[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 14, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10393-S10397]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        AFGHANISTAN TROOP SURGE

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I was critical of the President's decisions 
when he canceled the so-called missile shield that would have been 
located in Poland and in the Czech Republic, among others things, 
because I was concerned about the message it sends to our allies in the 
region. After working with them to develop the political and public 
consensus for this missile shield, the United States essentially pulled 
the rug out from under these allies and left the consensus in Central 
and Eastern Europe that the United States, once again, proved to be an 
unreliable ally.
  Throughout the Baltic States, Central Europe and other people in the 
world couldn't fail to notice the same. I am thinking of countries in 
the Persian Gulf that have relied upon the presence of the United 
States but have, I think, wondered from time to time whether we are the 
ally they want to stick with because of the fact that sometimes we have 
proven to be unreliable.
  I am concerned about that same issue with respect to Pakistan and 
Afghanistan. Will our continued public debate over the recommendations 
that General McChrystal has made to the President result in both allies 
in the region as well as the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan 
concluding that they better make book with others in the area, 
including potentially the Taliban? Because after all, those people are 
going to continue to be in the area; the United States may not.
  This is where I think the debate about General McChrystal's 
recommendations about troop levels and other resources in Afghanistan 
become so very important. I think we need to listen to the advice of 
the commander in the field, General McChrystal, who produced a very 
straightforward assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.
  Obviously, the President is the Commander in Chief, and the decisions 
are his to make. It is appropriate for him to rely upon others for 
advice as well as on the commander in the field. But there is a point 
at which the President's own strategy, which he announced in March, 
needs to be adequately resourced and we need to move forward. Here is 
what the President said:

       The American people must understand that this is a 
     downpayment on our own future.

  He was talking about the resources that would be needed in 
Afghanistan. So he selected General McChrystal to implement his 
strategy. We unanimously confirmed General McChrystal, and then the 
President asked him to give an assessment of what it was going to take. 
That assessment was provided in August. It has now been about 50 days 
since that assessment

[[Page S10394]]

has been made public--since the President received it. Yet we still 
don't have a decision.
  My concern is that this continuing public debate is going to raise 
doubts around the world about the staying power of the United States; 
about our willingness to continue commitments we make. Remember, the 
President himself called this a war of necessity, both during the 
campaign and after his inauguration. He stressed the fact that we had 
to do what it took to win in Afghanistan. There are those around the 
world who are wondering whether we mean to resource this effort to the 
extent that General McChrystal has said is necessary.
  What did General McChrystal's assessment say? First, he speaks of 
what ISAF--that is the international force, including NATO forces--will 
require.

       ISAF requires an increase in the total coalition force 
     capability and end strength.

  In other words, more troops. He warned of the risk of not providing 
adequate resources, and here is what he said:

       Failure to provide quality resources risks a longer 
     conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and 
     ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of 
     these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission 
     failure.

  Is that what we want--mission failure? If we don't quickly make a 
decision, support the President--if he makes the decision to adequately 
resource our effort there, then we are not only going to be losing, we 
are not only going to have mission failure, but we will send a message 
to everybody around the world that, once again, the United States can't 
be trusted. Here is what the General said about why it matters:

       Time matters; we must act now to reverse the negative 
     trends and demonstrate progress. I believe the short-term 
     fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and 
     reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term--next 12 months--
     while Afghan security capacity matures--risks an outcome 
     where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.

  Do we want to take the risk that we take so long in getting the 
additional troops there that success is no longer possible? I hope not. 
Finally, General McChrystal underscored the reason for his conclusions 
during a recent speech he gave in London, where he said:

       I believe that the loss of stability in Afghanistan brings 
     a huge risk that transnational terrorists such as al-Qaida 
     will operate from within Afghanistan again.

