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67–890 PDF 2011

S. HRG. 112–68 

STEPS NEEDED FOR A SUCCESSFUL 2014 

TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 10, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gpo.gov 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman

BARBARA BOXER, California 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

FRANK G. LOWENSTEIN, Staff Director

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Biddle, Stephen, senior fellow for defense policy, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC ......................................................................................... 18 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 19 

Jones, Seth, senior political scientist, RAND Corporation, Washington, DC ..... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11 

Kerry, Hon. John F., U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, opening statement ..... 1 

Kilcullen, David, president and chief executive officer, Caerus Associates, 

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6 

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 3 

(III)

(1) 

STEPS NEEDED FOR A SUCCESSFUL 2014 

TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN 

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011 

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in room 

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John F. Kerry 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Kerry, Boxer, Shaheen, Durbin, Udall, Lugar, 

Corker, and Lee. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN F. KERRY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order. 

My apologies to colleagues, witnesses, and audience, alike, for 

starting a little bit late today. We had some business, before the 

Finance Committee, that I needed to attend to. And I appreciate 

everybody’s patience. 

This is the third of six hearings on Afghanistan and Pakistan 

that we are holding this month. 

Last week, we explored some aspects of the endgame in Afghanistan: what it might look like, how we might better engage with 

Pakistan on common interests and threats. 

Today, we’re focused on Afghanistan and on the specific steps the 

administration might need to take to shift security responsibility to 

Afghan security forces by 2014. It’s my hope that these hearings 

will help us develop a roadmap and at least broaden the understanding and engagement of the American people and of policymakers as to how the United States can shift responsibility to 

Afghanistan in a way that still protects our interests and increases 

our ability to respond to the threats on a global basis. 

We are fortunate to have a strong panel of witnesses. And I want 

to thank each of you for taking the time to be here today. 

Osama bin Laden’s death was more than a critical triumph in 

our fight against terrorism. It provides a potentially game-changing 

opportunity to build momentum for a political solution in Afghanistan that could also bring greater stability to the region, as well 

as ultimately enable the allies to bring their troops home. 

Let me be clear, I don’t know of any serious policy person who 

believes that a unilateral precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan 

would somehow serve our interests or anybody’s interests. I don’t 

believe that that is a viable solution, a viable option. I do think 

that we ought to be working toward achieving the smallest footVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
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print possible in Afghanistan. What is necessary is a presence that 

puts Afghans in charge, pressing them to step up to the task, at 

the same time secures our interests and accomplishes our mission, 

which hasn’t changed, even with the death of Osama bin Laden. 

And that mission is to destroy al-Qaeda and prevent Afghanistan 

from again becoming a terrorist sanctuary. 

I think one threshold needs to be restated as we consider the options, and that is that it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation 

with no end in sight. The good news is: I believe we don’t have to. 

I’m convinced that we can achieve our core goals at a more sustainable cost, in both lives and dollars. 

I hope our witnesses will really help us understand, today, the 

nitty-gritty details of how we can get there. 

To begin with, we have to take a hard look at the capability and 

the sustainability of the Afghans to take responsibility for their 

own security. That is certainly the best course to transition, I 

think, in most people’s judgment. 

But, despite our best efforts, there are challenges: corruption, 

predatory behavior, incompetence still evident within the Afghan 

army and police; attrition rates, although slowly improving, still remain debilitating; a series of deadly attacks by uniformed Afghans 

against their own troops, their own government officials, and our 

men and women in uniform, has undermined trust and morale. 

On top of these problems, there is the question, ultimately, of 

money, resources. I’m not sure that an Afghan security force of 

350,000 people is sustainable, by either the Afghans or us. The estimates are that it would cost about $8 billion to $10 billion a year 

to sustain a force of that size after the transition of 2014. Even the 

most optimistic estimates are that the Afghan Government’s tax 

revenue will be around $2 billion; $2.5 billion, tops. That’s the 

total, my friends. So, who will pay the bills to avoid having those 

armed soldiers and police mobilized as part of the next insurgency? 

The future of the security forces is only part of the discussion of 

what kind of Afghan state we can afford to leave behind. How 

democratic? How capable? How free of corruption? How national? 

How organized do Afghan institutions need to be to be able to provide the basic services and basic security? What is ‘‘good enough,’’ 

a word we have heard applied to the standard by which we might 

transition? At every turn we have to ask what we can realistically 

accomplish in the next few years to build sufficient Afghan capacity, and focus on those areas. 

Finally, as we did in Iraq, we need to determine how we can best 

support the political solution that everyone has agreed is ultimately the only way to resolve the crisis of Afghanistan. Again and 

again, from General Petraeus through ambassadors and other military leaders, and from the Secretary of Defense, all have confirmed 

that there is no military solution. So, looming large in front of us 

is the pregnant question: What is the political solution? 

We need to make our ultimate goals absolutely clear, for the sake 

of the American people, Afghans, Pakistanis, and everyone else 

who has a stake in the outcome. The administration needs to send 

a clear signal, with respect to the direction on the reconciliation 

efforts. Our lack of clarity has perhaps caused Afghanistan and 

3 

Pakistan and many other players to persistently hedge their bets 

and plan for the worst rather than the best. 

We have three distinguished witnesses today who are going to 

help us explore these issues. 

Dr. David Kilcullen is an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. He was a civilian adviser to General Petraeus on the 

U.S. counterinsurgency missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Dr. Seth Jones is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He’s a well-known expert on Afghanistan, and the author 

of the book, ‘‘In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in 

Afghanistan.’’ 

Stephen Biddle is a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council 

on Foreign Relations, and an expert in defense policy and strategy. 

So, gentlemen, we look forward to your help in addressing many 

of the questions I’ve just posed. 

Senator Lugar. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA 

Senator LUGAR. Mr. Chairman, I join you in welcoming our distinguished witnesses. We look forward to a very important hearing 

with them. 

Afghanistan has undeniable symbolic importance and can still be 

a source of threats to United States security. On that, we are all 

agreed. The question before us is whether Afghanistan is important 

enough to justify the lives and massive resources that are being 

spent there, especially given our Nation’s debt crisis. Or, can we 

achieve the most important national security goals in Afghanistan—especially preventing the Taliban from taking over the government and preventing Afghan territory from being used as a 

terrorist safe haven—at far less expense? 

At our first hearing on Afghanistan last week, I offered four observations as a prelude. First, we are spending enormous national 

security resources in a single country. Second, although threats to 

United States national security do emanate from within Afghanistan’s borders, these may not be the most serious threats in the region and Afghanistan may not be the most likely source of a major 

terrorist attack. Third, the broad scope of our activities suggests 

that we are trying to remake the economic, political, and security 

culture of Afghanistan, but that ambitious goal is beyond our powers. And fourth, although alliance help in Afghanistan is significant 

and appreciated, the heaviest burden will continue to fall on the 

United States. 

These observations, if accepted, call into question whether our 

vast expenditures in Afghanistan represent a rational allocation of 

our military and financial assets. This was true before Osama bin 

Laden was killed. His death has encouraged reflection on our policy 

in Afghanistan and may create some perceptual opportunities in 

the region. But a reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the 

basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served 

by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was 

needed before our troops took out bin Laden. 

Our geostrategic interests are threatened in numerous locations, 

not just by terrorism, but by debt, economic competition, energy 

4 

and food prices, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, 

and numerous other forces. Solving these problems will be much 

more difficult if we devote too many resources toward one country 

that has, historically, frustrated nation-building experiments. 

The Obama administration has targeted July for decisions on initial troop withdrawals. The President should not just withdraw an 

arbitrary number of troops. Rather, he should put forward a new 

plan that includes a definition of success in Afghanistan based on 

United States vital interests and a sober analysis of what is possible to achieve. I continue to stress that such a plan should include an explanation of what metrics must be achieved before the 

country is considered secure. It should also designate and eliminate 

those activities that are not intrinsic to our core objectives. 

In Afghanistan, measuring success according to relative progress 

has very little meaning. Undoubtedly, we will make some progress 

when we are spending more than $100 billion per year in that 

country. The more important question is whether we have an efficient strategy for protecting our vital interests that does not involve massive open-ended expenditures and does not require us to 

have more faith than is justified in Afghan institutions. 

In this context Congress needs to know much more about the 

prospective strategic partnership agreement that is under discussion with the Afghan Government. The cancellation of bilateral 

talks scheduled for last March underscored that progress on this 

agreement has been slow. The President and his team also need to 

establish much greater confidence regarding coalition efforts to 

train Afghan security forces. 

A DOD inspector general report from March of this year concluded that the NATO training mission ‘‘lacks enough specialized 

personnel to initiate, manage, and oversee the rapidly growing 

number of contractors and effectively manage the use of ASFF 

funds.’’ 

The United States spent $9.2 billion in 2010 and more than $10 

billion this year on this project. President Obama has requested 

nearly $13 billion for training in 2012. The high cost of this program is evidence of its centrality to administration strategy. But 

doubts also exist about whether newly trained security forces can 

assume responsibility for providing security in the country anytime 

soon. Even if training begins to produce units capable of independent action, tribalism and the corruption inherent to the central 

government create complications that could undercut the success of 

this experiment. 

In addition, after units are trained, what are U.S. obligations 

over the long term for sustaining them with equipment, pay, fuel 

and other inputs? According to some estimates, this could cost 

more than $6 billion per year. 

I am hopeful that these hearings will provide greater focus to the 

mission and strategy in Afghanistan in the context of broader 

United States vital interests. We look forward to our discussion 

this morning. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar, very much. 

We will begin with Dr. Kilcullen and just run down the table 

from there. 

5 

Thank you. 

If I could ask everybody to try to keep your openings to around 

5 minutes, your full statements will be placed in the record as if 

read in full, and then we’ll have more chance for exchange with the 

Senators. 

Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID KILCULLEN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CAERUS ASSOCIATES, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

committee. I’m honored to be here in such distinguished company. 

I will keep my opening remarks fairly brief. And what I want to 

do is focus fairly narrowly, on the question of what actually has to 

happen on the ground inside Afghanistan in order to get to the 

point where we need to be in 2014. 

The way that you see the problem depends very much on 

whether you think that the insurgency—the Taliban—is the problem, or whether they’re actually a symptom of a wider set of problems. I tend to the latter point of view. Most of the work that I’ve 

done in country over the last 7 years or so suggests that actually 

we’re looking at a much broader cycle of instability, of which the 

Taliban is only part. And, if you want to transition successfully, 

you need to address that whole cycle. 

The first element in the cycle is corruption and criminality, 

which comes about, in part, because of the drug economy, but also, 

in large part, because of lack of accountability and corruption in 

international community assistance programs. What that does is, it 

creates a tsunami of illicit cash that washes around the Afghan 

system and creates incentives for abuse. 

The abuse is the second part of the problem. And it sometimes 

takes the form of actual physical abuse and violence, but more 

often it’s expropriation of property, shakedowns, bribery, taking 

people’s assets away, denial of justice. 

And that second part of the cycle creates the third part, which 

is rage. And that rage is directed from the population, not only 

against corrupt actors, but also against the international community, because they blame us for the behavior of corrupt people in 

their own districts. 

And then, the final part of the cycle is the fact that that rage 

empowers the Taliban, or whatever other insurgency elements are 

operating in a given district, and creates the conditions that lead 

to the corruption and criminality in the first place. 

And so, that cycle, if you want to address it, you need, essentially, four elements. You need a countercorruption element, you 

need a governance-reform element, you need some kind of political 

reconciliation element, and then, finally, you need targeted measures against the insurgency itself. So, counterinsurgency’s very important in Afghanistan. But, it’s really only one part of a much 

larger set of issues, which you could characterize as a stabilization 

problem. 

Now, all those four elements, that I just mentioned, are present 

in the ISAF campaign today. It’s a question of how heavily we 

invest in each part of the problem. Right now, we’re investing very 

heavily in defeating the Taliban, as a military force, and actually 

6 

making very significant progress, I would argue, in that part of the 

problem. But, where we have really failed to engage fully in the 

issues that are going to confront us between now and 2014 is in 

the other parts; in particular, district-level reconciliation, anticorruption, and reforming the corrupt and abusive practices of a variety of power elites inside Afghanistan, not just government 

officials. Not all government officials are corrupt. There are some 

dedicated public servants within the Afghan Government. But, 

there are also a lot of power elites at the district level who are very 

exploitative of the population. 

I see three pathways toward transition that we need to integrate 

and to effectively do at the same time if we want to get there by 

2014. 

The first pathway is what I would call the suppression path. It’s 

a counternetwork approach or a counterterrorism approach. And 

it’s about destroying the insurgents’ ability to threaten the transition or to threaten the future stability of the Afghan state. It requires a lot of special forces, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance effort, but it’s the one area of the campaign where I 

think we’re doing particularly well. 

The second element, or the second path, is the stabilization path. 

And that’s essentially, at the district level, identifying all the inputs into what makes a stable district, and carrying out, basically, 

counterinsurgency operations to clear, hold, build, and then transition in each district. I think most members of the committee are 

very familiar with that aspect of the campaign. 

The third pathway is reconciliation, not just at the senior level 

with high-level Taliban, but at the local level; and again, not fundamentally between the insurgency and the population, but among 

different power brokers at the district level, leading to a stability 

environment, when we pull out of the district, which remains 

stable. 

I don’t want to take any additional time to talk about those pathways. I would just make one final comment, which is that we have 

a constitutional crisis coming in 2014. The Afghan Government 

limits the term of the President to two terms. President Karzai is 

in his second term now. That term will run out in the middle of 

2014. Who is our partner going to be toward the end of this transition process? I mean, it’s an important factor to consider. 

I’ll stop there, in the interest of time, and leave it to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kilcullen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID J. KILCULLEN

Mr Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak 

with you today about this important national and international issue. I intend to 

keep my opening remarks brief in order to allow maximum time for discussion, and 

in order to do so I would like to focus narrowly on the question of what, specifically, 

needs to happen on the ground in Afghanistan in order to enable a transition in 

2014. 

NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

The answer to this question depends on whether you believe the insurgency in 

Afghanistan is the problem, or is a symptom of a wider set of problems. My work 

in and on Afghanistan over the past 7 years suggests the latter—that is, the insurVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
7 

gency arises from a wider set of causes, and just dealing with active fighters will 

be insufficient for effective transition. 

In particular, I see the war as arising from a four-part cycle of instability: 

• Corruption and criminality, arising in part from the drug economy and in part 

from the international presence and the contracting bonanza associated with it, 

creates a flood of illicit cash into the hands of elites, power brokers, local warlords and certain corrupt officials; • This corruption enables and incentivizes abuse, in the form of expropriation of 

resources, denial of justice, physical abuse and violence, against ordinary members of the Afghan population; • These abuses create popular rage, cynicism, and disillusionment with the 

Afghan Government, but also with the international community, whom many 

Afghans hold responsible for the behavior of abusive officials and elites; • This empowers and enables the insurgents, who are able to pose as clean, just, 

incorruptible, and the defenders of the people, and can exploit popular rage to 

build support; and the insurgency in turn creates the conditions of instability, 

violence and lack of accountability that drive the cycle onward. 

As I have previously testified, we have seen this cycle deepen and worsen over 

the past decade of the war, and our focus (at various times) solely on destroying 

the main forces of the enemy has been ineffective in addressing the wider drivers 

of the conflict, or has even made things worse. 

To address this overall instability dynamic, we need four things: an anticorruption 

campaign, a governance reform campaign, a process of political reconciliation at the 

district and local level, and a robust security campaign to suppress the insurgency 

while these other elements have time to take effect. 

All these elements are present in our campaign today, and we have seen some 

very real security progress in Afghanistan in the past year, as well as limited 

progress on governance and rule of law. Yet progress on corruption, abuses, and political reconciliation is lagging, and we have heavily emphasized fighting the insurgents, while investing far less in addressing the other elements of the problem. This 

means that progress in the campaign is not only mixed, but that we are somewhat 

unbalanced. 

PATHWAYS TO TRANSITION

Based on all of this, and on recent developments in the campaign, I see three 

pathways to transition, which we might shorthand as suppression, stabilization, and 

reconciliation. These are not mutually exclusive, and in fact we need to integrate 

all three for transition to succeed. 

The first pathway is what we might call the Suppression Path. This is a counternetwork approach, focused on destroying the insurgents’ ability to threaten the transition and reducing their military capacity as a threat to the Afghan state. This requires a high concentration of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance effort, 

combined with a network of forward-deployed strike assets that can respond quickly 

to target the insurgents’ leadership and specialist cadres, and can support and enable stabilization activities at the district level. 

Ideally, in a transition process, counternetwork operations would be transferred 

to Afghan special operations forces, the National Directorate of Security, and specialized law enforcement and military organizations of the Afghan Government, and 

would continue with assistance, advice, and enablers from the international community after the transition to Afghan lead has occurred. This of course depends on the 

outcome of discussions with the Afghan Government about the status of international forces and security assistance after 2014. The suppression path is already 

in place in Afghanistan, and in fact is one area of the campaign in which ISAF is 

performing extremely effectively. 

The second pathway is the Stabilization Path. This is a counterinsurgency approach, focused on stabilizing districts most heavily affected by the insurgency, reducing the insurgency’s spread, and inoculating areas that have been stabilized in 

order to prevent the insurgents’ return. This approach requires security operations 

and governance reform at the district level, and targets the three basic insurgent 

elements at the district level—the main force insurgent column, the part-time local 

guerrilla group, and the village-level underground or shadow district administration. 

In addition to destroying the effectiveness of the insurgency at the district level 

through targeted military and intelligence activity, the main tasks within the stabilization approach are to protect the population from insurgent intimidation, rebuild district and community-level political systems, and create self-defending communities that are resistant to reinfiltration by insurgents once our forces are no 

longer present. This process is often short-handed as ‘‘clear-hold-build-transition.’’ I 

8 

think we all recognize, however, that it is an extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive process, and that it requires a high degree of international civilian 

and military engagement at the district level. It also requires an Afghan partner, 

in the form of the Government of Afghanistan, that is willing to actually undertake 

the hard work of governance reform and anticorruption at the local level, to help 

stand up responsive government, and put in place responsive and effective administrative structures. 

ISAF has made enormous progress in the last year, particularly in the south, in 

improving security at the district and village level. But the hard fact is that the 

other aspects of stabilization—countering abuse, governance reform, standing up 

viable local political institutions—are lagging significantly. Village Stability Operations (VSO) are one particularly promising program, but if we consider the work 

remaining, the lack of appetite for reform on the part of some local partners, the 

lack of appetite in this country and others for the expense and effort of nationbuilding, and—most importantly—the lack of time given the 2014 transition 

timeline, it is extremely hard to see how we can ‘‘get there from here’’ using a stabilization approach alone. There simply isn’t the time, will, or resources for classical 

counterinsurgency to work in Afghanistan by 2014. 

The final pathway is Reconciliation. This is a peace-building model, which recognizes that apart from a small committed hard core of full-time insurgents, the 

majority of people in the insurgency are local part-time guerrillas motivated in part 

by local abuses, in part by the presence of international forces in their area, and 

in part by community, ethnic and tribal affiliations and by ties of loyalty forged with 

members of various insurgent groups over decades of war. Much of the violence in 

Afghanistan is unconnected to the Quetta Shura, to Mullah Omar, let alone to 

al-Qaeda. Local peace deals, complemented by a reintegration program to bring less 

committed members of the insurgency back to their communities, and by a nationallevel reconciliation program to make peace with higher level leaders of insurgent 

groups, are already in place. Again, the VSO program also plays a valuable role 

here, as do security operations that make people feel safe enough to reconcile, and 

reform and governance programs that address key grievances. 

In order for transition in 2014 to succeed, we need to make progress along all 

three pathways, so it is important to understand how they intersect. Strategically, 

the critical pathway that underpins everything else is stabilization. Stability operations at district and province level provide a basis for everything else we do, enable 

strike assets to be based far enough forward for counternetwork operations, and 

help the population feel safe enough to reconcile. Layered on top of stabilization, 

counternetwork strike reduces the insurgents’ effectiveness and, by killing or capturing irreconcilables, makes it more likely that others will reconcile or reintegrate. 

Finally, reconciliation brings those who are willing to reconcile into a peace-building 

process, further reduces the strength of the insurgency, and improves district stability by reducing conflict. 

These three approaches are mutually reinforcing—stabilization provides the firm 

base, and the better we do at counternetwork operations, the easier it becomes to 

reconcile with less committed insurgents, while the better we do at reconciliation, 

the fewer hard-core insurgents we need to target. Ultimately this can create a virtuous circle that leads to rapid and sustainable improvements in security, as we saw 

in Iraq in 2007, and this can accelerate the process of stabilization. 

Thus, we could depict a workable transition strategy in Afghanistan as a process 

of ‘‘Accelerated COIN,’’ which can be represented graphically as follows: 

9 

Beyond these three aspects, two other elements are critically important to transition. These are the buildup of Afghan Government capacity (especially, the creation 

of robust and representative security forces), and the reduction of the insurgents’ 

safe havens in Pakistan. In the interests of time, I will discuss these issues in response to members’ questions rather than in formal remarks, however I would like 

to note one other key element today, and that is the coming transition crisis associated with President Karzai’s term of office. 

THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION CRISIS

The Afghan Constitution limits the President to two 2-year terms; President 

Karzai is currently in his second term, which commenced in November 2009. His 

previous term expired in April 2009. Depending on whether you date the term from 

its commencement, or from the expiration of the previous term, this means that 

President Karzai needs to leave office as early as April 2014, or as late as November 

2014. There is very little prospect that the Afghan Parliament will agree to extend 

his term or to grant him a third term, and even though there are a number of 

Supreme Court judges favorable to the President, three of these have overstayed 

their terms and would need to leave by 2014. So we are confronting a coming succession crisis, right at the critical time in a transition to Afghan control in mid2014. One of the critical issues in transition at the political level is to ensure an 

effective Presidential succession, or at least a peaceful and stable resolution of the 

coming crisis. It will be too late to start thinking about this in 2014—it needs to 

be a topic of thought, discussion, and deliberation right now, or we run the risk of 

undermining any political and security gains that we may make in the next few 

years. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to discuss this important topic with you 

today; I look forward to your questions and comments. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Kilcullen. 

Dr. Jones. 

STATEMENT OF SETH JONES, SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENTIST, 

RAND CORPORATION, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, other 

members of the committee. 

10 

I’ve spent the last several years in U.S. Special Operations Command, so will try and give a perspective from much of my time on 

the ground, as well as back in Washington. 

I’m going to lay out a couple of things: what I believe our objective should be, which are fairly limited; look at a range of options; 

and provide, in my view, costs and risks as we move forward. 

I think our—especially with the death of Osama bin Laden, in 

my view, our objectives in Afghanistan should be limited to two key 

issues. First is disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and 

allied groups in the Afghan/Pakistan region. I would obviously 

point out this is not just al-Qaeda. The Faisal Shahzad attempted 

attack in Times Square was Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. So, there 

are some other groups in this region. And both he and Najibullah 

Zazi were trained on the border, on a border that is quite porous. 

So, this clearly is one issue that directly impacts homeland 

security. 

