north of Afghanistan lie three former republics of
the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan,
nations always feeling the pull north from Russia and east from
China. And, finally, to the west, Iran, a growing regional
power whose intentions remain suspect.
Mr. Chairman, this tour of the map sheet around Afghanistan
clearly paints the picture of a region with major strategic
importance to the United States and one in which we must
continue to exert powerful and sustained American leadership.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 107.]
General Barno. Since your visit to me in Afghanistan, Mr.
Chairman, in 2004, much has changed there. Security incidents,
defined as reported acts of violence, nationwide totaled 900 in
2004 at the time of your visit. Last year, in 2007, they
totaled 8,950 across Afghanistan.
Roadside bombs in 2004 amounted to 325. Last year, 1,469.
Suicide bombings, a decidedly non-Afghan phenomenon, totaled
three in 2004. Last year, they exceeded 130, a deadly new
tactic which has been imported from Iraq.
Total bombs dropped by U.S. and coalition air forces in
Afghanistan in 2004 totaled only 86. Last year in Afghanistan,
NATO air power, primarily American forces, dropped 3,572 bombs
in the country, noteworthy in a war that all of us commonly
define now as a complex counterinsurgency fight.
Finally, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, poppy production is on
the rise. In 2004, poppy production totaled 131,000 hectares,
while dropping to 104,000 in 2005, ballooned once again in 2007
to a new record of 193,000 hectares under cultivation.
These selected trend lines, although certainly not a
comprehensive depiction of all the sectors in Afghanistan, are
certainly cause for concern.
On the military side of the ledger, we have also witnessed
major changes in our approach since your visit in 2004. During
2004, our military forces under U.S. coalition command totaled
nearly 20,000, including typically about 2,000 coalition
soldiers from among our friends around the world, operating
under an Operation Enduring Freedom mandate, generally with
robust counterinsurgency rules of engagement.
NATO back in 2004 comprised only about 7,000 troops, mostly
on Kabul and in the northeastern corner of Afghanistan, and
those forces were primarily engaged in peacekeeping and
reconstruction tasks.
The combined total numbers of international forces in 2004,
U.S., coalition and NATO, amounted to about 26,000 all told.
Today, international forces in Afghanistan total just over
50,000, with another 3,200 American Marines pledged to join the
effort soon.
In the command and control arena, the U.S. three star
headquarters, Mr. Chairman, that you visited in Kabul, a
headquarters which built a comprehensive civil military
counterinsurgency plan that was tightly integrated with our
U.S. embassy there, led by Ambassador Khalilzad, that
headquarters has now been disestablished.
In late 2006, NATO assumed overall military command in
Afghanistan. Our senior U.S. military headquarters today is now
a two star organization and it is located once again at Bagram
Airbase, a 90-minute drive north of Kabul.
Its geographic responsibility under NATO comprises only
Regional Command East, territory representing less than one-
quarter of that same headquarters' responsibilities in 2004.
The enemy in Afghanistan, a collection of al Qaeda,
Taliban, Hezbi Islami, and foreign fighters, is unquestionably
a much stronger force than the enemy we faced in 2004. There
are many reasons for this change, but I am afraid it is an
undeniable fact. And, of course, this enemy extends in many
ways and regenerates itself within the tribal areas of
Pakistan.
Mr. Chairman, in the face of these admittedly incomplete,
but worrisome trends, I can offer one equation--success in
Afghanistan--and I absolutely believe success is attainable in
Afghanistan. Success in Afghanistan equals leadership plus
strategy plus resources.
Only if we fully commit our best efforts in all three
areas--leadership, strategy and resources--and relentlessly
integrate these three internally within the U.S. effort and
externally within the international effort will we be able to
seize the opportunities available to reverse these troubling
trends.
Only if we make this a regional effort, most especially
connecting Pakistan and Afghanistan in one dimension, will we
be able to once again move in a positive direction. And only if
we objectively and dispassionately examine both where we have
been and where we are today will we be able to correctly shape
where we must go.
If we fail to do so, we face great risks, in my estimation,
to our prospects for success.
I look forward to being able to expand upon some possible
further prescriptions during your questions.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of General Barno can be found in
the Appendix on page 51.]
The Chairman. Thank you, General.
Ambassador Inderfurth.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR KARL F. INDERFURTH, JOHN O. RANKIN
PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Ambassador Inderfurth. Thank you very much. Chairman
Skelton, Ranking Member Hunter, members of the committee, thank
you for inviting me to take part in this assessment of
Afghanistan and especially the opportunity to express my views
on the subject of the way ahead.
I would like to begin by commending the committee for
taking up Afghanistan as one of its first items of business at
the new session. Not only does this reinforce the committee's
determination that Afghanistan not become the forgotten war,
but I believe it sends a signal to the Bush Administration to
put Afghanistan and, I would add, Pakistan at the top of this
country's security agenda, where they should have been for the
past six years.
Unfortunately, Afghanistan has taken a back seat to U.S.
military involvement in Iraq and still does. As Joint Chiefs of
Staff (JCS) Chairman Mullen told this committee, ``In
Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.''
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I believe some
way must be found to deal with this perpetual problem of
Afghanistan being overshadowed by the Iraq war. I hope this
committee will do what it can and must to rectify this
situation.
Mr. Chairman, we have been asked to provide our views on a
number of critical issues facing Afghanistan today. I have done
so in my written testimony, which I am submitting for the
record. But in my brief oral statement, I would like to call
attention to just one--the challenge Afghanistan faces from the
use of Pakistan as a safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda
and the rising level of violence and political instability, as
evidenced by the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are joined at the hip. There can
be no successful outcome for Afghanistan if Pakistan is not a
part of the solution. Engaging Pakistan is one of the crucial
elements of success in Afghanistan.
So what can the U.S. and the international community do
about this fundamental issue? First, the future stability of
both Afghanistan and Pakistan depends on the development of an
effective joint strategy to counter the Taliban-al Qaeda
sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal border areas and the expanding
extremist insurgency in other parts of Pakistan.
This means working with Pakistan to root out Taliban
ideology from its own society and shut down its extremist
madrasahs, the religious schools, and training camps that fuel
the Taliban insurgency and cross-border activities.
Countering cross-border infiltration is critical. The
trilateral Afghanistan-Pakistan-NATO military commission is an
important mechanism in this regard. So is the strengthening of
the U.S. military presence along the Afghan side of the border.
There is also a need to reduce the level of mistrust that
exists between the U.S. and Pakistani military at the
operational level. The appointment of a U.S. special envoy to
work with Afghanistan and Pakistan could contribute to tackling
these issues.
Washington also needs to convince Islamabad to work more
closely in joint counterterrorism operations that can bring
U.S. resources, including intelligence and military assets to
bear in the border areas.
But I want to caution here that any large-scale U.S. troop
intervention in Pakistan's tribal areas would be disastrous for
the Pakistani state and for U.S. interests and would not
provide a lasting solution to the problem.
A more effective strategy involves working with Pakistan's
military to integrate these areas into the Pakistani political
system and, once they are secure, provide substantial
assistance to build up the economy and social infrastructure,
something to which we should contribute, along with the World
Bank and others.
Second, the key to achieving the goal of a stable and
peaceful Afghanistan is to improve the longstanding troubled
relationship between Kabul and Islamabad, including mutual
recognition of their still disputed unresolved border. Again, a
special U.S. envoy could be helpful in this regard.
Third, over the longer term, the United Nations should
convene a high level international conference attended by all
of Afghanistan's regional neighbors and other concerned major
powers. The goal would be a multilateral accord to affirm
Afghanistan's standing as a permanently neutral state, like the
Congress establishes for Switzerland.
Such an agreement would provide an international foundation
for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. and NATO military forces
from a stable and secure Afghanistan.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to conclude by offering one
final recommendation for those of you who have not already done
so, and that is to see ``Charlie Wilson's War,'' the film. I am
sure many members of this committee already know this story, as
well as your former House colleague, Charlie Wilson.
The film is certainly entertaining, but it also contains,
at the end, a very serious takeaway message. Simply stated,
after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help the
Afghan Mujahideen Freedom Fighters defeat the Soviets and the
Red Army, we walked away from Afghanistan after the Russians
withdrew their forces in 1989.
We left it to Afghanistan and, I would add, Pakistan to
pick up the pieces after 10 years of brutal warfare. Funding
and high level U.S. attention to help the Afghans face their
new challenges of security and rebuilding evaporated.
We all know what happened after that, up to and including
9/11. So this is my point and this is the takeaway message from
the movie. We still have time to get Charlie Wilson's War
right, for to have, as they say, a happy ending.
We have been given a second chance to do the right thing
for Afghanistan and for the United States. I sincerely hope we
don't miss this opportunity. This committee has a major role in
assuring that we do not.
Of one thing I am certain--without a genuine and long-term
commitment on the part of the United States and the
international community, Afghanistan will fail again.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Inderfurth can be
found in the Appendix on page 62.]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
Dr. Rubin.
STATEMENT OF DR. BARNETT R. RUBIN, DIRECTOR OF STUDIES, CENTER
ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Dr. Rubin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking
Member. Thank you for this invitation.
Actually, I believe the first time I visited the Rayburn
Building was sometime more than 20 years ago when I came here
to see Charlie Wilson during the first part of this problem.
I very much appreciate the invitation, partly because even
before I knew of this hearing, I had noted the testimony of
Admiral Mullen and commented about it in my Web blog, and I
believe that the Admiral was correctly stating the situation as
it is, not necessarily as he wishes it were.
That is that from September 12, 2001, the Administration
did not put a priority on Afghanistan, still does not place a
priority on Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq has done
incalculable harm to our ability to succeed in Afghanistan.
I won't go into that, I will try to look forward, but that
is the reality that we are living with and there is no simple
way out of it.
Now, I think that General Barno made an important point,
which is the need for a multifaceted, focused strategy which
brings together military, political and economic elements. I
will talk about that a little more generally, but, first, I
want to tell you--just mention something very specific that has
recently come to my attention and which I think is indicative
of the problem we have, and the people affected may be in this
room. I am not sure.
There are some Afghan-American investors and other
specialists who have developed a program for the manufacture of
textiles, oilseeds and other job creation industries in
southern Afghanistan, which is the area with the highest level
of poppy production and the most Taliban activity.
After two years of trying to get it funded through U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), they were told
that it could not be funded because it would violate the
Bumpers Amendment, which is an amendment to the Foreign
Assistance Act (FAA) prohibiting USAID from funding anything
that might compete with the U.S. and world markets.
I think this is a remarkable example of the failure to
align our tools with our strategy and I hope that Congress will
look into it. I do not believe that was the intention of
Senator Bumpers at the time.
Now, first, why is this so important? There is a common
misconception that both of my colleagues have addressed. I want
to make it even more specific. The misconception is to think
that what we are talking about is, one, a war and, two, in
Afghanistan. That is not what we are talking about.
What we are talking about is a political, economic and
military struggle in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I believe in one
of his recent writings, General Barno has said the military
part of it is about 20 percent.
Therefore, one of the most important things that we can do
is to align the international effort, and it is a fully
international effort under U.N. resolutions, with the U.N.
mission, not just the U.S. and NATO, every other international
organization, as well, with the political and economic--align
the political and economic parts of it with the military
effort.
Now, there is one proposal I would just address now, which
is the proposal to appoint a special international coordinator.
The reason that this is potentially important, though risky, is
that the center of gravity of this struggle specifically is the
relationship between the Afghan people and their government, on
the one hand, and the Pakistani people and their government, on
the other hand.
