[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6724-6725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    AFGHANISTAN AND UKRAINE SECURITY

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I just returned from a trip to Afghanistan 
and Ukraine where I reviewed the security situation in each country as 
chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
  In each country, I met with military leaders and with civilian 
leaders and representatives of civilian society. The overwhelming 
impression I came away with is that American leadership remains 
critical, that others who are struggling for democracy and freedom see 
us as an essential friend and ally, and support for those who share 
those values must remain a cornerstone of our foreign policy and as 
essential to our own security.
  In Afghanistan, I met with senior leaders of both our military and 
the Afghan military, including General Dunford, the commander of U.S. 
and coalition forces, and Afghan Minister of Defense Mohammedi. They 
reported that the transition of security responsibility to the 
Afghanistan National Security Forces--ANSF--has gone even better than 
we had hoped, with no significant loss of security in the country 
despite the withdrawal of tens of thousands of American and coalition 
troops. U.S. and Afghan leaders alike expressed satisfaction with the 
ability of the newly built and much larger ANSF to successfully protect 
the Afghan people, to defeat Taliban forces in combat, and to secure a 
series of major public events, culminating in the April 5 Afghan 
presidential election.
  Our military commanders emphasized that while these gains reflect the 
growing confidence of the Afghan security forces in their ability to 
provide security to the Afghan people, the challenge ahead is to put in 
place the final pieces needed to make the progress of the last decade 
sustainable. This includes logistics, maintenance, airlift, and 
building the institutions of the Afghan Army and police. Fundamental to 
any long-term effort on our part in Afghanistan will be the signing of 
the Bilateral Security Agreement as soon as possible with a new Afghan 
president. While President Karzai remains unreliable and his rhetoric 
offensive, all the major Afghan presidential candidates, including the 
two winners of the first round, support what we have done so far and 
look forward to signing the BSA promptly if elected.
  In addition to meeting with the three leading presidential 
candidates, I met with Afghan government officials and with several 
groups of representatives of Afghan civil society. The Afghans I met 
with came from different backgrounds and spoke with different voices, 
but they shared a common message of pride in the achievement of their 
country as it has rebuilt and recovered from the devastation of decades 
of civil war and Taliban rule. They pointed to the revival of 
Afghanistan's education and health systems, the dramatic improvement in 
the role of women in the country, and the new life that the last 10 
years have brought to the country's economy.
  They also spoke of their frustration with the exceedingly negative 
picture of events in Afghanistan depicted in the U.S. press. A leading 
national paper writes about a ``deepening resentment'' of the American 
presence and a ``growing alienation'' between Afghanistan and the 
United States. But the Afghans I met and large majorities of Afghans, 
according to public opinion polls, are grateful for the sacrifices we 
have made on their behalf and are convinced they can continue to 
transform their country with our continued support. Their polls show 
that 64 percent of the Afgan people believe there has been significant 
progress in security. U.S. polls show the opposite, the product of an 
unbalanced, negative view in our media.
  The Afghans I met spoke with pride of the election they held on April 
5, in which 7 million Afghans braved threats and violence to get to the 
polls, voting at a higher rate than we achieve in our own elections. 
According to preliminary counts, more than 35 percent of the voters 
were women. This record vote was the culmination of a campaign in which 
the leading candidates held huge rallies, attended by tens of thousands 
of Afghans all over the country--including in areas that much of our 
press reports are controlled by the Taliban. All of the security for 
these events, and for the vote itself, was provided by Afghan forces. 
And every Afghan I spoke with said that he--or she--feels more secure 
today than a few years ago, in part because Afghan forces are providing 
security in Afghan cities and towns.
  Although the vote was divided among a number of candidates and a run-
off between Dr. Abdullah and Dr. Ghani will occur, Afghans say the act 
of voting itself sent a message that Afghans reject the Taliban and 
what it stands for. Our intelligence sources indicate that the Taliban 
leadership is concerned by its inability to disrupt the election and 
prevent Afghans from getting to the polls.
  So, far from what we may read in much of our press, the Afghan people 
conveyed to me their optimism regarding their country's significant 
progress, their desire for democracy, and their gratitude for the 
assistance of the United States over the past decade.
  In Ukraine, I met with Acting President Turchinov, Prime Minister 
Yatsenyuk, Defense Minister Koval, National Security and Defense 
Council Head Parubiy, and numerous other government officials, 
activists, and participants in the political process. Ukrainians faced 
down the heavily-armed security forces of a corrupt, repressive regime 
on the Maidan--their Independence Square--while they themselves armed 
with little more than rocks, tires, and sandbags. Now they face an even 
greater challenge in the form of tens of thousands of Russian troops 
massed on their borders. Already, the Russians have annexed Crimea and 
Russian Special Operations forces have organized sympathizers to occupy 
buildings in a number of Eastern Ukrainian cities and towns in an 
effort to disrupt and destabilize the

