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S. HRG. 111–321 

EXPLORING THREE STRATEGIES 

FOR AFGHANISTAN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations 

( 

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

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

BARBARA BOXER, California 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware 

KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

DAVID MCKean, Staff Director

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Biddle, Dr. Stephen, senior fellow for defense policy, Council on Foreign 

Relations, Washington, DC ................................................................................. 15 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16 

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

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 5 

Nagl, Dr. John, president, Center for a New American Security, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 

Stewart, Rory, director, Carr Center on Human Rights Policy, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA ....................................................................................... 24 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, prepared statement .. 14 

(III)

(1) 

EXPLORING THREE STRATEGIES FOR 

AFGHANISTAN 

WESNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 

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

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in room 

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

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Kerry, Feingold, Menendez, Cardin, Casey, 

Shaheen, Kaufman, Lugar, Corker, and Risch. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN F. KERRY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee 

will now come to order. 

Delighted to welcome our distinguished panel, and appreciate 

very much their taking time to come and share this first hearing 

in a series of hearings on the subject of Afghanistan. 

I also want to welcome—I am told we have a group of members 

of the Afghan Parliament who are here, and maybe they would just 

stand up and be recognized. Where are they, right back here? 

Thank you very much. We appreciate your being here, and we hope 

that this is helpful to you, as it will be, hopefully, to us. 

The future course of our mission in Afghanistan has become one 

of the most important and one of the most difficult questions that 

we face. In the weeks ahead, this committee will hold a series of 

hearings to study the situation in greater depth and to weigh our 

options going forward. I know that all of my colleagues on this committee and in Congress take that responsibility seriously, and I 

look forward to using this venue to ask some tough questions and, 

hopefully, to uncover some answers together. 

Frankly, I am concerned by where we are today in Afghanistan, 

about the rising number of casualties among our troops and those 

of our allies, about the deeply flawed Presidential voting that just 

took place, about the impunity with which drug traffickers have 

been to operate, and about the rampant corruption undermining 

the faith of Afghans in their government and ours. And most of all, 

I am concerned because, at the very moment when our troops and 

our allies’ troops are sacrificing more and more, our plan, our path, 

our progress seem to be growing less and less clear. 

Nearly all of us agree that it was right to go into Afghanistan 

when we originally did. There is no such consensus about what 

comes next. The eighth anniversary of our presence in Afghanistan 

2 

approaches at a time of growing doubts about our mission, at home 

and abroad. I’ve heard some of my colleagues express reservations 

in many different ways about different aspects of what we are engaged in, ranging from the size of our military commitment, and 

our Afghan and NATO partners’ commitment, to what is possible, 

to fundamental questions about the underlying presumptions of our 

presence there. 

It’s very easy to understand why some people have become skeptical. We appeared to achieve our key objectives very early and 

very easily. We toppled the Taliban, and we drove out al-Qaeda’s 

leaders, although obviously the intent was to either capture or kill 

them. But, we didn’t drive them very far—only a 100 miles or so 

across the border into Pakistan, from where they have been able 

to organize and perpetuate their activities in perhaps as many as 

60 countries around the globe. 

Year after year, while many of us warned that our mission was 

not just adrift, but even slipping out of control, the last administration’s focus was definitively elsewhere; in Iraq. In fact, many military people complained to me at various times about the diversion 

of resources and of strategic thinking from Afghanistan to Iraq. 

Now the window is closing. Today, we face a tougher foe, a more 

educated foe, in a sense, to our practices, an insurgency that has 

adapted to our tactics and honed its own deadly methods. Afghans, 

who once welcomed Americans with open arms, have, in many 

cases, grown suspicious. American and allied populations are suspicious, too. They want a clearer explanation of our goals, of our 

methodology, our plans. And so do we, here. 

Each time I visit Afghanistan—and I intend to go again in October—I return with a renewed appreciation for our troops. In Kunar 

and Zabul, I have seen the Provincial Reconstruction Teams weave 

their way through the complex web of tribal alliances to empower 

local governments to deliver basic services to the Afghan people. 

I’ve seen a Navy commander and an Army lieutenant colonel 

directing unbelievable activities, engaging in being mayor, psychologist, judge, diplomat, and soldier, all at the same time. 