That is, in a sense, the strategic goal of this struggle is
to help those people build states that can provide security. To
do that, we have a problem that while we have military there
that can clear the enemy out of areas, it is the state of
Pakistan and Afghanistan that have to hold those areas, and we
have underinvested in police, the justice system and the
administration, which is what can hold those areas afterwards.
We have over-invested even, in a way, in elections rather
than in police, justice and administration, which are the key.
The way that we deliver aid in Afghanistan and many other
places actually undermines that effort, because it puts the
money largely outside of government channels and forces the
government to divert a lot of its energy to responding to 60
different donors.
The coordinator could be important, particularly if, one,
his main function is not to pressure the Afghan government, but
coordinating the international actors and, second, if, to do
so, he has some measure of budgetary authority over all of the
international aid and if more of it were consolidated into a
common fund.
That is an important point for Congress, because often in
discussions with the Administration, I am told that Congress
will not permit the Administration to provide the aid in a more
coordinated way, and I wish you would look into that.
On Pakistan, I will just say a few words. As I say, it is a
two-nation struggle. Taliban and al Qaeda are based and
centered in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan, though they conduct
operations in Afghanistan. They are now operating militarily
not only in the tribal agencies of Pakistan, but in the settled
areas of Pakistan, and have struck at the very heart of the
Pakistani political system.
There is no way to succeed in Pakistan and Afghanistan
without a partner in Pakistan whose actions in alliance with us
are also supported by the main political forces in Pakistan.
Unfortunately, today they are not, because the military regime
of General Musharraf lacks legitimacy in Pakistan today.
And a key question for the future of our effort is whether
there will be an election in Pakistan whose outcome the people
of Pakistan will accept as legitimate and whether those who win
those elections will actually be able to govern rather than
being subject to restrictions by the Pakistan military, as has
been the case in the past.
That will be the condition for their ability to extend the
control of the Pakistani state further into those areas which
are now in the tribal agencies and out of its effective
governance, which is the key measure that we need in order to
secure that border area.
Finally, on the opium question, there was an article by
Richard Holbrooke in this morning's ``Washington Post'' which
mentioned me and I endorse the point of view in that article.
Opium drug production is a tremendous problem in Afghanistan,
but it is the result of insecurity. It is not the cause.
It has migrated to those areas along the Pakistan border
where the Taliban are most active.
Second, the way to combat it in a way that is compatible
with our goals is not crop eradication. The problem in
Afghanistan is not the farmers earning money. The problem is
the 80 percent of the drug economy that goes to dealers,
traffickers, processors, terrorists, Taliban and corruption.
We need in our drug policy to win the support of the people
of Afghanistan, including farmers who are now growing poppy,
for their government and for the effort that we are making
together with their government in order to break their links
with the traffickers and others who are profiting from the drug
economy.
And if we proceed down the road we are now going, which is
to pressure the Afghan government to undertake a much higher
level of eradication of the crop, that is an attack on farmers'
livelihood, rather than addressing the roots of the problem in
insecurity and corruption, I am afraid that we will--rather,
integrate counter-narcotics with counterinsurgency, we will
make counter-narcotics into a recruiter for the insurgency.
Done properly, counter-narcotics will give Afghans what
they have been demanding--more security, more development, the
removal of corrupt power-holders. But done improperly, I am
afraid it will contribute to many of those negative trends
which were summarized by General Barno and also by Mr.
Cordesman in his testimony.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Rubin can be found in the
Appendix on page 78.]
The Chairman. Dr. Rubin, thank you very much. And,
gentlemen, thank you.
I would like to ask just one question before I call on our
ranking member and the other members.
General Barno, it is in regard to your recommendation about
a three star headquarters being reestablished, American
headquarters being reestablished.
How would we go about that? How would that be integrated
into the NATO structure, if at all? We had it, it seemed to
work. And if you had the magic wand, how would you reestablish
that and make it a success?
General Barno. Mr. Chairman, let me answer that by
describing what I thought was probably the best profile of
comparative advantages, if you will, between NATO and the U.S.
during the time I was there, and that occurred right before I
left in the spring of 2005.
At that time, NATO was going through its various phases of
expansion around the country and they had gotten to what they
called phase two and the phase two expansion, the picture
looked like NATO having ownership of the northern half of
Afghanistan and the U.S. and the coalition having ownership of
the southern half of Afghanistan.
I think a version of that could be looked at today,
although I still subscribe to the idea that NATO has overall
ownership here in Afghanistan.
In this model, in 2005, NATO played to its comparative
advantage. It played to its ability to do stability operations
or peacekeeping operations in the north, which was a more
benign area. The U.S. and the coalition played to its
comparative advantage, which was robust counterinsurgency
operations across the southern half of Afghanistan, which was
the contested area.
And so I think in each case, the alliance and the U.S.
elements within were playing to what each of them did best. The
headquarters itself in Kabul had the great strength, the U.S.
three star headquarters, of being connected to the American
embassy there in a way that was the engine of the overall
integrated effort, both the military and embassy working hand
in glove.
I went to meetings every morning with Ambassador Khalilzad
there. I lived on the embassy compound. And we had an
integrated political, military, economic, social, security
strategy for Afghanistan. And that doesn't exist today, of
course, because there is no American headquarters with the same
functionality for the embassy to link into.
So I think that as I look backwards in time, that was a
picture that was about right, in my judgment. It produced a lot
of capability that kept each of the different elements in areas
where they were very effective, NATO in the north in stability
operations, coalition, Americans in the south focused on
counterinsurgency.
I think today, if you were to consider reestablishing that,
physically, I think, there needs to be an American headquarters
in Kabul that connects into the embassy and potentially
connects into the Afghan government and the other elements
going on there to help be an engine within the international
effort.
I think our ambassador and our senior U.S. military
commander need to be the engine that helps the international
effort be effective. And today, if we do have a special envoy
being appointed, Paddy Ashdown or someone else, he may be the
senior civil element in the 80 percent international. Clearly,
the ISAF commander will be the senior military commander.
But beneath them, I think there is a layer that ought to be
an American engine helping to drive that forward. And, again,
just looking backwards, without trying to prognosticate to the
future, I think the picture I saw that worked the best was that
picture at about phase two, with NATO focused on the north,
perhaps with a deputy looking at that, U.S., perhaps American
deputy with a headquarters focused on the south.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony. I think that some
of the recommendations that you have made, especially, Mr.
Ambassador, that we must try to fix Pakistan in some way in
terms of bringing that border area, that no man's land into an
integration with the mainstream in Pakistan is a long, long
bridge to cross.
I mean, you have got a remote area divided by politics, by
lots of tribal crosscurrents and by massive geographical
challenges. And the idea, also, of trying to seal up that
porous border with those rugged mountain ranges and canyons,
mountain ranges up to 18-19,000 feet, all of the physical
challenges that that brings, I think that is a very, very
difficult thing to accomplish.
It is easier to say than it is to accomplish. And so the
borderlands is not an easy fix. You have got 100,000 troops
there right now, including, as I understand, the division that
they moved over from the Indian border, which is supposed to
have some level of competency.
I guess, General Barno, for you, the one question I would
like to ask is this: what is the pressure point that we have
been trying to use to move the NATO allies, the 25 recalcitrant
allies, let us say maybe 20 recalcitrant allies, with a few
that are fairly strong, to participate in this operation,
because obviously the decision to move the 3,000 Marines into
the southern operations is really basically a result of a
failure to bring even an anemic response from the allies in
participating there.
So when our leadership sits down with the NATO defense
ministers, what is the point of leverage? Is this simply
jawboning or a few speeches in between the courses?
I get to the point where I think that the NATO boys are
spending more money on catering than they are on military
operations in Afghanistan. But have we really been exercising
any real attempts at leverage in terms of bringing about
participation?
General Barno. Well, sir, I am not sure I have got a good
answer for that. I know that as I have watched the reporting on
our interactions with NATO over the last six months, and
Secretary Gates, in particular, and his various visits there, I
think our outlook publicly and our rhetoric has changed a bit
and I think it has changed, to some degree, in recognition that
there is a limited amount of political will within NATO to do
more, certainly in the south.
I think as I traveled around Europe last year, what I heard
in visiting various NATO countries was that the populations in
those countries, in their own mind and in the minds of their
government, had not necessarily signed up to go to Afghanistan
to fight a counterinsurgency war against the Taliban.
In their mind and I think their governments', to some
degree, in many cases, viewed that they were going to
Afghanistan to do a peacekeeping operation of sorts, and that
was the degree of political support they had.
Now, that is untrue of the people fighting in the south,
clearly, in terms of the British, the Canadians, the Dutch, but
many of the nations that are in the north, they are in the
north because their populations are, it would appear, only
willing to be in Afghanistan to do something other than combat
operations.
So I think it would take a fairly significant change in
their perceptions about the purpose of NATO in Afghanistan, in
the case of these members, the purpose of those NATO members in
Afghanistan to take on the combat mantle.
Several nations have done that. We should be very impressed
by what, I think, the casualties certainly in the fighting that
the British have been involved with, that the Canadians have
been involved with, but there are a number of other NATO
nations, as you well know, that have not been willing to go to
the south and, in my judgment, it appears it is because their
populations are not necessarily willing to do that.
Mr. Hunter. And, General, don't we have a leadership
problem? If you have got--if, in fact, we are in this global
war against the terrorists and we have a major forum for that
and the center of that struggle is Afghanistan, the idea that
we are not able to impress upon the leaders of the NATO
membership that this is, in fact, a war of enormous consequence
to them, it is kind of remarkable.
Are we working this thing at the high level to show them
the big picture that we feel that we understand?
General Barno. I can't speak personally for the degree to
which we are doing that. What I read is clearly that that is a
major effort the U.S. is undertaking.
But I think that those countries themselves, the leadership
in those countries have a responsibility to make that case to
their people. Their national leaders have got to make the
argument why the Afghanistan effort is an important strategic
arena to be involved with and why there is an extraordinary
threat that is emanating from there.
Mr. Hunter. Okay. I guess bottom line, then--and, Mr.
Chairman, thank you for the time here. Bottom line, then, do
you think we are making the strong case to the NATO leadership?
Do you think U.S. leadership is making the strong case to the
national leadership of the NATO member?
General Barno. I think we are, yes.
Dr. Rubin. May I comment?
The Chairman. Yes, please, Doctor.
Dr. Rubin. I believe it is fundamentally mistaken to blame
the NATO allies for what is going on, for the problems in
Afghanistan.
Mr. Hunter. Well, Doctor, hold on a second. I am not
blaming them for what is going on in Afghanistan. I am blaming
them for not being able, among 25 member nations, to comprise a
force of 3,000 required troops in the southern piece. That is
roughly 100 people apiece.
And the idea that the NATO membership can't come up with
100 soldiers apiece is quite remarkable.
Dr. Rubin. Well, first, I just want to say that Canada's
casualties in Afghanistan are proportionately higher than
America's casualties in Iraq.
Second, there is, indeed, as you say, a failure of the----
Mr. Hunter. And Canada is doing a good job in the south.
Dr. Rubin. Yes.
Mr. Hunter. But there are only a few people in the south
working, as you know.
Dr. Rubin. But the failure of leadership, I am afraid, is
in Washington. I myself have gone to many of the NATO member
countries trying to argue with the members of parliament and so
on that they should increase their commitment to this important
operation, which I have been working on myself.
I can tell you people in other countries around the world
do not want to cooperate with this Administration and this
Administration has not made the case for American leadership,
and that is one of the main problems that we are facing in
Afghanistan.
