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61–824 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–166] 

DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JUNE 16, 2010 
(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

FRANK M. KRATOVIL, JR., Maryland 

BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama 

SCOTT MURPHY, New York 

WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

MARK S. CRITZ, Pennsylvania 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

CHARLES K. DJOU, Hawaii 

PAUL ARCANGELI, Staff Director 

MIKE CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

AILEEN ALEXANDER, Professional Staff Member 

MEGAN HOWARD, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2010 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Developments in Afghanistan .................................. 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 ...................................................................................... 61 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2010 

DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck,’’ a Representative from California, Ranking 

Member, Committee on Armed Services ............................................................ 3 

Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman, Committee 

on Armed Services ................................................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Flournoy, Hon. Miche`le P., Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, U.S. Department of Defense ............................................................................................. 5 

Petraeus, Gen. David H., USA, Commander, U.S. Central Command ............... 8 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Flournoy, Hon. Miche`le P. ............................................................................... 70 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ .................................................................... 67 

Petraeus, Gen. David H. .................................................................................. 78 

Skelton, Hon. Ike .............................................................................................. 65 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Opening Statement by Gen. David H. Petraeus to the Senate Armed 

Services Committee, 16 June 2010 .............................................................. 87 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Critz ............................................................................................................ 94 

Mr. Heinrich ..................................................................................................... 93 

Mr. Kissell ......................................................................................................... 92 

Mr. Loebsack ..................................................................................................... 91 

Mr. Owens ......................................................................................................... 94 

Mr. Rogers ......................................................................................................... 92 

(1) 

DEVELOPMENTS IN AFGHANISTAN 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 16, 2010. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:03 p.m., in room 2118, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman of the 

committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. Good afternoon. 

Today, the House Armed Services Committee meets to receive 

testimony on developments in Afghanistan. Our witnesses today 

are two old friends, the Honorable Miche`le Flournoy, the Under 

Secretary of Defense for Policy, and General David Petraeus, Commander of the United States Central Command. 

And we welcome you both, and we thank you for being with us. 

First, let me take the opportunity to thank the many brave men 

and women serving under General Petraeus in Afghanistan, Iraq, 

throughout Central Command, for their outstanding service. 

I know I speak on behalf of all the members, General, when I 

convey to you our heartfelt thanks to those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for all that they do. And we are truly blessed 

to have such heroes working on behalf of our Nation under your 

command. 

The recent weeks’ reports from Afghanistan have been largely 

negative. We heard that operations in Marjah are not going as expected and the Taliban has begun a campaign of murder and intimidation, the Kandahar operation has been postponed while the 

Taliban have been assassinating local government officials. 

U.S. and coalition casualties are increasing, and in some cases, 

the United States has been contracting with the very warlords who 

intimidate the people of Afghanistan and undermine our efforts. 

To some, these reports reflect what they have always suspected, 

that our efforts in Afghanistan are futile. I do not share that view. 

Last fall, I advocated for a counterinsurgency campaign as the 

course most likely to prevent al Qa’ida from re-establishing a safe 

haven in Afghanistan. And I still believe this to be true. While we 

face many challenges in that country, the type of challenge we face 

now were largely expected. As we surge troops, there will be hard 

fighting and many setbacks, and I believe that this is the dark before the dawn. 
2 

Let me be clear: We face serious challenges in Afghanistan. But 

after many years of neglect in Afghanistan, there are positive 

signs, as well. 

General McChrystal has reported that security is no longer declining. Local populations are increasingly pointing out improvised 

explosive devices. And while we desperately need more trainers 

from NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization], the recruiting of 

new personnel for the Afghan security forces is ahead of schedule. 

Increased cooperation with key nations in the region during the 

past year has also shown signs of success. Our Pakistani allies 

have arrested senior members of the Taliban leadership, while Afghan government and our forces have had great success targeting 

the local shadow governors. 

Further, we must remember that not all of our forces are deployed yet, which must happen before we rush to judgment. I do 

not doubt that we can face down the insurgency on the field of battle. 

While our troops are tired from many deployments—and they 

are—those same combat tours have made them into the best counterinsurgency force in history. What concerns me is the capacity of 

the Afghan government to sustain the military success provided by 

U.S. and Afghan troops. Ultimately, it is this ability that will convince the Afghan people to stand against al Qa’ida and against the 

Taliban. 

In recent weeks, we have seen mixed signals about this capacity. 

President Karzai forced out two of his most competent and highly 

regarded ministers. Media stories repeatedly bring home examples 

of corruption undermining our efforts. 

And yet at the same time, the Afghan government has forced out 

and prosecuted a number of government officials for corruption, including the former border police chief for Kandahar. Further, data 

suggests that the Afghan people are showing increased confidence 

in their local governments and an increased confidence that their 

national government is headed in the right and correct direction. 

While small and not irreversible, these significant signs give us 

some hope of progress. 

This December, the President has promised to review the 

progress of his strategy in Afghanistan. I hope our witnesses can 

help us understand what this review will entail and set some expectations for us. 

December is a reasonable time to review progress. All the surge 

troops will have arrived on the ground and been undertaking operations for several months. 

But I hope our witnesses can help the members here understand 

more about what we expect to see before December, particularly in 

Kandahar, which is so critical in the forthcoming months. What 

progress do they expect to see among the Afghan security forces 

and the Afghan government? We all know Afghanistan will not become peaceful and successful overnight, but what signs are reasonable to expect and would represent enough progress to suggest we 

should continue our present course? 

And I hope our witnesses today can help us with these questions. 

We, again, thank both of you for being with us today. We appreciate your service and your testimony, as well. 
3 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the Appendix on page 65.] 

I turn to my good friend, the ranking member, gentleman from 

California, Buck McKeon. 

Mr. McKeon. 

STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for 

holding today’s hearing on Afghanistan. 

I think this hearing is especially timely, and I agree wholeheartedly with all of your comments about the troops that General 

Petraeus commands. And I send my best to them and to their families. 

While the Senate passed its version of the wartime supplemental 

measure prior to Memorial Day, consistent with the Department’s 

request, the House has yet to mark up this legislation in committee, let alone bring the matter forward to a vote for the full 

House. 

I hope today that we will hear from you regarding the urgency 

of this funding and the consequences of delay when it comes to our 

military operations, particularly those in Afghanistan. 

I would like to welcome back Under Secretary of Defense Miche`le 

Flournoy and the Commander of Central Command, General 

Petraeus. Neither of you are new to this committee, nor to the ongoing discussion about Afghanistan. I want to take a moment to 

thank each of you for your service to our Nation and for being here 

with us this afternoon. I look forward to a candid discussion. 

Over the last several months, I have been vocal in expressing my 

support for the President’s strategy and his decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. forces to Afghanistan. Many of us believe, Republicans and Democrats alike, that failure in Afghanistan is not 

an option. The stakes are too high. 

If we do not succeed in our mission by working alongside our Afghan and international partners, the result will be the re-establishment of a pre-9/11 sanctuary for al Qa’ida terrorists and the 

Taliban extremists. This is not an end state that any of us should 

be willing to accept. 

I look forward to our witnesses providing their assessment of 

where security and stability in Afghanistan and the region stands 

today. 

Now, turning to my concerns. As you both know, I have been just 

as outspoken in sharing my apprehensions with what I have called 

a minimalist approach advocated by some in Washington when it 

comes to resourcing our efforts. General Petraeus, at CENTCOM’s 

[U.S. Central Command] posture hearing in March, I shared with 

you my concern that we were not applying lessons learned in Iraq 

to address the indirect fire threat to U.S. and coalition forward operating bases in Afghanistan. 

Under Secretary Flournoy, at our Afghanistan hearing in May, 

you heard similar concerns, as well as my fear that a real or perceived troop limit was forcing tradeoff decisions between combat 

troops and key enablers. 
4 

I would like to thank our chairman and my colleagues on both 

sides of the aisle for taking a strong stand on this issue in the 

House-passed version of the defense bill. We will work with the 

Senate and the Department of Defense to ensure that the United 

States devotes all necessary resources for success in Afghanistan 

and that U.S. force levels are not limited in an arbitrary manner 

that would hamper the deployment of critical combat enablers, including force protection. 

Over the course of the last six months, I have spoken out against 

the President’s announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawing 

U.S. forces. In my view—and I am not alone—this decision was 

based on the Washington political clock, not the Afghan operational 

clock. 

While some will argue that the scope and the pace of that withdrawal remains undecided, I believe that setting a date certain 

risks undermining the very counterinsurgency mission which is 

based on winning the support of the Afghan population that our 

troops and their civilian counterparts are executing. 

July 2011 is not the only date that has warranted my attention. 

As you both know, we are quickly approaching the pending December 2010 strategic review. Nearly six months ago, I questioned the 

timing of the review, given that it would occur within three months 

of all the surge forces arriving in theater. 

I was also skeptical whether by December 2010 we would be in 

a position to fairly evaluate whether or not we should begin a transition by the summer of 2011. I support assessments. They are absolutely necessary to measure progress or the lack thereof. 

And I am confident that General Petraeus, General McChrystal, 

and the entire chain of command are constantly assessing our military operations and progress in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere 

around the world. Additionally, I am confident that Ambassador 

Eikenberry is doing the same on the civilian side. 

My concern, then, which has been strengthened recently, is that 

events on the ground usually evolve in such ways that they don’t 

align perfectly to political deadlines put in play in Washington. 

Based on recent press reports, it appears there is an effort to manage expectations for that review and what it means in terms of assessing our progress in Afghanistan. 

I think the process and nature of the review deserve some discussion this morning. I continue to doubt that we will be able to fairly 

assess this, this December, just 90 days after all the surge forces 

arrive in theater, if General McChrystal and our troops are going 

to succeed in Afghanistan or be in a position to determine whether 

we are on track to begin redeploying U.S. forces by July 2011. 

While the additional 30,000 U.S. forces are arriving in the south, 

we recently learned that our operations are taking longer than 

originally expected. How will the upcoming December assessment 

be used by the President and this Administration to determine the 

pace and scope of our redeployment? 

Last week, General McChrystal acknowledged that our military 

is using lessons learned from its efforts in the Helmand River Valley, called ongoing operations a ‘‘deliberate process,’’ and recognizing that it takes time to convince people. 
5 

When asked about upcoming operations in Kandahar, General 

McChrystal stated, ‘‘It will happen more slowly than we originally 

anticipated. I think it will take a number of months for this to play 

out, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. I think it is 

more important that we get it right than we get it fast.’’ 

I absolutely agree with General McChrystal. It is more important 

that we get this done right. The President’s determination on how 

and when we move forward should be based on events on the 

ground, not imposed timelines that are often artificial and can be 

counterproductive. 

Do the assumptions underlying the President’s December 2009 

decision to begin redeployment in July 2011 still hold true today, 

more than six months later? Did the Administration underestimate 

the time it would take to get the surge forces into the fight? Did 

we also underestimate how long it would take to set the conditions 

to begin and complete the operations in Kandahar? 

Do timelines reinforce our long-term commitment to the Afghan 

government and its people, as well as Pakistan and our international partners? Or do they alter behavior in such a way that 

makes our strategy more difficult to achieve? 

Once again, thank you for being here this morning, and I look 

forward to your testimonies and having my concerns and questions 

addressed. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the Appendix on page 67.] 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman from California. 

And we, again, welcome you, Madam Secretary. You are on. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHE` LE P. FLOURNOY, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 

DEFENSE 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member McKeon, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting us here to testify today. 

I would like to give you an update on our recent progress and 

remaining challenges in Afghanistan. As you know, President 

Obama announced a number of key refinements to our Afghanistan 

strategy last December, including the deployment of 30,000 additional troops. Today, over 19,000 of these additional troops have deployed, and most of the remainder will be in place by the end of 

the summer. 

Our own troops will be joined by over 9,000 international troops. 

Approximately 60 percent of the NATO and partner troops are currently in place in Afghanistan, and more will arrive in the coming 

months. 

Currently, the main operational effort for ISAF [International 

Security Assistance Force] and our Afghan partners continues to be 

in the central Helmand River Valley and in Kandahar. Our focus 

in these operations is protecting the population and fostering Afghan security and governance capacity. 

So far, we believe that we have been making gradual, but important progress. The coalition is contesting the insurgency more effec-
6 

tively, in more places, and with more forces. But this insurgency 

is both resilient and resourceful. 

In both April and May, we have seen insurgent activity resume 

in Marjah and in much of central Helmand. However, local Afghans in the region have also shown an increased willingness to report suspected IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and insurgent 

weapons caches, which suggests growing pockets of confidence 

among ordinary people and a willingness to support ISAF and Afghan efforts to establish much needed security and governance. 

In Kandahar province, we are, indeed, taking a deliberate approach, gradually expanding our efforts to improve local governance in key districts and as the coalition and ANSF [Afghanistan 

National Security Force]—as those operations improve the security 

situation. 

Some in Congress have expressed concern about the impact of 

local power brokers on our efforts in Kandahar, and we share this 

concern. We also recognize that there are ways in which our own 

contracting practices have had unintended consequences, concentrating wealth among a relatively small number of Afghans who 

control companies large enough to procure contracts. 

General Petraeus and Admiral Mullen have recently created a 

two-star task force to examine our contracting practices, with a 

view to reducing these unintended consequences. When we have 

evidence of corruption, we will also work with our Afghan partners 

to prosecute those who have violated the law. 

Let me turn to our efforts to increase the strength and capability 

of the ANSF. Building effective Afghan National Security Force capacity remains key, both to the long-term security and stability of 

Afghanistan and to our ability to transition security responsibility 

and eventually draw down our own forces as conditions allow. 

While we are still short about 450 institutional trainers, we have 

brought the instructor-trainee ratio from about 1 to 80 down to 1 

to 30. 

The ANA [Afghan National Army] is on schedule to meet the 

goal of 134,000 troops for fiscal year 2010, and nearly 85 percent 

of the ANA is now fully partnered with ISAF forces as they operate 

in the field. 

As far as the police, the ANP [Afghan National Police] is on track 

to reach its goal of 109,000 police by the end of the fiscal year. We 

have increased the capacity to conduct ANP training by 400 percent over the last 12 months, and follow-on training has been provided for Afghan uniformed police in 83 key districts, as well as to 

the Afghan border police. 

Recent salary and benefit initiatives have addressed pay disparities between the ANA and the ANP, and these initiatives appear 

to be improving retention and reducing attrition. 

Literacy programs have also proven to be a positive incentive. 

Further, we believe that rising end-strength numbers and newly 

instituted unit rotation schedules will further reduce attrition. Consequently, we believe that ANSF end-strength goals for 2011 are 

achievable. 

Needless to say, the purpose of these efforts is to ensure a gradual transition of security responsibility to the Afghan government. 

And as we told President Karzai and 14 members of his cabinet 
7 

during our strategic dialogue last month, transition does not—does 

not—mean abandonment or withdrawal. We are committed to supporting the Afghan people over the long haul, and we will not walk 

away from this commitment. 

Nonetheless, we cannot and should not remain in a combat role 

indefinitely. As the international military presence begins to shift 

from a lead combat role to an advise and assist role, it will be absolutely vital to ensure a robust and long-term security assistance 

program, as well as an international civilian assistance effort focused on capacity-building, governance, and development. 

We are working closely with the Afghan government to plan for 

this transition process. At the Kabul conference in July, the Afghan 

government will present plans for achieving further progress in 

governance and development across four ministerial clusters. We 

will also expect to hear from President Karzai regarding actions to 

be taken with regard to corruption, as well as plans for reconciliation and reintegration. 

Let me say a few words about the latter, since I know it is an 

issue that has generated a lot of interest. All parties to the conflict 

in Afghanistan recognize that, in the end, some political resolution 

will be required to bring the conflict to a close. This recognition has 

driven the Afghan government to begin to develop plans to reconcile insurgent leaders and reintegrate low-level fighters. 

In early April, President Karzai presented his interim plans for 

reintegration. And in May, a consultative peace jirga gave President Karzai a conditional mandate to pursue reconciliation. 

The U.S. supports an Afghan-led process that seeks to bring back 

into society those who cease violence, break ties to al Qa’ida, and 

are willing to live under the Afghan constitution. 

Let me conclude by underscoring our overall assessment that we 

are heading in the right direction in Afghanistan. Of the 121 key 

terrain districts identified by COMISAF [Commander of International Security Assistance Force] in December 2009, 60 were 

judged as sympathetic or neutral to the Afghan government at the 

time. By March of this year, that number had climbed to 73. 

This and other indicators suggest that we are beginning to regain the initiative and the insurgency is beginning to lose momentum. That said, the outcome is far from determined, and these are 

still early days for the Administration’s new strategy. 

When I testified before this committee six weeks ago, I said at 

the time, inevitably, we will face challenges, possibly setbacks. 

Even as we achieve successes, we need to recognize that things 

may get harder before they get better. And I stand by that assessment. 

None of what we are doing in Afghanistan involves quick fixes. 

These are long-term problems, and their solutions will require patience, persistence, and flexibility, but we are making progress, 

sometimes slow, but we believe steady, and we are confident that 

General McChrystal will be able to show further progress by the 

end of this year. 

We greatly appreciate this committee’s steadfast support for our 

efforts, from OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] budget requests 

to our supplemental request. And as was stated, this is indeed an 

urgent matter, and we look forward to rapid passage of that bill. 
8 

In particular, we appreciate your support for full funding of the 

Afghan National Security Forces Fund, for the extension of coalition support funds to reimburse key coalition partners, and for 

your support for the Commander’s Emergency Response Program 

[CERP]. The CERP is a critical tool in this counterinsurgency fight, 

and we hope that you will support the full request that the Department has made. 

Thank you again for inviting us here today. Appreciate your support. And we look forward to your questions and comments. Thank 

you. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Flournoy can be found in 

the Appendix on page 70.] 

The CHAIRMAN. I certainly thank you. 

General Petraeus, we, again, welcome you, and we appreciate 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF GEN. DAVID H. PETRAEUS, USA, COMMANDER, 

U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND 

General PETRAEUS. Mr. Chairman, Congressman McKeon, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide an 

update on the situation in Afghanistan and our execution of the 

comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign that is 

being conducted there. 

I might note that it is a pleasure to do this with Under Secretary 

Miche`le Flournoy, who I might note was a contributor to the conference at Fort Leavenworth in January 2006 that launched the effort to draft the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. 

I will begin with some brief context. As you will recall, soon after 

the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States 

conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qa’ida, 

and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan. 

In the years that followed, however, members of the Taliban and 

other extremist elements gradually reconnected in the AfghanistanPakistan border regions and rebuilt the structures necessary to 

plan and execute insurgent operations. 

In recent years, these groups have engaged in an increasingly 

violent campaign against the Afghan people, their government, and 

ISAF forces, and they have demonstrated symbiotic relationships, 

ambitions, and capabilities that pose threats not just to Afghanistan and the region, but to countries throughout the world. 

In response to the threat posed by these extremists, ISAF forces 

and our Afghan partners are engaged in a campaign intended, 

above all, to prevent re-establishment of transnational extremist 

sanctuaries in Afghanistan, like the ones al Qa’ida enjoyed there 

when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan prior to 9/11. 

To achieve our objectives, we are working with our ISAF and Afghan partners to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and other 

insurgent elements, to improve security for the Afghan people, to 

increase the quantity and quality of the Afghan National Security 

Forces, and to support establishment of Afghan governance that is 

seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people. 

Over the past 18 months, we and our ISAF partners have worked 

hard to get the ‘‘inputs’’ right in Afghanistan. We have worked to 
9 

build the organizations we learned in Iraq are needed to carry out 

a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign. 

