[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
.
[H.A.S.C. No. 113-124]
RISKS TO STABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN:
POLITICS, SECURITY, AND
INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENT
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 30, 2014
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Thirteenth Congress
HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, California, Chairman
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas ADAM SMITH, Washington
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
JEFF MILLER, Florida ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOE WILSON, South Carolina SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
ROB BISHOP, Utah RICK LARSEN, Washington
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia Georgia
DUNCAN HUNTER, California COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii
JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana JACKIE SPEIER, California
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado RON BARBER, Arizona
E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York
JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada DEREK KILMER, Washington
JON RUNYAN, New Jersey JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi SCOTT H. PETERS, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas
KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
PAUL COOK, California TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama
Robert L. Simmons II, Staff Director
Alex Gallo, Professional Staff Member
Mike Casey, Professional Staff Member
Aaron Falk, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2014
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, July 30, 2014, Risks to Stability in Afghanistan:
Politics, Security, and International Commitment............... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, July 30, 2014......................................... 33
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2014
RISKS TO STABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN: POLITICS, SECURITY, AND
INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENT
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.............. 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
WITNESSES
Cordesman, Anthony, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center
for Strategic and International Studies........................ 8
Dale, Dr. Catherine, Specialist in International Security,
Congressional Research Service................................. 3
Neumann, Ambassador Ronald E., President, American Academy of
Diplomacy...................................................... 11
O'Hanlon, Dr. Michael, Director of Research for the Foreign
Policy Program, Brookings Institution.......................... 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Cordesman, Anthony........................................... 78
Dale, Dr. Catherine.......................................... 40
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 37
Neumann, Ambassador Ronald E................................. 88
O'Hanlon, Dr. Michael........................................ 57
Smith, Hon. Adam............................................. 38
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
RISKS TO STABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN: POLITICS, SECURITY, AND
INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENT
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 30, 2014.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''
McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. The committee will come to order. Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. The committee meets to receive
testimony on the risk to stability in Afghanistan as we
transition to a post-2014 residual presence there.
Our witnesses include Dr. Catherine Dale, Dr. Michael
O'Hanlon, Mr. Anthony Cordesman, and Ambassador Ronald Neumann.
Thank you all for joining us today. I know you have been here
before, but it is important for us to find out the latest.
The United States and its coalition partners have made
significant achievements in Afghanistan, from building the
Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF] to advancing growth in
civil society, to achieving significant counterterrorism
successes against our enemies. All of these efforts have served
our national security interest. However, these gains are
fragile and reversible.
Afghanistan has entered a period of transition, one that
carries significant risk in my view to its stability and
security because the critical elements of that transition have
not yet been achieved.
Politically, the Afghan presidential elections remain
unresolved. Diplomatically, the Bilateral Security Agreement
remains unsigned. And from a security perspective, sustainment
of an adequately sized and capable ANSF remains uncertain.
We are witnessing an uptick in violence not only because of
the summer fighting season, but also because the Afghan Taliban
and the Haqqani Network are testing the ANSF and their ability
to secure the country.
If we don't get this transition right, do what is necessary
to provide U.S. and international commitment to a long-term
sustainable strategy for Afghanistan, then we risk a similar
future for Afghanistan as we are seeing today in Iraq, where
there are few good options and sizeable limits on our ability
to affect the situation even though the risks to our security
are clear and present.
Our security interests in Afghanistan are clear and we have
sacrificed too much to focus solely on short-term exit
strategies. Now is the time when we have more options to
consider, when we have an opportunity to shape and influence
the situation and when the President must engage and engage
often.
However, I fear that the totality of the President's
interest on Afghanistan is simply to do what is necessary to
finish the job and withdraw. And I worry that the 9,800 U.S.
troops, which will be halved within a year, are not going to be
sufficient to provide the necessary support to the ANSF given
the threat from Al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and other
jihadist groups in Afghanistan.
On a final note, I hope the President will heed the advice
of his military commanders. He has a superb Army General, John
Campbell, taking command of ISAF [International Security
Assistance Force], following after General Dunford's tremendous
leadership there.
I will encourage General Campbell to conduct his own
assessment [of] the situation in Afghanistan and to provide
that assessment up through the chain of command, as well as to
Congress.
Today, we will gain more insights into where we are at and
where we need to go along the key lines of effort of the
transition that I outlined earlier during this critical phase
in Afghanistan. Our panel of experts has a wealth of experience
and, again, I thank you for being here today to share them with
us.
I look forward to your testimony and your insights.
Mr. Smith.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 37.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to our
witnesses for being here today. I look forward to the
conversation. And I agree with the chairman's remarks.
Certainly, we have made significant progress in Afghanistan
in terms of training their forces, fighting back in the south
and elsewhere to regain security and some control. The efforts
of the last 3 or 4 years in particular by our service men and
women, and all of the supporting folks as well, have borne real
fruit and have moved us forward.
However, as the chairman says, those gains are fragile and
reversible because the problems with the Afghan Government
remain. We are going to the difficult transition, trying to
figure out who the next president is going to be. We do not yet
have the Bilateral Security Agreement, which would give us some
security going forward.
And just, overall, the stability of the Afghan Government,
it still is plagued with corruption and plagued with a number
of difficulties. While the security forces in Afghanistan have
gotten better, they are not as well-equipped as they could be.
I am particularly concerned about the lack of close air support
going forward and their overall ability to deal with what is
still a very robust Taliban insurgency.
That said, we have got to hand off responsibility at some
point and I think it is important we have done this in a
stairstep manner, that we have sort of slowly gradually handed
over responsibility. And hopefully, if we can get the Bilateral
Security Agreement signed, we will not be in the same place
that we were in in Iraq, where we couldn't get a similar
agreement signed, and we had to just go down to nothing in 1
year.
That quick transition, I think, was at least the small part
of the problem in Iraq. We would like to see a smoother
transition in Afghanistan.
But as these challenges confront us, we are always
interested in learning more about how best we can meet them,
how best we can deal with them, because we do have national
security interest in that region. You know, the violent
extremist groups that are present there are obviously closely
linked to Al Qaeda and the ideologies that threaten us.
We need to find some way to contain that and hopefully get
us to the point where we can have a peaceful and reasonably
stable regime in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, as Pakistan is
also threatened by many of these terrorist groups.
So I look forward to the testimony. I thank the chairman
for having the hearing. And I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 38.]
STATEMENT OF DR. CATHERINE DALE, SPECIALIST IN INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
The Chairman. Dr. Dale.
Is your mic on?
Dr. Dale. It is not. Sorry, but it is now. Chairman
McKeon----
The Chairman. And you have to talk right into it.
Dr. Dale. I have been accused of many things over time,
seldom of being too quiet. But I am happy to accommodate.
Again, thank you for the invitation to join you today, the CRS
[Congressional Research Service] and myself, to testify about
risks to stability in Afghanistan.
It is a great time for this discussion, not long after
President Obama's announcement in May about the timeline for
further U.S. troop drawdowns and changes in their mission and
footprint. The U.S. still does face tough choices ahead,
choices that will powerfully shape the prospects for stability
in Afghanistan, the protection of U.S. interest, and the U.S.
reputation and influence on the world stage.
A genuinely strategic approach to those choices would start
with the interests we had at stake, what it would take to
protect those interests, how long that would take, how much it
would cost, and the risks if we don't take those steps, and
then given limited resources, the importance of this effort
compared to all the other things that we care about.
Afghanistan's future stability is at risk in at least four
different arenas. First of all security. In just 5 years, the
Afghan National Security Forces have made remarkable progress,
with support from the U.S. and other NATO [North Atlantic
Treaty Organization] allies and partners. They have grown in
capacity, in capabilities, in their unity of effort, their
ability to generate effects against the enemy, and they have
largely succeeded in providing security for major events across
Afghanistan over this past year, including the two rounds of
elections.
But the insurgency has not been defeated. They are able to
stage traumatic attacks, to intimidate some Afghans in some
communities, and to mount some large-scale assaults. So at
issue is how much the insurgency may be further emboldened by
the ongoing coalition troop drawdown and how well the ANSF will
respond to any increased insurgent pressure.
Security in Afghanistan is fragile. Let me mention three
aspects. The ANSF are still in the process of integrating their
own organic enablers in arenas such as lift, casualty
evacuation, and fires. They will face enabler gaps as coalition
forces draw down and before Afghan enablers, which will be more
limited in scope and scale, come fully online.
Afghan forces on the ground also need better institutional
support from the systems like logistics and personnel and
resourcing against requirements. The coalition is working with
Afghans both at ministries in Kabul, national level
headquarters, and then down on the ground with the army and
police to help them vertically integrate those systems.
The current policy calls for pulling advisory efforts back
into Kabul by the end of next year, and it is not yet clear how
much progress will have been made by that point.
The ANSF feel that the tools they have are insufficient or
that their own systems cannot support them. They may choose to
retract their reach, to hunker down, to cut local level deals
with insurgents, or they may overextend and fail so
catastrophically that they lose confidence in themselves.
In addition, U.S. troop drawdowns will sharply curtail our
ability to target Al Qaeda and affiliates, which still do pose
a threat.
There are three options, essentially, if you choose an
option. One is to eliminate the threat beyond prospect of
regeneration. Another is to ensure that Afghan and Pakistani
forces can handle that threat. Or you could preserve U.S.
ability to act directly, more or less indefinitely. We need to
be clear about which of these solutions, if any, we intend to
pursue.
Second arena is governance. Security in Afghanistan cannot
hold without governance that the Afghan people accept. An
architecture of responsible governance is needed to direct the
ANSF and hold it accountable to provide access to justice in
the rule of law, to ensure some minimum foundation of economic
viability and opportunity, and to inspire the trust of both
regional neighbors and the Afghan people.