And there is a limit to how much you get by bullying and
threatening them about defense contracts.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Mr. Chairman, may I also----
The Chairman. Yes, Mr. Ambassador.
Ambassador Inderfurth [continuing]. Inject a comment,
perhaps a diplomatic comment into this discussion?
In my written testimony, I have attached a recent poll, in
June of 2007, by the Pew Global Attitude Survey, which shows
you the problem we are facing, and that is the attitudes of the
publics of the countries that we are working with about whether
to keep troops there or to take them out.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
beginning on page 70.]
Ambassador Inderfurth. And only two countries listed, and
you can see this in the testimony, in only two countries is
there a majority of those of the publics saying keep the troops
there, and that is the U.S. and the U.K.
So there is a public support problem that all of these
nations have to address.
I am a little bit encouraged by the fact that as we are
approaching a very important NATO summit in Budapest in early
April, that a number of the leaders, world leaders, I think,
recognize that they have to do more to convince their publics
that they are in a fight with us and that it is in their
interest to be there.
You have had visits to Kabul in the last several--at the
end of December by Gordon Brown from the United Kingdom (U.K.),
France's president, Sarkozy, Australia's new prime minister,
Kevin Rudd, Italy's prime minister. Canada has just issued its
Manley's report.
I think there is a growing recognition among world leaders
that they have got to do more to inform their publics about the
stakes involved in Afghanistan and I think this is leading up
to a very important summit in April in Budapest.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Ortiz.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for
our witnesses that we have today.
Last week, the Terrorism Subcommittee hosted a briefing
with special forces who recently returned from a mission in
Afghanistan.
The team members stated that the alliance of the locals is
tied to commerce, basically who is perceived as winning, and I
think that is human nature. You go with whoever you think that
is winning the war.
But they also acknowledged the importance of reconstruction
on winning the hearts and the minds of the Afghanistan people.
We know that operations in Iraq are consuming most of the
resources, equipment, money, and readiness, and the U.S.
strategy only to do what we can in Afghanistan reminds me of
the statement that was made some time back by the secretary of
defense--you go to war with the army you have got, not with the
army that you want to go with.
I think that what we are going to have to do is work [it
out so] that the majority of the resources be committed to
counterinsurgency or to reconstruction. And I think that one of
the problems we are having now is that we just don't have
enough troops.
I mean, how are we going to be able to do that? And I think
this is having an impact on readiness, it is having an impact
on retention and recruitment, because when we send young men
and women to war, they want to be sure that they have got the
equipment, their families are taken care of, and I think that
we are lacking.
So maybe you can answer that question. Where do we go,
operations or to reconstruction? Where do we put the money or
the manpower?
Ambassador Inderfurth. I don't think there is a choice. I
think we have to do both. I think we have to do more
operations. I think that the focus on security is a
precondition to being able to do reconstruction.
So security is key. I think that there have been some
important steps in the right direction of late. I think the
decision to send in the 3,200 Marines is an important step.
Secretary Gates, when he was in Kabul, on his last visit,
said that the U.S. would see an increase in the Afghan national
army, which is key to success there, from 70 to 80,000, and
that the U.S. would support that.
In the past, actually, Secretary Rumsfeld had recommended
that those numbers be reduced to 50,000. So we are heading in
the right direction. There has also been a $7.5 billion
increase in U.S. assistance to Afghan security forces,
including the police, by the way, which is in need of even
greater need of support right now than the army. They are in a
terrible state.
So security is absolutely essential. But if that doesn't
also lead the way toward a greater degree of construction,
reconstruction, you will see in my written testimony that the
head of the Army Corps of Engineers says there needs to be a
construction surge in Afghanistan, construction surge. That is
the right kind of surge right now in Afghanistan.
And so more money has to go there. Afghanistan has been
underfunded, undermanned, and given less attention than it has
needed, and that is one reason that we are in the state we are
today.
So I think that it is both security and construction.
Dr. Rubin. If I could just elaborate a little bit what we
mean by security. General Barno mentioned that Afghanistan is
tied for last place as the poorest country in the world. I
don't know if everyone fully appreciates that.
It is tied for last place with Burundi and Sierra Leone in
terms of its income.
Now, its government is also in last place in terms of the
amount of taxes that it collects. It has tripled its tax
collection since this intervention. It now collects five
percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in revenue. That
means it has an extraordinarily weak government, which is not
even present in most of the territory.
The most important thing we can do is help Afghans
strengthen those governmental institutions, the army, for one,
but equally or even more important, the police, the justice
system, and the administration. We have lagged behind very
badly on that.
Finally, no matter how well we do within Afghanistan
itself, it will ultimately be a stopgap measure as long as the
situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate and the Taliban
and al Qaeda continue to have their headquarters in Pakistan.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, welcome.
Dr. Rubin, I couldn't agree more with your very last
statement about the realities, and it is been endorsed in the
comments of your two colleagues, about the need to integrate
our approach in Afghanistan with the problems we now face in
Pakistan.
Mr. Ambassador, you mentioned that you felt it would be a
grievous error for us to introduce troops into the Federally
Administered Tribal Area (FATA). I assume you would make that
statement. And I don't want to assume, so I will ask you.
Of course, the official Musharraf position, and I would
assume any possible successor, would have that same position,
is to tell us not to come in. But if that were to change, if
Pakistan were to welcome, if that is the right word, U.S.
forces present in Afghanistan, whether it is in Swat or FATA or
wherever, would that change your position?
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, one thing we are dealing with
is the fact that the United States has only a 15 percent
favorable rating in Pakistan. We have got a real problem there
in terms of Pakistani support for American efforts.
The government is actually more supportive of our efforts
than the Pakistani people. I think we can turn that around, but
it is going to take some time and including demonstrating to
them that we are fully behind free and fair elections on
February 18 in their country.
But I think that the military connection, the fact is, I
mean, this is coincidental, but we have just seen in Islamabad
today Admiral Fallon, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
commander, meeting with the army chief of staff, General
Kiyani. They are talking about military cooperation.
I think what we need to do with Pakistan is to work with
them and their armed forces in a cooperative way. We can't
inject ourselves unilaterally or with large numbers of troops,
but we can find ways to cooperate with them. We can actually
have greater intelligence and military training, assistance,
military equipment.
We have been providing a number of things to them. They
have got the 80,000, 100,000 troops along that border area. We
have been providing things like night vision goggles and the
rest.
Unfortunately, there has been--I mention this in my
testimony--a level of mistrust that has developed between the
U.S. and Pakistani military, because they have to turn in those
night vision goggles for accounting purposes every 30 days, at
least that was the last report that I heard.
We need to work more closely with them. We need to have
more of the International Military Education and Training
(IMET) training. We need to get closely connected with them to
address not only the issue of the cross-border infiltration
into Afghanistan, but what is a spreading insurgency in
Pakistan itself, out of the tribal areas, into the settled
areas, as they call them, into Swat. A lot that we need to do
there.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
General Barno, I have been to Afghanistan and up in the
mountains with the 10th Mountain Division and been to Pakistan,
but I don't think anybody has a better on-the-ground
perspective, at least in this hearing today, than you do on the
circumstance.
Do you feel, given the realities, the historical lack of
control in that area, whether it is Shah Massoud or any other
of the warlords, that Pakistan has in the near term and, by
that, I will say the next decade, a reasonable chance to get
control of those areas where none has ever existed? Do you view
the frontier corps as a plausible approach to this? What is
your perspective on that?
General Barno. I think Pakistan is going to have to assert
further control in those areas. In the near term, in the next
several months, I think with the turmoil in Pakistan recently,
the military has been very focused inwardly toward the settled
areas, toward the urban areas, maintaining stability inside of
Pakistan during this time of some degree of confusion and
uncertainty.
So I think that that will limit their ability to be
effective in the tribal areas in the near term.
However, as the year goes on and, presumably, as things
stabilize, I think they are going to have to turn their
attention to more effective counterinsurgency efforts in those
tribal areas.
I am hopeful the U.S. can assist with that. I know Admiral
Fallon, prior to this visit, has been there and has discussed
the possibility of additional U.S. trainers and assistance and
support to help work with the Pakistani military to improve
their counterinsurgency capabilities, because as you know, they
were very focused for their entire existence on the major
conflict with India as their primary focal point.
They had not spent any time in counterinsurgency. In fact,
the regular army in Pakistan had never been in the tribal areas
in the history of the nation until 2004, when they conducted
their first offensive out there. And those were very uneven in
performance and outcome.
They sustained a lot of casualties, they inflicted a number
of casualties. But counterinsurgency is not something that is,
I would argue, one of the core competencies right now as a
military. So I think we are going to have to work with them
very carefully to grow their capacities and to help make them,
with their support and a mutual effort, more effective in
counterinsurgency efforts to be able to reassert control in
these areas, because the areas I think are probably more
problematic today than they certainly were three or four years
ago.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Lieutenant General Barno, I was curious. You said if
several factors occur, then you would have success in
Afghanistan. I would be curious to hear how you would define
success in Afghanistan and I would be curious how the other two
members of the panel would react to your definition.
General Barno. I have actually sketched out a few thoughts
on that that I can share. One is I think success equals a
stable, sustainable Afghan government that is broadly
representative of the people of Afghanistan.
Second, I think, regionally, success equals Pakistan
stabilized as a long-term regional partner, friendly to the
United States and in control of its military and its nuclear
weapons.
Third, I would say having regional states around
Afghanistan confident about U.S. staying power and commitment
as their partner in a war on violent extremism in the region.
Fourth, I think the Taliban and al Qaeda defeated in the
region and denied useable sanctuary in this part of the world
and that further attacks against the United States and our
friends are prevented.
And then, finally, I think a final objective defining
success would be a NATO presence that is recast into a
sustainable set of objectives that NATO can be able to be a
part of over the long term in Afghanistan.
So that is a few ticks, I think, in terms of what success
might look like.
Mr. Taylor. Dr. Rubin.
Dr. Rubin. Well, just to refine that a little bit. A
government in Afghanistan, to be stable, is going to require
foreign assistance for a long time. It always has required
foreign assistance for as long as it has existed within these
borders.
For that foreign assistance to stabilize it, there must be
a political agreement among the major powers and the regional
powers to support the government and not to support other armed
contenders for power.
Therefore, there has to be some kind of regional security
arrangement of the type that Ambassador Inderfurth was talking
about. Our forces there may be necessary to stabilize it, but
whether our forces are stabilizing or, in the long term,
destabilizing depends on how they are perceived by
Afghanistan's neighbors.
If they perceive our forces as using Afghanistan as a base
for destabilizing others in the area, such as Iran, or for
power projection into other areas, such as central Asia, then
they will not want U.S. forces to play a stabilizing role.
So it is not only about what we can do to them, but also
how we relate to them politically. It is ultimately a political
issue.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Ambassador.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, I would agree with those
definitions of success. I do want to say one thing, that
success does not mean, in my mind, a narcotics-free
Afghanistan. We are not going to see that.
We can see a turning of the corner on that problem. It
keeps going up--92 percent of the world's opium comes out of
Afghanistan and maybe higher this year. It is becoming a sole
source supplier to the world.
That corner has to be turned, but it will have to take
years to do it. Thailand took decades to reach their point of
moving away from a reliance on narcotics. Alternative
livelihoods took years to take hold.
