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i 

53–449 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–103] 

AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES 

ON U.S. STRATEGY, PART 1 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

OCTOBER 22, 2009 
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

DREW WALTER, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

TREY HOWARD, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2009 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, October 22, 2009, Afghanistan and Iraq: Perspectives on U.S. 

Strategy, Part 1 .................................................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, October 22, 2009 .................................................................................... 31 

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2009 

AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES ON U.S. STRATEGY, PART 1 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

Barno, Lt. Gen. David, USA (Ret.), Director, Near East South Asia Center 

for Strategic Studies, National Defense University .......................................... 4 

Cole, Beth Ellen, Senior Program Officer, Center for Post-Conflict Peace 

and Stability Operations, United States Institute of Peace ............................. 7 

McCaffrey, Gen. Barry, USA (Ret.), President, BR McCaffrey Associates, LLC 2 

Waldman, Matthew, Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights, Kennedy School 

of Government, Harvard University ................................................................... 9 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Barno, Lt. Gen. David ...................................................................................... 47 

Cole, Beth Ellen ................................................................................................ 53 

McCaffrey, Gen. Barry ..................................................................................... 41 

Waldman, Matthew .......................................................................................... 64 

Wittman, Hon. Rob ........................................................................................... 35 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: PERSPECTIVES ON U.S. 

STRATEGY, PART 1 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, 

Washington, DC, Thursday, October 22, 2009. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in room 

HVC–210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman of the 

subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Dr. SNYDER. The hearing will come to order. 

I actually have a wonderfully prepared written statement, but I 

think we know why we are here. We are going to talk about foreign 

policy and national security objectives primarily in Afghanistan, 

but also as it relates to Iraq. 

I will defer now to Mr. Wittman. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, in that spirit, I have a written 

statement that I will submit for the record. In the interest of time, 

we will go ahead and dispense with my opening statement. 

I thank the panelists for joining us today. We appreciate your efforts. We know this is a very timely and important issue, and we 

look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on the current 

state of affairs, and where we need to go, and how we can best get 

there. Thanks. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Our witnesses today are General Barry McCaffrey, 

Retired, U.S. Army; Lieutenant General David Barno, Retired, 

from the U.S. Army; Beth Ellen Cole, Senior Program Officer, Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations, United States 

Institute for Peace; and Mr. Matthew Waldman, Carr Center for 

Human Rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

General McCaffrey, we will begin with you. 
2 

STATEMENT OF GEN. BARRY MCCAFFREY, USA (RET.), 

PRESIDENT, BR MCCAFFREY ASSOCIATES, LLC 

General MCCAFFREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Wittman, 

and members of the committee, for including me in a very distinguished panel. I know that you will enter our statements into the 

record. 

Dr. SNYDER. Without objection, they will all be made part of the 

record. 

General MCCAFFREY. I ran through several iterations on this. I 

was trying to end up with probably less a prescription than the 

questions that the committee and the administration has to ask 

themselves as they try and sort out the way ahead, and I have also 

given you some other material relating to the platform that I use 

as an adjunct professor up at West Point to try and hopefully add 

to the debate with informed, objective, and nonpartisan insights. 

A couple of quick, brief comments, not to reiterate what I put in 

my statement. Number one, what is the situation in Afghanistan? 

It seems to me, I have known General McChrystal since he was a 

lieutenant colonel, Petraeus since he was a cadet. It is rare that 

I would make this statement: I think these two are probably the 

most talented, determined people we have had in uniform in many 

ways since World War II. 

McChrystal, as you know, has run a parallel universe, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), for 5 years. Publicly we don’t 

talk too much about that effort, except I have characterized them 

as basically the most dangerous people on the face of the Earth. We 

picked him. He listened to the President’s March strategy. He was 

a student of the interagency process conducted January through 

March. The incumbent military Joint Commander, North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization (NATO), Commander Dave McKiernan, was 

asked to step off his responsibilities. We put McChrystal on the 

ground, and unsurprisingly he has made what I would strongly underscore is a nonpolitical assessment of the situation. 

Given the counterinsurgency strategy, and given the threat situation on the ground, he has tried to come up with options for the 

Commander in Chief. The only criticism I might level at his analysis and recommendations is, and I sort of go to the bottom line, 

it is always inappropriate to use metaphors that are one wavelength off the subject, but I frequently tell people that I learned in 

combat as a rifle company commander that when under fire, you 

have three options. Two of them are okay, and one of them is always wrong. The one that is always wrong is hunker down under 

fire and hope something else changes. The other two options are 

break contact and move back, think through it and do something 

new. And the third option is attack. 

I think McChrystal has said, I heard your strategy formulation, 

I know what you are trying to achieve, and he banded his resource 

options to include a high end of 40,000 to 60,000 additional troops. 

Personally I would argue if we were going to reinforce for success, it would obviously not just be military, but the military component of it would be more likely to be 100,000 troops than 40,000, 

obviously with a concomitant increase in resources for road building and repair the agricultural system and to get contractors in, 

probably since United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) 
3 

has not been rebuilt since Vietnam, to try to dramatically change 

the situation. But personally I don’t think that is politically feasible. Therefore, I think his analysis is probably on the downside. 

I also think, and several I am sure will make the same point, if 

this was an academic exercise talking theoretical options, you can 

make a decent argument that we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan with 

68,000 U.S., about to reinforce with 40,000 NATO allies, that we 

had other strategic options, but we don’t. We are there now, and 

so the consequences of our actions in the coming 180 days will be 

immediate. They will have an impact not just on the Afghans and 

our Pakistani neighbors. And many of us will argue there are two 

vital national security issues at stake in the United States in the 

coming five years, and one is Saudi Arabia, and the other is Pakistan for a completely different calculus, political and economic calculus. 

But the impact of a strategic option that said let us downsize, let 

us do over-the-horizon counterterrorism, which, I might add, from 

a military and an intelligence viewpoint is sort of a silly option, but 

if we had that option, if we weren’t where we are now, it would 

be a reasonable thing to consider. So I don’t think that we can 

downsize either. 

The end result of all of this is to some extent this is an insidethe-Beltway political debate we are taking part in with an attentive U.S. public that is focused on the economic recession, focused 

on immigration, focused on Social Security reform, and not too 

keen about a major, decade-long effort in Afghanistan. Too bad. 

Sort of a final comment. As we look at the situation on the 

ground, I would give great weight—I have known all of these actors. Our U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, probably 

one of the top three Foreign Service officers I have ever met in my 

life, enormously experienced, zero ego, common sense, tremendous 

access, a voice that will help us understand and interpret what the 

Pakistanis are going through. I will be in country here in another 

few weeks, and I will again see General Kiyani, and I will go take 

a look at the frontier regions, but I would sort of suggest that we 

give great weight to our own interpretation of what we are seeing 

on the ground. She is absolutely first rate, as is the agency on the 

ground in Pakistan. 

Karl Eikenberry, now the U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan, well 

known to all of you, one of the few, besides Dave Barno, military 

intellectuals we tolerated in the U.S. Army over the years. He has 

a personal sense of affection and commitment to the Afghan people, 

but I don’t think he has ever lost his objectivity and his understanding that he is serving U.S. national foreign policy interests. 

Again, I think his viewpoints ought to be given special understanding and great weight. 

Finally, one thing I must congratulate the Administration on. 

One of the most bizarre and shameful periods in U.S. foreign policy 

history was after the intervention in Iraq, which I personally 

thought was the right thing to do, was to take down Saddam at the 

time. I remember watching Secretary Rumsfeld on television just 

in disbelief where he proudly said he had never been asked about 

his viewpoint on military intervention in Iraq, nor had he proffered 

one. And others in the government said the same thing. 
4 

I think the notion that this administration of ours is deliberately 

walking through the options if nothing else is a very sound signal 

within the administration that when they reach a conclusion, they 

own it collectively. It is not just the political calculus of the President of the United States, but the reasoned thinking of his most 

senior people: Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary Hillary Clinton 

and others I have tremendous respect for. 

On that note, let me just leave those thoughts on the table, and 

I look forward to responding on your own interests. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General McCaffrey. You will have to 

come back and see us after you get back from your next trip. 

[The prepared statement of General McCaffrey can be found in 

the Appendix on page 41.] 

Dr. SNYDER. General Barno, I should have pointed out that you 

are the Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic 

Studies at the National Defense University (NDU). We appreciate 

your being here, and you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. DAVID BARNO, USA (RET.), DIRECTOR, NEAR EAST SOUTH ASIA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC 

STUDIES, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY 

General BARNO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Wittman. Thanks for inviting me back again to the subcommittee 

on a topic near and dear to my heart, having spent 19 months out 

there as the overall Coalition Commander from 2003 to 2005. As 

many of you know, I had my youngest son out there serving in the 

101st Airborne Division just back in January of this year. It is still 

an arena that I spend a significant amount of time on, given my 

job at NDU, and also one that I have a personal commitment to. 

Today’s views, despite my government affiliation, are my own 

personal views. I would like to make that point up front. 

I think one of the challenges that we face today with regard to 

our efforts in Afghanistan is what I would characterize as a crisis 

of confidence in the United States and among our NATO allies at 

this particular juncture. In the aftermath of a very deeply flawed 

Afghan election which was set in the context of rising American 

and NATO casualties over this summer, the U.S. has some significant challenges in front of us, and I want to talk to at least four 

of those here today. 