But governance in Afghanistan faces two fundamental
challenges. One is simply a lack of capacity, the ability to
get things done. The other is corruption: pervasive, voracious
contestation for political and economic power and influence,
backed up by personalized militias, that consistently
cannibalizes the Afghan state.
The best long-term solution would be an increasingly
inclusive constitutionally grounded Afghan political order.
Successful resolution of the current electoral impasse in a way
that most Afghans accept could be an important catalyst of that
longer-term process.
Now, Afghanistan's increasingly vibrant civil society can
also help. That is non-governmental organizations, women's
groups, media outlets, youth organizations, the private sector,
traditional local councils. National dialogue in Afghanistan is
alive and well. It just needs time to grow.
Third is Pakistan. There is no such thing as a stable
Afghanistan in isolation. And the neighbor most crucial to
Afghanistan's stability is Pakistan. But that bilateral
relationship is marked by a fundamental lack of good faith at
the strategic level.
ISAF actively facilitates Afghan-Pakistani mil-to-mil ties,
but those opportunities will be more limited as our troops draw
down. More fundamentally, it is not clear how well mil-to-mil
ties can actually aggregate up to resolve tensions at that
political level.
What may make sense for the longer term is sustained
strategic-level U.S. engagement, leveraging all the instruments
of national power to help shape a stable region. There is some
danger that without a continued significant U.S. force presence
in Afghanistan, this region will simply disappear from our
strategic radar screen amidst the panoply of competing demands.
Fourth, and finally, economics. The biggest elephant in the
room is this--who will pay for future security in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan itself simply will not be able to foot the bill
anytime soon. And without funding, Afghanistan security
architecture would almost certainly collapse quickly and
perhaps with it the Afghan state.
The international community has pledged support, but the
bill is large and it faces competing exigencies in each
national capital. As the international presence in Afghanistan
diminishes and with it, the ability to monitor implementation,
donors would want concrete reassurance that any funding they
provide would be utilized accountably. And would-be donors are
hardly likely to sign up for a 10-year commitment if there is
no prospect that Afghans at the end of that time will be able
to assume responsibility.
The step that could come next is a real dialogue about
future funding requirements over time, including Afghanistan's
ability to contribute. It would also be helpful for the
international community to pool its efforts more concertedly
and leverage tools like the Tokyo Mutual Accountability
Framework.
One final word. One of the greatest risks looking ahead is
that in the mad rush of competing global crises, the U.S.
Government will not be able to find any more time to think
about Afghanistan. It will effectively decide not to decide.
Far better to approach the way forward strategically with due
consideration of the interests the U.S. has at stake, what it
would take to protect them, and the consequences for the United
States should stability in Afghanistan collapse.
Thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Dale can be found in the
Appendix on page 40.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Dr. O'Hanlon.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL O'HANLON, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH FOR THE
FOREIGN POLICY PROGRAM, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be
before the committee that I have admired for so long, and I
want to say a special word of gratitude and admiration to your
service as chairman, as you think about a next stage in life in
the coming months.
I really want to just focus on one point. I know we have a
lot of subjects before us on Afghanistan, and I am here with my
distinguished colleagues and frequent travelling companions to
Afghanistan who are, like Catherine, going to add so much.
So I just want to focus on the proposal to pull all of our
main combat units out by 2016 or by the end of that year, which
of course is part of the drawdown plan the President has now
put on the table in his May remarks.
And, Mr. Chairman, you alluded to the 9,800 goal, the total
number of American men and women in uniform that will start
next year in Afghanistan according to the current plan if we
get the Bilateral Security Agreement. And like you, I have some
concerns about that number, but I have even greater concerns
about the plan to go to zero by the end of 2016.
And I think it is actually based on a paradigm or on a set
of assumptions that I would disagree with. And let me begin by
saying I think the President has been very patient, as has this
committee, as have the American people in supporting a long,
frustrating, ugly mission.
And it hasn't gone nearly as well as most of us would have
liked, and yet, I think it has done better than many realized,
and the importance of the mission remains. And the President
and the Congress deserve a lot of credit for sticking with it.
But I fear there is a little bit now of a loss of patience,
that there is a narrative that says we somehow have to end
this. And maybe the President feels that he is doing his
successor a favor by getting out by the end of 2016. But I
actually worry the President will be taking away tools that his
successor needs.
And so the way I would suggest we think about 2017 or the
end of 2016, this is not a period where we need to pursue an
exit strategy. It is a period where we need to establish a new
partnership with Afghanistan.
We have core American interests above and beyond the
development of the Afghan National Security Forces, and those
interests are important themselves. But we have a
counterterrorism interest in staying in Afghanistan with a
limited military capability of perhaps a few thousand total
forces, anywhere between one and four bases.
For the indefinite future, I see no reason that exit
strategy or a declaration of the end of America's role should
be our guiding principle. We have an enduring plan for forces
in Djibouti. We are probably going to have to do more in Iraq.
We have forces in and out of the Persian Gulf all the time. We
had forces in Korea for many decades and still have them today.
I don't see why exit strategy should be the defining objective.
And the reason I say this fundamentally is because I cannot
rule out in my own mind that Al Qaeda is still going to be a
threat in Pakistan after 2016. And to be blunt, we need places
nearby from which to attack Al Qaeda even after 2016.
Now, I would hope very much we don't have to do this nearly
as much as we did in the past. I am glad to see the number of
drone attacks and the frequency has gone down. I would hope it
could continue to go down. But we have seen Al Qaeda and its
affiliates move and take advantage of new opportunities, again,
in recent months in the Levant and in Iraq. There is no reason
to rule out that they might do that again in Pakistan or
Afghanistan.
We need tools, especially drones, intelligence, and special
forces, to be able to address the possibility of Al Qaeda,
starting with Mr. Zawahiri and working down, using Pakistan or
Eastern Afghanistan as sanctuary, as planning centers, training
bases, operational headquarters in the future.
And to me there is simply no reason that we should think
that this has to stop or should stop by the end of 2016. Our
threat assessments are not precise enough and even if Al Qaeda
and affiliates are stronger now in the broader Middle East and
maybe a little less worrisome in Pakistan and Afghanistan
compared to how the tables were different 5 years ago, they
could change again.
Al Qaeda as a global movement is a very adaptive, very
opportunistic, set of organizations. And if they sense an
opportunity in the tribal areas of Pakistan or Eastern
Afghanistan again, I believe they could use those kinds of
geographic locations to do much of what they have done in the
past. And this includes, of course, the Haqqani Network, a
number of other groups that are affiliated with Al Qaeda,
whether or not we describe them by that formal Al Qaeda central
construct or name.
And so, just one last point as I make this overall
argument. When I think about the President's overall approach
towards Afghanistan during his 5\1/2\ years in office, again, I
think he has been remarkably patient. He has always felt the
need to talk about getting out. And it seems that we have
always been working towards an exit strategy and yet he has
taken his time to actually make the cuts.
They have been, as Congressman Smith said, in a staircase
manner with the support of the committee and others in
Congress, and I think that has been very prudent. And I think
that should continue.
If I look back at 2011--and this committee remembers very
well the debate from that period of time--in June 2011, as
General Petraeus was here for CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]
Director confirmation hearings and John Allen was about to take
over in Afghanistan, at that time the President announced a
plan to cut our forces by one-third, from roughly 100,000 down
to 68,000 by the end of the summer of 2012. So it was going to
be over about a 16-month period.
As you will recall, General Petraeus voiced some concerns
that was a little too quick in his mind, but he thought it was
reasonable. Some of his friends were encouraging him to resign
in protest or what have you, but he said, no, you know,
President Obama has to take a little broader perspective than I
do as commander. And he said, if it is a little faster than I
would like, so be it, we can still work within that kind of
approach.
We got down to 68,000 troops by the end of September 2012.
And then, the President made no further declarations of any
drawdowns until after he had been reelected and gave his State
of the Union address in February of 2013. At which point, he
said he would take a full 12 months to get down to 34,000
troops.
In other words, there was a certain amount of patience and
a conditions-based approach. And even if it was a little faster
of a drawdown than I might have preferred myself, at least it
had that kind of a logic to it.
Now I fear that we are lumping everything altogether in one
plan. So we are getting from our current 30,000 down to about
10,000 by the end of the year, then we are going to cut it
again in half by the end of 2015, and then we are going to be
virtually all the way out by the end of 2016.
I think it is piling too much on top of competing plans or
overlapping plans. We would be better off going one step at a
time and probably planning to keep several thousand forces even
after 2016, fundamentally, for counterterrorism purposes, even
if the Afghan forces may not need us as much at that point.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. O'Hanlon can be found in the
Appendix on page 57.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Cordesman.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE CHAIR IN
STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Mr. Cordesman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Smith,
members of the committee.
This is the third war in my lifetime where I have seen us
headed out of a war where we are denying or understating the
risks in what we are doing, where the United States Government
is systematically spinning the facts to try to justify a
structure which is not supported by outside forms of analysis,
and where we have little real public debate over the strategic
impact of our actions.
To be blunt, I think we already have transitioned wrong. As
was raised by both Dr. Dale and Dr. O'Hanlon, I think we are
repeating a mistake that I saw us make in Vietnam, that has
been clearly demonstrated in Iraq. We are rushing advisory
groups out too quickly, setting levels too low. We are not
integrating a civil-military plan and we are creating metrics
which basically are not supported by looking at the facts.
The problem I have always seen in our approach to
counterinsurgency is we face three threats. One is the enemy.
