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AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: OVERSIGHT OF A

NEW INTERAGENCY STRATEGY

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND

GOVERNMENT REFORM

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 24, 2009

Serial No. 111–99

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

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

——— ———

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

——— ———

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

——— ———

ANDREW WRIGHT, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 24, 2009 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Holbrooke, Ambassador Richard C., U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; and General Wallace Gregson, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs .......................................... 125

Gregson, General Wallace ........................................................................ 139

Holbrooke, Ambassador Richard C. ......................................................... 125

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

Gregson, General Wallace, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and

Pacific Affairs, prepared statement of ......................................................... 140

Holbrooke, Ambassador Richard C., U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, prepared statement of ........................................ 128

Issa, Hon. Darrell E., a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace article ............. 9

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

of Massachusetts, prepared statement of ................................................... 5

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 157

(1)

AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: OVERSIGHT

OF A NEW INTERAGENCY STRATEGY

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2009

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, JOINT WITH THE SUB- COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AF- FAIRS, Washington, DC.

The committee and subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at

11:15 a.m., in room 2157, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.

John F. Tierney (chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs) presiding.

Present from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: Representatives Towns, Cummings, Kucinich, Watson, Kaptur Norton, Speier, Issa, Souder, Bilbray, and Chaffetz.

Present from the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs: Representatives Tierney, Van Hollen, Welch, Cuellar,

Quigley, Flake, and Turner.

Also present: Representative Coffman.

Staff present: Adam Hodge, deputy press secretary; Carla

Hultberg, chief clerk; Ophelia Rivas, assistant clerk; Ron Stroman,

staff director; Andy Wright, staff director, subcommittee; Scott

Lindsay, counsel, subcommittee; Elliot Gillerman, clerk, subcommittee; Brendan Culley, detailee; Cliff Stammerno, legislative

assistant; Steven Gale, fellow; John Cuaderes, minority deputy

staff director; Frederick Hill, minority director of communications;

Dan Blankenburg, minority director of outreach and senior advisor;

Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison; Kurd

Bardella, minority press secretary; Seamus Kraft, minority deputy

press secretary; Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel; Dr. Christopher Bright, minority senior professional staff member; and

Glenn Sanders, minority Defense fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. Good morning. A quorum being present, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs will come to order.

The hearing is entitled, ‘‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Oversight of a

New Interagency Strategy.’’

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairmen and ranking

members of the committee and subcommittee be allowed to make

opening statements. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open

for 5 business days so that all members of the committee may be

allowed to submit a written statement for the record. Without objection, so ordered.

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I want to welcome both of our witnesses here today. Thank you

for coming. Ambassador, we appreciate your forbearance last week

when we had a day of unexpected and lengthy votes. I am very respectful of the fact that you have moved your schedule around and

made yourself available today. General Gregson, we are happy to

have you here with us as well. Though you wouldn’t have been

here last week, we have the benefit of your presence here today.

The President’s interagency strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is a welcome shift in the approach to that region of vital national security interest. As the new strategy recognizes, our common goal with Afghanistan and Pakistan will require a closely coordinated effort between all three states. Ultimately, the United

States must rely on the capabilities of the Pakistani and Afghan

governments themselves.

This hearing has come at a critical time. Afghanistan will hold

Presidential elections in August amid a long, deteriorating security

situation. The United States has committed to significantly increase its troops on the ground coupled with a so-called civilian

surge of 450 additional aid professionals over the next 18 months.

Finally, we have a new Commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant

General McChrystal, who has arrived on the ground there this past

week.

After years of seemingly inconsistent attention to the threat

posed by extremist militants in the North-West Frontier Province

and the federally Administered Tribal Areas, as well as increasingly in Balochistan and Punjab, Pakistan seems to have finally

harnessed the political will and manpower to engage in a concerted

action to retake Swat and the adjoining areas of the Malakand region in the past 8 weeks. It is important to recognize and honor

the sacrifice that Pakistan and its soldiers have made during this

campaign. That has been substantial.

But tragically the nature of the recent fighting has produced by

some accounts approximately 3 million internally displaced persons, an expression I understand the Ambassador doesn’t like to

use any more than we do because of its impersonal nature. But

there are 3 million people who are now without homes, without

businesses, and having a difficult time struggling to survive and to

get their lives back together. And there are untold numbers of civilian casualties.

According to public reports, the Pakistani military will now turn

its focus to the much more difficult terrain of south Waziristan

where Baitullah Mehsud and the most hardened Pakistani

Taliban—and likely senior Al Qaeda leadership—reside. Undoubtedly the military and civilian toll will dramatically rise in this portion of the campaign and Pakistan’s resolve for the long struggle

ahead will be sorely tested.

As the United States discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, initially clearing extremist militants from an area does not in itself

create long term security. Long term security will require a comprehensive strategy to secure, rebuild, and implement the political,

legal, and economic enfranchisement of Pashtun populations that

have been isolated for far too long.

Critically, the Pakistani civilian government must extend its writ

to all areas of the country. For too long, Pakistan has ceded its auVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:49 Feb 15, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\63038.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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thority in some regions and failed to establish a basic domestic

compact between the Federal Government and the people residing

in those regions. The United States must continue to support the

Pakistani government as it provides more security, more governance, and more basic services in those provinces.

I have a concern that, as a result of its history of failure to adapt

its national security priorities to the evolving circumstances of militant extremism, Pakistan currently lacks the resources and strategic doctrine to engage in a concerted campaign to win the hearts

and minds of its own people in the affected regions. The House of

Representatives has recently taken an important step to address

this issue by passing the Berman bill, also known as the PEACE

Act. The Senate has marked up its counterpart to the Berman Bill,

the Kerry-Lugar Bill. These bills propose to triple economic assistance to Pakistan in the next 5 years to $11⁄2 billion.

We recognize that some controversy has been stirred over the

question of conditions in the legislation. Some are concerned that

conditions will offend the political sensitivities of Pakistanis.

In last Thursday’s subcommittee hearing we had various witnesses, one of whom was expert Dr. Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group. She testified and put in her report that the

Pakistani population, particularly those in the embattled regions,

distrust the military’s historic involvement with the Taliban and

other extremists. There are notable examples of inexplicable conduct such as failing to target wanted leaders of visible anti-government groups and failing to dismantle their known bases. We have

learned of the release from confinement of such leaders, even those

believed to be implicated in the Mumbai bombings. We are painfully aware of the military’s proclivity for entering into truces with

extremists and ceding territory to their control only to have residents there suffer egregious repression.

I support the conditions that are in the Bill and wish that they

were stronger and more pointed. They are applied only to the military and not to civilian assistance. In the Berman Bill, I hope that

my colleagues, people in the other chamber, and the administration

will support the carefully crafted and negotiated legislation.

One of the principal aims of today’s hearing is to address the serious accountability and transparency concerns that have plagued

U.S. programs and operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan

for the past 7 years. For example, last year this subcommittee conducted a major investigation of the Coalition Support Funds Program by which the United States reimbursed Pakistan for expenses

it incurred in certain counter-terrorism operations. This program

has represented the bulk of U.S. aid to Pakistan’s military in the

past 7 years, amounting to over $6.7 billion to date. Our investigation found that there were no receipts for a significant portion of

U.S. reimbursements to Pakistan and that the program lacked

basic accountability provisions. Further, this program has not improved the Pakistani military’s capabilities for counter-terrorism or

counter-insurgency operations.

Another purpose of this hearing is to hear from our witnesses

about implementing a fundamentally interagency strategy across

the departments in the U.S. Government. We want to know about

the contributions by the various departments, their coordination

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amongst others, and the strategic guidance and implementation directives that are coming from senior leadership. In addition, we

want to know whether there are capacity problems at the civilian

national security agencies that need to be addressed further by this

Congress.

Finally, the most immediate and urgent task for the United

States is to provide aid to alleviate the suffering of the Pakistanis

displaced by current fighting. We have had the opportunity to

speak with Ambassador Holbrooke about his recent trip to the

camps. I want to express my strong support for that trip, for his

efforts, and for the United States’ efforts.

About a week ago last Thursday, the subcommittee held a hearing on the humanitarian crisis and heard witnesses testifying in

this room and from Islamabad. They reported that they expect the

crisis to get worse before it gets better and that much more must

be done. It is our oversight capacity and our responsibility to continue to urge the United States to provide aid for humanitarian crises and to make sure it is delivered to the field promptly, effectively, and accountably.

With that, I defer to Mr. Issa who will give his opening remarks.

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

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would ask

unanimous consent that the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.

Coffman, be allowed to sit in on the hearing today.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. ISSA. Additionally, Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous

consent that the article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace be entered into the record today. This was a witness

we chose not to have so as to keep the hearing simple.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you. Ambassador, General, I want to thank you

for being here today.

As the new administration begins to implement its vision of a

better and safer world, particularly as to the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am comforted to know, Ambassador, that you will be involved firsthand in this. Over the

years in which you have been out of the administration, I have had

an opportunity to meet with you around the dinner table and

throughout the circuit here of good thinkers. They had a lot of

thoughts and were often asked if they had been asked, but seldom

could they answer that they were.

The tools the previous administration used undoubtedly will be

the same tools you use. What will be different can only be the tone

and the amount of each of those tools.

Certainly, as your administration inherits an Afghanistan dependent upon poppy production at a level far greater than at any

time in history, it is particularly difficult to wean a people off of

a corrupting influence like the production of tools for heroin. Additionally, the situation in Pakistan has only deteriorated during the

previous 4 years. This is by definition a huge problem for the new

administration.

So I want to say today that, on a bipartisan basis, we look forward to working with you as you attempt to reverse what has been

in many ways the 9/11 failure. Notwithstanding that, it is no surprise to you that I would say that Iraq is to a great extend behind

us. That will allow you the opportunity to work on this troubled region.

This is the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, not

the Foreign Affairs Committee. Although I am pleased, as is the

ranking subcommittee member, to be a member of Foreign Affairs

on leave of absence, I recognize that our job is not to discuss in detail your vision. Our job is to provide the oversight as to whether

or not the plan has been properly thought out as to cost and effectiveness.

Additionally, as the chairman indicated in his opening remarks,

there have been serious concerns about waste, fraud, and abuse.

This is both directly with our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan and, in previous hearings of this committee, with our NATO

partners. Large amounts of cash have been taken to the region,

often with little or no oversight. I hark back onto a hearing in

which we discovered that good NATO allies were given tens of millions of dollars simply on one General’s signature. Although they

are allies—I rely on them to try to protect us—I recognize that we

would not accept that one American General signed for $20 million

with no further receipt. We certainly cannot expect less of our

NATO partners than we expect of our own homegrown Generals.