I believe, like General McCaffrey, that General McChrystal’s recent assessment was a very sound one, very thorough, and deserves 

a very careful read, and in some ways, however, has fueled this debate. Perhaps in the broader scheme of things, to look at where we 

are and where we are going, that is appropriate. 

I would start by asking the question of what, on a strategic 

level—and I want to take this up away from the number of troops 

for most of my remarks and talk about where we are going. The 

fundamental question we have to ask is what is the end game for 

the United States and the region? Where are we going? What is 

our ultimate objective? 

Until we can clearly answer this question, I think, to ourselves, 

to our friends in the region, to our allies in NATO, then we have 

a problem with having a sound policy. If we don’t have a clear definition of success and, in my judgment, worse yet, if we signal that 
5 

success equals exit and our ultimate goal is exit, I think that we 

have created an unsound strategy and one that undercuts our actual objectives in the region. That is a bit of a paradox because 

most Americans, my cousins who are farmers in northern Pennsylvania, my aunts and uncles of retirement age, don’t fully understand why we are in Afghanistan, and I think we have to be clear 

about that. 

I also think that the fundamental flaw in the American approach 

to both Afghanistan and Pakistan lies in the lack of confidence in 

the region in American staying power. When I left Afghanistan in 

May of 2005, the biggest concern I had was the lack of the belief 

among our friends there that we were in this to succeed, and we 

would be in it for as long as it took to win. I think this uncertainty 

in the region, for example, drives our friends, the Pakistanis, to 

judge many of their decisions based upon how will this decision 

look the day after America leaves; what position will it put us in 

for the ensuing conflict that is it certain to break out at that point 

in time. 

I think we have to confront these fears as we think about and 

talk about our policy and our goals and objectives in the region. 

I would cite four challenges in front of us as we now have gone 

through this very fractious election, and we are on the verge of 

some tough decisions about future troop strength. 

The first challenge is to understand and defeat the Taliban strategy; not simply defeat the Taliban, not simply kill more Taliban, 

but to understand their strategy and have a plan that defeats their 

strategy. 

In simple terms, their strategy is ‘‘run out the clock.’’ If this were 

a football game, they believe they are in the fourth quarter, they 

are ahead on the scoreboard, they are controlling the football, and 

they are going to run out the clock. They will be the last man on 

the field when the game is over. We have to take that into account 

as we think about and we talk about our strategy on the road 

ahead. 

Many of our efforts at home inadvertently call into question the 

very purpose and the strength of our resolve in Afghanistan. This 

feeds directly into the Taliban strategy. The more we talk about 

exit as our goal, the more we reinforce what the Taliban are telling 

the people of Afghanistan, in their terms: ‘‘the Americans have all 

of the wristwatches, but we have all the time. We, the Taliban, will 

be here when the Americans are gone.’’ So that is challenge number one. 

Number two is to rebuild the trust and help the Afghan Government; the next version of that, rebuild trust between their government and their people. That trust has been badly fractured over 

the last three or four years in Afghanistan. I was there during the 

halcyon days after the first election of President Karzai in 2004 

and 2005. There was immense hope and optimism and positive feelings there. Much of that has been lost. Much of that trust has been 

squandered. I think we have to focus our diplomatic efforts in 

Kabul on helping to shape and reform this next government to be 

one that is viewed as noncorrupt as opposed to having corruption 

as its salient feature. Most of all, we have to help that work at the 

local level. Our legitimacy is tied to this government. We have to 
6 

be able to see this government become a better government than 

the one we have supported over the last three years. 

Third is to achieve unity of effort. That was in some ways the 

bane of our existence in the last three years, and bringing NATO 

into Afghanistan, for all of the goodness that brought, really 

brought a lot of dissolution of unity of effort that we had under a 

more centralized command before. Much of that is being addressed 

on the military side, but I think we have to be careful that as we 

bring in new capabilities there, we bring in as many civilian capabilities to meet the need there as we do on the military side, and 

that that includes the effects at the local level. If we are going to 

bring 1,000 new civilians into Afghanistan by the end of the year, 

those have got to be out at the local level primarily, not simply in 

Kabul. And I think there has to be a fused effort between the Afghan Government, its security forces, the international military coalition, and the international civil forces all the way down to the 

local effort to make things work for individual Afghans. 

Finally, I think we have to reframe the narrative here at home. 

The rationale for us staying and winning in Afghanistan has become muddled here in the United States, out in your districts and 

across the country. That is true in Europe as well; perhaps worse 

there. Our national leaders have to clearly articulate our goals, our 

end game, why we are in Afghanistan, and what the costs of failure 

in Afghanistan are, which are extraordinarily serious for us. 

So the fundamental question may end up being: Do we stay or 

do we go? Do we invest and endure, as my friend Ashley Tellis here 

at Carnegie likes to talk about, or do we simply declare success and 

leave and then have to reengage again, reinvade the country again, 

as some pundits have suggested already? That, I think, is a choice 

fraught with great danger. 

I would close by saying that I think success or failure in Afghanistan will set the terms of our involvement in that region, not just 

Central Asia, but South Asia, India, Pakistan, a very growing and 

important region for the United States, for the next generation. 

Will our credibility suffer a fatal blow among our friends out there? 

Will the NATO alliance survive a defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan? Will we see another 9/11 because once again we have 

walked away from Afghanistan, as we did after the defeat of the 

Soviets at the end of the 1980s? 

Will our adversaries, the extremists, be catalyzed both in the region and globally by our departure? And does this victory reenergize a birth of this movement of extremism that many see as waning today? 

So I would say short-term gains need to be avoided here, and we 

have to take a long, strategic view of the cost in blood and treasure 

versus the downsides of failure. This may be the most important 

national security decision we see here in the next several years. 

Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General. 

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

Appendix on page 47.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Cole. 
7 

STATEMENT OF BETH ELLEN COLE, SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER, CENTER FOR POST-CONFLICT PEACE AND STABILITY 

OPERATIONS, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE 

Ms. COLE. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the 

committee, I thank you for the opportunity to offer my personal 

views today. I am Beth Cole. I am a senior program officer in the 

Center for Peace and Stability Operations at the U.S. Institute of 

Peace (USIP), and in that capacity over the past few years, I have 

been directing a multiyear effort to produce civilian doctrine for 

stabilization and reconstruction missions. I have been working on 

these missions for about 15 years before U.S. troops crossed the 

River Sava to stabilize Bosnia. 

As you well know, the military is equipped with a very complex 

system, with doctrine, lessons learned, planning, training, education, and deployment. This complex system allows the President 

to time and time again look to the military leaders for guidance 

and for how to implement success on the ground. 

The civil side of the United States Government has no doctrine, 

and the elements of this system are now just emerging. They are 

extremely nascent. The system starts with strategic doctrine that 

tells us what we are trying to achieve in these missions. 

USIP, with its Army partners at the Combined Army Center at 

Fort Leavenworth, have just released the first strategic doctrine for 

civilians on reconstruction and stabilization missions. It follows on 

the U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual that was published a year ago under the leadership of Lieutenant General Bill 

Caldwell, who now has been nominated to go out to Afghanistan. 

These manuals share a common face because they are companions. 

The Guiding Principles fills the civilian gap. This manual offers a 

shared strategic framework from decades, four or five decades, of 

conducting these types of operations. This has been vetted by 

United States Government agencies, by the United Nations (U.N.), 

by NATO, by the European Union (EU), by nongovernmental organizations, and many others. 

In every war-torn country over the past five or six decades, we 

have strived for five core end states: a safe and secure environment; the rule of law; stable governance; a sustainable economy; 

and some minimum standards for social well-being. A set of 22 necessary conditions have been identified in this manual that we 

should meet to achieve these end states. These are shared minimum standards, much like the humanitarian community has minimum standards for humanitarian relief and assistance. They were 

developed on the basis of a comprehensive review of some 500 core 

doctrinal documents from across the institutions that have engaged 

in these missions. 

Of these 22 conditions, I recommend prioritizing eight for Afghanistan. The first is the primacy of politics, the need to reach political settlements, not just at the national level where the current 

crisis resides, but at regional and local levels as well. We must redouble our efforts to separate reconcilable insurgents from those 

who will not forsake violence. 

Second, we cannot achieve success without security. Physical security for the population, their government centers, education, 
8 

health, economic centers will require that international forces work 

closely with Afghan local forces to protect the population. 

Third, we must prioritize territorial security by mitigating the 

threats that occur along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Dealing 

with that border will require a higher level of engagement between 

the Afghanistan and Pakistan Governments, as well as elements of 

civil society that reside along that border. 

Fourth, we must redouble our efforts to achieve a legitimate monopoly over the means of violence, something General McChrystal 

is very focused on. The objective is not only to train and equip police and military forces, but to enhance the organizational development and professional leadership of those forces. 

Fifth, we need to continue to prioritize the identification and disruption of finance networks, as difficult as that may be, of the insurgents, organized crime and terrorist organizations fueling the 

fires in Afghanistan. This means shutting down foreign financing 

and disrupting the reliance on the narcotic trade and other illicit 

activities. 

Six, improving access to justice for the population will require a 

bolstering and rebuilding the informal mechanisms for dispute resolutions that Afghanistans have long employed, that the insurgents 

have now largely replaced, and supporting the traditional justice 

system that has a justice continuum from police to prosecutors to 

judges to corrections. 

Seven, we must build the capacity of the government to deliver 

essential services to the population and to be seen as the deliverer 

of those essential services. This is necessary to separate the population from the insurgents who delegitimize the government daily 

by providing those services themselves. 