The other is the government and allies that we have to work
with, and the third is our ability to adapt with some degree of
transparency and realism to the actual nature of the war we are
fighting.
Now, people have mentioned already the accomplishments or
the gains we have made in Afghanistan. Well, I think the
problem is, that when you shift from the reporting that comes
in the 1230 report or USAID [United States Agency for
International Development] or the State Department and you look
at the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the World Bank, the
U.N. [United Nations] and other sources, you get a completely
different picture of the risks and problems we face.
You also find something that is totally lacking in U.S.
Government reporting, which are assessments of uncertainty,
definitions of where our data come from, and frankly,
timeliness, because so much of our reporting lags 3 to 6
months, in some cases even a year behind the current status
inside of Afghanistan.
I think that one of the key issues you see almost
immediately, and this is in the 1230 report, but even clearer
in the U.N. report. The surge in Afghanistan had none of the
effects it had inside Iraq. You have not seen a decline in
violence. You have not seen a decline in casualties. You have
seen a steady rise in all of these metrics, including acts of
violence as measured by people outside the ISAF structure, like
the U.N. and other sources.
You have seen a rise in civilian casualties that is very
significant. And you have not seen a decline in the areas of
conflict. You have seen just the opposite. In the U.N.
reporting in every area except the south, you have seen a major
expansion of insurgent activity in terms of acts of violence,
in terms of casualties, in terms of IEDs [improvised explosive
devices], and the other measurements involved.
I think as SIGAR [Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction] reporting has shown, you have seen very serious
problems emerge in the training and support effort and
transition of the Afghan National Security Forces. I don't
think that these are fatal, but they are real.
And one of the lessons in both Vietnam and Iraq is
precisely the issue that Dr. O'Hanlon raised. You need to have
sufficient advisors long enough to make the transition from
generating forces to creating effective combat forces.
If you look at the official U.S. Army history of what
happened in Vietnam, you will see measured in detail the cost
of following the course of action we plan to follow in
Afghanistan. If you look at reports on what happened in Iraq,
units began basically to collapse, became corrupt, failed to
support maintenance within a matter of months of the departure
of U.S. advisers in the field.
And these were forces considerably better developed than
the ones in Afghanistan and far less dependent on a police
force which is roughly half of the Afghan National Forces and
is rated by every source as ineffective, corrupt, and not tied
to an effective rule of law structure.
I think that we are looking at numbers which this committee
really needs to examine. The public data on the number of
Afghan-led operations ignored desertion rates, absentee rates,
in the units involved. They do not characterize who is leading
what and the definition of Afghan-led even in elite forces like
Afghan Special Forces is a little amazing because when you go
to the latest 1230 report, you will see there are 488 Afghan
Special Forces units or led operations.
The problem is, if you read into the fine print, 378 of
those actually have U.S. participation and strong U.S.
involvement. And defining data is a critical issue even within
the military in terms of police effectiveness, the
effectiveness of the ALP [Afghan Local Police]. There is a very
serious risk.
But the problem, I think, that is equally critical is the
civil dimension. One of the things that is stunning is the gap
between World Bank assessments of the quality and movements in
governance, the U.N. indications of basic human development
measures, and the reporting that has come out of USAID and the
U.S. Government.
You see a major set of improvements through about 2005,
2006 in international reporting by the World Bank, the IMF, the
U.N. You do not see that as being sustained. You see a major
drop as the level of violence rise. You do not see claims as
you saw in a White House factsheet that the GNP [gross national
product] is improving. And the reason, as the World Bank
explains, is that has been an improvement almost completely
dependent since 2005 on rainfall.
So when the White House quoted 2012 for an average
improvement, that was a great year for the rains. The problem
was, in 2013, the GDP [gross domestic product] growth radically
dropped. And I think, frankly, in politics, taking credit for
the weather may be a little ambitious on the part of anyone.
The World Bank does not show rising income. The World Bank
presents just the opposite argument. It is that you have had a
serious increase in poverty, largely for population pressures,
largely because of hyper-urbanization, problems with water and
agriculture.
All of these are laid out in detail in terms of World Bank
and IMF reporting. They are laid out by reporting by the
Afghans. You see a level of dependence on outside aid and
military spending, which is, again, well-presented in the World
Bank data and the IMF data.
All of our aid programs, to the extent we have any plan,
ignore that economic risk; they are essentially program or
project aid plans. And let me note, this is now 2014. We became
actively involved in war and aid programs in 2002.
We have, in two wars, never had the State Department or
USAID present any meaningful effectiveness measures of what aid
has actually accomplished on the civil side. The one document
in two wars we have is this one, and not one of the statistical
areas listed can be sustained by an examination of where the
data came from.
I think that we face critical problems that we have ignored
in terms of the infrastructure. We have talked about the ring
road, we have talked about the improvement we have made, but
these are not being sustained or maintained. Security is an
issue, but basically we are watching a lot of that
infrastructure deteriorate before we even leave.
We see that we have not done anything to remove critical
barriers by World Bank or IMF or U.N. estimates to industrial
development. And again, these are all laid out in detail in a
formal statement that I would like to have entered in the
record. All of the data are taken from sources other than the
U.S. Government to illustrate the issues involved.
Finally, we are not even coming to grip with the issue of
dependence on narcotics and power brokers. We are watching a
steady increase in production, we are watching an increase in
the area of cultivation, and one of the key problems is that,
as we pull down on aid and military spending, the percentage of
Afghan dependence on narcotics has to go up because there is no
other area of development which the World Bank or the IMF has
been able to identify.
So let me close by saying, I do not believe in looking at
what is a poor developing country, virtually at the bottom of
the world in terms of rankings of governance and corruption.
Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as 93 percent of
the worst country in the world in terms of corruption and the
ineffectiveness of government after all of our aid and other
efforts.
But, if we are going to leave Afghanistan and we want it to
work, we need to keep the advisers in, we need to keep the
military spending up, and we need an honest and realistic
assessment of economic and governance risks that takes account
of the fact that the only source I can think of that is talking
about these accomplishments of all the rating groups is the
United States Government.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cordesman can be found in
the Appendix on page 78.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Ambassador Neumann.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR RONALD E. NEUMANN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF DIPLOMACY
Ambassador Neumann. Thank you, Chairman McKeon,
Representative Smith. Thank you for your invitation to appear
today.
Far too much has been accomplished to say that Afghanistan
is without hope and far too little is finished to claim that we
have accomplished our purpose. We are ending our active combat
participation in a bloody continuing war. We retain a strong
interest in supporting stability. As we consider how to
confront the new Islamic caliphate, we should not start by
losing the war with its Al Qaeda parent.
There are some positive aspects. Despite white-knuckle
confrontations, it appears Afghanistan will emerge with a
peaceful transition of power to a legitimately elected
president. That individual will have a stronger hand to govern
and to negotiate because he is broadly legitimate.
Afghan political leaders, albeit with international help,
are able to compromise. The Afghan Security Forces, with
100,000 fewer foreign troops in the country than in 2009,
credibly managed security through the election.
I want to focus particularly on those areas where U.S.
policy and actions can make a difference. My colleagues have
discussed economic security and politics. There is a
psychological element that links all three. Afghans and
neighbors, friends and enemies alike, pay a great deal of
attention to what they think the U.S. will do.
When they are unclear, they make policy based on
assumptions. Our recent policy decisions need to be reviewed in
that light.
I support the decision to leave just under 10,000 troops in
Afghanistan in 2015, although like my colleagues, I wish it had
been a few more. However, many problems are occasioned by the
President's having already decided without reference to what
will or won't happen on the ground that our presence will be
reduced by half in 2016 and ended by 2017, except for forces
under embassy control.
These decisions raise doubts about our effectiveness, about
what Afghans think they may expect from us, and about the
future of NATO. The change in configurations will diminish our
effectiveness. In the next 6 months, our forces will
consolidate one posture, only to radically change it 12 months
later, when we shrink to a Kabul base.
Physically, a lot of work is going to be taken away from
advising and go into shifting locations and organizations. We
will become more ignorant of what is going on in the war and in
governance in the provinces. Most important, these decisions
radiate doubts about our commitment, since we are going to end
our mission on the same timetable no matter what.
Uncertainty gives hope to our enemies, it leads Afghans to
fight or govern with one eye watching to see what they can do
to protect themselves if we bail out faster than we now claim
will be the case, and these considerations affect stability and
performance.
U.S. troop decisions need to be integrated with NATO
planning. We have a double interest in extending the NATO
mission beyond 2016. First, we will continue to have an
important training mission that should be shared with our NATO
allies. That is what the people that are going to stay under
embassy control are going to be doing. Second, when nations
have troops engaged, they are far more likely to maintain
financial support and share the burden of stabilizing
Afghanistan.
Therefore, we need to decide how to coordinate the NATO
mission with U.S. forces under embassy control. Otherwise, we
will end up with separate parallel and probably duplicatory
functions, or no NATO.
We know that many NATO nations are prepared to extend their
stay beyond 2016, but to stay, they will need support from us
and that apparently is not decided.
Finally, I want to stress the interrelationship of force,
money, and diplomacy. In the recent electoral crisis, our
diplomacy was undergirded by the very real threat to reduce
assistance if the crisis worsened.
The lesson here is really important. Threats alone, which
was sort of where we started, you work it out or we are going
home, were not sufficient to resolve the crisis. Diplomacy was
essential. But it is because of the weight of our commitments
of military and financial aid that we had real influence to use
in brokering a process.
We are not out of the woods. Whatever level of Afghan
political cooperation has been agreed, will be carried out with
one eye constantly on future political advantage and power
politics, as they maneuver against each other. That shouldn't
surprise us, it isn't terribly unfamiliar.