We have put the best military and civilian leaders possible in 

charge of those organizations. We have refined and, where necessary, developed the plans and concepts needed to guide the conduct of a comprehensive effort. And we have deployed the substantial additional resources—military, civilian, funding, and so on— 

needed to implement the plans that have been developed. 

And I note here that the deployment of the final 30,000 additional U.S. troopers announced by President Obama last December 

and their equipment is slightly ahead of schedule. Nearly 21,000 of 

the additional 30,000 are now in Afghanistan. And by the end of 

August, as we committed, all the additional U.S. forces will be on 

the ground, except for a headquarters unit that is not required 

until a month or so later. 

Meanwhile, the efforts to increase the size and capability of the 

Afghan National Army and police are also now on track, though 

there clearly is considerable work to be done in that critical area 

and to sustain the improvements that have been achieved in recent 

months. 

Even as we continue the effort to complete getting the inputs 

right, the actions taken over the last 18 months, which include tripling the U.S. force contribution and increasing similarly the U.S. 

civilian component, have enabled the initiation of new efforts in 

key areas in Afghanistan. 

As the Under Secretary noted, the initial main effort has been 

in the central Helmand River Valley, and U.S. and U.K. forces 

have made progress there, though, predictably, the enemy has 

fought back as we have taken away his sanctuaries in Marjah, 

Nadi-Ali, and elsewhere. 

And I might note that I walked the market in Marjah a couple 

of months ago, something that would not have been possible when 

I appeared before this committee for my posture hearing several 

months back. 

The focus is now shifting to Kandahar province, where the effort 

features an integrated civil-military approach to security, governance, and development. In the months ahead there, we will see an 

additional U.S. brigade, from the great 101st Airborne Division, deploy into the districts around Kandahar City, together with an additional Afghan army brigade, with which they will partner. 

There will also be the introduction of additional Afghan police, 

both uniform and national civil order police, and U.S. military police, to secure the city, along with other U.S. forces and civilians 

who will work together with the impressive Canadian provincial reconstruction team that has been deployed in the city for several 

years. 

As you have heard General McChrystal explain, the concept is to 

provide the Kandaharis a rising tide of security, one that will expand over time and establish the foundation of improved security 

on which local Afghan governance can be built and that will enable 

improvements in the provision of basic services and other areas, as 

well. 

There will, as the Under Secretary noted, be nothing easy about 

any of this. Indeed, I noted several months ago during my annual 
10 

posture hearing that the going was likely to get harder before it got 

easier. That has already been the case, as we have seen recently. 

But it is essential that we make progress in the critical southern 

part of the country, the part where, in fact, the 9/11 attacks were 

planned by al Qa’ida during the period when the Taliban controlled 

it and much of the rest of the country. 

Central to achieving progress in Afghanistan—and to setting the 

conditions necessary to transition security tasks from the international coalition to the Afghan government—is increasing the size 

and capacity of the Afghan National Security Forces. 

To that end, with the assistance of the Afghan Security Forces 

Fund, Afghan security forces are now on track to meet their targeted end-strength objectives by the end of this year, based on improvements that have been made in recruiting and in reducing attrition. 

In January 2009, the ANSF numbered 156,000; today, there are 

over 231,000 Afghan National Security Force members. And to help 

achieve greater quality as well as greater quantity, General 

McChrystal has directed much greater partnering with the ANSF, 

an emphasis that is now on display daily in operations throughout 

Afghanistan. 

Considerable progress has been made in getting the concepts 

right for developing the ANSF and also in developing the structures needed to implement those concepts. Improving the ANSF 

has been facilitated considerably, for example, by the establishment 

last November of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, the organization created to help the ANSF expand and professionalize. 

It is worth noting that the NTM–A [NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan] Commander for the last six months, Lieutenant General 

Bill Caldwell, assessed that in NTM–A’s initial period, NATO and 

Afghan security leadership have made progress in reversing adverse trends in the growth and professionalization of the ANSF. 

Nevertheless, as General Caldwell has also observed, there is 

much work remaining to reduce attrition further and to develop effective leaders through considerably augmented partnering, training, education, and recruiting, and initiatives are being pursued in 

each of those areas. 

In all of our efforts, we and President Karzai continue to emphasize the importance of inclusivity and transparency on the part of 

the Afghan government and its leadership, especially in linking 

nascent local governing structures to the decision-making and financial resources in Kabul. 

Needless to say, innumerable challenges exist in all areas of governance, and much more needs to be done to help the Afghan government assume full responsibility for addressing the concerns and 

needs of its citizens. 

The National Consultative Peace Jirga held in Kabul earlier this 

month was a constructive step in this effort, providing an opportunity for President Karzai to build consensus, to address some of 

the political tensions that fuel the insurgency, and to promote reconciliation and local reintegration as means that can contribute to 

political resolution of some of the issues that exist. 
11 

The shura council that President Karzai conducted on Sunday in 

Kandahar furthered this process and the effort to set the political 

conditions for progress in Kandahar. 

Another critically important part of our joint civil-military campaign in Afghanistan is promoting broad-based economic and infrastructure development. We have seen that improvements in the Afghan government’s ability to deliver basic services, such as electricity, education, and basic health care, have positive effects in 

other areas, including security and broader economic development. 

We have worked closely with the international community and 

the Afghan government to support robust strategies for water, energy, education, health, and road programs. And we are now embarking on a project jointly developed by the government of Afghanistan and various U.S. government agencies to dramatically 

increase production of electricity in the Kandahar area and parts 

of southern and eastern Afghanistan. 

To complement this effort, we also promote agricultural and economic programs to help Afghans bring licit products to market, 

rather than continuing to grow the poppy. 

Again, none of this is easy or without considerable challenges. 

However, the mission is, as the members of this committee have 

noted, hugely important to the security of our region—of the region 

and our country. In view of that, we are obviously doing all that 

we can to achieve progress toward accomplishment of our important objectives in Afghanistan. 

And in closing, I want to thank the members of this committee 

once again for their unwavering support and abiding concern for 

the more than 215,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast 

guardsmen deployed throughout the CENTCOM AOR [area of responsibility], and for their families, as well. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of General Petraeus can be found in the 

Appendix on page 78.] 

The CHAIRMAN. General, thank you very much. 

General, would you agree with me that our combat troops today 

are the best counterinsurgency force in history? 

General PETRAEUS. I would, Mr. Chairman. They are superb. 

And, in fact, I think they deserve the title that Tom Brokaw, 

among others, has given to them, as well, as the new greatest generation of Americans. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is really interesting to note, in visiting with 

them wherever one visits with them, either at a post like Fort 

Leonard Wood in Missouri or in Afghanistan, the positive attitude 

of the young troops toward their mission, whether they be active 

duty or they be National Guard. And in signing up, they know full 

well that they are going to be deployed. 

To what do you attribute the positive state of our military today, 

that those of us on this committee encounter when we visit with 

them? 

General PETRAEUS. I think there are several factors, Mr. Chairman. And, in fact, you may recall—I have talked to you about the 

re-enlistment ceremony one time of 1,215 soldiers, sailors, airmen 

and Marines at the headquarters of Multi-National Force-Iraq in 

the Fourth of July 2008, and actually asking myself that question. 
12 

Why are these individuals all raising their right hands in a combat 

zone, knowing that by doing that they will likely return to a combat zone for at least one more tour in their next enlistment? 

And I think there are several factors. I think there is certainly 

a sense that they are serving a cause larger than self, performing 

a mission of enormous importance to our country. They believe 

they are doing it with other like-minded individuals. And as you 

know, when the going gets tough, what keeps them going most of 

all is that fierce desire not to let down their buddy on their right 

and left. 

And then I think another hugely important factor is the sense of 

support of our fellow citizens. Occasionally people say, jeez, the rest 

of America doesn’t know what is going on, in terms of those who 

are in uniform. I don’t think that is the case. I think that there 

has been an outpouring of support for our men and women in uniform and for their families, and there is nothing that means more 

particularly to those who are serving in harm’s way than a sense 

that those back home appreciate the sacrifices that they and their 

families are making. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let’s look at the Afghanistan police, if we may. 

Over a year ago, when in Afghanistan, we got a pretty negative report on their progress. Tell us what progress, if any, they have 

made within the last year and where—what is the status of them 

today? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, there has been progress, I think, first 

of all, that was very important in terms of inputs, in terms of ensuring that the model is right for the Afghan police, because in one 

important respect, it was not. The model used to be that an Afghan 

policeman was recruited and then assigned immediately and then 

trained when they got to it, and that obviously is not a model for 

success, if you are facing a difficult insurgency. 

So General Caldwell has changed that, and it is now recruit, 

train, and assign. And moreover, there is help for recruiting, because for the first time, the Ministry of Interior has a recruiting 

command that goes out, and that will also help to try to achieve 

a more broad representation of all of the different ethnic and sectarian groupings in Afghanistan. In particular, the Pashtun are 

generally underrepresented in the ANSF compared to some of the 

others, though there is certainly representation of that. 

Moreover, the ratio of trainers—just broadly speaking—in the Afghan forces has been reduced from 1 trainer for every 80 trainees 

to 1 trainer for every 29 or 30 trainees, notwithstanding the continued shortage of some 450 trainers overall, and then hundreds more 

that are pledged by coalition governments—have yet not arrived, 

but improvements in all of those different areas. 

On the ground, I think it is important to note that Afghan forces 

are in the lead, in Kabul, for example, far and away Afghanistan’s 

largest and most significant city, and, by and large, are doing competent work there. They are also in the lead in a variety of other 

areas and in mission sets, such as escorting convoys and so forth. 

But having said all that, with respect to the police, there are two 

considerable concerns that still are being confronted. The first is 

that, in an insurgent area that is difficult because of the insurgent 
13 

activity, the local police are the first to be the most vulnerable, intimidated, assassinated, or have their families threatened. 

Moreover, one of the solutions to the local police challenge or the 

uniform police challenge, which has been the use of the ANCOP, 

the Afghan National Civil Order Police, which are units and have 

the resiliency that comes from that, the challenge there has been 

that they have been used so hard and so frequently and at a pace 

that their attrition rate has been unsustainable. 

So where there has been reduction overall in the police and army 

attrition below the level for the last three months that is necessary 

to sustain meeting the end-strength goals at the end of this year, 

there are still components within those forces that have an attrition rate that is too high, and the ANCOP are among them. 

The CHAIRMAN. General, from time to time, I will receive comments to the effect that, well, the British couldn’t do it in Afghanistan, and the Russians couldn’t do it in Afghanistan, what makes 

you think we can do it in Afghanistan, trying to point out the difference? But could you answer that question that I often get? 

General PETRAEUS. I could. First of all, I think, as you know, as 

a fellow history lover, the fact is the British did succeed in Afghanistan for sustained periods of time, and then they would be defeated 

again, but they had quite significant periods during which they 

prevailed. 

Now, they did it through a variety of different mechanisms and 

deals, as did Alexander the Great, who you will recall, at least, the 

history records had to take an Afghan wife to solidify the links 

there, and we are hoping that that won’t be necessary for General 

McChrystal or myself. [Laughter.] 

But it is accurate—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Will you invite us to the wedding? 

General PETRAEUS. We have to hold a shura council first. It is 

accurate that, again, Afghanistan regarded as the graveyard of empires, and it—in that regard, I think it is very important to draw 

a distinction between the character of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the character of certainly what we are trying to do 

in Afghanistan. 

The Soviet occupation was quite brutal. They employed very, 

very harsh tactics, leveled half of an entire city in the west, sowed 

the fields with toys that blew up when the kids picked them up; 

very, very harsh tactics, techniques, and procedures, and ultimately, of course, repelled the population rather than winning it to 

the side of the Afghan government that they were trying to establish. 

We have worked hard not to do that. In fact, as you know, among 

the directives developed first by General McKiernan and then refined by General McChrystal was one, as an example, to reduce to 

an absolute minimum the loss of innocent civilian life by the way 

that we employ these largest casualty-producing weapons, bombs, 

indirect fire, various forms of attack helicopter, close air support. 

The fact is, I want to assure the committee that we will drop a 

bomb anywhere at any time if our troopers’ safety is in jeopardy. 

But what the directive is designed to do is to ensure that our troopers have the recognition that our normal impulse of closing with 

the enemy, of pressing the fight, can sometimes result in dropping 
14 

a bomb on a house that you are not sure who is inside, as opposed 

to breaking contact and keeping it under observation and trying to 

track the bad guys who have been shooting at you, if the fact is 

that you are going to kill a bunch of innocent civilians inside that 

house. 

And that is the kind of awareness that is essential for counterinsurgents. And as you noted, our troopers are superb counterinsurgents at this point in time, and we believe that by working 

hard with those who train them in the states, prepare them for deployment, and then command them downrange, that, indeed, we 

can both reduce innocent civilian life and not jeopardize the safety 

of our soldiers. That is just one example, if I could. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. McKeon. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Petraeus, from your perspective, can you describe the 

nature of the review that will be undertaken by the Administration 

this December? And do you think it could lead to a strategic overhaul for our efforts in Afghanistan? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, Congressman, as you rightly 

noted, we do reviews all the time. We are constantly doing assessments. I think you get at least a quarterly review. We do monthly 

assessments. General McChrystal has some new, even now unclassified monthly assessments that are all very useful. 

I would not want to overplay the significance of this review, 

which as you rightly noted will only be three or four months since 

the full deployment of all of the surge forces and will be six or 

seven months prior to the point at which—July 2011, which the 

President has described as the point at which a process begins, 

based on conditions on the ground, to transition some tasks to Afghan forces and officials and a process of the beginning—again, 

pace to be determined by conditions on the ground—of a responsible drawdown of the surge forces. 

Mr. MCKEON. So we should probably not be overly emphasizing 

the December report that will be issued. Do you think that that 

will be used by the President and the Administration to determine 

the pace and scope for the redeployment of our U.S. forces? 

General PETRAEUS. I think that is probably too far out to be 

making those kinds of judgments, Congressman. I think that we 

will have to do that much closer to the point at which we have a 

sense of the real conditions. 

And, again, keep in mind that July 2011, in the first place, is 

based on projections made all the way back last fall during the decision-making process. And so, again, I think—we would not make 

too much out of that. So I think your characterization is correct, 

and I don’t know if the Under Secretary wants to—— 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I would confirm that that is my belief, as 

well, sir. The December review is simply the fact—we have a President who wants to keep abreast of what is going on. He has a 

monthly review as it is. December will be a bit of a deeper dive. 

How are we doing? Where do we need to adjust strategy, resources, 

et cetera, to achieve our objectives, given the vital interest at 

stake? 
15 

I expect there will be further review before we get to the point 

of actually making decisions about the scope and pace of what happens after July 2011. 

Mr. MCKEON. Right. 

General, is it your best professional judgment that the assumptions underlying the President’s December 2009 decision to begin 

redeployment in July 2011 still hold true today more than six 

months later, and after we are seeing that operations in the south 

are taking longer than originally expected? 

General PETRAEUS. I think so, Congressman. Again, I will—I explained this to the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning—as we get closer, you can be assured that I will provide my 

best and most forthright professional military advice to the Secretary and to the President on the way ahead as we start to get 

greater clarity on July 2011. 

I know that that is what the President expects and wants. And 

I know that that is my obligation—sacred obligation to our troopers 

out there on the ground, as well. 

Mr. MCKEON. I just want to reaffirm some of these same things, 

because all of us weren’t at the Senate hearing. But Senator Levin 

asked you ‘‘whether or not you continue to support the strategy of 

the President and continue to support that July 2011 date for the 

start of a reduction in U.S. forces from Afghanistan.’’ 

General PETRAEUS. Maybe—if I could, Congressman, if you can 

indulge me, I will just read what I gave, because I try to be very 

precise in this. And what I said this morning was that I did support and agree at the end of the President’s decision-making process last fall, with the July 2011 date described by the President as 

the point at which a process begins to transition security tasks to 

Afghan forces at a rate to be determined by conditions at that time. 

I also agreed with July 2011 as the date at which a responsible 

drawdown of the surge forces is scheduled to begin at a rate to be 

determined by conditions at the time. 

And I did believe there was value in sending a message of urgency, which is how I interpreted the July 2011, as announced at 

West Point, as well as the message of substantial commitment, the 

considerable additional forces that the President ordered, as well as 

additional civilians, authorization for extra ANSF, and additional 

NATO forces, as well. 

But it is important that July 2011 be seen for what it is, the date 

when a process begins, based on conditions, not the date when the 

U.S. heads for the exits. 

Moreover, my agreement with the President’s decisions was 

based on projections of conditions in July 2011. Needless to say, we 

will do all that is humanly possible to achieve those conditions, and 

we appreciate the resources provided by Congress to enable us to 

do that. 

Of course, we will also conduct rigorous assessments as we get 

closer to next summer, as we do periodically in any event, to determine where adjustments in our strategy are needed. 

And as July 2011 approaches, I will provide my best professional 

military advice to the Secretary and the President on how I believe 

we should proceed based on the conditions at that time, and I then 

will support the President’s ultimate decision. 
16 

I do believe that providing one’s forthright advice is a sacred obligation that military leaders have to our men and women in uniform. And, again, I know that that is what the President expects 

and wants his military leaders to provide, as well. 

Mr. MCKEON. You also paused and said, ‘‘In a perfect world, Mr. 

Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines.’’ And I think, 

as I just heard again, you said the July timeline is not when we 

head for the exit, but rather we begin a process. 

In Iraq, we have a timeline of August that all the warfighters 

will be out, and we will be down to 50,000, and then December of 

2011, we will be totally out of Iraq. We do not have a final 

timeline, my understanding, as to when we will be out of Afghanistan in total. 

General PETRAEUS. That is correct, Congressman. If I could, I 

would just clarify one item there about the characterization of the 

forces. 

We will have combat forces in Iraq, but they will have been remissioned, if you will, and also literally re-organized to perform in 

advise and assist mission. And so the real change beyond the reduction of our forces down to 50,000, which is still a considerable 

number and considerable capability, especially as it consists of almost all of the special operations forces of all types that we currently have on the ground still, but it will also be that a mission 

change takes place from a mission where we occasionally lead operations, although, frankly, we have—candidly, we have long since 

transitioned. 

But officially, we will go to an advise and assist mission. And the 

last of the units that deployed configured as brigade combat teams 

will have reconfigured into advise and assist brigades, so there is 

sort of a nuanced description there, I think, that is important. 

And I guess the Under Secretary is reaching for the microphone, 

too. 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I just wanted to clarify that you asked, sir, 

a very important question about the assumptions underlying the 

July 2011 beginning of a responsible drawdown process that is conditions-based. And there are two key assumptions. One is that 

there will be some provinces that are ready for transition to Afghan 

lead, with us presumably still in support in some ways as necessary, and that there will be ANSF units who are ready to take 

a lead combat—you know, the lead combat role, the lead security 

role, with international support. 

Those are the sort of two critical assumptions. And I think if you 

look at the—where we have come in the last year—and we recognize that there is still another year to go, with additional resources 

coming into play—I think those two assumptions, the expectation 

that those two assumptions will still hold, I think, is still there. 

Mr. MCKEON. General, you stated that we are assuming we will 

have those kinds of conditions that will enable—by the time in 

July—enable that by the time in July 2011. That is the projection. 

And that is, again, what we have supported. And both of you mentioned that this is based on conditions, not just on a date on a calendar. 