Eight, stewardship of state resources means that essential services must be delivered by an accountable government. Prioritizing 

support now for subnational institutions of government, both informal and formal, will be key to ensuring an entry point for those 

essential services and to boosting this lack of confidence that the 

population has in any form of governance. 

Most of these are inherently civilian tasks. We have the skills in 

the United States Government to deliver that assistance, not just 

among our military forces. We now have a civil-military plan in Afghanistan, and we are building a civil-military structure from every 

level, from district up to the regional commands. So we have a 

chance right now to put the hard lessons that we have learned over 

the past eight years not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq to 

work in Afghanistan. 

I look forward to your questions. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Ms. Cole. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cole can be found in the Appendix on page 53.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Waldman. 
9 

STATEMENT OF MATTHEW WALDMAN, FELLOW, CARR CENTER 

FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. WALDMAN. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wittman, and 

members of the committee, thank you, first of all, for this opportunity to be here today. 

If I may, I will make some remarks about why I think we are 

in the current difficulties that we are facing today in Afghanistan, 

and some reflections on the approach that may deliver better results going forward. 

I think that it is clear that the international approach after 2001 

was manifestly insufficient, given the scale of devastation that was 

caused over two decades of war, and that it was founded on corruption. In other words, it compounded the authority of the warlords 

and local strongmen. I think it is clear international aid has been 

in many ways ineffective. It has been fragmented, supply-driven, 

inefficient, and not responding sufficiently well to Afghan needs 

and preferences. 

I think also another problem with the international approach has 

been that international military forces have tended to prioritize the 

elimination of insurgents and winning hearts and minds through 

assistance-related projects. 

Now, I would submit that both of these objectives are largely futile. Why is this? Well, I think, first of all, we have to consider the 

context, the history of external interference in Afghanistan; their 

proud independence, conservatism, and mistrust of foreign forces. 

Consider also the large population of unemployed young men with 

families to feed. The international military are perceived as using 

excessive force through airstrikes and raids, and are perceived as 

propping up a regime that is seen as corrupt and unjust. 

If you also consider the insurgent propaganda and their systematic use of terror and intimidation against Afghans, it is clear that 

the Afghan people, while they may not be enthusiastic for the 

Taliban, are facing no credible alternative. 

When we see the insurgents using sanctuary and support from 

inside Pakistan, and they appear to be winning, it is understandable that Afghans, for reasons of personal safety, are reluctant to 

oppose the insurgents. 

I think the focus of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) on 

militarized development doesn’t achieve what it is intended to 

achieve. It doesn’t meet core development objectives. 

Moreover, it is precisely the heavy involvement of the military in 

civilian affairs that is substantiating the Taliban campaign, which 

is framed as resistance to foreign forces. So thus, the military and 

the Afghan Government are caught in a mutually detrimental relationship in which both sides lose credibility, the military by association with a corrupt government, and the government by association with the foreign military. 

Now, I think General McChrystal’s report is very insightful, and 

I think he is right about the importance of legitimacy and the population security; however, I think we have got to realize that international military forces have a limited capability to address some 

of these issues. First of all, building Afghan national security forces 

is an extremely long-term endeavor, and we know there are major 
10 

problems with the police force. Of course, they are the most critical 

elements of a counterinsurgency campaign. 

Also, there is danger in the integrated—the emphasis on an integrated approach in which international forces increasingly engage 

with Afghan civilians. I think this plays into insurgent hands. I 

think it attributes unrealistic capabilities to soldiers. I think it is 

burdening them, perhaps, with responsibilities that they cannot 

meet. And I think it doesn’t address the key and the core issues. 

I would suggest that what is required is a greater civil-military 

delineation, greater political efforts that lie outside of the core competency of the military. And that is the fundamental point, that 

this is a political problem. In fact, insurgency is not itself a disease, 

but the symptom of a deeper disorder; namely, a government that 

is perceived as illegitimate, self-serving, and that has excluded certain groups and communities based on various reasons such as 

tribal affiliations, ethnicity, and other factors. It demands a response that is political. It has got to be indigenous, inclusive, and 

address injustices and legitimate grievances. 

Just some brief remarks about how we might change the strategy 

going forward to deliver better results, and I think there are probably five points. 

Firstly, we should acknowledge the limits of outsiders in effecting change in Afghanistan, given the enormous complexity and the 

scale of the challenges. But what we should do is empower Afghans 

to address these challenges; in other words, focus on capabilities 

and building robust institutions, not just delivering results. 

Secondly, empathize with Afghans. I think if we do effectively 

empathize, as I said, considering the context, the history, the culture of Afghanistan, it leads to the conclusion that we should reduce foreign military involvement in civilian affairs and prioritize 

interventions which reflect Afghan interests and preferences. 

Thirdly, after determining what is possible, develop strategies 

that fit the purpose, devote sufficient resources and political will 

for accomplishment. Half measures, whether it is police reform, 

governance development, are likely to do more harm than good. We 

need to recognize the need for regional political strategy, too. 

Fourth, address obvious flaws in aid delivery. It astonishes me 

that more has not been done to address very rudimentary problems 

in the system of aid delivery, such as the widespread use of contractors and consultants, the parallel mechanisms, and the lack of 

transparency. 

Finally, I think, as some of the panelists here suggested early on, 

we should not expect swift results. This is an incremental progress. 

It requires realism combined with long-term commitment and a 

genuine political resolve. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Waldman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Waldman can be found in the 

Appendix on page 64.] 

Dr. SNYDER. We will put ourselves on the five-minute clock here. 

I will ask one question, and then we will go to Mr. Wittman. 

I think General Barno discussed this some in his statement, and 

I asked this a week or two ago in the full committee hearing on 

Afghanistan. When we made the commitment and gave President 

Bush the authorization in mid-September of 2001 for military force, 
11 

we all knew what that was going to mean with regard to Afghanistan, and some pretty strong statements were made about following through after a military operation. What is our moral responsibility to the Afghan people in all of this? 

General McCaffrey, we will begin with you. 

General MCCAFFREY. Well, one is always tempted to go back to 

former Secretary Powell’s statement that if you break it, you own 

it. I must admit, I have never entirely bought that policy. I think 

there are points in time in foreign policy where we intervene for 

our own purpose and don’t pick up the follow-on implied responsibility of turning the place into Switzerland. 

Nonetheless, here we are 600 miles from the sea, 32 million Afghans, this giant, wild country, much of it rooted in the 14th century. We have made promises, explicit and implied, and something 

that greatly bothers me in the current debate, the notion that we 

are there and can’t stay unless we appreciate the nature of the 

chief of state bothers me. We are there for U.S. national interest 

reasons, not because Karzai is corrupt, good, bad, or whatever. 

But there is no question in my mind as we look at the situation 

now, we have told the region, our NATO partners and the Afghan 

people, we are going to try to create a situation where you won’t 

be an international pariah, where your agricultural system and 

your road network and the fundamentals of health care will work, 

and we will then withdraw and increasingly turn this operation 

over to you. I think there is a moral responsibility at this point. 

It would be an unbelievable disaster in the short run, meaning 10 

years or less, if we withdrew and left the population to the tender 

mercies of Taliban retribution. 

General BARNO. I think one of the unique aspects of Afghanistan 

is that we know what failure would look like. We know what 

Taliban rule looks like. We know what it means for women. There 

are six million children going to school today. About a third of 

those are Afghan girls. There were zero during the time of the 

Taliban. We know what it means for justice. We watch people be 

beheaded in soccer stadiums for offenses that were modest by 

Western standards. We watched the Bamyan Buddhas be destroyed 

by the Taliban, some cultural artifacts that date back centuries. 

I always felt during my time in Afghanistan that that inoculated 

the Afghan people against the Taliban’s return. There is very little 

interest to no interest across Afghanistan to see the Taliban come 

back. We know exactly and explicitly what the outcome is going to 

look like should that occur. 

Moreover, those who aligned with us, those who sided with us 

and are working with us, from Kabul all the way down to the 

smallest village out there, are going to pay that price. So we have 

a fairly clear picture in front of us of what the downsides of withdrawal and what the downsides of failure to achieve our objectives 

look like, and we have to keep that crystal clear in our minds. 

Ms. COLE. In 2001, whether or not we were trying to fulfill a 

moral responsibility or a national security responsibility, today the 

facts on the ground suggest that people, Afghans, nongovernmental 

organizations, many of whom are manned by U.S. nationals, and 

our civilians on the ground are now at great risk. They have chosen, by aligning themselves with us in this fight against the 
12 

Taliban and others in Afghanistan, to choose a side. So we have 

moral responsibility now to carry out at least some minimum 

standards, which I have tried to lay out here today, for how the Afghan Government itself can protect its population in the future. 

But we have a lot of exposed people on the ground right now. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Waldman. 

Mr. WALDMAN. Well, I agree with some of the remarks that have 

already been made. I think that at the time of the intervention, the 

fact that it did take place as it did and the promises that were 

made were quite extensive to the Afghan people, and I think there 

is a duty on those nations who were involved in that intervention 

to seek to meet those expectations. And I think it is clear that in 

many respects we are failing to do so, and in some very obvious 

ways. 

I mean, it astonishes me that there is so little transparency in 

terms of the delivery of international aid. It is very difficult to critique it and identify what is going wrong and then put it right. It 

is an elementary problem that could be solved if there was sufficient political will. 