The resulting political maneuvers will strongly affect the
next Afghan president's ability to improve internal governance,
a critical issue for future stability, women's advancement, and
economic and justice sector development. There will be a
continuing need for careful diplomacy to help the next Afghan
president work through these challenges.
Maintaining our aid and our presence are vital to providing
the tools with which successful diplomatic outcomes can be
built.
Thank you for your attention and I await your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Neumann can be found
in the Appendix on page 88.]
The Chairman. Thank you. Ambassador Neumann, it appears
there is going to be--that there will be negotiations between
Ghani and Abdullah campaigns or some type of power-sharing
arrangement.
Could you provide more detail on what options there may be
for a power-sharing arrangement? Also, can you describe any
risks to security in Afghanistan in rushing a political deal
among the candidates?
Ambassador Neumann. I want to be careful not to exceed my
actual knowledge at the moment in an area which is pretty
opaque. I think there are several different kinds of
negotiations going on.
First of all, power needs to be shared no matter who wins.
That was clear even before the election. I was in Afghanistan
in March and both Ghani and Dr. Abdullah, and for that matter,
Sayyaf and Rassul, all said to me that if they won, they
understood they would have to govern with a broader coalition
than that that elected them, because the country is still riven
by political factions at the moment, although not nearly as
brutally so as Iraq.
So there is a need to spread out. What you have got now is
a kind of double-balancing, where on the one hand, you have the
negotiations over how you are going to count ballots--that
might remind us of certain Florida events--and at the same
time, you are using the tension there to play for how you are
going to get more positions.
I think there are two risks, but they are manageable. One
risk is that so much is given away to power brokers in this
balancing that the next president has a constrained ability to
actually govern any better than President Karzai has been able
to do.
The other is that this process is probably going to break
down after the election. I am not so worried that you will
have--can't resolve it. Afghans have shown an incredible
ability to resolve issues, people who were shooting at each
other in the ruins of Kabul have managed to be holding hands
and drinking tea together in the parliament for some years.
So I don't think at the end of the day that they are going
to let this go over the edge. They understand how serious it
is. But I don't think you will get a stable situation out of
it, because you will continue to see a maneuvering for power.
And that is where I think our role is really critical, to
keep reminding them of the dangers of letting this get out of
control and keep the boundaries in place, which I think we
could do creatively. We have good diplomats who have done a
good job. But you have to have assets.
When you take all the assets out, then you look like Iraq,
where you are not even jawboning, you are just doing toothless
gumming.
The Chairman. Thank you. Dr. O'Hanlon, in my opening
statement, I made the parallel between the situation currently
unfolding in Iraq and the potential for something familiar in
Afghanistan should we pull out too hastily on an arbitrary
timeline.
I am concerned that the 9,800 troops are not robust enough
to support the mission in Afghanistan post-2014, that there is
a risk associated with the President's decision to go to zero
on an arbitrary timeline by the end of 2016.
Could you describe in detail the nature of the risk of
leaving on an arbitrary timeline? What needs to be achieved in
Afghanistan before the United States departs with its residual
presence in your view?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of things.
First, Tony made, I thought, the very good point that we need
to stay in the field with Afghan forces. And that gets to the
question of what the numbers are.
Of course, commanders have been discrete about their public
statements, but I think if we read the tea leaves and read
between the lines, we can tell the commanders would prefer to
be a little higher than 9,800, but it is not out of the realm
of at least what you can debate or consider.
So I think that number is probably low for the reasons,
again, that Tony is getting at and the reasons that Congressman
Smith was alluding to with air support, as well as a couple of
other specific needs. But I am less worried about that, putting
that aside for the moment.
What I am more worried about is that, as soon as we get to
that number, we immediately need to start making plans to cut
it in half. As Ron points out, that is going to distract us
from the actual job at hand in 2015, because by the end of that
very next calendar year, we have to be down to 4,900, which
means we will be implementing that drawdown in the late summer
and fall, which means we will be planning it in the spring.
So there will be no period during which we are actually
just using that number of 9,800 to do whatever we can do with
it. We will almost immediately be figuring out how to cut it.
And then, even worse yet in my eyes is the plan to go to
essentially zero operational units in the field by the end of
2016. And there I have my concerns about how we nurture and
steward the Afghan forces. But I also have my concerns, as I
mentioned earlier, about the Al Qaeda threat.
We don't know how to predict where Al Qaeda is going to be
strongest in 2 to 3 years globally, but I think we can all be
fairly sure of one thing. It is not going away. And I think
this committee has been very good at getting that message out.
We all--a lot of us were hopeful that Al Qaeda was maybe
not on the ropes, but at least diminishing in overall influence
2 or 3 years ago. That became a partisan issue. Leave aside the
partisan issue.
Empirically speaking, there was a serious debate in 2011/
2012 about whether the global threat was getting a little bit
less. I don't think there is any such debate anymore.
Empirically speaking, the threat is very serious and the only
thing we don't really know is where it is going to be most
serious come 2016, 2017.
So, taking away tools to deal with it in South Asia, to my
mind, is not a logical thing for American counterterrorism
purposes.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One question in terms of Taliban and Al Qaeda, you know,
back when the Taliban was in power, they made the deal to allow
Al Qaeda to be there and they have had an alliance of some
sorts ever since. As the Taliban are ascended, to what extent
do you see Al Qaeda being intricately linked with them?
Let's say that the worst happens and the Taliban take over
at least some portion of Afghanistan, are able to govern it,
how would any of you assess the risk that Al Qaeda will again
be able to enjoy safe havens or that whatever that group of
violent extremists looks like that the threat would then become
external, that they would try to attack Western targets, that
they would try to sort of recapture what Al Qaeda used to do in
terms of plotting, you know, wars, terrorist attacks against
Western interests outside of Afghanistan?
What is that link? It doesn't seem to be as strong as it
was prior to 2001, but I am interested in your assessment.
Mr. Cordesman. Mr. Smith, I think that we need to be very
careful because the Al Qaeda has a sanctuary in Pakistan, and
that has not been challenged and none of the fighting that is
taking place in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]
area will be affected, because that sanctuary is in the----
Mr. Smith. Well, it has been challenged. I mean, witness
the drone strikes and some other things. It is not----
Mr. Cordesman. Well----
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Cordesman. Well, the strikes have been essentially not
on Al Qaeda, however. We have had a challenge in the raid, we
have gotten bin Laden. But I think the real issue here is Al
Qaeda was never a controlling force in the Taliban government.
Al Qaeda central has now been replaced by more influential
centers of operational activity by Al Qaeda in Yemen, North
Africa.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
Mr. Cordesman. It has been displaced by groups like ISIS
[Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and ISIL [Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant]. I think that quite frankly our concern
really is not Al Qaeda as much as the fact that, when you look
at the Haqqani Network, if you look at what is happening in the
Taliban, there are significant numbers of foreign fighters in
those groups. They interact with people moving in and out of
areas like Syria, now Iraq and elsewhere.
It is not Al Qaeda anymore that is probably the primary
threat, at least Al Qaeda central, of terrorist attacks outside
of Afghanistan. It is the flow and interaction of activity
through the Haqqani Network and the Taliban.
Mr. Smith. And the foreign fighters as well. The other
question I had is in----
Ambassador Neumann. Could I just make a short addition to
that?
Mr. Smith. Sure.
Ambassador Neumann. I think we want to be careful because
you could get lost in the technical definitions and miss the
threat, and we also have the problem as we have with the
expanding threats that we can end up doing policy a little like
small children playing soccer, where everybody runs to the
current ball.
Intellectually, these groups that Tony was talking about,
the foreign fighters, old Al Qaeda, new Islamic caliphate, have
a very strong intellectual link. And I think it is a mistake to
try to be too precise and say that one is a threat and this one
isn't. I think that begins to exceed our knowledge.
I think it is also important to remember that there were a
lot of writings that said, we will get the United States in,
they will lose the war because they will be exhausted, and we
will come back. It doesn't mean that they will be back as a
huge presence, but I think there is a psychological element
also, which will invigorate the general movement. And we need
to be careful about that.
I cannot imagine them not coming back to some extent
because I don't see any pressure on the Taliban sufficient to
keep them out when they are useful linkage and ally.
Mr. Smith. And as Mr. Cordesman mentioned, they are
beginning to sort of cross-pollinate there. It is not just a
matter of Al Qaeda; the Haqqani Network or other groups that
aren't even affiliated with Al Qaeda can still present a threat
to us.
I guess, you know, one of the things we really struggle
with is--and I think, Mr. Cordesman, you did a decent job of
explaining the limitation in Afghanistan--but how long would we
have to stay there before those limitations would change?
It seems to me that we are on sort of a perpetual motion
machine here. We could go back up to 100,000 troops and stay
for 20 years and somehow I feel that 20 years from now,
hopefully a different group of people would be having this same
conversation about, you know, a corrupt, incompetent
government, we can't leave because they are not going to be
able to stand.
And if that is true, what does that mean in terms of how we
adopt our policy? I mean, isn't there some sort of containment
policy that is short of well, we just have to try to stay there
forever to hopefully keep the lid on this.
Mr. Cordesman. Mr. Smith, we are already in many ways out.
And when we talk about advisers, you are talking about
advisers, not combat forces.
Mr. Smith. Right, but that dodges the question to some
extent. Okay, so take us back a couple of years to where we
were in.
Mr. Cordesman. Let me just say though that I think the
honest answer to your question is, until there is some
resolution of what is a set of religious, demographic,
economic, and political tensions that now extends, really, from
North Africa in some ways to the Philippines, we can contain,
we can limit area by area according to how serious the issue
is, but this threat is going to remain.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
Mr. Cordesman. There is no way we can physically defeat it.