What our troops are doing is extraordinary, and extraordinarily 

difficult. We have an obligation to make certain that we give them 

a strategy that is worthy of their sacrifice. President Obama has 

promised to weigh the recommendations of the top commander in 

Afghanistan—GEN Stanley McChrystal—on whether to commit 

more troops to this effort. We don’t know what the answer will be. 

But, we do know that August was the deadliest month on record 

for United States troops in Afghanistan. 

We also know, and we know this definitively, that this should not 

become a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike can best 

support the President, and our country, by not acting as a 

rubberstamp. We can help him best by asking tough questions, just 

as he is doing, and partnering with the administration to craft policies that reflect the answers. 

Secretary Clinton has committed to testify before the committee 

next month, once the President has finalized some of these choices 

that he faces. And I know that all of my colleagues will welcome 

the chance to further this dialogue with her. 

3 

So far, the limited debate has really focused on absolute numbers 

and on different kinds of metrics: How many United States and 

allied troops are required; how many Afghan soldiers and police do 

we need to train; how many more billions do we need to invest in 

a moment of enormous need here at home. Of course, no amount 

of money, no rise in troop levels, and no clever metrics will matter 

if the mission itself is ill-defined or ill-conceived. That’s why we 

need to expand the discussion to grapple with fundamental questions and examine core assumptions. We need to agree on a clear 

definition of the mission and of what is possible. We need to decide 

what is achievable and what is an acceptable goal for the future 

shape of Afghanistan. We need to know the size of the footprint— 

military footprint—that that goal will demand. We need to weigh 

the probabilities and the cost of getting there. 

I believe that certain principles must guide this thinking, and I 

will say to you that—there was an interesting article in today’s 

Washington Post, and it’s one that sort of reflected some of the 

thinking that I and others have shared recently, which is—I mean, 

I recall full well, in 1964 and 1965, being one of those troops who 

responded to the call to augment our presence in Vietnam, and 

there was this constant refrain from President Johnson and from 

General Westmoreland to, you know, ‘‘Give us more troops. We just 

need X more, and we’ll get the job done.’’ But, in fact, some of the 

core assumptions were not being examined—about the domino theory, about the nature of the civil war, and the structure. 

This is the kind of thinking we need to apply now to this challenge. And I believe certain principles must guide our thinking. 

First, it will be the Afghans who must ultimately win or lose the 

struggle with the Taliban. We need to ensure that the Afghan people feel a sense of ownership, not of occupation. 

Second, as I warned, back in February, in an op-ed piece in the 

Washington Post, we need to recognize that we are in a race 

against time. In a region suspicious of foreign troops, an openended obligation of large numbers of United States troops risks 

consigning us to the same fate as others who’ve tried to master 

Afghanistan. No matter how long we remain there, history should 

teach us that there will be no purely military solution in that country. What’s needed instead is a comprehensive strategy, one that 

emphasizes the need for the right level of civilian effort as much 

as for the right military deployment to provide security for that 

other effort to take hold. 

We must also understand Afghan realities, and recognize the 

decentralized nature of Afghan society. I won’t go into it all right 

now, but there is a distinction between Iraq and the civil structure 

that existed in Iraq and the capacity of that civil structure, and the 

system that existed, and the level of education, and the commerce, 

and the development—a clear distinction between that and what 

exists in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. 

So, we need to understand this decentralized nature of Afghan 

society and the history of its monarchy and its relationship to a 

centralized government, and that requires us, I think, to be flexible. Afghanistan is a very diverse place, and we need to understand 

that what works in Mazar-e Sharif, a predominantly Uzbek city 

that fought the Taliban tooth and nail in the 1990s, is very difVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
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ferent from what works in Kandahar, a Pashtun city that welcomed the Taliban with open arms. It also requires us to be humble about our ability to bring large-scale change to other societies. 

That was true in Iraq, it remains true in Iraq, and it is even more 

true in Afghanistan. We have to weigh our choices against what is 

possible. 