I think there is a moral responsibility to try to improve the lives 

of Afghans to the extent that it is possible, given the widespread 

poverty and hardship that many Afghans face, but it doesn’t seem 

to me that we are taking the elementary steps to do that. 

On a wider level, I think it is clear that we need to address the 

political problems, and I think the approach of the international 

community has supported a system that thrives on patronage, on 

impunity, on nepotism and corruption, and it is our duty to try to 

address some of those problems. Of course, there are limits as to 

what we can do. We should be clear and realistic about what we 

can achieve, focus on those areas, and show genuine commitment 

to improve the situation. 

Dr. SNYDER. General McCaffrey, if I understand your point, and 

I think I agree with it, which is we had every right to take out the 

Taliban and al Qaeda and then walk away militarily; but we made 

very strong statements that we would do a lot of rebuilding. We 

had every right to break al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, 

if I understood your point, but it was very clear to a lot of us in 

those early days that we went far beyond that in terms of rebuilding the country, and I think that is where the moral responsibility 

comes from. 

General MCCAFFREY. Exactly, as well as other tiered responsibilities we have explicitly to NATO. Personally, I would argue it 

would probably be the end of NATO if we unilaterally and precipitously changed this strategy, never mind its impact on Pakistan. 

But at the people level, it still makes me wince every time I hear 

a rifle platoon leader, Marine Corps, U.S. Army, promising the 

locals we will be there for them to establish continuing security. 

Clearly they are not in a position to make that kind of compact, 

and neither is the military commander on the ground or the U.S. 

Ambassador. That is the job of this august body and the Administration. That is where we are: Will we honor our commitments, yes 

or no? 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman for five minutes. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
13 

I want to thank the panelists for joining us today. 

Is a stable Afghanistan critical to U.S. interests, and in that context, is it also critical to Pakistan security interests? And if so, is 

the strategy laid out of a full counterinsurgency effort by General 

McChrystal the right way to go to secure stability in Afghanistan? 

And how does that relate to securing the future interest of Pakistan? 

General MCCAFFREY. You know, I think that is the most painful 

question that you can pose in this debate. I think one can make 

a sound argument that Afghanistan is not a vital U.S. national security interest. If you start from where we are now, and you look 

at the secondary and tertiary effects of withdrawal, particularly 

Pakistan, and our credibility in much of the Muslim world, certainly to include the Saudis, you can get closer to it, but at the end 

of the day, I can remember being a lieutenant colonel at the U.S. 

Army War College that involved analysis of whether one should 

ever intervene in northwestern Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I 

reached the concluding that axiom one for the United States Army 

is: Don’t carry out any military operations where you can’t walk 

down to the sea and a Navy ship. We are a long way from the 

coast. We have to get there through a fragmented, incoherent Pakistan. At the end of the day, we are looking at 32 million of the 

most-suffering people on the face of the Earth who have nothing 

that is vital to our economy, political system, social order, nor are 

they a central or long-standing ally. We are where we are. 

But I do believe the question you posed is the one the American people are going to ask themselves: If our current burn rate is $5 

billion a month, if it will go to $10 billion a month by next summer, 

which assuredly it will, if we are going to start losing 1,000 killed 

and wounded a month—and, like General Barno, my son just came 

out of combat in Afghanistan a year ago—then you have asked a 

legitimate question which we have to address. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Barno. 

General BARNO. It is a very tough question. And again, to harp 

back to General McCaffrey’s initial comments, if we were standing 

on the high ground in Kabul in December 2001 before we had made 

commitments, we would probably look at this in different ways and 

have different choices and options. Those second- and third-order 

effects on Pakistan, on NATO, on our commitments in the region 

would not be there yet. We might have made different choices then, 

but we are where we are today. 

I do think there is a growing recognition, in retrospect, that this 

region, Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular—and we should 

talk about how this plays in India, but Afghanistan and Pakistan 

in particular— instability in this region is going to cause some very 

serious trouble for the United States down the road. 

Is the region’s stability critical to the United States, is it a vital 

national interest? I think it approaches that because of the prospects for, once again, the region becoming a hotbed of Islamic terrorism potentially that has some access to nuclear weapons. That 

is a worst-case scenario, but it is not an impossible scenario by any 

stretch of the imagination. 

So we are now committed. We are seen with our major military 

alliance, NATO, as having a commitment to see this through to 
14 

success. There is great damage that is possible there if we fail, but 

there is also the tremendous risk if this part of the region goes unstable, what does that mean to the national security interest of the 

United States. For that reason alone I think this may be a vital 

decision for us. 

Ms. COLE. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported this month that five times as many civilians among NATO 

nations are being killed as the number of casualties that we have 

taken in Afghanistan among coalition forces. If we think about a 

narco-state with al Qaeda sitting over on the other side of the border in Pakistan, I think that answers the question. I don’t think 

we can afford to have an unstable Afghanistan in a very, very bad 

neighborhood supplying 92 percent of the world’s opium. 

I also think that it is useful to take a step back and ask ourselves—because we constantly seem to forget that five decades of 

these missions have shown us that we can stabilize nations: Cambodia, El Salvador, Sierra Leone, Rwanda—many, many places 

that have been completely torn apart and shattered where there 

have been insurgents involved and al Qaeda and other terror cells 

involved, we have managed to stabilize. We can do it again. It is 

going to take a lot of effort and time, as everyone said here, but 

it is not a lost cause. 

Mr. WALDMAN. Congressman, I agree with the other panelists. 

There are questions about the extent to which Islamic terrorists 

may or may not operate inside Afghanistan, given the fact that 

they are largely operating in northwest Pakistan. 

As for the stability of the region, clearly that is in America’s national security interests. I think the fragility of the Pakistani regime can sometimes be overexaggerated, and they have shown in 

the past the ability to retain fairly sturdy state institutions and 

cope with insurgencies despite obvious difficulties in doing so. I 

don’t believe that the Pakistani state is in danger of collapse. 

If I may, I would just respond to a question about whether counterinsurgency is a correct response in Afghanistan. I think counterinsurgency is the correct response, but whether we have the design 

right and whether we have the tools for its implementation is another question. I would submit the answer to that is no. Why do 

I say that? Well, first of all, I think it assumes that soldiers, American soldiers, have a capability and a wide range of technical sectors beyond what they are trained for. I think it assumes if you deliver rapid material progress in rural areas in Afghanistan, then 

you will win the hearts and minds of local people. As I said earlier, 

I don’t think that is the case. 

I think, secondly, it assumes a vast and detailed knowledge by 

soldiers of Afghan society. And actually the demands placed on soldiers in the counterinsurgency manual are enormous and are rarely met even by civilian workers, who stay there for many years and 

speak the languages. The manual speaks about armed social work. 

The real question is the extent to which this is possible and the extent to which this promotes stability at the local level, and actually, 

you know, deals with the insurgents. 

Finally, I think it also assumes that greater civil-military integration is possible and delivers results, and I think it is clear that 

the insurgents thrive on this overlap. This is good news for them 
15 

because the more they can portray civilian affairs being dominated 

by the military, the better it is for their nationalist Islamist campaign against aggressive invaders. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

I think we are going to have some votes around 3:00. We may 

want to try to get everybody in, which may be impossible. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you all for being here. 

I would like to follow up, because this is an area I really have 

grappled with. It is a little bit of nation building versus national 

security. 

I think clearly the American people right now are conflicted as 

well, certainly not with the kind of information that you all have 

expressed today, but nevertheless the fear that it would be years 

and years before and generations before you are able to actually 

turn the situation around, and the extent to which that is truly in 

our national interest. 

But as you all speak, and certainly Mr. Waldman as well, security has to be at the forefront of all of that. I recall one of my times 

being in Afghanistan, remembering some of the non-governmental 

organizations (NGOs) saying to us that our ambassadors or people 

from the State Department have to travel with military support, 

but they basically use their relationships that they build as that 

kind of support because clearly they are unable to do that. 

Help me with this issue because we are continuing to raise the 

issue of the role of women and whether or not we are abandoning 

them in any way if we move into negotiating or how we are able 

to have some kind of reconciliation in Afghanistan. We want to 

focus on them. Where does security lie, because clearly the military 

has paved the way for many efforts in Afghanistan. There is no 

doubt about that. Yet on the other hand, I understand that it is 

perhaps overly ambitious for us to believe that all of those efforts 

with the military and civilian capacity both are not necessarily in 

the best—are picking up the best interests of the Afghan people or 

the region, assuming that Pakistan we are talking about as well. 

Ms. COLE. I think, like with governance and all of these other 

issues, we have to enlarge our view of security. Security is not just 

something that military forces can bring to the communities of Afghanistan. In the United States, we think of security as school 

guards and bank guards and people who protect judges. It is not 

just a question of military or police forces, border guards, people 

who are looking at money laundering and bank operations. In that 

sense the debate about troops is a very, very important debate. But 

we have to think about the other assets that we have to bring to 

bear, including with the Afghans, including putting women as police officers in certain places, or as school guards, which we have 

shown we can do in Liberia. 

This question of just having soldiers that are armed to the teeth 

engaged in combat operations has us thinking, I think, too narrowly. We have people who know how to do witness protection in 

the Marshals Service, and we have people in the Department of 

Justice who know how to train police and do police mentoring and 

development. We have forensic investigators who look at money 

laundering. 
16 

This is much more than just the military. If we think about it 

that way, I think we can arrive at actually producing security in 

a much more efficient way. 