Mr. Smith. But if that is the case, isn't that an argument
for doing it in more containments. Instead of putting all of
our eggs, a 100,000 troops in Afghanistan when the threat could
be in a whole bunch of different places, isn't it an argument
for coming up with a broader containment strategy where you
don't try to, you know, put 100,000 in Iraq or 100,000 troops
in Afghanistan, because in no place can you actually eliminate
it.
Mr. Cordesman. Well, I think you are absolutely correct,
but it--to the extent that talking to people in the special
forces or the Joint Staff and elsewhere, I think that really is
their strategy.
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Cordesman. It is to find areas where we do not abandon
security partners, as Ambassador Neumann, Dr. Dale, and Dr.
O'Hanlon have mentioned. We create the kind of presence and
role which is both affordable and sustainable. And we will find
ourselves with new areas emerging.
I don't think anyone a year ago would have said that we
would face a proto-state in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
People have talked about our progress in Yemen quite frankly as
optimistically as they have our presence in Iraq--or rather
Afghanistan. But we are at the point where we can't provide
sufficient forces to control that threat, we may be able to
limit it.
Mr. Smith. Yes, thank you. I want to let somebody else, and
I yield back. I appreciate the answer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank each of you
for being here today. And my hopes for the people of
Afghanistan are very personal. My youngest son served as an
engineer there last year with the South Carolina Army National
Guard. And he was really inspired by the people of Afghanistan.
My former National Guard unit, the 218th Brigade, served
for a year in Afghanistan, led by our Adjutant General Bob
Livingston, and they developed a real identity and bond with
the people of Afghanistan as Afghan brothers. So I am hopeful.
Additionally, though, I am so concerned. We certainly
should remember that it was from the caves of Afghanistan that
Osama bin Laden directed the attacks against the United States
on September 11, 2001. Somehow we--the American people have
forgotten that. They need to remember.
And, Mr. Cordesman, as you are indicating the spread of Al
Qaeda across the globe from North Africa through the Middle
East, Central Asia, and you added to it, the Philippines, too.
We have people who are dedicated, according to this diagram by
Dr. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, of death
to Israel and death to America. That is their plan.
At the same time, again, it is personal, I have had an
opportunity to visit with our troops 12 times in Afghanistan,
but something that was, again, very uplifting to me is to visit
with our diplomatic corps led by Ambassador Neumann. And so, I
know we have extraordinary people.
As we face this, I would like to know--the President has
correctly identified that there was a direct relationship
between the stability of Afghanistan and the stability of
nuclear Pakistan. If what--what would be--how could this be
missed that the President was very clear that this is--the
instability there could result in extraordinary threat to the
American people.
Each of you, if you would comment in regard to the
importance of the interrelation with Pakistan.
Dr. Dale. Sir, thank you for your question, and thanks to
your sons as well for their terrific service. You raised a
terrific issue. Stability in Afghanistan, many would say, is
important from a U.S. national security interest perspective
for multiple reasons. One is the threat of violent extremism,
violent extremists, who as my colleagues were just discussing
have found a genial home in Afghanistan in the past and
currently.
But in addition, the South Asia region raises other
concerns for us. One is the prospect, and a very scary one, of
nuclear proliferation in Pakistan which could be triggered by
state instability or collapse.
A stable Afghanistan could go a long way to lowering the
temperatures and the tensions in the Afghan-Pakistani
relationship and perhaps bolster state stability in Pakistan.
And that is something worth thinking about as we make future
decisions.
One more facet is the Pakistani-Indian relationship and the
prospect there of a potential nuclear standoff. Afghanistan has
traditionally served as grounds for proxy contestation between
those two states. Again, a stable Afghanistan could go a long
way to lowering those temperatures and reducing that tension.
Thank you.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Congressman, I will just make one brief
point, which is a scenario that I worry about somewhat if
Afghanistan were to fall apart, and whether the Taliban itself
would invite a group like Lashkar-e-Taiba into part of eastern
Afghanistan or not, I don't know. But if the state collapsed, a
group like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which of course was behind the
Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008 in India, could have another
place from which it could do planning.
At the moment, it may not need that because, historically,
of course, the Pakistani security forces have tolerated and
even helped Lashkar-e-Taiba. But there hasn't been another
attack like Mumbai in the last 6 years and there could come a
point where Lashkar-e-Taiba wants more freedom of maneuver to
operate beyond the controls of the Pakistani state.
So I would worry that an Afghanistan in chaos could provide
the sanctuary not only for the groups that might threaten us
directly, but for groups that might want to start Indo-
Pakistani conflict, and specifically Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Mr. Cordesman. I think that Mike has raised a key issue, as
has Dr. Dale. There is something to remember about Pakistan.
The United States State Department Report on Terrorism ranks it
as having the highest level of terrorist incidents of any
country in the world. Almost all of those incidents are not
related to any aspect of Afghanistan.
Many of them take place in areas that have nothing to do
with the FATA area. It is an economy which basically faces a
crisis because of demographic pressures, because this is a
country that spends less on education than virtually every
country in the world. It is a country which is always on the
edge, in many ways, of being a failed state.
It is also a country where we don't seem to tie our
strategy to Pakistan to our strategy in Afghanistan. It
virtually went unmentioned in the Quadrennial Defense Review,
there is no mention of it in the West Point speech, and we are
cutting aid very seriously.
Most of that military aid never went to counterinsurgency.
It went to buying equipment to fight India. And as is the case
in Afghanistan on the economic side, in spite of efforts by the
Congress over the last 10 years, we have never had a single
report from USAID to explain what the benefits or impact of the
economic aid to Pakistan has been. And quite frankly, it is not
quite clear what the program did.
The questions you raised are very serious, but we have a
Pakistan problem, and not just an Afghanistan-Pakistan problem.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time expired. Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for
being before us today. I just want to try to understand whoever
or as many of you who want to answer this question, what do you
think--what is the real assessment of the capability of the
Afghan National Security Force?
Where are their gaps in capability? What key resources do
they need? What is it that the international community needs to
do in order to get them to a point where they can really do
things on their own?
Ambassador Neumann. I want to make a couple quick comments,
but Catherine is the one who runs around the most out in the
boonies. But I think first of all, as Tony was talking about
with the police, you have got considerable variation in forces.
It is important to remember how little time we have
actually been at this. When I left Afghanistan in 2007, my
official departure, but I keep going back, we were building
less than 200,000 forces for the total of Afghan security
forces. We had 600,000 in Iraq already under arms.
We didn't raise our level of building until the decisions
of 2009. And given our budget processes and our political
processes, that means those people start coming on line in 2010
being recruited. For your advanced equipment, your logistics,
that doesn't even start arriving until 2010 because you all
have to appropriate money, contracts have to be signed, stuff
has to be built.
So you are actually looking at a force generation process
that is about 4 years old for the majority of the force. And we
tend to forget that because we think, well, we have been at
this 13 years, why is this so screwed up.
Secondly, I remember very clearly when I visited in 2010, I
was getting a lot of briefings that we were not even beginning
the development of most of the--what we call the enablers, the
logistics, the medevac, the artillery, because we were using
every inch of space in basing to create infantry so we can get
them into the fight.
But there was no big neon sign in 2010 that said, hey, we
are going to quit this in 2014, you are done, or 2016.
Ms. Sanchez. But, Ambassador, the capacity.
Ambassador Neumann. Okay.
Ms. Sanchez. What is our current capacity?
Ambassador Neumann. Their capacity--okay, their capacity
is----
Ms. Sanchez. That is really my question, because I got news
for you.
Ambassador Neumann. Yes.
Ms. Sanchez. I have talked to plenty people, plenty of
people who told me that, you know, all these numbers that we
saw over the years, hundreds of thousands of people recruited,
we were recruiting 63-year-olds, we were recruiting people who
were illiterate.
You know, I would really want to know what is their
capability and what do we have to do to get them into place so
that we can get out of there.
Ambassador Neumann. Tony will tell you in great detail that
our statistics are rotten, with which I agree. The overall
ability to fight has been fairly high. The variance is extreme
so that we have a huge amount of anecdotal evidence--you know,
Afghanistan is a place where if you have your mind made up, you
can find the anecdotes that fit your belief.
What we don't have is the air support that we have had.
What we don't have yet developed is casualty evacuation. We
don't have well-developed targeting and intelligence processes,
all of which are things we started very late.
We have a lot of willingness to fight when you contrast--
and you can--we can debate this pretty long because it will be
different with different stories. But the point I would make
is, when you look at the falling apart of the Iraqi army in the
last year, you are not yet seeing anything equivalent to that
with Afghan units in the fight. That is a fairly high degree of
willingness to carry out the battle.
But the competence question and the effectiveness question
are much, much harder to get at and we are still, I think, in
fairly early days to measure that.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. Does anybody else on the panel
have--before I lose all my time here?
Mr. Cordesman. Very quickly, in two wars, Iraq and Vietnam,
we discovered the hard way that all of the metrics we had in
generating forces, as Ambassador Neumann, did not give us a
measure what happened when we left and they went into combat.
The truth is, we can't answer your question until we
actually watch them seriously fight on their own. And if we
don't have advisers or presence that is with those units, the
historical case is, the chance of their collapsing, or a
significant amount of the order of battle collapsing, is very
high.
Dr. Dale. Ma'am, thanks for the question. Just two words:
my colleagues are kind; I've spent a lot of time on the ground
with Afghan army and police commanders over 5 years in a lot of
different parts of the country. They are capable, they are
confident, they integrate their efforts much better than they
did, and they have been successful operationally, in particular
over the last year, but they do lack some key enablers.