And the second is denying al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan 

both a safe haven but—and this is often under emphasized—an 

ally in Afghanistan. If we remember, the Taliban regime in the 

1990s was not just provided a safe haven, but it was actually an 

ally of al-Qaeda, despite some differences. 

At this point, I’m going to lay out what I consider three plausible 

options for moving forward. One of them is a counterterrorism option; the second is a comprehensive counterinsurgency; and the 

third is somewhere in between, which is where I will fall into. 

The first is a counterterrorist option. As I said earlier, I’m just 

coming from Special Operations Forces. This really is a JSOC-type 

direct-action mission, to capture or kill al-Qaeda and other terrorists; CIA units on the ground, as well. And it would essentially 

limit our focus to a very small direct-action footprint, both in 

Afghanistan but also threats along the border. 

I would warn that there are several risks in this strategy that 

are worth understanding. The first is, it will reaffirm a regional 

perception that the United States is not a reliable ally. Some people may consider that important, some may not. But, it certainly 

is a risk. Second is, it, in my view, fails to address the elimination 

of a sanctuary and an ally in Afghanistan, certainly does not prevent an ally of terrorist groups from emerging unless the Taliban 

and its allies are defeated or agree to a settlement. 

Second, I suspect that a precipitous American drawdown will encourage Afghanistan’s neighbors, including Pakistan, to increase 

their support levels to Afghan insurgent groups, the Haqqani Network and the Taliban, as a bulwark against a perceived Indian/ 

Afghan access in Afghanistan. And as we will probably note in the 

question-and-answer session, my concern right now is with senior 

al-Qaeda leadership, from Zawahiri to Ilyas Kashmiri, Abu Yahya 

al-Libi and others. There is still a relationship with senior elements of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. That is a concern. 

The second option would be a comprehensive counterinsurgency 

option, which probably decreases the U.S. footprint somewhat, but 

is along the same lines as exists right now. I will not go into this 

in much detail, except to say that it is probably unsustainable, both 

from an American and from an Afghan standpoint, for a range of 

reasons, that I’d be happy to get into later. 

11 

What I’m going to very briefly, in about 30 seconds, outline is 

what I’m going to call an Afghan-led counterinsurgency option. And 

I think it leverages U.S. Special Operations Forces both for CT 

efforts, but also for counterinsurgency. 

The specifics—and we can get into them later—would be: train 

and equip Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police 

forces; support what’s now called Afghan local police and village 

stability operations from the bottom up—that is helping Afghan 

communities push back against the insurgency; conducting some 

direct-action operations; and then providing a range of enablers— 

intelligence, civil affairs, and other efforts like that. I’ve got numbers, in my written testimony, on what each of these options might 

look like, in terms of United States as well as Afghan forces. 

Let me just summarize, real briefly, in conclusion, that I think 

there are several ways for the United States to achieve the limited 

objectives I noted earlier. One is if al-Qaeda is destroyed in the 

Afghan/Pakistan region and no longer poses a threat to the United 

States homeland. A second is if the Taliban breaks ties with 

al-Qaeda. And a third is if Afghan National Security Forces and its 

allies can sufficiently degrade the insurgency. At the moment, in 

my view, all three means should be pursued simultaneously until 

one of them, or some combination, adequately achieves core U.S. 

objectives. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Jones follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SETH G. JONES

The death of Osama bin Laden and the upcoming 10th anniversary of the U.S. 

involvement in Afghanistan have triggered several important policy issues. This testimony poses several questions. What should the U.S. objectives be in Afghanistan? 

Based on these objectives, what are America’s military options (and what would the 

implications be for transition)? Finally, what are the political options, including the 

possibility of a peace settlement? 

I argue that U.S. objectives in Afghanistan should be tied to narrow U.S. national 

security interests, and the U.S. military strategy should transition to an Afghan-led 

counterinsurgency strategy. This strategy would involve decreasing the U.S. military footprint and relying on an increasingly prominent role of U.S. Special Operations Forces to help Afghans conduct counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. It would require assisting Afghan national and local forces degrade the 

insurgency and target terrorist leaders. Implementing this strategy would require 

decreasing the U.S. military footprint to perhaps 30,000 or fewer forces by 2014 and 

surging Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan Local Police. It would also include leveraging U.S. Special Operations Forces, CIA, and some conventional forces 

to conduct several tasks: train, equip, and advise Afghan National Security Forces; 

assist local communities improve security and governance from the bottom up (especially the Afghan Local Police and Village Stability Operations programs); conduct 

direct action operations against high value targets; provide a range of ‘‘enablers,’’ 

such as intelligence, civil affairs, and military information support operations. 

There are several ways for the United States to achieve its limited objectives in 

Afghanistan. The first is if al-Qaeda is destroyed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region 

and no longer poses a serious threat to the U.S. homeland. The second is if the 

Taliban breaks ties with al-Qaeda. The third is if Afghan National Security Forces 

and local allies (such as Afghan Local Police) can sufficiently degrade the insurgency 

and prevent the return of the Taliban with minimal outside assistance. At the moment, the United States should pursue all three means simultaneously—targeting 

al-Qaeda and its allies, political negotiations, and Afghan-led counterinsurgency— 

until one of them, alone or in combination with the others, adequately achieves core 

U.S. objectives. 

12 

I. OBJECTIVES IN AFGHANISTAN

The U.S. objectives in Afghanistan should be limited and tied to narrow U.S. national security interests. They include: 

• Disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and allied groups in Afghanistan and 

Pakistan that threaten the U.S. homeland and its interests overseas 

• Deny al-Qaeda and its allies a safe haven and an ally in Afghanistan that 

threaten the U.S. homeland and its interests overseas 

As illustrated on September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was not just a sanctuary for 

al-Qaeda, but the Taliban was an ally. There were disagreements between Taliban 

and al-Qaeda leaders, as there are between most organizations. But Osama bin 

Laden’s decision in the late 1990s to move from Tora Bora to Kandahar, only a few 

miles from Mullah Omar’s residence, and the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin 

Laden after September 11 indicated a viable relationship. Today, the United States 

cannot accept a situation in which al-Qaeda and its local allies have a sanctuary 

to plan and train for terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. Nor can the 

United States accept an Afghan Government that is an ally of terrorists. Al-Qaeda’s 

continuing relationship with senior Taliban, Haqqani, and other militant leaders— 

including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba—suggests that a 

Taliban-led government would be a risky gamble for U.S. national security. A precipitous U.S. withdrawal and continuing Pakistan support to Afghan insurgent 

groups could certainly lead to Taliban control of part or most of Afghanistan over 

the next decade. 

II. MILITARY OPTIONS

To achieve these limited objectives, there are several possible military options: (1) 

counterterrorism, (2) comprehensive counterinsurgency, and (3) Afghan-led counterinsurgency. All come with risks and benefits. They involve different strategies and 

require different force levels. Figure 1 outlines possible U.S. force levels over the 

next 5 years. They vary in several respects—including their overall strategy, the 

number of forces required for 2014, and the slope of the curve in reducing U.S. 

forces. These levels are meant to be illustrative. Actual planning would need to be 

based on a more fine-grained analysis of unit deployments, conditions on the 

ground, performance of Afghanistan national and local forces, and other factors. 

Figure 1: Example of U.S. Force Reductions, 2011–2015 

1. Counterterrorism: The first is a counterterrorism strategy. While there are several variants of this strategy, most agree on quickly withdrawing all—or most—military forces from Afghanistan and relying on U.S. Special Operations Forces and CIA 

units to capture or kill al-Qaeda and other terrorists that threaten the U.S. homeland and its interests abroad. It would involve rapidly decreasing the number of 

U.S. forces in Afghanistan, leaving between several hundred and several thousand 

Special Operations Forces and CIA personnel to conduct direct action missions. The 

U.S. footprint in Afghanistan might more closely resemble the current U.S. footprint 

in Yemen: lean and lethal. In addition, a counterterrorism strategy would also require a range of support elements such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT seth.eps
13 

1 U.S. Department of Defense, ‘‘Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan and United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghan National Security Forces’’ (Washington, 

DC: U.S. Department of Defense, April 2011). 2 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, ‘‘Counterinsurgency,’’ FM 3–24, MCWP 3–33.5 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army and Headquarters Marine Corps Combat Development Command (December 2006). 

sance assets; air support for combat patrol, close air support, and other missions; 

and perhaps a small number of conventional forces for logistics and force protection. 

This strategy has the benefit of significantly decreasing the financial burden on 

the United States, minimizing the deaths of American soldiers, and allowing the 

United States to focus on other areas of the world where it may have strategic interests. The death of Osama bin Laden has already increased calls for such an 

approach. 

But a counterterrorism strategy has several risks which likely outweigh its benefits. A rapid and large-scale withdrawal of U.S. forces reaffirms the regional perception that the United States is not a reliable ally. More importantly, a rapid U.S. 

withdrawal would fail to address the elimination of a sanctuary where al-Qaeda and 

its allies can reside. It treats the symptom and not the underlying disease. Indeed, 

a counterterrorism strategy would likely increase Pakistan’s impetus to support the 

Taliban and other insurgent groups as a bulwark against a perceived Indian-Afghan 

axis in Afghanistan. The possibility of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan has serious 

risks since al-Qaeda leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and 

Ilyas Kashmiri, retain an active relationship with senior Taliban and Haqqani Network leaders. Osama bin Laden would not have been killed if the United States had 

been unable to operate in Afghanistan. In the future, the United States will only 

be able to stay in Afghanistan if the Taliban is prevented from retaking power. 

The United States should have learned its lesson from September 11, 2001: the 

Taliban would likely allow a range of terrorist groups to operate and train on its 

soil. Some of these groups, such as al-Qaeda, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and 

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, present a threat to the U.S. homeland. Indeed, on May 1, 2010, 

Faisal Shahzad, who was trained in Pakistan by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan 

bombmakers, packed his Nissan Pathfinder with explosives and drove into Times 

Square in New York City on a congested Saturday night. Only fortune intervened, 

since the improvised explosive device malfunctioned. 

Some have argued that al-Qaeda operatives primarily reside in Pakistan, not 

Afghanistan. But the 1,519-mile border, drawn up in 1893 by Sir Henry Mortimer 

Durand, the British Foreign Secretary of India, is largely irrelevant for militant 

groups. Locals regularly cross the border to trade, pray at mosques, visit relatives, 

and—in some cases—target NATO and coalition forces. Indeed, al-Qaeda migration 

patterns since the anti-Soviet jihad show frequent movement in both directions. 

Osama bin Laden established al-Qaeda in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1988, though he 

and other Arab fighters crossed the border into Afghanistan regularly to fight Soviet 

forces and support the mujahedeen. When bin Laden returned to the area in 1996 

from Sudan, he settled near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan and later moved 

south to Kandahar province. After the overthrow of the Taliban regime, however, 

most of the al-Qaeda leadership moved back to Pakistan, though some settled in 

neighboring Iran. This tendency to find safe havens in both Afghanistan and Pakistan will likely continue. 

Based on historical patterns, al-Qaeda and other groups would almost certainly 

increase their presence in Afghanistan in a Taliban-run Afghanistan. A counterterrorism strategy will unlikely prevent this outcome, especially if Pakistan continues 

to back the Taliban and other insurgent groups. 

2. Comprehensive Counterinsurgency: The second option would require keeping a 

fairly large U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan to conduct what some U.S. Government assessments refer to as ‘‘comprehensive, population-centric counterinsurgency operations.’’ 1 As outlined in the U.S. Department of Defense’s Report on 

Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, the goal would be fairly 

broad: to protect the Afghan people, neutralize insurgent networks, develop Afghan 

National Security Forces, and support the establishment of legitimate governance 

and sustainable socioeconomic institutions. This strategy is most consistent with 

conventional counterinsurgency theories.2 It would likely require continuing to keep 

fairly robust levels of American forces in Afghanistan through 2014, perhaps up to 

60,000 U.S. soldiers, depending on conditions on the ground and other factors. These 

forces would continue to engage in combat operations, as well as train, equip, and 

advise Afghan forces. 

But a comprehensive counterinsurgency approach has risks. To begin with, it is 

probably not sustainable over the long run in Afghanistan or the United States. In 

14 

3 ABC News, BBC, ARD, Washington Post, ‘‘Afghanistan: Where Things Stand,’’ December 6, 

2010. 

Afghanistan, it does not adequately prepare Afghan national and local forces to fight 

the insurgency and secure their country. Afghan support for the U.S. military has 

declined every year since 2005, though it is still above 50 percent.3 American support for the war has also been declining. As discussed in the next section, a range 

of initiatives—including the Afghan Local Police program—have shown serious potential, indicating that Afghans are willing to take the lead in counterinsurgency 

operations. In fact, large numbers of U.S. forces will likely inhibit the ability of 

Afghan forces to operate effectively, since most continue to use international forces 

as a crutch. 

3. Afghan-Led Counterinsurgency: A third option would be to transition toward an 

Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy that relies on a limited Special Operations 

Force footprint, aided by the CIA and a reduced number of conventional forces. On 

the military side, it would focus on two goals: (1) assist Afghan national and local 

forces degrade the insurgency and (2) target terrorist leaders. It is different from 

the counterterrorism strategy because it relies on U.S. Special Operations Forces 

and others to conduct counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. And it is different 

than comprehensive counterinsurgency because it would largely terminate U.S. combat operations by 2014 except for targeting terrorist leaders. An Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy would involve using U.S. forces to conduct several tasks: 

• Train, equip, and advise Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police 

forces (top-down counterinsurgency); 

• Assist local communities improve security, governance, and development—including through village-level community forces such as Afghan Local Police (bottom-up counterinsurgency); 

• Conduct direct action operations against high value targets (counterterrorism); 

• Provide a range of ‘‘enablers,’’ such as intelligence, civil affairs, and military information support operations. 

This strategy would require decreasing the number of U.S. forces to perhaps 

30,000 by 2014, depending on ground conditions and other factors. As illustrated in 

Figure 2, it would also require a robust Afghan National Security Force and Afghan 

Local Police presence for the near term, which could then decrease as security conditions improved. One of the critical parts of this strategy is supporting growth of the 

Afghan Local Police, a ‘‘bottom-up’’ component of the campaign plan that allows 

Afghan communities to stand up for themselves. The Afghan Local Police program, 

which was established in August 2010 by President Karzai, has undermined Taliban 

control in Helmand, Kandahar, Oruzgan, and other provinces by helping villagers 

protect their communities and better connecting them to district and provincial government. Despite some off-kilter media reports, the Afghan Government and NATO 

forces have been fairly meticulous in choosing locations where locals have already 

resisted the Taliban, vetting candidates using biometrics and available intelligence, 

and training and mentoring local villagers. They’ve also helped ensure Afghan Local 

Police are small, defensive entities under the supervision of local shuras and the 

control of the Ministry of Interior. 

15 

Figure 2: Example of Force Numbers for Afghan-Led Counterinsurgency 

This strategy entails some risks. It assumes that Afghan National Security Forces 

and local allies, with assistance from U.S. Special Operations Forces and others, 

would be adequate to degrade the Taliban-led insurgency. Along with the comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy, it also assumes that Afghan central government institutions would be adequate to establish order and deliver services, at least 

in key urban areas. Current levels of corruption and incompetence raise long-term 

governance concerns. Finally, a lower U.S. footprint risks backsliding if Afghan 

National Security Forces and Afghan Local Police fail to degrade the insurgency. 

But the Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy has several benefits. It relies on 

Afghans to do the bulk of counterinsurgency, but with U.S. assistance and oversight. 

It also ensures a steady drop in financial costs of the war, though not at counterterrorism levels. At its core, it would involve a combination of top-down and bottomup efforts. There is good reason to believe an Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy 

could degrade the Taliban and other insurgent groups. U.S. intelligence assessments 

have indicated that the Taliban and its allies have lost control of some territory over 

the past year in the south, the Taliban’s center of gravity. One of the primary reasons, according to several of these assessments, has been the introduction of Afghan 

Local Police and Village Stability Operations. In addition, a growing number of 

Americans believe the war is now going well, as illustrated in Figure 3. Now is not 

the time to abandon this promising effort. 

Figure 3: American Perceptions of the War in Afghanistan4

16 

4Gallup, ‘‘Americans Divided on How Things Are Going in Afghanistan,’’ April 8, 2011. 

5 ABC News, BBC, ARD, Washington Post, ‘‘Afghanistan: Where Things Stand,’’ December 6, 

2010. 6Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: 

Princeton University Press, 2009). 7 James D. Fearon, ‘‘Iraq’s Civil War,’’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 2, March/April 2007, p. 

8. 8 Virginia Page Fortna, ‘‘Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace’’ 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 

III. POLITICAL OPTIONS

In addition to military options, there are also important political options. Some 

have argued that a political settlement to the conflict is critical to peace in Afghanistan. Peace negotiations would be desirable if they succeeded in a settlement. Opinion polls show high levels of support within Afghan society for a negotiated settlement, and a willingness to bring Taliban members back into the fold, though not 

to run the country. When asked who they would rather have ruling Afghanistan 

today, 86 percent of Afghans said the Karzai government and only 9 percent the 

Taliban, according to a December 2010 poll by ABC News, BBC, ARD, and the 

Washington Post. When asked who posed the biggest danger in the country, 64 percent of respondents said the Taliban, up from 41 percent in 2005.5

But there are good reasons to be skeptical of a political settlement, at least in 

the short-term. First, insurgencies often end with a military victory by one side, 

rather than a peace settlement. According to one study, military victory was the primary reason why civil wars and insurgencies ended between the 1940s and 1990s, 

though peace settlements became more common in the 1990s and 2000s.6 According 

to another study, of the roughly 55 wars fought for control of a central government 

(as opposed to secession or regional autonomy) since 1955, 75 percent ended with 

a clear victory for one side. The government crushed the rebels in at least 40 

percent of the cases, while the rebels won control of the center in 35 percent. Powersharing agreements that divide up control of a central government among the 

combatants have been far less common.7 This has been particularly true in 

Afghanistan—including during the 1990s—where peace efforts brokered by the 

United Nations failed in Afghanistan. 

Second, a fairly robust body of research has found that several conditions present 

in Afghanistan make it difficult to establish a peace settlement. These conditions 

include a long history of conflict, the absence of a perceived winner, and geographic 

contiguity.8 In addition, the ideological vision of Taliban leaders, which is based on 

an extreme interpretation of Deobandi Islam, is likely incompatible with that of the 

Karzai government and most Afghans. It’s not difficult to see why the Taliban is 

unpopular. The group subscribes to a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam established in Deoband, India, in 1867. In the 1990s, the Taliban closed cinemas and 

banned music, along with almost every other conceivable kind of entertainment. 

Most Afghans don’t subscribe to their religious zealotry, which the founders of 

Deobandism wouldn’t even recognize. 

Third, a peace settlement with the Taliban runs the risk of escalating conflict 

with Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and anti-Taliban Pashtuns in Afghanistan. Many current and former leaders, including former head of the National Directorate of Security Amrullah Saleh, have expressed alarm about a peace settlement. Such a settlement could trigger a military buildup among northern commanders, such as Atta 

Mohammad Nur, Abdul Rashid Dostum, and Mohammad Fahim, causing the war’s 

center of gravity to shift north. Indeed, reports indicate that northern commanders 

are already discussing a military buildup if there is a settlement with the Taliban. 

In the end, however, the benefits of continuing peace negotiations outweigh the 

costs—even if negotiations fail. The U.S. demonstrated during the cold war that direct dialogue with the Soviet Union could be helpful in passing information (including threats) and correcting misinformation. It may also cause fissures within insurgent ranks between those who support—and those who oppose—settlement talks. 

Negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups should be supported, even 

if the probability of a settlement is low. 

IV. ADDITIONAL FACTORS

At least three additional factors are critical over the long run, regardless of which 

strategy is pursued. The first is sustainability. The key is analyzing what needs to 

occur to make key economic sectors sustainable—or somewhat sustainable—without 

massive foreign resources. Some economists are concerned about the potential for 

a recession in Afghanistan when the international funding flow from the InterVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
17 

national Security Assistance Force (ISAF) decreases. This would not be a result of 

declining development aid, but rather a decrease of services from ISAF activity. 

How can security costs be sustainable—or at least partly sustainable—by the Afghan Government? How can the United States help the Afghan government grow 

its revenue and productive sectors to help pay for services, investment, and security? There are several options that should be more effectively implemented. Examples include long-term development of a mining sector that offers substantial benefits from Afghanistan’s virtually untapped deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and 

critical industrial metals like lithium. In the shorter term, there should be an emphasis on artisanal projects and a shift from illegal artisanal mining to legal smallscale mining operations. 

The second is good governance. To maintain and build legitimacy, the central government and local institutions need to more adequately provide justice and service 

delivery to the population, including countering high levels of corruption. How much 

is sufficient? In addition, how much legitimacy, order, and justice should come from 

the central government as opposed to informal government in rural areas? A key 

part of governance will be relaxing Western notions that stability must come only 

from the top down. Power has generally come from the bottom up in Afghanistan, 

especially in Pashtun areas of the country, the focus of today’s insurgency. It is 

striking that when considering Afghanistan’s recent history, U.S. policymakers often 

turn to the failed military exploits of the British or Soviet Union. A stronger focus 

needs to be placed on understanding what factors have contributed to Afghanistan’s 

stable periods. The Musahiban dynasty, which ruled Afghanistan from 1929 to 1978, 

was one of the most stable periods in modern Afghan history, partly because the 

Musahibans understood the importance of local power. While they established a 

strong army and competent government technocrats, they also allowed a number of 

rural areas to police their own villages and establish rule of law through local 

shuras (councils). This model has a range of lessons for today. 

The third factor is Pakistan. The failure to eliminate the insurgent sanctuary in 

Pakistan will cripple long-term efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. Every successful insurgency in Afghanistan since 1979 has enjoyed a sanctuary in Pakistan and assistance from individuals within the Pakistan Government, including the Inter-Services 

Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Today, the Taliban and other insurgent groups enjoy 

a sanctuary in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan province. 

Insurgent groups regularly ship arms, ammunition, and supplies into Afghanistan 

from Pakistan. Many suicide bombers come from Afghan refugee camps located in 

Pakistan, and improvised explosive device components are often smuggled across 

the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and assembled at safe houses in such provinces as 

Kandahar. The leadership structure of most insurgent groups (such as Taliban, 

Hezb-i-Islami, and the Haqqani Network) is based in Pakistan. Finally, elements 

within the Pakistan Government, including the ISI, continue to provide support to 

such groups as the Taliban and Haqqani Network. 

Pakistan and the United States have failed to target the insurgent sanctuary in 

Pakistan, especially in Baluchistan province. Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps 

forces have conducted operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas to the north, and the 

United States has conducted numerous drone strikes there. But relatively little has 

been done in Baluchistan. The United States and Pakistan must target Taliban 

leaders in Baluchistan. The most obvious way is to conduct clandestine raids to capture Taliban leaders in Baluchistan; large-scale military force would be unnecessary 

and counterproductive. Most Taliban are in or near cities like Quetta and Karachi. 

These operations should be led by police and intelligence agencies, much like Pakistani-American efforts to capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other al-Qaeda 

operatives after September 11. In response, the United States could support Pakistan efforts to stabilize Baluchistan and defeat Baluch insurgents, a long-term goal 

of the Pakistan Government. 