  Now we are having this big public debate. Some prominent Democrats 
have said we shouldn't resource this the way General McChrystal has 
announced, and this is why I think we are sending the wrong message. I 
understand there is some declining support for the war, but this is 
where Presidential and congressional leadership comes in.
  I remember, during the debate over the Iraq war, we had a lot of 
armchair generals and even a lot of pundits who thought they knew 
better. Well, General Petraeus, it turned out, was right. Thankfully, 
President Bush at the time followed his recommendations. As a result, 
the surge in Iraq was successful. General McChrystal and General 
Petraeus are essentially saying the same thing again.
  Remember, General McChrystal is an expert in both counterterrorism 
and counterinsurgency policy. He understands the difference and he 
understands it takes resources to fight a counterinsurgency campaign 
because you not only have to defeat an enemy but you have to continue 
to hold the area you have taken until the indigenous forces--in this 
case the Afghan police and army--are trained in sufficient numbers to 
hold the territory. You have to protect the populace. In a 
counterinsurgency strategy, the key is not killing the enemy, the key 
is protecting the populace. That is why it takes more troops.
  Let me read a couple other things the general said:

       My conclusions were informed through a rigorous multi-
     disciplinary assessment by a team of accomplished military 
     personnel and civilians, and my personal experience and core 
     beliefs. Central to my analysis is a belief that we must 
     respect the complexities of the operational environment and 
     design our strategic approach accordingly.

  This is a carefully thought-out strategic assessment with a lot of 
support.
  There is a recent article in the Weekly Standard magazine by Fred and 
Kim Kagan that does an excellent job of explaining why this advice is 
so wise. It focuses on the nature of the al-Qaida threat that emanates 
from Afghanistan and the network of support that is established there. 
Part of this is what has informed General McChrystal's assessment. The 
article says, and I quote:

       We should fight [the Taliban and Haqqani groups]--

  Another terrorist-led group--

       because in practice they are integrally connected with al 
     Qaeda. Allowing the Taliban and the Haqqani networks to 
     expand their areas of control and influence would offer new 
     opportunities to al Qaeda that its leaders appear determined 
     to seize. It would relieve the pressure on al Qaeda, giving 
     its operative more scope to protect themselves while working 
     to project power and influence around the world.

  In other words, against the United States. The Haqqani group he is 
referring to is another terrorist-led group.
  Secretary of State Clinton said it quite succinctly when she stated:

       If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can't tell 
     you how fast al-Qaida would be back in Afghanistan.

  That is the point. That is why I think we need to get on with our 
decision.
  I noted, with interest, a column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington 
Post entitled ``No Rush to Escalate.'' He quotes in his column 
historian Robert Dallek, who recently advised President Obama:

       ``In my judgment,'' he recalls saying, ``war kills off 
     great reform movements.''

  Then he goes on to talk about how World War I brought the Progressive 
Era to a close; that Franklin Roosevelt would have done better if not 
for World War II; that Vietnam hurt Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. He 
says:

       It may just be that some of the President's senior advisers 
     and supporters may be urging him not to devote the necessary 
     resources to Afghanistan because they don't want him to 
     become a war president.

  That would be most unfortunate. President Obama is the Commander in 
Chief. He campaigned to become the war President. He said he wanted to 
end the war in Iraq, which he called a war of choice, and he wanted to 
win the war in Afghanistan--a war of necessity.
  He won the election and he, now, as Commander in Chief, has to make 
these critical decisions. Whether he likes it or not, he is a war 
President and he will be judged by history not only by his domestic 
agenda but by how well he leaves the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
The key with Afghanistan is not to leave the country in the hands of 
dangerous Taliban or other terrorists who would work with al-Qaida and 
give them the kind of place they had before from which to train and 
plan attacks on the rest of the world.
  Also at stake in this debate is the message we are sending to the 
rest of the world, to our allies in the Middle East, in the Persian 
Gulf, to Pakistan. Is it safe to throw in with the United States and to 
help us in our war against these terrorists or, because the United 
States may bug out when the going gets tough, do we decide to make book 
with the other side, as Pakistan had done in the past with various 
groups including the Taliban? That is part of what is at stake. It is 
not just Afghanistan but our reputation around the rest of the world as 
to how we deal with our allies and how we resolve conflicts we get 
involved in.
  General McChrystal said it best when he said:

       We must show resolve. Uncertainty disheartens our allies, 
     emboldens our foes.