We also need to consider our mission in Afghanistan in the context of a highly volatile and strategically vital region. And I emphasize that this is a very important part of our thinking—Pakistan, 

Iran, and other questions. These permeable borders are straddled 

by clans, ethnic groups, and militants, where what happens in one 

country can have profound implications for the security of its 

neighbors. It is also true that the Pashtun represent a people 

divided by an artificial line, many years ago by Sir Durand and the 

British, which was drawn right down the center, putting part of 

them in Pakistan, part of them in Afghanistan, but it is a border 

that they have never recognized. 

We also face the continued stability of Pakistan, and those 

issues, a nuclear-armed nation in an existential struggle with 

extremists and insurgents. I might add, Pakistan has made a significant advance from where it was a year ago. And where many 

people thought that, in fact, Pakistan was the problem without a 

solution at that point in time, they have been surprised by the results. And I think we need to take note of that as we think about 

these mutual implications. 

We also need to set realistic goals. The purpose of our mission, 

is what the President said it was: To prevent Afghanistan from 

becoming a safe haven or sanctuary for al-Qaeda, and to make sure 

al-Qaeda is not there in Afghanistan, and, therefore, a destabilizing 

force in the region. I do not believe that we are in Afghanistan to 

create a carbon copy of American-style democracy or to impose a 

strong central government in a nation that has never had one. We 

need to ensure that we not only set realistic goals, but also align 

them with our chosen strategy. 

In a week when U.S. commandos killed a top al-Qaeda leader in 

Somalia without a major troop presence, we should be asking ourselves, How much counterinsurgency and nation-building are 

required to meet a sufficient set of goals to achieve America’s objectives with respect to counterinsurgency? And whatever approach 

we decide on, we do need to find a clear set of metrics to measure 

the progress. 

And finally, we need to ask ourselves the questions that General 

Petraeus famously asked in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, How 

does this end? Supporters and opponents of this war should agree, 

we need to have this discussion. It may be that we will decide that 

there need to be additional troops. I don’t know the answer to that 

question until we ask all of these other questions. But, we should 

not do it in a knee-jerk, automatic, predisposed way that has not 

thoroughly examined the assumptions and the possibilities. Therefore, this discussion is essential. We’ve already lost 827 Americans 

in Operation Enduring Freedom. We have spent over $200 billion. 

And all of us have attended the funerals and met with families of 

those who have been lost. We have an obligation to make certain 

that their sacrifice is not forgotten, but also not in vain, and that 

5 

we give them a strategy that is worthy of the sacrifice they’ve 

made. 

For the first time, the Pentagon has requested more war funding 

next year for Afghanistan than for Iraq. It is critical for us to communicate a clear goal, and begin to show progress toward achieving 

it. And we risk losing support for our mission, not just in Afghanistan, but here at home, if we don’t undertake that effort. 

Dr. John Nagl is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and president 

of the Center for New American Security. He was selected by General Petraeus to coauthor the Army’s Counterinsurgency Field 

Manual. And we appreciate him being here today. 

Dr. Stephen Biddle is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign 

Relations, an independent thinker and an incisive military analyst. 

He spent a month in Afghanistan this summer as a member of 

General McChrystal’s assessment team. 

And our last witness, Rory Stewart, got the ultimate ground education on Afghanistan by walking straight across the country from 

Herat to Jalalabad right after the Taliban’s fall. He is director of 

the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy 

School, a former British diplomat and soldier, an early and eloquent critic of our Afghan strategy. So, I welcome you—each of you 

today, and look forward to your testimony. 

Senator Lugar. 

Senator LUGAR. Mr. Chairman, I’d like to ask permission to vote 

at this point. We’re about halfway through the rollcall. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think that’s wise. And—— 

Senator LUGAR. And then, as I come back, I’ll commence my 

statement, if that’s permissible. 

The CHAIRMAN. Absolutely. We will—in fact, what I’d like to do, 

because I think it’s important for everybody to hear your statement, we will recess until we return from this vote. 

And we stand in recess until such time. It will probably be about 

10 minutes, folks. Thanks. 

We stand in recess. 

[Recess.] 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come back to order. 

I apologize to everybody. We had two votes, not one, so it took 

us a little longer, and I apologize to our witnesses and those watching. 

Senator Lugar, we look forward to your opening. Thank you. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA 

Senator LUGAR. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I join 

you in welcoming our distinguished panel. 