What was mentioned at the beginning of this testimony bears repeating. Despite 

a range of difficult issues, there are several ways that the United States can achieve 

its objectives in Afghanistan. The first is if al-Qaeda is destroyed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and no longer poses a serious threat to the U.S. homeland. The 

second is if the Taliban breaks ties with al-Qaeda and other groups that threaten 

the U.S. homeland. The third is if Afghan National Security Forces and local allies 

(such as Afghan Local Police) can sufficiently degrade the insurgency and prevent 

the return of the Taliban with minimal foreign assistance. At the moment, the 

United States should pursue all three means simultaneously—targeting al-Qaeda, 

negotiations with the Taliban, and Afghan-led counterinsurgency—until one of 

them, alone or in combination with the others, achieves adequate results. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very helpful. Thank you very much. 

18 

Dr. Biddle. 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN BIDDLE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR 

DEFENSE POLICY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. BIDDLE. I’d, also, like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you on this important issue. 

I’ve long thought that Afghanistan is a close call on the analytical merits. If you’re going to make the call in favor of waging the 

war, though, it seems to me, in order to realize the potential of 

securing the interests that we have at stake, I think we need to 

resolve some important ambiguities in the goals that we seek and 

the end states that we’re after. 

In 2001, we sought very ambitious end states, but committed 

very little resources. And the result was unhappy. In 2011, our resources are much increased, but the end state that we’re seeking 

is still very ambiguous. It’s unclear what success would look like. 

And that lack of clarity makes it hard to make good near-term 

decisions across the range of policy issues that face us. 

My statement is an effort to reduce that ambiguity and try to describe in more detail what end state we actually require and what 

that implies for the definition of a reasonable success. The bottom 

line that that statement reaches is that our interests in Afghanistan are real, but narrow, and they focus on keeping Afghanistan 

from threatening the stability of an already unstable Pakistani 

neighbor. We tend to hear a lot about the ways in which Pakistani 

safe havens can destabilize Afghanistan. And they do. But, the bigger problem is the long run danger that if we should fail in Afghanistan, the result could be to tip an unstable Pakistan into collapse, 

with grave implications for United States security. 

This limited conception of our interests, however, implies a variety of different end states that could suffice to meet them. My 

statement goes into more detail than I’ll attempt now. For now, I’ll 

just note that at least two such less ambitious alternative conceptions of an acceptable end state might be: one, a decentralized 

version of today’s very centralized, but democratic, 2001 model 

Afghan Government; alternatively, what, for lack of a better term, 

I’ll call an ‘‘internal mixed-sovereignty system’’ involving a series of 

bargains between Kabul and the periphery, in which local power 

brokers are granted a sphere of autonomy in exchange for the observance of several key redline restrictions on their behavior that 

are designed to cap the worst abuses of today’s corruption while 

permitting lesser forms, and to limit the use of Afghanistan’s territory as bases for terrorism or subversion. 

These limited goals and less ambitious end states, I believe, 

make success possible in the Clausewitzian sense of realizing the 

political aims for which we’re waging the war. They do not, however, permit a radical reduction to very limited means. Even modest aims in Afghanistan are going to be very hard to attain. If we 

couple a realistically limited ambition with unrealistically limited 

means and resources, we run the risk of duplicating the 2001 mismatch between ends and means that got us into the fix that we’ve 

faced in recent years. 

19 

And, in particular, I’m very skeptical that a small-footprint 

counterterrorist strategy can secure our real interests, whether in 

Afghanistan or in Pakistan, for reasons that my statement treats 

in some detail, and which I would be happy to discuss in response 

to your questions. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Biddle follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN BIDDLE

The Afghanistan debate often focuses, understandably, on near-term concerns. 

Sound policies in the near term, however, require a longer term vision to guide 

them. And for now, several key components of a long-term vision for Afghanistan 

are absent or underdeveloped. What would success look like? What does the United 

States require to secure our central interests there? What relationship do we want 

with Afghanistan or its region after 2014, and what role will that require us to play 

then—or now? 

I argue below that core American interests in Afghanistan are real but narrow, 

and center on the security requirements of denying Afghan territory to terrorists as 

a base for attacking us or destabilizing Afghanistan’s neighbors. These limited interests can be realized via a range of possible Afghan end states—we need not hold 

out for the highly ambitious political and economic development aims that the 

United States adopted in 2001. While desirable, these are not strictly necessary to 

meet our core requirements. But we cannot settle for just anything. There are limits 

on the acceptable that exclude outcomes such as partition or anarchy, and this limits the viability of approaches such as a counterterrorism (CT) strategy that would 

leave us unable to prevent a collapse of the current government. And it is hard to 

see any feasible, acceptable, Afghan political outcome that could function without 

sustained American and other international engagement. In the longer term, that 

engagement need not be primarily military (though some U.S. military presence 

ought not to be excluded as a possible means to the end of Afghan stability). But 

financial and technical assistance is likely to be needed on a sustained basis if 

Afghanistan is not again to suffer the fate that befell it the last time the West disengaged. To realize U.S. interests will require a long-term relationship with Afghanistan that accepts the need for continued assistance, albeit at levels far below today’s, in the service not just of a better life for Afghans, but of a safer future for 

Americans. 

This longer term vision implies a number of near-term requirements. Among the 

more important of these is a clear strategy for governance reform; meaningful, 

measurable progress before 2014 in restraining government predation; and a negotiated agreement with the GIRoA that provides concrete reassurance that our allies 

will not be abandoned to their fate even as the United States draws down. 

To develop this argument I first identify and prioritize America’s underlying interests in Afghanistan. I then discuss what these imply for acceptable end states there, 

and what this in turn implies for the required American role to sustain a stable 

Afghanistan that can meet our interests in the longer term. I then turn to some consequences of this long-term analysis for several near-term policy issues—especially 

the utility of permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan as a part of a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the GIRoA, the attractiveness of substituting a counterterrorism (CT) strategy for today’s counterinsurgency (COIN) approach in light of bin 

Laden’s death, the attractiveness of negotiated settlement as a means of achieving 

an acceptable end state, and the appropriate sequencing and prioritization of security improvement and governance reform. 

U.S. INTERESTS IN AFGHANISTAN AND SOUTH ASIA

Of course the United States has many interests at stake in Afghanistan and its 

region. From the emerging great power of India to the east, to the destabilizing influence of Iran to the west, south Asia and its environs pose a range of economic, 

humanitarian, and security concerns for the United States. For Afghanistan itself, 

a variety of American aspirations for human rights, democracy, and economic development are at stake. 

But these are not of equal importance. In fact, the central U.S. interest in the 

region is its nearly unique potential for terrorist violence against Americans. This 

threat emanates chiefly from Pakistan. Its combination of a deepening internal insurgency, a growing nuclear arsenal, a diverse range of Islamist militant groups including the global headquarters of al-Qaeda, a weak and divided government, deep 

20 

1 Imtiaz Gul, ‘‘The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier’’ (New York: Viking, 

2010). 2See, e.g., Bill Roggio, ‘‘Pakistani Taliban Enlist 6 Local Groups in Wana Region of South 

Waziristan,’’ The Long War Journal, November 8, 2010, accessed May 9, 2011. http:// 

www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/11/pakistaniltalibanlen.php; Shuja Nawaz, ‘‘The Perfect Storm in Af-Pak,’’ The National Interest, May 9, 2011, accessed May 9, 2011. http:// 

nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-perfect-storm-af-pak-5277?page=1; remarks of Daniel Benjamin, U.S. Department of State, at http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rm/2011/161895.htm. 3 Albeit one that at least some Pakistanis are willing to tolerate for now as a hedge against 

the prospect of U.S. failure in Afghanistan (more on which below). 

sources of internal instability deriving from a growing population, a stagnant economy, and great asymmetries between wealth and poverty together give Pakistan a 

well deserved reputation as ‘‘the most dangerous place in the world,’’ as Imtiaz Gul 

put it.1 By many measures Pakistan’s ongoing civil war is not going well for the 

government. If Pakistan eventually loses this war, the state collapses, the security 

services splinter, and the nuclear arsenal breaches containment, this would provide 

one of the few plausible scenarios in which al-Qaeda or its allies could obtain a usable nuclear weapon. Terrorists may gain bases in many ill-governed spaces around 

the world, including Afghanistan. But only in Pakistan do they pose a serious threat 

of overturning a nuclear weapon state and gaining access to its arsenal. This is a 

unique challenge of special magnitude. 

In this context, Afghanistan is important to the United States chiefly in terms of 

its potential effect on its unstable neighbor across the Durand Line. Pakistan is not 

only a country of unusual peril for the United States, it is also one where we have 

unusually limited direct leverage to reduce the danger. U.S. aid to Pakistan can 

help at the margin, but it is unlikely to be decisive in defeating Pakistan’s insurgency. Our ability to go beyond financial aid to training or military assistance is 

limited by our extreme unpopularity among Pakistanis. We cannot realistically expect to remove the threat by drone attacks on militants, which can eliminate key 

leaders and suppress terrorist activity if well designed, but are unlikely to defeat 

whole organizations of hardened militants and guerillas in the absence of a far more 

effective ground war than the Pakistanis have yet been able to mount. With our 

ability to make a bad situation much better so limited, it is especially important 

to avoid making it any worse than it needs to be. 

And failure in Afghanistan could make the prognosis in Pakistan much worse. All 

states worry about instability on their borders. For a state as internally threatened 

as Pakistan, this danger is far greater than most. The Taliban are a transnational 

Pashtun movement that is active on either side of the Durand Line and sympathetic 

to other Pakistani Islamist insurgents. By many accounts, their links to anti-Pakistani militants are growing as these groups expand and seek allies to extend their 

reach and power.2 The Afghan Taliban presence within Pakistan is thus already an 

important threat to the regime in Islamabad.3 But if Afghanistan descended into 

chaos, the spillover effects would be far worse. A combination of refugee flows, safe 

haven in an anarchic Afghanistan beyond Pakistani state control, and the calling 

in of IOUs by anti-Pakistani militants who had assisted the Afghan Taliban in part 

to secure the latter’s support against Islamabad could eventually be enough to tip 

an already unstable Pakistan into collapse. Much has been made of the threat Pakistani base camps pose to Afghan Government stability, but this danger works both 

ways: instability in Afghanistan poses a serious threat to the civil government in 

Pakistan, and the latter is a greater threat to U.S. interests than the former. 

These security interests are real but they are not unlimited. Afghanistan’s potential effect on its neighbor is genuine, but indirect. Nor does failure in Afghanistan 

predetermine failure in Pakistan: if Pakistan puts its own house in order and marshals the full resources of the state behind its own counterinsurgency effort then 

it could survive in spite of chaos on its border. A series of uncertain events would 

have to break in unfavorable ways for an Afghan failure to yield a nuclear-armed 

terror threat from south Asian militants. The consequences for our own security if 

this chain of events did unfold would be radically grave, but the likelihood of this 

should not be overestimated. Americans have invested major resources to combat 

unlikely but grave threats in the past (the cold war nuclear arms race had much 

the same quality), but that does not mean we should always do so, or that it necessarily makes sense to do so here. Reasonable people can thus differ on whether 

our interests in Afghanistan warrant American warmaking to secure, or whether 

they merit the scale of effort we are now expending. 

But of the various interests we have at stake in south Asia, its unique terrorist 

potential is the only one that might merit conducting or continuing a war. And if 

one judges that the war is worth waging, then it makes sense to prioritize an 

21 

4For a more detailed discussion, see Stephen Biddle, Fotini Christia, and J Alexander Thier, 

‘‘Defining Success in Afghanistan: What Can the United States Accept?’’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 

89, No. 4 (July–August 2010), pp. 48–60. 

acceptable outcome to that war above other economic or political interests in the 

region. 

DEFINING ‘‘SUCCESS’’ IN AFGHANISTAN: END STATES THAT CAN MEET

OUR CORE INTERESTS

Clausewitz taught that war is a means to political ends, which implies that the 

standard for measuring success in war should be whether the outcome secures the 

political interests at stake. If our interest in the conflict is partly that Afghanistan 

not again become a base for terrorists to attack us directly, but largely that Afghanistan not become a base for destabilizing Pakistan, then the right definition for success in the war is that it yields an Afghanistan which averts this. Of course there 

is a much wider set of ambitions America would seek for Afghanistan, as it would 

for any country. Americans would like Afghanistan to be ruled in accordance with 

the will of the governed, for its people to be prosperous, and for minority and women’s rights to be respected. But the vital national security interests for which the 

waging of war might normally be justified are narrower, and focus on denying 

Afghanistan as a base for transnational terrorism and subversion. 

Our original aims in Afghanistan were much more ambitious. The 2001 Bonn 

Agreement committed the United States to pursue a remarkably centralized democratic state with almost all meaningful governmental functions held by the national 

government in Kabul. This design would have minimized the danger of warlordism, 

enabled centralized protection of human rights even in Afghanistan’s conservative 

south, and empowered a modernizing center with the authority to develop the country through rational investment in national economic infrastructure. If this agenda 

could be realized it would be an ideal outcome. But 10 years into a costly and destructive war, its very ambition has put it effectively beyond our reach. 

This scale of ambition, moreover, is unnecessary to secure our core interests. A 

variety of less centralized, and possibly less democratic, alternative end states could 

still provide the critical requirement of an Afghanistan that does not threaten us 

or its neighbors. Two such alternatives are decentralized democracy, and internal 

mixed sovereignty.4

Decentralized Democracy 

Decentralized democracy would delegate a variety of authorities now held in 

Kabul to the periphery. This would surely include the power to make and execute 

budgets, to utilize traditional alternatives to centralized justice systems for some offenses, to elect or approve key officials who are now appointed by Kabul, and could 

presumably extend to local revenue collection or regulatory authority. 

Greater local autonomy would promote buy-in from populations who distrust distant Kabul, and would exploit a preexisting base of legitimacy and identity that’s 

stronger at the local than the national level. Foreign policy and internal security, 

however, would remain with the central government, which would prevent more autonomous localities from using their territories to support international terrorism or 

insurrection against the State. 

Accountability would be obtained chiefly via transparency, and electoral or legal 

sanction: as with centralized democracy, the will of the governed would be the ultima ratio, and governance would be designed to promote the people’s ability to detect misbehavior and punish it by voting out miscreants in free and fair elections. 

To the extent that provincial and district governorships acquire significant additional powers, these offices would need to be elected, or subject to tight oversight 

by elected councils empowered to enact meaningful sanctions. And watchdog provisions would be needed to ensure that these elected bodies have the information they 

need to enforce the public will. Other matters, such as civil disputes and minor 

criminal cases, could continue to be handled by the traditional justice system if local 

communities prefer. 

This option should be acceptable to the United States. Its core reliance on democracy and transparency is consistent with basic American values and ambitions in 

the international system. Localities with freedom to reflect local preferences may 

adopt social policies that many Americans would see as regressive, but the opposite 

could also occur, with some places implementing more moderate norms than those 

favored by a national majority. By promoting local acceptance of the Government 

of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) by Afghans, this option removes 

much of the casus belli for insurgency. And it preserves a central state with the 

power and incentive to deny the use of Afghan soil for attacking the United States 

22 

or destabilizing Pakistan, thus securing the critical minimum U.S. security stakes 

in the conflict. 

On balance, decentralized democracy should offer a significant improvement in 

the odds of success—because it exploits the greater natural legitimacy of local authority in Afghanistan and the greater availability of existing resources at the local 

level. Overall, though it offers no easy guarantee of success, decentralized democracy promises a real prospect of an acceptable outcome if the international community is willing to pay the price in the form of sustained counterinsurgency, major 

assistance in Afghan governance, and a vigorous anticorruption campaign. 

Internal Mixed Sovereignty 

An internal mixed sovereignty model would decentralize even further by allowing 

localities to adopt any system of government as long as they respect a handful of 

constraints imposed by the center. Like decentralized democracy, it would delegate 

many powers now held in Kabul to the provincial or district level. It differs in granting local authorities the additional power to rule themselves without transparency 

or electoral sanction as long as three key ‘‘redlines’’ are not crossed by the local 

government. 

The first such redline would forbid local authorities from allowing their territories 

to be used in ways that violate the foreign policy of the state—and especially, it 

would ban terrorist or insurgent base camps that could threaten Pakistan, the 

United States, or its other allies. The second would bar local authorities from 

infringing on the rights of neighboring localities (such as seizing assets across provincial or district boundaries, or diverting water resources upstream in violation of 

covenants). The third would discourage localities from generating massive illicit revenues through land grabs, large-scale theft of international customs, widespread 

narcotics trafficking, or exploitation of state-owned natural resources without 

license. Beyond these limited restrictions, local authorities would be free to run 

their localities as they see fit, whether this reflected the expressed will of the governed or not, and to engage in lower level corruption without federal sanction. Central authorities in Kabul would thus retain absolute control over foreign policy and 

the ability to make war, limited authority over interprovincial commerce, and the 

ability to prohibit land grabs and enforce narcotics, customs, and mining laws, but 

almost all other powers and authorities would be ceded to the local government, including the power to rule without interference from the center on any matter other 

than the observance of explicit redlines. 

This freedom to select the manner of government without interference as long as 

redlines are not crossed would potentially enable local strongmen to run provinces 

and profit from corruption. The absolute requirement that certain behaviors are off 

limits, however, restricts true sovereignty by ceding to the center some sacrosanct 

powers—especially, the control of foreign policy and the ability to make war internationally. Hence sovereignty is mixed in this variant to a much greater degree 

than in the other options explored above: many, but not all, of the ordinary powers 

of sovereign governance would be delegated to the provincial or district level. 

This option would signal a much more serious break with the overall direction of 

the Afghan state as conceived in 2001. In many ways, it would be an acknowledgement of de facto arrangements since 2001 and acceptance of a delimited form of 

strong-man rule in various regions of the country. Many of the governors and other 

local officials appointed by Karzai have ruled not by virtue of legal authorities bestowed upon them by Kabul, but rather through their own local security and economic power bases operating outside the law but with the tacit acceptance of Kabul. 

In areas such as Balkh and Nangarhar, this has resulted in relative security and 

drastic reduction of poppy cultivation. ‘‘Warlord governance’’ in such places has 

found a relatively stable equilibrium in which provincial authorities profit from 

rent-seeking behavior but keep their predation within limits so as to avert a mutually costly crackdown from Kabul. 

In other areas, however, strongman rule has undermined stability. In Helmand 

for example, several years of bad governance that excluded and alienated significant 

population groups fueled insurgency. Even in the north, tensions have been stoked 

due to ethnically targeted violence and criminal impunity that marked strongman 

rule there. To be stable, mixed sovereignty thus cannot amount to partition by another name under local strongmen who can do whatever they wish in private 

fiefdoms—redline restrictions that preclude the excesses that fuel insurgency are 

essential. 

The attractions of this option are obvious: it is less demanding of rapid institution-building, and offers a closer fit to Afghanistan’s current environment. 

However, this option carries risks that make it less consistent with U.S. interests 

than the previous two. First, governors would have considerable freedom to adopt 

23 

regressive social policy and abuse human rights. The degree of corruption would 

also be high—indeed, the opportunity for corruption is an essential part of the system’s attraction for the prospective governors. Again, this is a limited departure 

from current practice, but would require acknowledging that only moderate change 

is coming—which in turn may deepen public grievances or promote renewed insurgency in the future if corruption is allowed to exceed public tolerance. There would 

also be a constant threat of instability as powerful governors periodically test the 

waters to see what they can get away with. The central government would thus presumably be called upon for periodic enforcement actions that could require violence 

if the system is to be kept within its limits of adaptation and tolerance. 

This model could nevertheless be viable and meet minimum U.S. security interests, however, if the three key redlines can be enforced. The model offers two key 

means of enforcement, one being a stick, the other a carrot. The stick is the threat 

of military punitive action by Kabul to sanction governors in violation, or to destroy 

base camps when discovered (or both). The carrot is Kabul’s control over foreign aid, 

and ability to direct it to some provinces but not others, as well as the profit potential from local autonomy if the rules are respected. The United States would retain 

influence through its control of foreign aid and its deep engagement with the 

Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF); this influence can be used as leverage to 

keep local authorities’ behavior within acceptable bounds. 

Afghanistan itself was ruled under a similar model for much of the 20th century: 

the Musahiban Dynasty lasted for five decades as a nominally absolute monarchy 

with an ostensibly uniform national code but in which the periphery held a certain 

degree of autonomy with a modest state bureaucracy and a centrally controlled 

army and police force serving mainly to enforce a few key royal prerogatives. The 

rule of law was generally locally administered and some Pashtun tribes in the south 

and east were exempted from military service. Tax revenues were primarily levied 

from foreign trade, foreign aid (starting in the late 1950s), and sales of natural gas 

to the Soviet Union (starting in the late 1960s) rather than from rural agriculture 

and livestock. Kabul sought to leverage its international links for resources rather 

than extracting them from local power centers. But when local leaders were out of 

line, the center would forcibly intervene to police them. Over time, as government 

capacity and resources increased, the state was gradually able to extend its writ. 

The mixed sovereignty model, however, faces implementation challenges all the 

same—especially the need to rein in the worst excesses of today’s malign power brokers, and the need to constrain illicit economic activity. Without regulation, unrestrained abuse of power on today’s scale is a major contributor to the insurgency. 

If mixed sovereignty is merely a gloss for more of the same, it will fail. The model 

requires a bargain in which power brokers refrain from destabilizing, grand-mal 

abuses in exchange for a share of foreign assistance and local revenues, and freedom 

from federal enforcement and sanction. Today’s strongmen, by contrast, enjoy nearly 

complete freedom to exploit with little risk of sanction; even a mixed sovereignty 

model will thus require coercive effort to compel acceptance of its half-a-loaf relative 

to today’s entire bakery for the corrupt. And for aid incentives to be meaningful, 

they must comprise a meaningful fraction of total economic activity. Today, the narcotics trade, for example, is so large as to threaten the power of outside aid as an 

incentive for compliance. It will require important effort to shrink narcotics trafficking, illicit natural resource exploitation, and other theft of public resources to a 

manageable scale. 

Other significant drawbacks are its potential for instability and its consignment 

of many Afghans to nondemocratic rule. It would backtrack on nearly 10 years of 

U.S. promises for democracy, rule of law, and basic rights for women and minorities, 

with costs for U.S. prestige in addition to its effects on innocent Afghans. And it 

would require constant attention to sustain. Properly managed, the internal power 

balancing mechanisms of this approach keep it within bounds. But this is a dynamic 

process requiring continuous, potentially costly management; without this, it could 

slip into unconstrained warlordism and civil warfare. A workable mixed sovereignty 

model is thus not a recipe for Western disengagement: not only will it require a continued aid flow, but a sustained political and military engagement will be needed 

to help maintain internal equilibrium and to promote social justice where possible. 

This need for external engagement highlights the importance of regional diplomacy. International consensus-building on Afghanistan is critical for stability under 

any approach. But the dynamic quality of internal mixed sovereignty and the 

particular weakness of its central government make it a potential magnet for foreign interference and a source of regional instability if Afghanistan’s security is not 

embedded in a workable regional security framework with real buy-in from its 

neighbors. 