General PETRAEUS. Correct. 
17 

Mr. MCKEON. General, what are the conditions you project will 

be in place by 2011 to begin a transition to the Afghan security 

forces? How are they different in the east versus the south, such 

as Helmand and Kandahar? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, the conditions will be in a variety of 

different areas: improvements in security, improvements in the Afghan National Security Forces contributing to that security, and 

improvements in governance. And those are the components—just 

very broadly speaking, without getting into too much of a deep 

dive—that we are obviously looking for in those districts and provinces that can be transitioned and from which we can begin to thin 

out our forces in a process similar to what we did in Iraq, noting 

that it is thinning out, not handing off, that is the technique that 

produces success in this kind of effort. 

Mr. MCKEON. You say improvement in those three areas. But I 

imagine you have some baseline that you will expect them to be at, 

improved to at least a certain point. If those conditions don’t exist 

by July 2011, will you make the recommendation that we delay the 

redeployment of the U.S. forces? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, as I have said, Congressman, I will provide my best professional military advice. And if that is what is 

necessary, that is what I will do. 

Mr. MCKEON. And what would you tell members of the congressional body, in terms of being careful of timelines? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, I think that we have to be very clear 

with July 2011. I have tried very hard to explain this to—in fact, 

to President Karzai, to Afghan leaders, to Pakistani partners and 

leaders, other regional governmental leaders, and to our allies and 

to even audiences in the United States, that the message that 

President Obama was conveying at West Point was one of urgency, 

not that July 2011 is when we race for the exits, reach for the light 

switch, and flip it off. 

What he was trying to convey to various audiences, some of them 

in Kabul, I think, that we have to get on with this, some perhaps 

to some NATO partners, again, greater sense of urgency, perhaps 

some of us in uniform, and others, that we have to get on with this, 

we must produce progress while we have the opportunity, and that 

was the key behind the July 2011 date, not, again, that that is it 

or anything else. 

In fact, as Senator Lieberman reminded the SASC [Senate 

Armed Services Committee] this morning, I thought very importantly, the President used the word ‘‘vital national interest’’ in his 

speech at West Point, and that is—as you know, that is a code 

word that means a great deal. 

And that is why, when I heard the speech at West Point—and 

I was privileged to be there—I, again, took from it these two messages, one of enormous additional commitment, again, recognizing 

that we will have more than tripled our forces since he took office, 

basically, and tripled civilians and added more funding and authorization of ANSF and a variety of other activities, and then some 

complementary activities on the other side of the border, of course, 

with the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, to show sustained, substantial 

commitment to our Pakistani partners, as well. That is all the commitment. 
18 

And then there was the urgency piece, and that is what July 

2011 conveys. 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ORTIZ [presiding]. Thank you. 

Secretary Flournoy, again, I want to thank you for appearing before our committee today. 

And, General Petraeus, thank you, sir. Good to see you. And you 

are looking well today. Welcome. 

General PETRAEUS. Remember my squad leader’s advice—you are 

supposed to hydrate. 

Mr. ORTIZ. Yes, sir. You know, recently, General McChrystal expressed concern over the number of private security contractors in 

Afghanistan, and he suggested that the contractors should be replaced by the United States military. 

General, do you agree with General McChrystal’s assessment? 

And has a request been made for additional troops to replace the 

contractors? If so, when will those troops be deployed to Afghanistan? 

You know, and I can understand—I mean, with the increased violence reported between the United States forces and the private 

security contractors, in Afghanistan and with the majority of these 

contractors being Afghanistan nationals, I want to have a better 

feeling—and I think the committee, as well—I mean, how are these 

individuals vetted? I mean, how do they apply to become security 

guards or security forces to help our troops? 

I mean, do they go through a written test? Do they speak the 

same language that our soldiers need to be able to communicate 

with them? Are they tested? How do we go about—because this is 

very, very serious. I mean, we are concerned with the safety of our 

soldiers. 

And not only that, when these convoys move, you know, they are 

bringing a lot of equipment, merchandise, ammunition, and whatever they might have to take to our troops now. Is this something 

that we are going to be able to see in the future, that they are 

going to be replaced by contractors because of what is happening? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, Congressman, there are different categories of contractors, of course. There are contractors 

that we have hired—and I think we are somewhere in the 15,000 

to 20,000 range in Afghanistan, private security contractors, under 

DOD [Department of Defense] contracts. And then there are other 

private security contractors that secure any number of different legitimate Afghan businesses, activities, some of which we are contracting and others of which are, again, legitimate Afghan efforts 

or other countries’ efforts, as well. 

The first category, if you will, those that we have hired to perform tasks that are related to our operations and missions, logistics, convoys, what have you, again, in concept, a great idea, I 

think, to have our forces do those. In reality, of course, that would 

mean replacement with a like number. 

And there is a reason that we contracted these out in the first 

place. It is either that at various times the tempo of our forces was 

so high or the cost of our forces is considerably higher or what have 

you. 
19 

The fact is, I contracted out my own security in Iraq when I was 

a three-star because we didn’t have enough military police and 

other security forces. I was standing up the train and equip mission, enormous organization, but we didn’t have the kinds of existing structures. We weren’t in an existing headquarters with security. We were just a bunch of individuals brought together. And to 

go downtown, to go out and do our missions and so forth, we needed security. 

So I was finally given a military police company for me and a 

couple of the senior folks. I said, well, heck, I am important 

enough, I can contract out my security, someone will actually pay 

for that, and you can take the MP [military police] company and 

whatever else we can cobble together and use that to secure other 

members of the headquarters. 

That is how we end up in this kind of situation. And I am not 

sure that we are at a position where I think I would want to take 

forces from other combat roles to perform these private security 

contractor missions. 

Now, having said that, we do need to get them—and we are 

working on this—and we learned these lessons, some of them the 

hard way, in Iraq—to get them more integrated into our situational 

awareness tools, and command and control, and common operational picture, and the like, to make sure that we de-conflict their 

activities to make sure there is not fratricide, they are not interfering with one another, and so forth. And I think there has been 

progress in that regard. 

Beyond that, we have got to come to grips with the issue that 

is created where, in some cases, we are trying to train Afghan 

forces, we invest in their human capital, and then we hire them 

away from the Afghan forces—or not we do, but other private security contractors or others hire them away to use them for these 

other functions. 

That is an issue that extends beyond private security contractors, 

by the way. It is one that Ambassador Holbrooke and I discussed 

with President Karzai when we were out there a couple of months 

ago for the civil-military review of concept drill. And, again, that 

is yet another issue that we have to work out, and the Afghan government has to help us with that to make sure that there is a policy at the least that is similar to what we have. 

You know, when the Army sent me to graduate school, I had to 

pay back three years, if you will, of additional active service obligation for each year that I was in graduate school. They don’t have 

that. We have got to get that kind of policy, and President Karzai 

is working on it. 

Mr. ORTIZ. But going back to the vetting process, I mean, 15,000 

security guards, that is a big number. How do we know what we 

are getting? I mean, how do we know they can be trusted? I mean, 

there has been incidents with their—and I don’t know whether 

they are rumors or real facts—that sometimes they are shooting at 

our troops. So my concern is, how do we get to hire these people? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, this is, again, the piece that I was talking about with respect to, in some cases, also, using the authorities 

that you all gave us in the defense authorization act several years 

ago, when it comes to contractors working for DOD. We have au-
20 

thorities over them, in some respects, if they are Americans. And 

a number of these are at least in the upper echelons. 

And then laying down the requirements to them for the vetting, 

for the de-confliction, for the situational awareness, and for the coordination of their operations, because that is how we minimize the 

cases of fratricide that you alluded to. 

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Bartlett. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. Thank you both for your service. 

I want to ask two questions related to addiction. The first is the 

West’s addiction to oil, and the second is the Afghan addiction to 

the revenues from poppies. 

It is my understanding that 10 percent of all of the dividends 

that British investors receive come from BP. That means that this 

company is enormously important in the economy of England. If we 

push too hard and jeopardize the financial stability of BP, I think 

we put at risk the strength of the coalition and the British participation. 

Are you all at the table when decisions are made of how hard we 

are going to squeeze in this area? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. The Defense Department is certainly represented at the interagency process in decision-making on handling 

the oil crisis, yes. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Do you have any concern about the strength of 

the coalition relative to the politics of what is going on now in this 

gulf crisis? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Sir, my judgment is that the President is 

focused on holding BP accountable for its responsibilities in this 

disaster. I also believe that, based on Secretary Gates’ recent interactions and others with our British counterparts, the new government there, that their commitment to Afghanistan remains quite 

firm and remains so even in the face of tremendous economic pressures that they have already experienced. 

Mr. BARTLETT. I hope that you are right, and I hope that pushing 

too hard will not jeopardize the financial stability of BP, which I 

think may very well result in some cracks in the coalition. 

My second question has to do with the addiction of the Afghans 

to the revenues from poppies. Obviously, there are some considerations we have there which are in tension. 

First of all, the revenues from poppies, we know, largely funds 

our enemy there. We also know that if we destroy poppy fields, 

that it makes recruiting of additional personnel for both the 

Taliban and al Qa’ida much easier. 

How are we doing at straddling these two problems? On the one 

hand, it is kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If 

we push too hard, we are driving these people into the arms of al 

Qa’ida and the Taliban. And if we don’t, we are just helping to create more revenues for the enemy. How are we doing? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Sir, I think, because of the risk that you 

just framed, our strategy toward counternarcotics in Afghanistan 

has shifted over the last year, year-and-a-half, away from a real 

focus on eradication and more focus now on crop substitution, support to farmers to make the switch to licit crops, support to the sort 

of systems of systems that get the crops, you know, planted, harvested, to market, et cetera. 
21 

Eradication still is ongoing. It is an Afghan lead. But we have 

focused our efforts more on enabling Afghan farmers to make different choices away from poppy and doing it in a way that doesn’t 

drive them into the arms of the insurgency. 

General PETRAEUS. And also targeting the industrial narcotics 

kingpins much more, making them the focus, rather than the little 

guys. 

Mr. BARTLETT. I understand that highly ranked people in the Afghan government have meaningful ties to the poppy trade. Are we 

handling that well? 

General PETRAEUS. First of all, we have to have the kind of intelligence that can be sufficiently hard to really convince people that 

this is the case. And, second, even better, of course, is if we can 

turn that into evidence. 

In those cases where that has been possible, there have been. In 

fact, as the chairman mentioned, there have been some recent 

cases prosecuted generally revolving overall corruption and narcotics trafficking together. 

The challenge is a great deal of hearsay and much less in terms 

of the very hard intelligence that can enable you to go after these. 

If we get hard intelligence, we will go after them with our Afghan 

counternarcotics partners, as military operations, as well, because 

of the connection that you mentioned earlier between the Taliban, 

which receives about a third of their funding from illicit narcotics 

activities, a third from general criminal activity, taxes and so forth, 

and then a third from outside remittances. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. I thank the gentleman. 

Dr. Snyder, please. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you both for being here. 

Secretary Flournoy gave a speech just last week at the Center 

for a New American Security on my mother’s birthday, by the way, 

Secretary Flournoy, and I am going to direct a question to you, 

General Petraeus, but I am going to quote from a part of the 

speech in which the Secretary said the following. 

‘‘To put it bluntly, we are still trying to face 21st century challenges with national security processes and tools that were designed for the Cold War and with a bureaucracy that sometimes 

seems to have been designed by the Byzantine Empire, which as 

you recall did not fare so well.’’ 

‘‘We are still too often rigid when we need to be flexible, clumsy 

when we need to be agile, slow when we need to be responsive, focused on individual agency equities when we need to be focused on 

the broader whole-of-government mission.’’ 

Last week, our subcommittee had a hearing on some of these 

interagency issues. And the GAO [Government Accountability Office] testified on a report from September 2009, which they just reconfirmed, and this is what they said: ‘‘In our prior work, we have 

identified situations in which the lack of interagency collaboration 

has hindered national security efforts. For example, we have previously reported and testified that, since 2005, multiple U.S. agencies, including the State Department, USAID [United States Agen-
22 

cy for International Development], and DOD, led separate efforts 

to improve the capacity of Iraq’s ministries to govern without overarching direction from a lead entity to integrate their efforts.’’ 

‘‘We found that the lack of an overarching strategy contributed 

to U.S. efforts not meeting their goal of key Iraqi ministries having 

the capacity to effectively govern and assume increasing responsibility for operating, maintaining, and further investing in reconstruction projects.’’ That is the end of the GAO statement. 

General Petraeus, my question is, how much do the Byzantine 

processes that Secretary Flournoy refers to hold you back in Afghanistan? Can you give us some specific examples of how? And 

should this issue of interagency reform be a much higher priority 

for the Congress than it is now? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, if I could just start off by saying that 

I thought that that was a characteristically elegant and incisive 

analysis by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. 

Dr. SNYDER. I agree with you. 

General PETRAEUS. There was a reason that, as I noted earlier, 

she was part of the counterinsurgency conference that began the 

whole process that resulted in the—I think it was the fastest production of a field manual by any service, in this case, two services 

together, probably in our history, and a fairly meaningful one, at 

that. 

I would like to think that we did over time integrate the efforts 

in Iraq considerably. I think that certainly by the mid-2007 timeframe, Ambassador Crocker and I had forged a partnership, developed a civil-military campaign plan that was so civil-military, in 

fact, that the mission statement frustrated both of our respective 

chains of command when it went further up, because it was seen 

as too civil on my side and too military on his side of the chain of 

command. 

Having said that, I felt that, again, over time, we were able to 

integrate what it is that we were doing. And, frankly, I have described the same process with respect to Afghanistan in this effort 

to get the inputs right, a component of that, key component has 

been to forge the kind of civil-military effort and integration, in 

this case, one that has got a much greater component of NATO, of 

course. 

In fact, General McChrystal’s operational hat is his NATO hat, 

and he has a NATO senior civilian rep who is part of his Ryan 

Crocker, as he also has the U.S. Ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, and 

then the U.N. SRSG [United Nations Special Representative of the 

Secretary-General]. 

I am sure that if we looked at various aspects of interagency reform, that there would be some fertile fields to till there. I know 

that there have been efforts to do this in the past. I remember all 

the way back—I think when the Under Secretary was a mere Deputy Assistant Secretary—PDD [Presidential Decision Directive] 56, 

I think it was, talked about addressing complex interagency scenarios or something like that. It was hugely impressive as a document, as a concept, but it was very difficult to implement. 

Again, it is flat hard to bring them together. We have seen it in 

the intelligence community, certainly, as well, I think. So I do 

think, as she described, there are some fertile fields, and I was 
23 

going to ask if she might provide supporting fires, but our time is 

up. 

The CHAIRMAN. General, thank you very much. 

Mr. Thornberry, please. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General, a few months ago, General Flynn published an article 

that was critical of intelligence in Afghanistan. I am sure it is a 

lot better partly because he is in charge of improving intelligence 

in Afghanistan. I am sure it is a lot better particularly in those 

areas where he talked about the deficiencies, culture, who is the 

tribal leaders, and so forth. 

But I would be interested in your views as to how—or what it 

says about us, I guess, in a way, that we could be in Afghanistan 

for eight years and be so deficient in intelligence. I mean, if there 

is a kind of bedrock concept, it seems to me, in the counterinsurgency manual, it is that we have to be learning, adaptable organizations. 

And yet we were there eight years with deficiencies that he describes, and I guess, obviously, where that leads us is, how do we 

know we are getting better and learning the lessons we need to 

learn now for the future, that we are not locked into some mindset 

that is going to make it harder for our troops to accomplish what 

we ask them to accomplish? 

General PETRAEUS. I think the short answer to that, Congressman, is that, frankly, we under-resourced the effort. In fact, when 

I took over Central Command, as any commander does when he 

takes over a new organization, you do a strategic assessment. We 

did that, got a bunch of big ideas out of it that were hugely important to guiding me as I took on the new position. 

And one of the biggest of the big ideas was that we did not 

have—we had neither the intelligence capability, nor the intelligence capacity needed in Afghanistan and Pakistan to carry out 

the kind of comprehensive, civil-military counterinsurgency campaign that was necessary. 

In fact, one of the earliest meetings that I had after new appointments were made with the new administration was with Admiral 

Blair to ask him to appoint—there was not even a mission manager 

in the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] structure for Af-Pak 

[Afghanistan and Pakistan], much less a deputy—associate deputy 

director. He actually ultimately appointed an associate deputy director, not just a mission manager. 

Central Command did not have the adequate structure. We created the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence. In fact, we 

took the same intelligence individual, senior intelligence service civilian who did this for me in Iraq, and he is now doing it for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and doing it magnificently, Derek Harvey. 

And as you noted, one reason that Mike Flynn was in Afghanistan was to fix the very challenges that he perhaps almost too eloquently described. You know, when you use a word like ‘‘clueless,’’ 

that is probably a little bit too rhetorical. 

But at the end of the day, it was a forthright assessment, and 

that is why he was there, was, indeed, to come to grips with that. 

And in the meantime, we have devoted considerable additional resources. 
24 

I could enumerate a number of different initiatives that we have 

pursued. Among them would be important would be not only the 

proliferation of greater numbers of human terrain teams that were 

so helpful in Iraq and are now so helpful in Afghanistan, but also 

the development of what we call a human-terrain database, and we 

have a variety of different systems, applications so that we can constantly build. 

What we did previously, to a degree—this is an overstatement to 

say that, you know, we fought Afghanistan for seven years in seven 

one-year increments, but the fact is that we didn’t capture, we 

didn’t develop the sufficiently granular understanding of the areas, 

and that is what this all depends on. 

Every insurgency is local. Therefore, every counterinsurgency 

has to be local. And you have got to understand the dynamics of 

each village and city. 

And I have seen in recent months what we call deep dives—I 

have participated in them—for, for example, certain areas in the 

Kandahar area. I have been on the ground in three of the most important districts of Kandahar and the city itself. And there is, indeed, a much greater knowledge. 

But we still have work to do in that regard. You can’t fix something like that without, again, devoting the kind of resources that 

have been part of getting the inputs right on the resource side, 

which as I noted included tripling the military, but also considerable additional devotion of resources from each of the different intelligence agencies. And I have talked to the heads of each of the 

intelligence agencies, as well, CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], 

NSA [National Security Agency], DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], and so forth. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Ms. Sanchez. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you both for being before us again. 

General Petraeus, I have a couple questions for you. I want to 

talk a little bit about Iraq for a minute, since you also have some 

jurisdiction over that. 

I remember in one of my first trips to Iraq, at the time, I believe, 

General Odierno was a two-star, and I asked him at the time how 

many insurgents he thought we still had left to take care of in 

Iraq. I think it was maybe the winter of 2003 or 2004, as I recall. 

And at the time, he told me 536. He said we were done, we were 

just around the corner, we had turned the corner, we are getting 

this done. 

So many, many years later, we have a President who has a drawdown schedule, as you said. We are going to draw down to 50,000 

troops, and I don’t know what the picture looks like after that for 

Iraq, but maybe about a month-and-a-half now, I saw General 

Odierno, now a four-star, commanding out there in Iraq, and he 

gave his estimate that the Afghan army and customs and police, 

et cetera, would not be ready to take over and really secure their 

country for at least 5 to 10 years. 

General PETRAEUS. General Odierno was talking about the Afghan army? 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Yes. 
25 

General PETRAEUS. Or the Iraqi army? Or the Iraqi army? 

Ms. SANCHEZ. I am talking about Iraq. 

General PETRAEUS. Okay, the Iraqi army. Okay. Got it. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. The Iraqi army. So—— 

General PETRAEUS. I am—with respect, I am not familiar with 

that assessment. If I could just—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. That was on TV, so—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Interject right here—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. So—you know, so we are in 2010. We are in Iraq. 