Mrs. DAVIS. General Barno. 

General BARNO. Two thoughts. One, on the issue of security, I 

think you are correct; it is not a sequential problem of security and 

then reconstruction and development. It is really concurrent. These 

have to go on in parallel with each other. Based on the amount of 

security, or lack thereof, you will have a greater or lesser military 

presence and a greater or lesser civilian presence. But I think 

clearly because of the security dynamic, you will always have to 

have these elements working together. I disagree a bit with Mr. 

Waldman on that. 

You also alluded to what does it mean to women if we negotiate 

with the Taliban. That is a paraphrase of what you were saying. 

I think we have to be aware, in my estimation, from a policy standpoint, having the Taliban be part of the government in Afghanistan 

is not where this is going. It is not the objective. Having reformed 

Taliban, ex-Taliban, Taliban that have rejected violence, put down 

their weapons and joined the political process, that is a very different outlook; the small T, if you will, the individuals, not the 

movement. That is where we have to be careful that we don’t inadvertently send this message that we are willing to negotiate with 

the Taliban because we are trying to exit, as opposed to we are 

willing to see these former Taliban fighters lay down their arms 

and become part of this political process. 

Our goal when I was there was not to kill the Taliban collectively 

in the big strategic picture, it was to make the Taliban irrelevant, 

make no one want to become part of the Taliban, no one aspire to 

the Taliban. That takes a very nuanced approach of many different 

elements other than just security and military forces. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mr. Waldman, quickly may I have a response from 

you? 

Mr. WALDMAN. Sure. In terms of security, it really varies. It is 

a very serious situation at the moment. On average, every three 

days two Afghans are executed for having any association with the 

government or military forces. I think that underlies the concern 

about integration of civil military affairs. But it clearly is the critical issue. Of course, there are some obvious factors for the current 

situation. The complete failure to really reform the police, lack of 

resources and political will, I think, are largely responsible for that. 

That certainly contributes to the current situation. Less than 10 

percent or around 10 percent of the police are capable of operating 

independently. 

But as has been said by Ms. Cole, the national security is much 

broader, and, of course, really security will be achieved if there is 

a proper political strategy which is indigenous, which is inclusive, 

which addresses some of the fundamental injustices and the grievances that are driving this conflict. And as I said, I think this is 

essentially an Afghan political conflict, and it requires that political 

solution to be brought about. Of course, as I said earlier, there are 

some things we can do to help make that happen. 

In terms of women, you are absolutely right to raise this. This 

is a very serious issue. When one travels the country and talks to 
17 

Afghans, it is very clear that they want their girls to go to school. 

With two million girls in school, it is a universal desire to see that 

happen, for women to be able to work and have rights and freedoms and rights that men have. It is alarming that the Shia law 

was passed recently, as you are probably aware of, and I certainly 

think one has to ask about the commitment of the current administration to women’s rights. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Which is doubtful. 

Mr. WALDMAN. Yes, it certainly is. We have yet to see real substance behind their work to try to empower women and support 

their opportunities and rights. 

But you are also right that there is concern about women’s rights 

as negotiations move forward. Of course, reconciliation, truth and 

reconciliation is essential in Afghanistan, particularly after the decades of war that it has undergone. But on the one hand, there is 

reintegration. As General Barno mentioned reintegration efforts, 

this is low-ranking, perhaps midranking fighters, and bringing 

them in, requiring them to disarm and so on, and integrating them 

into society. There is another set of ideas and approaches which 

concerns political engagement and accommodation with more senior members of the Taliban, and in that respect I think a great deal 

of caution is required, and indeed the essential rights reflected in 

the Afghan Constitution should be respected. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Rogers for five minutes. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Listening to the discussion about the possibility of the Taliban 

becoming a dominant force again, obviously I find what that—the 

implications to women would be abhorrent to me. 

I was listening to Mr. Waldman and Ms. Cole talk about what 

I consider nation building. I don’t think our military is required for 

that. 

What I am particularly interested in from the two generals is 

what do you see as realistic goals and objectives for our military 

in the short term, and by that I mean in the next two to three 

years? And what is unrealistic? I think some of the things that we 

are talking about long term here, I am not sure that our military 

needs to be used for that. 

So General McCaffrey mentioned, and I think he is accurate, 

that this is a 14th century civilization, and apparently a lot of folks 

there want to keep it that way, and that is fine. But what can we 

do with our military that is realistic? That is the number one question. 

And secondly, is it practical for us to shift a lot of our troop 

strength to the border, particularly on the Pakistan side, and let 

Afghanistan do whatever Afghanistan is going to do as long as it 

doesn’t disrupt the security or stability of Pakistan? 

General McCaffrey. 

General MCCAFFREY. I listened to that question with a great deal 

of sympathy. And I don’t profess—several people on this panel have 

enormous personal experience on the ground in Afghanistan. I am 

in and out of there periodically and listen very carefully, particularly to our own battalion commanders on the ground. 
18 

A couple of comments. First of all—I think General Barno said 

it—we have to write down and agree on what we are there to 

achieve. And I think you can form a pretty good argument, we are 

not there to fight al Qaeda. National Security Advisor talked about 

100 al Qaedas being in Afghanistan. That is a nonnumber. If you 

want to fight al Qaeda, that is Tier 1 JSOC, that is political, that 

is international, that is financial management, arguably better 

there in Afghanistan than in Frankfurt, London, Hamburg and Indiana, which is currently where we worry about them. 

I think, secondly, you can say we are not there to fight the 

Taliban. And indeed I would argue the Taliban are not across the 

border; they are also across border because there are 40 million 

Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line. But I don’t think we 

are there to fight the Taliban, and had the Taliban not acted as 

a sanctuary for the disastrous attack on the United States, we 

wouldn’t be in Afghanistan today. We would have left it the way 

it was. 

I don’t think we are there to free half the population that are 

women. The plight of women in that region is abysmal. As we went 

in, I asked one of our intel officers, a U.S. Army full colonel 

woman. She said, you know, essentially better to have been a donkey than a woman under the reign of the Taliban. And that situation, particularly in the Pashtun south, continues. And by the way, 

it isn’t Shia restrictions. That is tribal, and that is cultural and historical. 

So what are we there for? It seems to me that we are there to 

try to create—we haven’t made this explicit—a state that is operational, has its own security forces and does allow us to withdraw. 

Mr. ROGERS. Can that be done in three to five years? 

General MCCAFFREY. I personally think this is a 10- to 25-year 

job. The first two to five years may involve a lot of combat, but essentially it is a long-term commitment. And building a police force 

is an example. 

I think the other thing we ought to be realistic about is USAID 

is 3- or 4,000 people, not 15,000. They don’t have the U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers’ capability to run large projects. I am still appalled that we are not in Afghanistan with an engineer two-star 

general, 500-person staff, and 3 or 4 U.S. Army engineer brigades 

hiring thousands of Afghans and mentoring and tutoring them. But 

I don’t believe that many of these civilian agencies in the short run 

or the medium term can operate in Afghanistan. That is one of the 

perils of the U.S. Armed Forces is we can do it. We can do neighborhood councils, call-in radio shows, women’s rights groups, sanitation projects in downtown Kandahar. That is what is in the short 

run our only option. 

I do not believe—in fact, I differ from other panel members possibly on this. I do not believe in the short run that what we are 

talking about in Afghanistan is witness protection programs. There 

is no—at district capitals there is no operational police force, no 

court system, no jail. Nothing is there except raw power. 

And I also don’t even—I wouldn’t characterize this as an insurgency. That implies there is a central government against which 

we are fighting, as opposed to seeing this more likely as an ongoing 

tribal ethnic war for the control of that part of the world, though 
19 

I think in the short run, it is armed power with multiple purposes 

and a considerable amount of U.S. resources. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thanks. My time just expired. 

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Pingree for five minutes. And then we will do 

it fairly strictly on our five minutes since we are going to have 

votes here. 

Ms. PINGREE. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I will try 

to be brief here. 

I appreciate everyone’s testimony on this complicated issue that 

we are spending a lot of time trying to sort through as we think 

about what should happen next, and I really appreciate all of your 

perspectives. I will start with Mr. Waldman, and if anybody else 

agrees on this particular point, I would be happy to hear from anyone else’s perspective. 

You brought up this issue that I think is often pointed out, but 

very difficult for us to think about in terms of our military involvement because we like to think about a military solution, and you 

suggested this point that people say perhaps our very presence, the 

paradox of our presence is the problem. So when we think about 

committing to more troop strength, even further involvement of our 

military to deal with the chaos there, we often think about the 

other side, you know, maybe our presence is the problem. 

So I just would like to hear you talk about that a little bit more, 

particularly in light of the fact that even you said on the other 

hand, many of the people doing civilian aid and the NGOs there 

are corrupt, there is not enough transparency around that. So 

while we can talk about philosophically, well, we will put more people in the country to rebuild the institutions there and really get 

back to the kind of place where perhaps there could be a major 

shift in this power struggle, we haven’t been successful at that either. 

So can you talk a little bit about something that I think for many 

people is a dramatically different—difficult concept to swallow, but 

perhaps is exactly what we should be doing? 

Mr. WALDMAN. Yes. Thank you. 

I think that what you have indicated, though, is correct. There 

is this problem that in some ways international forces are part of 

the difficulties that we are seeing. And, of course, on the other 

hand, a rapid withdrawal would—could be extremely destabilizing. 