General, that will be one of our questions today, undoubtedly.

Can we bring a level of transparency and accountability both to our

effort at nation-building and to our cost and detailed work in the

region?

Without a doubt, that is the primary jurisdiction of this committee. I always remind my colleagues and particularly myself that we

are a committee of broad jurisdiction, but we are not the Foreign

Affairs Committee. Our efforts today will be in order to support you

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but at the same time to let you know in no uncertain terms that

this committee is dedicated to making sure the American taxpayers’ dollars are spent wisely.

With that, I thank the chairman for this important hearing and

yield back.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Well, Mr. Flake has probably gone voting.

We are having votes, I wanted to share that with my witnesses,

from time to time today. We are going to continue on through the

hearing. The absence of some Members on occasion here is not any

indication of their lack of interest but rather their obligation to register their votes and also sometimes to be at other committees as

well. But we are going to continue on.

We will now receive testimony from the panel that is before us

today. I would first like to say a few words about each of the witnesses.

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke serves as President Obama’s

Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Prior to that

he served as chairman of the Asia Society. From 1991 to 2001, Ambassador Holbrooke served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United

Nations. He has also held a number of other senior diplomatic

posts including Special Envoy to Cyprus and Kosovo and U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Throughout his career, Ambassador

Holbrooke has held a number of other distinguished positions in

both the public and the private sectors. He holds a Bachelor of Arts

from Brown University. Welcome, Ambassador.

General Wallace ‘‘Chip’’ Gregson serves as Assistant Secretary of

Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. Prior to assuming

this post, General Gregson was owner and president of WCG & Associates International, a foreign policy and military affairs consulting organization. Prior to his retirement from the U.S. Marine

Corps, General Gregson was Commanding General of the Marine

Corps Forces Pacific and Marine Corps Forces Central Command.

General Gregson holds a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Naval

Academy as well as M.A. degrees from the Naval War College and

Salve Regina College. Thank you for joining us here today, General.

Thank you to both of you for making yourselves available and

giving us your expertise. It is the policy of this committee to swear

witnesses in before they testify. I ask you to please stand and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. The record will please reflect that both

of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

As you are experienced witnesses, you know that your full written statement by unanimous consent will be allowed into the

record. We ask you to summarize your statement.

Ambassador, we would like to begin with you. Feel free to take

a reasonable amount of time. We are not going to shut you off in

5 minutes.

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STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE, U.S.

SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE TO AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN; AND GENERAL WALLACE GREGSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great

honor to appear before this committee for the first time. I have

never testified before this committee, although I have been testifying before the Congress and the House since 1977.

I am very mindful of what your colleague, Congressman Issa,

just said, that your main goal is ‘‘dedicated to making sure American taxpayers’ dollars are being wisely spent.’’ I take that very seriously and I share that goal. More importantly, it is a specific instruction that the Secretary of State and the President have issued

to us.

I would like to divide my opening comments into two parts. First,

I will discuss the strategic issues. Second, and very briefly, in addition to this lengthy opening statement that I would like to submit

for the record, I want to comment on the points you have just

made.

First of all on the strategic issues, I concur fully in what both

you and Congressman Issa have just said. This is a strategic priority for the United States for reasons that we all know. Pakistan

contains within its western areas people who have attacked the

United States, our European allies, India, and the people of Pakistan repeatedly. They have said they wish to do so again. They

are—and there is no other word for it—our enemies.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban continues to fight and form a support group for Al Qaeda and the others who threaten the United

States directly. So at this point, separating the Taliban and Al

Qaeda is not something one can do in terms of our policies.

In terms of our resources, of course, there is a huge mismatch.

In Afghanistan we have 68,000 troops. They are on their way. We

have a vast civilian and growing infrastructure, considerable involvement, on the ground in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan

has made clear from the beginning that there are certain red lines

which cannot be crossed. Most important, is no ground troops. They

do not wish any American military presence on the ground and we

fully respect that. So we can take that off the table.

However, supporting Pakistan in every possible way is of the

highest priority to the United States. For example, we have an integrated White House, Treasury, and State Department team on its

way to Pakistan now to talk to them about how we can help their

economy more. They are facing some deadlines from IMF loans.

They are facing a very tough set of problems and we want to show

assistance in every way. With the support of this body, additional

funds have been voted in the Supplemental. In addition to that,

$200 million has been voted in the Supplemental for the internal

refugees in Pakistan.

Thank you for noting my aversion to the initials IDP. These are

human beings. They were farmers; they were pharmacists; they

were jewelers. They are living now in hot, airless tents on the

flatlands of Pakistan’s west. They are from the highlands. They

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need to go home. By the way, Mr. Chairman, having read the testimony of the three witnesses you had earlier—Ken Bacon, Sherry

Rehman, and the person from International Crisis Group whose

name I don’t remember—I want to concur in virtually everything

they said to you.

So we have the highest possible priority in terms of our national

security interests at stake. Having said that, we all recognize that

this is a very difficult, difficult set of problems. The administration,

building on what we inherited, has made significant adjustments

in our policy, which I can refer to in more detail later. If I had to

give a headline, I would say, a massive increase in agriculture and

a continued focus on stopping the drug trade. But within that, Mr.

Chairman, we are downgrading our efforts to eradicate crops with

spraying—a policy we think was totally ineffectual—but we are

going to increase efforts on interdiction and going after the drug

lords. So we are not downgrading narcotics. We are downgrading

crop eradication and upgrading agriculture. We have to improve

the police and we have to work on governance.

I would draw your attention to one last point, the elections. In

55 days from today there will be an election in Afghanistan that

will have a direct bearing on the future of American and international policy in Afghanistan. It must be a fair, open, and legitimate election. If it is not, if it for example looks like something resembling what is happening next door to the west, it would undermine the legitimacy of our effort and the legitimacy of whichever

candidate won. So to underscore the most important point we can

make on Afghanistan, we are not supporting any candidate. We are

not opposing any candidate. But we are actively supporting a fair,

free, and open process.

For example, Ambassador Eikenberry, our extraordinary new

Ambassador on the ground in Afghanistan who twice was the Commander of U.S. forces and brings to his job both his past and

present positions. To this end Ambassador Eikenberry has in the

last few days participated in press conferences with three leading

members of the opposition. He made an opening statement saying

how strongly we were committed to a fair process without endorsing the candidate he was attending the press conference of. He

then made no further comments during the meeting. Each candidate presented their platforms. He is challenging every candidate

to come up with platforms.

Some people said he was intervening in showing a preference.

Our position, and I am happy to discuss this for the first time publicly today with you, our position was very simple. We are not supporting a candidate but, because of the high investment that the

international community has made in Afghanistan, we are supporting a process. It must result in a legitimate outcome. He and General Jones, our National Security Advisor, are in Kabul today and

they have been talking to various leaders.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, is our organizational structure. As you

yourself mentioned, the President and the Secretary of State directed me to create a special office in the State Department which

is a true interagency office. It is what Secretary of Defense Bob

Gates, after visiting us 2 days ago, called ‘‘a genuine whole of Government effort.’’ General Gregson is one of the people who feeds

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into our effort through a new meeting which we are holding. We

held one yesterday and we will hold one again tomorrow in which

all the agencies send their own representatives. But inside our office we have representatives of the CIA, AID, the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, the Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department,

the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Office of

the Secretary of Defense, a person who used to work with General

Gregson. This remarkable interagency effort feeds directly into the

National Security Council. The documents I gave you, which I

would prefer not be made public, outline the details of the result.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this very important hearing. I look forward to answering your questions.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Holbrooke follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador. I want to just say that I

believe everybody has read the written statement which was even

more extensive than your opening remarks. We appreciate the time

that went into that as well.

General.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL WALLACE GREGSON

General GREGSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am here today on

behalf of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Ms. Michele

Flournoy, who is currently on travel to Beijing and Tokyo. She expressed her regret that she could not be here but the written testimony that she submitted prior to last week’s scheduled hearing remains the statement of record. I have come prepared with a short

opening statement as well.

I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee, for this opportunity to speak to you at this moment of

opportunity. The issue today could not be a more apt subject, the

interagency efforts of the administration to design and implement

a whole of government strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. This

unprecedented task relies much on the insight and guidance of

Congress. Our assistance to the people in governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan is at a crucial juncture and our ability to operate smoothly as a cohesive and agile team will, with your help, play

as large a role in determining the outcome of the fight as anything

else.

With that, let me stop. I will submit the rest for the record and

we can get on with your questions.

[The prepared statement of General Gregson follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. You were not kidding when you said it was a brief

opening remark. We will go to the question period now on that, if

I could.

Ambassador, I just want to start off by asking you this: In reviewing your testimony, you made mention of the fact that you

would support expanding the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s [SIGAR], mandate and responsibilities.

Would you also support the expansion of those responsibilities to

monitor our aid programs in Pakistan?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Yes, I would, Mr. Chairman. In fact,

my next meeting after this hearing will be with Major General

Fields, the head of SIGAR. We are very impressed with what the

Congress established a year or two ago in creating SIGAR, but we

noted two things. Its mandate is limited only to one of the two

countries, yet we all agree that they are equally important. Second,

we recognize, respect, and support its total independence from the

executive branch. They will follow your guidance, not ours.

In Afghanistan, interest has been expressed by Afghans themselves about the possibility of SIGAR helping them in their anticorruption drive. They can speak for themselves but they think

they need approval from your body or the overseeing bodies to do

this. I will leave to you the discussion with General Fields as to

whether his mandate needs to be expanded on the corruption issue

in Afghanistan.

But on Pakistan there is no question. The legislation is restricted

to Afghanistan. Speaking for myself—even within the executive

branch there is some disagreement on this but since you asked and

I am under oath, I will tell you what I believe—the answer to your

question is an unambiguous yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I appreciate that. Some of us on this committee have been thinking along the same line. We have a meeting set

up with General Fields to talk about what the potential for that

is but also whether or not he is going to need more personnel to

do that and whether or not he needs more legislative capacity as

well.

Let me ask you another question. In the President’s——

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. May I just interject? Excuse me, Mr.

Chairman. General Fields has said that if he is given the additional mandate, he will need additional resources. But I leave that

to you.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK, well that is good. In the President’s speech

when he announced this whole new interagency strategy, he said,

‘‘We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves

accountable. We will consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan

security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will

measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether or not we are using the

right tools and tactics to make progress toward accomplishing our

goals.’’

It has been 3 months since he made that statement. Have you

developed any metrics? If so, how are we going to assess the United

States’ performance moving forward?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. The answer to your question is yes. Let

me explain first of all that, because of the enormous combination

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of responsibilities our small office has, the metrics issue has been

handled by other divisions of State, the intelligence community,

and the National Security Council.