As we draw down and stop providing our enablers for their
use, there will be a gap before their own enablers are fully
online. And then more fundamentally, they need institutional
systems that can support them, and those are not fully in
place.
That is a key focus of the campaign, including beyond this
year, going into Resolute Support, helping Afghans build those
systems that my friends and colleagues here have talked about.
But it takes work both in Kabul and out on the ground for end-
to-end integration, and there is a question about how long we
are going to be able to sustain that; current policy calls for
us to pull back to Kabul by the end of next year.
It is a great question. As Tony points out, how will we
know how much is enough, but also how much time we will have.
Thank you.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Nugent.
Mr. Nugent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And really to build on
what you were just testifying to, you know, I had a son in
Afghanistan for 15 months in--I think around the 2006, 2007
time period. And then I had two in Iraq right at the drawdown.
And my concern is, we don't want to create the same
situation that we currently have in Iraq. And I know that you
have struggled to try to explain what we think the capacity is
of the Afghan national forces, and I think you do have
different motivation on the fight level, I will tell you.
But what do you think--and I have heard you, you have all
talked about this. You know, we are drawing down to 9,800 and
then we are drawing down to half of that. It seems like all the
planning that is going to take place is going to be not
planning about how we sustain, but planning on how we get out.
How does that put us in a sustainable position? And I would
like to hear from any of you what you think that causes us to
do or not do.
Ambassador Neumann. Real quickly. It does not put us in a
sustainable position. And the doubts it creates about us
directly undercut effectiveness. When people look over their
shoulder to think are they about to be let down, then they are
not putting their back into the fight.
So there is not one answer to how good they are, because
the answer is partly a reciprocal of how much confidence and
faith they have in support. Just as troops going into battle
think a lot about whether they are going to be inside or
outside artillery range or air cover or the other things. That
is a reciprocal.
Mr. Cordesman. If I could just say from Vietnam and Iraq,
one of the key lessons we should have learned and haven't is,
once you generate forces, you have to keep advisers with them
in the field long enough for them to actually become a fully
functioning force.
Under the current plan, we will not come close to that.
With 9,800 people, we can advise at the core level. We cannot
put people into the field. If we cut it down to half that at
the end of 2015, we will have rushed forward through a plan
which originally was supposed to have advisers through 2018.
And as Ambassador Neumann pointed out, this really started
in 2009. And if you go back to testimony before this committee,
you were only at about 60 percent of the required advisers even
in 2010.
Mr. Nugent. So let me ask you this. At the 4,800 level,
what exactly can they do? What can those U.S. troops provide?
Mr. Cordesman. Pack.
Mr. Nugent. Pack.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Yes, I don't like that number. I think it is
good that you are honing in on that aspect of the plan, because
it strikes me as a somewhat meaningless number. It is in the
rough range of what I think should be our enduring force past
2016 for counterterrorism purposes, maybe a little bit bigger
than would be absolutely required, but roughly in the range
that I probably want to see the next American President
sustain.
But as a halfway point between 2014 and 2016, it seems to
me that it is really just, you know, a packing-up force,
because it hasn't yet had a clear mission defined. And
presumably, we need that 9,800 force for something. In 2015,
they are not going to have time to do whatever they are being
asked to do.
Mr. Nugent. But doesn't all this really relate back to what
our foreign policy is or the lack of, I think, a cohesive
foreign policy? Doesn't this kind of speak to that and
particularly to our friends and to our enemies as to what our
true, I guess, where we come from as to what we are willing to
do to help our friends and to sustain a relationship?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Can I just add one point on that. Thank you
for putting it that way. I feel like collectively as a nation,
we have shown a lot of patience in Afghanistan.
Mr. Nugent. I agree.
Dr. O'Hanlon. And it is--and we should keep it going. And
it feels to me like we are losing our--the patience we have
had. And people like to say America is not a strategically
patient country. I see a lot of patience in our country. We
stuck with Korea for many decades when it was still essentially
a dictatorship.
We stuck with a lot of messy friends in the Middle East
because we had no better alternative. In Afghanistan, we have
been at it for now two Presidencies and several terms, and that
has been, I think, to our credit, because we haven't figured
out a strategy that has really given us a resounding success,
but we kept at it. Now we are losing our patience and I don't
think that is smart.
Mr. Nugent. Well, and one of the things and, lastly, that I
am concerned about is, as a parent of those that actually have
to go out and project that force is I want to make sure that
they have the ability to protect themselves.
You know, when my kids were over there in Iraq leaving--and
one of my sons, you know, they lost five members of that unit
from an IRAM [improvised rocket-assisted munition] attack the
night I was there. And they knew where the bad guys were laying
their heads and the Iraqi Government had to okay the ability to
go out and get those folks and they were stopped from doing
that, from protecting their own forces because Iraq, as corrupt
as they are, were protecting those particular minorities.
I yield back. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Excuse me. Thanks to you all for being here. In
response to the last question, I think trying to understand
sometimes what really was different in those countries, I
wonder--and particularly having this, Ambassador Neumann here--
was there a real difference in how we saw the role of civil
society?
I think one of the frustrations that Americans have is they
didn't see a functioning government. They didn't see the
ability of governance throughout the country, even where you
might have a kind of remarkable governor, you didn't have the
support for that governor, you certainly didn't have the role
of women put on any kind of--not even an equal footing, but at
least some acknowledgment of.
And I--you know, we just talked about South Korea and
sticking with South Korea. Do you think that there--what role
does the, our perception of civil society in Afghanistan play
in all this? And do you see any changes?
What should our embassy look like there if we sustain the
level of support that we are talking about? We obviously need
the ability for some kind of counterterrorism activities, but,
you know, what role does the embassy play on that? Where do we
anticipate that we will have a different kind of outlook
because we hopefully have had--maybe even a perception of a
transition in terms of the election.
Where does that play and what can we do about that? What
should we be doing about that? How should we see that and how
should it be different and not normal, as I think the President
has said?
Ambassador Neumann. Thank you. It is an important question.
I think actually we have had more integration of effort. We
tend to talk about and be focused on the military so much that
there is very little understanding of what we are doing in the
other places.
Having said that, though, we are flighty and impatient and
we want to--often we want to see change in civil society and
governance, which is important. But we demand a rate that is
probably impossible, that has never happened in any country
developing from similar circumstances, and then when we don't
get it, we get disgusted and we throw up our hands.
So the first thing we need is a longer term plan with a
longer term basis of understanding that when you are talking
about societal change, you are talking about something that
takes a long time. And in fact, a lot of your training and
education doesn't produce immediate effect, but it builds up,
and then the effects come in if they come, and you can't be
certain, later.
In the civil society area particularly, there has been a
huge amount of development. But we have by our project approach
created a project-driven civil society groups which tend to ebb
and flow depending on the dollars and where the projects are,
rather than sort of working out their own priorities. We need
to help stabilize that.
There is a big development in women's programs. It is very
uneven. It is strongest in the urban areas, weakest in the
rural. We have tended to be too dominant in trying to lead it
rather than support what they lead, and I think not always very
effective.
In the NATO planning, it tends to----
Mrs. Davis. Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, if I could interrupt
for a second.
Ambassador Neumann. Yes, please.
Mrs. Davis. Because I think one of the other issues that
clearly has been a problem is accountability in terms of many
of those programs, as you say, sort of the target.
Ambassador Neumann. I am sorry. When you say
accountability, you mean political accountability of Afghans or
dollar accountability in our programs, as I want to make sure I
am speaking to your question.
Mrs. Davis. It is probably both. I mean, I think that we
have not developed very good tools for evaluating whether or
not anything is working. And so, that complicates whether we
actually can be more aggressive in how we proceed.
Ambassador Neumann. Our tools are not good. Tony has talked
about that. And if you will give a chance he will talk a lot
more.
But I also think that we sometimes demand tools that are
unrealistic, that we--you know, we can measure how many schools
are built but it is very hard to measure the quality of
education coming out of them which is actually the only thing
that really matters. And I don't think we are--I think we have
a lot of trouble developing that, but some of that is
legitimate trouble.
Mrs. Davis. I was going to try and ask Mr. Cordesman but
I--unfortunately my time is up, to respond and I know you are
frustrated about that issue as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Conaway [presiding]. Mr. Coffman, 5 minutes.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, obviously, we can't--one mistake we made in
Afghanistan, we have made--but, you know, it is--but I have a
question about how realistic is our policy there, how realistic
is our objectives given the political culture of the country.
You know, it seemed to me that what the Bush administration
did first was brilliant. That we were attacked in 9/11. That
the Taliban who controlled much of the country gave safe harbor
to Al Qaeda that planned their attack and operation from that
area.
We then, after 9/11, we supported the anti-Taliban forces,
the Northern Alliance, who pushed the Taliban out of most of
the country, I think. And then I think we made a big mistake.
Instead of saying to the Northern Alliance, the victors on the
ground, you are in charge now, and you ought to probably expand
out your governance to make sure all of the factions in the
country are included. I think we pushed them aside and
superimposed a political process that gave the people of
Afghanistan the government that we wanted them to have.
But it is what it is.
And one question I have for you, after the Soviets pulled
out, and I think the Government of Afghanistan that they
established failed. After they ceased supporting the
government, after the Soviet Union dissolved, what, how
dependent--after 2016, assuming that U.S. forces are out there,
how dependent will the Afghan Government be on continued U.S.
support in order to sustain itself? And what happens if we
don't?
Dr. Dale, we will start with you.
Dr. Dale. So thank you for the question.
Right now Afghanistan is extraordinarily dependent on the
international community, not only to sustain the Afghan
National Security Forces, but for most everything else that the
government does.
The international community has pledged support for an
additional 10 years, the decade of transformation out to 2024.