So I think it needs—it needs to be dealt with very carefully. 

I mean, I think, first of all, rather than treat numbers, the question is on the one hand, what are the troops doing, and how are 

they operating? Of course, that means minimal force. We have seen 

quite a significant number of casualties, and they are coming down 

now. And I think General McChrystal can be acknowledged to have 

played an important part of achieving that. But keeping casualties 

very low is crucial and making sure redress to Afghanistan civilians when they suffer through operations is inevitable in that sort 

of situation. 

And then I think, as you have indicated, we have got to do better 

at the state building, and I would suggest that actually you find 

that the real problem—actually NGOs take only a limited proportion of the amount of aid going to Afghanistan, but by far a bigger 
20 

proportion of it is run through foreign government agencies, and 

there, I think, is a lot we could be doing better. 

For a start, the Foreign Service personnel have actually got to 

be engaging with the local people, getting out there, not living behind fortified compounds, and there has got to be better understanding of Afghan society so that we can really respond to Afghan 

needs. But at the same time, make sure we don’t—we can’t do everything, and we have got to be clear about what is possible and 

focus on that. The National Solidarity Program is an example 

where, by focusing on communities themselves that traditionally in 

Afghanistan have great capability to provide for themselves, that 

you can really—you can start to see progress. 

But I also think—I come back to this point—that ultimately the 

real solution here is going to be a political one, and it requires us 

to engage on a political level and address some of these problems 

and concerns. I mean, I think the excessive concentration of power 

in the hands of a limited number of people of dubious records, let 

us put it that way, is one of the major problems. I think we also 

need to address the imbalance of power between the center of government and local government. 

But again, trying to support the development of just some basic 

functioning representative institutions, these are the sorts of steps 

that really could see—we could start to see a solution in sight. 

Ms. COLE. I think the question of whether the United States 

troops are drawing attack and, if they were gone, that they 

wouldn’t have a problem is maybe not the right way to look at this. 

I mean, if you think about post-9/11, the U.N. has been attacked, 

the International Committee of the Red Cross has been attacked. 

Humanitarian workers are constantly under attack. The Brits, all 

of our other allies are constantly facing attacks. So it is not a question of removal of our forces, it is a question of winning the peace. 

And I think that we need to shift and think about that a lot more. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Platts for five minutes. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I first thank all of the witnesses for your testimony, obviously 

great expertise that you bring to our committee, and we are grateful for that. 

Two things. First, a quick follow-up on my colleague’s question 

on the issue of Afghanistan being a vital national interest. And I 

think—I look at it in the sense of how we would have looked at this 

country in 1989 when we helped the Afghanis, in essence, throw 

the Soviets out. And if asked—in fact, I think Congress was asked 

in 1989 is it of national vital interest to be there, and the answer 

was no. And we, in essence, walked away, and we learned 12 years 

later, well, yeah, it was, when it came to the lives of 3,000 American citizens that were taken on 9/11, that it is going to be difficult, 

but just standing back and watching what happens was not in the 

best interests of our citizens. 

So I think it goes to where we are today, unless we want to repeat that era and allow it again to become a safe haven for those 

who want to take American lives, it clearly is of vital interest. So 

it is not going to be easy how to ensure that that doesn’t happen 

going forward from where we are today, but my specific question 
21 

actually is regarding the comment of the military presence is one 

of the problems for us in Afghanistan. 

Having been in Afghanistan five times now, and one of the most 

informative visits I had was several years back in Jalalabad where 

our PRT team, civilian USAID officer working hand in hand with 

an Army lieutenant colonel and just doing amazing work. And in 

our time with them, we met with the local mullahs that gathered, 

tribal leaders that came in and we met with. And it was clear what 

a positive relationship that both the USAID officer had and the female Army lieutenant colonel had with those local leaders and the 

advancement they were achieving there. 

I don’t know how we do the development in the environment we 

are in without that partnership, hand in hand, because I wouldn’t 

want that USAID officer out there without the military security to 

protect. I think it is more how we approach it. So I guess it is really, Mr. Waldman, how do you do the development in the environment today without the security that the military brings to those 

USAID and other officers? 

Mr. WALDMAN. Thank you. I think that is an excellent question, 

and it poses real challenges for aid workers and civilians that are 

operating in development in Afghanistan. 

I think we do have to at some point consider the fact that of the 

26 provincial reconstruction teams that exist in Afghanistan, in the 

provinces in which they operate, there has not been a diminution 

of insurgent activity. In fact, it has increased. 

Now, I am not saying there is a direct relation, but we have to, 

I think, ask ourselves whether the PRTs are able to achieve stability objectives, and I think the answer to that is no. And as I 

said, I think the reason for that is because it doesn’t take into account the complex, the very complex and diverse, rich context of Afghanistan, the history of this resistance to outsiders, that culture, 

that conservatism and a number of other factors, including the action of insurgents. 

Mr. PLATTS. Is it possible that how we have resourced them has 

played an important role, that we have a team there, but what we 

actually give them on the development side? 

Mr. WALDMAN. No, I don’t think that is the problem. In fact, I 

think the problem is that because they exist, a lot of the aid has 

gone to those PRTs. And, in fact, what you are doing is you are 

breaking the accountability of Afghan leaders to the Afghan people, 

because there is a parallel foreign mechanism that has been inserted into the society. So what the real focus is to build Afghan 

institutions—— 

Mr. PLATTS. If I can ask on that real quickly. In Pakistan I know 

USAID is doing some development work that it is in the arena of 

counterinsurgency, but where it is actually done under the name 

of the Pakistan Government or in partner with. So we are not the 

lead. Is that what you think is a better approach not just in Pakistan, but in Afghanistan? 

Mr. WALDMAN. Well, I think really what we should be doing is 

the military should focus on security issues. And I think the military have some legitimacy in that area, and I think Afghans expect 

them and actually want them in many cases to do that, to focus 

on that issue. 
22 

But actually civilians need to be the primary—the central channel for civilian activities, and actually there are a number of mechanisms. I mean, first of all, you have, of course, Afghan NGOs, and 

many are desperate for money, for funding to actually operate. And 

in areas in the south and southeast, we found—who I used to work 

for—sorry. My apologies. 

Dr. SNYDER. I don’t think we have time, unfortunately, right now 

for an augmented answer that begins ‘‘first of all.’’ But I apologize. 

We will come after a series of votes. 

Mr. Spratt, I want to give you a chance before the votes, and we 

will come back afterwards. 

Mr. SPRATT. Rather than keeping the whole group here, I 

will—— 

Dr. SNYDER. We have time. 

Mr. SPRATT. Just a quick question. 

General McCaffrey in particular, to pick up where you left off, if 

our original purpose in going to Afghanistan was to crush al 

Qaeda, to exact a full measure of retribution upon them and to 

render them ineffective, have we strayed from our original objective? Have you said we set the wrong objectives and raised the bar 

unnecessarily highly in Afghanistan? 

General MCCAFFREY. Again, I—back to the fundamental challenge we face is we are where we are today, but I think the original 

notion was one of anger, retaliation, vengeance, all of it appropriate. Afghanistan deserved to be part of that target of reaction. 

We essentially achieved our initial purpose to some extent. I 

think it was a strategic surprise of immense proportions that the 

U.S. Armed Forces struck at them 700 miles from the sea, 7,000 

miles from the United States, something I think had enormous 

heuristic benefit for al Qaeda globally deployed. 

By the way, we ought to take into account we have killed or captured much of the senior al Qaeda leadership. Indeed there is an 

argument that 10 years from now, our principal threat will be 

Hezbollah, not al Qaeda. 

But I think we have been a force in search of a mission, and the 

sensible mission, in my viewpoint, if the American people and the 

Congress and the administration support it, it would be to build a 

viable state over the decade to come. And we can do that at significant cost, probably 60 billion to 80 billion a year, and another 30- 

to 40,000 killed and wounded. We would probably achieve that objective. 

Now, one caveat, and I think Mr. Waldman and I would not be 

on the same side of the sheet on this one. I have over the last 30 

years of public service been astonished at the courage and the creativity and the language skills of the international NGO community. They are beyond belief, to include Oxfam. But there is a handful of them. 

Afghanistan is big muscle movements, it is 30 million people. Nobody moves in the south except the Marine rifle company. Nobody 

is out in the east except a PRT. I think these have been huge payoffs. They simply couldn’t exist. They would be blown away in the 

wind within an hour of us extracting the military component. 

We still have a choice, but I don’t think there is a choice of waving a magic hand and saying, we can turn this over to civilian 
23 

agencies. We can’t turn it over in State Department, Treasury, Agriculture. They can’t do it. They won’t do it. When I asked the agricultural guy in a PRT, what are you, an Iowa farmer, what is your 

background, he will invariably say, sir, I am an artillery lieutenant 

colonel, I retired a year ago. And he gave me a 2-week course, and 

I am over here teaching them how to plant rice. 

I think that is worth talking about, whether that is the appropriate thing to do. But in the short run, that is reality. 

Dr. SNYDER. We have no time left on the votes. We better go 

vote. What we are going to do is we have about a half hour of 

votes, and then there will be a motion to recommit. So we will come 

back right after that vote before the motion to recommit. We will 

have the time for debate, and then we will probably have another 

half hour of questions for anyone who wants to come back. It will 

be about a half hour or so for the witnesses. 