Metrics have been developed. There has been extensive consultation with the Congress on this. We are working them out at all levels. Some will be classified; others will be public. Of course, you

will have access to both the public and the classified.

Mr. TIERNEY. When do you think they will be released, at least

the public versions?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I can’t give you a date for certain, Mr.

Chairman, because the mandate on that, the leadership on that

rests directly with the National Security Council. I do not have a

date. Can I answer you in a written message this afternoon?

Mr. TIERNEY. That would be fine.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. The reason I can’t give you a specific

date is simply that the tasker went elsewhere. It is a very complicated issue.

Let me just say one thing. Having been through several guerrilla

wars, we must differentiate between input and output. We can tell

you how much money we are spending, how much food we are giving under the World Food Program, and our support for CERP programs. But how do you measure results on the ground? If you were

to ask me how we are doing in Swat, I could tell you what the

Pakistan Army has done but I couldn’t tell you how much damage

has been done to the Taliban. Until you know that, you don’t know

if you are succeeding.

Having started my career in Vietnam, I saw a confusion between

input and output, most famously on the body count issue. That was

a dangerous and misleading statistic but there were many others.

I am very pleased to see that General Petraeus is moving away

from that. There were some articles about this and we are moving

away from it.

So I want to be very careful that when we talk to you about

benchmarks, we give you meaningful measurements of progress

and are not simply telling you how we are organized and how we

spent the money. That sorting out is what we are doing now.

Mr. TIERNEY. That will be appreciated. Thank you.

Mr. Issa, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ambassador, I know 100 or

so days isn’t very long but the good news, as I said in my opening

comments, is that you never gave up your passion to look at all of

these regions.

The previous administration had a bias toward using military assistance to do what had historically in some cases been State Department work. Not just in this region, if you don’t mind, but perhaps looking more at the whole administration, how do you intend

to balance how much is military delivering nation-building versus

either directly or hand in hand with State Department your folks

overseeing that? You mentioned General Petraeus. We all have a

great deal of confidence in him. But who is going to have the lead

and how will it be different than the previous administration?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. This is a very important question. As

you know, books have been written on this. From my point of view,

to begin by analyzing the problem, you can’t separate the civilian

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and the military aspects of a war in which terrain is not the issue.

It is control of the population. Either there is support or there is

passive acceptance of coercive force. That is what happened in

Swat.

The Afghan people are overwhelmingly against the Taliban. The

IRI poll that came out the other day had additional evidence of

that. But their regard for the government of Afghanistan has been

declining. What we need to do now is restructure our policies to improve the capacity of the Afghan government and its security

forces. If we don’t do that, Congressman, we will never be able to

carry out the exit strategy.

Now, I want to stress when I use those loaded words that I didn’t

say exit timetable. This is a tough war. But the long term way for

the United States and its allies to draw down its forces, as President Obama has said, is to buildup Afghan capacity in both areas.

Now your question went to the issue of how the military and the

civilians integrate. In the previous era——

Mr. ISSA. I think you partially answered it by saying that today

the Afghans are not the best way to deliver support for the Afghan

people. That is your goal, which of course begs the question of the

outcome of the election. It does matter if it makes a difference as

to how that is accomplished.

My question really was are they going to see the lead in some

way changing a little bit more toward this is the U.S. Government

versus this is the U.S. military delivering this aid?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. First of all, I want to start with a statistic we discovered when we took office. Only 10 percent of American civilian assistance was going through the government, yet the

rhetoric was to strengthen the government. We were undermining

it without even realizing it.

I talked earlier when you went out to vote about the agriculture

program. The Afghans used to be agriculture exporters. They know

how to farm in that rocky and high altitude soil but they need help

in rebuilding. Here is a perfect example of your issue. The U.S.

military gives out free seed as part of its CERP programs. We are

all in favor of that. We think it is great because it helps farmers

get back on their feet. But it doesn’t build a long term capacity.

Under the new plans and under the direction of the President

and the Secretary of State, in our office we have USDA, AID, and

the Pentagon all together. In fact, this morning we briefed some of

your colleagues on this very program. We are working at a new integrated approach to agriculture. General Nicholson, who some of

you know, our Commander of all the surge troops in Kandahar and

RC South, has been working with our AID and agriculture people.

We are going to bring in 60 new agricultural people. Tom Vilsack

is involved personally and he will be going out there next month.

Mr. ISSA. Ambassador, let me tie into, as my time is expiring, the

last part. How is that going to bring greater accountability and

transparency for us to see those dollars? As you said, a lot of those

dollars were not only around the government but they were fairly

opaque to this committee.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Well, they were opaque to us. We are

spending a lot of time trying to find out where they go. By the way,

we are having even greater trouble knowing what other countries

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are doing so sometimes there is international redundancy and

sometimes there are great gaps.

When you were out of the room, I quoted back to your committee

your own phrase that you are ‘‘dedicated to making sure American

taxpayers’ dollars are being used wisely.’’ That is our highest goal.

That is why we talked about SIGAR a moment ago.

In regard to your issue, we are focused on accountability. There

are hundreds of AID, DOD, and other contracts which we have suspended, put holds on, and refused to pass forward because we were

dissatisfied with the rationale behind them. The President and the

Secretary of State have instructed us, and DOD is working with us

on this, to reduce the number of contracts. Sometimes building a

road, that is easy. But why, for example, were we subcontracting

$30 million for women’s programs to NGO’s instead of using it directly under the Ambassador? So when the contract came to me for

approval, and Secretary Clinton has asked me to do that, I stopped

the contract. We turned the money over to the embassy and we

now have an ambassadorial fund for women’s programs.

That way, we think we will have more accountability. We are

going to work with SIGAR as often and as freely as possible. I

could give you many other examples. This is a work in progress but

I cannot underscore how strongly we believe in your goal and how

closely we are working with our colleagues in the Pentagon, AID,

USDA, the FBI, and elsewhere.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. In writing, to the extent that your staff

can, I would appreciate seeing some of the other examples. It is

very helpful.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you, General. You

all have probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest, jobs in

Government. We really appreciate your service.

The fundamental question, which is a tough one, is what is the

right strategy to deal with a very difficult problem? Obviously, the

weight of our strategy is based on military engagement in Afghanistan and support in Pakistan. I think the Obama administration is

rightly focused on trying to help with capacity building as well. But

I have skepticism about the capacity to execute on that strategy.

There are some critics who suggest the better approach is essentially containment as opposed to transformation and nation-building. There are two examples that stick out in my mind that demonstrate how tough it is for our tremendous military and our tremendous diplomats.

First, when we were with Mr. Tierney in Afghanistan, we talked

with some folks from the Chamber of Commerce whose job was to

try to encourage investment in Afghanistan. Their biggest problem

was exemplified by the example of truckers coming from the Iranian border into Kabul who were stopped on average 27 times and

shaken down by ‘‘authorities.’’ If you wanted to get a driver’s license in Kabul you had to get 21 different people to sign off.

Then second, one of our wonderful State Department people that

we met in Kabul had a job outside of the embassy to monitor and

implement a program of demining, which is obviously incredibly

important to the folks there. I asked her how many times she had

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been out in the 10 months she had been on assignment. She had

only been off that base once because of the security concerns.

So it raises just very serious questions in my mind about the fundamental tenet that a) you can have the military take on this new

mission that historically has never been what we have asked of our

military, namely nation-building and capacity building, and b) to

have the civilian capacity building occur when the shooting is going

on, which means the security needs for those folks are so great that

they can’t do their job.

Many critics who prefer containment to this nation-building

would suggest that when you are going to do this capacity building

with NGO’s or State Department people it has to be done either before or after the shooting but not in the middle of it.

So I am sorry for such a long introduction on this but it really

is the core of my apprehension about the strategy. I would ask each

of you to comment on that. If we were going to do containment as

opposed to this military engagement, what would we do? What

gives us confidence that we can achieve this goal that never in the

history of the country has it achieved by the military, the building

nations? Let us start with you, General.

General GREGSON. Thank you for the question. I think containment, just to set a premise and then return to it later, containment

would be exceedingly difficult. We have seen that the forces of

globalization around the world make that virtually impossible to

execute now with any effect.

The military role in the counter-insurgency in a large respect is

protection of the population. There are times when we have to do

the protection ourselves. But we want to transition that as quickly

as possible to a properly organized security sector, meaning in this

case the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, the

border police, and other similar institutions.

With that, though, has to immediately or concurrently come development. We have to bring the instruments of good governance

to places that haven’t had good governance. We have to provide

more government services to the villagers and to the farmers than

the Taliban provides while we are simultaneously eliminating the

Taliban. The nation-building thing has in the past sometimes devolved to the military while we are building civilian capacity to do

that. But it is not an either/or. Both of these have to be done together.

In the past, the phrase used to be we fight the Nation’s wars.

That was wrong on a couple of counts. The Nation fights the Nation’s wars, not the military. But the goal of any conflict or any engagement of the military is profoundly political. That in a counterinsurgency situation means protecting the population and ensuring

the delivery of good government services.

One example of how this fits together is that it used to be much

more difficult to train soldiers and police because there was no viable banking sector in Afghanistan. The individual soldiers had to

take their pay and personally walk it home to their family, which

could be miles away. So you were losing your forces for 2 weeks.

Thanks to a lot of great civilian efforts, we now have a much more

viable banking sector which in turn increases the effectiveness of

the forces we are trying to train.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Mr. Flake, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ambassador Holbrooke,

do we have a Status of Forces Agreement that includes State Department officials and whatnot or is it just with our uniformed personnel?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. There is no Status of Forces Agreement.

Mr. FLAKE. Is that something that needs to be remedied or is

that something we are just going to deal with?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Having negotiated these things before,

I think we are better off right now being in Afghanistan under the

U.N. mandate, which was all-embracing. It is the most far reaching

U.N. mandate in the history of the U.N. because it stems directly

from the events of 9/11. It included not only the Security Council

but the whole General Assembly. So sooner or later, of course, but

negotiating a SOFA is really tricky. When the Afghan government

feels it is necessary, of course we will do it. But right now I would

leave it where it is.

Mr. FLAKE. We are OK under the U.N. umbrella, then. OK.

You mentioned that the support for the Afghan government

seems to be declining. To what do you attribute that, mostly? Is it

the perception of corruption or is it just the inability to deliver

services or security? What is at the root of that?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Let me stress, Congressman, that I

was quoting an IRI poll. I don’t have a view on that, I just noted

it. Second, according to the same poll, corruption and a difficulty

in delivering services left many people feeling that their country

was not as well off as it was in 2004 when everything looked much

rosier. On the other hand, nobody wants to go back to what is

called the Black Years. So while reporting to you accurately, I don’t

want to leave you with a sense of despair.