24 

5 Avoidance of moral hazard requires a balance between a credible promise to support one’s 

ally if they do what is necessary themselves and a credible threat to sanction them if they do 

not. At the moment, the chief problem in Afghanistan is the lack of a credible promise, as can 

be observed in the scale of hedging behavior ongoing in the region. But success will require 

credibility in both directions: reassurance alone, without conditionality and a believable threat 

of sanction in the absence of reform, is insufficient. It is worth noting that the threat of withdrawal is not the only, or the best, form of sanction—in fact, any of the manifold forms of U.S. 

aid and assistance can be a source of leverage if made conditional on specific Afghan reforms. 6 ‘‘Corruption Perceptions Index 2010’’ (Berlin, Germany: Transparency International, 2010). 

7Plus, of course, the scale of foreign assistance and ill-managed contract money flowing into 

the country after 2001 and especially after NATO began reinforcing its military presence after 

2005, which provided a rich target array on which corrupt power brokers could prey, with little 

real oversight to constrain the predation. 

Unacceptable Others 

Many other outcomes are possible—but fail to meet core U.S. security requirements. Partition, whether de facto or de jure, would involve the country’s breakup 

into ethnic substates. The likeliest such split would divide the Pashtun south from 

the largely Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara north and west. A poorly designed reconciliation deal with inadequate safeguards on Taliban authority in the south could closely approximate a form of de facto partition along these lines. Any such partition 

could easily yield safe havens for cross-border terrorism and insurgency, as seen 

elsewhere in such cases as Iraqi Kurdistan’s use by the PKK to attack Turkey, or 

the use of Congolese border havens to attack neighboring Rwanda. Regional proxy 

battles, and internal competition for control of Kabul and key border areas add further incentives for instability to any partition scheme. 

Alternatively, Afghanistan could return to the atomized civil warfare of the 1990s. 

An anarchic Afghanistan would resemble the conditions that led to the Taliban 

takeover and basing of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, or present-day Somalia, where lawlessness has promoted al-Shabaab, a violent, al-Qaeda supported 

Islamist movement. 

In principle, Afghanistan could become a centralized dictatorship, whether by the 

Taliban or someone else. But any real consolidation of power in the hands of a single strongman is a highly unlikely scenario in post-2001 Afghanistan where political, military, and economic power is dispersed among numerous power brokers 

backed by competing regional interests. In this environment, any prospective dictator, whether pro- or anti-U.S., would have great difficulty preventing a subsequent 

descent into civil war. A coup d’etat or other antidemocratic power grab is entirely 

possible, but is very unlikely to yield stability in its wake. 

THE U.S. ROLE IN A STABLE, ACCEPTABLE AFGHANISTAN

What do these end states imply for the role the United States would have to play 

in order to obtain them and sustain them over time? Today, the U.S. role in Afghanistan is ubiquitous and central. If U.S. troops, money, and advisers were withdrawn 

the Karzai government would be unlikely to survive for long. Moreover, this view 

is widely held among Afghans, Pakistanis, and the Taliban—it is not just an American academic perception. Unfortunately, many in the region now believe that this 

U.S. role, though necessary, is unlikely to be sustained until a stable outcome is obtained, and that this will lead to an eventual collapse of the government and either 

a Taliban takeover or an extended civil war. Some have argued that this perception 

encourages the enemy to hunker down and wait us out. A bigger problem, however, 

is its effect on our allies: it encourages them to hedge their bets in ways that make 

success less likely.5

For Afghans, a critical example of this hedging is corruption and government predation. Corruption is common in the developing world, but not on Afghanistan’s 

scale: Somalia is the only country on the planet that exceeds Afghanistan on Transparency International’s corruption index.6 This is not some deep product of ancient 

cultural norms or tribal social structure—the scale of this problem is the result of 

a recent, calculated response to the expectation that the government will soon fall.7

Since the United States handed the war over to NATO in 2003, many Afghan officials and local power brokers came to the conclusion that they would be abandoned 

and that the government would then fall. This impression was reinforced by the 

President’s announcement of a July 2011 date for the beginning of U.S. troop withdrawals, but the underlying perception was already widespread by the time the 

2011 date was unveiled. This judgment that the government would fall and the system would collapse provides a powerful incentive for predation. On the one hand, 

it makes patient, long-term investment in an honest, democratic future very risky: 

the system could easily collapse before such patience bears fruit, leaving the honest 

25 

with nothing. At the same time it encourages the powerful to steal now while they 

still can: if the gravy train will end in 3 years, that leaves only a short time in 

which to amass enough wealth to build a comfortable exile abroad for the aftermath. 

These dilemmas make it very difficult to combat corruption and predation as long 

as Afghans expect abandonment and collapse. And no stable, acceptable Afghan end 

state is possible with today’s scale of corruption: even internal mixed sovereignty 

requires an enforceable cap on the take. Without the ability to contain predation, 

success is impossible; bet hedging by Afghans makes predation extremely hard to 

contain. 

For the Pakistanis, such hedging includes tacit support for the Afghan Taliban, 

whom the Pakistanis rely upon to ensure a friendly government in Kabul if the 

United States leaves too soon. An Indian-aligned Afghan Government would be a 

disaster in most Pakistanis’ eyes; U.S. success might build a pluralist GIRoA that 

could prevent the country from becoming an Indian pawn, but U.S. failure would 

leave Pakistan badly exposed, and to many Pakistanis the latter looks more likely 

than the former. Hence they protect the Haqqanis, the Quetta Shura, and others. 

Most counterinsurgency theorists see outside havens as a major advantage for insurgents; as long as the Pakistanis protect the Afghan Taliban as a hedge it will 

be very difficult to end the violence. 

We can try to reduce this hedging with pressure, oversight, or persuasion, and 

indeed we have tried all three for years now (albeit with varying seriousness). But 

as long as the underlying perception in the region remains the expectation of abandonment, there will be a strong rational incentive for self-interested actors to hedge 

via Afghan predation and Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban. And this will 

make it very hard for the United States to change these behaviors. 

This leaves us with a dilemma. We cannot sustain today’s role forever. But the 

more emphasis we put on drawing down our presence, the more we fuel the perception that we’ll leave too soon, the more bet-hedging we can expect as a result, and 

the lower the odds of success. 

The administration has eased this dilemma somewhat by shifting its emphasis 

from the 2011 drawdown onset to the 2014 target for transition to Afghan lead security responsibility. This helps clarify that the United States is not in the midst of 

a precipitate rush to the exit, which eases the pressure on South Asians to hedge. 

A Strategic Partnership Agreement that codifies a longer term U.S. relationship 

with and role in Afghanistan can also help a great deal (more on this below). 

Also necessary, however, is greater clarity on our long-term objectives and the end 

states we can accept. Today’s ambiguity promotes confusion in the region, undermines the credibility of the commitments we are willing to make, and encourages 

pessimists to believe that our goals are misaligned with our willingness to pay and 

that we will eventually give up. Only if we can identify an end state whose resource 

requirements are bearable can we possibly commit ourselves credibly to provide the 

resources needed. And if we cannot make a credible commitment, we will promote 

hedging strategies that make any acceptable outcome nearly impossible. 

What U.S. role would the end states described above require? Our original goal 

of a radically centralized democracy was so ambitious that it would now require an 

impractical U.S. investment—this is effectively beyond reach. 

Decentralized democracy is less demanding, but would still require major exertions in population security and governance reform. It is difficult to be specific without a troop-to-task analysis that would be beyond my scope here. But it seems reasonable to expect that the U.S. resource requirements would be substantial, and 

would require a major U.S. troop presence for years to come. 

Internal mixed sovereignty is less attractive but also less demanding, at least by 

degree. By accepting but regulating the existing practice of strongman rule in many 

parts of the country, this model would reduce the scale of governance transformation required and would be closer to historical experience. And strongly enforcing a restricted set of redlines against warlords and other power brokers would give 

them incentives to moderate the destructive excesses that today drive many 

Afghans toward the Taliban. A mixed sovereignty model would be less dependent 

on administrative transparency and efficiency, and hence less demanding of international mentoring, oversight, monitoring, and technical assistance. Even internal 

mixed sovereignty, however, would require hard fighting to secure. And it cannot 

succeed without a major effort to rein in the scale of today’s predatory 

misgovernance and cap its virulence. 

Internal mixed sovereignty would thus probably be less costly to obtain than decentralized democracy. But it could require a greater U.S. investment to sustain 

than a decentralized democracy would. 

It is hard to see any stable Afghan outcome without some kind of sustained U.S. 

role. Afghanistan was at peace for most of the 20th century, but it was a major reVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
26 

8From 1960–69, Afghanistan received, on average, the equivalent of $247 million/year in 

international aid, in 2011 dollars; from 1970–79 it received an average of $269 million/year: 

OECD (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids/), assuming inflation figures taken from the U.S. Bureau of 

Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflationlcalculator.htm. By 1973, foreign grants and 

loans provided two-thirds of annual Afghan Government revenue: Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: ‘‘A Political and Cultural History’’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 205. 

cipient of international economic aid throughout that period, and given its limited 

revenue base for the foreseeable future it will surely require some degree of continued aid to be viable in the 21st.8 A decentralized democracy would need continuing 

technical and financial assistance in governance and development, but the natural 

checks and balances it would feature would build in an important measure of stability. Such a system would be designed to enable local shuras or councils to oversee 

public expenditure, and popular dissatisfaction with the Taliban even in the 

Pashtun south could be expected to restrain local officials from the ideological extremes of the previous Taliban regime, or from empowering militants to engage in 

international terrorism. This would give Afghans with a natural incentive to oppose 

militancy the political power to constrain it. 

Internal mixed sovereignty, by contrast, has weaker natural balancing mechanisms. In fact it should be assumed that Afghan power brokers will regularly test 

the limits of the bargains they have reached with Kabul, especially in the system’s 

early years. Vigorous enforcement would thus be necessary to prevent predation 

from returning to today’s intolerable levels. The sticks and carrots described above 

could, in principle, be sufficient to persuade profit-motivated strongmen to stay 

within their limits as long as violation does, in fact, yield sanctions painful enough 

to be bad for business, as it were. But this is a dynamic process requiring continuous, potentially costly management; without this, it could slip into unconstrained 

warlordism and civil warfare. And this management will require U.S. assistance for 

the foreseeable future—partly to provide (or catalyze) the aid flows needed as carrots, partly to provide the training and technical assistance needed for the ANSF 

to suffice as a stick, partly to help monitor compliance in the periphery, and partly 

to encourage Kabul to use both the carrots and the sticks energetically. A workable 

mixed sovereignty model is thus not a recipe for Western disengagement. It might 

enable a somewhat quicker U.S. military drawdown in the near term than other 

options, but it could demand a greater and more complex long-term economic and 

political engagement to sustain than other options would. 

IMPLICATIONS: THE UTILITY OF A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

WITH THE GIROA

This assessment of long run U.S. interests and potential end states for Afghanistan poses a variety of implications for near-term policy questions. Among them is 

the utility of a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the GIRoA. The United States 

is now conducting negotiations with the Karzai government over such an agreement 

to frame the long-term relationship between the two states. A detailed analysis of 

preferred terms or negotiating positions in these talks is beyond my scope here. But 

the discussion above implies several important roles such an agreement should play, 

and some considerations for critical sub-issues. 

In particular, it would be extremely useful if these talks could assure South 

Asians that a post-2014 U.S. troop drawdown will not leave Afghanistan abandoned 

and at the mercy of an empowered Taliban. As I argue above, many in the region 

(Pakistanis, Taliban, and other Islamist militants as well as loyal Afghans) now believe the United States and other foreign powers will leave Afghanistan before defeating the Taliban, and that this will lead to an eventual collapse of the government and either a Taliban takeover or an extended civil war. The hedging incentives 

this creates are deeply problematic; success probably requires some change in this 

widespread expectation of abandonment, and greater clarity as to America’s longterm intentions for Afghanistan and the region. A more consistent, more explicit 

communications strategy would help—many Afghan officials are now confused about 

American intentions and objectives, and this confusion is aggravated by conflicting 

U.S. statements about our commitment to counterinsurgency or other state-support 

policies. But in the final analysis a real change in regional perceptions will probably 

require actions rather than just words. 

One such action would be for the actual U.S. drawdown rate to be slow rather 

than fast. Many Afghans, for example, misinterpreted the President’s 2009 West 

Point speech to mean that there would be no U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan 

by 2012. This perception was remarkably stubborn; in a 2010 visit to Kabul, I found 

even members of Afghanistan’s Parliament and analysts from Afghan think tanks 

convinced that we would be gone by 2012. For some, only the actual observation 

27 

that American troops remain will convince them that they are not on the brink of 

abandonment and collapse. 

Another helpful action, however, would be to conclude a Strategic Partnership 

Agreement that committed the United States to a long-term role that could combat 

this perception of looming exit. This need not take the form of a commitment to permanent bases or a permanent military presence, though it could. But it would need 

to make it clear that the United States does not intend to repeat its policies of the 

1990s, in which we left Afghanistan to its own devices after the Soviet withdrawal 

and did little to avert open civil warfare. A strong agreement with an explicit commitment to continued U.S. engagement could go a long way toward reducing the incentives to hedge bets that are now so corrosive in the region—and this in turn 

could substantially improve the prospects for near-term governance reform in 

Afghanistan or realignment of Pakistani policy toward the Afghan Taliban. 

Should this agreement provide for permanent U.S. bases or a permanent U.S. 

military presence? While detailed prescription for negotiations is beyond my scope, 

some points are clear. First, given our interests in the region, the primary criterion 

for this choice should be stabilizing Afghanistan, not broader concerns with power 

projection or the conduct of counterterrorist missions beyond Afghanistan’s borders. 

I treat the viability of an Afghan-based CT strategy below. For now, though, it is 

worth noting that Afghanistan is far from an ideal base for regional power projection. As a remote, landlocked nation with mountainous borders and unreliable and/ 

or unstable neighbors astride the natural lines of communication to seaports, 

Afghanistan is a highly imperfect base for projecting power elsewhere. As the bin 

Laden raid showed, it can be useful, especially for small-scale raids of short duration, but the real issue is not whether it has some advantage under some circumstances but whether the difference between Afghan bases and the next-best 

alternative is large or small under normal conditions. Even for the bin Laden raid, 

alternatives were under active consideration that would have involved air attacks 

from bases far from Afghanistan; many, apparently including the Secretary of 

Defense, actually preferred these to a plan that relied on SEALs flown from 

Jalalabad. For most purposes in most scenarios, there are alternatives to Afghan 

bases for power projection missions—whether these be bomber strikes from the continental United States; missions flown from regional bases in places such as Diego 

Garcia or elsewhere; carrier-based aviation; or cruise missiles launched from submarines or other naval platforms offshore. And given the difficulties in maintaining 

logistical support for sustained action from Afghan bases, these alternatives are 

likely to look reasonably competitive for many contingencies. Afghanistan may be 

better for some purposes at some times, but it is unlikely to be so much better as 

to be indispensible as a base. 

Second, and related, permanent bases should be seen as negotiable in the talks. 

An important argument in favor of permanent bases is their ability to reassure 

nervous Afghans. But some Afghans see permanent U.S. bases as intrusion and interference, or as an infringement on Afghan sovereignty. If the net result of an insistence on permanent bases is to inflame anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan 

and undermine Afghan support for the war, this downside would outweigh any plausible military benefit to the United States—and it could end up impeding, rather 

than advancing, the underlying logic of reassurance. The Taliban, for their part, will 

surely oppose any permanent foreign military presence and will present this as an 

obstacle to negotiated settlement of the war. Reconciliation negotiations pose complex challenges and may or may not prove fruitful (more on this below). But if they 

otherwise show promise, the cause of stability in south Asia could be better served 

by removing a barrier to negotiating progress than by retaining a power projection 

platform that is little superior to its alternatives. It is thus a mistake to view permanent U.S. bases as a redline requirement that must be preserved in any negotiations, whether with the GIRoA or with the Taliban. 

The chief point is thus that permanent basing is a means, not an end. The end 

is a stable south Asia via a stable Afghanistan, and the primary role of any Strategic Partnership Agreement should be to serve that end by reassuring Afghans and 

others that they will not be abandoned. If in the course of the negotiations over the 

agreement such bases look useful as tools of reassurance, they should be offered. 

But they are not ends in themselves of any superordinate importance. 

IMPLICATIONS: COUNTERTERRORISM, COUNTERINSURGENCY, 

AND THE DEATH OF BIN LADEN

Many have proposed the the United States shift from a counterinsurgency (COIN) 

strategy to one based on counterterrorism (CT). Whereas COIN is focused on sustaining the host government by securing its population, CT is focused on removing 

28 

9Greg Miller, ‘‘CIA Spied on bin Laden From Safe House,’’ Washington Post, May 6, 2011, 

accessed May 9, 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cia-spied-on-bin-laden-from-safehouse/2011/05/05/AFXbG31Flstory.html. 10David Gollust, ‘‘Clinton: Pakistan Cooperation Helped Find bin Laden,’’ Voice of America, 

May 2, 2011, accessed May 9, 2011. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Clinton-StressesPakistan-Cooperation-After-bin-Laden-Killing--121092289.html. 

threats to the U.S. homeland by killing or capturing terrorists and their leaders. 

And whereas COIN is labor intensive and expensive in lives and dollars, CT can 

in principle be much cheaper, relying on small numbers of drone strikes or special 

forces raids without the multibrigade, long-term ground commitments required for 

COIN. If our primary interest in Afghanistan is in fact to reduce the terrorist threat 

to America, would it not make more sense to pursue this directly and cheaply via 

CT rather than indirectly and expensively via COIN? 

The answer is no, and the reason is that CT depends on the host government cooperation that COIN is designed to secure. The binding constraint on CT effectiveness is normally intelligence on the targets’ whereabouts. This intelligence normally 

requires access on the ground. The raid that killed bin Laden, for example, depended on information gained from patient, long-term surveillance of the compound 

by human agents operating from a safe house in Abbottabad, and elsewhere in the 

country.9 The Secretary of State has reported that we also relied upon cooperation 

from Pakistani intelligence, based on their own human source networks on the 

ground.10 This access on the ground is vastly harder if the local government is actively hostile and seeks to exclude us. Moreover, our ability to use drones or other 

long-dwell airborne surveillance systems to complement ground-based sources depends heavily on permissive airspace; if a hostile government with access to an air 

force and ground based air defenses chose to close its airspace, then our ability to 

use platforms like UAVs would be greatly reduced and we would have to fight for 

aerial access in ways that would greatly increase the cost and difficulty of the campaign while reducing its effectiveness. 

CT is also much more effective against small bands of terrorists or discrete sets 

of senior commanders than it is against large guerilla forces in the field; it is illsuited to defend governments from broad insurgencies without a supporting COIN 

effort involving large friendly ground forces. If we shifted from COIN to CT in 

Afghanistan and withdrew the ground forces now critical to the COIN campaign, the 

Karzai government could collapse before the CT leadership targeting campaign bore 

fruit. And this would risk losing the ground and air access that effective CT 

requires. 

An explicit shift to a CT strategy would also aggravate the hedging problems 

noted above. Many Afghans already fear that the United States will shift from 

COIN to CT; to them, a U.S. CT strategy looks like a plan to allow Afghanistan 

to fall into chaos while the United States flies above it all with drones hunting for 

terrorists. This is an extremely unpopular image among Afghans, for whom it offers 

nothing but the prospect of endless internecine warfare. Occasional comments by 

U.S. officials suggesting that a CT approach would be preferable to COIN are thus 

read by Afghans as evidence that abandonment is coming. Even if the Karzai government did not fall in the immediate aftermath of an actual U.S. shift from COIN 

to CT, we could expect limited cooperation with such an agenda from the Afghans, 

who would be strongly motivated to seek accommodation with the Taliban under 

such conditions, and disinclined to support an American CT campaign with intelligence or other cooperation on the ground. 

As complementary elements of a joint campaign, COIN on the ground and leadership targeting from aircraft and special forces strengthen one another synergistically. But CT without COIN risks losing the prerequisites needed for its 

success. The ultimate purpose of our efforts is indeed to counter terrorism. But to 

do this well requires that we secure the governments whose support we need to conduct effective CT. Hence it is a mistake to see these as substitutes for one another: 

CT and COIN strengthen one another; CT without COIN is unlikely to work. 

A related argument raised since bin Laden’s death is that his removal might warrant a shift away from COIN that would otherwise be unwise but can now be tolerated. If our ultimate purpose is to combat an al-Qaeda terror threat to the United 

States, then the effort would become unnecessary if the threat were removed. More 

broadly, the investment warranted in Afghan COIN is surely a function of the 

virulence of the al-Qaeda threat: the lower the latter, the smaller the former. If 

al-Qaeda’s effectiveness is attenuated enough, then eventually it must make sense 

to invest less in Afghan COIN even if this isn’t as effective as a larger effort would 

be. If not, then we are committed to a permanent war with vast resource requirements and no conceivable way out. It must therefore be possible to identify a condiVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
29 

11On the effectiveness of CT decapitation campaigns, see Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘‘How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns’’ (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 2009); Jenna Jordan, ‘‘When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness 

of Leadership Decapitation,’’ Security Studies, Vol. 18 (2009), pp. 719–755; Daniel Byman, ‘‘Do 

Targeted Killings Work?’’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, no. 2 (2006), pp. 95–111. 12 Estimated historical frequencies of negotiated settlement range from as low as 20 percent 

to as high as about 50 percent; the rate of settlement appears to have been rising since the 

1970s. See Ben Conable and Martin C. Libicki, ‘‘How Insurgencies End’’ (Santa Monica: Rand, 

2010), RAND MG 965, pp. 18, 169; Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson, ‘‘Rage Against the Machines: 

Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,’’ International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 1 

(Winter 2009), pp. 67–106. 

tion of ‘‘success’’ such that we can stand down from this scale of effort; some see 

this success in bin Laden’s killing. 

The problem here is twofold. First, it is too early to know what effect bin Laden’s 

death will have on al-Qaeda. Most terrorist organizations survive decapitation. The 

United States, for example, killed the head of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, Abu Musab 

al Zarqawi, in 2006; he was replaced, and the violence continued. Israeli leadership 

strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah have hardly destroyed either organization. 

Russian efforts to kill Chechen separatist leaders failed to defeat the separatist 

movement. There are exceptions: the Shining Path in Peru withered after the arrest 

of Abimael Guzman in 1992; Aum Shinrikyo was greatly weakened by Shoko 

Asahara’s arrest in 1995. In general, however, decapitation campaigns can weaken 

terror groups by replacing talented leaders with less able successors, but they rarely 

destroy the organization.11 Perhaps al-Qaeda will follow the Shining Path exception; 

bin Ladenism was probably in some degree of general decline by 2011 given its 

reduced popularity in the Arab world as a result of its indiscriminate killing of Iraqi 

and other Muslims and its irrelevance in the ongoing Arab Spring uprisings. Maybe 

bin Laden’s death will be the straw that breaks this camel’s back and leads alQaeda into terminal decline. Certainly it is worth careful monitoring of al-Qaeda’s 

operational tempo and internal unity in coming months to look for possible evidence. 

But this would be the exception rather than the rule, and it is far too early to know 

whether al-Qaeda will follow such a trajectory. 