We are trying to get down to 50,000 troops, costing me an arm and 

a leg to have these people out there, our troops who are, by the 

way, doing a great job, but it is costing us money. 

When do you think we are really out of Iraq? And if I can—after 

that answer, I would like to hear what you think of your assessment in your professional military judgment, if it looks that you 

conclude that additional troops are needed to successfully accomplish the mission in Afghanistan right around December 2011, will 

you ask the President for additional troops? And how long do you 

really think we are going to be in Afghanistan? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, let me answer the last one first, if I 

could. If, in my best professional military judgment I think we need 

more troops, then I think I have an obligation to the President and 

to our troops and to you, the American people, to ask for more 

troops. That is what we do. And I know that he expects us to give 

him our best professional military advice and then also to support 

the policy when the decision is made. 

With respect to Iraq, we will get down to 50,000 by the end of 

August. We are on track to do that. The decision has been made, 

and we are, indeed, executing that decision. And that is the responsible drawdown plan. 

Beyond that, as you know, our mandate, if you will, runs out at 

the end of 2011, so our remaining troops, barring some further 

agreement with the Iraqi—the new Iraqi government, which still 

has to be formed, of course, would be—at the end of that year— 

would pull out. 

Having said that, there are reasonable expectations—in fact, actually, some of the Iraqi leaders have at various times even publicly stated that they would like to have an enduring security assistance relationship with us. The fact is, they want to buy F–16s. 

They have signed a letter of request. They have bought a variety 

of other hardware. They have bought billions of dollars already of 

foreign military sales. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Before my time runs out, General, when do you 

think we will really be out of Iraq? And when do you think we will 

really be out of Afghanistan? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, we will really be out of Iraq with combat forces, again, by the end of 2011. That is the—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Even if—— 

General PETRAEUS. That is the agreement. There are nearly 

700,000 Iraqi Security Force members in that country now, Congresswoman. They have been in the lead in operations for months, 

if not a year or more at this point in time, by varying levels—— 
26 

Ms. SANCHEZ. No, I have no doubt, but the commanding general 

there said, you know, he thinks 5 to 10 years before they will be 

able to secure. 

General PETRAEUS. With respect, I am just not familiar with that 

assessment, nor is the Under Secretary, and that is generally our 

line of work, so I am a little bit surprised with that. We do video 

teleconference with him all the time, so—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. I was surprised, too, when I saw him on TV saying 

that. 

General PETRAEUS. Now, again, it may be a more nuanced thing 

that implies that, you know, they might need some kind of air 

cover for a number of years or something like this. The fact is, they 

don’t have front-line fighters, if that was the issue. And there are 

some other capabilities that will take years to develop that you just 

can’t go out and buy an F–16 Block 52, which is what they have 

asked for, and, you know, get it into the country, put a guy in the 

cockpit, and have him be proficient. So in that sense, it may be 

that that was what he is referring to. 

More importantly, I think, is just the security assistance role. We 

have robust security assistance arrangements, as you know, with 

many countries in the region. In fact, the United Arab Emirates 

last year alone purchased nearly $18 billion worth of foreign military sales and foreign military finance, and a good bit of which 

goes to California, I think, as well. So, again—and we have that 

with many of the countries. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. I understand that, but we also don’t have 100,000 

troops—— 

General PETRAEUS. And that is the kind of relationship—— 

The CHAIRMAN. The—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ [continuing]. Or 50,000 troops in most of those 

countries. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, 50,000 by the end of August, but going 

down to a security assistance relationship, again, by the end of 

2011, I think. 

The CHAIRMAN. The—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, General. 

General PETRAEUS. And that is probably where we are headed. 

Great to see you again. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Madam Secretary, thank you for being here. 

General Petraeus, thank you so much, both of you, for your service. I am very grateful, General, as a parent. I have had two sons 

serve in Iraq under your command. We are joint service, ArmyNavy, and I have a nephew that just concluded his service serving 

in Iraq in the Air Force. And I know of your capabilities. And as 

a parent, I am just so appreciative of you looking out for our troops 

and protecting our country. 

Additionally, I am very grateful that, as a veteran, for your service. I am a former member of the 218th Brigade. For a year, they 

served in Afghanistan, led by General Bob Livingston. We were 

very proud of their service. And their relationship with the Afghan 

army and police developed into a great appreciation as Afghan 

brothers. 
27 

And so I know firsthand the achievements that are being made, 

and I know that those of us in South Carolina are very grateful for 

our adjutant general, Stan Spears, who has commanded our troops, 

and the largest deployment from our state, 1,600 troops, since 

World War II. 

So thank you. I know firsthand. 

General PETRAEUS. Congressman, can I just very quickly not 

only thank for what your sons and your nephew have done, but 

also say how proud you and all South Carolinians—heck, the whole 

country—can be of the 218th Brigade and General Bob Livingston, 

who as you know then came and joined the Central Command 

staff. We reluctantly allowed him to return to his home state for 

further duties. 

But, again, he is a great leader, and we were delighted to have 

him there as part of CENTCOM nation. 

Mr. WILSON. And I want to commend Fort Irwin, the National 

Training Center. It was 10 years ago this month that we went out 

for our desert training—— 

General PETRAEUS. Yes. 

Mr. WILSON [continuing]. In the summer of 2000 and helped the 

brigade get prepared, so I know what the training can be. 

General, I am concerned with the number of IED attacks, the increase in Afghanistan. I am very concerned that the Army and Marine high-mobility, multipurpose wheeled vehicles do not have a 

sufficient fire suppression system. What is being done to counteract 

that threat, to reduce the just gruesome fire injuries? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, Congressman, first of all, let me just 

say that the new MRAPs [mine resistant ambush protected vehicles] that we are working hard to get into Afghanistan, to my 

knowledge, they do have a sufficient fire suppressant system. Let 

us confirm that, please, and get back to you. 

[The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

General PETRAEUS. But the all-terrain MRAP, which the Secretary ordered production, you all funded on an urgent basis, and 

industry has produced at record speed—because we have moved 

this to—this is a case where we are way ahead of schedule. We 

originally thought we would not have all the MATVs [military allterrain vehicles] out there until sometime next spring. It now looks 

as if we will not only have them out there, but all of them in the 

hands of our troopers by the November-December timeframe, and 

that is an extraordinary accomplishment by, again, transportation 

nation, as well as industry and with you all’s funding. 

So that will go a very long way. That will get just about everybody else out of up-armored Humvees, because some of the original 

MRAPs, as you know, are too large for some of the road structures, 

quite a bit of the road structures in Afghanistan. 

Mr. WILSON. And I appreciate you expediting the new technology. And in fire suppression, that needs to be done. In fact, I 

point out that the equipment we used 10 years ago was all now in 

a museum because of the improvements. 

Secretary Flournoy, I support the funding for the Afghan Security Forces. It is an increase of almost 50 percent. But to avoid corruption in the security forces, where people are desperate because 
28 

of the low pay, supporting their families, this needs to be addressed. 

With the additional funds, can this be executed? What capabilities will be developed by the additional funding? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Sir, the additional funding goes for a range 

of things, from pay and benefits to infrastructure, equipment, 

training, sustainment. 

But very importantly to your point about corruption, it used to 

be that the members of the ANSF were not paid a living wage in 

Afghanistan. And so they sought other ways to support their families, and that engendered a great deal of corruption. 

One of the major reforms that has taken place is an increase in 

the pay of both and a reduction in the disparity between the two, 

army and police. That, plus additional benefits, looking to their 

ability to support their families, house them, et cetera, should 

make a big difference, in terms of lessening corruption in the force. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Madam Secretary. 

General, thank you very much for your service and being here, 

of course, today. 

I want to follow up on a question regarding the police force that 

the chairman asked, and just more specifically, as we focus on 

Kandahar. The New York Times just ran the article that there 

really are only about 800 to 1,000 police officers trained, Afghan 

police officers trained out of 100,000 in the country in Kandahar. 

And what do you think it really is going to take in order to have 

the numbers there to facilitate the kind of operation and the kind 

of, really, development that we are looking for in Kandahar? And 

how long is it going to take us to get there? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, in fact, the approach is going to be the 

deployment of additional forces, and not just additional local police 

trained, but also use, again, here of the Afghan National Civil 

Order Police, in addition to the recruiting, training, and then assigning of additional police. 

Importantly, a large number—I think over half of the 1,000 who 

graduated from the latest Afghan police officer course, are being 

assigned to the south. And this—and, by the way, the way that the 

Afghan National Military Academy assignments were done this 

year, which was by lottery, basically, as opposed to by who you 

knew or what your family tree is, these are important advances in 

that regard. 

Now, in Kandahar, we are also going to add additional U.S. 

Army military police who will partner with a greater density on 

those police that are there, even, as I said, that the training capacity and assignments are increased, as well. And then that will be 

augmented by the Afghan National Army and our forces in the districts around the city. 

Mrs. DAVIS. One of the things that we know, of course, is that 

they are being targeted. And I would suspect—and we certainly 

heard this on our trips—is that one of the concerns is the recruitment, but then who protects those forces? Is there sufficient capability there to really support them so they know that—— 
29 

General PETRAEUS. The only—and this comes to what I talked 

about earlier. When you are conducting counterinsurgency operations, the first and most vulnerable forces are the host nation 

local police forces. 

And in Iraq, there were entire swaths of the country in those 

areas that were dominated by al Qa’ida or other Sunni insurgents 

or, in some cases, the Shia militia extremists, in which there were 

no police whatsoever. They could not survive. 

And the only antidote to that, the only solution is that you must 

clear that area of the insurgents, reduce the insurgents, but in 

many cases—and this will be the case in Kandahar—you are not 

going to see a Marjah-like operation. Marjah had a huge concentration of insurgent infrastructure, Taliban headquarters, IED manufacturing factories, basically, car bomb makers, explosive experts, 

medical facilities, everything, and also in there, substantial numbers of the large industrial narcotics bosses, and their infrastructure and supplies. 

That had to be cleared. And that was a conventional clearance 

operation. It was actually done in a skillful way that avoided some 

of the casualties that I thought, frankly, were going to take place 

and avoided a lot of the damage to the village. It was not destroyed 

to save it, as the saying goes. 

Kandahar will be different from that. In Kandahar, you don’t 

find huge concentrations. You find intimidation, assassinations—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. General, is it true, as well, that there in Kandahar— 

and certainly in Zabul province and in others—we are just having 

trouble really identifying the insurgents? That is what our special 

forces are telling us. And, of course, on the one hand, people are 

suggesting that a lot of them are homegrown. They were young 

kids who were there at 10 years old, and now they are—you know, 

they are fighting us, basically. 

General PETRAEUS. I think, again, one of the other increases— 

and this comes back to the intelligence question earlier. It is very 

much related to that. You have to be able to understand the enemy 

networks in a very granular fashion, as well. 

And the elements taking that on are our high-end special mission 

units, which we have tripled the numbers of those elements and 

their assault elements on the ground, as well, and their analysts 

and other supporting enablers, and we have done the same with 

some of the other elements. 

So they are getting their hooks into the enemy. You may have 

seen—we don’t announce it all the time, but there was an important Taliban leader killed very recently, for example, in the 

Kandahar area. And we think we do have a much better understanding of the network itself. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. 

General, are we winning in Afghanistan? 

General PETRAEUS. Mr. Chairman, defining winning as making 

progress, then I think we are winning in Afghanistan. It is a roller 

coaster ride, however. It is very much an experience that has setbacks, as well as modest successes. 

It is a tough process. And it does get harder before it gets easier, 

even when you are making progress. The way you make progress 
30 

is you have to take away from the enemy his sanctuaries, his safe 

havens, his leaders, his explosives, caches, and all the rest of that. 

There is nothing easy about that. But, again, I think that we 

have got the inputs largely in place, we are seeing the beginning 

of the outputs. That is progress, and therefore, that is winning. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the general. 

Mr. Turner. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you both for being here. General, yesterday, when you 

were testifying before the Senate, as has been referenced several 

times in this hearing, you were asked about the issue of timelines, 

and your answer was that we have to be very careful with 

timelines. 

And I understand your answer to being one that there are risks 

and that there are issues that we must be concerned with that 

evolve separate from timelines. 

General PETRAEUS. There can be benefits, too, if I could. I mean, 

again, what I have pointed out is that July 2011, with respect, is 

a message of urgency. It is not a message of, ‘‘This is when we go 

home.’’ 

Mr. TURNER. Great. And I appreciate that you had made that 

point. And that is, I think, a very good one, because it certainly 

motivates everyone. 

But I know, also, as you look to a timeline, you look to, you 

know, the to-do list of what we are to accomplish, what type of 

standards or evaluations might occur as we approach those 

timelines. 

One of which that I am very concerned about is opium production 

in Afghanistan and the narcotics trade. There has been several 

questions. I asked you about that. But I have a—I have a chart 

that I like to hold up in our hearings. 

And this is a chart from CRS [Congressional Research Service]. 

And it shows the opium production in Afghanistan from 1981 

through 2009. And what I like about this chart is that if you fold 

it exactly in half, you get a picture that shows you that, in fact, 

what we have had is an opium production surge, a narcotics surge, 

if you will, in Afghanistan. 

And, in fact, the last four years, years in which we have been 

there, are—you know, if you will, if you look at this chart, extraordinarily increases in opium production. 

Now, we all know that when you fold this in half, you say, well, 

maybe that is like the historical production of opium, and you look 

at those last four years, where things have been more difficult for 

us in Afghanistan. We know that this trade is supporting insurgency. We know that this trade is supporting the Taliban. 

And my question is, is that we begin to approach those deadlines 

of July 2011, as we look to the issue of our surge and our troops, 

which we are facing an opium or narcotics surge, what should we 

expect to see in these lines? Are we going to see them go back to 

the beginning of when we were there, or are we still going to be 

at a time where we have an opium or narcotics surge? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, just to update the slide, if 

I could, Congressman, in this year, what we have seen is another 
31 

substantial reduction in poppy production. And that results from a 

number of different reasons. 

One is that there has been continued effort to provide crop alternatives. There has been some eradication, although as the Under 

Secretary explained, we have reduced that in favor of going after 

the narcotics kingpins, and that has been another reason that 

there has been some downturn. 

There have been a number of initiatives in what is called AVIPA 

[Afghanistan Vouchers for Increased Production in Agriculture], 

which is an AID [Agency for International Development] program 

that funds a variety of different seeds, fertilizers, and other implements to enable the production of either wheat or saffron or other 

substitutes. 

There have been some environmental issues, and there has been 

a continuation of the poppy blight that has caused problems, as 

well. And then some local Afghans, because of programs that have 

incentives connected to them—I am talking Afghan governance 

now—have incentives connected to being poppy-free and so forth, 

have really gotten quite energetic about that, as well. 

So you really have a situation now where, for the last four years, 

counting this year, there have been significant reductions after, as 

you note, quite a considerable increase, about four or five, six years 

ago. 

I think that trend will continue. It is certainly our goal. We waited in the case of Helmand province until the poppy was harvested 

before pursuing some of these additional initiatives, and we will 

have to see how the fall crop goes, because I think that will be a 

canary in the mine shaft, as for indicating that. 

Mr. TURNER. I appreciate you making that a priority, General. 

General PETRAEUS. Absolutely. 

Mr. TURNER. I had the opportunity to meet with you in Iraq 

three times, once when you were in Mosul—— 

General PETRAEUS. Right. 

Mr. TURNER [continuing]. Once when you were with the Iraqi 

troops in training—— 

General PETRAEUS. Right. 

Mr. TURNER [continuing]. And then another time after the surge. 

General PETRAEUS. Right. 

Mr. TURNER. And, of course, it was here when you were in Cannon after the surge for Iraq and the enormous room that was filled 

with so many people scrutinizing your answers, I appreciate that 

today you come forth with a credibility—— 

General PETRAEUS. Privileged to do it. 

Mr. TURNER [continuing]. That has a little less attention, but 

nevertheless still great importance. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, gentlemen. 

Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Flournoy, General Petraeus, thank you for your testimony today. And, particularly General Petraeus, thank you for 

your service, and I hope you will again convey our appreciation to 

all the men and women in uniform under your command who 

serve. We are grateful for their patriotism, dedication, everything 

they do for our Nation. 
32 

General PETRAEUS. I will do that, Congressman. Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

I obviously want our Nation to succeed in our effort in Afghanistan. And yet I look at where we are and the cost in blood and 

treasure. I look at the strategy. I know that we have—under General McChrystal’s recommendation, we are pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy versus counterterrorism strategy. And I think 

the jury is still out as to whether it is going to work. Of course, 

I am reserving judgment, still supportive of the overall effort in Afghanistan. 

But I do question, why is it that, in other areas of the world, in 

Yemen, for example, other areas where we are concerned about 

growth of terrorist groups like al Qa’ida, why they are we are pursuing a counterterrorism strategy and in Afghanistan we are pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy? Why one place, not the other? 

And why are you so convinced that counterinsurgency is going to 

work, versus counterterrorism, which would rely on less troops and 

more targeted strikes on terrorists’ training camps or strongholds? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, counterterrorism strategy is 

a component of a counterinsurgency strategy, without question. 

Again, that is a very important element of it. 

We worked hard to kill or capture or run off, as an example, in 

Iraq, the al Qa’ida leaders, and even their rank-and-file. You may 

recall when I testified in September 2007 I had something called 

the Anaconda strategy. And what I sought to explain with that, 

though, is that you don’t deal with a terrorist organization just 

with counterterrorist forces. It takes a whole-of-government approach. 

Now, the difference in Yemen is that there are Yemeni governmental elements, Yemeni forces that are capable of carrying out 

some of these operations, and, in fact, the bulk of the operations, 

without question. We are helping them to develop their capabilities 

further. We are helping them with equipment, with your 1206 

funding, and a variety of other assistance. We are helping them 

with intelligence-sharing, both ways, I might add, because al 

Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula is also tied into the extremists in 

Somalia and all the way over into the Arabian Peninsula and up 

into Pakistan, as well. 

If I could, I think Pakistan is instructive in this regard, because 

what you see in Pakistan is a combination of a counterterrorist 

strategy. You see extremist leaders being killed in a campaign, but 

you don’t see in some cases their sanctuaries or safe havens being 

taken away, and therefore, they can regenerate, they can replace 

themselves, and so forth. 

It doesn’t mean that it is not hugely important to take out—I 

think Vice President Biden noted one time, on the record, that 

some 12 of a constantly updated list of top 20 extremist leaders in 

the Pakistan border regions have been killed in the last 18, 24 

months. That is hugely significant. 

Obviously, it puts enormous pressure on the network. It disrupts 

them considerably. But it doesn’t put a stake through their heart. 

The only way you put a stake through their heart is by taking 

away ultimately their sanctuaries, their safe havens, and beyond 

that, even the reasons why those areas are fertile grounds for ex-
33 

tremist activity in the first place, for the planting of seeds of extremism. 

And so, ultimately, again, it comes back to a whole-of-governments—with an ‘‘s’’ on the end—approach. That approach is necessary, because you just don’t ever kill or capture your way out of 

these kinds of significant problems that we have. 

If the problem is very discrete and small—and interestingly, in 

Iraq, al Qa’ida in Iraq now, distinguished from Naqshbandi and the 

resistance, is more of a strictly terrorist problem now and can be 

handled much more with strictly counterterrorist forces. 

We have, with our Iraqi partners, for example, killed or captured 

34 of the top 42 al Qa’ida in Iraq leaders in the course of the last 

6 months or so. That is hugely significant. It put an enormous dent 

in them. 