So it is not going to be a narcotics-free Afghanistan and
it is not going to be an insurgency-free Afghanistan. There may
be long-term Taliban elements, extremist elements. But taking
into account the ability of the international community and the
United States to have a long-term commitment, including the
kind of foreign assistance that is necessary, including a
continuing effort to make the region of Afghanistan, as I
mentioned in my remarks, one that will ensure neutrality for
that country.
There are a lot of things that can be defined as success,
but it is not going to eliminate all the problems we see today.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett, please.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
Just a bit before we went into Afghanistan, I was
privileged with a small congressional delegation (CODEL) to go
visit the king of Afghanistan in his village just outside
Kholm. It just happened that our visit coincided with the visit
of about 10 of the tribal leaders who had come there to see the
king of Afghanistan.
We went next to Turkey and perhaps the most insightful
discussion that I have ever had was with a deputy prime
minister there, who pointed out that the northern alliance, the
tribal leaders, if we assisted them, that the Taliban would
collapse within 30 days. Now, it didn't collapse in quite 30
days, because we weren't very aggressive in the kinds of
weapons we gave the tribal leaders and the northern alliance.
What has happened to those tribal leaders and the northern
alliance, which was powerful enough then to overthrow the
central government, the Taliban, and are they a resource that
we can employ to help bring stability to Afghanistan?
General Barno. Well, I will let Dr. Rubin talk to part of
that, but I know, during my tenure there, that many of these
tribal leaders have now become integrated in the political
establishment. Some are in the parliament. Some of them, the
chief of staff of the army is one of those tribal leaders that
was one of the generals under Ahmad Shah Massoud.
So there is quite a bit of that leadership still present
and, generally speaking, in legitimate arenas of political life
there. Again, many of them have been in the electoral process.
So they are out there, but they are not a bloc in the same way
that they were seven, eight, nine years ago, although they are
still very influential, especially in the northern half of
Afghanistan.
Dr. Rubin. Well, I would try to just summarize a very
complex question. First, I don't think it is accurate to say
that the northern alliance defeated the Taliban. I believe that
what happened is the Taliban decided to retreat in the face of
U.S. air power and that the northern alliance then occupied the
territory, and that is why the Taliban were in a position to
make a comeback after going to Pakistan.
Second, the northern alliance never entered the parts of
Afghanistan where the insurgency is taking place today. It had
nothing to do with the change of power in those areas. In those
areas, it was basically a tribal struggle in which some of the
Pashtun tribes took power from the Taliban and then became
integrated with the government.
So as General Barno said, different figures who were in
that alliance have now assumed different roles, but we are now
at a point in the development of the struggle in Afghanistan
where uncoordinated paramilitary forces that can occupy ground,
but not govern, are not really what we need in order to
succeed. What we need is more effective government
institutions.
Mr. Bartlett. How long has it been since there was a stable
central government in Afghanistan to which all of the people
felt allegiance?
Dr. Rubin. Well, I can't answer for what is in people's
hearts, but in 1978, there was no organized armed opposition to
the government of Afghanistan. And since that time, there has
been one form or another of armed opposition to the government
of Afghanistan operating on the territory of Afghanistan and
also with support from neighboring countries.
Mr. Bartlett. What changed that incented this opposition?
Dr. Rubin. What happened basically was at that stage of the
Cold War, due to many geopolitical factors and some internal
ones in Afghanistan, rather than both supporting the
government, as they had for the previous several decades, the
United States and Soviet Union and their allies began to
support different contenders for power, with the result that
you had a proliferation of various armed forces which
undermined the ability of the government to control the
territory.
And we saw it at the time as an ideological struggle
between communism and the anticommunist Islamic forces, but it
had a fundamental structural effect, which was that the
administration and army of Afghanistan collapsed and instead
power was exercised by these various militias in different
parts of the country.
And we are now still trying to pick up the pieces from that
process of the destruction of the state in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bartlett. There is an old saying that adversity makes
strange bedfellows. Was it a common enemy that united them that
now doesn't exist?
Dr. Rubin. A common enemy helps, but so does a common flow
of funding. At that time, there was one flow of funding from
the Soviet Union going to the government, one flow of funding
coming from the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia going to the
opposition, which, nonetheless, was somewhat fragmented.
As soon as the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991
and as soon as the U.S. disengaged, the structure of the
conflict changed very radically and it instead became multi-
sided and factionalized rather than bipolar.
Part of the problem we are having, as I mentioned today,
again, is the way that assistance is provided and including
military assistance through the Provincial Reconstruction Team
(PRT) structure is not always helpful in consolidating and
making the Afghan government itself more coherent.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder, please.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to ask just one question and get each of you to
comment. We will start with you, Mr. Ambassador.
We currently are involved in two shooting wars, Afghanistan
and Iraq, both of which depend on the military operations well
at the same time the reconstruction efforts go well in order
for us to ultimately be successful.
There has been an increasing amount of discussion for the
last months, year or so, about this topic of interagency reform
and how Secretary Gates made his speech a few weeks ago at
Kansas State about the terrible underfunding in the State
Department, the civilian side of things.
Would each of you comment on how you see the issue of the
relationship between our military and our civilian side, now,
we are talking about just U.S. components of this, and things
that--obstacles that may be built structurally into our system
of administration that is delaying the achievement of the kind
of results we want in both Afghanistan and Iraq?
Mr. Ambassador, you go first and then down the line.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, that is a terribly important
question. I think that Secretary Gates's address in Kansas was
one of the most important ones that I have heard him give and I
think he has given several, but that whole issue of what I call
the ``Popeye syndrome,'' the strong right arm fueled by the
spinach is exactly what we see in the anemic left arm.
Our efforts to compete with the military requirements in
terms of funding and resources on the diplomatic reconstruction
side is just overwhelming and I think that there needs to be,
as Secretary Gates said, a great deal more attention given to
the whole issue of how our government is structured.
The State Department tried with a new office for
reconstruction post-conflict resolution. It has never been well
funded. It has never been given the attention that it needs.
I think that we fundamentally need to look in this
environment that we are in where the kinds of wars that we
fight, the kind of conflicts that we are involved in do require
a joining of both military and civilian components so that the
civilian side can get the same kind of attention and funding
that the military requires, as well.
This is a very important issue that I hope that the
committee can look into, because we are not doing well there
and we are not very well organized. We have been talking about
the fact that the international community has finally
recognized that it needs a high envoy, Paddy Ashdown apparently
being the choice, although I think that there are some
questions in Kabul about exactly what mandate he will have.
I think we need to have a higher level U.S. official
responsible for Afghanistan within the U.S. Government. General
Lute is trying to do what he can at the National Security
Council, but that is not integrating all of the civilian side
of this.
So I think that there should be a high level appointment
within the U.S. Government to bring our efforts to bear,
military, civilian, reconstruction on Afghanistan.
General Barno. I think it is interesting to do some
relative size markers, of course, and we hear this often
between defense and state and I talk to military alliances
about this quite a bit.
The total number of deployable military forces out there,
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, well over a million, within the
Army, over 500,000, the vast majority of the number of
deployable forces, individuals. State Department foreign
service officers, which is the deployable part of the State
Department, although there are some other segments, as well, is
about 6,500.
As the military folks like to say on occasion is that all
of them would fit on one carrier battle group and could sail
away out there, and that is the entire State Department
worldwide deployable force of foreign service officers.
So there is probably a capacity problem there that we run
into in manning PRTs in Afghanistan and growing larger
embassies in conflict zones. So that size is one part.
I think the funding aspect clearly is a factor of 10 to 1
or so with Defense Department, as well, and that has an impact.
But I think, also, the culture is important. The culture of the
State Department in the 21st century, in an environment where
the diplomatic end of this has got aspects of being a
prosecutor of parts of the conflict or being a partner with the
military in prosecuting these conflicts, we have to work at the
culture of what State Department officers do in the field.
They have got to be able, in Afghanistan or in Iraq, the
two current cases, to partner with military officers who are
trying to prosecute a very complex counterinsurgency campaign
in which, as we have heard several times, only 20 percent of
the effort is military. The other 80 percent is going to have
to be led by probably someone outside the military, and that is
not part of how we train or develop our State Department
officers today.
So I think we have to look at that aspect, the culture of
what the 21st century State Department officer needs to look
like.
Dr. Rubin. Well, I do agree. There is a severe imbalance on
the civilian side of our international relations apparatus, it
has been underfunded and downsized in many respects in a way
that is very harmful to our ability to prosecute this type of
effort.
That is particularly evident on the aid side, where the
downsizing and privatization of the aid apparatus has meant
that in a situation like Afghanistan, we have a very small
number of professional employees who are basically reduced to
the role of contract administrators, trying to--and then
bringing in primarily U.S. contractors who have no experience
operating in this kind of environment and then spend a lot of
money on subcontracting and so on in a way that is generally
considered by those on the ground to be extremely wasteful.
So we do need to professionalize our aid system much more
and, to some extent, of course, we face that problem on the
military side, with the growth of private military contractors,
as well, though that is not as big a problem in Afghanistan as
it is in Iraq. It still is a problem.
If we are going to address our national security needs, we
need to have a government that is capable of doing that in an
accountable way.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
And I want to thank you three gentlemen.
Dr. Rubin, the reason that I--you and the ambassador, your
comments about the fact that we are not getting more help from
NATO because the leaders of those nations, for whatever reason,
don't seem to feel a closeness to this Administration. I
believe I understood you correctly.
In 10 or 11 months, there is going to be a new President,
whether it be a Republican or a Democrat. I want to ask you--I
have got two questions. I will be very quick.
Do you think that the next President, if it is a he or a
she, that if they put Afghanistan on the front burner,
understanding--I think one of your answers to Mr. Snyder was
that what we need over in Afghanistan is a high level position
for a person even above the ambassador's position to try to get
a handle on a direction for Afghanistan.
Do you believe that if that could be done in the first 90
days of 120 days of the new Administration, that we could start
down the road of getting these other countries to understand,
as Mr. Hunter said, the war on terrorism and how important
Afghanistan is?
Dr. Rubin. Well, as I said, I have visited many of these
countries, Spain, Italy, U.K., Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden,
by the way, Turkey, all of whom have troops in Afghanistan, and
I have discussed this with some, not, of course, at the highest
political level, but with some of the professional level, and
there is definitely--they are all very much looking forward to
our Presidential elections and there is definitely a hunger for
U.S. leadership that they can trust and rely on.
And I think that the next President, let us say there are
approximately three candidates who look like realistic
possibilities right now, I think all of those individuals are
such that they would likely benefit from a tremendous bounce
from not being the current Administration and that many
countries around the world would want to do something to try to
rebuild the relationships with the United States, they have
said that to me, and that this would be one arena in which they
could do so.
Ambassador Inderfurth. I think that Dr. Rubin's remarks are
right. I would add, though, in terms of my suggestion for a--
the U.S. should appoint a special U.S. envoy, again, it should
be Afghanistan and Pakistan and working with those two
countries, both to deal with the military insurgency
requirements, working closely with NATO, working closely with
the leaders of both countries and their militaries, and, also,
trying to do something about these longer term issues, about
how to resolve the longstanding difference which are both
historical and ethnic and the rest between Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
So I think that a high level envoy--I wouldn't suggest that
that person supersede the U.S. ambassadors in those two
countries, but that that person would have full-time attention
to this issue, because, again, I think that these two countries
are truly the central front in the war on terrorism and we need
a high level person with authority and backing and direct
access to the President to work on it.
Mr. Jones. General, let me ask you a different question,
because time will go very quickly.
How many security contractors are in Afghanistan? How many
are American companies and how many are foreign companies, do
you know?