Second, the unique role of Pakistani instability and nuclear capability warrants 

special caution. Unlike most terror threats from most places, Pakistani militant 

groups have the potential to gain access to nuclear weapons if the host state collapses. A small remnant of an attenuated al-Qaeda somewhere else would pose a 

limited threat to the United States; a remnant that shared bin Laden’s strategy of 

targeting America and got access to a usable nuclear weapon in the chaos of Pakistani state collapse could pose a threat far exceeding their numbers or nominal 

strength. Similarly, non-al-Qaeda groups pose unique perils in Pakistan. An organization like Lashkar-e-Taiba that has not heretofore been focused chiefly on the 

United States could nevertheless pose an exceptional threat if the Pakistani Government collapsed and lost control of its nuclear arsenal. The stability of Pakistan is 

especially worrisome with a healthy al-Qaeda posing an explicit threat to the United 

States from its territory, but Pakistani stability is unusually important to the 

United States even if al-Qaeda per se withers or dies altogether given the ongoing 

presence of other militants with the potential to shift their focus to the United 

States, and prospective access to nuclear weapons if Pakistan collapses. 

This does not mean that al-Qaeda’s fate is irrelevant to the case for COIN in 

Afghanistan, or that no attenuation in the Pakistani terror threat could warrant 

drawing back from COIN to CT (even if the latter proved less effective without the 

former). But it does mean that it is too early to conclude that such a shift is warranted now. And it does mean that unusual care is warranted in assessing a COIN 

to CT shift in Afghanistan given its potential effect on Pakistan and the latter’s 

unique status. 

IMPLICATIONS: THE UTILITY OF A NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT

Many insurgencies end in negotiated settlements involving some degree of compromise on both sides.12 As public dissatisfaction with the war has grown, interest 

in such a settlement has grown, too. The Afghan war poses a number of challenges 

to negotiated resolution, including the number of parties to any such talks, the likelihood of internal disunity within several key Taliban factions, opposition among 

northern Afghans, growing radicalization of actors such as the Haqqani network, 

ideological commitment by Mullah Omar and key leaders of the Quetta Shura, and 

the difficulty of knowing whether any given Taliban negotiating partner actually 

speaks for his faction or others. By the same token, however, President Karzai has 

expressed clear interest in pursuing a settlement. And the death of Osama bin 

30 

13The Taliban’s strongest poll performance to date was a finding of 45 percent support in 

Kandahar that was reported in a Washington Post/ABC News/BBC/ARD survey of November 

2010: see ‘‘New Poll Reveals Afghan Perceptions of the War,’’ Washington Post, December 6, 

2010, accessed May 9, 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/AfghanPoll 

Results.html. More common is the figure of 11-percent support nationally in the same poll—or 

for Kandahar itself, the finding of 25-percent support in a Canadian survey of April 2010: see 

‘‘Taliban Support Strong in Kandahar: Poll,’’ CBC News, April 6, 2010, accessed May 9, 2011. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/04/06/taliban-support-poll.html. 

Laden may remove some barriers to negotiation, whether by releasing Mullah Omar 

or others from oaths of loyalty to bin Laden that would have made reconciliation 

impossible, or by affecting Taliban morale and expectations. 

Among the more important factors shaping the prospects for negotiation are our 

aims and ambitions. The original, highly ambitious U.S. goals virtually precluded 

settlement. Perhaps a Taliban on the verge of total military defeat might accept 

terms that would exclude them from any meaningful role in a centralized, strictly 

democratic government, but if so the settlement would be little more than the surrender instrument for a beaten insurgency. It is hard to imagine any major Taliban 

faction accepting such terms until the military tide turned clearly, decisively, and 

conclusively against them. To have any chance for hastening the war’s end via negotiation, we will have to accept compromises even as we demand them of the Taliban. 

We can, in fact, live with a degree of compromise relative to our original war aims 

while preserving the central security stakes for which we have fought. We do not 

require either the radical centralization or the strictly democratic system the 2001 

model prescribed. There is room for some legal political role for the Taliban within 

the Afghan Government without undermining our fundamental security requirements as long as the limits and enforcement mechanisms discussed above are maintained. It should be possible, for example, to offer designated seats for some representatives of some Taliban factions in the Afghan Parliament, or in Provincial or 

District governments in the south or east, as long as there are practical, enforceable 

limits on their ability to use territory as a safe haven for militant violence. 

The Taliban are not, and never have been, a popular movement with a broad base 

of support. In repeated polls over years of surveys, they have never drawn more 

than about 15 percent support nationally. Even in their birthplace of the conservative Afghan south they remain a minority preference, and elsewhere their support 

varies from modest to negligible.13 This makes them unlikely to agree to lay down 

their arms in exchange for a chance to run for national office in free and fair elections; some extra democratic set aside of seats or offices or positions would probably 

be needed to persuade them to settle. But this also means that the prospects for 

containing their influence once brought into the government are reasonably strong 

as long as the non-Taliban GIRoA has something to offer its citizens as an alternative to freely elected Taliban rule. 

And this in turn means that reining in government predation is a necessary component of any acceptable negotiating strategy. Corrupt predatory governance is the 

chief threat to public acceptance of the GIRoA. If a deal gave the Taliban a legal 

foothold in an Afghan Government too corrupt to command its people’s loyalty, this 

could be tantamount to admitting a Trojan Horse: continued predation by nonTaliban officials could eventually swing public support to a legalized Taliban that 

promised honesty and justice even at the cost of its ideology and repression. If so, 

then an initially limited, constrained role could grow into one that threatened U.S. 

core interests by enabling Taliban officials the scope to foment terrorism from 

Afghan soil. If government predation can be brought under control—not eliminated 

but at least capped and constrained—then the Taliban can be given a legal role in 

Afghan politics with the natural unpopularity of militant ideology acting as a check 

to strengthen other constraints on their ability to foment terrorism. But if not then 

a settlement could leave us unable to ensure that our interests were met in the 

aftermath. 

IMPLICATIONS: THE NEED FOR GOVERNANCE REFORM

Finally, this implies that the needed governance reforms cannot be put off indefinitely. It is tempting to assume that the near-term requirement for security can 

safely be allowed to push governance reform into the distant future. And there are 

near-term tradeoffs between security and reform that can encourage the former to 

displace the latter: many malign power brokers in Afghanistan maintain militias or 

other security forces that they make available to coalition commanders to reinforce 

our security efforts in exchange for our overlooking their economic exploitation of 

the population. Others use private security firms under their control to protect 

logistical convoys that supply coalition troops, or they make protection payments to 

31 

the Taliban or other local militants to ensure safe passage; if we crack down on 

their economic predation, their continued security cooperation is unlikely, and they 

can be expected to turn on us instead. With an urgent need to reverse Taliban military momentum by contesting their control of important districts, there is constant 

pressure on coalition commanders to postpone the needed reckoning to a future 

when we hope we will have the flexibility to clamp down on corruption in a safer 

environment. 

But in fact we cannot safely delay an aggressive governance campaign. Not only 

would this risk undermining any prospective reconciliation deal, as noted above. But 

it also undermines our ability to provide a degree of security that could actually permit us to drawdown our forces and hand off to a capable ANSF. Civilians systematically dispossessed by a predatory government will inevitably turn to the Taliban for 

succor (and the Taliban have been very astute in exploiting this to position themselves as the defenders of the dispossessed), even if they otherwise dislike the 

Taliban’s ideology or politics. If civilians who have been wronged—or expect to be— 

continue to do this, no density of security forces will be sufficient to exclude the 

Taliban from victimized communities. 

Worse, there may be reason to expect that the ANSF itself will be coopted in ways 

that undermine its ability to take over security duties as we drawdown. Security 

forces are products of the societies from which they are drawn. Where the society 

around them is dominated by the political and economic effects of malign patronage 

networks, it is unrealistic to expect that the security forces will somehow be hermetically sealed off and unaffected by this. Malign actor networks realize that they 

need top cover and protection for their activities; it would be dangerous for such 

predators to allow powerful armed forces in their midst to operate without some degree of control or cooptation by the network. And this gives Afghan power brokers 

a strong incentive to extend their reach and their influence into the police and the 

army. 

Historically, where armies in the developing world fail it is normally not because 

they have not yet taken the right training courses or had sufficient rifle ranges, advisers, or equipment available. The most important cause of failure in developingworld militaries is their politicization and corruption at the hands of the regime and 

its patrons. When the officer corps is politicized and corrupted, its ability to motivate effective combat action by its troops is powerfully undermined. Troops know 

when their leaders value political connection and graft above professional competence and service to the mission. No soldier wants to die for a corrupt chain of 

command, and no soldier wants to put his life in the hands of an officer who cares 

more about his connections than his military skills. The result can easily be a hollow army or police force, whose size or equipment does not reflect its actual capability, and whose ability to hold ground or defend population centers is much less 

than meets the eye. 

In Afghanistan today, police corruption is a known problem, and considerable 

efforts are underway to monitor this and remove corrupt leaders. The Afghan 

National Army (ANA), on the other hand, is commonly assumed to be mostly free 

of corruption and more effective in the field. This may well be true for now (though 

we know less than we might about the problem of politicization in the ANA today; 

since this has not been a high priority concern heretofore, it has thus received much 

less intelligence attention and command oversight than has the problem of police 

corruption). But the ANA is unlikely to remain unaffected if the surrounding society 

remains as dominated by corruption as it is now. Whatever the effectiveness of the 

ANA today, if we do not address and delimit the problem of corruption and 

misgovernance in Afghanistan soon we risk undermining the efficacy of the military 

tool that we are relying upon to take up the slack as we drawdown. 

It is thus a mistake to assume that security and governance reform are separable, 

and that the former can safely precede the latter. The McChrystal assessment report argued that security and governance reform were coequally necessary for success; this is as true today as it was in 2009, and implies a need to ensure that 

progress in one is not allowed to outstrip progress in the other. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, indeed—thank you all very much. I think 

it’s a good framing of the beginning of this discussion, which is 

very important and very tricky. 

There’s so much to focus on. And I hope, with all our colleagues 

here, we’re going to get to all of it as we go forward. So, I guess 

my question doesn’t have to cover all the bases. 

32 

Therefore, let me try to just focus on one of the most important 

components of this, which is really defining the mission. I’ve heard 

three different things from all of you. And you’re the experts, and 

you all see a destabilizing threat to Pakistan, yet you’ve put 

forward different choices. Dr. Jones, you’ve sort of landed in the 

middle, between the counterterrorism and full-flown counterinsurgency. And, Dr. Kilcullen, I think you are a bit more limited. 

But, I want to see if we can try to really define: Why should we 

be there now? What is our interest? Is our interest a stable Afghanistan, because of this threat to Pakistan? Is our interest simply to 

be able to sufficiently prevent the return of al-Qaeda, and destroy 

it, ultimately? I mean, I think two of you, at least, mentioned the 

destruction of al-Qaeda—or one of you mentioned the ‘‘disruption’’ 

and another, the ‘‘destruction.’’ So, is it possible for us to agree on 

the mission? 

I mean, it’s going to be very hard for the American people to feel 

confident about where we’re going if we can’t give a pretty simple 

well-agreed-upon broad-consensus definition of what the mission is. 

So, what exactly is the mission in Afghanistan, Dr. Kilcullen? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Well, thank you, Senator. 

You know, I don’t carry a brief for the administration, but I 

think the administration’s actually expressed it relatively clearly, 

and that was what Dr. Jones echoed. The core goal that the White 

House has put forward is the idea to disrupt, defeat, and eventually—and—disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in the AfPak 

region. And the goal in Afghanistan is to generate a stable enough 

platform to achieve that overall goal. 

I think you could look at it more specifically in terms of transition. In one sentence, I think the mission of the moment now in 

Afghanistan is to make the country stable enough that we can reduce the United States footprint to a sustainable level without an 

unacceptable drop security. And, of course, there are two important 

soft adjectives there: sustainable and unacceptable. ‘‘Sustainable,’’ 

I think, means politically, but also fiscally sustainable. And ‘‘unacceptable,’’ I think, translates to the administration’s core goal. An 

unacceptable drop in security is one that undermines our ability to 

eventually disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda in the region. 

In other words, we’re making Afghanistan stable as a means to 

the end of defeating al-Qaeda in the region. And I think that’s a 

relatively low bar, compared to some of the very maximalist objectives that people have put forward in the past. But, just because 

it’s a low bar strategically doesn’t mean it’s not going to cost a lot 

of resources to get there. And that’s probably a separate question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, let’s go—we’ll come back to that in a 

minute. 

Dr. Jones, do you agree? Is that—— 

Dr. JONES. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. A full definition? And you’re comfortable with it? 

Dr. JONES. I am comfortable with Dr. Kilcullen’s definition. I 

would say, just to support him, what we don’t want is an attack 

on the U.S. homeland which emanates from this region. And we 

don’t want, in my view, a government or a group that allows training camps and missions to be planned from this region. That is 

33 

what I think we can reliably tell the American public we are looking to prevent. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Biddle. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I agree wholeheartedly with my colleagues on the 

panel. The only amendment I would offer is that I would be cautious about identifying the threat of terrorist attacks to the United 

States too narrowly around al-Qaeda, per se. It has been the primary source of such a threat in the past. If its destruction leads 

other organizations in Pakistan, however, to shift their aims in 

ways that they have not heretofore, and take up the banner of 

al-Qaeda’s war against the distant enemy, the underlying identification of our interests implies that we would then have to broaden our target somewhat. 

But, the focus of it is exactly as Dr. Kilcullen and Dr. Jones have 

suggested. 

The CHAIRMAN. So, let me build on that a little bit. 

How likely is it, with the death of Osama bin Laden, that Pakistan will decide to join wholeheartedly in this effort—i.e., to focus 

on the Haqqani Network, harness or tame the disparate instincts 

of the ISI, and make a wholehearted effort to go after the Quetta 

Shura and foreign nationals in their country? To what extent could 

their decision greatly alter the choices that we face, and indeed, the 

length of this struggle? 

Dr. Kilcullen. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Sir, in fact, Dr. Jones’s organization, the RAND 

Corporation, did a study last year which looked, in part, at what 

the effect might be of removing a sanctuary on chances of success 

in a counterinsurgency environment. I’m quoting from memory, but 

I’m pretty sure that you have a very significant improved chance 

if you can reduce the sanctuary. And I think it’s roughly about 86 

percent of cases, where you can successfully destroy the insurgent 

sanctuary in a neighboring country, the government wins. But, if 

you fail to destroy the sanctuary, you still win in about 60 percent 

of cases. So, it’s actually not essential to destroy the sanctuary. It 

is very advantageous, but it’s nonessential. So, I think we should 

bear that in mind, when thinking about what we expect from 

Pakistan. 

I think we should also bear in mind the history of our relationship with Pakistan, which you know better than anybody else, and 

have some realism about our expectations of what they will actually do in response to this series of events. I don’t think we’re likely 

to see a significant drop of support, certainly not for the Haqqani 

Network, possibly not for Quetta Shura. I think they’re going to 

continue to operate. 

The CHAIRMAN. And that’s because they perceive a very stable, 

strong central government, well-armed Afghanistan, as not in their 

interest. Isn’t that accurate? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. That may well be true. I think there’s another 

sort of instrumental reason, which is, just because an organization 

like ISI can turn on an organization like the Haqqani Network 

doesn’t mean that they can turn it off. So, the ability to create 

mayhem and disruption through sponsoring a terrorist organization doesn’t necessarily mean that you still control that organization. I’m speaking hypothetically here, obviously. But, if indeed the 

34 

Pakistani Intelligence Service have had, in the past, some relationship with groups like the Haqqani Network and the Quetta Shura, 

just because they previously had a relationship doesn’t mean that 

they can now decide to shut them down. And I think that’s the 

problem that, in fact, a lot of Pakistanis are confronting now. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Jones, what kind of cost are you looking at 

in your ‘‘middle’’ strategy—which is neither a counterterrorism 

platform, nor a full-blown counterinsurgency? What’s the annual 

nut on that strategy? 

Dr. JONES. Well, it would vary by year, depending on the size of 

the footprint. What it comes down to, by 2015, though, is a smaller 

Afghan National Security Force presence, a smaller—depending on 

conditions and other factors—a smaller United States footprint and 

an Afghan local police footprint. This puts us—I can give you the 

numbers by year—or your staff—after the hearing. But, it puts us 

well below the $12.8 billion, for example, for Afghan National Security Forces, for fiscal year 2012. And it certainly varies by year. 

The CHAIRMAN. Why—is it more than $6 billion a year? 

Dr. JONES. It’s, depending on the year, between about $6 and $10 

billion per year. But—— 

The CHAIRMAN. For how many years? 

Dr. JONES [continuing]. But increasingly decreasing. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lugar. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, the panel has suggested, in answer to our 

basic question, ‘‘Why Afghanistan?’’ that we will want to stop 

attacks on the United States emanating from Afghanistan, and 

that one way of doing this is to eliminate training camps or other 

means of support possessed by terrorists there. 

Now, let me ask the following question, with two reflections. One 

is that some persons, long before the death of Osama bin Laden, 

were writing about the fact that the situation we face in Afghanistan today originated after the United States fulfilled Saudi 

Arabia’s call for support following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. As we 

know, a lot of American troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia, and 

not only for the duration of the gulf war, but several years thereafter. Now, the American presence on Saudi soil lead Osama bin 

Laden and his associates to emphasize their view of America as 

their enemy. 

Second, there was the situation, described by the Russians, of 

their attempt to do some of what we’re attempting to do now in 

Afghanistan. Principally, that is to train Afghan police and military 

to bring about stability at the village level or the provincial level. 

They had some success for quite a period of time, although they 

had problems stemming from unrest among Afghanistan’s different 

ethnic groups. However, in due course, the Russians ran out of 

money and time, and they never quite got the job done. Indeed, 

there remained the enduring historical problems in Afghanistan 

that were well beyond their efforts to put a centralized government 

in place there. 

Now, I raise all of this because, once again, why is there the 

thought that we must dedicate so many of our finite resources to 

the situation in Afghanistan? Couldn’t those who threaten us come 

from somewhere other than Afghanistan, such as Yemen or Somalia? Are there plans to set up forces in these countries that are the 

35 

size and shape of those we have in Afghanistan? And finally, given 

the Russian experience—maybe we’ll do better, but there are many 

historians who simply would point out that the diverse constitution 

of Afghan society does not really lead to a good centralized government. So, you’ve pointed now to the fact that we might think, in 

a more sophisticated way, of something less than central, wherein 

we have local entities—bits and pieces of governance—that somehow negotiate a pact among each other, and with us, that brings 

stability. This seems very, very difficult to imagine, and very hard 

to describe in parts or in conclusion to the American people or anybody else. 

So, my basic questions get back to: Why Afghanistan? Is it because, originally, we got crosswise with al-Qaeda, due to the earlier 

wars? And could we get uncrosswise with them if we were out of 

harm’s way there? What you have described as one alternative is 

a very small group of people that do intelligence work, that do 

JSOC work, that, in fact, do this in Afghanistan plus Yemen plus 

Somalia plus a lot of places. That such an effort keep an eye on 

everybody in this manner, without getting into the governance of 

a situation that is proving to be very difficult, if not impossible, for 

us? 

Does anybody have a comment about all of that? 

Dr. JONES. I’ll go first, Senator Lugar. I know my colleagues have 

comments, as well. 

I would argue several things. First, al-Qaeda was created here, 

in the Peshawar area. Its strongest support base, in my view, is 

here, as opposed to any other place in the world—Somalia, Yemen. 

In particular, if one looks at the tribal structures, Pashtun tribal 

structures were the Mehsuds, the Waziris, the Mohmans, and a 

range of others. These are individuals who have fought with, for 

the last three decades, and provided sanctuary to, a range of 

al-Qaeda leaders. So, they have a long-term relationship. 

They’re also—in addition to the tribal/subtribe clan structures, 

there are also a range of militant groups, from Lashkar-e-Tayyaba 

to Jaish-e-Mohammed, that have supported al-Qaeda. So, I would 

strongly argue that this is a safe haven, in my view, that is different from Yemen, Somalia, and other places. 

And, in addition, I would also say, if one looks at the bulk of the 

attacks over the past 10 years—the London attack, successful; the 

Madrid attack, successful; the 2006 Transatlantic plot, nearly successful; the Zazi attempted attack; Shahzad—they emanated from 

individuals operating here. Clearly, Yemen is a problem with 

Awlaki. But, I think this is an extraordinary threat. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I would agree with Dr. Jones that Afghanistan is different, as a haven, than other prospective havens. I would frame 

the reasons a little bit differently. 

I think the primary reason Afghanistan is different is its proximity to Pakistan because I think it’s important to distinguish different varieties and classes of terror threat. The threat emanating 

from places like Yemen or Djibouti or Somalia or elsewhere is of 

important but nonetheless conventional terrorism. The downstream 

threat associated with failure, uniquely in South Asia, is the potential collapse of a nuclear-armed and very unstable state that’s facing an internal insurgency of its own in Pakistan. 

36 

One of the very few scenarios I can think of that produces any 

plausible chance of terrorist access to a weapon of mass destruction 

that they could actually use against the United States would be if, 

as a downstream consequence of failure in Afghanistan, we were to 

tip an unstable Pakistan into collapse in such a condition that the 

military and the intelligence services split and the nuclear arsenal 

of the country breaches containment. That, it seems to me, is the 

critical distinction between our strategic interests in Afghanistan 

and our strategic interests in Yemen or in Somalia or elsewhere. 

Senator LUGAR. But this then tips things back toward the idea 

of the central importance of Pakistan; in other words, that the 

primary importance of promoting stability in Afghanistan is to 

prevent nuclear proliferation out of Pakistan, which is another 

interesting twist in our hearing dialogue today. 

Dr. Kilcullen. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Sir, I just want to note that all the examples 

that Dr. Jones gave came from Pakistan, not Afghanistan. The regional epicenter of terrorism is not Afghanistan. It’s highly unlikely 

that we would see a terrorist attack on the United States emanating from Afghanistan. 

The risk is somewhat different, in my view. It’s that instability 

in Afghanistan contributes to a regional pattern of instability. And 

that can undermine the stability of Pakistan. And that can significantly raise the threat. And it isn’t just the threat of terrorism. It’s 

also the threat of nuclear confrontation with India, of state collapse, and of a variety of other problems associated with changes 

in the security environment in Pakistan. 

So, I think the chances that al-Qaeda, for example, would move 

back to Afghanistan and set up a base, if we were to leave, are relatively slim. What’s much more likely is that there would be increased asset available to both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, 

there would be increased reason for an alliance between those 

groups and remaining terrorist organizations, there’d be a much 

higher level of instability in Pakistan, and that could potentially 

lead to all these negative consequences. 

So, I think the ultimate argument is correct, but the pathway to 

it is one of regional instability and, potentially, nuclear confrontation in South Asia. That’s what we, I think, have to think of as the 

primary outcome of failure in Afghanistan. Not so much somebody 

from Afghanistan attacking the United States, but a threat to the 

United States emanating from that instability in the region. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, my time is up. But once again, we’re back 

to our problem. We have a hearing on Afghanistan, but, in fact, 

we’re back to discussing Pakistan and the broader region. And 

maybe that’s the correct analysis of where we ought to be having 

the discussion for this hearing. But, it does pose problems for all 

the questions we were raising initially regarding how we counter 

threats to our security on a day-by-day basis in terms of our budget 

and the disposition of our forces, and how many of these resources 

should be dedicated specifically to Afghanistan. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar. 