Having reviewed the range of strategies suggested by our 

experts, it’s evident that each has his own perspective on international military forces in Afghanistan. What they have in common 

is acknowledging the important role for international civilian agencies in Afghanistan to help create stability. This hearing provides 

an opportunity to review progress on a key asset that I’ve long 

sought in our foreign policy efforts, a coordinator for reconstruction 

and stabilization in the State Department. 

6 

The story of the development of this office, which began under 

the previous administration and continues today, is a discouraging 

one, unfortunately. Despite the long-evident need for a coherent 

and efficient civilian coordination capacity to assist our troops in 

crisis response, we still don’t have one and continue to rely solely 

upon the Defense Department to provide personnel, equipment, 

resources, and ideas. 

In 2003, I convened a series of Policy Analysis Group meetings 

of senior officials from within our government and beyond to discuss the appropriate role for civilian agencies in post-conflict or crisis situations. Since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, we’ve 

been engaged in post-conflict situations in the first gulf war, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Iraq, Liberia, and, of course, Afghanistan. Each crisis required the deployment of technically proficient 

civilians familiar with unstable situations. Each situation was 

hampered by the inability to identify and to deploy such skilled 

civilians, either independently or as part of a multilateral or military operation. 

In 2004, then-Senator Biden and I introduced legislation to create a civilian reconstruction office, but that legislation was not 

championed initially by the previous administration. Belatedly, the 

value of this effort was recognized, but despite the Bush administration’s 2009 budget request of $249 million to fund the Civilian 

Stabilization Initiative and the new administration’s increased 

2010 budget request of $323 million for the same purposes, Congress has sharply cut these funds. 

As a result, as President Obama determines the strategic and 

tactical approach for Afghanistan and the region, he and his commanders and ambassadors are constrained by the inability to provide all the tools necessary. Ambassador Holbrooke was hired by 

this administration to improve our policy impact in Afghanistan 

and Pakistan. He determined that he would need a team of experts 

and the means to wield decisionmaking authority over human and 

financial resources. I would have hoped that by 2009, some 6 years 

after I broached the idea with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, 

Ambassador Holbrooke could turn to the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, Ambassador John Herbst, and an integrated 

civilian organization capable of assembling a large contingent of 

specialists. Instead, Ambassador Holbrooke concluded the capacity 

of these folks was not sufficient to perform the mission. Ambassador Holbrooke has instead established, within his own office of 

the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, what is, 

in essence, a central coordinating function for civilian agencies 

involved in the crisis. He’s built a team that now competes in size 

with the State Department CRS, and dwarfs that entity in its ability to empower and to employ personnel. 

The Department of Defense shares my concern over this gap in 

our civilian post-conflict capabilities. A variety of experienced military leaders have said the lack of an effective civilian partner is 

hurting our national interests. Secretary Gates has made clear that 

our national security is as dependent upon our foreign assistance 

budget and authorities as it is on our defense budget. Congress 

must now prioritize these parallel budgets and authorities in order 

7 

to strengthen our effectiveness in the realm of diplomacy and 

defense. 

Afghanistan is the priority our President has identified. It is in 

this engagement that we must provide the civilian resources and 

skills to complement our military effort, whatever shape the military posture may take. 

I look forward to hearing our witnesses. And I thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar, that’s a very thoughtful statement, and we appreciate it. 

We’re going to start with you, Dr. Nagl, and then Dr. Biddle, and 

finally Rory Stewart. Your full testimonies will be placed in the 

record in full, as if read in full; if you want to summarize and give 

us a little more time to have a dialogue. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN NAGL, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR A NEW 

AMERICAN SECURITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. NAGL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee, I 

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss 

U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Achieving an outcome in Afghanistan 

advantageous to our national security interest demands a careful 

appraisal of what America is trying to accomplish, and an appreciation for the resources required to get there, and I am honored to 

be there as part of that important discussion. 

Preventing the return of the Taliban to control of Afghanistan, 

maintaining stability in Pakistan, and keeping up the pressure 

against al-Qaeda are all objectives very worthy of American effort. 