General Barno. No, I can't answer that, Congressman, I am
sorry.
Mr. Jones. The reason for that, Mr. Chairman, I know that
time is about up, I met recently with a former--well, a Marine
who was with a foreign security company and his comments to
me--he gave me a two-hour report, that there are things going
on in that country as it relates to security forces that are
not good for the image of what we are trying to achieve in that
country.
I intend to take this gentleman before the right Members of
Congress, whether it be a Senator or a House Member, and ask
them to meet with him, because I was very disturbed by what he
told me is happening as it relates to many of these security
forces in Afghanistan.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Smith, the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Barno, I want to focus in on two of the three
points you had there, leadership and resources.
I guess as we were just talking about a little bit, I think
one of the major struggles right now, aside from the just
inherent difficulties in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is getting
the rest of the world, or at least our allies, to sort of see
the issue the same way, get on the same page, and--well, have
us get on the same page. I am not implying they need to come
our way, but get broader agreement amongst our allies so that
we can maximize the resources that are available to deal with
Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well, and all of the elements that
we have talked about: diplomacy, infrastructure, the need for
troops, because it just seems to be, as was mentioned in the
testimony, about how only two of the countries that are present
in Afghanistan currently have popular support for that
presence.
And there are a lot of different reasons for this. When I
was over there, one of the focuses was it is okay if we are
doing counterinsurgency with Afghanistan, but we don't want to
get--one of the quotes I received from someone from another
country was ``dragged into the global war on terror.''
And our perspective is, well, whether you want in or not,
you are in. But somewhere along the way, we have sort of lost a
message that everyone can say, ``Yes, this is clearly what we
are fighting, we are with you, let us work together.''
I have had a number of conversations with folks in Great
Britain, that they have reexamined this issue. They want to
dump the whole global war on terror phrase. They don't think it
is helpful. They don't think it works. And sort of reexamine
how we fight what it is that we say we are fighting, al Qaeda.
And certainly whatever disagreements may exist about Iraq,
you look at the situation, clearly, al Qaeda, the Taliban, that
is what threatens not just the U.S., but much of the civilized
world, and yet we can't get that civilized world, if you will,
sort of on the same page.
So I am curious what your thoughts are in terms of how we
exercise that leadership. Certainly, a new President shuffles
the deck, gives us an opportunity. But when we move into that
phase, how do we take that opportunity? What is the way to get
at least our NATO allies, but preferably a lot of moderate
Muslim states, as well, more on board?
So take a stab at that and then I will just throw a quick
comment out on resources and if any of you want to comment on
this. I think it is fair to say that our resources in
Afghanistan, whether diplomatic or military, are not going up
significantly as long as we are spending $150 billion, $160
billion a year in Iraq, and have 130,000-plus troops there, and
that is the plan for the foreseeable future.
I am curious about your comments on that, if I am right
about that, or if not, where we find the resources.
So in the tiny amount of time you have, take a stab at the
leadership and resources issue, along those lines. I would
appreciate it.
General Barno. I think I would start by saying I am less
optimistic that any change of Administration, be it Republican
or Democrats coming in in 2009, are going to suddenly change
the calculus for our allies in Europe.
As I travel around and I talk to militaries in various
countries in Europe and I talk to some of the civilian
leadership, I sense that their reluctance to get more involved
in Afghanistan has less to do with the current Administration
than it has to do with just tremendous aversion to being
involved in combat operations of a type that don't directly, in
their view, in the population's view, affect their countries,
and I think they are very extraordinarily sensitive to
casualties.
I was at one defense college in Europe last year and I had
two of their officers in uniform get up. One asked me the
question, ``How can you Americans send your soldiers out on an
operation knowing that some of them might not come back?'' And
another one asked me the question or made the comment that,
``The first thing in our mission statement for our nation,''
and he was talking about Afghanistan, ``was that we will bring
everyone back from this operation.'' Everyone has to come back
from the operations. In other words, no casualties.
And so as I listened to two officers in uniform make those
comments to me, I became very unsettled about what the
prospects for this country and some of the others that it
represents were for prosecuting further operations in
Afghanistan.
So I think that there is an underlying thematic in Europe
that I seem to detect that views Afghanistan much differently
than we in the United States view Afghanistan. We are there, at
least we originally came there because of 9/11. We are
remaining there because of that, because of the threat that
still represents out there. But somehow that doesn't, from my
experience, doesn't seem to resonate nearly as well in Europe.
So I am concerned about that and how you either energize or
reenergize their view of this in a different way is something I
don't have a good answer for right now.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Quickly, Ambassador.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, in terms of the resources, I
would just call attention to a statement that the Iraq study
group made in its report, where it said it is critical for the
United States to provide additional political, economic and
military support for Afghanistan, including resources that
might become available as combat forces are moved from Iraq.
This committee knows much better than I do the difficulties
of funding all of these objectives that we have right now with
two wars, but I think that there is a consensus that people
looking at this say we need to do more, including as we draw
down some of our commitment in Iraq, and hopefully we will be
able to do that.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. Drake.
Mrs. Drake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.
I was on a CODEL this summer that did visit Iraq, Pakistan
and Afghanistan. So it was quite an experience for all of us on
the trip.
I did think, in Pakistan, that the U.S. embassy employees
were phenomenal. I mean, I just have never been on a CODEL
where the people seemed as engaged and I just wanted to comment
on how impressed I was by them.
But the thing that always came back to us in Afghanistan
was the poppy crop and why we were in Afghanistan spending the
money, the effort, the human life, and not able to get our
hands around the poppy crop and the flow of money to the
Taliban.
And, Ambassador, you just made a point that this is going
to stay for a long time. When we were in Pakistan, we asked the
Pakistani senators that we met with about the poppy crop and
they said that they had been successful in eradicating a lot of
their crop and we asked them to help Afghanistan to find out if
there is some way that they could do that.
And the second thing that was so glaring, of course, and
you have mentioned it, are the ungoverned areas. And it almost
made you want to say either go in there and govern that area or
give it up so that somebody else can go and provide the
security.
So I guess I still just don't believe that we can't do
something about the poppy crop and the flow of money and
alternative crops for those farmers to grow there.
And I truly didn't leave there thinking it was the farmers
making all the money from the poppy. It is the middleman and
how we deal with that issue.
So any comments you have on that, I would truly appreciate
it.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, I will defer to Barney Rubin
on the narcotics issue, because I think he has studied that as
much as anybody that I know and has addressed many of the same
questions that you just had.
Dr. Rubin. Well, thank you. First of all, the comparison,
the way that Pakistan eliminated opium, poppy cultivation in
Pakistan was by pushing it into Afghanistan. And Pakistan, of
course, you have seen it is a very poor country, but it is much
better off than Afghanistan.
There is no comparison. Afghanistan, again, it is the
poorest country in the entire world outside of sub-Saharan
Africa and it is poorer than almost every country in sub-
Saharan Africa, not just in low income, but all the things that
you need to produce income, it is not just a matter of other
crops, such as roads, financing, agricultural extension, and,
most important, security.
You cannot take legal crops to market if you cannot travel
on the roads. That is the situation in the most insecure parts
of Afghanistan. That is not a problem for drug traffickers.
So, basically, it comes back to the security problem and
those areas of Afghanistan that are now relatively secure,
actually, poppy cultivation has decreased.
There is still a major problem with drug trafficking and
corruption that is related to it and it is the people--
associated with the government, not the Taliban, in those areas
who are getting the profit from it.
But it is primarily a security issue and a development
issue. It cannot be dealt with through military or coercive
means primarily.
General Barno. If I could make one additional comment. I
think one of the things we have to be careful about with the
focus on counter-narcotics is not to look at it as a single
issue of focus, that it is part of an integrated picture in
Afghanistan and it relates, very quickly, to the economics in
the country.
Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is an agricultural country. It has
no natural resources. It doesn't have an oil industry. It
doesn't have infrastructure. So the majority of the people in
Afghanistan are involved in agriculture.
Yet, the agricultural sector has been utterly destroyed
over the last 25 years and has not been rebuilt, despite
episodic attempts to do that by the U.S. and by the Brits and
others. The agricultural sector in Afghanistan is still largely
dysfunctional, which means that the economy that affects most
of the people of Afghanistan is largely dysfunctional.
In my judgment, unless we make a major effort to rebuild
the legitimate agricultural sector and measure our
effectiveness against acres of crops, of legitimate agriculture
that are planted instead of crops of poppy that are planted,
which pushes you toward eradication, we ought to be counting
how many acres in Afghanistan every year are growing and the
number of legitimate farms and working agricultural sector
approaches that are going on there.
That is what the country's economy is going to be based on
and we really haven't done enough to rebuild that, and I think
that is going to be a fundamental part of the ultimate success
or failure of the country, whether that agricultural economy
works in a legitimate agricultural arena, which it doesn't
today.
Ambassador Inderfurth. And I would just add, in terms of
agriculture, as I understand it, going back to an earlier
question, I think we have six agricultural experts assigned to
Afghanistan right now. The numbers are just dwarfed by the
other concerns.
The Chairman. You will soon have several Missouri National
Guard farmers that will add to that and they are due to arrive,
I believe, February-March. I would just point that out and take
a good opportunity to brag about my Missouri National
Guardsmen.
The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Andrews.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the panel.
General Barno tells us that in 2004, there were 900
security incidents nationwide in Afghanistan. In 2007, there
were 8,950.
The ambassador, I think, pinpoints the reason for this
spike when he says ``The future stability of both Afghanistan
and Pakistan depends on the development of an effective
strategy to counter and uproot the Taliban-al Qaeda sanctuary
in Pakistan's tribal border areas.''
If one looks at the short-term future of Pakistan, it seems
to me there are three possible scenarios. The first, although I
think it is the least likely, is the survival of the Musharraf
regime into the indefinite future.
General Musharraf has, at best, an ambiguous record in
recent years with respect to his desire to control the FATA.
The second possible scenario would be the--and I hope it is
the least likely--would be a hostile jihadist-type government
taking over in Islamabad, which presumably would be supportive
of the terrorist activities in the FATA.
The third possible scenario, the most likely one, is this:
that a new government does take place, whether by election or
some combination of election and popular will uprising, and the
Musharraf regime comes to an end.
If we assume that is what happens and there is a new
government after Musharraf that is not a jihadist government,
but a different government, what incentive do the leaders of
that government have to become aggressive in FATA and shut down
al Qaeda and the Taliban?
If they were talking to their constituents about Pakistan
and said ``We are going to commit money and people and
resources to flush the Taliban out of the FATA,'' what
justification would they give to the Pakistani people to do
that?
Ambassador Inderfurth. I will take a first effort here. I
think the justification is I think the vast majority of
Pakistani people are moderates. They do not want to see the
establishment of a theocratic state, a jihadist state.
They have seen what has happened in Afghanistan. They do
not want to see the Talibanization of their country.
Mr. Andrews. If I may--how probable do you think Pakistani
citizens think that is, given the relatively isolated
geographic nature of the violence? I know it is spread into the
settled areas, but do you think they think that is a real
threat?
Ambassador Inderfurth. No. I do not actually think they
think that this is a real threat now. But to President
Musharraf's credit, in a speech that he gave in January 2002, a
nationwide address, he said that the greatest threat to the
country is from within, extremist forces on the rise within
Pakistan.
He identified the problem then.
Mr. Andrews. As I think Dr. Rubin--I think he uses the term
``illegitimate'' to describe the way the Pakistani people see
Musharraf's leadership. So that is the position of a leader who
seems increasingly illegitimate.