Mr. Chairman, if I could add one word about Mr. Welch’s question on the wall of security that doesn’t allow Americans to get out

in the field? This is a huge problem. I have met people in Kabul

who never left the embassy compound for a year except to get on

the airplane and take their vacations. What are they doing there,

particularly somebody in the demining area as Congressman Welch

referred to?

Ambassador Eikenberry and his team are loosening the boundaries of that. They are removing the curfews. They are forcing people to go out. We have a huge civilian buildup underway and if the

people just come into compounds we are wasting time, money, and

so on.

Mr. FLAKE. Kind of going off on that, some of us have been in

country and have visited some of the Provincial Reconstruction

Teams [PRTs]. Having spoken to a number of them, there seems

to be—and it seems that you are correcting some of the lack of coordination on this side—I am just wondering if that filters down to

the PRTs?

I can tell you over the last several years there has not been coordination there. One seems not to know what the other is doing.

There is no sharing of best practices. You have nutrition programs

here; you have something completely different going on in another

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place. What are we doing on the ground? I understand what is

being done here to coordinate but is that filtering all the way

down?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Congressman Flake, our efforts are

only as good as they are at the province and district level. I began

my career as a province representative in the Mekong Delta. We

were living with the military and working with them so I believe

in that.

We are turning the political advisors, the so-called pol-ads, into

active operational people. We are abolishing the pol-ad system. By

the way, we also abolished the defense attache office in the embassy, removing 18 military positions from the embassy which frees

them up for useful service. And we are going to put a senior civilian in each province and at the regional commands to work with

the military commanders.

We have this straightened out already on the U.S. side. General

Petraeus and I have a framework agreement. Ambassador

Eikenberry and General McChrystal and their teams are drilling

down to the operational level as we speak. But we have not yet got

everyone out in the field. The other problem we have is that it only

applies so far to areas where there are U.S. forces and U.S. PRTs.

I will be going to Italy tomorrow to meet with my international

counterparts. There are about 25 countries now that have appointed counterparts to me from Britain to Tokyo, from the United

Arab Emirates to Sweden. We are all meeting and we are trying

to get other countries to follow the model.

I am not trying to subordinate civilians to the military, going

back to Congressman Welch’s question. But this is a war and the

lead has to be taken by the military. The civilian part of it, however, is integral to success because it is about strengthening the

government’s capacity to take care of its own problems.

If I were to list the problems, you started with corruption, but

I would say the top three issues in no particular order are governance, corruption, and the quality of the security services. Narcotics

is a big issue but it is not the reason we are having difficulties. Finally and above all other issues is the sanctuary in Pakistan. If

that isn’t fixed, success will be virtually unachievable.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Quigley, you are recognized for 5

minutes.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Shifting the focus for myself onto Pakistan and our relationship with the leadership in Pakistan, we read of the drone attacks

and cross border attacks that have taken place in the past. I guess

I want to couple that thought and your evaluation of how that is

affecting the good that we are trying to do with the interviews I

saw with Pakistani leaders in other discussions. I guess I was

questioning whether they seem to have a firm grasp of the reality

of their situation, their strengths, their weaknesses, and what they

might have to do to solve these issues.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. They do have a firm grasp of the severity of the situation but they may have gotten there a little more

slowly than you and other Americans might have liked. Having

just been out there on my third trip in 4 months, and I will be

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going back again in a couple of weeks, I am quite convinced that

the three most powerful elements in Pakistani political life all

share a common enemy, a common problem, and are coming together. Those three elements, of course, are President Zardari and

his PPP party, Nawaz Sharif and his brother the Chief Minister of

the Punjab and their party, and the Pakistani Army. All three are

united. Public opinion in Pakistan has begun to coalesce around

common opposition.

But this goes back to our early colloquy with Congressman Issa

and Chairman Tierney and the witnesses you had when we weren’t

here. All of them, as I read their testimony, all of them emphasized

the point I want to underscore, too. When the refugees go back,

they have to have security. If they don’t, and if we have a replay

of the Taliban coming down out of the hills, it will be a catastrophic setback. One of your witnesses, the Foreign Minister of Information, Sherry Rehman, made that point in very dramatic

terms. I don’t share all her rhetoric but I certainly share her view.

So my answer to your question is there is a common understanding. But are there enough resources? I don’t think so. I am very,

very pleased that your body passed the Howard Berman led legislation that gave $11⁄2 billion of authorization a year for the next 5

fiscal years and supported the ROZ legislation put forward by Congressman Van Hollen. That was terrific legislation. It got huge

headlines, Mr. Chairman, in Pakistan. If the Senate follows suit,

that will be the kind of support we must, in my view, give Pakistan.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Let me interject with that and perhaps you can

educate me on where their thoughts are now. I refer to Pakistan’s

desire to build their nuclear arsenal, which would seem to be misplaced in time.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Congressman, with great respect let

me follow our standard policy and offer you and your colleagues a

classified executive session discussion on that. It would serve no

national security interest whatsoever to discuss that issue in pubic

except to say that we understand your point of view and are not

ignoring it.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I understand. I guess in closing, the first point I

had made, if you could focus a little more on the negative reaction

perhaps to drone attacks or cross border ventures and how that is

playing out now in Pakistan?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. You are very good at asking the most

sensitive questions today, Congressman.

Mr. QUIGLEY. That is what my wife says. [Laughter.]

If you wish to reserve that for another session, that is fine.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. It would make our lives easier if we

discussed that also in closed session. But let me say that we are

very mindful of the complexities of this issue. Let me just stress

again that the people who have publically and repeatedly said that

they wish to stage another 9/11 reside to some large degree in that

portion of Pakistan which is out of reach of American ground

troops.

If I can just acknowledge Congressman Van Hollen as he comes

in, I was mentioning your legislation before you came in. I just

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want to acknowledge again how extraordinarily valuable it is and

how much I appreciate your leadership on that issue.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, sir. Mr. Souder from Indiana, you are

recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. First I want to thank you for using

Camp Atterbury. It is an amazing training camp for our Guard and

regular military people heading over to Afghanistan because it has

all sorts of buildings like a city. Some of the soil is actually similar

to the soil over in that region. I appreciate that so many different

branches of the Government are now seeing that.

I have worked for many years with the heroin question. I have

some concerns about the current strategy. Before the Russian plane

wrecked, I was one of the only groups that ever got down into the

Helmand Province. I understand how it differs from Colombia but

there are a lot of similarities to Colombia. It is not true that the

heroin is mostly in individual compounds. There was heroin as far

as the eye could see. The former king both in exile and after he

came in was repeatedly critical of our strategy of not eradicating.

They were the breadbasket of the world before heroin.

Going in and trying to do alternate agricultural crops when you

have the opportunity to get huge dollar returns off of heroin as

compared to traditional agricultural crops, there has to be a disincentive to plant heroin in addition to an incentive to plant other

crops. I am wondering what the current status is of trying to employ both the stick and the carrot. It will not suffice to say plant

corn when you can get an incredible amount more than you can for

corn.

A second part of this is there seems to be a presumption here—

let me ask you a series of questions—the second quick question is

what is Al Qaeda funding itself with if they aren’t getting some

kind of money from the heroin crops either in the form of providing

protection kickbacks like FARC does in Colombia or, in many cases

from what I understand, direct control of the poppy?

Third, are we trying to send a message to other countries around

the world that we think poverty is the reason for terrorism? If so,

how do we not repeat what happened in gang programs early in

the United States? When the Bloods and the Crips first started up,

we started job programs for the Bloods and the Crips. What we

found was that the number of kids who joined the gangs went up

four times from what it was because the only way to get after

school programs and so on was to join the Bloods and Crips. How

do we not send a message if it is all just kind of positive feeling

stuff, we are going to help you do agriculture? How do we not walk

into this trap that other countries will start harboring, that other

countries will see that the only way to get this amount of aid is

to do this?

We already have tribal conflicts. Iraq pales to the tribal conflicts

in Afghanistan. Part of the reason we haven’t been able to get most

of the money to the government in Afghanistan is because we

didn’t feel many of those leaders were trusted. They were making

all kinds of deals on their own. Then Pakistan, which was forced

together out of India, laying tribes over tribes, is a tribal mess. If

you don’t control the narcotics, how do you propose to get this all

sorted out?

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General GREGSON. Narcotics are certainly a major, if not the

only, source of funding for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We are determined to eliminate or at least greatly decrease the amount of illegal activities on that in Afghanistan and other places.

Eradication by itself hurts the farmers. The people who are making money off of the drug trade are not the subsistence farmers.

They are the middlemen and the other people. So the other piece

that has to be put in there if we are going to eliminate the growing

of the poppies that leads to the heroin and opium is sufficient security. Then we can introduce alternative crops so that the individual

farmers can make more money from the alternative crops then they

are making from the poppies. We need to make sure that there is

enough infrastructure, roads and other things, to get the legitimate

crops to market and build the capacity that way.

Your analogy about the Bloods and Crips is very interesting.

This is all about the legitimate government providing proper, better, and more efficient services to the population than other groups

who will come in and fill the place of the legitimate government.

In many ways with the narcotics trade we have the wrong people

providing the services and coercing the people involved.

Ambassador, you wanted to talk some financing?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I want to clarify what General Gregson

just said because it is very critical. A lot has been written about

the relationship between drugs and the enemy and there is a lot

of confusion about that. The intelligence community is not in full

agreement. My own view—and I met with the CIA analyst; we are

meeting with a woman who just wrote a book about it tomorrow,

open source—is as follows: The drug traffic is the source of the

local Taliban funding in Afghanistan to a considerable degree but

not exclusively. There is also massive extortion. So the people in

Kandahar fuel the Taliban through the drugs.

But as General Gregson said, spraying the crops just penalizes

the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else. Our hundreds and

hundreds of millions of dollars that we spend on crop eradication

has not done any damage to the Taliban in the country. It has

helped them recruit.

In my experience in U.S. Government foreign aid, and I began

my career with AID in the 1960’s, this is the least effective program ever.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you believe that is true in Colombia where we

finally have cities you can walk?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. No.

Mr. SOUDER. What would be the difference between Colombia

and Afghanistan?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I have no views on Colombia, Congressman. I have never served there or worked on the problem.