[Recess.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Well, that didn’t quite work out like we thought it 

would, did it? I apologize for that. They changed the order of votes 

and didn’t have a vote we thought we were going to have. Mr. Wittman has a conflict, and I appreciate your patience. You have all 

been public servants for a long, long time, and we have asked you 

to go further once again than we thought we were going to. 

I want to ask, and I may direct this to General McCaffrey and 

General Barno, and the other two can feel free to join in also if you 

would like. General McChrystal’s report, at least the unclassified 

version that we read publicly, he mentions the 12 months several 

times. I would like you, General McCaffrey and General Barno, if 

you would comment on, without my leading you down a road, when 

you saw the 12-month number, what does that mean to you in this 

report in terms of what we need to be thinking about as we are 

making our decisions looking ahead? 

General MCCAFFREY. Part of it may well be that General 

McChrystal, having served here, understands the dynamics of 

Washington as well as he does of the battlefield. I personally can’t 

imagine that 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days one way or another actually makes much of a difference, but he’s also understanding it takes us normally 2 years to make a significant policy 

decision in this Capital, as my own rule of thumb, and it takes a 

year for the military to make substantial reinforcements of a war 

that is in a 7,000-mile away theater. 

So I think his assessment on the ground, and I will probably 

have a better informed viewpoint by the end of November, is that 

the tactical situation deteriorated remarkably. You know, the currently serving unbelievably talented general officers we have got in 

the war zone don’t like me using this language, but we are seeing 

battalion-size units of the Taliban, 200, 300, 400-man outfits who 

are doing reconnaissance for 30 to 90 days of a target and are then 

using rockets, indirect fire, mortar, fire maneuver. It is astonishing. Some of them are using electronic intercept. They are wearing REI camping gear. They are a remarkably dangerous force. I 

have warned several of them about our own tactical arrogance. We 

are going to lose platoon and company-size units if we don’t watch 

our step here in the coming year. 
24 

So I think General McChrystal, who is probably the best fighter 

that has emerged from the Armed Forces in 25 years, was looking 

at that situation and said you had better get some resources to me 

rapidly, a conclusion with which I totally agree. 

General BARNO. I think in a way this goes back to my comment 

about the Taliban running out the clock, and they realize the clock 

in Washington is moving at a more rapid place than the clock in 

Afghanistan or Pakistan, even among our NATO allies in some regards, and I think General McChrystal is looking at that from the 

standpoint that the enemy is moving very rapidly. He has the initiative right now. He is doing offensively a great deal. He is getting 

to choose the time and place of his actions without a lot of constraints, and I think McChrystal in a sense of wresting that initiative back from the enemy, feels he has to do that in the next year 

or the enemy is simply going to be too strong for us to have the 

capability to turn this around. 

It also, I think, plays into General McChrystal’s perspective that 

this is a strategy behind which after another year or so there may 

be inadequate public support to continue. So I think he sees the 

next 12 months as critical. 

Dr. SNYDER. Now I am asking you to say what you think he 

meant, but let me put it this way: It would be a mistake for folks 

on this side of the dais to say 13, 14 months from now, well, it has 

been 12 months and we are still having problems. That is not the 

lesson we should take from the way McChrystal has phrased that 

language; is that a fair statement do you believe? 

General MCCAFFREY. Absolutely. I cannot imagine—I must 

admit I think Secretary Gates is one of the most remarkable public 

servants we have had in office in 15 years; however, the notion 

that we are going to make a substantial change in a year to 18 

months strikes me as the inappropriate level of expectations. I still 

believe this is two to five years of very hard work, including some 

serious fighting, followed by a decade or so of nation-building activities. 

General BARNO. I would generally agree with that. I think, as 

General McCaffrey pointed out, it takes a good bit of time to get 

those additional forces into the theater. So even if the decision was 

made today to add, let’s say, five brigades of additional combat 

forces, you are not going to see those brigades for at least six 

months, perhaps longer than that. And it takes time, as we saw in 

Iraq, for those units to actually get on the ground, get established, 

and then begin to have an influence. 

In my judgment, the way I would look at this, is the next 12 

months is basically the time to stabilize the patient and then after 

that you are going to look at basically getting, you know, the patient back into full health and go on a counteroffensive to take the 

momentum away from the enemy, but you are not going to see a 

complete turnaround in this situation in 12 months by any stretch 

of the imagination. 

Dr. SNYDER. Because I think you probably talked the most, General Barno, in your opening statement about framing this right for 

the American public so they understand it, we need to make sure 

that people understand this is going to be some hard fighting. Now, 

maybe things will go better than we think. Things could go more 
25 

difficult than we think. But you are putting in a range, General 

McCaffrey, of two to five years. Maybe it will turn out to 18 months 

to 6 years. I mean we don’t know. But that is part of the difficulty 

of fighting a war. I think it is important the American public be 

prepared for some uncertainty. 

Again asking you both to comment, but you have probably 

framed it in your opening statement, General McCaffrey, when you 

talked about—I think you said three basic options: Hunker down, 

drop back and re-evaluate where you are, or go ahead. 

How do you evaluate where we are at right now today? 

General MCCAFFREY. Well, the good news is in the short run, you 

know, if you fly over Afghanistan, which all of you in the room 

have done, and you saw it right after we got in there and you saw 

it today, there has been enormous change for the better. There is 

a road network emerging, there are institutions, there is a military 

academy, there is a physics lab in Kabul, court systems have started. So tremendous progress in some ways have occurred. 

The other tiny bit of good news is, and I remind military audiences, we have lost—the U.S. Armed Forces lost a brigade-size unit 

essentially twice in Vietnam. We had divisions dismantled twice in 

Korea. We lost a field army, most of it, twice in World War II, at 

Bataan and the Battle of the Bulge. 

So there is no reason why we are magic out there in a rough 

world. In Afghanistan today it is hard for me to imagine a tactical 

disaster of any serious consequence. You can’t overrun a U.S. Marine battalion with the entire Pashtun nation today. So that is the 

good news. The bad news is the situation is spinning out of control, 

and clearly the answer isn’t military. It is a lot of things at the 

same time: legitimacy of the government, economic rebuilding, 

most of which ought to be agriculture. 

But those—one of our panelists mentioned witness protection 

programs. I mean those are the kind of things that are step 10 of 

a 10-step process, and we are still on step one. 

General BARNO. I think I would agree with that. But I would also 

maybe take a step a bit higher and say I think the pervasive feeling in Afghanistan today is broadly uncertainty as they look at the 

international effort, and I think that is a debilitating perception because it causes people to have to judge based on not knowing what 

the U.S. military is going to do, not knowing what the NATO force 

is going to do, not knowing what the United Nations are going to 

do, not knowing what NGOs are going to do. They don’t know who 

is going to be standing at the end of day out there, and they are 

having to make tough decisions without really seeing a clear path. 

So I endorse the thought that this is a deliberate decision-making process here in Washington, but there is also a need once that 

decision gets made to violently and aggressively and fully execute 

it and implement it as rapidly as possible in Afghanistan because 

there is a perception—every day that we go on with our process, 

as necessary as it is, there is a perception out there that we are 

wavering and we are looking for a way to get to the exits, and that 

I think is very dangerous to us in our overall objectives. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

Mrs. Davis for such time as she needs. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
26 

Again, thank you all for waiting through the votes. We certainly 

appreciate that. We know you have very full schedules. 

I wanted to just follow up for a moment because there was the 

article today about the Nawa area, and there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not troop levels even of 40,000 is really 

what would be required. They mention the fact in this particular 

article—I guess this is the Post—of 1 to 50 ratio to the population, 

and that is basically what they tried to do in that area. They have 

had some success, but sometimes that is a fleeting success. It 

doesn’t necessarily mean that it stabilized the whole area. 

So could you respond to that perhaps, General McCaffrey and 

General Barno, whoever would like to do that? I actually hate to 

get into a discussion of the exact number of troops, but on the 

other hand isn’t what is truly required if we were actually going 

to be trying to change the projections that you would need so many 

more troops than that? 

General MCCAFFREY. Well, there are probably two different aspects of that very legitimate question. One is I personally don’t buy 

algorithms that are fixed such as 1 to 50. I think some of that is 

nonsense. The Brits ran a lot of these places with five smart Oxford boys who studied Greek and used native levies to, you know, 

achieve balance among the tribes. 

My own view would be, and I think McChrystal’s report is focussed on this, the only center of gravity of the struggle in Afghanistan is building the Afghan security forces, along with jump-starting the economy, social institutions, political institutions. But at 

the end of the day it is the Afghan National Army and the police. 

The police is a 15-year job; the army is a 5-year job. You can’t do 

it overnight. You have got to get officers, sergeants, equipment, 

training. They have got to have their own helicopter lift force. The 

Afghan National Security Force is the answer. I do not think the 

notion that we are going to embed U.S. Army and Marine rifle platoons in Pashtun villages is the way we are going to turn this 

around. So some of that in the short run we have got to do. I understand. But thank God we have got the Stryker Brigade in there 

so that at least now I am convinced that day to day the road network we can keep open. 

So it is the Afghan National Army (ANA). That is the center of 

gravity of the war from the U.S. military’s perspective in my judgment. 

Mrs. DAVIS. General Barno. 

General BARNO. We talked about that actually a bit at the break 

with Beth Cole here that this ramp-up of the Afghan security 

forces is going to be absolutely critical, and we have got Lieutenant 

General Bill Caldwell nominated to go out there and take over that 

mission. That is going to be the most important thing that happens 

in Afghanistan in the next three years. And his challenge will be 

to muster as much energy from Washington to help him get that 

done as he can because if that doesn’t work, then the rest of the 

enterprise is not going to work for us. Those are going to eventually have to be not Marines at Nawa but Afghan forces at Nawa, 

both police and army. 