  That is the key message today. I urge the President, in continuing 
this debate, to bring it to a close as quickly as he can to make the 
decision. I know Republicans will support a decision that follows the 
recommendations of General Petraeus and General McChrystal.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two articles 
from the Weekly Standard magazine: One, ``How Not to Defeat al-Qaeda, 
To Win in Afghanistan Requires Troops on the Ground'' and ``Don't Go 
Wobbly on Afghanistan; President Obama Was Right in March,'' both by 
Fred and Kimberly Kagan.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Weekly Standard, Oct. 5, 2009]

                       How Not To Defeat al Qaeda

               (By Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan)

       President Obama has announced his intention to conduct a 
     review of U.S. strategy in

[[Page S10395]]

     Afghanistan from first principles before deciding whether or 
     not to accept General Stanley McChrystal's proposed strategy 
     and request for more forces. This review is delaying the 
     decision. If the delay goes on much longer, it will force 
     military leaders either to rush the deployment in a way that 
     increases the strain on soldiers and their families or to 
     lose the opportunity to affect the spring campaign. The 
     president's determination to make sure of his policy before 
     committing the additional 40,000 or so forces required by 
     General McChrystal's campaign plan is, nevertheless, 
     understandable. The conflict in Afghanistan is complex, and 
     it is important that we understand what we are trying to do.
       At the center of the complexity is a deceptively simple 
     question: If the United States is fighting a terrorist 
     organization--al Qaeda--why must we conduct a 
     counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan against two other 
     groups--the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network--
     that have neither the objective nor the capability to attack 
     the United States outside Afghanistan? Shouldn't we fight a 
     terrorist organization with a counterterrorist strategy, 
     customarily defined as relying on long-range precision 
     weapons and Special Forces raids to eliminate key terrorist 
     leaders? Why must we become embroiled in the politics and 
     social dysfunctionality of the fifth-poorest country in the 
     world? Surely, some surrounding President Obama appear to be 
     arguing, it makes more sense to confine our operations 
     narrowly to the aim we care most about: defeating the 
     terrorists and so preventing them from killing Americans.
       This argument rests on two essential assumptions: that al 
     Qaeda is primarily a terrorist group and that it is separable 
     from the insurgent groups among whom it lives and through 
     whom it operates. Let us examine these assumptions.
       Al Qaeda is a highly ideological organization that openly 
     states its aims and general methods. It seeks to replace 
     existing governments in the Muslim world, which it regards as 
     apostate, with a regime based on its own interpretation of 
     the Koran and Muslim tradition. It relies on a reading of 
     some of the earliest Muslim traditions to justify its right 
     to declare Muslims apostates if they do not behave according 
     to its own interpretation of Islam and to kill them if 
     necessary. This reading is actually nearly identical to a 
     belief that developed in the earliest years of Islam after 
     Muhammad's death, which mainstream Muslims quickly rejected 
     as a heresy (the Kharijite movement), and it remains 
     heretical to the overwhelming majority of Muslims today. The 
     question of the religious legality of killing Muslims causes 
     tensions within al Qaeda and between al Qaeda and other 
     Muslims, leading to debates over the wisdom of fighting the 
     ``near enemy,'' i.e., the ``apostate'' Muslim governments in 
     the region, or the ``far enemy,'' i.e., the West and 
     especially the United States, which al Qaeda believes 
     provides indispensable support to these ``apostate'' 
     governments. The 9/11 attack resulted from the temporary 
     triumph of the ``far enemy'' school.
       Above all, al Qaeda does not see itself as a terrorist 