So when you can whittle the problem down—but we got to that 

point by a whole-of-governments approach that involved the Iraqi 

government, our forces, and other coalition forces, that included 

politics, fostering the awakening, reconciliation, getting it codified 

in legislation, hiring the Sons of Iraq, and addressing the basic reasons why, again, some of those areas were fertile grounds for extremism in the first place, among a host of others. 

And I will get the Anaconda slide to you, again, Congressman, 

because I think it is quite illustrative of why you have to do this. 

[The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

General PETRAEUS. In Pakistan, where the Pakistanis have gone 

after with counterinsurgency operations in Swat Valley, easternsouth Waziristan and elsewhere, they have kept those free of extremists of all flavors. In the areas where that has not yet been 

possible, even though the leaders might be killed, they are still 

going to regenerate. And that is the Achilles’ heel of a counterterrorism approach. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, General. Again, thank you for your 

service. 

General PETRAEUS. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Hunter, please. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you both for your service. I remember saying last year, 

General, that having you and General McChrystal on the ground 

was like having Belichick and Brady, had the dream team working 

over there. Just glad that you are there. Thanks for your leadership and for what you are doing for our military. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, and thanks for what you did 

downrange, Congressman. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. 

As you know, IEDs have gone up about 236 percent in the last 

year. And my question is—this was anticipated. We knew it was 

going to happen as we surged in troops. I know it has been one of 

our top priorities, not only yours, but this Congress’s, this committee’s. It has been one of our top priorities. 

But when we talk about metrics and how we gauge success, I 

think the greatest metric that we can use is the number of casual-
34 

ties or KIA [killed in action] taken from IEDs, how many IED 

caches that we find, how many IED emplacers that we kill. 

And, one, I am just wondering if you have any information like 

that or that you use as a metric to gauge maybe this compared to 

Iraq. That is my first question. 

And following up on that, you have already spoken—Mr. Langevin touched on this—Admiral Olson, who we all know, special 

ops, highest special ops commander in the U.S. military, he said, 

‘‘he fears that counterinsurgency has become a euphemism for nonkinetic activities. The term is now often used to describe efforts 

aimed at ‘protecting populations.’ He said counterinsurgency should 

involve countering the insurgents, and he calls our COIN [counterinsurgency] an oxymoron.’’ 

So on one hand, we have him saying—this was May 26th, I believe—we have him saying this in kind of direct conflict with what 

you are saying here now, and correct me if I am wrong and that 

is not true, and what General McChrystal’s strategy is. 

But specifically, my question is, is our COIN strategy having any 

effect on our inability to counter IEDs, specifically the emplacers 

of IEDs, because we are not taking kinetic action against them, 

rather, we are waiting to exploit the network, to back track, to follow them, track them down, and that kind of thing? Is our failure 

in cracking down and stopping the IEDs a result of our strategy 

over there? 

General PETRAEUS. I certainly don’t think it is, Congressman. I 

think, in fact, doctrinally, counterinsurgency, according to a reasonably good field manual that was published in late 2006, states that 

counterinsurgency operations are a mix of offensive, defensive, and 

stability and support operations. 

And the challenge is always to get the mix right and, more importantly, to know in a sense where you are locally with respect to 

what that mix should be, because at any given time in a country— 

I remember—of course, as an Army officer, to communicate, we use 

PowerPoint, and we produced a PowerPoint slide that showed the 

mix throughout the country at a particular snapshot, and then we 

zeroed in on a province, and then went in further, to show—in that 

case, we wanted to show how versatile our leaders needed to be. 

In other words, they need to be capable—they need to be 

pentathlete leaders, capable of not just offense and defense, the 

traditional operations, and now with much greater enablers, in 

terms of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as you 

know firsthand, but also able to do the stability and support tasks, 

where you do, indeed, sit down and drink many cups of tea and, 

indeed, support the civil aspects of the effort, because they in a certain case, once you reach a certain security threshold, can be every 

bit as important as kinetic operations, but not—— 

Mr. HUNTER. But specifically the IEDs? 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. But not if you are in a kinetic 

mode. And so if you are going after the IED networks, indeed, 

there is certainly not a hesitation to pull the trigger against somebody who is planting an IED, have seen to be planting an IED, unless—I mean, occasionally, we do make a tactical judgment. 

Let’s see if this guy is going to—let’s follow him back to where 

he came from. Let’s see if we can get something more than just the 
35 

low man on the totem pole. Let’s see if he tracks back to where his 

cell leader might be, where his weapons cache might be, and so 

forth. We did this a lot in Iraq, where you don’t kill the guy who 

is shooting at you with a mortar right then. You want to track him 

back to where he got the mortar rounds from and see what else is 

there. 

There is no question that the improvised explosive device numbers have gone up there. One reason they have gone up is because 

they don’t want to take us on frontally. They do not want to get 

in direct firefights the way they used to back, say, in 2004 or 2005, 

even 2006. More recently, there was guidance explicitly put out 

that we are aware of that told the Taliban to avoid direct firefights 

and, indeed, to use the indirect approach, which means IEDs and 

some indirect fire use, as well. 

Thank you. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, General. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Shea-Porter. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you very much. And thank you both for 

being here. 

General Petraeus, are we nation-building? I heard you talk about 

education, roads, health care, agriculture, electricity. Are we nation-building here? 

General PETRAEUS. We are, indeed. Now, we are enabling. We 

are supporting. In some cases, we are doing. People have asked me, 

for example, what was the first big strategic decision you made in 

Iraq early on? This is when I was a division commander. And the 

first big strategic decision was—which I announced to all of our 

battalion commanders and brigade commanders, gathered them all 

together, and I said, hey, fellows, you know what? We are going to 

do nation-building—— 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. But let me just say that—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Because there is nobody else 

around to do it. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Well, let me just say that I have heard over 

and over again that we are not nation-building, that we are here, 

you know, in Afghanistan for a different reason, in that—— 

General PETRAEUS. Well, we are there for a different reason, but 

to accomplish the—again, you can’t keep extremists from re-establishing sanctuaries if you don’t carry out a comprehensive campaign, one component of which clearly can be described as nationbuilding. I mean, I am just not going to evade it and play rhetorical 

games. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I appreciate that. 

General PETRAEUS. That is not our principal mission. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I appreciate that. But in the interest—— 

General PETRAEUS. The reason we are there is not nation-building. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Right. In the interest of time, though, Richard 

Barrett—it was reported in the Financial Times that Richard Barrett, the head of a United Nations team tracking the Taliban and 

al Qa’ida, was quoted as saying that our large-scale effort in 
36 

Kandahar will actually drive the people into the arms of the 

Taliban. 

He is the former head of counterterrorism for the Secret Intelligence Service for England. And I have great concerns about that. 

I know that our intentions are very good, but here is somebody who 

certainly knows this area, knows how things work, and he says 

that our efforts are actually driving the people to the Taliban. 

In addition, we had Karzai suggesting that America launched a 

rocket grenade attack on the peace conference that they had. 

General PETRAEUS. That is—Congresswoman, that is hearsay. 

That is not something as far as I said, I can assure you. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay, thank you. Okay, then. 

General PETRAEUS. That is from an individual who, frankly, had 

some reason to be somewhat angry at President Karzai at that moment in time. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. But Karzai has been making comments about 

the United States, negative comments. I think we all agree that we 

have heard some negative comments. 

So my question is, is Richard Barrett right? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, I don’t think so. I don’t know how you 

get rid of extremist elements if you don’t go in and get rid of extremist elements. I am at a loss. 

I read that, I must confess. I don’t know Richard Barrett, I don’t 

think. Although I have had quite a few dealings with the SIS [Secret Intelligence Service], that name doesn’t ring a bell. 

But, again, I don’t know how you get rid of insurgents if you 

don’t kill, capture, or run them off, or reintegrate or reconcile with 

them. I mean, there is only a variety of ways you can do that. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I certainly—— 

General PETRAEUS. And we are going to try all of those, by the 

way. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Well, I certainly recognize that we have to 

have some kind of footprint in Afghanistan, but there has been a 

lot of concern lately that we are actually increasing—as we apparently did in Iraq—increasing the number of people who were local 

insurgents who were joining up out of frustration, out of rage, out 

of, you know, a number of reasons for that, so I have a lot of concern about—— 

General PETRAEUS. I take issue within Iraq. There may have 

been periods in Iraq where we contributed to it, both by policies as 

well as actions, especially early on. We learned a lot about counterinsurgency, and we learned about the importance to test every policy by the question, will this policy produce more individuals with 

a stake in the success of the new Iraq or less? And if it is less, you 

probably should think twice about it or not. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Well, again—— 

General PETRAEUS. Over time in Iraq, if I could, over time in 

Iraq, because our soldiers did some exceptional work, and I don’t 

want it on the record that I agreed or accepted that our soldiers 

made more enemies—— 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. No, I—this is—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Than they did not, because, in 

fact, it was our soldiers who went and went into the neighborhoods—— 
37 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. General Petraeus, in the interest of time—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. In the sectarian violence—— 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER [continuing]. It is not our soldiers. It is not our 

soldiers at all. The soldiers have been absolutely fantastic. It is a 

question of whether our policy is correct or incorrect. And I am concerned, when—— 

General PETRAEUS. Well, I think we have got the right policy 

there, too, if you will. And I think the results—— 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay. But it is not our soldiers. 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Speak for themselves. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I think we both agree our soldiers are the 

best. But my concern—General McChrystal said that Marjah is a 

bleeding ulcer. 

General PETRAEUS. He didn’t say that, ma’am. He said that, in 

the eyes of the outside world, Marjah is a bleeding ulcer. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay. 

General PETRAEUS. It is very important that we get these things 

precise—— 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I agree. 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Because there have been a lot of 

these, if I could, and they get repeated and repeated. And so that 

is why, with respect, I have interjected. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. In Congress, we certainly understand that, as 

far as being repeated. 

General PETRAEUS. Oh, never. It has never happened to you, has 

it, Congresswoman? 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Not ever. Okay. But the tribal elder in the 

same article said that, by day, it is the government, and by night, 

it is the Taliban. Now—— 

General PETRAEUS. There are some cases like that. This is counterinsurgency and insurgency. I mean, this is a war. And that is 

what takes place, and we had that in Iraq, as well. And over time, 

what you are trying to do is to create situations in which, as many 

people as possible have an incentive in seeing the new structure, 

the new local governance, provincial governance, national governance succeed, rather than fail, and that is really the objective. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay. And one last question. Do they respect 

Karzai’s government? 

Mr. TAYLOR [presiding]. Ma’am, ma’am, you are over your time. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay, thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. TAYLOR. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Petraeus, Ambassador Flournoy, thank you so much, 

first of all, for your service. In 2006, I was the civil affairs officer 

with the United States Marine Corps in the Western Euphrates 

River Valley—— 

General PETRAEUS. I remember it. 

Mr. COFFMAN [continuing]. In an area that had a lot of al Qa’ida 

influence, and it was very difficult to encourage the population to 

cooperate with us because of fear for what—just the intimidation 

factor of what al Qa’ida might do to them or would do to them if, 

in fact, they were caught doing so. 

Now, in Afghanistan right now, there are media reports that— 

the President’s speech at West Point, where he talked about a date 
38 

for which we would begin the process of drawing down our forces, 

that that has filtered down to the Afghan people and has had an 

influence whereby they are less cooperative because they see that 

our presence is limited, where the Taliban’s is not. 

I wonder if you can comment on that, General Petraeus. 

General PETRAEUS. There may well be a case where that is the 

situation, but I don’t think it is throughout the country. I mean, 

what they are seeing right now is an enormous increase in our 

forces. Remember, when President Obama took office in January 

2009, this was an under-resourced effort, at the end of the day. 

I mean, what I have explained is what we have done over the 

last 18 months to try to resource it properly and to get the inputs 

right. And what they are seeing is a threefold—more than threefold 

increase, from 31,000 to 98,000, just U.S. forces, I think 8,000 or 

9,000 additional NATO forces, and now in the process of growing 

another 100,000 Afghan National Security Forces. 

So, again, there is an enormous additional commitment, a president who has labeled this a vital national security interest, indeed, 

has used a date to convey a message of urgency, as I have explained—and if you weren’t here earlier, I will give you my statement, because I felt it important enough to put that on the record 

with the Senate Armed Services Committee and then did the same 

thing here today. 

And I think that is what is hugely important. This is not a date 

when the United States races for the exits and turns off the light 

switch. It is a date at which a process begins that is based on conditions that govern a pace of transitioning of tasks to Afghan forces 

and officials and governs the beginning of a responsible drawdown 

of our surge forces. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, General Petraeus. I hope that the Afghan people realize that. We certainly do. 

To both of you, I am very concerned about the governance piece, 

that there are certainly reports in Marjah that the kinetic operations went well, certainly by our forces and Afghan forces, but 

there wasn’t the governance piece as a follow-on by the Afghans to, 

in fact, do that piece. 

And without a reliable partner, it doesn’t matter at the end of 

the day how successful we are in terms of tactical operations, we 

are not going to go anywhere unless they can fill that void, after 

we provide security. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, there is no question that that is the 

long pole in the tent in any counterinsurgency effort. As you experienced again, also, in the Euphrates River Valley, where it was 

very difficult—we could clear a town, and there was nobody to take 

it over from us, there was no transition, and there was certainly 

not a sheikh willing to stand up and be part of the new Iraq government at that time because the ones who did, out in western 

Anbar, as you will recall, got their heads chopped off, until we really got the sustained Anbar Awakening to take root, but we had to 

protect them. That was the key. 

With respect to Marjah, indeed, the clearance operation really 

was quite commendable, I think. The Marines that were engaged 

in that did very impressive work, U.K. up to the north of it, other 

areas of Nadi-Ali, as well, did not destroy the place to save it. They 
39 

cleared it. They went over a lot of it, as you will recall, and then 

came back and took the enemy from behind, and so forth. 

And the governance piece, as always in these efforts, is difficult, 

especially in Afghanistan, where human capital does not lie around 

in abundance after 30 years of war and where contractors pay more 

than the government does. 

There is, however, a district governor there. For what it is worth, 

I walked through the market of Marjah with him. We went and 

bought bread from the local bread vendor. Yes, we had security 

around us. I didn’t have body armor or Kevlar on in this case, but 

also had dozens, if not hundreds, of Afghans all around us, as well, 

and wanting to chatter with us and everything else. 

We also visited a school that had reopened. Again, I think there 

are 80 teachers in the Marjah area alone that have come back. The 

Taliban didn’t permit that. There is reconstruction of a variety of 

other basic services and so forth. 

None of this easy, but it is taking place. 

Secretary FLOURNOY. If I could just—— 

Mr. TAYLOR. Please. 

Secretary FLOURNOY [continuing]. Very brief, on your very important point about communicating to the Afghan people, our enduring 

commitment, when President Karzai and 14 members of his cabinet came in May for our strategic dialogue, we spent a lot of our 

time not only talking about where we are today in the campaign, 

but also the longer-term relationship, 5 years, 10 years, and beyond, and what kind of work we want to do with Afghanistan on 

security assistance and education, in economic development, and so 

forth. 

And we are actually beginning to work on a strategic framework 

for the long-term relationship, that we will be coming and talking 

to you more about as that develops, as well. But I think as that 

becomes more public, it communicates, I think, that, you know, 

there may be contours in the nature of our involvement there, but 

this is an enduring commitment. This is an area of vital interest, 

and we will stay committed to the people of Afghanistan and to 

their assistance. 

Mr. TAYLOR. The gentlewoman from Massachusetts, Mrs. Tsongas. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Thank you, and good afternoon to you both. 

I have to say, I have been sitting here, that I am a skeptic. And 

I made my first visit to Afghanistan in January of 2008, soon after 

I was first elected to Congress. At that point, I think the general 

feeling was that we had sort of dropped the ball by diverting our 

resources to Iraq, but that once we came back and engaged, it 

would be fairly straightforward. In fact, I can remember speaking 

to one of our generals who said it would be a piece of cake. 

A year later, I went back to Afghanistan, we had a newly inaugurated President who had revisited it and was committing 17,000 

soldiers, and, again, taking a longer time to consider going forward 

what was needed. And I felt a sense of hopeful optimism, especially 

with the civic-military sort of dual-headed effort there. 

And yet I came back with a lot of questions, because essentially 

I felt the situation had become quite different in the intervening 

year and that we were facing a new war effort, not a continuation 
40 

of what had taken place earlier, but given the dynamics in Pakistan, the re-emergence of the Taliban, that it was a wholly different effort and needed a wholly different thought process. 

And then we went back again this year, roughly a year later, and 

again you could see the impact of our great build-up there, and yet 

I didn’t come away feeling particularly confident for all the reasons 

we know, the many questions we have around the Karzai government, the issue of corruption, the challenges we have had training 

the police and the national army, better with the army, but extraordinary challenges with the police, and all the huge economic 

issues that the country as a whole faces. 

So I remain very skeptical, although I have to say, I do very 

much appreciate the extraordinary efforts of our military, and particularly the young soldiers who are serving on our behalf. 

We did meet with Afghan women as part of—they had a small 

shura. We were in Qalat, which is north and east of Kandahar. 

And, you know, there was some reassurance there. A PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] there had brought them together. They 

talked about having better health care, better education. There 

were some women who had essentially been beggars, talking about 

the small modest economic opportunities for them. 

But they also said how fearful they were for accessing all the 

things that we have tried to put in place so that we could deal with 

the capacity-building and the civic side. 

And so I have a question that is sort of related to that, that, yes, 

we are making these extraordinary investments, but they are not 

yet really reaching the people in the way that we need. Anyway, 

I came across a study that was done post-Operation Moshtarak, 

and it really did try to sense the local Afghani perceptions of the 

operation. 

It was done by the International Council on Security and Development. And it interviewed over 400 Afghan men from Marjah, 

Lashkar Gah, and Kandahar in March, and the research results 

are very concerning. The research revealed that 61 percent of the 

men interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces now than 

before the military operation and that 95 percent of the men believe more young Afghans have joined the Taliban in the last year. 

If one of the main goals of the counterinsurgency strategy is to 

win the hearts and minds of the local population, it appears we are 

not doing well, at least according to this research. 

Also, the research stated 59 percent of those interviewed believe 

the Taliban will return to Marjah after the operation, 67 percent 

did not support a strong NATO–ISAF presence in their province, 

and 71 percent stated they wanted the NATO forces to leave. 

Again, these are the results of an on-the-ground survey. 

So tell me both, General Petraeus and Secretary Flournoy, what 

benchmarks are you using to measure the effectiveness of the new 

counterinsurgency strategy? What specific quantitative and qualitative assessments are you using? You are testifying that our operations are producing slow, but steady improvements in security, 

stability, and capacity for governance, yet it seems many Afghanis 

don’t share that opinion. 

And I have to say, given my very first encounter with one of our 

generals in that first visit, I am just very cautious of overly opti-
41 

mistic statements in the face of all the extraordinary challenges 

that we face to achieve our goals. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, Congresswoman, I don’t 

think you have heard any over-optimistic statements from me. In 

fact, I specifically won’t use the term optimism, nor pessimism, for 

that matter. I use realism. 

The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Go ahead. 

General PETRAEUS. I have done that for a number of years, actually. I wish you had talked to me a couple of years ago, in fact, or 

go back and look at my statements on the record since taking command of Central Command. I have never believed that this would 

be straightforward. In fact, I have stated on the record on numerous occasions that, in certain respects, not all, because this is nowhere near the level of violence of Iraq. There are some other big 

issues. 