Ambassador Inderfurth. He actually had 60 percent approval
rating before he sacked the supreme court justice and since
then it has been downhill. And the Pakistani people, I believe
that they are--the majority of them, are moderates. They want
to see the establishment of a representative democratic state.
I think the February 18 elections are very important. It is
very important for the United States to signal in every
possible way, including from a very able ambassador in
Islamabad, Ambassador Patterson, who has just been mentioned,
very important that we are on the right side of speaking to
those issues.
But it is also very important that the United States not be
seen as trying to micromanage Pakistan's political future. We
need to indicate where we stand on principals, but not try to
make our way through this.
But of your three scenarios, the least likely, I think, is
the takeover of the government by a radical jihadist movement.
That may be well into the future, but I think these other
options are more likely.
Mr. Andrews. I sure hope so.
General, what do you think the incentive would be for new
leadership to get control of the FATA?
General Barno. I think it will be a challenge for them. I
think one of the problems we have today is that the Pakistani
populace, and I very much agree with Ambassador Inderfurth's
assessment of their moderate nature, is that the population
sees this as America's right. They don't see it as Pakistan's
fight.
Mr. Andrews. That is my concern.
General Barno. And I think that we have got to work with
this new leadership to convince them that it is all of our
fight and that this is a risk to them and their survivability.
Mr. Andrews. Do you think they believe that now?
General Barno. I think the population is ambivalent about
the threat, but I think the leadership could be convinced of
that and I think it is a very logical argument and there is
certainly a lot of history behind it being----
Mr. Andrews. What could we do to help change that tide of
public opinion within Pakistan? How do we contribute to that
effort in a positive way?
General Barno. I think, in part, probably through how we
target our aid programs might be a way to look at that,
including education.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Barno, I want to extend greetings----
General Barno. Good to see you.
Mr. Wilson [continuing]. West Point classmate, state
Senator Wes Hayes of Rock Hill. I want to thank you for your
service at Fort Jackson, helping provide opportunities to young
people to serve our country.
Also, as we discuss Afghanistan, my perspective, the 218th
Brigade of the South Carolina Army National Guard is currently
at Camp Phoenix and throughout the country training the Afghan
army and police units.
There are 1,600 troops. It is my former unit, led very ably
by General Bob Livingston, 1,600 troops. It is the largest
deployment from our state since World War II. And so our state
has developed a keen interest in success and victory in
Afghanistan.
I also have the perspective--I am the co-chair of the
Afghan Caucus. I have been to the country five times and the
people are so impressive.
What I am concerned about, General, is that having visited
the police training facilities, having met the very brave
people who volunteer to serve as police, what is the status of
the police that you helped create? And I am concerned about the
pay, if it is a disincentive to corruption or incentive for
corruption.
General Barno. I am probably not fully up to the very most
current information on police, but let me give you several
thoughts, Congressman.
It is terrific to see you once again. I spent a lot of my
life in South Carolina and enjoyed my tour there immensely at
Fort Jackson.
The police program I think is a success story that is still
to happen in Afghanistan in many ways. We made a strong
argument in 2004 and into 2005, during my time, to shift the
management of that over to the military and the embassy
combined as opposed to having it managed by a very small
element within state.
But I also think that there are misconceptions abounding on
the police training programs in Afghanistan. The police in
Afghanistan aren't the police we see on the corners in
Washington. They are in a counterinsurgency war. They are the
front line of defense in this war in many cases.
They have to be armed with AK-47s and sometimes rocket
launchers and machine guns, because they are fighting the
Taliban, not simply petty criminals on the street corner.
So I think that the training programs have got to account
for that and they have got to build a program for the police,
which I think is underway, that gives them many of the same
capabilities and many of the same mentorship opportunities that
the Afghan national army has done so well with.
If the Afghans, whether police or military, are given the
right training with the right weaponry and have Americans or
our allies standing shoulder to shoulder with them as mentors,
they will hold fast under difficult conditions.
And to the extent which we can import that idea into the
police program, I think it will have prospects for success,
perhaps even better than it does today.
Mr. Wilson. Ambassador Inderfurth, I had the privilege
several weeks ago, sadly, of visiting with Prime Minister
Bhutto at her home for breakfast. I also visited with President
Musharraf.
I share your view that we need to be working with the
Pakistani army. The military is professional. I was really
disappointed to find out that, as you specifically identified,
the night vision goggles, that is no way to treat a partner.
Are there other suggestions that you can provide that we
can work more closely with this army, which is truly facing the
enemy today?
Ambassador Inderfurth. Let me get to you on that. Let me
talk to some people. I would like to give you a considered
response to that, and I am glad that you picked up on that.
This is terribly important. This is the key to rising the
level of trust between the two militaries.
Mr. Wilson. And, indeed, it has been cited, they have
100,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan. They indeed are
taking casualties. The insurgency has spread backward into the
Swat region. This just needs to be addressed.
And, again, I just appreciate all of you being here and
this country is--the country of Afghanistan is so important to
the security of our country.
Thank you.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Could I also mention that I spent
time at Fort Jackson in basic training, which was a little bit
different perhaps than some of the other experiences there.
Mr. Wilson. And I also want to commend you. I am glad to
see someone from Charlotte, which is greater Rock Hill, is
doing well. Thank you.
Dr. Rubin. May I add?
The Chairman. Please, yes.
Dr. Rubin. The Pakistan military does have professional
characteristics as a military organization, but it also has
some very unprofessional characteristics, such as staging coup
d'etats and rigging elections.
And the fact that it has done those things is a reason that
the people in Pakistan, generally speaking, do not share the
regard that some of us have for the Pakistan military and the
key to our being partners with them is assuring that the
military within Pakistan plays its professional role in a way
that the citizens of Pakistan consider to be legitimate.
Mr. Wilson. And one point on that. I did visit with the
Pakistani military Muzaffarabad in the earthquake recovery and
I was very impressed at their professionalism, but it does need
to extend beyond coup d'etat.
Thank you.
Ambassador Inderfurth. And the Army chief of staff, General
Kiyani, has just issued an order that Pakistani military are
not to have contacts with the politicians, which may be a step
in the right direction.
The Chairman. With that, we thank the gentleman.
Mrs. Davis, the gentlelady from California.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you to all of you for being here.
And I must say you certainly, I think, have set the right
tone for this hearing. I returned two days ago from Afghanistan
and I guess one of the meters that I would use, having been
there in the past and been able to travel certainly on an envoy
into the city, into Kabul, that we were not able to do that
this time and, in fact, in many ways, in terms of the efforts
going on there, it seems to be left to the nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), because it is not secure enough even for
embassy officials to be able to travel easily and do the work
that they clearly want to be doing.
I wanted to just turn for one quick second, because I
also--and I think that Mr. Abercrombie will certainly address
this in terms of the impressions of our NATO counterparts.
And we did have an opportunity to speak with a few of them
on a CODEL and, in some ways, their responses actually
surprised us, I think, just a little bit.
It is not that they were interested in going--increasing
their troop levels or changing the caveats of where they can
fight and under what conditions, et cetera, but that they seem
to understand the long-term struggle, and they felt that there
were other non-kinetic ways in which they wanted to be asked
and to be engaged further, and, clearly, that is something that
they can do, but I think that there was a different tone that
we weren't expecting there.
On that note, I just think that we haven't necessarily
brought our public in, as well, to what this long-term struggle
means and the fact that we can't have short successes, that it
is a long struggle.
Could you help me out with one area? Having looked at
interagency coordination, the importance of our PRTs and we
have worked with them on Mr. Snyder's committee, on Oversight
and Investigation, we have looked at a lot of the PRTs.
We had a chance to visit our PRT in the Panjshir Valley
and, also, the Turkish PRT, as well.
What impact do you believe the PRTs are having on the
ground, particularly in those areas that are less stable or
were less stable and that we have--what impact are they really
having?
And I would just question one additional issue in terms of
``Charlie Wilson's War.'' How would you see unintended
consequences perhaps for the future and would those PRTs have
any role in a positive or negative way in the future?
General Barno. Briefly on PRTs and then perhaps a bit on
your second question.
I think, you know, when I first arrived in Afghanistan,
there were four PRTs in Afghanistan. There are over 25 there
today. There are different models in different nations out
there and some of those are much more effective than others.
I am a big fan of American PRTs. I think American PRTs have
a very good model and are focused on getting outside the wire
and working closely with the provincial governments.
Mrs. Davis of California. I am looking for the measures of
success. And how are we measuring that?
General Barno. That is a very good question and I think if
you dig into it, you will find that there has been resistance
to establishing a common metric of success or measurement of
effectiveness for the PRTs, mostly driven by our allies that
are out there on PRTs, that there is a reluctance, at least
there [are] reports I have heard six months or so ago, to
establish a standard by which everyone would be held
accountable.
I would encourage us to take that step. I think that is
important or you can't tell if you are having effectiveness and
you can't tell a good PRT from a bad PRT, which I think needs
to happen.
On your second point there on unintended consequences, I
was at a dinner last night and one of the members of the group
was a brigade commander who had just returned from Iraq
recently and he said--he was out in the Anbar province area and
he said that the biggest change, in his estimation, in Anbar,
that was the tipping point there to success in this tribal
awakening, was when we changed our message in Anbar from
``Don't worry, we are leaving'' to a message of ``Don't worry,
we are staying.''
That is the message that we have got to send in
Afghanistan, we have got to send in Pakistan, we have to send
in the region. The common question I got in Afghanistan over
and over again from Afghans of all stripe was ``You Americans
aren't going to abandon us again, are you?'' going to the
``Charlie Wilson's War'' outlook at the end of the movie.
And that is a tremendous concern that is always right on
the tip of people's tongues, the tip of their issues out there,
that we have got to reassure everyone there that we are
staying.
Many of them viewed NATO as our exit ramp and we have got
to disabuse everyone there of that notion and recognize that we
and NATO are there for the long haul and send that message.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you very much. I was trying
to just get a response from either of our guests, if you wanted
to comment.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, that latter point, convincing
them that we are staying for the long haul is also going to
play into Pakistan. Right now, there are those in the Pakistani
government that are playing a double game.
They do not fully believe that we will be there and the
whole idea of going into this borderland areas, which, as
Congressman Hunter said, this is going to be a tough, long-term
thing, unless Pakistan recognizes that we are going to actually
stick with them, then they are not going to be able to make
that full commitment themselves to deal with this, because once
we leave, then they are back to square one.
So a long-term resolve, a long-term commitment for both
Afghanistan and Pakistan is essential.
Mrs. Davis of California. Dr. Rubin.
Dr. Rubin. Briefly, PRTs, of course, are not solely
military units. They are, in fact, designed to provide a
security perimeter for political and economic activity in
insecure areas.
One of the problems with them is that because they are
under national commands, their aid budget and political
staffing also comes, generally speaking, from the nation under
whose command they are and there is no rational strategic
reason for distributing resources that way in Afghanistan.
One of the poorest provinces in Afghanistan, Ghowr has a
PRT which is headed by Lithuania, and I welcome Lithuania's
contributions, certainly, but Lithuania does not have the kind
of aid budget that you need to help Ghowr province and the aid
budgets to the PRTs, despite the good faith efforts of many
military commanders, are not institutionally integrated into
the aid coordination structures.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, appreciate that.
Two areas. One would be, is the Karzai government doing the
job in terms of the antinarcotics, of going after landowners
and the upper echelon of the food chain? It is one thing to
eradicate sharecropper poppy crops, but to go after the folks
who insist that the crops be grown on those properties, is that
government going after those?