     organization. It defines itself as the vanguard in the 
     Leninist sense: a revolutionary movement whose aim is to take 
     power throughout the Muslim world. It is an insurgent 
     organization with global aims. Its use of terrorism (for 
     which it has developed lengthy and abstruse religious 
     justifications) is simply a reflection of its current 
     situation. If al Qaeda had the ability to conduct guerrilla 
     warfare with success, it would do so. If it could wage 
     conventional war, it would probably prefer to do so. It has 
     already made clear that it desires to wage chemical, 
     biological, and nuclear war when possible.
       In this respect, al Qaeda is very different from terrorist 
     groups like the IRA, ETA, and even Hamas. Those groups used 
     or use terrorism in pursuit of political objectives confined 
     to a specific region--expelling the British from Northern 
     Ireland, creating an independent or autonomous Basque land, 
     expelling Israel from Palestine. The Ulstermen did not seek 
     to destroy Britain or march on London; the Basques are not in 
     mortal combat with Spaniards; and even Hamas seeks only to 
     drive the Jews out of Israel, not to exterminate them 
     throughout the world. Al Qaeda, by contrast, seeks to rule 
     all the world's 1.5 billion Muslims and to reduce the non-
     Muslim peoples to subservience. For al Qaeda, terrorism is a 
     start, not an end nor even the preferred means. It goes 
     without saying that the United States and the West would face 
     catastrophic consequences if al Qaeda ever managed to obtain 
     the ability to wage war by different means. Defeating al 
     Qaeda requires more than disrupting its leadership cells so 
     that they cannot plan and conduct attacks in the United 
     States. It also requires preventing al Qaeda from obtaining 
     the capabilities it seeks to wage real war beyond terrorist 
     strikes.
       Al Qaeda does not exist in a vacuum like the SPECTRE of 
     James Bond movies. It has always operated in close 
     coordination with allies. The anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s 
     was the crucible in which al Qaeda leaders first bonded with 
     the partners who would shelter them in Afghanistan. Osama bin 
     Laden met Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose network is now fighting 
     U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, as both were raising 
     support in Saudi Arabia for the mujahedeen in the 1980s. They 
     then fought the Soviets together. When the Soviet Army 
     withdrew in 1989 (for which bin Laden subsequently took 
     unearned credit), Haqqani seized the Afghan city of Khost and 
     established his control of the surrounding provinces of 
     Khost, Paktia, and Paktika. Haqqani also retained the base in 
     Pakistan--near Miranshah in North Waziristan--from which he 
     had fought the Soviets. He established a madrassa there that 
     has become infamous for its indoctrination of young men in 
     the tenets of militant Islamism.
       Haqqani held onto Greater Paktia, as the three provinces 
     are often called, and invited bin Laden to establish bases 
     there in the 1990s in which to train his own cadres. When the 
     Taliban took shape under Mullah Mohammad Omar in the mid-
     1990s (with a large amount of Pakistani assistance), Haqqani 
     made common cause with that group, which shared his 
     ideological and religious outlook and seemed likely to take 
     control of Afghanistan. He became a minister in the Taliban 
     government, which welcomed and facilitated the continued 
     presence of bin Laden and his training camps.
       Bin Laden and al Qaeda could not have functioned as they 
     did in the 1990s without the active support of Mullah Omar 
     and Haqqani. The Taliban and Haqqani fighters protected bin 
     Laden, fed him and his troops, facilitated the movement of al 
     Qaeda leaders and fighters, and generated recruits. They also 
     provided a socio-religious human network that strengthened 
     the personal resilience and organizational reach of bin Laden 
     and his team. Islamist revolution has always been an activity 
     of groups nested within communities, not an undertaking of 