But in certain respects, this will be harder than Iraq, due to the 

lack of human capital, damaged after 30 years of war, illiteracy, 

lack of infrastructure, and so on. But as you noted, education, 

health care, roads, and electrification projects, a lot of the basic 

services have increased. 

Now, having said all that, we are still very much getting the inputs right. We are getting toward the end of that process. Studying 

Marjah within a couple of months of the operation is not, candidly, 

a productive analysis, in the view of this counterinsurgent. I mean, 

it takes many months, if not years, to see the results of progress 

in these kinds of areas. 

Furthermore, the truth is, we are not trying to win hearts and 

minds for ourselves. We are trying to win hearts and minds for legitimate Afghan governance. Now, that is a long pole in the tent, 

as well, without question, but again this is not about—we would 

love to have hearts and minds. We would love to be loved. And we 

said that in Iraq, as well. 

But at the end of the day, what we really wanted was for our 

Iraqi partners to gain the support of the people, and it was a case 

of promoting them, occasionally even letting them lambaste us in 

front of some crowd or other to enable them to make points, if that 

helped them win hearts and minds for themselves. 

So I am not completely surprised at all by the results of the survey. Again, having said that, I walked the streets of Marjah. I have 

been in Nadi-Ali. I would love to have some—you know, you ought 

to go downtown in Nawa, which is a place where we have devoted 

resources now for well over a year, and where you can see the kind 

of progress that is possible, not just in terms of establishing a security foundation on which you can build, but then actually building 

on it, with, again, more schools, with clearing of canals. 

As you know, the whole Helmand River Valley was really created 

by USAID some—I think more than 50 years ago now, back in the 

1950s. And actually refurbishing that area and so forth is a hugely 

important component of what it is that we are trying to do. Same 

thing, again, with basic health care and a variety of others. 

So, again, I would be happy to temper anyone’s optimism that 

you find with my realism. Having said that, I personally keep coming back to the fact that this is a hugely important mission. We believe this is the right approach, strongly, to accomplish that mis-
42 

sion. And, again, that is a pretty important bedrock conclusion, I 

think, that one keeps coming back to. 

We talked about, you know, can you do counterterrorism versus 

COIN? Well, first of all, they are both entwined. But it is—as Ryan 

Crocker, the great ambassador Ryan Crocker, world’s finest diplomat, my wingman in Baghdad, used to say about Iraq, it is all 

hard, and it is hard all the time. And that is reality. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the general. 

Before calling Mr. Conaway, the same question of you, Madam 

Secretary. In your experience, in your opinion, are we winning in 

Afghanistan? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I would define winning similarly to General 

Petraeus, in the sense of, are we making progress? And I think if 

you—granted that counterinsurgency is always one step forward, 

two steps back, two steps forward, one step back, it is full of 

progress and setbacks simultaneously. 

But if you look overall at the trend lines, I think we are heading 

in the right direction, we are on the right trajectory. And I do look 

at polling results in Afghanistan. But I also take them with a grain 

of salt, because it is an extremely difficult thing to do, conduct an 

objective poll in such a contested and hostile environment. 

That said, what I try to look at is actions, behaviors. Are people 

in the area cooperating more? Are they taking risks for the sake 

of a more secure and stable environment? Are they participating in 

governance? Is there more legitimate economic activity? Are they 

accepting and participating in Afghan governance? Is there some 

reduction in violence and casualties? Those sorts of things that I 

think are more concrete. 

And, again, I think, as General Petraeus said, you know, there 

are many challenges. The picture remains mixed. Are we there yet? 

Absolutely not. But I think when you look at where we were a year 

ago, the strategy we have put in place, the leadership we have put 

in place, the resources we have put in place, and the progress that 

has started to be made, that we are heading the right direction and 

we need to give the resources and the strategy a bit of time to 

make further progress in a way that is more definitive. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Conaway. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Flournoy, General Petraeus, thank you for your service, and 

thanks for being here this afternoon and tolerating this inquisition. 

Iraq has oil, land, arable land, and water, resources that can 

support an economy and a form of government that makes sense 

for them. Up until Sunday, I had the same impression of Afghanistan, in that I expected the world’s communities to be financially 

supporting the military there for a long time in order to get that 

done. 

The New York Times article in which you were quoted, General 

Petraeus, some trillion dollars’ worth of value of minerals, copper, 

gold, somebody called it the Saudi Arabia of lithium, that is a 

game-changer. From a $12 billion annual economy, $1 trillion is 

natural resources that can be properly and safely and environmentally friendly exploited, could lift an awful lot of folks out of 
43 

poverty, address the issues that drive much of the problem that the 

country has in stabilizing itself. 

Can you—and one final point. The article went on to say that the 

Pentagon has been aware of this since 2007 and has, in effect, let 

it languish somewhere on a shelf. Can you talk to us about—both 

of you, talk to us about the broader context of what this means for 

that country? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, we need to be measured in 

our expectations about how quickly Afghanistan can, indeed, capitalize on what is truly extraordinary mineral blessings and also 

timber blessings and some other very exploitable resources that it 

has. The fact is that—— 

VOICE. That is why we are in Afghanistan—— 

The CHAIRMAN. The lady will remove—the lady will remove herself. Order. Order. The lady will remove herself. The lady will remove herself. Please remove her. That is all right. 

VOICE. It is mass murder—— 

General PETRAEUS. If I could just comment on a point that the 

woman made that—you know, the fact is, if we wanted Iraq’s oil, 

we could have bought it for the next four decades with what we 

spent probably in a couple of years. 

The CHAIRMAN. Exactly. 

General PETRAEUS. And as you know, the mineral wealth is—as 

you noted, I think an awareness of that grew probably in recent 

years, but it just so happened that Deputy Under Secretary Paul 

Brinkley, the head of the Task Force for Business Stability Operations at the Pentagon, who did magnificent work in Iraq bringing 

businessmen back to that country, back when no one else was coming to Iraq. 

And we helped him. I was his partner in this. We transported 

them, housed them, fed them, secured them, and everything else 

to try to do anything to get people re-interested in a country that 

we knew had incredible potential, but which at that time was seen 

as just so violent as to be impossible in which to do business, even 

for the so-called adventure venture capitalists. 

And in the case of Afghanistan, he has engaged here. We are 

supporting him here, as well. In fact, I asked him to go to Afghanistan some months back. He has already made several trips out 

there. He has been impressed by the potential that he has seen in 

a host of different areas, actually, and now the question is how to 

enable the Afghan government to develop the kinds of legal regimes, in addition to the security foundation, but then also the 

legal regimes, the infrastructure, the capital investment, the training of a workforce, and all the rest of that, to enable them to extract these mineral resources and get them to a market somewhere 

in the world. 

That will not be one of those that will be coming soon to a theater near us, but it is something that, as you noted, holds out a 

prospect that is entirely different from the perception that many of 

us had for years, that Afghanistan was, in a sense, going to be a 

ward of the court that would always be subsidized to a substantial 

amount by the outside world, trying to help it deal with its extremist problems. 

Miche`le, did you want to—— 
44 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I just wanted to add that, I think, since the 

U.S. geological initial survey was done, this has caused us to really 

focus a lot of attention on building capacity in key areas like the 

Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Finance, the sort of Afghan 

wherewithal to begin to put an Afghan plan in place for how they 

are going to manage this potential. 

The Pentagon did not sit on these results at all. I think Mr. 

Brinkley has been hard at work and working very intensively with 

our folks downrange in the embassy and with Afghan partners for 

quite a while now. 

General PETRAEUS. And, in fact, one of the recent trips, when I 

was in Afghanistan about two or three ago, I ran into him in 

Kabul, and he had some of these adventure venture capitalists 

with him. That was, obviously, good to see. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thanks. Appreciate it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. 

Ms. Pingree. 

Ms. PINGREE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Thank you, Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, for being 

with us today and for your great service to this country. We greatly 

appreciate that, and I want to say at the offset how much I appreciate the hard work and sacrifice of our troops, particularly representing the state of Maine, where we have a high proportion of 

people who have served in the military. We are grateful for their 

work and their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families. 

Like a couple of my previous colleagues, I guess I want to take 

issue with a little bit of your perspective on this and elaborate a 

little bit on how I feel about that. I disagree with you basically on 

the premise that our continued military presence in Afghanistan 

actually strengthens our national security. 

Since the surge of troops in southern and eastern Afghanistan 

started, we have seen only increased levels of violence, coupled 

with an incompetent and corrupt Afghan government. I am of the 

belief that continuing with the surge and increasing the level of 

American forces will have the same result, more American lives 

lost, and we will be no closer to success. 

In my opinion, the American people remain skeptical that continuing to put their sons and daughters in harm’s way in Afghanistan is worth the price being paid. And I think they have good reason to feel that way. 

It seems that increased military operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan have resulted in increased instability, increased 

violence, and more civilian casualties, some of which we have already discussed today. 

Meanwhile, pulling out of an area not only reduces the level of 

violence, the local Afghan leaders sometimes end up turning 

against the Taliban. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Brown, Commander of a U.S. Army unit that came under attack in Kamdesh, 

described what happened when his company was ordered out of the 

area. Colonel Brown said, ‘‘If you pull out the coalition forces, you 

open up the natural seams between the traditional leaders and the 

Johnny-come-lately Taliban.’’ According to Colonel Brown, his pa-
45 

trolling troops were just providing a recruitment tool for the insurgency. 

The chair alluded to this same kind of sentiment earlier, but I 

want to repeat a remark of the former Russian ambassador to Afghanistan, who was a KGB agent in Kabul when the Soviets were 

occupying the country. He said the USA has ‘‘already repeated all 

of our mistakes and has moved on to making mistakes of their 

own.’’ He said the single biggest mistake the Soviets made was letting their military footprint get too large. 

We are now on track to have more troops in Afghanistan than 

the Soviets did at the height of their occupation. So can you comment on this? Was Lieutenant Colonel Brown correct? Has the escalation of U.S. forces increased the insurgency? And was the 

former Russian ambassador correct that the presence of our forces 

is fueling the violence in Afghanistan and strengthening the insurgency? 

Thank you. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, Congresswoman, with respect to the Lieutenant Colonel, there may be cases where you pull 

out of an area and serendipity results in the form of local leaders 

who stand up to the Taliban. 

I am hard-pressed to think of cases where that has taken place, 

though, and I will have to see where it was that his element was 

deployed. In many cases where we have pulled out for one reason 

or another over the years, if it is a Pashtun area—and that is 

where we tend to be deployed—the Taliban will fill the void, together with the illegal narcotics industry, and they will revive the 

poppy crop, and, indeed, become a stronghold for the insurgency. 

Again, it is a fact that the Taliban controlled that entire part of 

the country, of course, Kabul and much of the rest of the country, 

as well, and that is where the 9/11 attacks were planned. That is 

why we are there, to prevent that from becoming an extremist safe 

haven again. 

The fact is that, when we do go into an area, in many cases, the 

violence does go up, and that is because we are taking away sanctuaries and safe havens from the Taliban, which is why we have 

to go into those areas. 

The campaign focuses on the major population centers. They 

have to be provided greater security. It is not just about stability. 

I mean, if you want—if all you want is stability, and you don’t care 

who is in charge of that stability, then, again, you can give that 

to them, but then you obviously don’t have control over what it is 

that takes place in that ‘‘stable region.’’ It may be that Kandahar 

was stable at the time of the Taliban controlling it, but the fact is 

that you also had al Qa’ida’s senior leadership in there, hatching 

plots such as the 9/11 attacks and others. 

So, again, you know, you have cited a couple of different isolated 

incidents and so forth, and I can probably cite as many isolated incidents in return, or perhaps even some firsthand accounts—— 

Ms. PINGREE. In the interest of time, I know I am going to run 

out here, so I will just say, I appreciate it, and I appreciate it from 

the start that you and I disagree. I wanted to put the sentiment 

out there that I do think increasingly the American public is concerned about the expense, the loss of lives, and I think all of us 
46 

are concerned with our lack of success. But thank you very much 

for your service. 

General PETRAEUS. If I could just relate one, because this is important, I think, to this body. One of your members came out. She 

had just been elected. This was when I was in Iraq, and it was in 

the—probably still in the early months of the surge, and it was a 

very tough time. 

And she forthrightly, right before Ambassador Crocker and I 

could even open our mouths, she wanted me to know that she was 

a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus. And I said, ‘‘Congresswoman, 

so am I.’’ 

And so, I mean, in the sense that I share your concerns about 

getting out of there from a number of different perspectives—I will 

explain some of those later, perhaps—I share the concerns about 

the cost, about the stress on our force, about the sacrifices that our 

young men and women and their families have made and are making. 

But I also share a concern about the security of our country. And 

I don’t share the idea that our presence does not strengthen our 

national security. 

I do think the reason we are in Afghanistan is very, very clear. 

And, again, it is about how we can accomplish that core objective 

that the President has articulated that is, I think, the real essence 

of the debate. But—— 

Ms. PINGREE. And I will just say, again, I appreciate your service. We have a strategic disagreement here. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. 

General PETRAEUS. And I appreciate yours, as well. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kissell. 

Mr. KISSELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Madam Secretary and General. 

And, by the way, I am not sure anybody has wished you happy 

birthday, 235 years. 

General PETRAEUS. Well, actually, it is the Army’s birthday. My 

goodness. You are exactly right. 

Mr. KISSELL. So—— 

General PETRAEUS. We will be celebrating that later this week 

in Tampa, I want you to know. 

Mr. KISSELL. So happy birthday. General, this is my first term 

in Congress, but I recently got back from my third trip to Afghanistan, because I think it is important to our Nation. I think it is important for us to not only be aware of what is taking place on the 

ground, but to listen to the leadership, listen to the Afghans, listen 

to all our soldiers that we come in contact with. 

Myself and some of our friends here, we were the first congressional delegation to be asked to come into Kandahar City. I think 

you guys were in the week before we were, so I didn’t do the 40 

steps. I understand you all did. So—some of our guys did, too. 

General PETRAEUS. I was going to ask you your time in the 40 

steps, as well. If you do that, please bring a stopwatch. 

Mr. KISSELL. I was the one that strategically decided not to. One 

of the things that General McChrystal mentioned to us in a briefing is that we were desperately in need of linguists, translators. 

And it surprised me a little bit. You know, if we are desperately 
47 

in need of that—and I sent a letter to the chairman and to Secretary Gates to that effect—what are we doing about that? 

General PETRAEUS. We have a pretty comprehensive effort in 

that regard. We are, first of all, training linguists at the Defense 

Language Institute out in Monterey, California, and in some other 

service-provided locations, as well. 

We have had a full-court press on to recruit Afghan-Americans 

and other Afghan native speakers and those who speak, again, 

Dari and Pashto and the other languages. 

In the United States and, frankly, elsewhere throughout the 

world, there has been recruiting of them in Afghanistan itself, and 

that has been problematic in some cases. And, in fact, that is a conundrum that we have, frankly, that in some cases, we are hiring 

away from the Afghan government individuals who were educated 

by the Afghan government to serve in the Afghan government and 

then we are taking them away from—in some cases, we are taking 

doctors who make more working for us as translators than they do 

working as doctors for some Afghan hospital. 

So we have got to come to grips with that. But I think that is 

the broad outline of what it is that we have done, and we have expanded that in every respect. But when you triple your forces on 

the ground in the course of about 18 months, there is no way—you 

know, it takes at least a year to train a linguist, at least, and probably more than that to be adequate—— 

Mr. KISSELL. And, General—and is there anything more we can 

do? Any resources that you need that we could provide toward that 

effect? 

General PETRAEUS. Sir, I don’t know. I have been out of that 

business since I was a three-star out at Leavenworth, and we actually oversaw the Defense Language Institute. I just don’t know 

what the capacity is at this point in time. I haven’t personally sat 

down and compared our demand signal, which I know, but we, 

frankly, feed that to the services and to Joint Forces Command, 

and they then satisfy that demand. 

And I don’t know how it is that they are producing at this point 

in detail, so—— 

Mr. KISSELL. Well, if there is—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. It is a service question, I think. 

Mr. KISSELL. You know, once—if there is anything, just let this 

committee know, because this committee always has responded 

well. 

General PETRAEUS. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. KISSELL. Just two or three real quick things. I recently wrote 

to the folks back home after being over the third time that I am 

realistically optimistic about what we are doing, because I believe 

that it is important to our Nation, I believe the leadership has the 

right plan, but it is awfully, awfully tough. 

I have also had General Arnold Fields in my office three times 

to talk about those things that we need to do better in all regards 

and to make sure we don’t make some of the mistakes that we 

have made before and that we continue to do things that would 

help the Afghan people. 

The distribution of resources, especially in Kandahar, I think is 

real important because they are going to just a few people and 
48 

sometimes that warlord-type person that has exerted the type of influence that we want to counter. I think that is very important. 

Electricity in Kandahar, we heard from the governor there and 

the mayor there and the police chief there, when the city goes dark 

at night, the Taliban has freedom of movement. 

And one thing that struck me very interesting is we were 

helicoptering out of Kandahar, out of the city. There were streets 

laid off to the east. It looked like something you might see in the 

American Southwest, you know, coming soon, Shangri-La or something. There is anticipation of business and commerce there, if they 

have the electricity, and a lot of places have moved out because of 

a lack of electricity. 

But I was impressed in Kandahar, the fact that there—you 

know, beautiful flowers, beautiful commerce, and thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, but, you know—— 

General PETRAEUS. I walked the streets, bought bread there, too. 

And if I could just very quickly, we have a program—it is at the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense—to increase substantially electricity production in Kandahar City and also for the eastern and 

southern parts of the country. 

It would use CERP funds. That is a different use of those, but 

those funds are available, they are adaptable, they are accessible. 

Our understanding is that it meets the policy on the governing and 

the law. But, again, we would just ask your support if it comes to 

that, because this is one of those game-changers, if you will. Like 

you said, if you can turn on the lights, turn on the businesses, and 

turn on security, then you have really made some progress. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank—— 

General PETRAEUS. The Taliban cannot produce electricity. They 

can do a lot of other things, but they can’t produce electricity. Only 

the Afghan government can. And, again, that would be quite significant. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Heinrich. 

Mr. HEINRICH. General Petraeus, Secretary Flournoy, I want to 

welcome both of you and thank you for all the hard work you have 

put into this effort. 

I was in Kandahar City with my colleague just two weeks ago. 

I don’t want to give you my time on the 40 steps. It wasn’t very 

impressive, but I did make it to the top. 

General PETRAEUS. You did do the 40 steps? 

Mr. HEINRICH. I can’t—I did. 

General PETRAEUS. I have got a coin for you, Congressman. 

Mr. HEINRICH. That is a deal. I can’t say strongly enough how 

much I support your response on the electricity issue. I think it is 

absolutely critical for what we saw on the ground there, and I really appreciate my colleague bringing it up. 

One of the other issues that, you know, we dealt with directly 

and got to see firsthand was the Afghan national police, the nature 

of the partnership we have there now, and one of my concerns with 

your testimony yesterday has to do with our NATO partners and 

the pace at which they are making their commitments, in terms of 

trainers. 
49 

And I would like you to touch on that, if you would, and tell us, 

you know, why aren’t we—why isn’t that pace coming together 

more expeditiously? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, again, there are national reasons for 

that. In each case, they vary. The fact is, though, that we are short 

about 450 trainers, and then there are another numbers of hundreds that have been pledged that are not yet on the ground. 

And so notwithstanding the gains with respect to the ratio of 

trainers to trainees, which has gone from 1 to 80 to 1 to 29 or 30, 

which is significant, we still have a good ways to go. And, in fact, 

as we increase capacity, that need may grow further. 