Senator Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

37 

Thank you all for your testimony. It’s very important, I think, for 

us to do this, because we are in Afghanistan, now, for a very long 

time. And I’d like to do kind of a reality check. And I’m going to 

end it with a question to Dr. Jones, because his statement that a 

large-scale withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan would reaffirm, ‘‘the regional perception that the U.S. is not a reliable ally,’’ 

is very troubling to me. And so, I want to press you on that, Dr. 

Jones, if I might. Are you with me? 

Dr. JONES. Yes. 

Senator BOXER. OK. 

So, we’re talking about, What is the mission? I would like to go 

back to why we went there, because I think most of us sitting here, 

most of us, were either in the House or the Senate when we voted 

to go into Afghanistan. Why did we do it? We had no interest in 

doing that. I had talked about the Taliban for years. Women’s 

groups had come to me, they talked about the burqa, they said 

we’ve got to get rid of the Taliban. Nobody was that interested. 

And we did pass legislation never to recognize the country of 

Afghanistan, as long as it was led by the Taliban. And I was proud 

to be involved with that, in a bipartisan way. 

So, we went in there because of the horrific attacks on September 11. You remember exactly why we went in there. And we 

said, ‘‘We’re going there to get Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.’’ 

That was the reason we went there. So, all of this expansion, I 

think, of our role there, I’d like to take it back to that. 

Now, thanks to our President and the brave military forces, we 

know that justice was served on bin Laden, and we didn’t do it 

with boots on the ground; we did it with counterterrorism, a lot of 

what Senator Kerry talked about during his Presidential campaign. 

That’s how we did it. And we delivered, our troops did, overdue 

justice. 

But, I also think it’s a turning point. And, from intelligence information we gathered during the raid, we learned that bin Laden 

was playing a significant role in the organization’s day-to-day operations. He wasn’t just sitting there and doing other things; he was 

plotting and planning. As the New York Times—an American official quote in the Times said, ‘‘He wasn’t just a figurehead, he plotted and planned to come up with ideas about targets, et cetera.’’ 

So, this important news comes along with significant progress 

we’ve made against other Qaeda figures in Afghanistan in recent 

years. In fact, the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, says 

that the number of Qaeda in Afghanistan is less than 50, and, in 

the region, less than 500. We talk about the region—and Senator 

Lugar’s right to do that—less than 500. So, we have all these boots 

on the ground. 

And so, here’s my question, and I want to give you some facts, 

before it. I laid out the predicate. Talk about the region, saying, 

‘‘Well, if we withdraw, they’re going to think we’re not committed, 

and they’ll be upset with us; we’re not a reliable ally.’’ 

So, here’s the situation: Pakistan is now the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, receiving $4.3 billion in FY 2010. 

We know that’s now a little controversial, but I assume we’re going 

to keep helping Pakistan; and I’m one who believes we have to, 

with more strings. And you know the United States has spent more 

38 

years fighting in Afghanistan than any other war. If anybody says, 

‘‘Oh, we’re not committed to the region,’’ how about the 100,000 

forces we still have on the ground, $1⁄2 trillion we spent, $10 billion 

a month. We can ill-afford it. Right now, let’s be frank, there are 

certain military people who say the biggest threat is our debt. Well, 

we’ve got to look at all these things. 

We’ve trained 125,000 members of the Afghan police and 159,000 

members of the Afghan Army. They have less than 50 al-Qaeda. 

And we have spent $26 billion equipping these soldiers and these 

police that we have trained. Most tragically, we’ve lost 1,562 Americans; 11,191 have been wounded, and you’ve seen some of those 

wounds. Unimaginable injuries. Unimaginable injuries. And we 

know a growing number of our personnel suffering the loss of more 

than one limb or devastating groin injuries. 

So, if 10 years of American sacrifice hasn’t convinced the region 

that the United States is a reliable ally, and all this money that’s 

going into that region, why are you confident that more time, more 

money, and the loss of more American lives will change that view? 

And do people there have a right to assume we’re going to continue 

this level of assistance forever? Isn’t there a time when every country has to say, ‘‘We believe in our country, we’re going to defend 

ourselves,’’ especially since we’ve trained all these troops? 

So, I like the odds that we’ve done here. We’ve got 159,000— 

159,000 Afghan National Army trained, 125,000 police, against 50 

al-Qaeda. 

Dr. JONES. Thank you, Senator. 

A couple of points. One is, it is an unfortunate perception—it was 

not the primary component of my critique of the counterterrorism 

strategy, but I think it is an unfortunate reality in the region and 

will certainly impact the way other countries, including Pakistan, 

will behave over the next several years. 

I would add a couple of things. One is, on the numbers of 

al-Qaeda, I would point out—I’m going to disagree with Dr. 

Kilcullen for a moment. Almost every tribe, subtribe, and clan that 

I referred to operates on both sides of the Pakistan/Afghan border. 

Al-Qaeda, in general, its migration patterns have been on both 

sides of that border. They look for a vacuum. In my view, if we 

push out of Afghanistan, it allows—as we’ve seen up in Nangarhar, 

Kunar, Nuristan, they will push back. So, I would not draw a 

strong line along the Durand Line. 

And, just to highlight it, my biggest critique of the counterterrorism strategy is that it does not, in my view—it is not an effective strategy to minimize Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary 

or an ally. In my view, a Taliban government in Afghanistan would 

be a serious, serious problem for the United States, because U.S. 

intelligence assessments now indicate a relationship between alQaeda—senior al-Qaeda leaders, the Taliban, inner Shura, several 

key members in the Haqqani Network. That is not something I 

believe that we can look Americans in the eye and be OK with. 

Senator BOXER. OK. Well, my time has run out. But I will say 

this to you, I don’t think you give enough credit to the people of 

Afghanistan who don’t want the Taliban and who have these 

trained police and who have these trained military. And nobody’s 

saying we wouldn’t have counterterrorism forces there. And I think 

39 

your critique of that is misplaced. That’s how we got bin Laden. 

That’s how we got the other leaders. 

And, for me, to live by somebody else’s reality or perception of 

reality is not the way to go. I’ve gone through my whole life. 

There’s people who perceive a lot of things differently than I do. 

But, you have to fight for what’s real. And what’s real is the dead, 

the wounded, the cost, and the comments, I think, of Senator 

Lugar, of all the other places in the world. So, I think you paint 

way too drastic a picture as what would happen if we don’t have 

the boots on the ground. And no one’s suggesting we don’t have a 

presence. 

But, I think that your testimony is very disturbing to me. And 

I don’t think America could say, ‘‘Oh, because they say that’s true, 

we might as well have policy, based on their faulty perception.’’ It’s 

very risky business, because—I just went to China; they have a lot 

of misperceptions. And I don’t expect to change our policy because 

of their misperceptions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Did you want to answer? 

Dr. JONES. Sure. Just briefly. 

Well, one of the issues I’ve been involved in over the last several 

years is actually having Afghans stand up for themselves, the 

Afghan Local Police Program and village stability operations, I was 

involved in from the beginning, in 2009. And I would just say that 

what I am talking about is decreasing the footprint, but supporting 

Afghans’ fight for themselves. What we’ve seen Uruzgan, Helmand, 

Kandahar, is Afghan communities who actively have fought for 

them. I have served—and I was one of the Americans serving in 

Afghanistan along those lines. 

But, I would say I agree with you on—Afghans are willing to 

combat the Taliban—— 

Senator BOXER. Good. 

Dr. JONES [continuing]. Both the central government—— 

Senator BOXER. Good. 

Dr. JONES [continuing]. And locals. And we have seen that. 

Senator BOXER. Good. 

Well, I want to put in the record, from your statement, Dr. Jones, 

that you would have, in 2014, 40,000 troops—American troops, 

boots on the ground. I don’t think that’s the right footprint. We 

ought to get—stop this—the combat forces, and concentrate on the 

other ways. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Corker. 

Senator CORKER. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

I appreciate your testimony; I’ve enjoyed all of it. 

Let ask each of you—the issue of Pakistan has come up in each 

of your testimony, and certainly by questions from people here at 

the dais. Should we reach agreement with Pakistan on what our 

joint efforts are going to be, as it relates to Afghanistan, and let 

that be part of the equation, as it relates to our aid to that country? I mean, isn’t this a moment where that sitdown should take 

place and we should absolutely, without any doubt, understand, 

with a fairly unreliable partner today, that our goals are going to 

be exactly the same, and let that be a component of the aid that 

goes to their country? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Thank you, Senator. 

40 

Look, I think we should. I think we already have. And, in fact, 

the Kerry-Lugar legislation of a couple years ago was designed to 

be part of a process of bringing that agreement to fruition. The 

problem we have is not that; it’s that we don’t have a trustworthy 

interlocutor that we can deal with on those kind of issues inside 

Pakistan. Not to say that the Pakistani Government necessarily is 

backing or supporting the opposition, but that it’s very difficult to 

know at what level that support stops. It’s pretty clear that some 

elements inside Pakistan and some elements of the national security establishment of Pakistan have taken a supportive attitude, 

not only to the Quetta Shura, Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and 

other terrorist organizations, but also possibly to groups associated 

with al-Qaeda. But, does that mean that somebody senior in the 

Pakistani Government has backed that? It’s a bit of an open question. So, it’s very, very difficult to actually get to an agreement 

that’s going to stick with Pakistan. 

I think that the best thing that we can to do limit our vulnerability there is to successfully prosecute the campaign in Afghanistan. The more stable we make the environment in Afghanistan, 

the more we damage the Taliban, the less use it is to anybody inside Pakistan to continue to support or enable the Taliban as a 

proxy instrument. I think that undermines the motivation, as well 

as the capability, on their part. 

Senator CORKER. Anybody with a differing point of view? 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, I think the question, again, gets back to long 

run objectives. Part of the problem in our relationship with Pakistan right now is that they’re hedging against an expectation that 

the United States has unrealistic aims which will ultimately lead 

us to disengage. They, therefore, in order to protect themselves 

against that possibility, maintain links with organizations that 

make success less likely, but that build in a second-best alternative 

for them if, in fact, success doesn’t obtain. 

Part of the process of coming to a relationship with Pakistan 

that’s less pathological than what we have now, it seems to me, is 

a greater degree of clarity on our part about what we’re seeking, 

about the ability to secure what we’re seeking with the resources 

we’re willing to provide, and our ability to negotiate actively with 

parties in the region to try and bring about some mutual condition 

that meets all of our interests. 

We’re in the process of trying to engage in talks with the Afghan 

Government now about the longer term. There may be reconciliation talks beginning. The complexity of those should not be underestimated. But, if we are going to engage, for example, in serious 

reconciliation talks in South Asia, it has to involve the Pakistanis 

and it has to enable them to try and realize some of their interests, 

as well as ours, in any settlement that emerges, else they will use 

their spoiler capacity to destroy any progress that can be made 

toward that. 

But, if we don’t arrive at some mutually agreeable understanding 

of what the end state looks like, such that Pakistan stops trying 

to undermine it because they don’t think what they’re going to get 

is something they can live with, the Pakistanis have a substantial 

and impressive capacity to hedge in ways that make it very unlikely that we’ll receive an outcome we can live with. 

41 

Senator CORKER. How does the fact that, in essence, any kind of 

Afghanistan, if we are—if we get to ‘‘good enough’’—and I agree 

with the testimony that it’s not clear what ‘‘good enough’’ is, and 

that creates some of the problems that you’re talking to—but, if we 

get to ‘‘good enough,’’ Afghanistan will not exist without us, they’re 

going to be our supplicant. There’s no way that they can continue 

to take care of the army and the police on the ground. I mean, the 

budget—it’s just not possible. So, they, in essence, will be our 

supplicant in a way that I don’t think any country that I can 

remember in recent times has been. 

How does that play into the equation, both on the Afghan side 

and on the Pakistani side, and, to Dr. Kilcullen, the rage that you 

were talking about that people have on the ground, as it relates to 

the many problems that exist there? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Let me pick that up first. It costs us roughly $12 

billion, right now, per year to support the Afghan National Security 

Forces, police and military. Even if we were to still be supporting 

those forces at that same level, and be providing roughly the same 

amount of support in civilian assistance, in 2014, that’s still an 

85-percent reduction in the cost of the war now. 

Senator CORKER. But, they’re still our supplicant. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Absolutely. But, I think that there’s a very important objective here, in reducing the overall cost of the war, and 

a lesser objective of reducing Afghan dependence on the international community. The way that counterinsurgency campaigns of 

this nature usually play out is that there is a heavy investment 

phase, up front, that sometimes goes for 10 to 12 years, followed 

by a very long, drawn-out tail that can go 20 or 30 years. Most successful examples of counterinsurgency involve that. 

The trick is to get to that second phase, which is a much-reduced 

cost over a longer period of time. And I think that’s what transition 

is all about, between now and 2014, getting ourselves to the position where the Afghans can continue to suppress incivility and terrorism in their area, with a lot of international assistance at first, 

but gradually reducing over time, but still 80 percent lower than 

it is today. 

Dr. JONES. Couple of quick comments. 

First, Afghanistan has always been what we call a ‘‘rentier 

state.’’ It has always—during the cold war, it actually received both 

American and Soviet assistance. 

But, I would say that the burden, I think, is on us to do two 

things, possibly simultaneously. The first one is to get others to 

help share the burden, whether it’s neighbors—and one has to be 

careful, a little bit, of the zero-sum game, I think, between the 

Indians and the Pakistanis—but, how can neighbors and others 

with an interest, including the British, help share some of these 

costs? 

The second is to put Afghanistan on at least the road where it 

can increase its revenue basis. If one looks at the lithium, copper, 

iron mines that are completely or largely untapped, frankly, except 

for the Chinese, in Afghanistan, there are ways, I think, one can 

begin to increase the government’s ability to cover some of those 

costs. 

42 

Dr. BIDDLE. Just to add one minor point, it’s important to note 

that, for most of the 20th century, Afghanistan was stable and at 

peace. During that time, when Afghanistan was stable and at 

peace, it was a ward of the international system. At no point in the 

20th century was Afghanistan able to operate under its own revenue. At many points, the majority of all the government revenue 

in Afghanistan was coming from foreign assistance. That did not 

necessarily make Afghanistan a source of instability for its region. 

So, to call them a supplicant is accurate, in some senses, but it 

implies that the Afghans will find it unacceptable. Whereas, I think 

there is a substantial historical record to suggest that Afghanistan 

is able to operate stably, in steady state, with substantial levels of 

foreign assistance, and not finding this to be a violation of their 

sovereignty or other conditions that would lead to instability. 

Senator CORKER. Can I ask one more quick question? 

I guess the difference, though—and maybe, historically, I don’t 

remember correctly—I mean, have they ever had this large of a 

trained central military? In other words, the money that will need 

to go to them for years will have to go to them. If it doesn’t go to 

them, those armed troops will do something with the arms if 

they’re not getting paid. OK? So, it seems to me that dynamic will 

be very different this time, if we ever get to ‘‘good enough.’’ 

Dr. BIDDLE. But, it seems to me that it’s important to distinguish 

between the wartime national security requirements of a state and 

the peacetime national security requirements of a state. Afghanistan is now waging a war, for which one would reasonably expect 

that a level of mobilized military effort that would be required 

would be much greater than would be the case if, in fact, this 

brings about a satisfactory resolution to the conflict. 

It seems to me that part of the planning process for building up 

the ANSF, however, should be some thought to how we’re going to 

build it down and demobilize it if and when we reach a point 

where, either through negotiated settlement or through simple 

decay of Taliban military capability, we get to the point where 

that’s no longer necessary. If what we’re doing is we’re building an 

institution that cannot be built down, then it will be a destabilizing 

element within a state that will never be able to afford a military 

establishment on the scale that we are now constructing. But, normally one expects that there will be a process of demobilization. 

So, it seems to me that when one thinks about the revenue 

stream required for Afghan security forces, one needs to differentiate between the waging of the war and what will be required in 

steady state once that’s over. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Senator Udall. 

Senator UDALL. Senator Kerry, thank you for holding this hearing. I think it’s very important. 

One of the things we aren’t getting to—and Senator Kerry asked 

that big overall question, How do we make the transition? It seems 

to me—and we used to talk about this some, and this is the issue 

of a flexible transition deadline. And President Obama, I think, in 

that national security order, talked about July 11 being the date 

for an accelerated transition. And he really emphasized that, ‘‘acVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
43 

celerated transition.’’ And somehow, now we’ve gotten ourselves to 

the position where we’re not talking anymore about an accelerated 

transition to an Afghan-led operation in July 2011; we’ve now 

moved to 2014. 

And I’m kind of trying to figure out, you know, how that all happened. What is it—you know, it appears that all three of you agree 

that we should be doing that, and that the reason is the mission, 

that I think’s been pinned down here, to defeat, disrupt, dismantle 

al-Qaeda in the Afghan/Pak region. What I can’t understand is, if 

we had, as our—and which the President laid out, accelerated transition deadline and move in that direction, What is it that has happened that keeps moving it down the road? Is it the failure of the 

Afghans to really step up to the plate? Is it the corruption? Is it 

the inadequate partnership? I mean, what’s going on here that has 

caused that? 

And I think that’s the big question, back in my State. And the 

other question that comes up with people, Why do we keep moving 

this down the road? So, please—— 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I can give you the historical aspect to that, 

Senator. 

Last November in Lisbon, in Portugal, the NATO countries 

involved in the campaign got together for a summit meeting, at 

which they reviewed progress and made the decision to—NATO, as 

a group, made the decision to put a peg in the sand of 2014 for 

completing transition. 

I think—and I’d defer somewhat to Dr. Biddle on this—I think 

that we are entering, in July 2011, what I would characterize as 

a war-termination window, so that we’re basically getting to the 

point, by this summer, where we need to be beginning that transition or glidepath to full Afghan control. The administration and 

NATO have always said that it’s going to be conditions-based. It’s 

going to depend on how things pan out on the ground. 

But, I think you’re going to start to see a process—it’s already 

happening, actually, in Afghanistan—of provinces and districts 

and, in particular right now, town centers starting to transition to 

Afghan National Security Force control. Right now, Kabul province 

and Kabul City, itself, is already fully under Afghan Security Force 

control. ISAF has identified a ring of provinces around Kabul, the 

next ring out, to be next in the priority order for transition. And 

we’re also seeing significant centers—for example, Lashkar Gah, 

the capital of Helmand, in the south, being prepared for transition 

to the Afghans. 

So, there will certainly be some transition activity this year. I 

would caution members of the committee into thinking that— 

against thinking that that means we can immediately pull those 

troops out of country. Once troops have left Afghanistan, it’s almost 

impossible to get them back in. But, transition is much like that 

children’s game, Jenga, you know, where you have the stack of 

wooden blocks, and you pull one out, and the structure becomes unstable, and you sort of see if it stabilizes, and then you try and pull 

another one out. It’s an experiment. And as you go ahead with the 

drawdown of forces, the security environment changes in unpredictable ways, at the district level. 

44 

So, I think we’re going to see significant transition activity, beginning this year. We are already seeing very significant progress 

in security in the last 18 months. Whether and how that translates 

into a drawdown of troops, I think is a different matter. But, we 

should certainly expect to see some drawdown this year and very 

strong progress toward drawdown by 2014. 

Senator UDALL. Dr. Kilcullen, doesn’t it worry you at all—you 

talk about NATO, but it looks like the major NATO forces are coming out much sooner than 2014. The British and the Polish, aren’t 

their deadlines this year or next year? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. The British deadlines, actually, are April 2015, 

which is the next British election, so that—the British will be 

there, Australians have already said that they’ll be there, the 

Canadians have—— 

Senator UDALL. All the way to 2014. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Absolutely, yes. 

Senator UDALL. OK. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. The Canadians have already pulled out. But, 

the—— 

Senator UDALL. The Polish? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I’m not aware of their specific deadline. Other 

members of the panel may be. 

Senator UDALL. Yes, OK. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Yes. 

Senator UDALL. OK. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. But, I think it’s not a matter of the coalition collapsing around us; it’s a matter of very significant military 

progress not matched by the political and reconciliation progress 

that needs to go with it if you actually want to get to a sustainable 

state in 2014. The issue is not about military success; it’s about 

sustainability of progress after the military forces begin to come 

out. 

Senator UDALL. So, it’s a combination of nation-building and the 

kind of effort we’re talking about, that I think Dr. Jones talked 

about, the particular area, up on the border, where al-Qaeda is 

partnering with tribes in those regions. I mean, are we putting in 

the resources we need to put into that area? It sounds like you’re 

saying this is the area where all of these folks are at. Why aren’t 

all our resources focused on that area—and the Afghan troops and 

to—why aren’t we having that be our primary focus, if this is what 

our mission is, is to defeat al-Qaeda and the people that are 

partnered with them? 

Dr. JONES. Well, I think our forces are primarily focusing on two 

areas. One is RC East, Regional Command East, where these areas 

are. And second is the Taliban’s command and control, down in 

Regional Command South. So, I think, in that sense, our priorities 

are roughly accurate. 

What I would also note, in—and you refer to ‘‘nation-building’’— 

is—and this goes back to a comment we had earlier—I would 

strongly, strongly suggest that, both historically and presently, the 

answer is not only a central government in Afghanistan. In my 

view, that is an ahistorical Westernized approach to understanding 

Afghanistan. And I would argue that, as we look at transition, 

some of the more successful areas, ones that don’t get a lot of 

45 

media attention—Uruzgan—Uruzgan province has largely transitioned from Taliban control in most of the districts to allied control. 

These are allied, both Ghilzai and Durrani Pashtuns, with a very 

small special forces—these are Operational Detachment Alpha— 

footprint. They’ve rebelled against the Taliban. That’s part of, I 

think, a transition. And, in that case, it’s not a central government 

presence through all of Uruzgan or Arghandab, in Kandahar, or 

Panjwaii, now, in Kandahar; it’s a notable local presence as well. 

In fact, that’s, I think, what we missed, for 9 years, from our strategy in Afghanistan, that General Petraeus has more recently 

added. 

Senator UDALL. But, isn’t it true the central government doesn’t 

like that trend? They see that as a threat. 

Dr. JONES. I would say it was actually President Karzai that supported the creation of this program, in the summer of 2010. 

Senator UDALL. But having militias and locally armed operations, I think he’s very wishy-washy on that. I—— 

Dr. JONES. Well, I think that the concern, in my discussions at 

the palace, has been, if these forces are operating against the central government, that is the most significant concern, and if they 

are large and offensive. That has definitely not been the case in 

any of the areas I’m talking about. These are village-level, small, 

tribal/subtribe, community-level forces. These are not militias, as 

the term is generally turned. 

Senator UDALL. Senator Kerry, sorry I’ve run over so much here. 