And the other question would be, how much of Pakistan's
military attention is still spent on India and the issues on
their eastern border? How does that play into what is going on
with the Pakistani military?
Ambassador Inderfurth. I could take the latter question
about India. The fact is that there has been a long period of
time now where the relations between India and Pakistan have
been calm, stable and progressing in a positive way.
I think that the--we saw in 2001-2002 the border between
the two countries, a mobilization of over a million people, a
million soldiers, because of the attack on the Indian
parliament. That period then has been replaced by both what we
call front channel and back channel communications, including
President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and back channel intermediaries, trying to find a way to walk
away from that past history that has caused three wars in their
60 years and two over Kashmir.
So I think the military concerns right now in Pakistan are
far less with India than they have been in a very long time
and, therefore, far more focused on what is happening in these
northern tribal settled areas.
Dr. Rubin. If I may. I think we should have--to address the
issue of the Karzai government, it is very difficult for the
Karzai government to take on powerful figures who have been
armed and funded by the United States in order to fight the
Taliban. So let us be realistic about what has actually gone
on.
And I even know of cases where President Karzai has wanted
to do something and has not been able to do it for that reason.
I believe that has changed in the past several years, but,
again, remember, the Afghan government, as I pointed out
several times, is extraordinarily weak. The justice system does
not work and the police do not work.
And in order to have access to most of the territory, the
Afghan government relies on political alliances with local
power holders who actually control the territory, many of whom
are involved one way or another with drug trafficking.
You can't use law enforcement against something that is
equal to one-half the size of your whole economy. Law
enforcement is used against marginal activities.
So in a way, we need a political solution to the drug
problem in Afghanistan, just as we do to the insurgency.
Mr. Connolly. Well, Mr. Rubin, what is your political
solution?
Well, in the time left, how would you get the Taliban and
al Qaeda out of the ungoverned areas, if you were president?
Dr. Rubin. You are asking me?
Mr. Connolly. Yes, sir.
Dr. Rubin. Well, I think that the strategy for doing so is
to support the programs which have been proposed by the leading
Pakistani political parties to politically integrate those
areas through a process which they have laid out which has
support in those areas themselves.
There is no immediate military way of doing that that has a
likelihood of success and I think that is the reason that even
most military figures to whom I have spoken do not advocate a
primarily military-led operation to gain control of those
areas.
On the first question about the political settlement of the
narcotics issue, I do have a lengthy report coming out on this
which will be available in a couple weeks.
Let me say that the political goals should be, one, to win
the allegiance of those in the population who are economically
dependent on the drug economy, but they are not the main
profiteers from it; second, to offer legitimate options for
those who have been profiting from the drug economy, but want
to move out of it and into legitimate activity; and then,
third, in that context, to use as many instruments as we can,
in particular, for the destruction of heroin laboratories, the
interdiction of drug trafficking and removal from political
positions of people whom we know to be involved in drug
trafficking.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
What I have heard this morning is that our success in
Afghanistan is dependent on our success in Pakistan. Could you
briefly tell us why and--well, I will start with that.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Well, the principal reason right now
is that, as the National Intelligence Estimate, in July, that
was released, the key findings was that al Qaeda has
reconstituted itself in these border areas of Pakistan and we
have seen for some time a resurgence of the Taliban with a safe
haven in Pakistan itself.
They are working together. The insurgency that they have
crossing the border is placing the Afghan government and our
forces in southern Afghanistan at risk. The militancy, the
extremism that al Qaeda-Taliban represents is spreading through
the tribal areas into other parts.
There has been a migration of tactics used in Iraq into
these areas, the suicide bombings, the assassinations,
including, if our CIA is correct, the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto.
So it is dealing with that threat of al Qaeda-Taliban in
the Pakistani border areas that is placing both countries at
greater risk and that is why they have to be dealt with.
Mr. Johnson. And that threat cannot be eradicated by
military means.
Ambassador Inderfurth. By military means alone.
Mr. Johnson. So we have got to focus our----
Ambassador Inderfurth. It has to be a comprehensive
strategy that deals not only with the military threat, through
intelligence, through military assets, working cooperatively
with the Pakistani government, working cooperatively with, I
mentioned, the trilateral commission of Afghanistan, Pakistan.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have to work on this together,
too, and there is that trilateral commission that will allow
that to take place. We have to enhance that and, again, the
appointment of a U.S. special envoy could be a key part in
raising the availability and the viability of that mechanism.
So that is what we need to do.
Mr. Johnson. Okay. I would say, first of all, we should not
lose sight of the fact that the very military in Pakistan with
which we are working against the Taliban is the same military
that put the Taliban in power and supported them for many years
and that they did so for strategic reasons having to do with
India, which is partly in response to the question about India.
Even Pakistan's activities that are not directly directed
at India are part of an overall strategic vision that the
military has, which is focused on India.
We have a tendency to think that the rest of the world is
seeing things the way we do in terms of the threats we
identify, terrorism in this area. For Pakistan, the big threat
is India. The big threat to Pakistan in Afghanistan was not
extremism as represented by the Taliban, but the idea that
India might get a toehold or, before that, the Soviet Union,
which is considered to be closer to India, on Pakistan's
northwestern frontier.
So long as the military still has that India-centric focus
and regards the tribal area as a platform for covert operations
to balance its much larger foe, India, which it has been doing
since 1947, we will have a problem.
I would assume that dynamic has changed, though, within the
Pakistani leadership regarding Afghanistan.
Ambassador Inderfurth. I believe it has.
General Barno. I am skeptical about that. I still think
that that is a critical core component of how the Pakistani
military thinks and I think one of the things that
inadvertently happened when the U.S. announced in 2005 that we
were turning the effort over to NATO and, later, at the end of
the year, we announced we were actually going to withdraw some
combat troops, that the Pakistanis, in my opinion, absorbed
that as the Americans were moving for the exits and then they
had to make sure that their back door was protected inside of
Afghanistan.
I was at a conference earlier, last year, where a senior
Pakistani general made the comment that we really need to get
out of this counterinsurgency business and get back into major
war fighting, that is what militaries ought to be doing, and
that is still a very important cultural content of their
military.
The diplomatic relations with India are significantly
better than they have been in many years, but the military, I
think, still views this a bit differently and is very reluctant
to put their apples in a counterinsurgency basket focused on
the tribal areas.
They had very severe results, very negative results, in
many respects, from their fighting there in 2004 and they are
not enthused about going back and fighting there again, because
it is not the core of their capabilities.
Ambassador Inderfurth. May I explain my answer? Because I
gave a more positive response to whether or not there has been
an attitudinal change. I said, yes, I believe there has been,
in this way:
The Pakistani military and their leadership recognize that
there has been a blowback on them by supporting the Taliban
during that period, as well as jihadist groups in Kashmir.
These are coming back to attack them and they realize that.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. Abercrombie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I have here a copy of the report you will be
receiving probably today or tomorrow. This is the result of a
congressional delegation that I headed as a result of a visit
to Afghanistan on another congressional delegation we went on,
Iraq and Afghanistan.
We went to Europe to speak with NATO folks and the French
and German colleagues with regard to Afghanistan. Obviously, I
don't have all the time to summarize that for you, but suffice
to say that with regard to two particular areas, the PRTs and
the growing of poppies, hopefully this will lead us to some
perspective that might reflect on the testimony you have given.
I cannot fathom how we can even begin to think that we are
going to deal with this poppy situation with the eradication
policy that we have right now. Total failure, nonsense.
The only way you can deal with this eradication is if you
do it in what I would call a scorched earth approach involving
tens of thousands of troops, absolutely wiping it out,
controlling the area militarily and then instituting a crash
program of some kind, which you have alluded to, about
agricultural alternatives that don't even exist.
There is not a single landfill in Afghanistan.
Hydroelectric capacity is, at best, diminished. There are no
cooling facilities, drying facilities, transportation
facilities associated with alternative agriculture.
I can't see it. We talk about being there for the long run.
I have no idea what that means in practical terms. I am the
chair of the Air and Land Subcommittee. We are going to deal--I
have to make recommendations to the chairman shortly with
regard to working with the Readiness Subcommittee with regard
to what we are going to do with the Army.
I have to have a summary right now, the mission of the
National Guard has completely changed. We don't have a National
Guard in this country anymore. It is just an adjunct of active
duty operations. We don't have any troops, we don't have any
readiness, we don't have any capacity, and now the dollar has
sunk out of sight and we are in the middle of a recession.
This discussion seems to me to be totally beside reality.
What I want to know is--and I would appreciate it particularly
from Dr. Rubin's point of view--why don't we buy the poppy
crop? Why don't we buy it and use the--and give the money? If
we subsidize agriculture in this country, we subsidize
biofuels, we subsidize everything else, why don't we buy the
poppy crop, turn it into a pharmaceutical derivative of one
kind and another and use the money to begin to try and,
particularly in the south, start developing an alternative
agriculture system, which, according to the PRT people that I
talk to, would be welcome, that there are markets for it in the
Emirates.
Afghanistan has a reputation of being agriculturally--has
terrific possibilities, but you have to have the
infrastructure. So if you are going to use the PRTs and you are
going to address the poppy problem in the immediate, why not
buy the crop and turn it into pharmaceutical activity of one
kind and another and begin a comprehensive infrastructure
implementation for alternative agriculture, developing markets
and so on through the PRTs?
What do you think, Dr. Rubin?
Dr. Rubin. Well, first, I just wanted to recall something--
thank you for that question--something that I mentioned
earlier, which is that we have to work on the demand side for
agricultural products, as well as the supply side. And as long
as we have a Bumpers Amendment that----
Mr. Abercrombie. I missed what you said.
Dr. Rubin. There is what appears to me--I haven't been able
to investigate it, but there was a rather promising project for
creation of a textile and oilseed industry in southern
Afghanistan.
Mr. Abercrombie. Yes.
Dr. Rubin. Which USAID said it could not fund because it
conflicted with the Bumpers Amendment, because the products----
Mr. Abercrombie. Yes, I understand that. I have discussed
all this with the AID people.
Dr. Rubin. Now, the problem with offering to buy the poppy
crop is that only three percent of the land in Afghanistan is
now planted in opium poppy. If you say you are going to buy all
of the crop, then everyone will plant that.
Even if you bought it, no matter how big the legal crop
was, there would still be an illegal crop. However, there is a
very good idea in that people which you mentioned, which is the
question of agricultural subsidies, price supports and so on.
Farmers in Afghanistan, in fact, are asking for that. I
haven't evaluated----
Mr. Abercrombie. That is why I brought it up.
Dr. Rubin. Yes. In Helmand, for instance, which is the
leading area where opium poppy is grown, it used to be a major
cotton producing area and some of the infrastructure is still
there and could be rehabilitated.
So there might be some potential for bringing--for
guaranteeing them prices for cotton and other kinds of
commercial crops and, in fact, the Afghan government and the
U.S. embassy and others in Kabul are working on such a proposal
right now and we would like your support for it.
Mr. Abercrombie. Obviously, I don't have more time to
pursue this now. My principal point, Mr. Chairman, is simply to
cite that we have to do things in this area, cite agricultural
alternatives or cite dealing with eradication or cite dealing
with the NATO troops, and ISAF needing a different approach
doesn't accomplish it.
We have to have some practical implementation or all is
lost there.
Dr. Rubin. I would like to just add that I am myself a
private investor in Afghanistan and with some other investors,
I have founded a company for the manufacture of essential oils
for perfumes and personal care products.