     isolated individuals. As American interrogators in Iraq 
     discovered quickly, the fastest way to get a captured al 
     Qaeda fighter talking was to isolate him from his peers. Bin 
     Laden's Taliban allies provided the intellectual and social 
     support network al Qaeda needed to keep fighting. In return, 
     bin Laden shared his wealth with the Taliban and later sent 
     his fighters into battle to defend the Taliban regime against 
     the U.S.-aided Northern Alliance attack after 9/11.
       The relationship that developed between bin Laden and 
     Mullah Omar was deep and strong. It helps explain why Mullah 
     Omar refused categorically to expel bin Laden after 9/11 even 
     though he knew that failing to do so could lead to the 
     destruction of the Taliban state--as it did. In return, bin 
     Laden recognizes Mullah Omar as amir al-momineen--the 
     ``Commander of the Faithful''--a religious title the Taliban 
     uses to legitimize its activities and shadow state. The 
     alliance between al Qaeda and the Haqqanis (now led by 
     Sirajuddin, successor to his aging and ailing father, 
     Jalaluddin) also remains strong. The Haqqani network still 
     claims the terrain of Greater Paktia, can project attacks 
     into Kabul, and seems to facilitate the kinds of spectacular 
     attacks in Afghanistan that are the hallmark of al Qaeda 
     training and technical expertise. There is no reason whatever 
     to believe that Mullah Omar or the Haqqanis--whose religious 
     and political views remain closely aligned with al Qaeda's--
     would fail to offer renewed hospitality to their friend and 
     ally of 20 years, bin Laden.
       Mullah Omar and the Haqqanis are not the ones hosting al 
     Qaeda today, however, since the presence of U.S. and NATO 
     forces in Afghanistan has made that country too dangerous for 
     bin Laden and his lieutenants. They now reside for the most 
     part on the other side of the Durand Line, among the melange 
     of anti-government insurgent and terrorist groups that live 
     in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Northwest 
     Frontier Province of Pakistan. These groups--they include the 
     Tehrik-e Taliban-e Pakistan, led until his recent death-by-
     Predator by Baitullah Mehsud; the Tehrik-e Nafaz-e Shariat-e 
     Mohammadi; and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 
     Mumbai attack--now provide some of the same services to al 
     Qaeda that the Taliban provided when they ruled Afghanistan. 
     Mullah Omar continues to help, moreover, by intervening in 
     disputes among the more fractious Pakistani groups to try to 
     maintain cohesion within the movement. All of these groups 
     coordinate their activities, moreover, and all have voices 
     within the Peshawar Shura (council). They are not isolated 
     groups, but rather a network-of-networks, both a social and a 
     political grouping run, in the manner of Pashtuns, by a 
     number of shuras, of which that in Peshawar is theoretically 
     preeminent.
       All of which is to say that the common image of al Qaeda 
     leaders flitting like bats from cave to cave in the badlands 
     of Pakistan is inaccurate. Al Qaeda leaders do flit (and no 
     doubt sometimes sleep in caves)--but they flit like guests 
     from friend to friend in areas controlled by their allies. 
     Their allies provide them with shelter and food, with warning 
     of impending attacks, with the means to move rapidly. Their 
     allies provide communications services--runners and the use 
     of their own more modern systems to help al Qaeda's senior 
     leaders avoid creating electronic footprints that our forces 
     could use to track and target them. Their allies provide 
     means of moving money and other strategic resources around, 
     as well as the means of imparting critical knowledge (like 
     expertise in explosives) to cadres. Their allies provide 
     media support, helping to get the al Qaeda message out and 
     then serving as an echo chamber to magnify it via their own 
     media resources.
       Could al Qaeda perform all of these functions itself, 
     without the help of local allies? It probably could. In Iraq, 
     certainly, the al Qaeda organization established its own 
     administrative, logistical, training, recruiting,