U.S. policymakers must, of course, weigh all strategic actions 

against America’s global interests and against our opportunity 

costs. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, low-cost strategies do not have 

an encouraging track record of success, since the initial successes 

of Operation Enduring Freedom. Drone attacks, which are very 

useful for their ability to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, 

have not prevented militant forces from making threatening 

advances in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The light-footprint 

option has failed to secure U.S. objectives, as the Obama administration and the American military leadership have recognized. It is 

well past time for a different approach. 

Preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a sanctuary for 

terrorists with global reach or as the catalyst for a broader regional 

security meltdown are the key objectives of our campaign there. 

Securing these objectives requires helping the Afghans to build a 

sustainable system of governance that can adequately ensure stability and security for the Afghan people, the keystone upon which 

a successful exit strategy depends. 

While an expanded international commitment of security and 

development forces can assist in the achievement of these goals in 

the short term, ultimately Afghans must ensure security and stability in their own country. The development of a state that is able 

to provide a modicum of security and governance to its people is 

necessary to ensure that American security interests will be preserved without a major U.S. ground presence. And the classic clearVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
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hold-build counterinsurgency strategy offers the best way to 

achieve that objective. 

The first requirement for success in a counterinsurgency campaign is the ability to secure the population, but at present there 

are insufficient Afghan soldiers and police to implement that 

approach by holding areas that had been cleared of insurgents by 

United States and international forces. As a result, American 

troops have had to clear the same areas repeatedly, paying a price 

for each operation, both in American lives and in Afghan public 

support, which suffers each time we clear and leave. More United 

States combat soldiers are required now to implement a clear, hold, 

and build counterinsurgency strategy, but, over time, responsibility 

must transition to the Afghans to secure their own country. 

Ultimately, therefore, much of the focus on the direct counterinsurgency role of United States forces should shift to a focus on 

developing Afghan security forces. The preexisting numerical targets for the development of Afghan security forces are not based on 

the actual security requirements for the country. The current endstrength targets for the Afghan National Army and National Police 

are 134,000 and 82,000 respectively, about half what would be 

required to provide adequate security in a war-torn country of over 

30 million people with very rough terrain. The United States 

should initiate a greater international effort to expand the Afghan 

national security forces. If that means the U.S. Government and 

the international community has to pay for them, then so be it. 

Doing so will be far cheaper than maintaining substantial numbers 

of American and international forces in Afghanistan for an even 

longer period of time to do the jobs that Afghans should do. Building Afghan security forces will be a long-term effort that will 

require United States and international assistance and advisers for 

many years. 

Security must come first, but these wars are not only won with 

bullets, so a renewed U.S. commitment to development assistance 

must also be initiated. And Senator Lugar has mentioned the fact 

that we simply don’t have the expeditionary capability we need in 

the civilian agencies of government here in this country, and therefore, I’m afraid, much of that burden for development will have to 

continue to be borne by the U.S. military. 

In particular, I’d like to highlight the contributions of the 

National Security Program in Afghanistan, perhaps the best investment of dollars we’ve made there. Ultimately, the NSP is an important step toward the defeat of the insurgency, which we will see 

when the Afghan people know that a non-Taliban political order 

can offer them a modicum of security and governance. 

St. Augustine teaches us that the purpose of war is to build a 

better peace, but America built nothing in Afghanistan after the 

Soviet withdrawal, and the Taliban filled the vacuum. Afghanistan 

became the vipers’ nest in which al-Qaeda grew, and the United 

States paid a heavy price for its strategic neglect of Afghanistan. 

Over the next 5 years, we want to create an Afghanistan from 

which al-Qaeda has been displaced and from which we can continue to attack its remnants. By that point, the Government of 

Afghanistan should be able, with only minimal external help, to 

secure itself from internal threats like the Taliban or the return of 

9 

1This testimony draws upon John A. Nagl, ‘‘A Better War in Afghanistan,’’ to be published 

in Joint Force Quarterly in November 2009. The author thanks Brian M. Burton of the Center 

for a New American Security for his assistance in the preparation of this testimony. 2This section draws upon Nathaniel C. Fick, David Kilcullen, John A. Nagl, and Vikram J. 