The CHAIRMAN. No, no—— 

Senator UDALL. I know Dr. Biddle wants to say something. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Notwithstanding what Dr. Jones pointed out, I think 

it is fair to say, as a general matter, that the Karzai government 

has not been as enthusiastic about decentralization as we have 

been, in various respects, which brings us back to the point that 

Dr. Kilcullen mentioned earlier, which is the relative priority we 

place on the security effort, as opposed to the governance reform 

effort. I think the political strategy in the theater to induce a 

Karzai government, which is currently substantially less enthusiastic than we are about decentralization, to move in the direction 

we would like them to move is a tremendous unmet priority right 

now. 

I think, for understandable reasons, the theater command has 

tended to believe that it needs to show early progress in security; 

and that is indeed a requirement. But, I think if what we do is to 

prioritize security to the point where we simply kick the can down 

the road on the eventual requirement to deal with governance 

issues, we run the risk of undermining the security improvements 

that we’re buying at such great cost today. 

So, to the extent that we need to change priorities in the conduct 

of the campaign, a change I would like to see is an increased emphasis, and an earlier priority placed, on doing the things we have 

to do in order to fill in the missing implementation guidance on 

how we’re going to improve governance. 

One last point, in due defense of the administration on the 2014 

date, I think one way of thinking about it is that the deadline has 

moved somehow from 2011 to 2014. But, if one’s going to be fair 

to them, what this really represents, I think, is a greater degree 

46 

of specificity, still substantially lacking, on what the end state is 

supposed to be. The original announcement was that what was 

going to happen in July 2011 was the beginning of something; it 

was very vague as to what the end of something looked like. There 

was no indication, at the West Point speech, of whether what 

began in 2011 would end by 2013, 2014, 2050. I think what the administration has gradually been doing is painting a slightly more 

detailed picture of what happens later. I think, however, a substantially more detailed picture than that is needed, for all sorts of reasons, both strategic and, I suspect, political. 

Senator UDALL. Thank you, Senator Kerry. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator. 

Let me come back to a couple things. I want to check on some 

history here. Is it accurate that during the ramp-up to the initial 

beginning of the war, under George Bush, that Mullah Omar offered up Osama bin Laden, providing he was transferred to a third 

country, Arab country? Anybody? 

Dr. JONES. My understanding is CIA chief of station in Islamabad sat down for talks along the border, offered that alternative, 

and that was rejected by the Taliban. That’s my understanding. 

The CHAIRMAN. And then, subsequently, when the bombing 

started, was there not an offer made, at that point, to give him up? 

You’re not sure? 

Dr. JONES. I’m not aware of—— 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

Dr. JONES [continuing]. Such an offer. 

The CHAIRMAN. By Mullah Omar? By the Taliban? 

What I’m getting at is, some people in the region have suggested 

that the Taliban have been somewhat chastened by this dislocation 

and loss of power, and by the loss of personnel that has taken 

place. And there are arguments made, by some, that the Taliban 

would not, in fact, welcome al-Qaeda back, because they’re more 

interested in their own political power and possibilities within 

Afghanistan itself. Can you comment on that? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I’d like to just offer some data. I want to add one 

historical point to your historical comment, Senator. 

The Taliban, in fact, surrendered after the fall of Kandahar, in 

2001. Roughly 20 al-Qaeda—I’m sorry, Taliban senior leadership of 

the Quetta Shura signed a letter, which was delivered to President 

Karzai, by people, including Mullah Baradar, Mullah Dadullah 

Lang, Haji Zahir, all pretty well-known names, in terms of leading 

the Taliban now. Mullah Omar moved into Pakistan, but the 

majority of the leadership of the Kandahar Taliban actually surrendered to the Karzai government, acknowledged the authority of the 

Karzai government, and went back to their properties inside 

Afghanistan and tried to live in peace for a period after 2001. 

What happened after that was what I would characterize as a 

failed peacemaking activity, where we continued our focus on 

al-Qaeda, now in Pakistan, and a number of actors in the Afghanistan environment, who were former mujahideen leaders, longstanding enemy of the Taliban, went after these people who had 

surrendered to settle scores. And, over about a 2-year period, most 

of the people who signed that surrender document fled, under the 

threat of torture or execution or abuse by these power brokers, into 

47 

Pakistan and gradually reformed their organization. The Quetta 

Shura wasn’t even formed until October 2003; that’s 6 months after 

the invasion of Iraq. 

So, there’s an Afghan history, here, that we need to think about 

that’s more recent than, you know, the 19th century, about why 

these guys are actually fighting. And—— 

The CHAIRMAN. That’s what I’m—that’s exactly what I’m trying 

to get at. 

Dr. KILCULLEN [continuing]. It has a lot to do with the perception 

of injustice. 

The CHAIRMAN. Right, lack of justice. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Justice is really the framework of what drove the 

original Taliban, is it not? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. It certainly is. The Taliban initially was an 

armed vigilante movement. 

Some people may be aware of a Afghan Border Police officer, 

called Abdul Raziq, who currently runs operations down in Spin 

Boldak, in southern Kandahar. His father, Mansour al-Raziq, was 

a famous and famously abusive warlord in the Kandahar area. He 

was the first warlord to be executed by the Taliban, in the early 

1990s; they hanged him from the barrel of a tank on the Kandahar 

Road. And I think that indicates some of the problem right now, 

in that the people that are working with us most effectively on the 

ground are, in some cases, longstanding enemies of the Taliban 

precisely because they abused the population and the Taliban 

attacked them in the early 1990s. 

To your second question, I’ve actually had the opportunity, over 

the last 7 years or so, to speak with a large number of Afghans in 

the field, including some very closely aligned with the opposition. 

What you tend to get from them is a statement to the effect that, 

‘‘We don’t like the Pakistanis, we don’t like living in Pakistan, we 

don’t like al-Qaeda, the worst thing we ever did was bring these 

Arabs into our midst who caused this problem and brought the 

international community down on us like a ton of bricks.’’ And they 

will say, ‘‘Look, we’re willing to swear off allegiance to al-Qaeda, 

we’re willing to promise not to be a threat to any other country, 

we’re willing to consider all kinds of reforms to Afghan governance, 

but we need foreign troops to leave the country.’’ 

You’ve got to put a huge grain of salt on comments like that from 

people within an organization that’s very diverse and disorganized, 

in the way that the Taliban is. But, you do get a similar kind of 

theme from lots of different people, who basically say, ‘‘Look, we 

recognize that we screwed up in bringing al-Qaeda into Afghanistan. We’ve learned our lesson. Can we come back, now, and be 

part of a future solution?’’ 

The CHAIRMAN. So, just playing devil’s advocate here, if you’re 

looking at our interests, our interests are to prevent us from being 

attacked again—then we need to have a sufficient level of stability. 

But, that stability, it seems to me, is not going to come until you 

have some capacity for this justice and for different groups to be 

adequately represented in the power structure. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I think that’s a very good way to characterize it. 

Another way to think about it is exclusive versus inclusive security. 

48 

If you try to exclude groups from the security process, then you create spoilers who are going to attack that security process. If you 

try to make it inclusive, that’s a much more complicated and longer 

term, messier process, but it ultimately has a higher chance of 

success. 

The CHAIRMAN. Why, then, is our current presence structured as 

it is, in support of Karzai and the central government, but not 

politically adept enough or inclusive of these other efforts? Is that 

not doomed? We are plunking down a whole bunch of money for a 

long, long period of time because we’re basically backing one set of 

people within an internal civil conflict. But perhaps our interests 

could, in fact, be satisfied differently? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I want to defer to Dr. Jones, here, because the 

points that he’s been making about the Afghan local policing initiative, I think, are very important. 

There’s a second component to it—the village stability operations—which is, in fact, a political component about village-level 

and district-level political stability. And I think that United States 

forces in Afghanistan have, for a very long time, been pursuing an 

inclusive security model, trying to get the majority of actors, at the 

village and district level involved in local-level peace deals involving security commitments on all sides to create, if you like, a resilient structure that resists the Taliban. The problem that we have 

is in connecting that to our Afghan Government partners who, as 

you noted, have different interests. And I think that’s part of the 

problem. 

The CHAIRMAN. To what degree could Iranian interests, which 

are not aligned with the Taliban and also don’t appreciate the drug 

trafficking, and to what degree could Russian and/or some of the 

‘Stans be brought to the table here? Is that a possibility? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I think that it’s certainly a possibility. And I 

would add China to that mix. China has—— 

The CHAIRMAN. China, too. 

Dr. KILCULLEN [continuing]. An incredibly strong economic and 

geopolitical interest in the stability of Pakistan. 

The CHAIRMAN. And how do you see them being able to play that 

role? What could you see, strategically, being the framework that 

brings people together? 

Dr. JONES. Well, I think, on the Iranian front, the Iranians have 

been helpful, in some ways, in providing a range of development 

assistance in the west and in parts of Hazarajat, in the center of 

Afghanistan. They have a vested interest, over the long run, in my 

view—and they’ve showed this, historically—of developing a range 

of energy ties with Afghanistan, and of pushing strongly for the 

prevention of a Taliban-governed Afghanistan. So, I think the 

Iranians actually have a quite helpful role to play. 

I would caution that the problems we’re going to have in trying 

to bring everybody together are, their interests do diverge somewhat. So, if one looks at the Russian—the primary Russian support 

networks tend to be with the Uzbek and Tajik communities of the 

north, not with the Pashtun communities in the south, which 

largely are Pakistan’s support networks. So, at some point, for example, reconciliation discussions may be supported by Pakistan, 

but generally aren’t going to be supported by the Russians and 

49 

their Tajik and Uzbek support networks. So, in that sense, there 

are going to be clear friction points in some aspects of trying to 

bring regional countries together. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lugar. 

Senator LUGAR. As a followup to that, in the past, we’ve talked 

about warlords, and the respective areas in which they were the 

leaders, and the continuing impact of this on the ability to govern 

Afghanistan from the center. When discussing this, we’ve also kept 

in mind the difference between the Pashtuns of the south and east 

and the myriad other groups spread throughout the country. With 

this in mind, hypothetically, what does political Afghanistan look 

like? Is a stable Afghanistan one in which we return to more localized government of sorts, with the warlords—the regional leader— 

who are more akin to the countries north of Afghanistan? Or is it 

closer to an Iran or even to the Pashtuns in Pakistan, in control 

of specific parts of the country? 

This apparently was the case in Afghanistan for a long time. 

And, as all of you pointed out, Afghanistan was never very selfsustaining, in terms of economic support or political support. It was 

always buttressed by these alliances across the various borders. 

We’ve favored President Karzai and a central government and the 

idea that there would be national elections, a national Parliament, 

and so forth, in a manner somewhat akin to our traditions. But, 

is the former situation one that is ultimately more promising, in 

terms of this political stability we’re talking about today? 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, I think, when Afghanistan has been stable, it’s 

because there was an equilibrium relationship between the periphery and the center that obeyed a set of deals such that each side 

had a realm of autonomy and each side had a set of limited obligations toward the other. 

The problem we’re in now is we have a substantial disequilibrium, in which the periphery is too little constrained and is preying 

upon the population in the areas in ways that give the Taliban 

access to population centers and undermine our efforts. Some degree of reestablishment of a more stable equilibrium is necessary. 

Now, the original 2001 plan recast that equilibrium radically in 

favor of the center. And I think that’s proven to be unstable. To 

recast it radically in the direction of the periphery is where we’re 

going now, by default. And it’s not working very well for us, either. 

I think what we need to do is find something between the radical 

empowerment of local power brokers that we’ve fallen into by accident since 2001, and the insistence on an unreasonable degree of 

centralization that we adopted at 2001. I think there are a variety 

of ways to think about recasting those bargains in ways that would 

make them more sustainable. Part of making them sustainable, 

however, is going to be resource input from outside the system, 

which probably means from us. For the center to be able to enforce 

any set of redline restrictions on the behavior of local power brokers, it’s going to have to have sticks at its disposal and it’s going 

to have to have carrots at its disposal. Its ability to raise revenue 

sufficient to make the carrots sweet or the sticks harsh is very limited. I think, if what we’re going to aim for is a reestablishment 

of a more plausible balance between the center and the periphery 

in Afghanistan, we or others in the international system are going 

50 

to have to empower the center in such a way that it can offer a 

mix of sticks and carrots that are persuasive enough to reestablish 

the kind of bargains that existed in the Musahiban era. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, Dr. Biddle, what you’re describing is a situation, which you all touch upon, and that is considerable continued economic support from the United States. As you’ve stated, the 

necessary revenues will not be forthcoming on the Afghan side. 

And so, as we discuss this situation with our constituents and the 

Congress, we’re talking about a stream of expenditures well beyond 

2014. And this isn’t often discussed very publicly, except in this 

committee, when we bring it up, because it is difficult, politically, 

given the arguments that we’re having with regard to our current 

budget. But, in any event, it’s important to try to get an idea on 

what is likely to bring about this stability that we’re talking about. 

Now, you’ve all also raised the question of—which is not necessarily frightening—but President Karzai’s term of office comes to 

an end in 2014. We don’t really know, as we’ve discussed Pakistan 

and the impact there, when terms of office come to an end or, how 

power is sorted out there. So, even as we’re talking about the stability, from our standpoint today, there is a potentially unstable 

political framework in terms of who runs these countries and their 

interactions with each other, to say the least. This is beyond our 

ability to solve, here in this hearing or in this committee, but it’s 

an important factor to be considering as we discuss the future commitment of our own resources to the region. 

We already have real problems, in terms of delivery from the 

Karzai government, not to mention the problems of Kerry-LugarBerman in Pakistan, which are so difficult. With regard to KerryLugar-Berman, we’ve spent only $179 million out of $1.5 billion in 

the whole year, on four projects, due to lack of confidence in anybody administering these funds or more fundamentally, disagreements regarding what we should be spending the funds on to begin 

with. 

So, I just raise this as background for a dilemma. We finally get 

back to the thought that we’re involved in all of this because we 

don’t want people plotting attacks on the United States of America 

in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the surrounding territories. And so, 

the basic question still is: What is the best route to prevent this? 

How much involvement, how much expense, for how long? 

Yes, Dr. Jones. 

Dr. JONES. Sir, if I could make a brief comment on that and to 

come back to this justice issue. 

I think one unfortunate reality, for much of the last 10 years, 

even on the justice front, is the choice we gave—and I sat in 

Shuras, in villages, giving Afghans this choice between central government justice—that is, a court system that was nonexistent in 

their areas—and a Taliban shadow court. Well, as part of—and Dr. 

Kilcullen mentioned this earlier—the village stability operations 

portfolio that President Karzai signed, General Petraeus has been 

a major supportive of, is—the choice now is what Afghans have 

been doing generations, and that is supporting justice, in rural 

areas, through Shuras, informal decisionmaking. 

51 

There is an answer here. This is the component that Dr. Biddle 

mentioned earlier. The 50 years of stability, between 1929 and 

1978, that has been a key, key part of it. 

And, even on the dollar sign, just to give you an example, 

roughly the average cost for Afghan National Security Forces, for 

an individual, that’s a combined police and army, is about $32 million per year. For the local police it’s $6,000 per year. We’re actually talking about fairly small amounts of money: $10,000 Afghan 

local police, $60 million. That’s actually—and we’re seeing, I would 

argue, major progress in the south on this issue. The U.S. Government assessments indicate this. 

So, I would say some of the progress we’ve had, in the south, is 

actually coming with a very small expense. 

Dr. BIDDLE. By way of brief amplification, with respect to the 

cost of what would be required to keep Afghanistan stable in the 

long run, again, it’s important to distinguish between wartime 

costs and peacetime costs. If we look back to what Afghanistan 

absorbed from the international system in aid during a period of 

stability in the mid-20th century, it was typically receiving something in the order of $200–$300 million a year, from all sources, 

in 2011 dollars. Relative to what we are now spending to wage this 

war, that is extraordinarily cheap. 

Even if you raised that, to account for the needs of wartime reconstruction or a different Afghanistan or other requirements, by 

a factor of ten, it would still be at a small fraction of what we 

spend today. I think the investment required of us to sustain an 

Afghanistan in the long term, relative to what we’re spending now 

to create an uncertain outcome militarily, would be a modest 

investment. 

If we decide that we are unwilling to make that commitment, 

that we are unwilling to make that investment in the long-term 

post-conflict stability of the country, we will, I think, with high 

probability, get an opportunity to run the social science experiment 

and see what happens if Afghanistan collapses and if Pakistan is 

then affected. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, I thank you, each—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Senator LUGAR [continuing]. All of you, for tremendous testimony. This is very helpful to us. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think, obviously, everybody would opt for that 

expense, if we knew we could get there. The question is, ‘‘Do we 

have the political framework to get there?’’ which we want to come 

back to. 

Senator Shaheen. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I apologize for having missed most of this hearing. I had to 

preside. So, hopefully I won’t repeat some of the questions that 

have already been raised. 

And I think this follows the line of discussion that you were having with Senator Lugar. As we look at what it will take to sustain 

the Afghan security forces at their current levels, obviously we’re 

on an unsustainable course, given that, at the current level—or the 

target level, it would require about $10 billion a year. And the 

52 

Afghan Government takes in about $100 billion in revenue a year, 

so obviously there’s a disconnect there. 

So, I guess I want to start with a couple questions. First of all, 

we heard, in—I think, both in this committee and in Armed Services, that there is consideration of increasing the target number of 

Afghan security forces from 305,000 to as high as 378,000. My first 

question is: Do we really need to do that? And is that a realistic 

number? And then, what are the prospects, given particularly what 

you said, Dr. Jones, in terms of funding that level of security 

forces, of the United States ultimately footing the bill, if that’s 

what we do? And obviously that’s a concern that I would have. 

So, I don’t know who would like to address that first. 

Dr. Kilcullen. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Yes—yes, Senator. 

I think we’ve covered this, to some extent, but just to rehash. I 

think that—do we need to do it? Yes, we probably do need to do 

it. Because, if we lose the war, then all the money we’ve spent so 

far will be to naught. Can we afford it? That’s the purpose, I think, 

of focusing heavily on the drawdown right now. The war—roughly 

80 percent of the cost of the war is the cost of U.S. combat involvement. Another 10 percent is ANSF development, and another 10 

percent is civilian assistance. So, we could get to a much, much 

more sustainable position, by drawing down U.S. forces by 2014, 

that would allow us to buy some time. 

The devil in the detail, from my perspective, is the issue of demobilization. If you expand the Afghan security forces to 375,000 in 

order to win the combat phase of the war, what are you doing with 

all those armed guys afterward? And what’s the plan for actually 

putting them into productive economically fruitful labor, rather 

than having them on the street with weapons? That has traditionally been the Achilles’ heel of most foreign security assistance programs of this type. It’s something that people in Afghanistan are 

well aware of. But, it’s something that we really need to engage 

with, I think, as a priority problem as we get closer to 2014. 

Senator SHAHEEN. So, you, then, agree with the assessment that 

we need to increase the Afghan security forces to about the 375,000 

level. 

Is that something that everybody else on the panel agrees with? 

Dr. JONES. Yes, I do, with two caveats. One is, assuming that 

also triggers an American drawdown in numbers of forces. That is, 

the Afghan National Security Forces are coming up as the United 

States numbers are going significantly down. And second, just to 

add to that, the additional part of that number was—and this is 

in addition—up to 30,000 Afghan local police. So, this is both a topdown national security force and a bottom-up local police. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I believe it’s appropriate and economically efficient 

to increase Afghan National Security Forces, given their cost advantages over ours, subject to provisos, of course; one being, to amplify Dr. Kilcullen’s point, that demobilization needs to be planned 

for during mobilization. Postponing that as a consideration that 

we’ll deal man ̃ ana is dangerous. And I think, to NTMA’s credit in 

Afghanistan, they are now doing, for example, literacy training 

that is designed, in part, to enable an eventual reabsorption of this 

force into a productive economy as it builds down. But, more genVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
53 

erally, I think a fair criticism can be made that we aren’t devoting 

enough attention to systematically thinking about the build-down 

process, to avoid having this institution become a source of instability once the war turns less violent. 

The other proviso I would offer, however, is that there’s a strong 

tendency, both in the United States and in theater, to see the problem of building an indigenous military force in Afghanistan in 

quantitative numerical terms. Do we have enough police? Do we 

have enough soldiers? Do we have enough trainers? Do we have 

enough ranges? 

When you look at the history of military performance of developing-world armies, I would submit that very rarely does failure 

occur, when it occurs, because they didn’t have enough training 

courses or enough rifle ranges or enough advisers. When developing-world militaries fail, it seems to me, it’s typically because the 

officer corps becomes politicized and corrupted, because the society 

with which they are embedded is politicized and corrupted, and 

militaries tend to be products of the society that produces them. A 

corrupt officer corps cannot command effective combat behavior 

from its troops. 

I think, in general, it would be to our advantage to pay more attention to the problem of the politics of Afghan security force development, rather than simply the numerical issues of, ‘‘Do we have 

the training regime filled with the necessary number of trainers, 

or not?’’ and to devote the intelligence resources in theater that are 

required in order to understand the question of the political orientation of the officer corps that we’re creating, and to fit it into 

the context of similar examples elsewhere, and understand whether 

or not we’re headed toward the development of an institution that’s 

as professional and politically disinterested as we hope it is, or 

whether we’re headed toward an institution that looks more like 

the history of other similar organizations in other places and times. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Let me change subjects, before my time is up, 

because last week, during our hearings, a few of the witnesses suggested that bin Laden’s death would give some opportunity for further, or more, negotiations with Taliban members in Afghanistan 

to renounce al-Qaeda. Do you agree with that assessment? And is 

there any evidence, at this point, to indicate how they might be 

reacting? 

Senator SHAHEEN. Dr. Kilcullen. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. We saw some pretty immediate commentary, by 

Taliban in Afghanistan, about the killing of Osama bin Laden. And 

it’s interesting to look at that commentary and see how it differs 

in different groups in the Taliban. The Taliban, or ex-Taliban, representative on the High Peace Council came out pretty quickly and 

said, ‘‘Look, this will create a sort of circuitbreaker, and this will 

create the opportunity for people who wanted to negotiate, but felt 

like they couldn’t abandon al-Qaeda while Osama bin Laden was 

alive, to really see that as an opportunity to move on.’’ 

Some junior commanders, a Taliban commander in Loya Paktia, 

which is southeastern Afghanistan, at the, sort of, field level, called 

in and said, ‘‘Look, these guys are Arabs. We’re Afghans. We have 

a different jihad from them. We admired and respected Osama bin 

Laden, but it doesn’t make any difference, we’re just going to keep 

54 

fighting.’’ And I think there’s a significant element in which the 

younger generation of fighters, forward in Afghanistan, have a different attitude than the leadership group back in Pakistan. 

And then the third thing that happened was, Muttawakil, who’s 

the former Taliban foreign minister, came out and said, ‘‘Actually 

this will increase our desire to fight.’’ 

So, there’s actually very different point of view coming from different parts of the Taliban. 

I think what we’re going to see, however, is the acceleration of 

various processes that have already started in al-Qaeda, that the 

power of the central group will be diluted somewhat as we get into 

an internal power struggle, where people are struggling to see who 

will replace Osama bin Laden at the central leadership level. Dr. 