[[Page S10396]]

     and support structures under the rubric of its own state--the 
     Islamic State of Iraq. For a while, this system worked well 
     for the terrorists; it supported a concerted terror campaign 
     in and around Baghdad virtually unprecedented in its scale 
     and viciousness. It also created serious vulnerabilities for 
     Al Qaeda in Iraq, however. The establishment of this 
     autonomous, foreign-run structure left a seam between Al 
     Qaeda in Iraq and the local population and their leaders. As 
     long as the population continued to be in open revolt against 
     the United States and the Iraqi government, this seam was not 
     terribly damaging to al Qaeda. But as local leaders began to 
     abandon their insurgent operations, Al Qaeda in Iraq became 
     dangerously exposed and, ultimately, came to be seen as an 
     enemy by the very populations that had previously supported 
     it.
       There was no such seam in Afghanistan before 9/11. Al Qaeda 
     did not attempt to control territory or administer 
     populations there. It left all such activities in the hands 
     of Mullah Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. It still does--relying 
     on those groups as well as on the Islamist groups in 
     Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier Province to do the 
     governing and administering while it focuses on the global 
     war. Afghans had very little interaction with al Qaeda, and 
     so had no reason to turn against the group. The same is true 
     in Pakistan today. The persistence of allies who aim at 
     governing and administering, as well as simply controlling, 
     territory frees al Qaeda from those onerous day-to-day 
     responsibilities and helps shield the organization from the 
     blowback it suffered in Iraq. It reduces the vulnerability of 
     the organization and enormously complicates efforts to defeat 
     or destroy it.
       The theory proposed by some in the White House and the 
     press that an out-of-country, high-tech counterterrorist 
     campaign could destroy a terrorist network such as al Qaeda 
     is fraught with erroneous assumptions. Killing skilled 
     terrorists is very hard to do. The best--and most dangerous--
     of them avoid using cellphones, computers, and other 
     devices that leave obvious electronic footprints. Tracking 
     them requires either capitalizing on their mistakes in 
     using such devices or generating human intelligence about 
     their whereabouts from sources on the ground. When the 
     terrorists operate among relatively friendly populations, 
     gaining useful human intelligence can be extremely 
     difficult if not impossible. The friendlier the population 
     to the terrorists, the more safe houses in which they can 
     hide, the fewer people who even desire to inform the 
     United States or its proxies about the location of 
     terrorist leaders, the more people likely to tell the 
     terrorists about any such informants (and to punish those 
     informants), the more people who can help to conceal the 
     movement of the terrorist leaders and their runners, and 
     so on.
       Counterterrorist forces do best when the terrorists must 
     operate among neutral or hostile populations while under 
     severe military pressure, including from troops on the 
     ground. Such pressure forces terrorist leaders to rely more 
     on communications equipment for self-defense and for 
     coordination of larger efforts. It greatly restricts the 
     terrorists' ability to move around, making them easier 
     targets, and to receive and distribute money, weapons, and 
     recruits. This is the scenario that developed in Iraq during 
     and after the surge, and it dramatically increased the 
     vulnerability of terrorist groups to U.S. (and Iraqi) 
     strikes.
       Not only did the combination of isolation and pressure make 
     senior leaders more vulnerable, but it exposed mid-level 
     managers as well. Attacking such individuals is important for 
     two reasons: It disrupts the ability of the organization to 
     operate at all, and it eliminates some of the people most 
     likely to replace senior leaders who are killed. Attacking 
     middle management dramatically reduces the resilience of a 
     terrorist organization, as well as its effectiveness. The 
     intelligence requirement for such attacks is daunting, 
     however. Identifying and locating the senior leadership of a 
     group is one thing. Finding the people who collect taxes, 
     distribute funds and weapons, recruit, run IEDcells, and so 
     on, is something else entirely--unless the counterterrorist 
     force actually has a meaningful presence on the ground among 
     the people.
       The most serious operational challenge of the pure 
     counterterrorist approach, however, is to eliminate bad guys 
     faster than they can be replaced. Isolated killings of senior 
     leaders, spread out over months or years, rarely do serious 
     systemic harm to their organizations. The best-known example 
     is the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, founder and head of Al 
     Qaeda in Iraq, in June 2006, following which the 
     effectiveness and lethality of that group only grew. It 
     remains to be seen what the effect of Baitullah Mehsud's 
     death will be--although it is evident that the presence of 
     the Pakistani military on the ground assisted the high-tech 
     targeting that killed him. Such is the vigor of the groups he 
     controlled that his death occasioned a power struggle among 
     his deputies.
       One essential question that advocates of a pure 
     counterterrorism approach must answer, therefore, is: Can the 
     United States significantly accelerate the rate at which our 
     forces identify, target, and kill senior and mid-level 
     leaders? Our efforts to do so have failed to date, despite 
     the commitment of enormous resources to that problem over 
     eight years at the expense of other challenges. Could we do 
     better? The limiting factor on the rate of attrition we can 
     impose on the enemy's senior leadership is our ability to 
     generate the necessary intelligence, not our ability to put 
     metal on target. Perhaps there is a way to increase the 
     attrition rate. If so, advocates of this approach have an 
     obligation to explain what it is. They must also explain why 
     removing U.S. and NATO forces from the theater will not make 
     collecting timely intelligence even harder--effectively 
     slowing the attrition rate. Their argument is 
     counterintuitive at best.
       Pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy against the Taliban 
     and Haqqani groups--that is, using American forces to protect 
     the population from them while building the capability of the 
     Afghan Army--appears at first an indirect approach to 
     defeating al Qaeda. In principle, neither the Taliban nor the 
     Haqqani network poses an immediate danger to the United 
     States. Why then should we fight them?
       We should fight them because in practice they are 
     integrally connected with al Qaeda. Allowing the Taliban and 
     the Haqqani network to expand their areas of control and 
     influence would offer new opportunities to al Qaeda that its 
     leaders appear determined to seize. It would relieve the 
     pressure on al Qaeda, giving its operatives more scope to 
     protect themselves while working to project power and 
     influence around the world. It would reduce the amount of 
     usable intelligence we could expect to receive, thus reducing 
     the rate at which we could target key leaders. Allowing al 
     Qaeda's allies to succeed would seriously undermine the 
     counterterrorism mission and would make the success of that 
     mission extremely unlikely.
                                  ____