But I want to go to Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. There,

according to our best sources, the primary source of money is

money flowing in from supporters of jihad based in the international community of people who support them. Much of it seems

to come from the Gulf but not the governments involved. I have

now made three trips to the Gulf. The Treasury Department, the

intelligence community, the FBI, and State are all working together. We have created a taskforce to address this issue. A lot of

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this has to be in closed session but I have no hesitation saying in

public that we are intensely concerned about this much greater

flow of money.

As far as the drug trade goes, the major beneficiaries are corrupt

officials and people on the take in the police system. So although

there is some going to the Taliban, Al Qaeda doesn’t get its money

from drugs. They get their money from the international support

for jihad. This has to be a worldwide effort.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Souder.

We are pleased to have joining us the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Ed Towns from New York who was busy on the floor

with other matters. Mr. Chairman, we want to thank you for convening this meeting and your leadership on this issue. If you are

prepared, we would like to give you an opportunity to make a

statement and ask whatever questions you might have for the witnesses.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much. Let me ask that my entire

statement be placed in the record.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns follows:]

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Mr. TOWNS. Let me also apologize for the votes that are going on.

I know we scheduled it before and we had a vote problem. Today

we sort of have a vote problem but we are going to work through

it in some kind of way.

Let me begin by saying we now plan to significantly ramp up in

terms of the military and civilian aid programs for Afghanistan and

Pakistan. We plan to do that. Yet aid in both countries has proven

extraordinarily difficult to oversee. We feel that it is ripe for waste,

fraud, and abuse. What steps have you taken or will you take to

ensure greater transparency and accountability for the U.S. aid

programs?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Mr. Chairman, it is good to see you. If

I can be shameless for a minute, I want to introduce the mother

and future mother in law of two of your own constituents. My stepson and his future fiancee, Katie Marton, are here today. I know

that is shameless but I couldn’t resist.

In terms of greater accountability, we have already talked about

SIGAR. I will be meeting again with General Arnold Fields this

afternoon. Chairman Tierney asked if we wished to extend SIGAR

to Pakistan. You put me under oath so I said yes I would, and I

would extend its mandate in Afghanistan. Second, we are cutting

back on contracts. Above all, we have this integrated civilian/military effort. General Gregson and I, testifying together, we are well

mindful of our mandate not to waste taxpayer money. A lot has

been wasted already. We are going to do everything we can.

I would offer this committee, which as I mentioned earlier I have

never testified before, we would offer you total involvement in our

efforts. You can help us do what is our common goal. I really mean

that sincerely.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much. On that note, I yield back.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bilbray has probably gone to vote so Mr. Coffman, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both for

your service to our country. I myself served in Iraq at a time with

the U.S. Marine Corps when things were not going very well. It

wasn’t until later on when there was enough security on the

ground during the surge that provided enough security to allow the

political process to move forward and the kind of capacity building

to occur to create a government with more stability that is allowing

us at this time to do a phased withdrawal from the country.

When I look at the metrics between Iraq and Afghanistan, it

looks to me that this administration is making the same mistakes

that George W. Bush made in Iraq, that we are incrementally putting in resources that we know are not adequate. Because of that,

we will unnecessarily cost the lives of young Americans in this war.

Afghanistan has a larger land mass than Iraq with more difficult

terrain. Afghanistan has a larger population than Iraq disbursed in

rural areas, unlike Iraq. Afghanistan has no real history of governance that Iraq has. Iraq today has 610,000 members to its Iraqi security forces. Afghanistan is projecting I think under 250,000. I

know they are reexamining that. Iraq in the surge had 160,000

U.S. military personnel on the ground. We are going to source up

to I think something like 68,000 to include advisors and trainers.

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This administration needs to be honest with the American people

and up front as to what the cost of reversing the situation in Afghanistan is going to take. Please answer.

General GREGSON. Thank you. Afghanistan and Iraq are indeed

different. There is no doubt about it. We take your point about the

resources that may or may not be adequate. We are going through

another assessment. General McChrystal has been ordered by the

Secretary of Defense to conduct an assessment within the first 60

days of all manner of things in Afghanistan to include what will

be needed to reverse the adverse trends and to provide adequate

security and to get on with the development that we need to get

on with there.

In the meantime, in the interagency process led by Ambassador

Holbrooke, we are making an assessment across the region particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We expect to consult closely

with the Congress on these metrics as we go forward. We need not

only a whole of government—meaning a whole of the administration solution—we need a whole of government, whole of Nation solution from our part to make sure Afghanistan comes out the way

we want it to.

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you. I understand. I was in Afghanistan recently in discussions with General McKiernan and the Ambassador

as well as the General who is in charge of training Afghan security

forces. It is my understanding that review is focused on Afghanistan’s security forces and is not focused on U.S. military personnel.

I just want to urge you to take the message back to the administration that it needs to be focused on both.

The American people need to know what the true cost of this war

is going to be and that we are not going to go back to the George

W. Bush days before the surge where we are just getting into the

war and then figuring out based on our losses that we need more

resources and then we stop and pause until we get it right. I think

that is just unfair to the young men and women that are serving

on the ground. Again, I think that we need to do not what is convenient but what is necessary to reverse the tide in this war if that

is the intention of this administration.

General GREGSON. Yes, it is the intention of the administration.

We spoke earlier—Ambassador Holbrooke spoke earlier—about

making very sure that we are properly measuring outputs, not just

the easier measure of purely inputs. We are going to remain focused on outcomes, which is the proper way to measure what we

are doing. I think that fits with the intent of your comments that

we make sure that, No. 1, we are honest with the American people

and, No. 2, we can explain what we intend to gain from the expenditure of resources, both lives and treasure here.

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, General. To the Marines and soldiers

on the ground, those inputs are important for their day to day survival. We certainly found that out in Iraq the hard way.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Coffman. Thank you for joining us

today.

There are two votes for those Members on the panel here. Both

of them are procedural votes and they are going to be back to back.

One is winding down and the other will immediately follow.

Ms. Watson, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

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Ms. WATSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to really thank

you two gentleman for being so patient while we play games on the

floor. These are procedural motions and they delay our serious

work. What we are discussing is serious so if Members run out it

is just because they have to go down and vote.

I have to defend my Crips and Bloods. You know, we started in

south central and we send them worldwide. But so many of these

youngsters have never been off of their own turf or to the Pacific

Ocean. The end result of the drug trade is really that is coming

over our southern border. So I wanted to set that record straight.

Ambassador Holbrooke, I am so glad that you are back in the

mix now. We need you.

My question goes to what we have observed in Iraq. There was an attempt to build the largest embassy in the world at $1 trillion.

I thought the largest embassy in the world should be in India and

China so we stopped the funding on that. I understand that only

nine people in the embassy spoke Arabic. So my concern is the

communication, the understanding of the culture, the language,

and so on. I think that understanding who we are dealing with in

Pakistan and Afghanistan would help us. It is not all a military

war. It is a psychological war.

So I would like you to comment, both of you. General, thank you.

So I am really going to address this to the Ambassador because I

was there myself and you really have to understand the people.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I love your question because I was a

career foreign service officer. I was sent to Vietnam and I studied

Vietnamese for a year. Please don’t ask me to prove it today.

Ms. WATSON. [Remarks made in Vietnamese.]

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Of course we have to speak the languages. I can’t speak to the Iraq story but I can speak very directly

to our current efforts. The easiest way to do that is to introduce

my staff assistant who is traveling with me to the Hill, Kim

McClure. Kim, could you stand a minute? Kim is a Dari speaker.

She was in Ghazni Province. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is

going to end up there again, maybe not in Ghazni. We have a lot

of people like Kim in the foreign service now.

Once President Obama articulated the priority of Afghanistan,

once Hilary Clinton made the personal appeals, we found something quite interesting. Some 800 people signed up to be considered

for this surge. I just gave the chairman an unclassified timeline on

the surge. The Pentagon, at Secretary Gates’s initiative, has given

us an additional list of about 300 people. I brought with me today

Joanne Arzt who is in charge of 305 additional names from the

Pentagon. Joanne, who heads a special Afghan support office, is

working very, very hard on that.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, we would be delighted to

submit an additional statement for the record on these issues. It

doesn’t matter how many people we send if they don’t know the

territory, we are not going to succeed.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, we have been, just to inform, very

interested in the diversity in the State Department. I am so glad

that you are picking that cudgel up and moving with it. I think the

more people who reflect those out there that you are relating to,

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I think the better understanding we have. Maybe we can put our

guns down and negotiate through diplomacy. We are giving some

new tools to our Secretary of State and we can talk about that another time. But the questions have been who are we fighting and

what are we trying to win. I think we are going to have to do it

through negotiations and through diplomacy and not at the end of

a gun.

General, would you like to respond?

General GREGSON. I concur completely with that statement. The

military has a role here but the most important role is that of the

guardian. It is not how many enemies we attack. It is how well and

how much of the population we can protect. That is the operating

philosophy and the strong guidance from both the previous General

in command, General McKiernan, and it is certainly re-endorsed

and restrengthened by General McChrystal, who is now in charge.

I might add two additional points on the thrust of your comments. In addition to the people that Ambassador Holbrooke spoke

about, we have collected over 1,000 resumes of Department of Defense civilians and retired military who are volunteering to help to

fill any civilian capacity positions. We don’t know how many we

will need yet but there is a strong well of patriotism within the

country and certainly within the Government to volunteer to serve

in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The second point I might make, particularly on the language capability where Congress may be able to provide some help to us,

is that we are a Nation of immigrants. We have a tremendous latent language capability out there. You often find people that are

serving in Government or other places and you have no idea that

they speak a language of value to us. There has to be a way to tap

into that reservoir out there where we can get people who do bring

native language speaking capability in these many areas that are

of certainly very high importance to us now.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. There is one very good example of that,

Mr. Chairman, which we have now implemented in the refugee

camps in Pakistan. A member of our team, Shamala Chaudri from

Ohio, comes from a family from the Punjab in Pakistan, has been

mobilizing women doctors of Pakistani American background. The

first six are in the refugee camps now. It is obvious why you need

women doctors in that culture. Another 25 or 30 have signed up.

They would have gone except for the bombing of the Pearl Hotel.

This may seem like a small thing sitting in this room today but

you get some women doctors into those camps and you are making

a real difference. Secretary Clinton is particularly focused, as you

and I have talked about, on this question of the Pakistan American

diaspora as is Congressman Van Hollen.

Mr. TIERNEY. As you know, a week ago both Sherry Rehman,

who is a member of Parliament over there, and Dr. Ahmed were

indicating that very thing about getting female doctors over in that

region, particularly with all the disruption that has gone on. I

think I shared with you or were about to share about 12,000 names

of Pakistani heritage doctors in the United States. So we have a

large reservoir of people—the administration seems intent on trying to utilize those people the best they can.