[[Page 6725]]

government, make an election on May 25 difficult to organize, and 
establish a basis for Russian occupation or a Russian-oriented 
breakaway State.
  In the face of these challenges, the Ukrainians I met expressed 
gratitude for the solidarity and support our country has shown through 
the dark days of the Yanukovich regime and into the challenges they 
face today. They expressed their support for our values and their 
strong desire to be a part of the democratic West, rather than the 
authoritarian sphere of Putin's Russia and its allies. And they asked 
for our support in their effort to stabilize their country, fend off 
the Russian challenge, and hold free and fair elections as scheduled.
  The Ukrainian people earned our support when they put their lives on 
the line at the Maidan and turned to face the Russian threat with both 
toughness and restraint. We should stand with the Ukrainian government 
and the Ukrainian people because they share our democratic values, and 
because Russia's effort to dismember their country through the threat 
of force, if allowed to succeed, could undermine decades of stability 
and a peaceful, democratic, and united Europe.
  Ukrainians understand there will not be American ``boots on the 
ground'' in their country. But there are a number of important steps we 
can take to support the Ukrainians in their struggle.
  First, we must expedite the aid we have already promised them--
including both financial assistance and nonlethal military equipment--
to make sure it arrives as quickly as possible.
  Second, we should provide additional support, including body armor 
and fuel, that the Ukrainians need to protect themselves. We should 
provide the Ukrainians with firearms and ammunition if they need them--
but it appears that at this point they do not.
  Third, we should make more robust use of the powers established in 
Executive Order 13661, which authorizes sanctions against the Russian 
financial, energy, metals, mining, engineering, and defense sectors, to 
ensure that the Putin regime pays a heavy price for its illegal 
actions. President Obama's action to sanction more wealthy individuals 
in Putin's circle, as well as businesses they own, is a wise one, but 
we can do more.
  Fourth, we should ensure that Russian banks are subject to the 
significant tax penalties imposed on noncompliant banks by the Foreign 
Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, the antitax evasion law set to 
take effect in July. Russian banks and financial institutions that fail 
to register with the Internal Revenue Service and obtain the required 
identification number by July 1 of this year will be noncompliant with 
FATCA and become subject to a 30-percent withholding tax on any U.S. 
investment earnings. We should not negotiate with either Russia or 
certain Russian banks on measures to provide relief from FATCA's 
sanctions until Russia honors its diplomatic commitments and takes 
steps to diffuse tensions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, including by 
withdrawing Russian troops from the border region.
  Finally, we should use the existing authorities to take on Russia's 
manipulation of energy prices and supplies which it has used to coerce 
not only Ukraine but also many of its neighbors. To be most effective, 
these actions should be taken in close coordination with our friends 
and allies in Europe, many of whom are directly affected by Russia's 
abuses and threatened by its actions. We must take concrete steps 
toward substituting energy from other sources for the countries that 
would be impacted by a reduction of Russian energy. We must actively 
become involved in energy development, diversification, and 
conservation, even if it means paying higher prices for fuel, to break 
Russia's iron grip on this market, and to prevent future acts of 
attempted political extortion by Russia from being effective.
  The people of Ukraine are proud of their fight for freedom at the 
Maidan, as are the people of Afghanistan of the courage they showed, 
when they voted in record numbers to reject the Taliban in their April 
5 election. Both countries are struggling for values that we, as a 
Nation, have always shared. They both deserve our support, and we 
should continue to give it to them.

                          ____________________