But those pledges face competing exigencies in national
capitals. And in any case, quite frankly, that is not a
permanent solution.
What the ideal would be a way for Afghanistan to pay, more
or less, for its own security, and that requires an Afghan
economy that can generate revenues, collect those revenues,
execute budgets in a reasonably accountable way with, ideally,
diminishing international community assistance over time.
I think--I call it the elephant in the room because I think
that it is, without international community funding for some
period over the next years, security in Afghanistan is likely
to fall apart and perhaps with it the Afghan state.
And so, I think what we urgently need is a real dialogue
about what those costs actually look like, what international
community commitment might be, and what the plan is to help
Afghans cultivate their own and grow an economy that can
eventually sustain security there. Our decision in any case may
be not to engage. But that is the conversation, I think, that
we need to have.
Mr. Coffman. Dr. O'Hanlon.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Just one brief word, if I could, Congressman.
I think Afghanistan will crucially need our continued help.
And I actually think the committee and the Congress have played
a very constructive role therefore in empowering Secretary
Kerry to do what he just appears to have done, at least
temporarily averting electoral crisis, because I think Afghans
understand the message, that they need our help, and that you
are not going to provide if there is a hijacking of the
election process or a breakdown of the state.
And I think this is understood by people like Dr. Abdullah
and Dr. Ghani, which is part of why Kerry has leverage when he
goes and demands some kind of a compromise.
Mr. Coffman. Mr. Cordesman.
Mr. Cordesman. I think that the World Bank estimates that
the Afghan Government under a much tighter funding profile than
the Tokyo Conference called for would be at least 70 percent
dependent on outside aid and money through at least 2020.
I think that the other problem we have seen is that where
we expected the Afghan Government to improve its fundraising
and ability to manage assets it has actually declined
significantly in the last year and a half, according to World
Bank and other estimates.
We either provide them with continuing support or on the
military and civil level this structure collapses. That doesn't
mean they aren't improving. It doesn't mean they can't make
this work. But you can't go from a plan that extended to 2020
to one that doesn't have a plan at all for the future and
really expect success.
Mr. Coffman. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Conaway. The gentleman's time has expired.
Ms. Speier, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you all for your astute comments. One of you, I
think it was you, Mr. Neumann, Ambassador Neumann, had
indicated that power must be shared. And it appears that they
are moving in that direction with Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani.
But there is no reference to the Taliban. And as we move
forward in this new world order in Afghanistan, does not the
Taliban have to be part of the shared power within the country?
Ambassador Neumann. This question of negotiations obviously
has a two-part piece. Ideally, you need a political solution.
You only get a political solution though in this kind of war
when both sides reach the point of believing that they can't
achieve their maximal positions through force, and then they
get to negotiations.
Whether you can have successful negotiations with the
Taliban is a big question but it is actually it is an umbrella
term for multiple groups which are within it and with some you
can probably get negotiations. But there needs to be a clarity
of process. That will have to be addressed by the next
government because the current one is out of time.
I think a key piece of that is going to be our own
consistency of support. If the insurgents think they have an
easy job waiting us out, you have a very different dialogue
inside the insurgency about whether to engage in negotiations
from one that happens if they think that they don't even have
that luxury because we are staying around. So we lose a lot of
our pressure on them by the lack of clarity about our long-term
intentions.
The second question of course is whether they are prepared
in fact to make any kind of a deal; whether you could have a
shared relationship with a Mullah Omar, I think, is pretty
questionable, no matter how necessary it is.
But there is room for opening. That of course is something
that interested President Karzai a lot. It is one about which I
think Dr. Abdullah and the northerners are particularly
sensitive and question whether it can be done. But it can only
be explored if there is a sense of firmness.
You have got to have the position that I think late Prime
Minister Rabin expressed once when he was asked how can you
negotiate with terrorists, and he said, I have to negotiate as
though there is no terrorism and I have to fight terrorism as
though there are no negotiations.
You have got to be able to go full bore on both tracks
without letting one handicap you or cripple you on the other.
Ms. Speier. Do any of you have additional comments on that?
Dr. Dale. Ma'am, thank you for the question.
It is important for Afghans, first of all, to think about
how this conflict genuinely comes to an end. It is not with our
unilateral withdrawal and it is not with a great victory on the
battlefield. It is in some form of reconciliation over time.
What I would suggest though, that it may be worth thinking
about, is that the first requirement is for reconciliation
within Afghan society. That is first of all a resolution of the
current political impasse. But an increasingly inclusive,
dynamic, vibrant Afghan national dialogue about what that state
is and what it becomes, together with checks and balances that
can hold the system accountable, is a better foundation for
reintegrating Taliban and other insurgents than a fractious,
torn polity like the one that we currently have. It might make
sense to think of this then as a longer term process over time
rather than a deal that ought to be cut tomorrow. Thank you.
Mr. Cordesman. If I could add just one quick point. We
really need to start thinking of what happens if beginning in
2015 the central government runs out of the money that has
preserved political unity and kept the structure together. And
that is a very real prospect at this point.
Dr. O'Hanlon. And my one quick point if I could is that
because of uncertainty about money, uncertainty about the
battlefield as we draw down, I don't think the Taliban, at
least not Taliban Central, is likely to be interested in a
negotiation for 1 to 2 years at a minimum. So I think that is
one more argument in favor of strategic patience in my book.
Ms. Speier. All right, my time is expired.
Mr. Conaway. The gentlelady yields back.
Dr. Wenstrup, for 5 minutes.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cordesman, you, I think, answered one of my questions
already which referred to aid to Pakistan, but not only
Pakistan, wherever we are giving aid. I have always wondered
where we can go to find the information that tells us what the
goal of that aid would be and what the results of our aid have
produced. If I understood you correctly we really don't have
that information. Would that be correct?
Mr. Cordesman. We were supposed to, under Secretary
Clinton's QDDR [Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review],
have USAID and the State Department develop and report on
effectiveness measures. That commitment was made by both
agencies. They have produced no product and no results.
Worse than that, if you go back to 2009, 2010 in areas like
governance, in some aspects of aid we were providing maps by
district to progress. When that progress did not continue
because of the fighting we stopped publishing the maps.
And if you look at the reporting of SIGAR and the GAO
[Government Accountability Office] they have, again and again,
raised specific areas we could do this. The problem basically
is not that it is impossible, as Ambassador Neumann points out,
it is not precise, you have to make judgments. The real problem
is that people seem to be much more interested in reporting
success that doesn't exist than making success actually happen.
Dr. Wenstrup. When was the last time we had an actual
report?
Mr. Cordesman. The only report that aside from the
President's fact sheet, which came out when he gave his speech
on Vietnam, was this color comic that was provided by USAID
which creates all of the usual nonsensical data about GDP,
education, and the rest. Other than that, the 1230 report does
not have any report on the effectiveness of aid. USAID doesn't
report, the State Department doesn't report, and the U.N.
organization, which is supposed to report on aid effectiveness,
has never issued any report on aid, even in dollar terms.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. You know, we were talking about
role of Taliban. And I look back at the first election that
occurred in April. And Secretary Hagel was here and he
mentioned how well things went and how the Taliban was
virtually ineffective in trying to foil that election.
And, you know, what occurred to me as a military person
with some idea of strategy, if I am the Taliban I lay down
because if that--if the idea that we say that everything is
okay here, we are more likely to leave, and not press having a
greater presence. And that was what he was saying at that time,
that basically things are pretty good. They had that election,
it is okay.
You know, understanding this enemy a little bit, that would
be the approach that I would take, and from what I am hearing
today is that we really don't know what the Taliban is still
capable of or where they might go. Does anyone care to comment
on that?
Mr. Cordesman. If I can make just a quick--the U.N.
casualty report, IED reports, show that today's level of
violence in every part of Afghanistan, broken out into nine
different areas, is higher than it was in 2011, sometimes by a
factor of five. Now these numbers are not that high. But, yes,
we have a lot of data on the level of violence and it doesn't
show we are winning.
What we don't have, and this gets back to your military
question, insurgency and counterinsurgency is essentially a
political struggle. Every metric we have is a tactical metric
without any metric of government influence, or Taliban and
insurgent influence by district.
Dr. Wenstrup. Anybody else?
Dr. O'Hanlon. If I could add one point, Congressman. The
way I would generalize the overall situation on violence is
first of all to agree with Tony's point, there is a lot we
don't know and there are some negative trends.
And also I would emphasize the Afghan forces have taken
tremendous losses in the last couple of years, 4,700 fatalities
last year. It is not a number that ISAF has wanted to
publicize, although they don't classify it either.
I actually think we should talk about it more, because to
me it proves they are willing to fight for their country, with
all the caveats and concerns that they may or may not hold
together as we draw down.
But I also would say and Tony may disagree, but I think I
am saying something consistent with his point because he did
say the overall absolute levels of violence are not that high
statistically compared with certain other combat zones. But
even though some of the trends are worrisome, Afghanistan
cities and major roads are actually not that bad, certainly by
the standards of war zones, even by the standards to some of
the more crime-ridden societies in Latin America today, for
example, or in certain parts of Africa.
So there is a basis for hope if that Afghan force can hold
together and sustain those high casualty levels and keep
finding recruits and not fracture because of political
disunity.
Ambassador Neumann. Could I just add a couple of things
quickly.
I have seen over the years us speculate that the Taliban
will, at this or that point, lay back and wait for us to leave.
I have never seen them do it. And frankly I think they have a
lot of trouble doing it because they can't concede the ground
for the development of authority.
In the election they made a quite concerted effort to
prevent the election. They had a difficult issue they had to
manage which is doing it without so far alienating Afghans at a
kick-back. But there were actually a lot of attacks on the--
especially on the first day of the election.