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Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Do we have that list yet because that

would be very valuable?

Mr. TIERNEY. I know that we shared it. People on your staff and

ours need to work that out.

Mr. Chaffetz, you have been very patient. Thank you. You are

recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador and General,

for being here. Thank you for your dedication to our country, your

commitment to public service, and the untold number of hours and

heartache that you go through. We appreciate that.

I would like to talk about the nation-building aspect of what is

happening. But before I get to that, Ambassador, I need to ask you

just a brief set of questions about your involvement with the Countrywide loans that were given out, the so-called Friends of Angelo

program. My understanding is that you were a private citizen

when you participated in that. Personally, I don’t see a challenge

when you are involved as a private citizen engaged in those types

of things. But would you agree with me that there is a difference

between doing that as a private citizen and if you were engaged in

Government service?

Mr. TIERNEY. I am going to let you answer that. I expect you

want to respond to that. But I would like to try to keep this on the

subject matter of the hearing. We don’t get many opportunities to

have oversight hearings about this region and have the Ambassador and the General here.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. This shouldn’t take long.

Mr. TIERNEY. So I am not going to rule it out of order if the Ambassador wants to answer it but otherwise I will.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I will do whatever you want, Mr.

Chairman. I will be happy to talk privately about it.

Mr. TIERNEY. I will soon have you respond off the record on that

so we can keep this hearing focused on matters pertaining to this

region and the oversight aspect.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I will get through it very quickly. Believe me, I

want to talk about what is going on in Afghanistan.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I think we are through it already is what I

am basically saying. So if you want to move on to your next question, we are happy to entertain it.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I would appreciate it if the Ambassador has expressed a willingness to answer it, I would like to hear it.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Well, I am not going to comment on

other people. I was a private citizen. One sixth of all the mortgage

loans in the country were from that company. We looked around.

It wasn’t actually a loan for me; it was for my son.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. The question I really want to ask is if you were

involved in public service, that would be an issue, right? This really

shouldn’t be an issue because you were a private citizen.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chaffetz, if you can tie that in somehow so it

has some relevance to the hearing we are having, fine. Otherwise,

we are just going to rule that line of questioning out of order and

ask you to move on to something pertinent to this hearing.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I would like the Ambassador to answer that question, if that is all right.

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Mr. TIERNEY. I know you would but now I am asking you to ask

something that is pertinent to this hearing or we will just move on

to the next questioner.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I do think it is the relevancy and jurisdiction of

this committee to ask a relevant question like that.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, this should be in a private conversation.

Mr. TIERNEY. Excuse me. We have had a ruling of the Chair. Mr.

Chaffetz can either challenge the ruling or move on.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I will move on.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I had a chance to go to Afghanistan.

Let me just ask, Mr. Chairman, can I ask for unanimous consent

to at least submit the documents I have in my possession for the

record?

Mr. TIERNEY. We are going to withhold reservation on that objection until we see the documents. We will make a ruling after that.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. The nation-building aspect of what is

happening, my concern is the gravity and the propensity to be able

to actually execute and achieve those goals in so-called nationbuilding when you have an education system where you have such

an amazingly high illiteracy rate. How do we tackle that, not only

in the short term but the long term as well? That seems like such

a daunting task when you have parts of that country with, it is my

understanding, as high as a 90 or maybe even 95 percent illiteracy

rate. How do we address that?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. We have a very strong education backing. The government, since the Taliban were thrown out, has about

6 or 7 million people in schools including 2 or 3 million girls. Literacy rates are very low but they are not as low as you said. I

think your figures are wrong on that. It is a very high priority but

literacy in and of itself is not the underlying cause of the problem

we face. It is an endemic problem and one that has to be addressed

across the whole world.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. General, did you want to answer?

General GREGSON. I would like to comment that nation-building

travels under many definitions. The standard time-proven principles of a counter-insurgency campaign call for a whole of government effort providing security for the people and providing the

means of development, providing means for their lives to get a little bit better day by day, to be able to see that rising standard of

living, and to bring good governance from the host nation to bear

along with the host nation’s security forces.

Literacy education is part of it but a literacy rate measured by

the way we do in the West I would submit does not necessarily indicate a lack of intelligence. The oral tradition in Afghanistan is

very strong. To make progress in Afghanistan we have to operate

within the cultural norms and expectations within Afghanistan

while still bringing the good governance, the security, and all those

things there and providing better services to the population than

our enemies.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Chaffetz. Mr.

Van Hollen, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you both for your testimony.

I was very pleased to see that the President is finally allocating

the resources, attention, and energy necessary to address the national security challenges we face in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I

have just a quick word on Pakistan.

Ambassador Holbrooke, thank you for all your efforts, including

your efforts to pass the Reconstruction Opportunity Zone legislation. As you and the President have said, military force alone is not

going to resolve the challenges here. We have to have a comprehensive strategy. Certainly economic support, especially by way of free

trade opportunities, is important. If you have any update on where

they are in the Senate, I would appreciate it. I know you have been

in conversations with Senator Cantwell.

But before you answer that, let me just say with respect to Pakistan that I think enormous progress is being made in a short period of time. The new Pakistani government and I think the people

of Pakistan now see the challenge of the Pakistani Taliban as not

just the United States’ problem but clearly a problem for the people

of Pakistan. That has brought about a sea change. We need to

make sure that we continue to work with the government to make

sure they take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. We also need to make sure that out of this refugee crisis

it is clear that the Pakistani government, with our help and support, is able to provide the resources so that it doesn’t turn into

something that undermines our support in that area.

I want to briefly turn to Afghanistan. I commend the administration on the changes with respect to the use of bombing. There is

no doubt that if we are going to be successful in Afghanistan we

have to win over the hearts and minds of the people. I think our

previous approach was counterproductive in that regard. So I am

pleased to see the changes there.

My question relates to the AID program because, as you have

said, Ambassador Holbrooke, I think there have been serious shortcomings in the way AID has approached Afghanistan. I am very

heartened by the changes that you have made. One program that

by a lot of the testimony of a lot of people seems to be successful

at the local level is the National Solidarity Program. I would be interested in your thoughts on that.

There is a perception among some that AID is not a fan of the

National Solidarity Program and has not been interested in fully

supporting that effort. I don’t know if that perception is accurate

or not. I am interested in your take on that.

But there is some concern that some of the proposals that are

being made will undermine the efforts of the National Solidarity

Program. I am interested in your views on that.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Before I answer the AID portion of the

question, could I let General Gregson address the bombing issue

because it is far and away the most important issue?

General GREGSON. I could not agree more on the potential for

any use of close air support missions or any air support missions

to be counterproductive. All the Commanders and all the air crews

are very carefully attuned to the necessity to prevent civilian casualties. We are saddened whenever any innocent civilian is killed.

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We are continually adjusting our procedures, many times in response to discovered techniques that the enemy is using to place

civilians between us and themselves, in other words using them as

a shield or intentionally trying to cause casualties. It is a very serious matter. It has our full attention.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Congressman Van Hollen, once again I

give my appreciation to your leadership.

On the Senate ROZ side, I met this morning with three Members

of the Senate, two of the Republican leadership and Senator Cantwell. I talked to Senator Kerry and many other Senators. But

where it stood 3 hours ago and where it stands right now could be

different, so I think I had better just defer. But let me make it

clear, the President has spoken publicly about the value of this.

When your body passed the legislation it was a huge story in Pakistan and a favorable story, and we cannot thank you enough and

we hope that it will become law.

On the refugee issue, let me just point out again that the refugees are in the ROZ area and that is the critical issue.

On the bombing, let me add to what General Gregson just said,

a personal comment just echoing what General McChrystal, Ambassador Eikenberry, and I have all said publicly in the past. The

war could be lost over this issue. If the war turns from a war

against the Taliban and to a war against the Pashtun people, we

will lose. The Taliban propaganda is all designed to make that

point. We were successful in the 1980’s in turning the Soviet invasion along those lines. We cannot let that happen to us. That is

why we are putting so much attention on what is called strategic

communications, a phrase I am not comfortable with because it

does not quite convey what we are talking about. We are talking

about counter-propaganda. And the Taliban have been winning the

propaganda struggle.

Finally, on the National Solidarity Program, I consider it the

best program in the country—22,000 villages have been covered by

it, 7,000 have not. AID may or may not have been supportive in

the past but I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, they are 100 percent

supportive now or they are not going to be working on integrated

issues. The 7,000 uncovered villages, I have talked to Bob Zellick,

the president of the World Bank, about increasing their support.

Some of your colleagues have expressed support for it. And we

want to do everything we can to get this program going because it

is one of the few programs that gets all the way down to the bottom levels.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen. Just if I might interject something here, Mr. Ambassador. You talked about strategic

communications as a critical component, whether that is the right

term for it or not. You say you are going to need additional personal instructions in Kabul and the Afghan provinces, in

Islamabad, Peshawar, that would be necessary to implement the

new program and you are working with the embassies in Kabul

and Islamabad to address the needs. That is all in your written

statement. What additional resources do you anticipate that you

will require?

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Ambassador HOLBROOKE. The resources we need for so-called

STRATCOM are in the supplemental. The ISAF and CENTCOM

have put vast additional resources into this issue and, very importantly, have brought a new two star admiral, Admiral Smith, who

was in charge of this issue in Iraq, out there as part of the headquarters team for General McChrystal. We have a team in my office working on the civilian/military integration. We are still lacking a civilian counterpart to Admiral Smith on the ground in

Kabul. That is a very hard position to fill. So, on the resources

front, I think we have enough. And we talked earlier about

counter-narcotics. Some of that $45 million we are taking away

from crop eradication will be used for public information. And when

you counter the narcotics issue you are also countering the Taliban

propaganda. So I do not feel there is a huge resource issue. What

there is is an intellectual problem about the nature of the enemy.

Their propaganda is all negative—we are terrorist, we defile their

soil, the government is corrupt. You know the litany. And so we

need a really sophisticated set of public information programs and

they cannot be in an American accent, they must be local people

speaking to their tribal colleagues.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

Ms. Norton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an important hearing you have called and very much appreciated.

Ambassador Holbrooke, we have been hearing horrific reports

about internally displaced persons in Pakistan. Initially, it appears

that the Pakistani Army was reluctant, understandably, to engage

in conflict with their own population on the ground, with the difficulty of doing so, particularly when the Taliban is involved in exercising the kinds of pressure that they have brought on the population. Is this country doing anything to aid these people who apparently have been asked and have moved or run from where much

of the fighting is taking place and are living as catch-as-catch can,

internally displaced in their own country. Have we provided any

assistance of any kind? What of those, and are there large numbers

still left in the conflict zones in Pakistan?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I am sorry, I did not catch one phrase

at the end of your question. What if there is what?

