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AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: UNDERSTANDING

A COMPLEX THREAT ENVIRONMENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 4, 2009

Serial No. 111–161

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

——— ———

——— ———

——— ———

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

ANDREW WRIGHT, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 4, 2009 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Bergen, Peter, Schwartz senior fellow at New America Foundation and

author of the Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of aL Qaeda’s

Leader (2006), as Well as Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden

(2001); Joshua T. White, research fellow at the Institute for Global

Engagement and Ph.D candidate at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies; and Paul R. Pillar, Ph.D, visiting professor and director of studies, Security Studies Program at Georgetown

University, and former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East

and Asia ......................................................................................................... 9

Bergen, Peter ............................................................................................. 9

Pillar, Paul R. ............................................................................................ 26

White, Joshua T. ....................................................................................... 25

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bergen, Peter, Schwartz senior fellow at New America Foundation and

author of the Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of aL Qaeda’s

Leader (2006), as Well as Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden

(2001), prepared statement of ...................................................................... 12

Hodes, Hon. Paul W., a Representative in Congress from the State of

New Hampshire, prepared statement of ..................................................... 57

Pillar, Paul R., Ph.D, visiting professor and director of studies, Security

Studies Program at Georgetown University, and former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and Asia, prepared statement of ......... 30

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts, prepared statement of ................................................... 4

(1)

AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: UNDERSTANDING A COMPLEX THREAT ENVIRONMENT

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2009

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Van Hollen, Hodes, Murphy,

Welch, Foster, Driehaus, Lynch, Cuellar, Flake, Platts, Burton,

Mica, Duncan, Issa, McHenry, Jordan, and Fortenberry.

Staff present: David Turk, staff director; Andrew Wright, counsel; Alexandra McKnight, fellow, Department of State; John

Cuaderes, deputy staff director; Adam Fromm, chief clerk and

Member liaison; Tom Alexander, senior counsel; Christopher

Bright, senior professional staff member; and Glenn Sanders, Defense fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. Good morning. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing entitled ‘‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Understanding a Complex Threat

Environment’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and the ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open

for 5 business days so that all members of the subcommittee be allowed to submit a written statement for the record. Without objection, so ordered.

At this time, I would like to make a brief opening statement and

then allow Mr. Flake to do the same. First, let me welcome and

thank our witnesses for their time and their perspective on this.

Today, the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee

holds our second hearing of this 111th Congress by continuing our

sustained oversight on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As I noted at our first hearing, an overriding point a number of the

subcommittee members took away from recent visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month, whether it was meeting with Presidents Karzai and Zardari, with our Ambassadors and General

McKiernan, or with NGO’s and other experts was that we are at

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a unique moment to ask fundamental questions about the U.S. efforts in both countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The headlines in our newspapers continually remind us of the security challenges we face in both countries. Violence is on the rise

in Afghanistan with Coalition fatalities having increased in each of

the last 5 years. Control of the country, or parts of it, are contested

by the Taliban, political insurgents, warlords and drug traffickers.

Pakistan continues to struggle with extremist insurgents throughout its west, as well as political flare-ups in Punjab that threaten

to engulf the country in flames of instability. Increased Taliban

strength in Afghanistan and Pakistan is fueled by safe havens,

supply stores, and recruitment centers in Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas that we all take to calling FATA.

Certain areas of the northwest frontier province in Swat Valley

and western portions of Balochistan Province, with the Pan Jihadi

support from networks developed in the struggle for Kashmir. In

this swirling fog of combatants, agendas, ethnicities, borders and

traffic, it is difficult for some policymakers and the public to discern the nature of the stakes involved and how the lines of conflict

interrelate. Whether any or all of these elements constitute an imminent threat to the U.S. national interests, and, if so, what response is most appropriate are issues foremost on America’s agenda at this moment in time as we decide what resources and at

what cost might be brought to bear in the region and how.

This hearing aims to step behind the headlines and allow subcommittee members and the public at large to hear from top independent experts about the threats faced in these countries. The

goal here is to try to bring as much clarity as possible; in other

words, to try to make some sense of the swirling fog. After all, before being able to answer the question of what we should do, we

first need to have a solid foundation of knowledge about what we

are dealing with.

In Afghanistan, we must be able to distinguish between and

identify the goals of the Afghan Taliban, the drug cartels and the

various warlords. What is the relative threat, if any, of each to the

U.S. national security interest and to the interest of others? It is

important to determine any role player by al Qaeda in the Afghan

insurgency and know who exactly is crossing the border from Pakistan to join the Afghan insurgency.

In Pakistan we must understand just who the so-called Pakistani

Taliban is, who makes up the insurgencies in Pakistan’s federally

administered tribal areas in the Swat Valley. We need information

about whether parties are giving al Qaeda hospitality and protection and any threats posed by Lashkar-e-Taibe is essential, as is

an understanding of how various groups in Afghanistan may interrelate and interact with the groups in Pakistan. We will have an

opportunity today to explore the myriad interrelationships, as well

as ideological, religious, and political agendas of these groups.

Finally, in an overall effort to better understand the threats

posed, we will assess the trends in these lines of conflict, including

attack capacity, recruitment, and financing. Those of us serving

also on the Intelligence Committee regularly receive threat assessments in a classified context. I would extend the offer to my colleagues that I will try to facilitate a classified briefing for the adVerDate 17-JUN-2003 14:10 Jan 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\71613.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
3

ministration to supplement the testimony we receive here today.

However, wherever possible, public policy calls for public dialog.

With respect to the fundamental matters at the heart of our policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is important that we offer our

members and the public at large an opportunity to hear a publicsource threat assessment from a panel of esteemed experts with

hands-on experience in the region.

As a candidate, President Obama stated that Afghanistan and

Pakistan should be considered the central front on the war of terror. He has ordered into Afghanistan 17,000 additional brave

American men and women. He has also commissioned a top-to-bottom policy review. During this time of increasing peril in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a strategic review here in the United States, we

seek to help frame the discussion with a deeper understanding of

the threats faced in this troubled south Asian region. That is what

today’s hearing is all about.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. And with that, I defer to my colleague, Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the chairman for holding this hearing. I look

forward to the witnesses. I will just make a couple of remarks. This

hearing provides a great opportunity to see what some nongovernmental witnesses think of the threats that we face in Afghanistan

and Pakistan. We all know that we have spent billions in Afghanistan since 2001. We have seen some progress; however, security

has declined as the Taliban and other militant groups have reorganized. As a result, there were 155 combat-related deaths, U.S.

deaths in Afghanistan in 2008. This is the most since we have

started operations in 2001.

Clearly, we need to reassess our strategy. In Pakistan, we continue to spend a lot of money on Coalition support funding, but this

effort has yielded limited success. I think it is also incumbent on

us to see if the costs of this policy outweigh the benefits, where

might we better spend that money, require more, require less. It

needs to be reevaluated.

Since taking office, President Obama has already shifted policy

in Afghanistan. In February, on the 17th, he ordered 17,000 additional troops be sent there. This will bring our total to about

55,000. That is for U.S. troops. That is the largest number we have

ever seen deployed in that country, from the United States at least.

After having ordered the troops into combat, however, the President will receive the results of a high-level review. It seems a little

backward. We say all right, we are going to send 17,000 more and

then we will conduct a top-to-bottom review to see how they might

best be deployed, or if we need to deploy them, or if we should deploy more. We should have a clear policy.

Where we have seen success in other areas—most notably in

Iraq, it was after we had a clear, defined strategy and then had

our troop levels match and had our policy match the strategy that

we had outlined. And it seems to me that we are going a bit backward here. Notably absent from this hearing is a representative

from the administration to describe where we are going, who the

enemy is, in what ways do we need to reassess. It would seem that,

again, this should be done before deployment of more troops rather

than after. I realize that that review will be completed before most

of those troops arrive in Afghanistan. But there is a lot of preparation that needs to go into it and it seems to me that we should do

the assessment first.

I should note that this is not just a partisan issue, it is not just

Republicans saying this. Yesterday the AP reported that John Murtha, who holds a fairly important position on the Appropriations

Committee, estimated that it would take as many as 600,000

troops to fully squelch violence in that country. Quote: Murtha also

said he is uncomfortable with President Barak Obama’s decision to

increase the number of troops in that country by 17,000 before a

goal was clearly defined. It is not just Republicans saying this. It

is people, across the board, saying let’s define the goal, let’s reassess our strategy before we make clear commitments here.

Absent a policy statement from the White House on this, I’m inclined, as much as I don’t usually, to agree with Mr. Murtha here,

that we are putting the cart before the horse. We should see the

8

strategy outlined and we ought to have the reassessment before we

decide how many troops and how they should be deployed.

And with that, I thank the chairman again for calling the hearing and look forward to the witnesses.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Flake. Thank you for your

unspoken acknowledgement that Members of both sides of the aisle

on this committee are questioning the strategy and whether one exists, when it will exist and we will go forward. Of course, we will

hear from the administration in due course, giving them an opportunity, as we gave the courtesy of previous administrations, to develop their strategy before we make them come in and testify about

it. In the meantime, hopefully—we are going to have some testimony here today from a distinguished panel.

I will just introduce them before and then ask for their statements. Mr. Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New American

Foundation. He is a national security analyst for CNN. His research focuses on the al Qaeda network, counterinsurgency and

counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq. And he

has authored two books on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Joshua T. White is a research fellow at the Institute for

Global Engagement, is a Ph.D. Candidate at Johns Hopkins School

for Advanced International Studies. His research focuses on Islamic

politics and political stability in south Asia, and he spent nearly a

year living in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan in 2005

and 2006.

Dr. Paul R. Pillar is a visiting professor and director of studies

at the Security Study Program at Georgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a distinguished 28-year career in the U.S. Intelligence Community in which his last role was National Intelligence

Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

I want to thank you all for making yourselves available today

and for sharing your substantial expertise both through testimony

and in your written remarks. Your written remarks will be entered

in entirety on the record and we ask that you keep your remarks

as close to within 5 minutes as you can. Although we have an abbreviated panel here today, I’m sure we want to hear what you

have to say. We will be as generous on the 5 minutes as we can.

It is the policy of the subcommittee to swear in witnesses before

they testify. So I ask you to please stand and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please reflect that all the witnesses

answered in the affirmative. And, Mr. Bergen, we will start with

you if you’re prepared and welcome your remarks.