And from my experience in trying to run a legitimate Afghan
agricultural-based industry for the past three years, I can
explain to you at length why more people do not do it.
Mr. Abercrombie. Under present circumstances, I can see it.
But you are also there because there is a market, if you had
stable security to be able to pursue it. Is that not correct?
Dr. Rubin. That is correct, but we could use some help on
shipping. At the moment, there is no way to ship those products
from Afghanistan to the market.
Mr. Abercrombie. That is my point.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentleman.
Ms. Gillibrand.
Mrs. Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to
commend you for holding this hearing. The topics of today's
testimony are extraordinarily timely, and I have found it very
useful.
First, I would like to address the issue of the special
envoy and you have all testified that you would like to have a
coordinated special envoy with both Afghanistan and Pakistan,
and I agree wholeheartedly with that recommendation.
If we were able to convince this Administration or even
wait for the next Administration to do that, one question I
would like your expertise on is, getting America to do it is
one thing, but do you think we could ever get the Pakistani and
Afghanistan governments to also work together in coordinated
operation?
Ambassador Inderfurth. I do believe that we can do more on
that. That relationship has been very difficult to bring
together. President Bush actually tried to have President
Karzai and President Musharraf to dinner. It was a nice
symbolic step, but required a lot of follow-up.
President Musharraf recently went to Kabul to meet with
President Karzai and, by all accounts, it was the most
productive meeting they have had.
So I think that there is room there for a U.S. envoy to
work with both, recognizing that these are their countries,
their problem, but to kick up the level of attention and the
interconnectedness between the two countries, both on their
political difficulties, as well as the military security
issues.
So I think that there is an opportunity there and we have
plenty of people, I think, that could be called upon that have
the trust of both capitals.
I will give one example. General Tony Zinni, people of that
stature and that ability I think could be very helpful in this
situation.
Mrs. Gillibrand. Thank you.
Dr. Rubin. I just want to add this is--as long as Pakistan
has existed, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in conflict
with each other. There are very serious political issues
between the two countries that cannot be solved at a dinner
party.
That is why we--and to get them to operate together,
whereas they have tended to define each other as threats for
six decades, requires a very serious political effort, not just
a professional-level coordination effort.
General Barno. I would just add that I think the point,
whether you agree with the envoy idea or not, in realizing how
intractable these problems are, the U.S. has got to, I think,
at the military level, at the diplomatic level, perhaps at the
economic level, look at this as a two country problem and
organize against a two country problem.
We are organized in almost all dimensions on single nation
basis. All of our embassies are organized that way. Much of our
military efforts are organized that way.
So I think somehow we have got to break that down and come
up with a two country solution set for this challenge.
Mrs. Gillibrand. Would you also recommend an inspector
general for both countries? Because right now, obviously, we
have the inspector general of Iraq and he and his team have
done an excellent job in identifying corruption and fraud and
trying to prosecute that on the American contractor side and,
also, doing thorough investigations in Iraq.
Would you recommend an inspector general for Afghanistan,
number one? And would you recommend that inspector general do
both countries or have separate ones?
Ambassador Inderfurth. I would certainly recommend an
inspector general for Afghanistan. I think the situation with
Pakistan is different. What I do think is required for Pakistan
is much greater transparency and accountability for the
coalition support fund, the almost $6 billion out of the $10
billion total that we have provided Pakistan since 9/11, those
funds, nobody knows what they have been spent for and there is
no billing and the rest.
That requires a lot more attention.
Mrs. Gillibrand. And when I was in Pakistan this summer,
that is what the general we met with said. He said if Congress
can do anything, we have given these folks $10 billion, with no
accountability, no oversight.
So I raised the question with Secretary Gates and he is the
one who suggested maybe through the inspector general function,
because it hadn't occurred to me to use an inspector general in
Pakistan because the role in Iraq is a much more oversight for
fraud and corruption and finding misuses of American funds. And
so he suggested that.
I wanted your thoughts on whether that kind of structure
would work or whether you would recommend some other kind of
oversight where we get a receipt back from Pakistan as to where
they spend our money or some kind of conversation at least
about how they intend to spend our money.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Again, I think the special inspector
for Afghanistan would be the right approach, more congressional
oversight and making use of our already existing mechanisms
within the Pentagon for Pakistan I think would be the best way
to proceed.
Mrs. Gillibrand. Thank you. One follow-up question on the
crops issue. Obviously, your testimony is that there are some
challenges in the way, security being number one. Two, if you
do have replacement crops with subsidies and providing the
seeds, providing the business plan about how to make this an
effective production of a stable economy.
If you do all that, have you considered other ways to
support such a structure besides direct subsidies? One
suggestion I would like to give you, as I work on the
Agriculture Committee and come from a very rural district, the
land grant college system is extremely effective, particularly
the Cornell Cooperative Extension program in New York. That is
one I am familiar with.
Would you recommend having some kind of facility where we
have infrastructure in place to support agriculture, to help
these farmers create their business plans? Obviously, you would
need to have security first and you have to have roads first
and infrastructure.
But do you see that as something that we could have a long-
term 10-year investment on?
Dr. Rubin. Well, first, the opium economy in Afghanistan is
not just the crop. The crop part of it is only 20 to 30 percent
of it. It is an industry and what Afghan rural families need is
not just another crop. They need employment and they need
incomes, which does not necessarily have to come from another
crop.
So the arguments that another crop is not as profitable are
not really valid. Other economic activities are.
Second, of course, we need all of those things, but the
main point I think is the one that Rick Inderfurth made, which
is that neither the United States nor any of the other donor
entities active in Afghanistan has really made agricultural and
rural development as much of a priority, and General Barno
mentioned this very prominently, as well, as it needs to be in
a country like Afghanistan.
Everything you mentioned is potentially part of that
program, but with six agricultural experts in the country, we
won't be able to accomplish that much.
Mrs. Gillibrand. In addition to our National Guard, as the
chairman said.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The bill that hopefully the President will sign within the
next few days does establish, per this committee, an inspector
general for Afghanistan. We thank you for reminding us.
We have two members that have not asked questions. We have
a vote on.
Mr. Meek and Ms. Shea-Porter, if you would like to squeeze
in before, or we could come back and give you the full time.
So let us give it a shot, Mr. Meek.
Mr. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and I
will even slice it in half to two and a half minutes.
Welcome, gentlemen. I am glad that you are here.
As we look at the NATO--I am a member of the NATO
Parliamentary Council and there is a great discussion there
amongst those of us that serve in the legislative bodies of the
long-term plan for Afghanistan as it relates to financing.
I know that we--General, you mentioned earlier that they
are wondering if we are going to leave them again, and I think
that is the main question not only there, but also in Iraq,
because we can't afford to be there as long as we would like to
be there and that is the major discussion that is going on
right now as it relates to the economic state of our own
country.
The terrorism issue is very, very important to us. So I
think that since the EU is there and many of those
individuals--I have flown on CODELs to encourage those
countries to take part in the Afghanistan effort. EU now has a
financial leg of their whole European Union--and I was in
Brussels recently--and they are going to be doing all kind of
development projects throughout that region, throughout the
European Union.
They should take some responsibility, because Afghanistan--
financially--Afghanistan is a major contributor to the illegal
narcotic flow that is going into their countries.
Do any of you gentlemen see a link of the EU playing a role
and the rest of the world playing a role? Because they are
definitely doing a lot better than we are doing as it relates
to the dollar.
Ambassador Inderfurth. The answer is the EU does have a
role to play. Francesco Vendrell was their special
representative, along with the World Bank, along with the
United Nations. Again, better coordination among all of these
parties would be helpful.
That is why the appointment of Paddy Ashdown or someone to
take that lead role for coordination will be very important.
And on NATO itself, we have not addressed the chairman's
question about the consequences of failure. I think that that
would require a full hearing.
I can tell you that in terms of NATO and the coordination
issue, there are three reports that will be out within the next
10 days, one by the Center for the Study of the Presidency,
Ambassador David Abshire, Afghan study group report, one by the
Atlantic Council, one by the National Defense University, all
on the subject of Afghanistan, which will be provided to the
committee, and they address some of these issues you just
mentioned.
Mr. Meek. Financing.
Ambassador Inderfurth. Financing, as well as the future of
NATO.
Mr. Meek. Thank you.
Dr. Rubin. If I may, there is another financing issue which
I just want to mention that is very important, which is not
just for development projects, but how will Afghanistan
ultimately support and sustain the security institutions that
we are helping the country build, because we are--by necessity,
we have instituted a salary structure which is necessary for
recruitment, morale, and anticorruption measures, but which, so
far, the Afghan government is not going to sustain.
We cannot build up security forces, an educational system
and so on, relying on year by year supplemental appropriations
from a variety of donors. We need a much better and more
reliable system.
Mr. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Shea-Porter, do you want to give it a shot?
Ms. Shea-Porter. Yes, and it will only take 30 seconds.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Iran's influence in Afghanistan, on a scale of 1 to 10,
economically, where would you put it, 10 being very, very
influential for Afghanistan right now?
Ambassador Inderfurth. Economically?
Ms. Shea-Porter. Right.
Ambassador Inderfurth. They have great interests
economically with Afghanistan and, actually, good relations
economically. The problem recently has been what is Iran up to
in Afghanistan to make our life and the life of the coalition
there more difficult.
I believe that we should be engaging Iran on these issues,
not trying to isolate. I actually worked with them when I was
in office in something called the U.N. six-plus-two process.
During the bond process, they were actually constructive in
that process.
I think we need to find out, with our friends and allies,
more what Iran is actually up to and find ways to draw them
into the process. We don't want to have Iran as the adversary.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you.
And my question for Dr. Rubin, please, political influence,
on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most influential, where
would you put Iran's influence on Afghanistan?
Dr. Rubin. It is very hard for anyone to influence
Afghanistan. I would say maybe four, in the sense that,
generally speaking, the Afghan government regards Iran as being
a positive force for stability and assistance more than it is a
negative force, whereas it has the opposite view of Pakistan.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Several people have not voted. Do you have
one more question, Ms. Shea-Porter? Ms. Shea-Porter?
Ms. Shea-Porter. I am sorry. Thank you.
The Chairman. You may have time for one more question.
Ms. Shea-Porter. The last question is do you think that we
need to be working harder, and that was part of it, working
harder to talk to Iran about Afghanistan? And you had indicated
that you thought we did need to----
Ambassador Inderfurth. Yes, yes.
Ms. Shea-Porter [continuing]. Include them in these
conversations.
Ambassador Inderfurth. That is right, including in any
regional approach to Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, the other
neighbors, India, China, all have to be part of the solution.
General Barno. Just a comment. There were ongoing informal
discussions with Iran in Kabul between our embassy and the
Iranian embassy while I was there and it was noted that they
were generally playing, during that era, 2004, 2005, more of a
positive role.
I think one of the concerns we have looking forward to the
Afghan presidential election in 2009, which is just over a year
ago, is what role Iran will play in that election, behind the
scenes or in front of the scenes.
Dr. Rubin. The United States and Iran collaborated very
closely in removing the Taliban regime and in putting the
current government in place. And in the past couple of years,
Iranian diplomats have approached me as a nongovernmental
person repeatedly to signal that they would like to engage more
with the United States on Afghanistan.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady. I thank you.
And, gentlemen, thanks for your excellent testimony. I wish
we had a few more minutes to discuss this all important issue,
but it is an excellent way for us to get a start this year on
the most important topic, and you have our appreciation.
[Whereupon, at 12:26 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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