Singh, ‘‘Tell Me Why We’re There? Enduring Interests in Afghanistan (and Pakistan),’’ Center 

for a New American Security Policy Brief, 22 January 2009; and John A. Nagl, ‘‘Surge In 

Afghanistan Can Work, With Right Resources, Enough Time,’’ U.S. News and World Report, 23 

February 2009. 3 Ann Scott Tyson, ‘‘In Helmand, Caught Between U.S., Taliban; ‘Skittish’ Afghans Wary of 

Both Sides,’’ The Washington Post, August 15, 2009. 4See Ahmed Rashid ‘‘Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia’’ (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001) and Ahmed Rashid, ‘‘Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam 

in Central Asia’’ (New York: Penguin Books, 2003). 

al-Qaeda. It should have the support of its people, earned through 

reduced corruption and the provision of a reasonable level of government services, particularly security and an improving economy, 

and it should be determined to never again provide a safe haven 

for terror. These are difficult tasks, but the American military has 

a long history of demonstrating that ‘‘hard’’ is not ‘‘impossible’’ as 

long as the American people stand behind it. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Nagl follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN NAGL, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR A NEW

AMERICAN SECURITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, and members of the committee, I thank you for 

the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. 

Achieving an outcome in Afghanistan advantageous to our national security interests demands a careful appraisal of what America is trying to accomplish and an 

appreciation for the resources required to get there.1

THE ENDS: NO SANCTUARY FOR TERRORISTS AND NO REGIONAL MELTDOWN 2

Coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 with the objective of toppling the Taliban government and defeating al-Qaeda. The Bonn Agreement and 

subsequent accords expanded Afghan and coalition aims far beyond these original 

objectives. After 7 years of strategic drift, coalition efforts have failed to persuade 

many Afghans that it is wise or safe to defy the Taliban.3 Just as ominously, the 

prolonged nature of the conflict, mounting casualties and financial costs, and the 

lack of demonstrable progress have combined to weaken popular support for the 

mission in many NATO nations, even in the United States. But the fact that 

progress has been hampered by confused strategy and insufficient resources is an 

indictment of the conduct of this war, not its objectives. It does not mean that the 

campaign in Afghanistan is fruitless or that America’s interests in this part of the 

world are unimportant. 

The primary objective of American efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan remains 

the elimination of the al-Qaeda-associated sanctuaries and, if possible, top leaders 

that support transnational terrorist operations. Originally based in Afghanistan but 

squeezed by allied military operations, many in this shadowy alliance have shifted 

to Pakistan’s cities and frontier areas, beyond easy reach of the coalition. American 

efforts now focus on Pakistan as a launching pad for transnational terrorists and 

insurgents fighting in Afghanistan. But the problem runs both ways: A failed 

Afghanistan would become a base from which Taliban and al-Qaeda militants could 

work to further destabilize the surrounding region. Al-Qaeda and the Afghan 

Taliban have served as an inspiration and sometime-ally of violent extremist groups 

targeting resource-rich states of Central Asia.4 More dangerously, they also have 

ties to the insurgents seeking to overthrow Pakistan, and the ultimate prize in that 

contest would be not another ridge or valley, but possibly access to the Pakistani 

nuclear arsenal. An unraveling, whether gradual or unexpectedly rapid, of Pakistan 

in the face of the Taliban insurgency could spark a cascading regional meltdown and 

lead to nuclear arms falling into the hands of a terrorist group that would use them 

against the United States or its allies. This is, to be sure, widely considered a lowVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
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5See David Sanger, ‘‘Obama’s Worst Pakistan Nightmare,’’ New York Times Magazine, January 11, 2009. 6See Haider Ali Hussein Mullick, ‘‘Lions and Jackals: Pakistan’s Emerging Counterinsurgency 

Strategy,’’ Foreign Affairs (online only), July 15, 2009, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ 

65191/haider-ali-hussein-mullick/lions-and-jackals. 7See, for example, Hussain Haqqani, ‘‘Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military’’ (Washington, 

DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), 282–99. 8See Antonio Giustozzi, ‘‘Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in 

Afghanistan’’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 15–21. 9See Greg Miller, ‘‘U.S. Missile Strikes Said to Take Heavy Toll on Al Qaeda,’’ Los Angeles 

Times, March 22, 2009. 

probability event, but the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is hardly clear and 