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STATEMENTS OF PETER BERGEN, SCHWARTZ SENIOR FELLOW

AT NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION AND AUTHOR OF THE

OSAMA BIN LADEN I KNOW: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AL

QAEDA’S LEADER (2006), AS WELL AS INSIDE THE SECRET

WORLD OF OSAMA BIN LADEN (2001); JOSHUA T. WHITE, RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT AND PH.D CANDIDATE AT JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL

FOR ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES; AND PAUL R.

PILLAR, PH.D, VISITING PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF

STUDIES, SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM AT GEORGETOWN

UNIVERSITY, AND FORMER NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER FOR THE NEAR EAST AND ASIA

STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you very much, Chairman Tierney, and

thank you, ranking member—Congressman Flake. I wanted to respond just briefly to some of the things that Representative Flake

mentioned about the deployment of the 17,000 soldiers. While it is

certainly the case that the administration is still in the middle of

strategic review both on the CENTCOM side and on the Holbrooke

side and DOD generally, obviously the most important political

event that Afghanistan faces is the election, and securing the election is the most important thing in the short term the American

administration must do. Whether that election happens on August

20th, as at one point it was planned—now, of course, President

Hamid Karzai is saying it might happen as early as April 21st. But

whenever it happens, clearly, securing that election is a consideration that sort of trumps any other.

Without a secure election, you could imagine a situation where

all the Pashtuns don’t vote. Then you would have a very contested

situation, not dissimilar perhaps to the election in Iraq where a lot

of, you know, Sunnis essentially boycotted. And we know what that

resulted in.

So securing this election is incredibly important. My comments

are—basically I have three observations. One is how do the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan fit into the wider war that we

are fighting; what kind of war are we fighting? The Bush administration framed this as a war on terror. I think that was a rather

open-ended and ambiguous framing and we should be more specific

about who we are actually fighting. We are fighting al Qaeda and

its allies. This framing is very useful in Afghanistan and Pakistan

because then we can ask ourselves who exactly is allied to al Qaeda

in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Chairman Tierney raised the question to what extent is al Qaeda

influencing what is going on in Afghanistan. I think this is, in a

sense, one of the main things we need to answer today. In my view,

the Taliban has morphed together ideologically and tactically with

al Qaeda to a degree which is almost quite surprising if you think

about the history of the Taliban.

The Taliban were a very provincial group of people when they

were in power. Mullah Omar only visited his own capital of Kabul

twice in the 5 years he ran the country. And they banned television. You know the history.

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Now they have a very aggressive propaganda operation. They are

talking about their global jihad. They’ve made a number of references saying bin Laden is issuing some sort of orders which they

are responding to, which I take at face value. They adopted the al

Qaeda in Iraq insurgency playbook almost to the letter, which is

one of the reasons we are where we are today in Afghanistan between the suicide attacks going up exponentially, the beheadings,

the use—the very effective use of information operations against

us, etc. So al Qaeda and the Taliban, at least on the upper levels,

have morphed together ideologically and tactically.

On the lower levels, sure, there are lots of local members of the

Taliban who are influenced because they are involved with drug

trafficking. Well, they have some purely local concern and these are

people that definitely—the United States and the Afghan Government can do deals with, just as we have a number of different

deals in Iraq where we have probably a couple of hundred separate

peace negotiations for particular insurgent groups.

Yes, that is plausible in Afghanistan, but there is a huge caveat.

There is a big difference between al Qaeda in Iraq, which was really a foreign group, and was seen as a foreign group, and the

Taliban itself and Afghanistan. The Taliban is the guy next door

that you grew up with if you lived in the Pashtun areas of the

country. And also al Qaeda has been in this area for much longer

than they were in Iraq. Al Qaeda, after all, was founded in Pakistan in 1988. Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, they spent most of

their adult lives in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan. They

understand the local scene much better. So it is going to be harder—obviously we want to co-opt, split or make some kind of deal

where you have the Taliban moving away, reconcilable Taliban.

But my caveat today is that I think that is going to be a little

harder than it was in Iraq and it wasn’t easy in Iraq either.

One other broad question in the time I have left is why should

we be in Afghanistan at all? I mean, al Qaeda isn’t headquartered

there. They are headquartered in Pakistan. By the way, do the

thought experiment, where Iran was the headquarters of al Qaeda,

Iran was the headquarters of the Taliban. Iranian nuclear scientists have met with bin Laden to discuss nuclear weapons before

9/11 and the Iranian nuclear establishment had been leaking technology and know-how to Libya and North Korea. Undoubtedly we

would have gone to war against Iran if that was the case after 9/

11. But, of course, that is not Iran, that is Pakistan.

So here is a nominal close ally which is the headquarters and

has continued to be the headquarters for the last 8 years of these

groups that the United States is at war with. So why don’t we—

why should we be in Afghanistan at all? I think there is a very

simple answer to that.

First—two answers. One is we have a moral obligation to get it

right there. We overthrew their government and we owe it to the

Afghans to do it. This is the third poorest country in the world and

we have already run a videotape where we basically washed our

hands of the situation. It is very important to remember that in

1989, the United States closed its Embassy in Kabul and both the

George H.W. Bush administration and the Clinton administration

essentially washed their hands of Afghanistan. And we know what

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happened as a result of that. Al Qaeda and the Taliban moved in

to fill that vacuum.

We cannot let that happen again. So our strategy in Afghanistan

is essentially to not allow the Taliban to come back and basically

give al Qaeda another sanctuary, which is—would undoubtedly

happen if we basically did what we did in 1989 again. I’m fairly

confident that no one on this committee is advocating or thinking

along those lines to do something like that. But clearly we need to

get it right.

Afghanistan, as Admiral Mike Mullen pointed out, is an economy-of-force operation. It has been an economy-of-force operation.

You get what you pay for and we need to get serious about making

it right.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. White.

STATEMENT OF JOSHUA T. WHITE

Mr. WHITE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member

Flake, for the opportunity to be here today. I want to take up the

chairman’s challenge and try to make a little sense of the fog and

particularly the fog that we see on the Pakistani side of the border.

And in doing so, I’d like to make just two brief points about some

of the trend lines that I’ve observed over the last 4 years traveling

to Pakistan and particularly in the frontier areas.

On the one hand, we see a very striking trend toward consolidation of Islamist groups in Pakistan. You probably know that one of

the enduring features of this part of the world is the abundance of

ad hoc alliances, and particularly alliances of convenience between

tribal blocs, between Islamist groups, between tribal blocs and

Islamist groups. And just recently we saw the emergence of a new

shura at the Mujahedin, a group of three blocs in Waziristan who

have come together to oppose the United States and NATO.

It is very difficult to tease out what these alliances really mean.

Often they are simply sort of branding exercises on the part of

these organizations more than they are about operational mergers.

But nonetheless, we need to take them seriously and we see this

happening often. We see the consolidation of Islamist groups. At

the same time, just beneath the surface, we are seeing a tremendous amount of fragmentation. And I really began to pay attention

to this in 2006 when, as a result of the Institute for Global Engagement’s interfaith efforts, I was visiting some of my Pashtun friends

down at a place called Bannu, which is adjacent to the north

Waziristan tribal agency, and it happened to be just around the

corner from the madrassa where John Walker Lynn of the American Taliban had done his studies.

And I was talking with my friends and drinking tea there and

I found that a number of them were generally very sympathetic to

the Taliban, but they were also increasingly worried about the

Taliban. And they were worried because, increasingly, they couldn’t

figure out who the Taliban were anymore. There were local tribal

leaders who had started calling themselves Taliban. There were

smuggling gangs who had started calling themselves Taliban.

There were militants who had fought in Kashmir, Punjabi militants, who couldn’t get their—they couldn’t get their jihadi unemployment benefits and so they decided to go over to Bannu and become the Taliban in Bannu. And then there were, of course, the unemployed madrassa graduates from around the corner who had

nothing to do, who put on a black turban and called themselves the

Taliban.

So it was all very entrepreneurial, but it was also beginning in

the mind of my local Pashtunian friends to get out of control. They

couldn’t tell who the Taliban really was. Now, if you take this

trend and you multiply it across northwest Pakistan over the last

4 years, you can get a sense for why this fragmentation has been

so troubling, not just to me and not just hopefully to you, but also

to Pakistanis and to the Government of Pakistan.

The Taliban movement at large has really spun out of the control

of the government and it is impossible at this point for the governVerDate 17-JUN-2003 14:10 Jan 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\71613.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ment to deal with the quote-unquote Taliban as a unitary actor, as

one organization. And this is why at the end of the day, I tend to

worry more about fragmentation than I do about new groups, new

umbrella groups emerging which call themselves the Taliban.

The second point very briefly follows from this, which is that my

experience in the frontier is that all insurgency at the end of the

day is local. And all you have to do is look at a map of the frontier,

a detailed map, and you can see that the frontier of Pakistan is

this bewildering patchwork of different systems of government, different tribes, different regulations, local grievances, local dynamics

and, of course, local groups which call themselves the Taliban.

And to be very simple about it—and we can speak about this in

the question and answer—the United States needs to be very intentional about targeting its assistance, its development assistance,

its security assistance and its governance assistance in an integrated way to take account for these local dynamics.

Waziristan is very different from Peshawar, Peshawar is very

different from Swat. And even though these regions are close together, they represent strikingly different environments. And our

assistance needs to be cognizant of that.

We can talk about what this means specifically; but in my view,

if U.S. assistance is going to be effective in meeting our core objectives, we need to ask exactly where is the money going, to which

regions, and we need to ask how the money going to those specific

regions is addressing local dynamics, how it is addressing root

causes. Because in some areas, lack of development is arguably a

very important cause of the insurgency. In other areas, it is really

an unimportant effect. And we need at least, as best we can from

Washington, to tease that out so that our assistance can be as effective as possible.

I look forward to taking your questions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Dr. Pillar.

STATEMENT OF PAUL R. PILLAR

Mr. PILLAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In your opening statement, you outlined a whole host of extremely important questions,

and I hope you consider this hearing a success if we get to only a

fraction of them. I will try to just comment on a few things that

embellish on that list that you mentioned.