Ms. NORTON. Sorry?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I did not catch one phrase. What if

there is, I did not catch what you said after that. I am sorry.

Ms. NORTON. My question goes to what is being done for the internally displaced people or persons.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. As soon as the crisis hit, the first leader in the world to get involved was President Obama. This was acknowledged in Ahmed Rashid’s article in the Washington Post—he

is the most respected journalist in South Asia—last week. President Obama personally got involved and——

Ms. NORTON. With aid? In what way?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. He effectively became the chief refugee officer of the United States and Secretary Clinton announced $110

million of aid immediately. That has already been dispersed, We

then wrote a letter to the leadership asking for $200 million to be

added to the supplemental at the last minute for this issue. That

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was done. We found other money, and out total right now is $380

million. Now I was sent out by the President to visit the camps,

as the chairman mentioned. The rest of the world has not responded in kind. Normally, we give about a quarter to a third of

international assistance in humanitarian crises. In this case, we

are well over 50 percent, about 55 percent. That is not right. So

the President sent me to the Gulf to talk to the Gulf States. I went

to four of them, he, himself, went to Saudi Arabia. We are asking

for——

Ms. NORTON. Well what about the Islamic relief organizations

that we understand have been playing an important role. That is

not the case?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I do not want to get into castigating

other groups, but we honestly believe that other countries, including ones you are referring to, have not done enough. We are talking

to them continually about this. Some, like the United Arab Emirates just gave $30 million, Oman gave $12 million. But we think

more can be done. After all, these are countries which are neighbors of Pakistan with huge connections. In addition, we mentioned

prior to your arrival here, we have mobilized the Pakistani-American community. We are sending women Pakistani-American doctors out there, for obvious reasons, in the camps. If you take your

cell phone and you text S-W-A-T, SWAT, and then you send it to

the number 20222, you will automatically contribute $5 to the

UNHCR. I urge you all to do it. I have maxed out; $25 is the maximum. We are doing everything we can to support this effort. We

are taking the leadership role. Secretary Clinton and the President

are incredibly concerned. We also have an economic advisory team

headed by the White House’s international economic expert David

Lipton on their way out there to talk about the additional pressure

this is putting on an economy which is in deep trouble and which

had to take out an emergency IMF loan of $6.7 billion last year

with a quarterly report due next week. This was to raise energy

prices by 10 percent next week under the IMF agreement. The

whole rest of the country, 60 percent of the people in Pakistan earn

less than $2 a day, the U.N. poverty level. We are deeply concerned

with the overall strategic, political, and humanitarian implications

of this. There is no country in the world getting more attention

right now from President Obama and the Secretary of State and

the rest of us than Pakistan on exactly these issues.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Norton.

General GREGSON. If I might.

Mr. TIERNEY. I am sorry.

General GREGSON. Very briefly, DOD responded in the immediate aftermath of the appearance of the people pushed out of their

homes with aid, as requested. Admiral LeFever is our senior uniformed American in Islamabad. His counterpart is General

Nadeem. Those two operated together in the Pakistani earthquake

of 2005, so they are joined at the hip in our response.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Bilbray, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BILBRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. After last summer and

in talking with some people, it became obvious to me our biggest

military problem in Afghanistan was totally ignored by the press

and a lot of people in politics, and that is while we were conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:49 Feb 15, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00174 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\63038.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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centrating on contracts in Iraq by for-profits, we totally ignored

what appears to me as huge abuses of nonprofits that were getting

funds to do the economic development. That is where the problem

was, the lack of economic development, giving people that alternative. Now I will say it frankly to both of you, with the successes

we saw in Nangarhar with the reduction of poppies, and then to

see the lack of response that we had in a province that had a

major, and I would offer you the opportunity to comment, a major

reduction that we had in that province, and the fact that we are

looking at U.S. agriculture experts going in for 1 year and not

knowing local culture, not knowing the local experience, not being

able to really understand the application of their knowledge, do you

see some real changes we need to make in the way we handle that?

And I would open your comments about the problem of what I believe was major problems with the application of the contracts with

the nonprofits.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. On the contract issue, we could not

agree more. Prior to your arrival in the hearing, we discussed how

many contracts we are holding up, renegotiating, and re-examining, and I gave some examples.

In regard to the counter-narcotics issue, we consider it of immense importance. But we do not think crop eradication has had

any negative effect on the real enemy. In fact, it has only driven

farmers into the hands of the Taliban. So we are downgrading crop

eradication and redistributing the resources that you have appropriated for that to interdiction, rule of law, going after the big guys,

and those involved people in the government. The drugs are an important but not the primary source of funding for the enemy. They

get a lot more money out of the Gulf, according to our intelligence

sources, and Al Qaeda does not get money at all from drugs. That

goes to local Taliban and places like Kandahar, and they can also

get it from extortion. But we recognize the importance of the drug

issue. But what I would like to do, if you are interested, Mr. Chairman, is at another day come up and brief you in detail and bring

with us the entire panoply of people, military and civilian, working

in counter-narcotics because I think it is such an important subissue and we ought to do it as a coherent interagency whole.

But I appreciate your comments about contracts. We really are

spending a lot of time sifting through a lot of debris which we

found when we arrived.

Mr. BILBRAY. The lack of application of contracts where people

were actually—I am ranking member on Procurement Subcommittee—showing photos of their groves they were planting and there

were photos of other locations, and we were not keeping on that,

and the children were watching American troops destroy daddy’s

crop but did not see us planting it. And I have to say again, it

seems to me that the transition is how to slowly wean off and

maybe through a series of phasing in economic alternatives and

phasing out the lands that can be used. We do not need to talk in

detail about how they do it. Not an all or nothing thing, but a

phasing in so that there is an economic alternative as the ability

to grow the crops are slowly weaned out through proper application

of technology. Is that a fair approach?

General GREGSON. Yes.

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Mr. BILBRAY. Then it is doable?

General GREGSON. Yes. And not only doable in the way that you

described, but it has to be done that way. To repeat what we have

said, eradication applied solely with spraying the crops or whatever

else we are doing does nothing else but hurt the subsistence farmer

who is not getting a great profit from this stuff anyway and drives

them, as the Ambassador said, into the arms of the Taliban. We

can go to alternative crops. It is proven in other places in the world

that were tremendously troubled with the growth of poppies and

the opium trade, particularly the Thailand part of the Golden Triangle is now growing designer coffee that sells for $3 a cup here

in Washington and the farmers get the profits. But the key is providing the security and also providing the improvements to the infrastructure so the farmers can get their crops to market without

paying 27 tolls between Kabul and Iran or wherever it is that they

are going. So it is an all up approach. It is also codified strongly

in all the best practices of counter-insurgency. And with the new

leadership on the process here in Washington, with Ambassador

Holbrooke, we are hopeful that we can bring everybody into this to

fix the problem.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Mr. Chairman, I was just handed a report. There is nothing we can do about it but just so you know, the

embassy in Kabul has just reported a large explosion on the airfield at the site of the Jalalabad provincial reconstruction team.

That is the province that the Congressman was just talking about.

I assume you know it well from your own trips. Initial reports are

unclear as to whether any Americans have been injured or not.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you for that. We want to watch that.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. It only reminds us I think in the most

graphic possible way what dangers our civilian and military personnel face on a daily basis and the fact that so many of them in

both uniform and civilian clothes are volunteering to go out is to

General Gregson and me the most inspiring part of what we are

doing.

Mr. TIERNEY. We oftentimes in this committee during our hearings try to make mention of the risk not to just the people in uniform, but a lot of civilians go over there oftentimes with less security than we are all comfortable with. They do it understanding the

risk that they take, but it is no less notable and noble for them to

do it. So let us hope that nobody was injured.

To my witnesses, you have been good enough to say that you

would stay until 1 p.m. and we have a few minutes left. We have

three people that have not asked questions yet. I am going to ask

if they would ask their questions, try to keep it within a couple of

minutes so we can hold up our end of the promise to these witnesses. I understand the voting has kept everyone going back and

forth and I apologize. But if we can keep this reasonably close to

1 p.m., I hope we will be satisfying everybody.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman. I, too, have a news report,

Ambassador. The New York Times says an air strike believed to

have been carried out by a U.S. drone killed at least 60 people at

a funeral for a Taliban fighter in south Waziristan. Residents of

the area and local news reports said details of the attack remain

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unclear. The death toll was exceptionally high. They are saying, if

the reports are accurate, the strike could be the deadliest since the

United States began using aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles.

Now Ambassador Holbrooke, attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan

seem to have caused the United States to lose ground as we attempt to stabilize the region. Inevitably, these attacks when they

are massive produce reports that innocent civilian deaths, including the deaths of women and children, result from drone attacks

and that these attacks have been met with hostility by the citizens

of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now I would just like to know, would

you address the role that these drones used in Pakistan and Afghanistan play in the new interagency strategy with the Department of Defense. Also, when considering the use of drones, what

consideration has been given to the potential increase in extremism

among the population due to their use? Ambassador Holbrooke.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. It is a very tough set of questions and

you and I have different opinions on this. But before I respond directly, I would like General Gregson to make a specific response to

what you just said and then I will come back.

Mr. KUCINICH. Well I will redirect the question, General

Gregson, and I would like to hear it from Ambassador Holbrooke

as well. And I thank the Chair.

General GREGSON. I was made aware of that report shortly before we came into the hearing room. We take any reports of innocent casualties very seriously. We grieve for any innocent people

that are killed or hurt in any of these actions. You are correct that

we have to very carefully balance the objective we are trying to

achieve with these strikes with the creation of more disaffected

people and the creation of more enemies. I do not know the details

on this single strike, but I can guarantee that it will be fully investigated and we will insist on a full accounting.

Mr. KUCINICH. Ambassador Holbrooke.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Congressman, as you and I have discussed privately, I am really ready to talk about this in any level

of detail required but we have American lives on the line here and

we have a hugely important strategic relationship with Pakistan at

a critical juncture. Prior to your arrival we spent a great deal of

time talking about the refugees, the economic crisis. And with

great respect, I would rather continue this discussion off-line.

Mr. KUCINICH. All right. I thank the Chair. And I would like to

continue the discussion. Thank you, Ambassador Holbrooke.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. Ms. Kaptur.

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome gentlemen.

General Gregson, can you provide now or for the record the number

of civilian contractors by category working inside of Afghanistan

versus our regular military force? And if you had to guess today,

are they equal in number? And what about their responsibility?

General GREGSON. Let me take that for the record, if I could.

Ms. KAPTUR. All right. I am very interested in that and I will

provide more detail for the question as well.