So we have employed a variety of bridging solutions. The Marines—the Commandant of the Marine Corps provided hundreds of 

trainers on an interim basis. The U.S. Army, we diverted an entire 

battalion to do this, as well. And that also has had an important 

bridging effect. 

But the bottom line is that this has not been adequate, and the 

Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe today put out another request to the nations for the trainers that are required, and 

we will have to see what comes out of that—— 

Mr. HEINRICH. That is great. 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. Given that Secretary Gates just 

highlighted that need during the recent defense ministerials of 

NATO. 

Mr. HEINRICH. And I think that is absolutely critical. I want to 

switch gears real quickly. You used the phrase ‘‘Pakistani partners’’ a little while ago, and I want to talk for a few minutes about 

Pakistan. I think whenever we talk about Afghanistan, we have to 

think regionally. 

As you know, there was an April 2010 report on progress toward 

security and stability in Afghanistan that said one of the weaknesses of this insurgency is their over-reliance on external support. 

And I think that finding reinforces the need for eliminating that 

support, regardless of where it comes from. 

This last weekend, we saw another report that was prepared by 

the London School of Economics that indicated that Pakistan’s 

main intelligence agency continues to provide financing, training, 

sanctuary to certain Afghan Taliban insurgents, and exerts a greater influence over the Taliban than we previously thought. 

If we were to marginalize this group in Afghanistan and achieve 

greater security throughout the country, how do we address the 

issues with Pakistan to make sure that, while they are cracking 

down on Pakistan Taliban in places like Swat and east Waziristan, 

they seem to be sort of playing both sides of this game? 

General PETRAEUS. Well, first of all, I don’t want to imply that 

I would accept the London School of Economics study or the individual who wrote that for them, his conclusions in all respects. 

Having said that, there is no question but that there are a variety of relationships there, some of which date back decades from 

when we used the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] to build the 

Mujahideen, who were used to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. 

And some of those ties continue in various forms, some of them, 

by the way, gathering intelligence. You know, again, you have to 

have contact with bad guys to get intelligence on bad guys. And so 
50 

it is very important, I think, again, to try to have this kind of 

nuanced feel for what is really going on. 

Now, what is indisputable is that, as you noted, the Pakistanis 

have carried out impressive counterinsurgency operations against 

the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistani and their affiliate, the TNSM 

[Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi], and some of the other 

organizations in the former North-West Frontier province and in a 

number of the agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Area. 

Beyond that, they have also had attacked in a variety of ways 

a number of the other elements there. And, of course, there has 

been another campaign going on that I mentioned Vice President 

Biden alluded to in his comments about the more than 12—and 

that was before number 3 was announced—senior al Qa’ida and 

other extremist element leaders, transnational extremist organization leaders out of an updated list of top 20, killed during the last 

18 months or so. 

The combination of that has been important. Having said that, 

I do believe that the Pakistanis recognize—the people, the leaders, 

the clerics, and the military all recognize that you cannot allow poisonous snakes to have a nest in your backyard, even if the—you 

know, the tacit agreement is that they are going to bite the neighbor’s kids instead of yours, because eventually they turn around 

and bite you and your kids. 

And so I think there is recognition of the problem. What do we 

do about it? I think we have to continue what is slowly being seen 

by our Pakistani partners—and I say that word with sincerity—is 

as a sustained, substantial commitment. That is what they are 

looking to see. 

There is history here. Three times before, including after Charlie 

Wilson’s war, we left precipitously after and left them with holding 

the bag, if you will. They have enormous challenges, not just in the 

security arena, but in the economic arena, social, political, you 

name it. 

And it is hugely important that we be seen—again, we be seen 

as partners by them and seen to be working to help them. They 

are doing the fighting. We are doing the enabling, if you will, with 

equipping, with funding, some of it coalition support funds to reimburse them for efforts that they exercise to secure our lines of communication through their country, and so on, some training, intelligence exchanges, and the rest of that. 

And I think, again, the key is the development, again, of a strategic relationship. And they also have recently been to Washington, 

as have the Afghan leaders, and that is the key to the way ahead, 

in my view. 

Mr. TAYLOR [presiding]. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. 

Critz. 

Mr. CRITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Petraeus, Secretary Flournoy, thank you very much for 

being here, and thank you for your service to our country. 

My question is involving the provinces of Wardak and Logar, 

south of Kabul, and we have seen an improvement in the security 

situation there, and partly due to the presence of local militias. 

And the militias don’t have really any formal tie to the Afghan national army. They are under the supervision of a local police chief. 
51 

Can you elaborate on this a little specifically, and if there has 

truly been significant improvement in security due to the militia? 

And is there any plan to replicate these militias elsewhere in the 

country? 

And then, going further, is there plans to bring the militias 

under the supervision of the army? Or is it going to remain under 

the guise of the police chief? Thank you. 

General PETRAEUS. That is a great question, Congressman, because we are very much taking a comprehensive approach to this 

from a security perspective, all the way in the high end from targeting with our special mission units, and then with our partnered 

commando units, and so forth, all in the soft world of mid-level, if 

we can get them high-level, Taliban leaders, through conventional 

forces, together with Afghan elements that are clearing and then 

holding and building and getting ready for transition, on over to 

these local security initiatives. 

And there are several of these. One of these is what has been 

carried out in Wardak and Logar, the Afghan Public Protection 

Force—APPF is the acronym—they actually are tied into the Ministry of Interior, indeed, through local police chiefs, but they are 

paid by the Ministry of Interior. 

One of the issues right now that I have had to dialogue with 

General Caldwell on, in fact, is that they are not paid at the same 

rate as local police. And so that is one issue that does need to be 

dealt with, but they are, indeed, paid. They actually were trained 

before they went on the street by our—our special forces elements 

who retain a partnership with them. 

And they are not really militia, per se. They are local security 

forces that do have a tie to the government. And that was a point 

of insistence by President Karzai and the then-Minister of Interior, 

Hanif Atmar, when this program was put together. 

There are also village security programs where our special forces 

teams go out into small villages, live with those villages, and they 

are authorized to establish a small security force that, again, has 

a link back to a more robust quick reaction force as required from 

the Afghan National Security Forces. 

Again, this is linked through the Ministry of Interior. There is 

real potential here. There are also real concerns here. The Afghan 

national leaders are concerned that this could give—in a sense, legitimize warlord militias coming back to life after working very 

hard to demobilize those in the first few years after liberation of 

Afghanistan from the Taliban. 

And so I think it is prudent to be cautious. But, frankly, you also 

have to take some risk in this effort, especially when you are trying 

to produce progress as rapidly as is possible, because of a sense— 

understandable sense of urgency. 

And so these programs are being continued. They will be expanded. And, indeed, General Caldwell, General McChrystal and 

others are working with the Afghan government to fix some shortcomings that they have and to get the policies in place that can 

allow further use of them, where appropriate, and with the recognition that there are some risks that you take in establishing these 

forces, as well. 

Mr. CRITZ. Thank you, General. That is all I have. 
52 

General PETRAEUS. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. CRITZ. I yield back. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. 

Murphy. 

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, sir. 

And thank you, General and Secretary, for being here again 

today. 

Two points I was hoping to touch on. One, when I was in Afghanistan most recently, we were stuck a little bit in a catch-22, and 

the Secretary has addressed this before, but I would be curious to 

get the update, of—we are providing the money for rebuilding and 

for other things that people need, and so they kind of come to us, 

and it effectively infantilizes the Afghan government, but we are 

hesitant to give the money to the Afghan government because of 

corruption problems. 

And I am curious how we are doing on that. I know it is a big 

initiative that we are continuing to push on, and I would love to 

just get the kind of current state of affairs there in summary form. 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Okay. We have set a goal of trying to move 

more and more of our assistance through the Afghan government. 

What that requires is a process of certifying each ministry for financial accountability and absence of corruption. 

It is a painstaking process. The good news is, three of the key 

ministries have already passed. We have another three or four in 

the works. And we have a prioritized list that we are working 

through to get there. So we are aware of this dynamic and trying 

to address it. 

Mr. MURPHY. So we have three currently, and three or four more 

that are in process? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I think it is three or four, and another— 

and then there is another tranche after that that we will be starting very soon. 

Mr. MURPHY. Great. The second question I have relates to the 

same—similar issue, in terms of transitioning to Afghan government control over things. And I have been hearing from a number 

of people in the near past that the constitutional structure is a 

problem for us. 

We kind of know Afghanistan is very decentralized historically, 

culturally, in terms of these local areas, but the way the constitution got put together, for a whole host of reasons, it is very much 

that it kind of comes from the top down, and Kabul appoints the 

governors and the deputy governors. 

And I am curious how you are seeing that impact us on the 

ground, as we are trying to work in these local areas, in particular 

in the Marjah operation and trying to help build a successful local 

government. And is there a way to work in that construct? Or is 

this—I mean, obviously, we can’t change their constitution, but is 

that something that really needs to change for us to get to where 

we have local elections and a locally driven thing? 

I mean, we get frustrated with it here in Washington, because 

the guys locally yell at us for spending too much money and then 

ask us to send them the money, but it is a process that works here. 

And I am curious where you see that going. 
53 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I think, you know, what we have seen happening is a blending of the governance structures set up by the 

constitution and the more traditional social structures. So a lot of 

what is happening is you will establish, for example, a district governor and a district council. 

But he will basically use the traditional shura process with local 

tribal leaders to sort of advise him and the council on how to distribute resources, how to prioritize projects, et cetera. 

So my sense is that the constitution is not a barrier at this moment to really building the basic governance—putting the basic 

governance pieces in place. Whether down the road they want to 

make tweaks to the constitution, you know, that may be something 

that they want to address. But I don’t think we are seeing it as 

a real barrier to making some of the progress that needs to happen, 

particularly at the local levels. 

Mr. MURPHY. Would you agree with that—— 

General PETRAEUS. Very much so. In fact, what has to happen 

is there has to be a working from the bottom up even as there is 

also a working from the top down. And the bottom up means traditional local organizing structures. There is good use made of those. 

And the idea is to mesh those at about the district level, which is 

the lowest level typically that the central government might appoint officials, and then to have that district governor and other 

national officials at district level mesh with the local shura councils 

who are ideally are representative of the entire spectrum of tribes 

and other elements in a particular area. 

And that is actually happening. Now, it is problematic in some 

places where—just take Arghandab as an example. You may have 

two-thirds of Arghandab district represented in the shura council, 

but there still might be a third or a quarter that for reasons of 

Taliban intimidation or other reasons is not represented. And that 

is obviously problematic and has to be dealt with over time. 

And, indeed, that is one of the efforts that is part of the greater 

Kandahar province security effort. 

Mr. MURPHY. But so in Helmand and in Kandahar, we are seeing 

those local shura councils meeting and working well with those district governors and subdistrict governors? 

General PETRAEUS. We are. And, again, in the Marjah area, as 

an example, you can trace the security envelope or umbrella by 

how far out you have shura council representatives, because where 

you run into the areas beyond which the Taliban might have influence, then you don’t have representatives on the shura council. 

In some cases, there are a couple of tribal elders who have announced their intention to join the shura council, but noted that 

they need a little bit more time and a little bit more security before 

they can do it. 

So, again, if the incentives are there, they will join the shura 

council, and they will work with the district governor, because 

there is reason to do that. 

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you. 

Mr. TAYLOR. General Petraeus, I am curious. Are there any parts 

of the nation of Afghanistan that are off-limits to congressional delegations? 

General PETRAEUS. That are off-limits? 
54 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

General PETRAEUS. Not that I am aware of, no, sir. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Okay, so if I wanted to go visit the Mississippi 

Guard, I am getting your permission in advance to go see them, no 

matter where they get sent? 

General PETRAEUS. Absolutely. Sir, with all the years of—all the 

Army courses and classes you have spoken to, we will get you on 

a helicopter somewhere and get them out there. But, no, I mean, 

any place that our troopers are, certainly in the past we have put 

congressional delegations—you know, unless just the sheer logistics 

of it overwhelm the operation. 

Mr. TAYLOR. I liked your first answer better. 

Okay, Mr. Platts. 

General PETRAEUS. Please withdraw from the record my subsequent comments. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Platts. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and apologize having to step out to be on the floor for a while, and so don’t 

want to ask questions you have already answered. 

First, just want to convey my sincere thanks to each of you for 

your leadership, and especially, General Petraeus, you and all on 

your staff and our courageous men and women in uniform. It has 

been a couple months since my last trip to Afghanistan, and I come 

home every time inspired. 

And adding to the gentleman from Mississippi’s comments, when 

we are given those opportunities to be out, truly out, you know, as 

far as possible, the insights we get are invaluable, as a policymaker 

back here, and then being able to take that message back to our 

constituents at home of the heroic work of these courageous men 

and women. So we appreciate your first answer, and when we are 

over there, helping to get us out there with our soldiers and Marines and others. 

General PETRAEUS. Congressman Taylor, if you run into some 

perhaps bureaucratic response that initially is not in line with— 

perhaps you can alert me to that, and we—— 

Mr. PLATTS. I am sure the gentleman won’t hesitate. 

General PETRAEUS. He never has in the past. 

Mr. PLATTS. The one question that you did highlight in your testimony before I had to leave—and just want to, I guess, emphasize 

the focus—and I know General Caldwell is doing great work, and 

the leadership—is the importance of that—— 

General PETRAEUS. Right. 

Mr. PLATTS [continuing]. Short-, but especially long-term, for our 

long-term, you know, drawdown is that Afghan National Security 

Force effort. And I know we are in good hands with General 

Caldwell. 

And did I understand that the goal on ANA and ANP is that, by 

the end of this year, we are going to hit the training—I mean, the 

goals for up—you know, fully staffed out? 

General PETRAEUS. On the current glide slope that we are on 

now and have been on, really, now for about three months or so, 

so we are hesitant to declare this a sustainable trend, but it is certainly in the right direction, we are on track—we are actually 
55 

slightly ahead of track to meet the goals by the end of fiscal year 

2010. 

Mr. PLATTS. Okay. 

General PETRAEUS. And that then continues on out, of course, to 

the end of 2011. 

Mr. PLATTS. Right, so by 2011, you know, we are—— 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. 2011 is when we will have added 

the additional 100,000 that were authorized as part of the President’s policy and that you funded—— 

Mr. PLATTS. And we are on that track now, if I understood that 

correctly? 

General PETRAEUS. Right now. Again, there are many months to 

go, so—— 

Mr. PLATTS. Yes. 

General PETRAEUS [continuing]. In the spirit of realism rather 

than—— 

Mr. PLATTS. Right. Well, I appreciate that. And please convey my 

best to General Caldwell, and my interactions with him has—when 

I have been over there, as well as here before he was sent over, 

that that aspect of the mission is so important for our absolute success. 

General PETRAEUS. Absolutely. 

Mr. PLATTS. So, again, thanks for both of your leadership and 

service. 

I yield back. 

General PETRAEUS. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Thank you very much. 

We are getting near the witching hour. And we told you we 

would get you out of here. And I think we have three more folks, 

if we can squeeze them all in. If not, raise your hand. 

And right now, Ms. Giffords, you are under the wire. 

Ms. GIFFORDS. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Petraeus, welcome back to committee. 

And, Madam Secretary, thank you, as well. 

Hailing from southern Arizona, I am glad you are staying hydrated. It is very important, something that we know out in the 

desert. And on behalf of the men and women of Fort Huachuca and 

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, we just want to thank both of you 

for your service. 

And, unfortunately, we lost two of our airmen, actually, associated with Davis-Monthan, Senior Airman Benjamin White, who 

was 24, and also Tech Sergeant Michael Paul Flores, 31, were both 

based at Davis-Monthan and were part of the Rescue Command. 

Very sad. Very much brings home, you know, what we are asking 

of our men and women. 

There has been a lot of attention back here in the United States 

on what is happening with the BP oil spill. And as we all know, 

the largest user of energy on the planet is actually the United 

States Air Force. And the DOD is the largest user of energy in the 

United States. 

And I really want to commend the work done on behalf of DOD 

and also what is happening in the field with our energy. But it is 

an area that I just really want to focus on, and I know a lot of 

questions have been asked, but during the last three years, supply 
56 

lines have increasingly threatened—have been threatened either by 

enemy action or through international places. 

And in places like Kandahar, where we have a large presence, 

we have been plugged into a very unsustainable and really incapable grid system. We know that a major part of the upcoming 

Kandahar offensive will include some serious repairs and upgrades 

to the energy system, which will include small-scale solar and hydropower systems, and also some solar-powered streetlights. 

I am just curious whether or not there are plans to utilize any 

of those same technologies at our bases around Afghanistan. And 

wouldn’t that greatly reduce our need for fuel? 

General PETRAEUS. I pause, because there are a couple of different components to what we are trying to do with respect to energy reduction, if you will, and that is really what it is about. And 

there is, again, a fairly comprehensive effort in that regard. 

We don’t have hydropower, obviously, access to that on the bases, 

but there has been a significant effort which has reduced very substantially, actually, what we have needed for the cooling and heating of our workplaces and living places. And that is sometimes as 

simple as pumping extra insulation into the roof and walls of these 

fairly rudimentary temporary buildings that we have, sometimes 

even the tents. 

And it is interesting, because we were exchanging e-mails today 

with an individual who is involved in that effort, and we believe 

there have been actually billions of dollars of savings in this effort, 

if you look at what we did in Iraq first in that regard, and have 

now been pursuing in Afghanistan. 

If I could, I might note that the supply lines actually have 

worked well—the lines of communication through Pakistan. Yes, 

there periodically are attacks, and there was one a week ago, but 

that followed a period of months and months, if not a year or so, 

since the last significant attacks. And it is much less than 1 percent of all of the cargo that goes in through Pakistan that is affected by these various attacks. 

And we are up now to some 70 percent of all supplies, not necessarily all materiel, but all supplies coming through the north 

through this carefully constructed northern distribution network 

that we have been able to establish over the course of the last year, 

in close partnership with U.S. Transportation Command and the 

State Department, that enables us to bring items through Russia, 

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and into Afghanistan, and then even 

through some of the other countries, there are other routes, including one that comes out of Iraq through Turkey and then turns east. 

And we do use solar power in some cases, again, where that provides a benefit to us. We did that in Iraq, as well, by the way, I 

might point out, quite considerable use of that. And, again, that is 

the case in Afghanistan, as well. 

If I could add one final item, we are about to send you the new 

commander of Fort Huachuca, Brigadier General, promotable, 

Steve Fogarty, has been a stellar military intelligence chief at Central Command over the last two years, has time in Afghanistan, 

former special mission unit intel chief, and so forth, and I think 

you will really enjoy him and his wife, by the way, once they get 

out there. 
57 

Ms. GIFFORDS. And we are looking forward to it. 

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to have to cut you a few seconds 

short so Ms. Bordallo and Mr. Nye can ask questions here before 

our witnesses turn to pumpkins. 

Ms. Bordallo, go ahead. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, I would like to thank 

you both for your exemplary service to our country. 

And to you, General, and all the commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have always been very privileged to visit my 

servicemembers from Guam while I am there. 

I also fondly remember when I first met you. You were in charge 

in Mosul, and I knew then there was great expectations for you. 

General PETRAEUS. It was the all-woman delegation, as I recall. 

Ms. BORDALLO. That is right. Unfortunately, I am sad to say that 

Guam lost another son in battle last week in Afghanistan, and we 

have lost far too many of our own in combat, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Now, the mission in Afghanistan remains critical, I understand, 

and I appreciate the Obama Administration for focusing attention 

on the operations in Afghanistan. 