The current conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are multifaceted, they are interrelated, they affect a variety of U.S. interests. There is no way to clearly categorize these conflicts or the protagonists in these conflicts into allies versus adversaries and the

good guys versus bad guys. It is far more complex than that. The

main reason that I think we are in Afghanistan is exactly as Peter

Bergen stated.

But I would then quickly jump to the other main interests that

we have here as far as U.S. interest is concerned, and that is Pakistan, less we forget the sixth most populous country in the world,

the second most populous primarily Muslim country in the world.

We have a strong interest in Pakistani stability and everything

that implies with regard to getting the Pakistanis to try to cooperVerDate 17-JUN-2003 14:10 Jan 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\71613.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ate with us, not just on counterterrorism, but on any other U.S. interests that touch both of our governments.

The one other thing I would say on that score is anything that

involves Pakistan also involves the Pakistani-Indian conflict and rivalry; the tendency of both of those two parties to zero sum everything, to look at anything good for one of the parties to be bad for

the other one—even though that is not really the case, but that is

how they perceive it—means that U.S. policy toward Pakistan inevitably is going to affect the Indo-Pakistani rivalry.

You mentioned narcotics, Mr. Chairman. We will just note for

the record that Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium poppy

in the world, used for heroin. And the problem of poppy cultivation

is inseparable from the problem of infrastructure and economic development. The fact is, in Afghanistan it is just darn hard to make

a living growing legal crops that are bulkier and heavier but do not

bring as good a return as poppy. And it is also inseparable from

the insurgency, the Taliban part of it in particular, which profits

from the drug trade.

And one other thing I would note as far as U.S. interests are concerned is we do have already that ongoing counterinsurgency and

stabilization effort in Afghanistan being augmented by those

17,000 troops. And so that necessarily entails other operational requirements and interests involving the security of our forces, their

resupply and so on, that, like it or not, entail U.S. interests that

are going to be with us for some time.

With regard to the insurgency in Afghanistan, which my colleagues, I think, have described the mainlines of very well, I would

just further note that you have multiple lines of conflict in Afghanistan that have underlain the over three decades of civil strife and

instability in that country. You have an ethnic element, which pits

primarily the Pashtuns who have the majority, and the unstable

south and east; and also, by the way, the majority of the other side

of the Duran line in the tribal areas of Pakistan against other ethnic groups such as Tajiks and Uzbeks, and this was a major factor

throughout the period of the war against the Soviets and the subsequent civil war.

You also have the traditional struggles for power between whatever is the central government in Kabul and centers of power elsewhere in the country, primarily those chieftains and militia heads

we generally call warlords.

In Pakistan you also have multiple lines of conflict—it is sometimes easy to forget. The one between the radical Islamists such as

the Pakistani Taliban that now basically control most of the FATA

and have extended their region into other areas like the Valley of

Swat is just one facet of one of those lines. We may have seen another facet of that same line just yesterday with the attack on the

Sri Lankan cricket team, a very well-organized operation in Lahor.

But beyond that, you have the uneasy relations between the civilian establishment and the military structure in Pakistan.

We have had a history during Pakistan’s six decades of existence

of alternation and rule between military and civilian governments.

Basically what happens is one side or the other has power for several years, until the Pakistani people get fed up and they throw

28

them out. And they have just done that with General Musharraf

having reached the end of his rope last year.

But any new understanding between the civilian and military

structures and leadership of Pakistan, particularly regarding such

things as how to deal with the Taliban, has yet to be worked out.

And then among the civilians themselves, the acrimony between

the supporters of the accidental President, Asif Ali Zardari, and the

main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, is as deep and strong as

ever, punctuated by last week’s decision by the PakistaniSupreme

Court barring Sharif from running for office.

One thing that we need to remember is that the Pakistani and

Afghan protagonists themselves in all these conflicts do not necessarily see the mosaic the same way you or I would see it. In particular, Pakistani leaders, especially military leaders, tend to view

everything through the lens of their standoff with India. That is

part of the reason most Pakistani military forces are still in the

Southeast, facing India, and not in the Northwest, where the trouble that we are more concerned about is going on.

This perspective has also colored and continues to color Pakistanis’ views toward Afghanistan and the Taliban. Before Pakistan,

Afghanistan is part of their strategic depth as they confront India.

As was noted, the Taliban is originally a creation of Pakistan.

And for some Pakistanis, particularly in the military, even if they

realize their creation has kind of gotten out of control in a way that

they did not foresee, the Taliban is still, in the eyes of at least

some of them, a useful hedge against the considerable uncertainty

in Afghanistan.

I would close my oral comments by just noting three requirements of any policy review, including the one that the administration has going or any other discussion we may have about setting

a new course in this theater. One is—step one, to just determine

what U.S. policy objectives ought to be. And that is not self-evident

even when it comes to the counterterrorist objectives that are so

important.

Second, we have to set relative priorities among what are competing objectives, and they can compete even within the

counterterrorist area. For example, we have seen this with some of

the U.S. missile strikes on both sides of the Duran line, which have

achieved tactical gains in putting out of commission some al Qaeda

operatives, but have done so at the price of incurring popular

wrath that can increase sympathy and support for terrorist objectives.

And finally, policymakers have to determine not just the relative

priority, but the absolute priority of U.S. objectives in the region

in the sense of whether they are important enough to warrant the

cost and commitment necessary to achieve them.

And I think Congressman Murtha’s quoted comment about

600,000 troops—I think General McNeil, the former commander of

ISAF used a figure of 400,000—but suffice it to say several hundred thousand that would probably be required according to the

counterinsurgency doctrine and manuals to really pacify Afghanistan is a dose of reality that we all need to take into account when

we consider any new course.

29

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pillar follows:]

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33

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Mr. TIERNEY. You know, this is probably one of the more complex

issues that we will discuss in national security and foreign policy.

And all three of you managed to get your comments done under 5

minutes. It is amazing. Thank you for observing that time.

We are going to go to the question-and-answer period and we are

going to try to figure a better way to do this eventually than the

5-minute rule, something a little more free flowing. But Mr. Flake

and I will talk about that in the future. For now we will go under

the 5-minute rule and try to give as many people an opportunity

to ask their questions and have a second round if necessary.

Mr. Pillar, I want to start where you left off. And at the end of

your written remarks, you talk about the first step in setting any

new course of U.S. strategy in the region is to determine U.S. policy objectives and what they ought to be. You say, even the most

defensible objective, preventing the establishment in Afghanistan

of the kind of home for transnational terrorist group that existed

there until 2001, is not self-evident. Given the difficulty of demonstrating the different levels of U.S. effort in Afghanistan, it

would make the difference between such a terrorist haven being or

not being established. And that is in addition to the question of

how important such a physical haven is to terrorist groups who do

most of their preparations for attacking Western targets elsewhere,

including in the West.

I phrased it differently, but I’ve been asking that of General

McKiernan, or our ODNI, and the different people on that. If we

are saying our rationale is that we don’t want—that the Taliban

in Afghanistan is really more of a localized problem, narcotics people and the drug warlords, but the reason we say that we have a

military interest there is to stop it from becoming a safe haven, because we believe that if the Taliban takes over, they’ll invite in al

Qaeda, who is not there presently, and then they will be getting

back to pre-2001. I think that begs the question. Al Qaeda already

has a safe haven in Pakistan. I think that without too much effort,

they can have a safe haven in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Algiers and

go right on down the line. In none of those places, and particularly

in Pakistan, are we sending in ground troops of any magnitude to

speak of, never mind 600,000. We have decided we are going to

deal with that wholly different.

I think Mr. White talks about some ways of doing that, localized

aid and assistance, beefing up their security forces, working on

that basis. Why is it important for us ostensibly, then, to have a

military answer, primarily in Afghanistan, when it is uncertain as

to whether or not we can get to the level that would actually pacify

the whole region, when we have decided to handle the situation

other ways in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Mr. PILLAR. Excellent question. And that is why I raised it at the

end of my statement that you cited. I think there are three issues

here, Mr. Chairman. One is—and especially if we can assume we

are not going to go to levels like 600,000 troops. I don’t expect we

will. Is that going to make—whatever level of effort we do decide

on, is that going to make the difference between having or not having some corner of Afghanistan in which, whatever level of troops

we have, it is not fully covered?

Mr. TIERNEY. Or in Pakistan still?

35

Mr. PILLAR. Or Pakistan for that matter, yeah. That is point

number one.

But also is the further point of just—well, the second one that

you mentioned. If you want safe havens, there are ample opportunities for them elsewhere. And you mentioned two or three of the

most notable ones.

But the third point I would make, the last sentence that you

quoted from my statement is the question of how important a physical safe haven on the other side of the world is for the kind of terrorist group we are most worried about, particularly the kind that

would cause us harm in the United States.

Recall the parameters of the preparation for the 9/11 operation.

Yes, al Qaeda did have a safe haven under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Where did most of the preparations take place? In Hamburg

and Kuala Lumpur and in flight schools here in the United States.

So I worry a lot about this continued terrorist threat to the U.S.

homeland. I don’t worry about it primarily in terms of save havens

in countries on the other side of the world.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Bergen, would you care to react to that?

Mr. BERGEN. I’m going to take a slightly different tact.

Mr. TIERNEY. I suspected you would.

Mr. BERGEN. I think that if you look at any effective terrorist attacks, there is always a safe haven at the bottom. Somebody has

had military training or involved in some sort of paramilitary. You

don’t learn this over the Internet. I mean, look at the Mumbai attack. The guys in the Mumbai attack had trained in a training

camp in Murshidabad. That is why they could go and kill so many

people so effectively. So I think save havens are important.

There are save havens and there are save havens. Pre-9/11, you

had thousands of people going through the training camps. Obviously, we don’t want to return to that. The training camps in Pakistan are smaller. They are perhaps 20 people. They are not amenable to overhead imagery. They are in compounds.

But look at the London attack of July 7, 2005. The two leaders

of the attack both trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan at some form

of training camp.

So it is important for us to reduce the number of safe havens,

it goes without saying, and particularly—and obviously the kind of

safe haven of the pre-9/11 safe haven in Afghanistan would be—

is something that we must be very careful not to allow to come

back.