       [From the Weekly Standard, Oct. 12, 2009]

                     Don't Go Wobbly on Afghanistan

               (By Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan)

       ``To defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war, 
     we must recognize the fundamental connection between the 
     future of Afghanistan and Pakistan--which is why I've 
     appointed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke . . . to serve as 
     Special Representative for both countries.'' That 
     ``fundamental connection'' between Afghanistan and Pakistan 
     was one of the important principles President Obama laid out 
     in his March 27, 2009, speech announcing his policy in South 
     Asia. It reflected a common criticism of the Bush policy in 
     Afghanistan, which was often castigated as insufficiently 
     ``regional.'' It also reflected reality: The war against al 
     Qaeda and its affiliates is a two-front conflict that must be 
     fought on both sides of the Durand Line.
       Now, however, some of the most vocal supporters of the 
     regional approach are considering--or even advocating--a 
     return to its antithesis, a purely counterterrorism (CT) 
     strategy in Afghanistan. Such a reversion, based on the 
     erroneous assumption that a collapsing Afghanistan would not 
     derail efforts to dismantle terrorist groups in Pakistan, is 
     bound to fail.
       Recent discussions of the ``CT option'' have tended to be 
     sterile, clinical, and removed from the complexity of the 
     region--the opposite of the coherence with which the 
     administration had previously sought to address the problem. 
     In reality, any ``CT option'' will likely have to be executed 
     against the backdrop of state collapse and civil war in 
     Afghanistan, spiraling extremism and loss of will in 
     Pakistan, and floods of refugees. These conditions would 
     benefit al Qaeda greatly by creating an expanding area of 
     chaos, an environment in which al Qaeda thrives. They would 
     also make the collection of intelligence and the accurate 
     targeting of terrorists extremely difficult.
       If the United States should adopt a small-footprint 
     counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan would descend again 
     into civil war. The Taliban group headed by Mullah Omar and 
     operating in southern Afghanistan (including especially 
     Helmand, Kandahar, and Oruzgan Provinces) is well positioned 
     to take control of that area upon the withdrawal of American 
     and allied combat forces. The remaining Afghan security 
     forces would be unable to resist a Taliban offensive. They 
     would be defeated and would disintegrate. The fear of renewed 
     Taliban assaults would mobilize the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and 
     Hazaras in northern and central Afghanistan. The Taliban 
     itself would certainly drive on Herat and Kabul, leading to 
     war with northern militias. This conflict would collapse the 
     Afghan state, mobilize the Afghan population, and cause many 
     Afghans to flee into Pakistan and Iran.
       Within Pakistan, the U.S. reversion to a counterterrorism 
     strategy (from the counterinsurgency strategy for which Obama 
     reaffirmed his support as recently as August) would disrupt 
     the delicate balance that has made possible recent Pakistani 
     progress against internal foes and al Qaeda.
       Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, army chief of staff 
     General Ashfaq Kayani, and others who have supported 
     Pakistani operations against the Taliban are facing an 
     entrenched resistance within the military and among retired 
     officers. This resistance stems from the decades-long 
     relationships nurtured between the Taliban and Pakistan, 
     which started during the war to expel the Soviet Army. 
     Advocates within Pakistan of continuing to support the 
     Taliban argue that the United States will abandon Afghanistan 
     as it did in 1989, creating chaos that only the Taliban will 
     be able to fill in a manner that suits Pakistan.
       Zardari and Kayani have been able to overcome this internal 
     resistance sufficiently to mount major operations against 
     Pakistani Taliban groups, in part because the rhetoric