Ms. COLE. Just to add to that, I think we also need to step back 

again and realize that part of the country we are trying to sta-
27 

bilize, the other part of the country we are actually doing reconstruction. It is not all combat all the time. So whatever algorithm 

you want to arrive at, we need to identify the areas where there 

is high insurgent activity and try to stabilize those while keeping 

our eye on the other places where we actually—where we have stabilized and we are actually in a reconstruction mode. It is not all 

combat all the time. 

Mr. WALDMAN. Just one or two remarks about Afghan national 

security forces. I think certainly there needs to be a great deal of 

caution not to sacrifice quality in a drive for quantity. And of 

course General McChrystal has suggested doubling the number of 

police and perhaps more than doubling the number of military 

serving in the Army. And they are on short time frames as well. 

And I think certainly with respect to the police it is arguable that 

some of the actions at a local level have perhaps consolidated and 

strengthened the insurgency. So a great deal of caution is required 

there, I think. 

We also need to think about sustainability. The Afghan Government has a revenue of about a billion dollars. Now, the United 

States, as I understand it, is spending about $3.5, $3.6 billion on 

the Afghan national security forces this year. So it is going to be 

important to think about the financial sustainability of the armed 

forces. 

I mean, the other points I would make that are really critical to 

this is effective political engagement at addressing some of these 

problems. Until some of these fundamental problems are addressed 

in society, then these conflicts will continue. And I mean this is an 

incredibly complex area. It is, I think, very difficult for outsiders 

to understand, but I think we can at least recognize that that is 

the case and to take steps to help institutions and political systems 

to be able to address that. 

And I just want to put on the record, I did want to mention I 

think it is important to clarify that nongovernmental organizations 

can operate in insecure areas, and actually in the south and southeast there are many that do operate there today. I mean, NGOs operated under the Taliban regime right up until the intervention. 

There are mechanisms of doing that, and of course the priority has 

got to be those organizations which are going to be there into the 

future and that are Afghan that can respond to Afghan needs, and 

then you are starting to build up accountability within society for 

how resources are used to benefit people. 

So I would stress that side of the state-building agenda. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think what the 

American people are having a very difficult time understanding is 

whether or not we would continue an effort where we don’t perceive nor do the people that we are trying to help perceive that 

there is a legitimate government. 

In that context is there a role that you think we should be doing 

differently in the upcoming election and are we using whatever leverage we have, which should be great but I think we haven’t necessarily used it much, in trying to really impress upon the leaders 

that we need to see some action, whether it is in the corruption 

area or what have you? What is our leverage that you see, and how 
28 

do we explain to the American people that this is an effort done 

really with a void in terms of the governing? 

General BARNO. I was the overall military commander during the 

2004 presidential election, and we made the main effort for the 

military that year of setting conditions for that election because we 

recognized it was the most important strategic event in Afghanistan in 2004. The election this year was the most important strategic event in Afghanistan. In many ways it was a serious failure. 

The international community, the United Nations took a very 

minimalist role where they had the ability to take a much greater 

role to prevent the outcome that we saw occur after August 20. 

So now there is almost an opportunity to do this the second time. 

So one of the things I think that absolutely has to happen is a 

much deeper international and United Nations effort to ensure this 

election is held in a supervised manner, which the last one was 

not. Now, the timelines make that extraordinarily difficult to do. So 

I think that is an area. 

On the other side of the coin I would say the fact we are going 

to a run-off reflects some strength in the process. There were 

enough safeguards in the process so that the initial election result 

rightfully was called into question, was challenged, was evaluated, 

and enough votes were thrown out to force a run-off. That is a success story, although a dusty, muddy one, I am afraid, but it is still 

a success story. Now the legitimacy in this next election is critical 

to ensure that the outcome of that has the confidence of the Afghan 

people. 

Ms. COLE. I think we actually have an opportunity right now, as 

was demonstrated with Senator Kerry negotiating with President 

Karzai, to identify those people in the government who we know 

that are corrupt and we know the Afghan people don’t respect and 

to try to deal with them at this moment and then to embrace and 

empower the ones that we know are legitimate and are accountable. And we have all worked with wonderful Afghan leaders, ministers and others, who are the leaders for the future, but I think 

we have a moment in time right now where we have to press this 

case, the international community, all of those nations that have 

invested in Afghanistan, and do it with the Afghans themselves. 

But I think it is time to press it. 

Mr. WALDMAN. I would just add to that, I think many of the policies that we have implemented have actually compounded these 

problems of corruption, in fact. It was policies that forged alliances 

with local strongmen and warlords in Afghanistan that have I 

think led to this you know modus avendi of corruption, and it is 

not surprising that that is, you know, reflected in the current administration. And I think it really does require America and other 

states to usually reach to change their position with respect to 

those kinds of alliances of convenience and take principled stands 

on some of these issues. 

You know, I also think that there are other things that can be 

done better; for example, the work on governance. If you look at 

the thousands of consultants that are deployed in what is an uncoordinated fashion, many have little experience. Some are you know 

very talented but many have little experience. They don’t have familiarity with the country, of course paid enormous sums money, 
29 

and I think there really needs to be a very serious consideration, 

a rigorous consideration of what they are delivering. Of course they 

are necessary to some extent, but I think we have to accept there 

are deep flaws in the contracting and the consulting system that 

currently exists. 

Dr. SNYDER. I want to ask another question, again directed primarily to the military folks but the others can join in if they would 

like. Would you all put yourself in the position of the Pakistani 

military as they are undertaking what appears to be some very difficult work on the Pakistani side of the border? How do they view 

this discussion that is going on? What do they want to have happen 

on the Afghan side of the border with regard to the NATO forces? 

General MCCAFFREY. I am always fascinated—I always start off 

in Pakistan, spend some period of time there and listen very carefully to the Pak military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) 

and Pakistani politicians and go to the other side of the border, to 

include the U.S. team. Sometimes opposite sides of the coin. It is 

astonishing why there is this division, why there is this deep loathing on the part of the Afghans, many of them, toward the Pakistanis that gave them some support and sanctuary for so many 

years in their struggle against the Soviets and, conversely, the lack 

of the sort of empathy on the part of the Pakistanis for the millions 

of Afghan refugees who are stuck in their own territory. It has 

been surprising to me. 

The Pakistani military, and a couple of us were talking about 

this before, I am not an expert on Pakistan but I am sure of one 

thing: That is not a single monolithic state. It is four separate nations under one weak federal system. And when you look at the 

federal system, there has been a history of corruption and incompetence on the part of the political parties and the leadership. And 

the one institution that has been load bearing in Pakistan was the 

army, and the army is also the ISI and the army is the Frontier 

Corps, and the army loans their generals to run ministries. 

So it has tended to be—and it is also, and this disturbs people, 

the most respected institution bar none in Pakistan. So we end up 

with a situation—by the way, neither the army nor the political 

system never had one bit of control over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), never mind much of Balochistan. There 

are places in downtown Quetta where the ISI won’t go at night. So 

under our urging, they have intervened in these border areas. They 

are a remarkably small, professional, badly equipped force. They 

are primarily—if you talk to the Pak military, they spend 99 percent of their time worrying about the Indians and the confrontation 

to the east. Gradually they have come to support us. 

I personally think that without the support of the Pakistani Government and the military, our presence in Afghanistan would disappear and die of lack of oxygen within a year. So we have to be 

very careful of what we say in public and what we do in private. 

I think the initiative to provide nonmilitary aid to Pakistan is really a good one. 

So we are broadening our contact with these people in the last 

year. That is the good news. 

General BARNO. I would broadly agree with that. I spend lots of 

time with Pakistani officers. I have got 50 of them coming to my 
30 

center here in a week for another 2-week session, which we have 

done several times in the last year. They are conflicted in some 

ways because now they recognize they have an internal security 

threat with the so-called Pakistani Taliban, who are somewhat different and distinct from the Afghan Taliban across the border. 

They are now—their activity in the Pakistani army in fighting this 

Pakistani Taliban in Swat and now about to start in Waziristan is 

impressive. It is notable. It is a major change and it very much 

supports our interests and their interests. 

They have a bit of a different approach, I think, with regard to 

the Taliban in Afghanistan. And I think it is most positive that 

there is ambivalence, that they—they neither support them directly 

or fight them directly and have had a historical connection to that 

group that has given them capability to influence events inside of 

Afghanistan. They don’t want to let go of that connection entirely 

because they are simply uncertain about what we are going to do 

and whether we are going to be there three years or five years from 

now. 

So I think they deserve full credit for what they are doing in 

fighting their own internal threat which they now recognize, and 

I think we need to continue to work with them on convincing them 

we are there for the long haul so they can disassociate themselves 

further from the Afghan Taliban that are fighting our forces now 

in the southern and eastern portions of Afghanistan. 

Dr. SNYDER. Susan, do you have anything further? 

Mrs. DAVIS. No. 

Dr. SNYDER. Once again I apologize for the delay due to votes, 

but you have all been through that before. We appreciate your 

service. We appreciate your attendance here today. Feel free to 

send us anything written for us to look at that will also be made 

part of this record if you think of something that you would like 

to add. Thank you, again, for being here today. 

We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
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