But I wanted to pick up on the 600,000 figure because this is incredibly important. There are 565,000 members of the Iraqi police

and Army. Iraq is a smaller country in population and it is much

smaller in area and it is a desert which is very easy to control, relatively speaking. Afghanistan has a larger population. It is mountainous. So it is very amenable to guerilla warfare. Of course, the

United States is never going to produce hundreds and thousands

of additional soldiers to go to Afghanistan. But our exit strategy at

the end of the day is the Afghan Army and the Afghan National

Police. We have done a terrible job of that. The Afghan National

Army in 2002 was 6,000 guys. That is the size of a small police

force in an American city. So this is where we really need to focus

our attention. When we send additional troops to Afghanistan, it

36

is the most important role that they are going to be doing, is advising, mentoring, and embedding with the Afghan Army itself and

expanding that rather dramatically.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. The last point you make is interesting,

that we went from 17,000 to 36,000, to having troops there just to

be embedded and to train and to do—that is a whole different

strategy than what we are doing now. But also, you know, the idea

of safe havens being a problem, of course they are, whatever. But

I think the question still goes through, do we intend to take a military engagement against every potential safe haven of whatever

size, or is there another way to deal with that as we are currently

looking to do another way in Pakistan.

And last, just on the Afghan Security Force, we have done some

hearings on that. I don’t think anybody here is very impressed with

the likelihood that that force is going to get up to any particular

level anytime soon, given the literacy issues, the corruption issues,

and the sheer lack of numbers of qualified people on that. That is

an issue.

Mr. White, do you want to comment on the general issue?

Mr. WHITE. Just very briefly, I would say it is obvious we do

have a different strategy in Pakistan than Afghanistan because we

have a fundamental interest in the stability of the Pakistani state.

And I tried to highlight, very briefly in my testimony, the fact that

it is not only the transnational al Qaeda threat that face, but we

face a number of groups which vector their efforts toward

Islamabad. And given the progress of Iran’s role as a nucleararmed state, as an influential state in the Muslim world, and as

a geostrategic state which has importance to us, that is also a real

concern. I think that explains why we do what we do.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Flake, you’re recognized.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. I appreciate the testimony. Mr. Bergen,

when we visited Mr. Karzai in December 2004, I believe it was, he

had just been inaugurated then and he referred to the war on

drugs there and the war on poppies as the mother of all battles.

Notably, when I was there just a month ago or 2 months ago in

December, he downplayed that war substantially and even said

that there was little evidence that the Taliban was profiting from

the drug trade, that those who were profiting were somewhere in

Europe somewhere, but it really wasn’t filtering back to the

Taliban.

In your statement, Mr. Bergen, you mention that they are profiting handsomely from the drug trade. Do you want to comment on

that, and the government, the Afghan Government’s commitment

or lack thereof to fighting the drug war?

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you very much, Congressman Flake. I think

that—I mean, it is a widely accepted fact that the Taliban is profiting handsomely from the drug trade. Insurgencies cost a lot of

money to run because you have to pay people to be a part of the

insurgency. They don’t volunteer like terrorists who you don’t have

to pay. An Afghan policeman is making $70 to $100 a month. The

Taliban foot soldier is making $300 a month. This money is not

coming out magically and suddenly appearing. This money is coming from the drug trade.

37

What can the United States do about it? The DEA surely knows

who the leading drug lords are in Afghanistan. Think about Colombia. Pablo Escobar was a household name in the early nineties. The

Cali Cartel was a household name. Why don’t we know the names

of the Afghan drug lords? As the committee will surely understand,

because it includes a number of government officials. The time for

their public embarrassment is over. Why can’t we basically say to

the DEA it is a matter of—there are all sorts of reasons that they

are keeping this private. But I think the moment has come to make

it public.

Second, there is no extradition treaty between the United States

and Afghanistan. The Afghan judicial system is a joke. Congress

wouldn’t be presumably able to set up some kind of extradition

treaty for major drug lords from Afghanistan who could be tried in

the Southern District of New York or other locations.

So those are I think two specific things that we can actually do

to change the situation. The Afghan Government has proven unwilling or incapable of doing so.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. White, there is talk, that 600,000 troop figure

that has been thrown around, that that would be what we need to

actually secure the country. Is there—obviously we need more than

troops. You have to have a strategy and you have to employ that.

And we have the PRTs and we are making a lot of efforts on a lot

of levels.

What is the—in your view—the bottom threshold of numbers of

troops that the United States will have to commit in order to give

effect to any strategy that might work? Is there a minimum threshold and everybody knows we are unlikely to get to the 600- level.

Is there a point at which anywhere under the threshold, why bother? Can you comment on that?

Mr. WHITE. It is a very good question. I want to comment first

just briefly on your question to Mr. Bergen and just to note that

I think that there is a relationship, although it is not one that is

very well understood in detail, between the drug trade in Afghanistan and the entrepreneurial nature of the Taliban insurgency in

Pakistan, this fragmentation that I was talking about. Because

when you have a lot of money that is available, then you have a

lot of options for new groups to begin and for drug smugglers to

essentially label themselves the Taliban and to operate on that

basis. So there is a clear linkage there.

To the point about Afghanistan, I can’t answer the question

about a minimum threshold, but I think that I am sympathetic

with a part of your opening statement in terms of the importance

of specifying what these troops are going to be doing and particularly at what level they are going to be operating. Are they going

to be operating out of PRTs, are they going to be more forward-deployed at a village level, are they going to be focused on securing

major urban areas in the South, are they going to be focused on

rural areas? What do those objectives actually look like? And until

we understand a little bit more about what that strategy looks like

at a very granular level, I’m not sure that we can begin talking

about minimum thresholds and the like. I think those are some of

the prerequisite kind of questions.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Pillar, do you have any comments briefly?

38

Mr. PILLAR. Just the other prerequisite question, after talking

about sufficient levels, is just what the end state is and what we

hope to achieve. And is it a unified Afghanistan, is it something

much more fractionated? Is it one where the central government is

one that we would consider a friend and ally or just one that we

would consider has achieved a modicum of stability? Those are

basic questions you have to answer first.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Foster, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FOSTER. A couple of questions about the possible parameters

for the end state that we might get to, and particularly the economic investment that the international communities should think

about making. And first, are you aware of any estimates for how

much it would take to buy out the poppy farmers?

Mr. BERGEN. Yeah. The gate price of the opium that is produced

is $750 million, which is about the amount of money the United

States pays in its anti-narcotics policy in Afghanistan.

Mr. FOSTER. So for twice that? So if we are willing to put twice

that every year, there is a reasonable chance that we could buy out

the poppy farmers?

Mr. BERGEN. It would be $1.5 billion.

Mr. FOSTER. Similarly if you think about the manpower requirements for a well-trained Afghan Army and police force, do you have

a seat-of-the-pants guess for how many well-trained officers you

would need to actually have the central government control the

country? Any of you.

Mr. BERGEN. The short answer is no. I mean, the 600,000 figure

of soldiers and police is correct, and obviously most of that would

be police.

Mr. FOSTER. Is there some rule of thumb for if you just look at

marginally developed countries that are, in fact, stable, what fraction of their total populations are police force?

Mr. PILLAR. I would just comment, Congressman, that I’m not

going to give you a percentage either. But in Afghanistan, you’ve

got the added problem, which is appropriate for you to ask about

the officer corps, of basic literacy and other skills, mainly literacy,

that is required in the officer corps but not necessarily in the enlisted ranks. And that is one of the main impediments to——

Mr. FOSTER. I was talking about the end state where we put the

time and effort a generation from now, so that we actually have a

generation that has been trained from at least adolescents up

to——

Mr. PILLAR. It is probably somewhere in General Petraeus’

counterinsurgency manual, but I don’t know what the figure would

be.

Mr. FOSTER. Okay. Do any of you have a feeling whether the missile strikes against the Taliban, the recent ones, have been a net

plus or not? It is obvious they are a mixed bag, but do you have

a feeling?

Mr. PILLAR. In my judgment, no. Although it is hard to make a

case either way because, as I noted in my comments, there have

been important tactical successes scored, important al Qaeda

operatives have been taken out of combat. But we see in the press

39

reporting almost every week some of the popular response with regard to the perception that the United States is heartless and careless when it comes to Muslim lives on both sides of the Duran line,

and that is the sort of thing that could have a much more widespread effect even going beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. So my

sense is the net effect, when you consider that plus and minus, is

a net minus.

Mr. BERGEN. I think it is a maybe. There were three missile

strikes in 2007. There were 34 in 2008. There have been five under

the Obama administration. So the Obama administration is actually ramping up from what the already quite ramped-up Bush administration policy on this. Eight readily senior members of al

Qaeda have been killed, including al Qaeda’s number three. The

most dangerous job in the world is being al Qaeda’s number 3, because there is a constant replenishment of number 3s. But clearly

one metric to actually determine how successful this thing is, the

number of al Qaeda videotape releases have dropped. This is, I

think, an important indicator because to get these things out, you

need couriers, you need people. In the past year, we have seen a

drop from the record in 2007. So this is interfering with al Qaeda’s

command and control.

But as Professor Pillar has pointed out, there are enormous opportunity costs here. We have to calibrate recruiting—offering a recruiting tool to the Pakistani Taliban versus disrupting al Qaeda

which is, of course, our primary interest.

Mr. FOSTER. Are you—go ahead.

Mr. WHITE. I would just say very briefly that one of the reasons

this is very difficult to assess is because there is a local effect and

then there is a national or bilateral effect: the local effect, which

is to say do the missile strikes radicalize the local population and

spur recruitment into al Qaeda or into the Taliban, that is exceptionally difficult to asses; the national effect, the effect that it has

on the legitimacy of the Zawahiri government, the ability of the

Zawahiri government to take action against Taliban or al Qaeda

groups.

The relationship between Pakistan and the United States on a

bilateral basis is much easier to asses, and that is what makes me

think that this is probably a negative. But it is very difficult to tell

what is actually happening in the immediate vicinity of these

strikes after they occur.

Mr. FOSTER. Do they, for example, make the United States appear as though they are a more useful ally?

Mr. BERGEN. By the way, there is very good polling data on this.

In a 2008 poll, Pakistanis were asked, what is the principal threat

to your security? Fifty-two percent said the United States; only 8

percent said al Qaeda. Clearly in our minds that is crazy; however,

that is how it is perceived in Pakistan.