Let me state that what worries me about this whole Central

Asian engagement is the revolving door in and out of Government,

multi-million dollar contracts and interests, endless wars, sometimes justified by contractors, drawing us and our people deeper

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and deeper into a region of the world that we have very little competence to quell. It appears to me we are being drawn into the war

inside Pakistan for SWAT and FATA. My question to both of you

is, should that war be ours?

General GREGSON. Pakistan’s challenge from the extremists is severe and we cannot win in Afghanistan without Pakistan succeeding. So to the extent that we can, we are helping Pakistan with

this problem. Pakistan is a sovereign nation, they have a competent armed forces, we are not putting ground troops in there, we

are providing help to help them build a counter-insurgency capability to include doctrine, equipment, and training.

Ms. KAPTUR. Could I ask Ambassador Holbrooke, is Mr. Milton

Bearden working with our efforts in any way associated with you

or other parts of our Government right now?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Milt Bearden?

Ms. KAPTUR. Yes.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Milt Bearden was our station chief

when I was Ambassador in Germany. He is a friend of mine. Once

in a while I see him. There is no professional relationship between

Milt and myself since I left Germany as Ambassador in 1994. He

may be working with other people in the government, that I do not

know, but there is no professional connection between Milt and me.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I have asked myself

the question has the ISI ever told the United States the truth

about anything. And when one looks at the internals of Pakistan

and some of these ideas that we have from the administration

about opportunity zones, and about where we are going to do all

this development and so forth, would you not think that government would support its own interests in certain provinces and exclude other provinces. And as I look at some of the maps that have

been submitted for the record where we are going to do all this development, so to speak, if I look at the trade deficit in textiles

today we endure with Pakistan, we are down from 800,000 workers

at the beginning of this decade in our country in textiles to less

than half that now. Our textiles from Pakistan have increased exponentially. You would think that there would be a lot more middle

class inside of Pakistan for all the jobs that we have given up in

this country. So what makes us think if we are going to do more

of that it is going to have any impact?

It seems to me that there is a funnel and the funnel is the central government of Pakistan and there are certain provinces where

they hold power and certain provinces where they do not and we

are being drawn into a situation that we have very little ability to

control because we have a government there that has its own interests. I just say that for the record because I really do not see how

we are going to change that, the internals of Pakistan. And Ambassador Holbrooke, you have an interesting background because you

were in charge of rural pacification inside of Vietnam for AID. You

know a lot about rural areas and what happened back in the

1960’s. Do you sometimes have de`ja ́ vu ́ as you look at what you are

facing in Afghanistan and Pakistan right now? Back then the Vietnamese cared more about their individual villages and regions than

they did about any sense of security for the nation. We were not

effective there. Now we are in an area with even less contact, abilVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:49 Feb 15, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00178 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\63038.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ity, experience. So what makes you think that we are going to

make a real difference here working with a government like Pakistan where they have their interests?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I take those as rhetorical questions

since——

Ms. KAPTUR. I would like to hear your comment. How do they expect us to look through the prism of Pakistan and win this one

when Pakistan’s central government has an interest in certain

provinces and not in others?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Kaptur and I have talked many times and I greatly respect her and

I would like to address one of the three issues she raised.

Mr. TIERNEY. Address as many as you like. We are going to have

Mr. Cummings ask questions afterwards.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Let me start with the last one. First of

all, you promoted me. I was not in charge of anything in Vietnam.

I was 22 years old and they sent me down to the lower Mekong

Delta. But I did spend time working on programs which are analogous to what we have in Afghanistan and there are structural similarities between the two countries. The No. 1 problem is the sanctuary, Pakistan in the case of Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos and

North Vietnam in the case of Vietnam. There are also problems of

governance and corruption. There are many structural similarities

but the core difference, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese

never at any point posed a direct threat to the American mainland.

The people we are fighting now in Afghanistan and sanctuaries in

Pakistan do. And as General Gregson said, we have to fix the Pakistan sanctuary program in order to succeed, however you define

success in Afghanistan. So I want to say that I personally learned

from my Vietnam experience things I am trying to apply in my

present job. But I also questioned the Vietnam involvement and

took a leave of absence from the government over it during the

Nixon administration. In this case, I believe in what we are doing,

I am fully committed, and I think every American should say not

should we be there, but how can we succeed. We inherited a lot of

programs which were not successful. We are fixing them point by

point. This committee’s oversight is indispensable in that goal.

Second, in regard to textiles, I am not an expert on this issue,

which is one of the most complicated in the United States, but

Pakistan is sixth or seventh in terms of exports to the United

States in textiles. It is about, do not hold me to the exact number,

but it is about one-sixth, less than a sixth of the size of China, and

there is Mexico and other countries in between. The ROZ legislation which Congressman Van Hollen has proposed and Senator

Cantwell is advocating in the Senate would affect only about 4 or

5 million people in all of Pakistan. And if Pakistan is a national

security priority for the United States, and I believe it is, the administration I work for believes it is, I would ask respectfully, recognizing the immense special complexities of this issue, that it be

considered in this particular country in connection to our national

security interests. As some of my colleagues in the military have

said, Americans could die because people who are out of work in

the FATA, the western tribal areas, join the Taliban, and jobs

could reduce that. There is a causality in this legislation to our naVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:49 Feb 15, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00179 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\63038.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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tional interest and American lives which does not exist anywhere

else in the world. That is why President Obama has gone out of

his way to support what I would call in shorthand from the Van

Hollen-Cantwell slightly different versions of the legislation.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, may I put a couple remarks in the

record. One by the former Russian general in the Soviet-Afghan

conflict who said, ‘‘If Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson,

it has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems there with force.’’ I would also like to ask Mr. Arnest [phonetic] or Ambassador Holbrooke, if he could, as far as being a Special Envoy, I do not know whether you are required to provide financial disclosure.

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. I was.

Ms. KAPTUR. Those records for the official record today, please.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I will be very brief, Mr. Chairman. First of all,

thank you gentlemen for being here. I apologize. We have National

Defense on the floor and we are trying to figure out how to deal

with this piracy problem. I am chairman of the Coast Guard Subcommittee, so I am trying to get an amendment through.

I have just two things. Ambassador Holbrooke, first of all I want

to thank you for meeting with some Pakistani American constituents of mine a week or so ago. It was one of the most meaningful

things, as they tell me, that has ever happened in their lives. You

took the time to listen to them. You took the time to try to understand their concerns about their other home country. It just meant

a lot. I really appreciate it and they appreciate it.

How important is that? I mean, it seems as if you took that very

seriously. The support of the Pakistani Americans, and most of us

have Pakistani Americans in our districts, how important is that

to what you all are trying to do?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. Mr. Chairman, I want to publically

thank Congressman Cummings and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee for leading this effort. On the Republican side, although he

was not at that meeting, I thank Congressman Burton who cochairs the Pakistan caucus.

This is a personal initiative of Secretary of State Clinton. The

congressional effort to bring in a group of leading Pakistani Americans to reinforce our efforts was just fantastic. I already mentioned

before you were here the issue of the Pakistani American women

doctors with which you are familiar. I just want to thank you for

this.

The diaspora community, as General Gregson has already said,

is an immense resource to the United States not sufficiently utilized. There is also an Afghan community. We want to work with

them. In fact, I think some of them are in your district.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Did you have something on that, General? You

looked like you wanted to say something.

General GREGSON. Earlier we were talking about people with

special skills, language capabilities, and cultural understanding. I

only made the point that we are a Nation of immigrants. We have

many, many people across the country with very, very special skills

177

that we need to tap into like Dari speakers, Pashto speakers, and

a number of the languages that don’t make the top 10 in college

studies but are critical to our effort now.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I have just one question and this will be it. This

pending H.R. 1463, which presents congressional findings regarding Dr. Abdul Khan, founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. According to those findings, Khan confessed to participating

in an international network that provided nuclear technology to

other nations. The government of Pakistan released Khan from

house arrest in Islamabad after only 5 years and has refused to

allow the U.S. Government the opportunity to interview him.

How do our new strategies looking at nuclear weapons objectives

address these developments? How do you reconcile our care and optimism about interagency cooperation given Pakistan’s position to

date with regard to Khan?

Ambassador HOLBROOKE. On the nuclear issue itself, Congressman, I previously respectfully said that I want to stick to a long

standing policy of discussing that only in executive sessions. It is

the most sensitive issue. We pay a great deal of attention to it.

On the question of A. Q. Khan, before I entered the Government

I spoke repeatedly on the subject. I think it is inexplicable that

when this whole business broke out about 6 years ago the United

States was not immediately involved in interrogations. We have repeatedly stated that. We share your concerns. At this time, it is my

understanding—and I use those words advisedly because it is secondhand—that this issue is no longer relevant in the sense that he

is old and apparently unreliable.

Given the strategic crisis challenge we face, we are focusing on

many other issues as well. But I have discussed it with the leadership of Pakistan. I have made my views known. I think you would

find that you and I share the same views. I wish I could give you

more satisfaction on that but I think I can’t at this point. I am very

disturbed. I think this man did more damage to the world than almost any other person this side of Osama Bin Laden himself.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I just want to clarify one matter. A moment ago Ms. Kaptur asked for items to be put in the record. One

was a statement by a certain General. That was put on the record

without objection. You made another request, I understand, that I

didn’t hear. You somehow wound two together in there. That was

about financial statements or whatever?

Ms. KAPTUR. Financial disclosure.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is not going to be allowed in by unanimous

consent. Any public record that is already submitted obviously will

be a public record and that will be allowed. But we are going to

allow the witnesses to respect whatever public obligations they

have. That is what we will have for that.

Now I want to thank our witnesses for being here and generously

going beyond the time period. We have a lot of interest from Members, as you can tell. I think well over 20 Members got to ask questions and you fully answered them. We appreciate that. Mr. Flake

and I are used to having some time to ourselves to ask a second

or third round. But what I am going to do is I want to compliment

your staff, both of your staffs, for the great work that they do in

178

assisting you. I am nice to them because they deserve it, they do

a great job, and because I now want to ask to be able to put some

questions on the record for you and your staff to work on and to

submit any other questions that we might have had to get into if

we had a second or third round. Is there any problem with that,

gentlemen?

General GREGSON. No.

Mr. TIERNEY. Great, I appreciate that.

Also, I want to recognize Mrs. Holbrooke who is here for the

hearing this morning. Thank you for joining us. I hope he is taking

you to lunch. Find some time on the schedule for that, though we

even cut into that.

Again, thank you. Thank you for your forbearance for the other

day when we had all of those votes and for today’s procedural votes

as well.

This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the committees were adjourned.]

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