[[Page S10397]]

     and actions of the Obama administration to date have seemed 
     to prove the Taliban advocates wrong. The announcement of the 
     withdrawal of U.S. combat forces would prove them right. 
     Pakistani operations against their own insurgents--as well as 
     against al Qaeda, which lives among those insurgents--would 
     probably grind to a halt as Pakistan worked to reposition 
     itself in support of a revived Taliban government in 
     Afghanistan. And a renewed stream of Afghan refugees would 
     likely overwhelm the Pakistani government and military, 
     rendering coherent operations against insurgents and 
     terrorists difficult or impossible.
       The collapse of Pakistan, or even the revival of an 
     aggressive and successful Islamist movement there, would be a 
     calamity for the region and for the United States. It would 
     significantly increase the risk that al Qaeda might obtain 
     nuclear weapons from Pakistan's stockpile, as well as the 
     risk that an Indo-Pakistani war might break out involving the 
     use of nuclear weapons.
       Not long ago, such a collapse seemed almost imminent. 
     Islamist groups operating under the umbrella of the Tehrik-e 
     Taliban-e Pakistan (TTP), led by Baitullah Mehsud until his 
     recent death, had occupied areas in the Swat River Valley and 
     elsewhere not far from Islamabad itself. Punjabi terrorists 
     affiliated with the same group were launching attacks in the 
     heart of metropolitan Pakistan.
       Since then, Pakistani offensives in Swat, Waziristan, and 
     elsewhere have rocked many of these groups back on their 
     heels while rallying political support within Pakistan 
     against the Taliban to an unprecedented degree. But these 
     successes remain as fragile as the Pakistani state itself. 
     The TTP and its allies are damaged but not defeated. Al Qaeda 
     retains safe-havens along the Afghan border.
       What if the United States did not withdraw the forces now 
     in Afghanistan, but simply kept them at current levels while 
     emphasizing both counterterrorism and the rapid expansion of 
     the Afghan security forces? Within Afghanistan, the situation 
     would continue to deteriorate. Neither the United States and 
     NATO nor Afghan forces are now capable of defeating the 
     Taliban in the south or east. At best, the recently arrived 
     U.S. reinforcements in the south might be able to turn steady 
     defeat into stalemate, but even that is unlikely.
       The accelerated expansion of Afghan security forces, 
     moreover, will be seriously hindered if we fail to deploy 
     additional combat forces. As we discovered in Iraq, the 
     fastest way to help indigenous forces grow in numbers and 
     competence is to partner U.S. and allied units with them side 
     by side in combat. Trainers and mentors are helpful--but 
     their utility is multiplied many times when indigenous 
     soldiers and officers have the opportunity to see what right 
     looks like rather than simply being told about it. At the 
     current troop levels, commanders have had to disperse Afghan 
     and allied forces widely in an effort simply to cover 
     important ground, without regard for partnering.
       As a result, it is very likely that the insurgency will 
     grow in size and strength in 2010 faster than Afghan security 
     forces can be developed without the addition of significant 
     numbers of American combat troops--which will likely lead to 
     Afghan state failure and the consequences described above in 
     Afghanistan and the region.
       The Obama administration is not making this decision in a 
     vacuum. Obama ran on a platform that made giving Afghanistan 
     the resources it needed an overriding American priority. 
     President Obama has repeated that commitment many times. He 
     appointed a new commander to execute the policy he enunciated 
     in his March 27 speech, in which he noted: ``To focus on the 
     greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny 
     resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq.'' If he 
     now rejects the request of his new commander for forces, his 
     decision will be seen as the abandonment of the president's 
     own commitment to the conflict.
       In that case, no amount of rhetorical flourish is likely to 
     persuade Afghans, Pakistanis, or anyone else otherwise. A 
     president who overrules the apparently unanimous 
     recommendation of his senior generals and admirals that he 
     make good the resource shortfalls he himself called 
     unacceptable can hardly convince others he is determined to 
     succeed in Afghanistan. And if the United States is not 
     determined to succeed, then, in the language of the region, 
     it is getting ready to cut and run, whatever the president 
     and his advisers may think or say.
       That is a policy that will indeed have regional effects--
     extremely dangerous ones.

                          ____________________