Mr. FOSTER. Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Foster. Mr. Mica, you’re recognized

for 5 minutes.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Mr. Bergen, you have spent a long time as a CNN reporter. I

guess you were one of the first to interview Osama bin Laden and,

I guess, some time writing about him and reviewing his activities.

40

Sort of at the core of what we are after, I would imagine, here is

what he initiated. I think one of the your books, too, details some

connections between the Afghanistan or al Qaeda link and the

World Trade Center in 1993. These appear to be some pretty patient people.

And, Mr. Pillar, you described how their organization was in Germany, Kuala Lumpur and even the United States. They don’t seem

to have a specific home other than Afghanistan, or they use Afghanistan and Pakistan to—as havens to slide between borders.

My first question would be, given what you have seen over—

again, looking at this for years and their activities, they are very

patient. I would tend to think that they are looking to another hit.

They were very successful with both the World Trade Center the

first time during the Clinton administration and then hitting us

during the Bush administration and taking—actually taking the

towers down.

Do you feel that their plans would include another—I chaired

Aviation for 6 years—major attack in aviation, since that was such

a success; or maybe get their hands on nuclear or some sort of dirty

bomb to do another spectacular? What would be your opinion?

Mr. BERGEN. Certainly they are patient. I mean, Ayman

Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two, points out that it took two centuries to get the Crusaders out of the Middle East in the Middle

Ages. So that is the way they think. But—and we know that they

want to——

Mr. MICA. So you’re saying they are patient and that they are

determined?

Mr. BERGEN. Indeed. However——

Mr. MICA. What about the threats?

Mr. BERGEN. I think the threat level against the United States

from al Qaeda is actually very low for three reasons. As for al

Qaeda, while it has resurged, it is not at the point where it was

before 9/11.

Second, the American Muslim community has rejected the al

Qaeda ideology.

Third, I can’t prove negatives to you, but I don’t believe there are

al Qaeda sleeper cells in this country. They are so asleep, if they

exist, they are either comatose or dead. They’ve done nothing.

Mr. MICA. Do you think they’ve given up or just in waiting?

Mr. BERGEN. I think, you know, we have had—and also the Bush

administration, the government in general, made it much harder to

get into this country. When we have been attacked by Jihadi terrorists in the past, they have always come from outside. That was

true on 9/11. It was true in 1993 with the Trade Center attack and

it was true when Ahmed Ressam tried to blow up Los Angeles

International Airport.

Mr. MICA. They had a whole history—if you go back to Clinton,

we had the Khobar Towers, we had the Cole, we had the bombings

and the Saudis—and other bombings in Saudi Arabia. We had the

simultaneous bombing of our embassies in Africa. And so they

haven’t—since 2001, there have also been additional hits. To your

best knowledge, you don’t think they are working on a spectacular?

Mr. BERGEN. I mean, they are always working on it on a theoretical level. The question is what can they do on a practical level?

41

Mr. PILLAR. I would agree with everything that Peter Bergen just

said. I would just add that we should not focus too narrowly on the

one group, al Qaeda, the group led by bin Laden and Zawahiri. We

do have——

Mr. MICA. Then it is more of a war on terror than what——

Mr. PILLAR. It doesn’t have to be generalized that——

Mr. MICA [continuing]. Terrorism.

Mr. PILLAR. We can talk about radical Sunni, Salise Islamists,

just that movement.

Mr. MICA. Whether you have Obama in office, Bush in office,

Clinton in office, are they any more warm and fuzzy toward the

West?

Mr. PILLAR. The attitudes toward the West, and toward the

United States specifically, are a mixture of attitudes that would be

there because we are the leader of the——

Mr. MICA. Because some are still pretty radical and extreme and

hell-bent on destroying us.

Mr. PILLAR. Yes. But policy does matter as well. It is a mixture.

It is not all one or the other.

Mr. MICA. My final question is, you know, what should our objective be? Is our objective to be to get bin Laden? Are we trying a

political solution maybe to just get some neutrality? Or is this a

military—should this be a full-fledged military campaign to take

them out? Mr. Bergen.

Mr. BERGEN. In Afghanistan, sir, or——

Mr. MICA. Of course, you have the situation of we have to get

permission in Pakistan and we have been going across the border,

I guess, in some cases without permission. But what is our objective in that area, Afghanistan, Pakistan?

Mr. BERGEN. I think it is largely a counter sanctuary strategy,

which is not allowing them to have safe havens through which they

can train people to attack us or our allies or Americans abroad because the threat from al Qaeda is not necessarily on the United

States in general, but it is here and for Americans abroad.

Mr. PILLAR. It is primarily to prevent the recurrence of the kind

of safe haven and sanctuary that existed under the Taliban prior

to September 2001.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Mica. Mr. Lynch, you’re recognized

for 5 minutes.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding

this very important hearing. I want to thank the witnesses for

helping the committee out with its work. I returned from Afghanistan yesterday along with Mr. Driehaus and Mr. Platts from the

committee and Mr. Connolly from the committee, and I know the

chairman was there last week.

I had an opportunity to spend some time in Kandahar Province

with Special Forces operations that are going forward in there and

also some Marine units operating there and in Helmand Province.

And the military has explained a new phenomenon in their daily

contact with Taliban forces and actually local Afghan fighters. And

what they described to me and to the other members of the Codel

was that they are having daily pitch battles, they said, reminiscent

of something you might see in World War II, where local Afghan

fighters allied with the Taliban are actually not retreating over the

42

border into Pakistan, they are defending their ground. And each

and every day that our units go out there, they are in daily contact

with the enemy.

And I asked why this change might have occurred, and they said

that part of it is the fact that our troops and Afghan national

troops are conducting a more aggressive eradication process in the

Helmand Valley and other areas that are producing a lot of poppy,

and that we are alienating the local farmers.

Now, I know we have to—I know we have to do this for all the

right reasons. But you three guys are pretty smart guys. You know

the situation there. How do we—how do we manage that operation?

In other words, are we going to destroy all the poppy, as much as

we can, and yet continue to try to retain the loyalty and friendship

and support of the local population there?

We don’t want—the only way an insurgency is going to survive

there is if it has the support of the population, and that seems to

be where we are driving, at least some of them. Now, that same

area, RC South, is where we are going to see a lot of our sons and

daughters going in the coming months. It is a real hot-bed but

there is a real—I don’t know it is a real paradox, because what we

are doing is the right thing. However, it seems to be because of the

situation there and the great reliance on that economy on the

poppy cultivation that we are maybe driving some people into the

arms of the Taliban and the insurgency.

So could you help me with that and how we might not have that

effect?

Mr. BERGEN. Imagine a group of cops from New York were to

enter Iowa and started destroying people’s cornfields. I mean, those

groups of cops would take incoming fire. That is what we are doing

in Afghanistan. I’ve been on one of these eradication missions. A

group of Kabul cops goes down to a place like Oruzgan, destroys

the poppy fields. Whose poppy fields are destroyed? Not the guy

with the—who is really the drug lord. It is the poor guy who can’t

pay the bribe to make sure—so eradication first policy on—I mean,

the committee can certainly look into it in more detail—I think is

utterly crazy. It is the most counterproductive thing we are doing.

A third of Afghanistan’s GDP is derived from this. Millions of people derive their income from this, particularly in the areas where,

as you say, American sons and daughters are going to be going and

putting themselves in harm’s way.

We really need to be rethinking this. General David O’Bonner,

I think, has said the smartest thing about it: What is the mark of

a successful drug policy in Afghanistan? It is not the number of

hectares of poppy destroyed, it is the number of hectares of other

crops that are planted. That is the right way to be looking at it.

We need to rethink and reframe the way we are doing our drug

policy.

Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Bergen.

Mr. PILLAR. I agree absolutely with Peter. This is where the infrastructure reconstruction comes into play too, because part of the

reason it is difficult for Afghan agriculturists to make a living

growing pomegranates rather than poppy is the insufficiency of the

roads, the transportation. Poppy has the extreme attraction of

being a low weight, low volume but high profit margin crop which

43

simply can’t be matched given the existing infrastructure and economic development by other crops.

Mr. LYNCH. Is——

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Pillar with your background in the Agency, you had the opportunity to work obviously with the Intelligence Community somewhat with the military and somewhat with the State Department;

would that be fair to say?

Mr. PILLAR. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. So just for the record, if I go to the State Department,

they are going to always have a diplomatic answer that solves everything, you know, watch and engage and talk. If I go to the Intelligence Community, they are going to say watch, check and do

things clandestinely. And if I go to the military, they are going to

say we can fix the problem, we just need boots on the ground. Is

that fair to say that in every conflict, that is predictable from each

of those three pillars of our national defense?

Mr. PILLAR. Well, I think many years ago, Lord Salisbury had a

quotation that was sort of a paraphrase of what you just said, Mr.

Issa, but it is probably not entirely fair in that I think the professionals in each of those parts of the professional services and the

executive branch know full well that they aren’t the whole part of

the story. Our military knows full well that there is an economic

and diplomatic side, the intelligence people are there to serve the

others there, so——

Mr. ISSA. Sure. I asked a rhetorical question for this reason. You

mentioned just in response to a question that the image on the

ground was that with our military attacks or agency attacks that

we viewed their lives as cheap. In other words that—that they had

a down side for every up side. We are breaking up the leadership,

but at the same time, we’re demonstrating that their lives are

cheap and these raids come from the sky and kill without the socalled honor of standing there and being shot back at. Fair assessment or fair paraphrasing?

Mr. PILLAR. Yes. And I think that’s reflected in the sorts of

things as the poll result that Peter Bergen cited a couple minutes

ago.

Mr. ISSA. Well, I would like to use your combined intellect of, I

don’t know, 600 points or so, to ask a question, a bigger question,

because I think this was originally the Russians or the British war,

then it was the Russians war and Soviets war, now I guess it’s our

war. The last time when the Soviets were in, it was the cold war

and we picked the other side, but we didn’t pick it because we

wanted to help the Afghans we picked it because we wanted to

hurt the Soviets, that’s fair to say. By all of you, the head shaking

tells me I’m on the right track.

Aren’t we fairly in a cold war primarily with Iran with Russia

as a satellite player? And if we are in a cold war with Iran, then

should we view Afghanistan through who is our real enemy, who

is our real friend, what do we have to defeat in order to win this

long conflict. And the same could be said if you were here talking

44

about Hamas’s activity in Gaza or Hezbollah’s activity in Lebanon.