However, I do have some concerns about the impact the long war 

has had on our servicemembers. It can be for either one of you to 

answer, but I would like to know what we are doing to reach out 

to ensure that women play an important role in Afghan political 

and economic society. 

I just made another trip on Mother’s Day with Speaker Pelosi 

and four members of this committee, all women, and we visited 

with the Afghan women, and we found they are very passionate to 

take on the work that they are created for. Some of them were midwives and educators and health officials. But they are so afraid of 

the security in their country that they are not being able to carry 

out these chores. 

So I am just wondering, are you working with the Afghan government to encourage them to promote women to take on leadership roles? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. There are a number of efforts ongoing, everything from encouraging adequate female representation in some 

of the more important shuras, the decision-making bodies, the 

jirgas, and so forth, but also paying particular attention to implementation of the part of the constitution that really speaks to women’s rights and women’s roles. 

So I think, on the military side, there has been a number of innovative steps taken to reach out to women. There is a new group of 

young women Marines that there have been some articles written 

about recently who are seeking to engage Afghan women much 

more fully as we go into new areas and districts. We have also done 

a lot in terms of reaching out on women’s health issues. 

So I think it is sort of woven throughout different aspects of our 

strategy, from the highest levels of discussions with President 

Karzai down to what some of the innovative approaches that our 

small units are employing in the field. 

The CHAIRMAN. I hate to—— 

Ms. BORDALLO. I have one more question, Mr. Chairman. 
58 

The CHAIRMAN. Very quickly. Very quickly. We are trying to 

squeeze Mr. Nye and Mr. Sestak in—— 

Ms. BORDALLO. This has to do with the suicide rate, General. I 

just received a memo concerning May suicide data from the Army. 

We lost 9 active-duty soldiers to potential suicide and 12 potential 

suicides among reserve component soldiers. What are we doing? Do 

we have outreach programs? And how successful are they? 

General PETRAEUS. We have enormous programs, downrange and 

back in the United States. The Vice Chief of Staff of the Army personally is seized with this in a host of different ways. 

And, in fact, I would perhaps suggest that you have—ask General Chiarelli and perhaps his counterparts from the other services 

to come over and lay all these programs out to you. They are very 

extensive. 

And we think we have had some successes with this, but some 

of the numbers seem to fly in the face of that at times. We think 

that we start to make progress, and then you see it again. We 

thought recently that we had begun to turn the corner, and then 

we have seen a number again recently. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Nye. 

And very quickly, Mr. Sestak. 

Quickly, Mr. Nye. 

Mr. NYE. Okay. General, thank you for your service. I had an opportunity to work with your MNF–I [Multi-National Force-Iraq] 

team in 2007 out in Baghdad as a member of USAID. 

One quick question. I will be satisfied with a pretty brief answer 

on it. A lot of members have mentioned the importance of Pakistan 

and our ability to be successful in our mission in Afghanistan. Do 

you feel like our policy in Afghanistan has allowed the Pakistanis 

in their internal decision-making process to reach that tipping 

point where they are more likely to help us achieve our mission 

than be more concerned with their longer-term ties with Afghan 

Taliban and related groups? 

General PETRAEUS. I think—again, being absolutely forthright— 

that there are probably still calculations being made. This is why 

I have made the point that there needs to be a sustained substantial commitment. There needs to be a recognition that we are 

seized with this, that we are with them for the long term, that we 

will not do what we did to them, as I mentioned several times before, including after Charlie Wilson’s war. 

There has been impressive positive action against some of the extremists, principally those that threaten the internal writ of governance of Pakistan. There have been some operations against others, as well, again, including Mullah Baradar and a number of others. 

There is a greater awareness, I think, again, that you can’t allow 

extremists of any flavor to set up camp in your backyard. The problem has been one of capacity. And, again, we are working hard to 

enable that capacity and to be partners that they can count on, so 

if they go in and take care of some of these, that we are there for 

them, not doing the fighting—that is being done by their forces— 

but to assist them as much as we possibly can. 
59 

And the funding that was in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, the 

coalition support funding, the Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund and others are essential to that effort. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sestak, quickly. 

Mr. SESTAK. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Just two quick questions. Madam Secretary, if al Qa’ida were not 

in Pakistan, would we be pursuing this strategy in Afghanistan 

and—— 

Secretary FLOURNOY. It is hard for me to answer a hypothetical, 

but this President has been very clear that our vital interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in the region is disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qa’ida and its affiliates, that there is a real 

threat to the United States and U.S. security from that region, and 

that is the principal reason why we are engaged. 

Mr. SESTAK. So if—— 

General PETRAEUS. Can I add to that, Congressman? Because the 

fact is that al Qa’ida is not the only transnational extremist organization that has its senior leadership in the Pakistan-Afghanistan 

border area. You also do have Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistani, which, of 

course, is the group to which the Times Square bomber was linked. 

You have Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the Mumbai attack 

and has greater ambitions, as well. And, indeed, some other organizations, the Haqqani network has, again, transnational ambitions 

beyond its regional activities, which are already quite significant. 

Mr. SESTAK. Thanks, General. And my second question, which— 

the reason I asked is, Madam Secretary, I thought that the President said, as you said, we are worried about al Qa’ida. These other 

ones are around, but as you expressed it, it is al Qa’ida. So my 

question had been, if they—— 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Al Qa’ida and its affiliates—— 

General PETRAEUS. And its affiliates, that is right. 

Secretary FLOURNOY [continuing]. That pose a threat to us. 

Mr. SESTAK. So—— 

General PETRAEUS. And these are the affiliates. And that is why 

I added on, if I could. I know you were about to do the same thing, 

sorry. 

Mr. SESTAK. But back in the 1990s, the national security strategy of engagement always had an exit strategy. It was articulated, 

and they were specific benchmarks measuring success and failure 

for what your goal was. So if failure is more costly than success, 

you knew as warriors to exit to an alternative strategy. 

My question had to do with al Qa’ida, because they are not in 

Afghanistan. Do we have specific—and I have gone through your 

various reports—benchmarks for an exit strategy that actually 

measure quantifiably the ability to measure what is to be the removal of al Qa’ida, which is totally in Pakistan, and some of the 

other affiliates that, as you say, General—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you give a brief answer? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Brief answer is, we have provided fairly extensive reports that we will continue to update to Congress on 

metrics. But I think that the core idea here is that we want to reduce the capacity of al Qa’ida, its affiliates, which include many of 

the insurgents fighting against us, both us and our Pakistani partners—and while simultaneously increasing the indigenous capacity 
60 

in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be able to deal with the threat that 

remains. 

Mr. SESTAK. But I didn’t see quantifiable metrics. Do you have 

those? I mean, I saw the—— 

Secretary FLOURNOY. I think there are many of the metrics that 

are quantifiable, but perhaps we can have a further discussion on 

the metrics. 

Mr. SESTAK. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and I thank the witnesses very, very much. I realize you are pushing it for your next 

appointment. Thank you for your service. 

[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

JUNE 16, 2010 

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JUNE 16, 2010 

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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JUNE 16, 2010 

(87) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

JUNE 16, 2010 

(91) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LOEBSACK 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Later this year, the Iowa National Guard will deploy approximately 2,800 Soldiers to Afghanistan. They will focus on training the Afghan National Security Forces and will also mobilize an Agribusiness Development Team, 

two missions which I believe are absolutely critical to the mission in Afghanistan. 

General Petraeus, can you please provide me with an update on the work of the 

ADTs in Afghanistan and how agriculture assistance is being coordinated with security operations and counternarcotics operations? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Currently there are nine Agribusiness Development Teams 

(ADTs) operating in support of fourteen provinces in Afghanistan. The National 

Guard will continue to source nine teams through FY11 and four to nine teams in 

FY12. ADTs partner with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and civilian 

agriculture development specialists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture 

(USDA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The interagency partners on the Agriculture Policy Working Group in Kabul are developing 

a plan, to be released by the end of 2010, that would ensure a seamless transition 

of ADTs to civilian experts as National Guard sourcing of ADTs decreases. 

Based on the needs of the individual province, ADTs work to build sustainable 

growth and capacity to the agriculture sector and agriculture governance through 

the Provincial Director of Agriculture Irrigation and Livestock (DAIL). ADTs typically begin with infrastructure projects, e.g., irrigation improvements, demonstration farms, processing facilities, and roads. Once the appropriate infrastructure is 

in place, ADTs train local farmers in more productive techniques, establish agriculture schools, and develop links to U.S. universities. Finally, ADTs build the capacity of the DAIL and the DAIL’s staff to sustain growth and an environment for 

future agribusiness success. 

All development and capacity building efforts of the ADTs are coordinated with 

the other members of the U.S. Government Civilian Military Provincial Team. These 

include the PRT; the Brigade Task Force Commander; and the leads from the Department of State, USAID, USDA, and other international and non-governmental 

partners. 

Security issues are coordinated directly with the Brigade Task Force Commander 

for that Area of Operations. Counternarcotics (CN) efforts are the responsibility of 

the Afghan Provincial Government. Any coordination by U.S. forces, including 

ADTs, with CN efforts would be administered through the Brigade Task Force Commander and the PRT. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I have been concerned since the President announced his strategy 

in December that we do not have a clear set of goals and metrics for dealing with 

the cross-border violence and insurgency in Pakistan. Given that the attempted 

Times Square bombing apparently has roots in Pakistan, this lack of a clear strategy is increasingly troublesome. Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, can you 

please explain to me how we are addressing the threats emanating from Pakistan 

and how our strategy for Pakistan is being coordinated with the mission in Afghanistan? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. In March 2009, the President presented the U.S. Strategy 

for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was based on a policy review that he requested 

upon taking office. The goal of the strategy is to disrupt, defeat, and dismantle AlQaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent their return to either country. 

The strategy initiates a regional approach by linking Afghanistan and Pakistan in 

a common fight against violent extremists. 

The National Security Council Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) was released 

in July 2009 and provides a series of supporting objectives for implementing the 

U.S. Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The plan also includes measures of effectiveness to track progress in achieving the objectives. The SIP ‘‘metrics’’ are one 

of several means we use to evaluate progress, and they are an excellent example 

of precise, quantifiable information requirements that are continually collected and 

evaluated by our military and civilians in the field. 

Coordinating our efforts in Pakistan with those in Afghanistan is a challenge, but 

it is one in which we have effective offices and systems in place. The Special Rep-
92 

resentative to Afghanistan and Pakistan has formed an effective partnership with 

the Commander of United States Central Command. These two organizations serve 

as the primary hub through which information travels up, down, and across the 

interagency. 

Additionally, commanders at the battalion, brigade and task force level from the 

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Afghanistan National Army (ANA) 

and the Pakistan military (PAKMIL) are in frequent contact. These leaders hold 

regular border coordination meetings to ensure that cross-border activities are 

transparent, and that both Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to develop their own 

information sharing. ISAF, ANA and the PAKMIL also use these meetings to coordinate their operations with friendly forces on the opposite side of the AfghanistanPakistan border. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Later this year, the Iowa National Guard will deploy approximately 2,800 Soldiers to Afghanistan. They will focus on training the Afghan National Security Forces and will also mobilize an Agribusiness Development Team, 

two missions which I believe are absolutely critical to the mission in Afghanistan. 

General Petraeus, can you please provide me with an update on the work of the 

ADTs in Afghanistan and how agriculture assistance is being coordinated with security operations and counternarcotics operations? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I have been concerned since the President announced his strategy 

in December that we do not have a clear set of goals and metrics for dealing with 

the cross-border violence and insurgency in Pakistan. Given that the attempted 

Times Square bombing apparently has roots in Pakistan, this lack of a clear strategy is increasingly troublesome. Secretary Flournoy and General Petraeus, can you 

please explain to me how we are addressing the threats emanating from Pakistan 

and how our strategy for Pakistan is being coordinated with the mission in Afghanistan? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ROGERS 

Mr. ROGERS. I know that DOD employs hundreds of canines in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many of those canines are owned and operated by contractors? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. A total of 595 contractor-owned dogs are used to support the 

military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: 479 such dogs are used in Iraq and 116 

in Afghanistan. The number of dogs in Afghanistan will grow to 324 over the next 

three months to meet requirements to support Forward Operating Base (FOB) force 

protection missions. 

Mr. ROGERS. Does the Department have a set of minimum standards that contractors are required to meet in order to field an individual canine? If so, what are they? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. All contracted canines meet military certification standards 

prior to deploying to theater. Army Regulation 190–12 and USCENTCOM Military/ 

Contract Working Dog Policy outline the specific requirements each contracted canine must attain prior to entering the Area of Responsibility (AOR). During the 

course of their deployments, all contracted working dogs are certified by a military 

certification authority and monitored and validated by the Military Working Dog 

program manager. 

Mr. ROGERS. I know that DOD employs hundreds of canines in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many of those canines are owned and operated by contractors? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

Mr. ROGERS. Does the Department have a set of minimum standards that contractors are required to meet in order to field an individual canine? If so, what are they? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. KISSELL 

Mr. KISSELL. In response to a question from Congressman Kissell, General 

Petraeus mentioned a program he submitted for approval to address the electricity 

needs of Kandahar. The program will use Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds to provide electricity. Please provide details of the program, the benefits, 

and the projected cost. 
93 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. HEINRICH 

Mr. HEINRICH. Roadway Security: With respect to freedom of movement, what is 

the status of security on the main highways in Afghanistan? Specifically, what 

threat do IED’s and small arms pose to ‘goods & services’ movement? Furthermore, 

are these movements plagued or subjected to extortion, by Afghan National Police, 

Taliban or other extremist groups? If so, what is being done to prevent it in the future? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Roadway security continues to be a major problem in Afghanistan. Violence is the primary impediment to freedom of movement, with 69 

percent of attacks since January 2008 occurring within one kilometer of roadways. 

The majority of attacks continue to occur in the southeastern part of the country. 

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has limited information on details of illegal or compromised checkpoints along major roads; however, polling data 

suggests that illegal checkpoints remain a concern for the population. Reports that 

food prices at the local markets have increased beyond the normal seasonal fluctuations indicate that farmers may be experiencing greater difficulty or risk in bringing 

their products to market. 

The ISAF Campaign Plan is intended to secure major population centers in order 

to create a safe environment for governance and development efforts, and to improve the freedom of movement for the Afghan population. Ongoing and future operations are expanding the security zones around population centers and increasing 

freedom of movement and commerce. Recent operations in Kandahar, for example, 

are improving the security along Highway 1 for the Afghan people. 

ISAF continues to increase the size, operational capability, and professionalism of 

the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF). As part of the growth and development of the ANSF, ANSF personnel are trained on the conduct of checkpoint operations. 

Mr. HEINRICH. Mineral Discovery: A recent New York Times article highlighted 

the nearly $1T in untapped mineral deposits located within the borders of Afghanistan. This discovery stands to be a tremendous asset to the Afghan people. How do 

we leverage this discovery and ensure that Afghanistan and its people reap the benefits? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Increasing capacity within the Government of Afghanistan’s 

ministries is key to facilitating more effective and transparent management of the 

country’s mining resources, which, in turn, will encourage domestic and foreign investment in Afghanistan’s mineral industry. The U.S. Government assists these efforts through interagency engagements involving, among other agencies and offices, 

the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Geological Survey 

(USGS), and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Task Force Business Stability Operations (TFBSO). 

Mr. HEINRICH. Local Governance: One of the strategic linchpins of the Afghanistan campaign is the bolstering of local governance. On June 15, 2010, a governor 

from a southern district in Afghanistan was assassinated. According to Ben 

Rowswell, Chief of the Canadian-led provincial reconstruction team, ‘‘I don’t think 

it’s a coincidence that there have been attacks on government officials . . . That’s 

what you would expect from an insurgency that feels threatened by efforts to connect the people to their government.’’ What are we doing to ensure the safety and 

security of Afghanistan’s government officials? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. One objective of the International Security Assistance Force 

(ISAF) Campaign Plan is to secure and link Afghanistan’s major population centers 

to create a safe environment for governance and development efforts. Ongoing and 

future operations are increasing the physical security and freedom of movement for 

Afghan Government officials. In rural areas, the Afghan Local Police/Village Stability Operations programs will bring greater security for Afghan officials where Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) and Coalition forces have little or no 

presence. The increased security for Afghan officials will allow the Afghan Government to expand its reach and improve its ability to deliver basic services to the Afghan people. 

Mr. HEINRICH. Roadway Security: With respect to freedom of movement, what is 

the status of security on the main highways in Afghanistan? Specifically, what 

threat do IED’s and small arms pose to ‘goods & services’ movement? Furthermore, 
94 

are these movements plagued or subjected to extortion, by Afghan National Police, 

Taliban or other extremist groups? If so, what is being done to prevent it in the future? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

Mr. HEINRICH. Mineral Discovery: A recent New York Times article highlighted 

the nearly $1T in untapped mineral deposits located within the borders of Afghanistan. This discovery stands to be a tremendous asset to the Afghan people. How do 

we leverage this discovery and ensure that Afghanistan and its people reap the benefits? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

Mr. HEINRICH. Local Governance: One of the strategic linchpins of the Afghanistan campaign is the bolstering of local governance. On June 15, 2010, a governor 

from a southern district in Afghanistan was assassinated. According to Ben 

Rowswell, Chief of the Canadian-led provincial reconstruction team, ‘‘I don’t think 

it’s a coincidence that there have been attacks on government officials . . . That’s 

what you would expect from an insurgency that feels threatened by efforts to connect the people to their government.’’ What are we doing to ensure the safety and 

security of Afghanistan’s government officials? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. OWENS 

Mr. OWENS. With the understanding that Afghanistan’s mineral deposits are unlikely to affect American operations in Afghanistan in the short-term, is there a 

plan in place to help Afghanistan use these resources to grow and promote economic 

stability in the long term? In addition, is it reasonable to assume that these resources could be tapped to assist post-war reconstruction efforts and facilitate 

stronger economic ties with other nations? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CRITZ 

Mr. CRITZ. It is my understanding that the Government of Afghanistan is taking 

in approximately $1.3 billion in revenue each year, mainly from customs duties. The 

rest of their budget, including standing up the Afghan National Security Forces, 

comes from the United States and coalition partners’ aid. What are we doing to 

build greater revenue-intake capacity for the Afghan government to get them on 

track to paying more of their own budget commitments? 

Secretary FLOURNOY. Economic development is generally the role of the U.S. 

Agency for International Development (USAID). Within the Department of Defense 

(DoD), efforts are underway to assist with customs and mining revenue. 

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is working with the Afghan 

Government to increase customs revenue at its borders. Security at the borders is 

increasing as Afghanistan National Security Forces’ (ANSF) capabilities improve. 

Over the past few months, longer operating hours have facilitated a greater intake 

of cargo into Afghanistan and have yielded greater revenue. 

There are over 20 agencies within the Afghan Government working on border control and management. To coordinate efforts across these many organizations and 

improve unity of effort, the ISAF Borders Issues Working Group is helping the Afghan Government develop a comprehensive border policy. 

Mining may be one long-term solution to increase revenue. The DoD Task Force 

on Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) estimates that up to $1 trillion (U.S.) 

in mineral reserves exist in Afghanistan. Interagency working groups are investigating this option as a viable source of revenue for Afghanistan. 

Mr. CRITZ. It is my understanding that the Government of Afghanistan is taking 

in approximately $1.3 billion in revenue each year, mainly from customs duties. The 

rest of their budget, including standing up the Afghan National Security Forces, 

comes from the United States and coalition partners’ aid. What are we doing to 
95 

build greater revenue-intake capacity for the Afghan government to get them on 

track to paying more of their own budget commitments? 

General PETRAEUS. [The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

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