Jones already referred to some, but I’d add Saif al-Adel to that 

group, head of the military committee. Abu Yahya al-Libi’s already 

been mentioned. It’s not always appreciated quite how divisive a 

figure Ayman al-Zawahiri is within al-Qaeda. So, I think it’s quite 

likely that they may turn inward and spend some time organizing 

themselves. And that actually does create a window of opportunity. 

But, I think we also should recognize that a lot of people that 

support the Taliban—sorry, support al-Qaeda, in Pakistan, do so 

for economic reasons. These are business deals. And I think that 

there’s a lot of other things that go into the mix, other than simply, 

you know, Pashtun honor and politics. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. JONES. Very briefly. I think, one issue is, this is—this is 

partly an intelligence question, so that is—that is, I will pose this 

as, What does our intelligence now say about that relationship? 

The second part of that, and the more concerning element, is, when 

we say ‘‘Taliban,’’ that obviously includes a range of different militant groups. The strongest ties have often been—especially recently, with the Haqqanis in North Waziristan, Siraj Haqqani and 

some of the senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Ilyas Kashmiri. So, 

elements of the Afghan insurgency, I suspect, will continue to keep 

a relationship—a senior-level relationship with al-Qaeda, despite 

the death of Osama bin Laden. 

But, I think the onus is now on the Taliban itself and its inner 

Shura. Give them a chance to break—they have the opportunity 

now—are we giving them a chance to break ties and actually demonstrate that? And so, I would say they have an opportunity now. 

Show us. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Shaheen. 

Unfortunately, I have a 12 noon meeting with Senator McCain 

and some others, and I need to leave. Senator Corker is going to 

close out the hearing, or Senator Shaheen, if they both want to 

continue. 

What I’d like to do is leave one question on the table. And I 

would like you to answer it, for the record, with Senator Corker. 

And that is, I’d like each of you to speak specifically to the political 

solution. In the absence of a military solution, I want each of you 

to give your vision of what is the political solution and how you, 

specifically, arrive at it. And I’d like you to lay that out. 

55 

And again, I appreciate, enormously, your coming in today. It’s 

been very, very interesting. It really scratches the surface in a 

number of areas. What I’d like to do is ask you if you’d be willing 

to come back sometime, to have a discussion with members who 

might like to take part in it. We could have a little more back-andforth and really dig into some of this stuff, in a nonhearing atmosphere. So, if you’d be willing to do that, I think it’d be very helpful. 

Thank you for doing that. 

But, if you’d answer that question, for the record, about your 

vision of that political settlement, that’d be very helpful. 

Thank you. 

Dr. KILCULLEN. Nobody seems to want to go first, so I’ll throw 

myself on that particular grenade. 

I think we should look at the coming constitutional crisis, in 

2014, as an opportunity as well as a problem. When President 

Karzai’s last term ended, which was April 2009, there was a long 

hiatus before the elections in August 2009, and then a long period 

before he finally began his second term in November 2009. 

Depending on how you define the start and end of his term, his 

time as President either comes to an end in April 2014 or in November 2014. 

So, at some point in 2014, he’s gone as President of Afghanistan, 

unless there’s a significant change to the Afghan Constitution. And 

it’s quite likely that some people associated with the President may 

be thinking that that’s a good idea at this point, that, for the future 

stability of Afghanistan, for the future interests of their part of 

Afghan politics, it makes sense to change the arrangement so that 

he can remain in office. There are other people—in the Parliament, 

in particular—who are deeply opposed to that idea. And I think 

that that actually creates the opportunity for us to revisit some of 

the aspects of the constitutional makeup of the Afghan state that 

have really contributed to the problems that we’ve seen. 

When I say ‘‘us,’’ I mean, however, Afghans. You know, we have 

to set the condition under which Afghans can have that discussion 

themselves. In 2002, at the time of the Bonn Agreement, the country was still smoking, and there just wasn’t the ability to bring together a large enough group of people to represent the range of interests in Afghanistan, and to have a genuine discussion about 

what’s the appropriate way forward. 

And so, to some extent the international community imposed a 

solution, which centralized power in the hands of a person too 

weak to exercise that power on his own. And so, he had to make 

a series of deals with power brokers across the Afghan environment. And, having done that, it’s now very difficult for him to 

make the structure work. I think we should have some sympathy 

for President Karzai, given the circumstances that he was handed. 

But, I think there’s an opportunity to change that now, to relook 

at those issues. Issues, like, for example, the failure to authorize 

the creation of political parties. There’s no political parties in 

Afghanistan. The only thing that really represents the sort of largescale mass social movement that generates leadership as an American political party does is the Taliban. Legitimate political parties 

don’t exist in the environment in Afghanistan. 

56 

The other factor is the Northern Alliance. And I think it’s all too 

easy to talk about a negotiated solution. But, if that solution leaves 

out the Northern Alliance, if people in the other ethnic groups 

believe that they’re going to be sold down the river as the result 

of a cozy deal between the Taliban and the international community, that’s a recipe for future civil war in Afghanistan. So, I think 

there’s an opportunity coming to seize that constitutional crisis and 

turn it into a more of a review of the makeup of the Afghan State. 

And I think, to the extent that we can get Afghans to buy into that 

process, rather than imposing it from outside, we have a much better chance of creating a sustainable governance structure. 

Dr. JONES. Couple of key points on—this a very important discussion. 

First, let me just say, to preface my remarks, that I do not think 

we can assume a settlement will work. Both the history in Afghanistan, multiple efforts in the 1990s, brokered by the U.N., did not 

work and succeed in a successful settlement. 

Second, as part of that, most of the serious works on the end of 

insurgencies and civil wars indicate, at best, a 50/50 chance that 

it ends with a settlement. Many end with a military victory, by one 

side or the other, depending on which work you look at. 

Nonetheless, I believe it’s important, actually, to push forward on 

settlement discussions. And a few comments along those lines. 

First, what will be important is who is the third party that is 

helping broker the deal. I think, frankly, this is a role where some 

organizations, like the U.N., may be able to play a useful role, depending on who the individual is. Possibly somebody like Lakhdar 

Brahimi, who appears to have some support among both sides, 

maybe somebody viewed as trustworthy. 

Second, and as part of that, Pakistan has to be involved in any 

discussion. Based on the amount of assistance, both direct and indirect, they give to insurgent groups, they have to be a participator 

in the discussions, as, obviously, does the United States. 

In addition, I would argue and support the construction even of 

an overt Taliban political wing. This seems to have been a necessary component of any deals made in northern Ireland, in a 

range of other contexts, in El Salvador, of an overt political wing, 

whose individuals are identified as supported. They can travel. So, 

in that sense, that may rethink some of the U.N. and other blacklists with a political element. And then give them a chance. 

Now, how a political settlement could transpire, there are multiple avenues, but I would say those are key steps that have to be 

thought through: a, assuming that it may not work, so the military 

front should still be pursued; think very carefully about the third 

party, including the role of other states in the region, including 

Pakistan; and then supporting a political wing. This is, in my view, 

actually would be quite helpful. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I think there’s an important relationship between 

the political end state that we seek in Afghanistan and what we 

can do with respect to negotiations. If we insist on something that 

looks like the 2001 design, that makes it very hard to see what’s 

in it for the Taliban in any possible settlement. The Taliban are 

not a broad-based popular movement in Afghanistan. If the most 

they’re offered, in any prospective settlement negotiation, is the opVerDate Nov 24 2008 19:49 Aug 18, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\2011 ISSUE TEXT HEARINGS\051011-P.TXT
57 

portunity, perhaps, to run for office on an equal basis with any 

other candidate in a highly centralized national system where they 

have to compete on a national basis, their ability to command seats 

will be very limited. And it’s hard to see how they would see this 

as being worth making compromises to accept. 

I think, almost certainly, the direction of change, with respect to 

Afghan political end states, is likely to be in the direction of decentralizing nominal authority, but centralizing actual power, relative 

to what it’s become by 2011. At the moment, we have this radical 

dysjunction between a paper blueprint for how the country is supposed to be run, which assigns almost all governing authorities of 

any consequence to Kabul, and the actual distribution of political 

power in the country, which is mostly in the hands of peripheral 

warlords and power brokers that tend to tie the hands of Kabul to 

an important degree. 

I think the right way forward, in terms of thinking about what 

we can live with as an end state, is shifting the nominal powers 

of governance outward, but establishing enforceable limits on the 

behavior of peripheral authorities, such that we can keep them 

within bounds that don’t create radical public dissatisfaction with 

a predatory form of local governance. 

And I suspect that the key bounds that we need to pay attention 

to are: first of all, with respect to our national security interests 

involved, we have to ensure that local authorities in Afghanistan 

obey the foreign policy of the state, which is designed to prevent 

them from establishing safe havens for cross-border activity by 

militants, insurgents, or terrorists. 

Second, we have to prevent them from preying on their neighbors 

locally. 

But, third, and importantly, we need to cap the corruption take 

by local officials in ways that remove what is currently often an 

existential economic threat directed at local victims by powerful 

networks of malign officials. And I think a key to doing that is establishing a redline restraint at the taking of land. In an agrarian 

society, land and its control represent the ability to feed your family or a threat of starvation. One of the most damaging forms of 

predatory governance behavior in Afghanistan today is land-taking 

by networks of corrupt officials for the benefit of the network, 

which then drives the victims into the arms of the Taliban. 

I think that if we establish a series of what amount to reconfigurations, through deals, of the relationship between the periphery 

and the center that say, ‘‘As long as you avoid a collection of activities that will yield enforcement action, prominently including the 

illegal taking of land, we will allow you a sphere of autonomy to 

do what you wish in other domains, but that if you violate any of 

the explicit terms of the agreement, then you can expect enforcement activity from the center,’’ we, then, need, again, to be able to 

provide the resources to the center to enable and to enforce that 

deal. 

If we arrive at a more practically recast bargain between the periphery and the center, that, in turn, opens up opportunities for a 

reconciliation negotiation with elements of the Taliban in which, 

for example, they could be offered things like seats in Parliament, 

position as a legitimate political actor within the society, either as 

58 

a party or as individuals. And you could imagine there at least 

being the terms for a conversation with different Taliban factions 

about under what conditions might they be willing to renounce 

al-Qaeda, lay down arms, and come into the government. 

As a final point, with respect to the nature of that conversation 

with the Taliban, I think it’s important that we regard both the 

prospective political role of the Taliban in a possibly reconfigured 

Afghan state and the military presence of foreign powers as negotiable. At the end of the day, a permanent U.S. military presence 

in Afghanistan is primarily an instrument, or a means to an end, 

of a stable South Asia. 

It seems to me that, if we regard it as a means to an end, and 

not as an end of superordinate importance because of the consequences for power-projection capability of a United States base in 

Afghanistan, we need to be able to treat it as part of a negotiation 

with the Taliban, especially given the centrality of concerns with 

long-term foreign military presence in Afghanistan, in at least the 

things that the Taliban have been telling us to date. 

Senator CORKER [presiding]. Thank you. 

I know time’s limited. I do—the issue you’re talking about, about, 

basically, redlining behavior—And, you know, it’s—I think all of us 

who go there are frustrated by the sense, it feels like we’re fighting 

the Mafia, in many ways. And our soldiers are really fighting criminality mostly on the ground. I mean, that’s mostly what’s happening. But, the cultural aspect that you’re talking about, about 

the takings of land and all of that, is that something that is 

Taliban-bred, or is that something that’s just part of theAfghan culture, in general? 

Dr. BIDDLE. I don’t think this is cultural. I think this is largely 

a response to fairly recent events in Afghanistan since 2001; and 

especially the handing off, from the United States to NATO, of responsibility for the mission in 2003, and Afghan perceptions, in 

more recent years, that the United States lacks the will to bring 

this to a successful conclusion and is heading for the exit. Those 

perceptions lead to an expectation of abandonment and create what 

political scientists sometimes refer to as a ‘‘negative shadow of the 

future,’’ in which people who believe that, although they would prefer it to be otherwise, the government is likely to fall, and is likely 

to fall in a relatively short period of time, have powerful disincentives to make positive long-term decisions about how they run their 

province or about how they run their business, and have enormous 

incentives for corruption in the near term, to get while the getting’s 

good and provide for a safe exile after a looming collapse that people worry is on the horizon. That has created powerful incentives 

for networks of officials to come together in exploitative predatory 

ways so as to provide for economic gain for themselves and the 

members of their network, while they still have the opportunity. 

And the taking of land, again, I think is, in many ways, the most 

virulent of these. It’s not by any means the only piece of it, but it’s 

the piece that’s most threatening to the victims and tends, as a 

result, I think, to be the most important accelerant of insurgent 

activity in the country. 

I don’t see anything in the society, political culture, or history of 

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59 

ment officials to throw people off their land and engage in corrupt 

real-estate deals that will enable short-term windfalls to the officials involved. I think this is relatively recent in nature, and is 

potentially reversible if we put sufficient effort into it in multiple 

domains. 

Senator CORKER. As we’ve evolved to this sort of ‘‘good enough’’ 

vision of Afghanistan that continues to change—and I know each 

of you have talked about how that needs to be defined more fully— 

you know, it really, when you spend time, as you have more than 

me, I’m sure—President Karzai—I mean, it’s almost getting back 

to his vision. I mean, I think he wanted to make some accommodations with some of the warlords, early on, and wanted us to have 

less troops on the ground. And you’re talking about local Shuras. 

Our State Department, on the other hand, was focused on a sort 

of a Western democracy-type system, with a judicial system and all 

types of things happening there. Is the State Department in sync 

with what the military is now envisioning as ‘‘good enough?’’ Are 

their activities in concert with that? 

Dr. KILCULLEN. I think everybody’s looking at me because I used 

to work in the State Department. 

I would actually characterize history slightly differently. I think 

that a lot of the decisions that were made, early in the process, 

about focusing on the central government were international community decisions made in Bonn and enforced through a series of 

international decisions. 

I do think that the State Department now is very aligned with 

what the military is trying to achieve in Afghanistan, primarily 

through the mechanisms of things like district support teams; the 

regional platforms, where we have senior civilian representatives 

out in each regional command, conforming what the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development is doing, 

alongside the military. We’re also looking at a very substantial increase in the number of State Department officers and USAID officers deployed forward, from roughly 300, about 18 months ago, to 

nearly 1,200 now. So, I think we’ve seen the State Department 

aligning and working very closely, hand in glove, with the military. 

The problem in the political environment, I don’t think lies with 

our own civilian agencies; it lies primarily with Afghan officials, 

who—as Dr. Biddle said, their interests may be differently aligned 

from ours. And it’s just beyond the ability of any foreign intervening actor to really change the calculus that local power elites 

have toward their own population, certainly in the time that we’ve 

been present in the country. 

So, I think the State Department, to the extent that it matters, 

is very fully aligned and has put a lot of effort into its activities. 

But, frankly, ultimately, that doesn’t matter as much as what the 

Afghans themselves, particularly Afghan politicians and Afghan 

elites at the local level, actually decide about the process. 

Dr. JONES. I think the relationship between the military and 

civilian agencies, speaking from experience here, has definitely improved over the past 2 years, on this front, where especially organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office 

of Transition Initiatives, or OTI, has and is working, actually, 

60 

fairly closely with Special Forces team on bottom-up initiatives, 

these kind of initiatives we’ve talked about. 

So, I think that Dr. Kilcullen is right, that this was an international issue for a long time. The military probably moved earliest 

on it, in around the 2009 period—but, I think, at this point, most 

everybody is on board. 

The biggest challenge probably is, when you get into rural areas 

of Afghanistan, the military footprint is still the largest, by far. So, 

if civilian agencies are restrained, either because of their presence 

at the Embassy in Kabul or at very finite number of provincial reconstruction teams or other places, it’s the military out in the field 

that is the one that generally executes a lot of these governance, 

development, and military missions, just because they’re the only 

ones out there, in a range of places. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I think a great deal of progress has been made in 

what is famously the hardest part of counterinsurgency. Unity of 

effort, even within the military, much less across the military and 

nonmilitary dimensions of the effort, is famously difficult in this 

sort of undertaking. 

That said, there are still some important challenges that remain. 

And I think they tend to stem, in part, from the underdevelopment 

of the government side of the campaign plan for the conduct of 

operations in the theater. 

There are a variety of tradeoffs between different parts of what 

we seek to do in governance development. Many of the local power 

brokers that we’ve been discussing earlier in the hearing, for example, have militias or other security services that we, from time to 

time, rely upon to augment our security effort in parts of the country. That creates a short-term security benefit and a long-term 

governance problem. 

To resolve these kinds of tradeoffs, and, most importantly, to 

prioritize and sequence their resolution—we’re not going to simultaneously be able to constrain every malign actor in Afghanistan— 

we need to have a sense of who to start with, and in what order 

to proceed with the others. In order to do that, and to coordinate 

the resolution of those dilemmas and tradeoffs, with the State 

Department and with other countries that are part of the coalition 

requires, I think, a degree of explicit planning that, at the moment, 

I think, is still underdeveloped, relative to the planning that we do 

for the conduct of security operations in the country. I would like 

to see the governance side of the campaign plan get the degree of 

detailed development that the security side has had now for some 

years. 

Senator CORKER. Well, thank you all. I’m going to leave and turn 

it over to Senator Shaheen. But, your testimony has been outstanding, and thank you for your contribution. 

Senator SHAHEEN [presiding]. I just have one question before 

closing. 

And, as you all were talking about what a negotiated settlement 

might look like, one of the things that no one mentioned was what 

happens to protect the rights of Afghan women as part of any kind 

of settlement. And what should we be doing to ensure that those 

rights aren’t negotiated away as we might be talking to the Taliban 

or any other forces within Afghanistan? 

61 

Dr. KILCULLEN. The Taliban, about 12 months ago, changed their 

position on the education of women so that the current position 

which they are putting forward is that, ‘‘It’s perfectly okay for 

women to go to school. We want women to work productively and 

be part of the community. But, what’s not acceptable is for foreigners to come in and tell us how to treat women in our community.’’ And I think that was probably a tactical shift. It’s hard to 

know whether they really—— 

Senator SHAHEEN. Right. 

Dr. KILCULLEN [continuing]. Meant that or not. But, it certainly 

was a response to popular pressure from the Afghan population, 

where people were saying, ‘‘Well, hang on a second, if you guys 

come back in, what are the implications for us?’’ 

So, I think one of the things that we’ll see, if we do get into a 

negotiation process, is that there’s now a fairly significant body of 

public opinion in Afghanistan in favor of increased freedoms and 

increased equality for, you know, 50 percent of Afghanistan. And 

I think that that’s going to be a factor that any future settlement— 

all parties are going to have to take that into account, including 

the Taliban. Whether they really mean it or not, they’ll have to 

engage with that desire at some point. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Anything? 

Dr. JONES. Yes, I think this is an important issue. And I think 

what it comes down to, among other things, is, What is the vision, 

as part of a settlement, that the Taliban will agree to, in moving 

forward, in Afghanistan? If it’s a vision that is much like the vision 

in the 1990s, with a whole range of issues—its treatment of 

women, which was, frankly, despicable; its treatment even of general forms of leisure activity, like kiteflying—that’s the vision that 

is agreed on in a settlement; I don’t think it’s in the Afghan population’s interest. 

If, on the other hand—as I think Dr. Kilcullen has already indicated, their positions are changing, at least among some commanders; and so, what is agreed as part of a settlement, is a different vision than they have laid out in the past, I think that is 

something that is acceptable. 

Now, the problem is, even on the protection of the rights of 

women, local Afghans across the country view this differently. So, 

in some areas of very conservative areas of the south, they may 

view it differently than in more progressive parts of urban Afghanistan, including Kabul. So, I would say, one has to proceed with 

some caution, here, that we’re not pushing instability into some extremely conservative places too quickly. 

But, I will say that, in much of urban Afghanistan, there has 

been a fundamental change on the protection of the rights of 

women, from 10 years ago, when I first walked into Kabul. And 

even measuring the percentage of women who are walking with 

only a veil, or at least are mostly uncovered, as a percentage of— 

versus those who are wearing the full burqa, it is fundamentally 

different from 2001, when I was first there. 

Dr. BIDDLE. One of the arguments that’s been made in favor of 

a more centralized system in Afghanistan is to allow for protections 

of minority rights and women’s rights in ways that would not 

62 

necessarily be favored in conservative locales in the south. If one 

is going to decentralize, in the interests of aligning ends and means 

in Afghanistan, one is going to, therefore, allow for the possibility 

of greater variance in the way that these issues are resolved in 

localities. 

Now, in exchange for a degree of acceptance of more conservative 

behavior in some parts of the south, however, one could also obtain 

a greater degree of liberalism among urban communities in parts 

of the country where attitudes toward, for example, women’s education are more Western than what a national consensus could necessarily secure. 

But, one of the things that we have to think about, as we think 

about decentralization, is that it’s not a panacea and there are 

costs involved to values that we care about in walking down that 

road. It’s not an accident that the 2001 Bonn system and the 2004 

constitution were wired together the way they are. We do give 

something up when we abandon that and accept a degree of decentralization. 

Now, one important protection that can mitigate the degree of 

loss to things that we value is if the system retains its democratic 

character as it decentralizes, inasmuch as the parts of Afghanistan 

in which a radical pre-2001 Taliban system of women’s rights 

would be preferred are very, very few in number. As long as a 

Taliban representation in the Afghan Government has to compete, 

either for election to its seat or for influence over decided policies, 

with others in the Afghan public square, who are likely to represent true Afghan public opinion more accurately, we build in a 

degree of protection against radical oppression of women and 

minorities’ rights. 

But, as we decentralize, we are inevitably going to be moving 

into an area in which we permit a greater degree of variation within Afghanistan and the way they make these choices. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, that only works, though, if you’ve got an 

election or a system of democracy that actually works and is not 

corrupt in the way that the elections ultimately work. So, you don’t 

see this as an issue that you would put in that redline category, 

where you put the taking of land, then. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I think this gets to the question of, ‘‘How much are 

we willing to invest to get a better result?’’ I think a better result 

than a system tremendously reliant on brokered deals with local 

power brokers is a system that’s much more reliant on democratic 

accountability and transparency as the way of controlling local 

behavior. That’s probably going to be harder to obtain because the 

divergence between the interests of those who currently hold power 

in the periphery and that system is greater. 

But, I think, in general, when we think about long-term results 

in Afghanistan, to some extent you get what you pay for; and the 

more ambitious an outcome we hold out for, the greater the investment that’s going to be required of us to obtain it. In many ways, 

the ideal outcome, from the standpoint of the United States, is the 

2001 Bonn system, if we could find a way to make it work. The 

level of investment required to make it work, I think, is beyond the 

reasonably practical. And, therefore, that alternative, I think, is 

unrealistic. 

63 

A decentralized democracy is more realistic, but will require 

greater investment than, for example, the alternative that I’ve been 

referring to as ‘‘internal mixed sovereignty,’’ in which we accept a 

degree of extra democratic behavior in localities, as long as they 

agreed to delimit what they do. If we’re unwilling to make the investment required to bring about a decentralized but still democratic system, then we are stuck with outcomes that we don’t like 

as much. I think there is inevitably a relationship between our ambitions and our investments. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, thank you all very much for being 

willing to stay. I wish I could have been here to hear the whole 

discussion. 

So, at this time, I’ll close the hearing. 

[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

Æ