I would pose almost the same question.

If all of that is true, then how do we, or do we change our direction in a way that causes us to be seen as reluctant to go to war,

reluctant to kill, believers that, in fact, we engage only when we

have to and only to the extent we have to. So I’m setting up that

stage to say is our National interest perhaps deal with Iran and

settling that, dealing with perhaps Russia’s support in a cold war

way and in a great—to a great extent isn’t the lack of world support in dealing with Afghanistan the result that there is a side

that’s on one side and therefore there is a side on another side?

Mr. PILLAR. Well, I think what we have to do, Mr. Issa, is not

reduce things to a strictly red and white, green and white cold war

kind of thing. The lines of conflict are more complex than that. And

I think your mentioning Iran, this is the first time it came into this

hearing, it is very appropriate you should raise it, because Iran and

the United States actually have some parallel interest in Afghanistan as was demonstrated in the wake of our ouster of the Taliban

with Operation Enduring Freedom and the diplomatic work that

was done lead by Ambassador Dobbins with a lot of Iranian help

in the bond process back in late 2001 to start the political reconstruction process that led to the erection of the Karzai government.

Yes, we have conflicting interest, but we have a lot of parallel

and conversion interest, particularly in this country we’re talking

about today, Afghanistan.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Bergen.

Mr. BERGEN. I think there is one area of common interest in particular that we have with Iran which is the drug problem. Iran has

the highest proportion of heroine users in the world. And you can

imagine as there were baby steps taken to normalize relations with

Iran that that might be one the first issues where there is some

commonality where we both have the same strategic interest about

the drug problem in Afghanistan.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. McHenry, you’re recognized for 5

minutes.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank your for

your leadership on this issue. Two years ago, we traveled together

to Pakistan and Afghanistan and you raised those same issues

then that I think are coming to light now and I appreciate it.

We’ve got—obviously we are assessing the threat situation currently, but we also have an outline that’s becoming more and more

specific about President Obama’s new direction and the policy

changes in terms of our actions, in terms of troop levels and where

those troops will be located in Afghanistan. And we’re reading

about outposts that we’re going to have more forward operating

basis or outposts in the east and the south. And I wanted to get

your perspective, all three of you, your perspective on these outposts.

You know, Chairman Tierney was able to organize a trip to just

a very similar outpost that’s being described now, it’s going to be

quite prevalent along the border in the east and the south and so

I have an idea of what that looks like. But I want to know the security ramifications for this, whether or not you think it’s a good

45

idea, the appropriate idea, the best way in order to get ahold of

this situation. We’ll start with Mr. Bergen.

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you very much, sir. I’ve been on a number

of these small forward operating bases. I mean to give you an example, one in Zabul where 35 American soldiers, no electricity, no

water, I mean nothing. If you’re going to extend security to the

population, you’re going to have to do this. You are either not going

to extend security to the population and secure the main cities or

you’re going—80 percent of Afghans don’t live in the cities. So this

is, I think, the only way to guarantee extending security. It is going

to be very expensive in blood and treasure, I imagine.

Mr. MCHENRY. Mr. White.

Mr. WHITE. I agree, I think it is essential. I would go back to the

question that I asked earlier, where is the emphasis going to be?

Is it going to be on securing major urban areas, is it going to be

on village areas? And I would also make a parallel I think a useful

parallel to what we have seen the Pakistani government try to do

over the past few months in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan,

where they essentially were regularly able to clear areas with their

military, but then they always returned to sort of a PRT sort of location in an urban area, and the militants would just filter back

into the villages. And their inability to forward deploy, to stay overnight in places and to actually gather intelligence and work on the

front lines made it practically impossible for them to secure what

was their own territory in an environment where there is actually

quite a lot of support for the Pakistani government.

And I think that that same dynamic is in play, but even more

complicated in Afghanistan whether it is Afghan national troops or

U.S. troops that the forward deployment is absolutely essential if

they are going to actually secure the population.

Mr. MCHENRY. Mr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. I agree with my colleagues if we were going to do

counterinsurgency and do it seriously, I think this is an essential

part of it.

Mr. MCHENRY. Mr. White, you touched on the provincial reconstruction teams. Are we doing enough in terms of utilizing provincial reconstruction teams? And if not, what can we do to improve

them and make them much more effective?

Mr. WHITE. I’m actually going to defer to my colleagues on that

and their expertise. I think they have spent more time there.

Mr. MCHENRY. Mr. Bergen.

Mr. BERGEN. Afghanistan was the most under—underresourced

post World War II reconstruction effort the United States has ever

engaged in, both in terms of boots on the ground and money spent.

So the more that we can do the better now.

Mr. MCHENRY. That’s the shortest, best answer I’ve heard. Mr.

Pillar, do you want to try to improve it?

Mr. PILLAR. I—I can’t improve on that sir, no.

Mr. MCHENRY. And again, just in terms of our approach here,

you do think that the forward operating bases more engaged in sort

of sparsely populated areas, but where insurgents are active, is the

model similar to Iraq? Because in many ways, there are larger population centers that we are holding in Iraq as the model for these

46

operating bases being engaged in the neighborhood. Is it much

more complex because of how remote those areas are, Mr. Bergen?

Mr. BERGEN. The short answer is yes, I’m not a military expert,

but I will say one thing that the committee is in a position to order,

or at least—which is we need to secure the Kabul to Kandahar

Road, this is the most important road in the country. Securing

Route Irish between Baghdad’s airport and Baghdad City sent a

really important symbol. If we can secure this road much harder

than route Irish, it is much longer at 300 miles. This is one of the

things that we should really be focusing on. This is something that

all Afghans will understand, hey, this road is back in business.

This is the economic life line of the country. Right now, it would

be suicidal for anybody in this room to take that road.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. McHenry. Mr. Welch, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a question to everyone really, I’ll be brief but succinct. You have been terrific. I’m

sorry I missed the early part of the hearing. Who is crossing the

border from Pakistan to join the Afghan insurgency? Let’s start

with you, Mr. Bergen.

Mr. BERGEN. In terms of who’s crossing the border, you know,

I’ve interviewed a number people, a number of failed suicide bombers, probably the best definition of failure imaginable. But you now,

they are all—they are Pakistani bumpkins, Pashtune country

bumpkins who have been told they are going to get the 72 virgins.

I—I mean, that’s the foot soldier. But then, of course, you know,

the leadership of the Taliban is in Pakistan, the Quetta Shura, the

Bashara shura, Gulbadan head matcher, Hakani. The list goes on

and on, they are all in Pakistan so—but they are not crossing, they

are sending foot soldiers across. But—so the leadership is there

and they are sending thousands the people across.

And I think Mr. White raised a very good point which is a lot

of this is about business. I mean, you know, they may be dressed

up to some degree with the Taliban and religious justification, but

they’re controlling not just the drug trade but also all sorts of

smuggling schemes etc., in a place with very, very high unemployment. The Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban is often the only

job you can get.

Mr. WELCH. Do the other gentleman agree with that?

Mr. PILLAR. Yes.

Mr. WELCH. You know, we ran our recent trip with Chairman

Tierney one of the things—in Afghanistan and Pakistan—one of

the things that seemed to be the biggest threat was the corruption

in Afghanistan. I don’t know if you’ve covered this, Mr. Chairman.

I came in late. But we met some folks whose job in Afghanistan

was to try to get business investment if you can believe that. And

the big issue was corruption. And what they describe as two incidents that were pretty compelling, one is that if you wanted to get

a driver’s license in Kabul, you had to get the sign off of 21 different people and make a payment at each step of the way. If

you’re a trucker trying to deliver a load from the Iranian border to

the other side of Afghanistan you got stopped 27 times on average.

47

And they were excited because the average had gone down to something like 17, but these are by authorities.

I’ll start with you, Mr. Bergen, but if that is so much a part of

the economy in Afghanistan, I mean there is essentially no economy, drugs and corruption. And that is—it seems as though that

was as big a threat to the U.S. presence and success as anything

else, because we end up being seen as supporting the Karzai government which is seen as either tolerating or endorsing corruption.

So it makes me skeptical about our capacity to be militarily successful. So perhaps Mr. Bergen and others down the line can respond to that.

Mr. BERGEN. No doubt the corruption is an enormous issue.

Transparency International judges Afghanistan to be basically running neck and neck with Somalia in terms of corruption. So of the

175 countries it surveys, I think Afghanistan is like 172 in terms

of corruption. It is an enormous issue. It—what to do about it is

probably above my pay grade. I just you know—but I think the beginning is the U.S. Government does know the names of the

druglords, and clearly that’s a major part of the corruption going

on, it is time to publish these names.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Pillar and White.

Mr. PILLAR. No question that the corruption is a major factor in

the loss of popular support for the Karzai government, even though

most Afghans, I venture to say, would not want a return of the

harsh kind of regime that the Taliban had prior to the fall of 2001,

the Taliban had managed to exploit the resentment and disaffection with the Karzai government and corruption is probably the

single biggest ingredient in that.

Mr. WELCH. Before, Mr. White, maybe you can take up this one,

this is the dilemma that I experienced if you have a military strategy, trying to stabilize the society so civil—civic institutions can

buildup, but the civic institutions that we’re, in effect, supporting

are corrupt, then why is that not a dead end? And why does it not

suggest that we should have a refined approach where our goal is

to protect the American homeland and to rely more on intelligence

and perhaps military tactical strikes where there is a high value

target or an emerging base threat as opposed to an occupational

force with the Nation building goal. That’s the dilemma for me,

anyway.

And I will start with you, Mr. White. Do we have to face that

as our choice?

Mr. WHITE. To some extent, I think we will. I think there has

been and is a healthy reevaluation going on about our objectives

in Afghan. But I think we also need to listen to those who say it’s

very difficult to pursue a pure counterterrorism objective without

thinking in counterinsurgency sort of—sort of framework because

you cannot get the kind of local intelligence you need, you cannot

regularly disrupt the kind of havens as you need to from the air

or with an occasional strike. It’s very, very difficult and the actual

presence of safe havens on the ground is something that requires

state presence, it’s something that requires building institutional

capacity, and over the long term, have the legitimate state and I’m

sympathetic to that argument.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

48

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Burton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t take that long.