And one of the interesting things was to the degree to
which the Afghan press refused to publicize it, in part because
they were angry at the killing of a journalist in the Serena
Hotel, and they simply said we are not going to help you
discourage our election. And they really put practically a news
blackout which really frustrated the Taliban.
What you are seeing now, I think, is pulling out as many
stops as they can to have as many attacks as possible in as
many parts of the country, both high profile and taking on the
Afghan army. And I think it--we are really going to have to
wait out this fighting season and then do some kind of serious
analysis rather than trying to do an incident by incident and
anecdote by anecdote discussion.
I think you are probably looking at something that is going
to be called the Battle of Helmand, that is a 3- or 4-month
engagement in various places. And we are going to have to
assess on that basis at the end of time, both in terms of
competence in forces, as well as competence in leadership, as
well as fighting will.
So far I would say we are doing moderately--Afghans are
doing moderately well, but we are a long way from where we
should even be trying to make that judgment, frustrating as
that is, I think, for people who would like an instant answer.
Mr. Conaway. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Barber, 5 minutes.
Mr. Barber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for
being here today.
Recently with my colleague and others we spent some time in
Afghanistan and I have to say I, you have to be there on the
ground to realize how challenging the situation is for our
troops and for the diplomatic corps.
I remember being rushed from the airport to the embassy in
armored vehicles, and once we got there realized that the
embassy is essentially a fortress. You work there, you live
there, you rarely go off--one young man who escorted us said he
has been off once in 8 months and that was because he had a bad
tooth that needed to be taken out.
So that is the situation now with, you know, there was a
pretty substantial number of our troops still there. We went
out to Camp Leatherneck where a Marine Corps and British Army
are training the Afghan Army to protect their country.
And I must say I was impressed with that, as well as the
way in which they essentially protected their election process.
I was quite skeptical when I saw what was happening out there,
but I think they acquitted themselves fairly well.
So that is what I saw just in my brief visit. And I think
it is affirmed by many other observations about the current
situation where we have an essentially, you know, a pretty
substantial number of troops on the ground.
And I am concerned about, obviously, as we all are of what
happens with the election process and where we end up. And then
I want to also focus my question on the relationship with
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Two questions. First of all, would you comment on where you
think this election process is going? I mean, Secretary Kerry
apparently forged an agreement which may or may not last
between the two presidential candidates. The audit is going on.
Comment, if you will, on where you think we end up. We have an
agreement that was worked up by Secretary Kerry to have the
president and the loser, if you will, share power in a sense.
And then secondly--and this is really the more important
question for me. It has to do with the relationship between
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obviously there will be some changes
when the new President takes office. And we have seen over the
course of the last decade that security at the border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan has been interdependent on both
countries' efforts of fighting terrorism in the border regions.
However, the relationship between the two countries has ebbed
and flowed over time.
And as Pakistan continues to depend on U.S. military,
economic support, as we draw down our forces in Afghanistan,
how can we work with, how can we encourage more Pakistani
involvement in security at the border, and how do you see
Pakistan engaging with the new Afghan Government? I think this
is an essential question going forward once we leave. Can they
work together to make the area more secure?
Could you respond, any or all of you, please, to those two
questions?
Dr. Dale. Sir, thank you for the questions and to comment
on your second.
The relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan is
clearly very critical. The good news is that both states in
theory have strong vested interest in the same thing, right,
regional stability that is to everyone's benefit, economic
growth and opportunity--so that is a good starting point.
But in practice there is a fundamental lack of good faith
up at the strategic level and what we see, that exacerbates
every time there is a tactical level dispute at the border, for
example, it very rapidly escalates and runs the risk of
something much greater.
ISAF under NATO has played a terrific role in facilitating
mil-to-mil ties at the tactical level at the border, at the
operational level in terms of combined planning, and also up at
the strategic level in terms of contacts between Afghans and
Pakistanis and that is a great start.
It is hopeful. And those conversations can yield practical
progress that may be a helpful foundation for the future, but
it still leaves out the lack of confidence and good faith up at
the strategic level which is fundamentally a political problem.
And so it is worth thinking about, from a U.S. Government
perspective, if we are concerned how we continue to engage not
only from a military perspective, but with the other
instruments of national power to help shape that relationship
in the interests of stability.
Thank you.
Mr. Barber. Thank you, Doctor.
Mr. Cordesman. The problem I would say is that start is
purely political at the top. In the field you--actually in the
FATA area have a significant number of people fleeing Pakistan
because of a Pakistani operation in the border, going back into
Afghanistan, and at this point making our problems worse.
The history of how the Pakistani army also fights is
basically drive out the civilian population, arrest or kill
whoever is left, some of which is probably innocent civilians.
And then as in the case of the Swat you end up going back to
pretty much the problems you had at a lower scale.
At this point too Pakistan is competing actively with India
for influence over Afghanistan on terms, for example, that the
Afghan Government sees as a major threat. So we have to be very
careful. What Dr. Dale points out is the world that should be,
the world that exists in the middle of transition is moving in
exactly the opposite direction.
Ambassador Neumann. I am not sure----
Mr. Conaway. The gentleman's time has expired. If the other
witnesses would like to submit a written response that would be
great.
Mr. Barber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Conaway. Mr. Jones, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I thank
the panel for being here today. And I went to Walter Reed about
4 weeks ago to visit the wounded and I saw three Army soldiers
who had lost one leg each from Fort Bragg, not my district. I
represent Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point Marine Air Station.
Then I visited the two Marines from my district in addition
to the soldiers and one had lost both legs and an arm, 23 years
of age. The other Marine I saw was 24, very proud of his 8-
month-old little baby girl who was not there obviously. She was
home with her mother. He had lost both legs and is going to
have to have his rectum rebuilt. I wonder what it is all about.
I listen to you very carefully. I know you have different
views but to think that we have accomplished any great success
is absolutely ridiculous based on history. I am looking today
in the Washington Post where it says, ``Afghanistan may have
lost track of more than 200,000 weapons''; 200,000 weapons,
that is the security force. They say in the article we have no
idea what the police force has lost. I doubt if those weapons
are going to anywhere but our enemies within Afghanistan, maybe
a few outside.
And then Mr. Ambassador, I appreciate your patience on
Afghanistan. Obviously you have got the experience I don't
have. But let me give you another title. ``Is the Pentagon
Wasting Taxpayer's Money in Afghanistan?'' Then another title
is, ``The United States Military Was No Match for Afghan
Corruption.'' Then the last one I want to read to you the title
is, ``Money Pit, the Monstrous Failure of U.S. Aid to
Afghanistan.''
These are all articles this year, 2014. And then we hear
today, you are the experts. You are with think tanks, some of
you, you have had experience being as the ambassador. And yet
we continue to play the game we are changing Afghanistan. Am I
worried about the terrorists, the jihadists? Absolutely I am.
That is why if Saddam was still sitting in Iraq we wouldn't
have the problem that we got there now.
Yes, was he an evil man? Absolutely. But the world we live
in is not like America. It is not going to be like America. And
when I look at the history of Afghanistan and going back to
Alexander the Great and all the great nations that tried to
influence and to occupy Afghanistan, they all failed. And we
can play this game with the taxpayers, spending all their
money, and quite frankly, we all know it is not our money
anyway.
We are a debtor nation. We are borrowing from China, Japan,
the UAE [United Arab Emirates], to pay our bills. That is why
we have these debates about raising the debt ceiling every year
so we can borrow more money to pay the bills from last year.
This brings me to my point. What in the world are we trying
to do when other countries and this is from your report, Mr.
Cordesman, and I read the subtitle, ``The second threat is the
mix of weakness and failures in the host country and a lack of
commitment from our key allies.''
Why is Uncle Sam, meaning the taxpayers of America, taking
this burden on and continue a 10-year agreement known as the
Bilateral Strategic Agreement to keep a commitment going and
you would sit here--I might not be here. You will sit here 3 or
4 years from now and tell the same story.
Where is the honesty in an evaluation of the policy when
some people like you would come and say, you know, we need to
take what we take, cut our losses and let's take a different
view. I am all for the statesmanship. I am all for working with
other countries and let them share the lead and the burden, and
the pain of our country.
But, Mr. Cordesman, I will let you start this because this
was your subtitle. Apparently they are not doing their part
either, by the way. Thank you.
Mr. Cordesman. Congressman, in context that referred to
generic problems in counterinsurgency.
I think that as Ambassador Neumann mentioned, we, I think,
are planning on a significant, continued amount of military
support from Germany and Italy in terms of providing support
for the training effort. But the fact is that, yes, we should
have an integrated plan, we should have integrated military
assistance and aid.
But that is an area, quite frankly, where to have that, you
need U.S. leadership, as Ambassador Neumann pointed out. And
you do have to decide what your strategic objectives are and
limit them. And at this point, quite frankly, we have had
allied support in Afghanistan. What we have not had is a great
deal of leadership in shaping this transition process.
Mr. Conaway. The gentleman's time has expired.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. Dr.
Dale and Dr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Cordesman and Ambassador Neumann,
thank you very much.
This is a tough subject and it is one that where we can't
just simply ignore or do away with, or wish it was going to be
something different, as some have intimated on the panel this
morning. But it is just tough stuff.
Lives are at stake. Millions of young ladies or young women
are in schools, however affected those might or might not be,
they are at least learning something they wouldn't have learned
otherwise. And so, this is tough stuff and to take a cavalier
approach to simply tossing in the towel and leaving I think is
irresponsible and extreme.
Thank you very much for your patience this morning and we
are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
July 30, 2014
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
July 30, 2014
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