I just—I got here a little bit late so I apologize if I’m being redundant with this question, but in Iraq, we had substantially more

troops and it took a considerable length of time for us to stabilize

that country and to train the troops so they could take care of the

problem themselves. And President Obama is going to bring our

troops home relatively soon because of the transition to the Iraqi

troops.

And I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but Afghanistan is a

much larger country, it’s—the terrain is much different and this

guerilla war that’s being fought by the Taliban and its fellow travelers appears to be a more difficult situation than we had in Iraq.

So based upon this information, how many troops, I know Murtha

said we need 600,000, but how many troops and how long do you

anticipate we’ll have to stay there and will always—will we have

to have a permanent, a permanent number of troops there like we

have in Korea and Japan and elsewhere to augment the Afghani

forces once they’re ready to take up the slack.

Mr. PILLAR. Well, Mr. Burton——

Mr. BURTON. You have to speak up.

Mr. PILLAR [continuing]. I think we did address it a little bit earlier, perhaps before you were here. But the one comment I alluded

earlier was General McNeill, one of our former commanders of the

International Security Assistance Force and he was speaking of

several hundred thousand, I think he mentioned 400,000. And also

he had a timeframe, I can’t remember exactly what it was but it

was in the, you know, several years. I don’t—successful

counterinsurgency does not have to mean, shouldn’t mean a permanent presence. I mean, the kind of thing we had in Japan and

Korea is because of other things having to do with you know interstate threats. But suffice it to say, it’s in the hundreds of thousands and multiple years, exactly how many it would be hard to

say if full successful counterinsurgency was to be undertaken in Afghanistan. Against the background of all the factors that you appropriately mentioned, size, terrain and so on.

Mr. BERGEN. Can I add to that? There is a big difference between

Afghanistan and Iraq, which is, support for international forces in

Afghanistan is very, very high. The idea was that Afghanistan was

going to be the graveyard of Empires and we would be greeted with

flowers in Iraq and it was exactly the reverse. Afghans wanted us

to be there at very, very high levels. I can’t think of a single Muslim nation which in 2006 had a more favorable view of the United

States, 85 percent favorable. The numbers have dropped to 47 percent today in terms of favorable views of the United States. That’s

still half the population that’s basically in favor of us being there.

That’s better than Iraq ever was even at the height of the early

stages of the occupation. So the center of gravity in any insurgency

is the population, the population is still at least half in our favor.

And one other data point which is important, when we invaded

Iraq 4 million Afgh—4 million Iraqis left the—either left the country or were displaced internally. Four million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan since 9/11. People don’t vote with their feet

49

unless think there is a future there. So, you were completely right

about the problems, but there are also some significant factors in

our favor suggesting a possible outcome which will—to all our liking.

Mr. PILLAR. If I may just add to that, those are all very important points that Peter Bergen made, but related to the question of

greater international support is something that hasn’t yet come up

in this hearing and that is the role of our NATO allies. And as the

Members are well aware this has been a rather big issue between

us and our allies with regard to the size of their contribution and

what conditions or lack of conditions are placed on their troops that

are there.

Secretary Gates and others, of course, have been working hard

on this. But if you are talking about a long-term counterinsurgency

this is another dimension despite the—as Peter accurately points

out, the greater degree of international support for the effort.

That’s another consideration that has to be brought to bear.

Mr. WHITE. I would say briefly that in comparison with Iraq, I

think that the number of troops required to do the same amount

of work in Afghanistan will, in many ways, be higher for any given

territory, not only because of the development environment in Afghanistan, but because the difference in the travel structure which

is very pronounced. And in Iraq and in places it was possible to get

a few big men on board and to negotiate on that basis. And that

is very, very difficult to do in the Pashtun areas, both the Pakistani

tribal areas and in Afghan. Because a leader is only the first

among equals and there are a number of shifting alliances that

make it very difficult to make deals with large blocks at one time.

I think that’s going to be an important factor.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. White, I’m aware that you need to

be out of here by 11:40 or sooner and that you are going to walk

with your feet, or vote with your feet and that’s fine. So whenever

you feel you have to depart please go please go with our appreciation for your contributions here today and don’t hesitate at all. We

are very grateful that you were able to spend time with us. I think

we are going to spend a few more moments here if that’s fine with

our witnesses on that and do another round.

Let me start by saying there is one issue I think we all think

that if anything is going to be resolved in Afghanistan it requires

something to be resolved in Pakistan, that’s where the al Qaeda

and the al Qaeda affiliate leadership is, and they are, as Mr. Bergen said, sending people over into Afghanistan, but also presumably sending people to London and Madrid and elsewhere.

In Pakistan, we seem to have a very difficult time focusing all

of the players who are leaders in the Pakistani government and

military on recognizing that strategically their threat at the current moment is not necessarily India but is, in fact, the existential

threat of terror and Taliban and al Qaeda inwardly to them as

well.

Can you envision a way that the United States aid to Pakistan

be conditioned on certain benchmarks or metrics or whatever so

that we can say that if certain things don’t improve maybe the

funding won’t continue going because without continue going beVerDate 17-JUN-2003 14:10 Jan 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\71613.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
50

cause without resolving that problem we can’t really resolve Afghanistan. Dr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. I can envision it. It would be difficult to achieve because although we might put explicit conditions on aid so far of the

sort that you’re talking about Mr. Chairman. To be quite blunt, the

Pakistanis have played games with us in terms of making perhaps

more of a show of going after elements we are most concerned with

in the northwest, which is not to say that they haven’t done real

operations and indeed have incurred substantial casualties. But

they have then brought things to a halt and it breached these various agreements and truces, whether it is with the people in Swat

or elsewhere that have fallen short of our objectives.

The Pakistanis are adept and playing these sorts of games with

foreign governments, including us, in doing just enough to keep us

satisfied while doing our things, that if we knew everything that

was going on, with he would be dissatisfied with, this is the same

thing that has taken place for years with regard to their activity

in Kashmir and the cross border operations.

Mr. TIERNEY. So I guess the question is why should we continue

to fund them in fairly significant amounts if we are getting double

speak and avoidance back?

Mr. PILLAR. It is a legitimate question, but as I suggested in my

earlier comments, we have a variety of interests in Pakistan, many

of them related to the ability of Pakistani state and their cooperation and their willingness and ability to cooperate on many other

things besides just going after the Taliban and northwest.

Mr. TIERNEY. You feel the same, Mr. White?

Mr. WHITE. Yeah, I do. I think that I know we talked about conditioning aid and I think those are very helpful discussions. But I

think from the perspective of the U.S. Government what the

United States can do is to more wisely target the aid that it is giving and the assistance that it is giving. That we can talk about

what that looks like in development aid, but for example, in military aid, a lot our funding has either gone directly to the Pakistani

government in a fairly unaccountable way or our military sales

have gone through the FMF process in a way that is both rather

slow and not always targeted to what our major joint objectives

are.

And so I think there is a real need to look at those mechanisms

and say are there mechanisms by which, for example, the relevant

combatant commander could sit down with the chief of Army staff

and look at a set of equipment or set training that meets

counterinsurgency objectives and so forth and then have a mechanism by which that equipment can move through the system in a

way that is not just the Pakistanis sort of checking things off a list

that they would like to see. So there are ways to target our assistance, and I think that that could address a good part of the problem that we’ve been facing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Bergen, where did most of the opium grown in

Afghanistan end up?

Mr. BERGEN. In Europe, I mean 95 percent of it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Europe. And some in Iran?

Mr. BERGEN. And some to Iran and I know central Asia, but I

mean terms in west, mostly Europe.

51

Mr. TIERNEY. And besides the United States, who else is interested in the stability of the south Asia region——

Mr. BERGEN. I mean, United Kingdom, NADAR, NATO allies.

Mr. TIERNEY. India, Iran.

Mr. BERGEN. You have multiple people trying.

Mr. TIERNEY. Is it striking to any of you that we’ve had so very

little effort in engaging all of those parties in some sort of contact

effort? We have done it at margin levels in term of money, but in

terms of really working with those people and trying to come up

with some strategic answer to this, is it striking at all that there

seems to be a paucity of effort there?

Mr. BERGEN. Indeed, but I believe Ambassador Holbrook will be

changing that.

Mr. WHITE. And that has been striking to me. I think it is particularly important to engage the gulf States because they have an

enormous influence in Pakistan because of their financial position,

even though it has been recently weakened somewhat. And there

is a tremendous amount of transport—transit by the Pashtun population in Pakistan and Afghanistan through the gulf states. So I

think that’s—those are very important players to engage.

Mr. PILLAR. I think you’ve correctly identified a possible missed

opportunity, Mr. Chairman. As it relates, for example, to the central Asian states, which have ideas about energy resources being

exported through Afghan and Pakistan.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Bergen, you mentioned the necessity to ensure

that the elections are—that we have sufficient security for the elections and—is reason enough, I guess, to send troops now before we

have an overall plan, we at least need that. Are 17,000 sufficient

to help provide the necessary security? And is that—from your

knowledge, do we have that in mind in terms of deployment of a

lot of those 17,000. My understanding is they are going to specific

areas and are they going to need to be deployed further out or will

we need additional resources to make sure that election goes off as

well as it can?

Mr. BERGEN. I would make two comments. I mean, Iraq in 2005

was far more violent than Afghanistan is in 2009, and the United

States was able to secure that election. So I do not doubt that for

1 day we can secure the whole country so that there is a successful

election. Whether those troops are going in terms of their missions,

obviously, I’m not privy to that kind of information, but the area

where you need to secure is the south. The north is not an issue,

and that is, of course, where these soldiers are going. So I am presuming that two birds will be killed with one stone in terms of both

securing the south and also securing the election date.

Mr. FLAKE. Just further on the election, obviously we’re a little

less excited about another 4 years of Karzai, but is there any other

viable option at this point in your view?

Mr. BERGEN. That is a good question. He has a huge incumbency

advantage. You know, Karzai won the last election with 55 percent

of the vote against a dozen other candidates, and I don’t need to

tell the politicians here that is a pretty successful outcome. It is

better than Obama did against one serious challenger in the recent

Presidential. So he is still a popular guy. And I think the maneuVerDate 17-JUN-2003 14:10 Jan 24, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\71613.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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vers that he’s been making with this election are actually rather

skillful. I mean, he completely wrong-footed his opponents by saying we might do it earlier. They can’t organize themselves. He—so

I think, you know, we will have a second Presidential term with

President Karzai who has been—you know, the idea that he is

mayor of Kabul I’ve always been suspicious of. He’s been pretty

adept about maneuvering of people out of office who are potential

threats. He is quite an adept politician. Of course, you’ve met him

so you can make your own judgment.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. White, do you agree?

Mr. WHITE. I do, I do.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. Yes.

Mr. FLAKE. So another 4 years, as far as our policy, or what we

are doing, we really have no choice but to move ahead and hope

for the best in the second term, I guess.

With regard to security in the election is that—do you also agree

that that—where we face the situation here that is less volatile

than it was in Iraq and we were able to succeed there. Do you foresee a successful election there?

Mr. PILLAR. I think Peter makes the basic point here that what

we did in Iraq was lock down the country for a day. And I have

confidence as he did that we can do it in Afghanistan too, but that’s

still just a day.

Mr. WHITE. I think it’s probably possible, but exceptionally difficult. I recently have been an observer in elections in Bangladesh,

and in Pakistan last year, and even in those environments in the

rural areas it is very, very difficult to provide security. And the

best bet the government can usually provide is—in many of those

countries is a lone police officer with a 1950’s rifle who is falling

asleep by the side of the polling station. So it’s possible, but I think

we have to keep our expectations very low.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Pillar, at this point, there are no significant

blocks of people or groups who have said that they are not going

to participate.

Mr. PILLAR. Could you repeat the question?

Mr. FLAKE. In the election, in the election. Are there significant

blocks that are threatened to boycott the election.

Mr. PILLAR. Not that I’m aware of. But Peter probably is better

able to answer that question than I.

Mr. WHITE. I think after Karzai’s posturing yesterday, Ashraf

Ghani and others said they couldn’t participate in an election that

was held on the spring timetable, but that’s still posturing at this

point. And that hasn’t sorted itself out.

Mr. FLAKE. And in the end you expect, Mr. Bergen, all significant

blocks to participate?

Mr. BERGEN. I do. You know, the last time there was a turnout

of 70 percent in the United States was in 1900. There was a 70

percent turnout in the 2004 election, it went very, very smoothly.

Obviously it is not going to go quite as smoothly this time, but I

anticipate high turnout and relatively successful outcome.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Welch, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

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Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the

cross-border effect and I will start again with you, Mr. Bergen, is

the cross-border effect coming from Afghanistan as bad as the Afghan government portrays it?

Mr. BERGEN. I think that’s a very important question. Let’s do

the thought experiment where there was not cross-border traffic.

Afghanistan would still have a lot of problems, they would have the

drug problem, they would have local Taliban. So RAND did a study

of the 90 insurgencies since World War II. If you have a safe haven

half the time of insurgents win, I mean it is a game changer. So

the problem——

Mr. WELCH. What’s the game changer?

Mr. BERGEN. The game changer is continuing to have a safe

haven. Clearly that operates in the insurgents’ favor. But if they

didn’t have the safe haven, the problems of the Taliban would not

completely disappear. They wouldn’t have commander control from

across the border, but you would still have the drug trade and you

would still have local Taliban. The problem would not go away. The

Afghan government, you know, tends to be very critical of Pakistan, we know that, but they have their own problems.

Mr. FLAKE. Okay. Mr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. Well, I think when you hear President Karzai complaining mightily about the Pakistanis, it’s—it’s partly to deflect

attention from the internal problems that we’ve been discussing,

but the reality is that I agree totally with what Peter said.

Mr. WELCH. I want to talk a little bit about Lashkar-e-Taiba—

am I pronouncing that right? Can you just describe who they are

and what threats they pose? You know, a lot of these names just

kind of run over the surface and we get a little bit confused by it.

And when we are too general it means that we don’t get specific

on practical responses. So Mr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. Lashkar-e-Taiba or LT is an Islamist Pakistani

group that has gotten, certainly in the past, and there is a question

about how much it still has in the present cooperation and sponsorship from elements of the Pakistani government itself, which saw

it as useful tool, particularly with regard to confronting the Indians

in Kashmir and keeping an insurgency in Kashmir brewing.

Since then and partly because of the pressure that our government has placed on the Pakistanis, not to do business with this

group, which is, let’s be quite blunt, a loathsome terrorist group

that is appropriately on all of our terrorist lists, and it is appropriate for us to place such pressure on the Pakistanis. The official

sponsorship is no longer there, the remaining question is to what

degree there may be individuals or elements, particularly in the

Pakistani military that may have some continued relationship with

the group. But for any Pakistani military or civilian, they have to

consider that Lashkar-e-Taiba is now doing things in Pakistan that

have been as much of a problem as a resource. We have of

course——

Mr. WELCH. That goes back to what Chairman Tierney was talking about earlier, where Pakistan has a threat, an existential

threat from the terrorists and is starting to occur in its own boundaries.

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Mr. PILLAR. It might not be an existential threat in the sense

that we are going to see—we’ll have a chance to see next year LT

taking over the government and nuclear weapons, and that sort of

thing. That’s not going to happen. However, insofar as it becomes

a preoccupation and a diversion for any Pakistani leader, it is an

important thing for us. We have seen the Mumbai bombings and

the very sophisticated attacks on Lahore yesterday and against the

Sri Lankan cricket team. It is still a matter of speculation, there

haven’t been any claims of responsibility, but I would put LT at the

top of the list of suspects as many Pakistanis are indeed doing

today.

Mr. WELCH. Does their agenda, the LT agenda extend beyond its

views on India-Pakistan relations in Kashmir?

Mr. PILLAR. They share the general ideology in many respects of

bin Laden’s al Qaeda, although operationally, they have been focused more on their region, on Kashmir and now in Pakistan itself.

Just to speculate a bit more about yesterday’s attack, if it was

Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the question is why did they do it, my speculation would be to discredit and destabilize the civilian government

lead by Zardari. Perhaps even in the hope that a new military government might put more continued sympathizers to them and their

cause back in power, as opposed to Zardari and the Pakistan people’s party.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. Mr. Bergen, who makes up the insurgency in the Swat Valley?

Mr. BERGEN. Well, it’s a Pakistani Taliban. I mean that’s—I’m

not—I wish Mr. White was still here, he would have a much more

sophisticated answer, but I mean it’s essentially the Pakistani

Taliban.

Mr. WELCH. And their goals are what as you see it?

Mr. BERGEN. Well, it’s a Sharia law. It’s a replica of what happened in Afghanistan pre 9/11, essentially.

Mr. WELCH. And President Zadari, as you know, indicated that

he thought the west should have a greater sophisticated understanding of the goals with respect to the imposition of Sharia law.

What’s your take on that?

Mr. BERGEN. If you ask almost any Muslim are you in favor of

Sharia law, most Muslims will say yes, because it’s—in principle

the details of what that Sharia law might look like. Is it Taliban

or is it something much, much, much less onerous? So I mean,

there is nothing necessarily wrong with people who want to install

some form of Sharia law. It is a question of degree.

The other issue that Swat raises is—is doing these kinds of deals

at all a good thing. Now obviously Pakistan makes its own judgments about this, but if we’re prepared to do side deals with the

Afghanistan Taliban, why can’t the Pakistani government do deals

with Pakistani Taliban in its own territory. That’s something they

need to think about.

Mr. WELCH. But they can if they want to, right?

Mr. BERGEN. Well, I mean, obviously they can. But I mean, we

tend to be very critical of these fields. I think appropriately so, because often the deals basically give the breathing room for the militants to regroup. You have to understand the Pakistani government does these deals, I think, because they have no other options.

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Usually when they go into these areas it is a military defeat, the

much-wanted Pakistani Army has never really won any kind of significant war it has been involved in. And it is not winning a war

against the insurgency on its western and northern borders. And

so these peace deals are certification of failure than anything else.

Mr. PILLAR. A couple of other relevant points, with one the Pakistani military is not trained, equipped or organized to do

counterinsurgency in the northwest, they are trained equipped and

organized to conduct armored battles against the Indians along

their border.

And second, a lot of areas we talked about, the Pakistani central

government basically has never controlled it, that’s certainly true

of the Sharia.

Mr. WELCH. It’s a very small percentage of the 170 million or so

people in Pakistan, right?

Mr. PILLAR. That’s correct.

Mr. WELCH. What’s the population out there?

Mr. BERGEN. 3 million in FATA.

Mr. WELCH. So how in the world do we control that, it is pretty

mountainous out there. There is a level of presumption in a lot of

our discussions about our capacity to affect what is, I guess, extraordinarily rural, extraordinarily decentralized area of the world

where there is some potential, is the potential of a threat to our

country.

Mr. PILLAR. I think that’s a fair observation, and on the Pakistani end, it’s not a question of willingness or capability, it is a little bit of both, and a lot of capability. We like to think of it more

as well, the Pakistanis ought to do more and they should do more.

Well, that’s probably true, but there is a large capability question

as well. The one other point if I could just add Mr. Welch, to get

on the table about the Pakistani Taliban and the original question

to Peter is when we talk about the Pakistan Taliban we are not

talking about a single unified group. We are talking about a number of elements particularly in the FATA, each of which independently control chunks of it. Masoud and others have pieces of it, and

sometimes there have been conflicting and contending among

themselves.

Mr. WELCH. Well, is it your view that those various elements in

the FATA region have as a goal more autonomy in that region or

did they want to take over the Pakistani government?

Mr. PILLAR. Oh, I think it is much more the former, to maintain

and solidify their autonomy. And I think most of them are smart

enough to realize they aren’t close to taking over Pakistan.

Mr. WELCH. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you Mr. Welch. And I thank both our witnesses here. I am still left with the question we started with, that

if we were to get some sort of government stabilized in Afghanistan

and get Pakistan to deal with their situation, that there would still

be some ungoverned areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to

which elements uncharitable to our interests would reside or they

could go to Yemen and whatever—and the questions are we going

to keep sending in troops after troops after troops or do we have

another way of dealing with this.

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I thank you for your contributions and all of the information that

you shared with us today, it’s certainly helpful. It is assistive to us

to sort of focus our attention on this and decide as this country is

about to embark on an expenditure of human and financial treasure as well. So thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Flake and

this hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Paul W. Hodes follows:]

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