U.S. visibility into events there is fairly low.5

Because these threats of terrorist sanctuary and regional instability emanate from 

territory shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistan must be encouraged to confront terrorism within its borders and curtail its military’s clandestine support for 

extremist factions. Stepping back America’s commitment to the theater would be a 

particularly odd choice at the present time, given the recent improvement in Pakistani efforts to conduct counterinsurgency against its own radical elements and in 

American-Pakistani intelligence-sharing. The course of 2009 has seen dramatic 

changes in the Pakistani willingness to wage war against insurgents who increasingly threaten the survival of the government. In that sense, the alarming advances 

of Taliban-aligned forces in Pakistan during the early months of 2009 proved to be 

something of a blessing in disguise: The militants’ attacks into heartland provinces 

like Swat and Buner galvanized a previously indifferent Pakistani public and military to stand up to the militants and drive them back.6 This is momentum toward 

that the United States should seek to encourage while working to overcome decades 

of Pakistani mistrust of an America that has not been perceived as a reliable or supportive partner. 

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, the United 

States curtailed virtually all of its assistance to Pakistan and was perceived by a 

generation of Pakistani leaders as having abandoned the region. In sharp contrast 

to the close security relationship that prevailed for the preceding decade, Washington quickly moved to distance itself from engagement and support of Pakistan, 

culminating in decisions to impose sanctions and ban military-to-military exchanges 

with Pakistan over its nuclear weapons programs and tests. Pakistani leaders, 

military officers, and policy elites have not forgotten these events, and our actions 

ensured that U.S. policymakers lost one of our most significant sources of understanding and levers of influence over events in the region for a generation.7 The 

improving but still fragile relationship of cooperation on counterterrorism and 

counterinsurgency would be damaged by an American pullback now: The Pakistani 

leadership would be further convinced that the United States cannot be relied upon 

and encouraged to maintain its ties to Islamist militant groups as a strategic hedge, 

both dangerous developments from a U.S. national security standpoint. 

Preventing the return of the Taliban to control of Afghanistan, maintaining stability in Pakistan, and keeping up the pressure against al-Qaeda are objectives worthy of American effort. U.S. policymakers must, of course, weigh all strategic actions 

against America’s global interests and possible opportunity costs. But in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the low-cost strategies do not have an encouraging track record 

of success since the initial success of Operation Enduring Freedom. After the fall 

of the Taliban regime in 2001, the United States sought to limit its own involvement 

by working by, with, and through militia or tribal commanders to provide security 

and mop up the remaining al-Qaeda presence. But in many cases this approach empowered these commanders to act abusively and unaccountably, which alienated an 

Afghan population that had been promised a new ‘‘Marshall Plan’’ by the United 

States and thereby facilitated the Taliban’s reemergence as an insurgency against 

the new government and international presence.8 Drone attacks, which have been 

highly touted for their ability to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders,9 have certainly killed numerous terrorists and insurgents. But they have not prevented militant forces from making threatening advances in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

This is not to say that drone strikes or alliances of convenience with tribal and militia commanders should not have a role in the U.S. campaign, but neither should 

form the primary basis for our strategy going forward. The ‘‘light footprint’’ option 

has failed to secure U.S. objectives; as the Obama administration and the U.S. military leadership have recognized, it is well past time for a different approach. 

11 

10See Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘‘A Fight for Ordinary Peace,’’ Washington Post, July 11, 2009. 11The White House, ‘‘White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Strategy 

Toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,’’ March 27, 2009, 3. 

TOWARD A ‘‘BETTER WAR’’ IN AFGHANISTAN

Preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a sanctuary for terrorists with 

global reach or serving as the catalyst for a broader regional security meltdown are 

the key objectives of the campaign there. Securing these objectives requires helping 

the Afghans to build a sustainable system of governance that can adequately ensure 

security for the Afghan people—the keystone upon which a successful exit strategy 

depends. In order to achieve this objective, the coalition and its Afghan partners 

must seek to build a state that reconciles some degree of centralized governance 

with the traditional tribal and religious power structures that hold sway outside 

Kabul. An internal balance between centralized and traditional power centers—not 

central government control everywhere—is a practical basis for assuring the country’s stability, much as it was in the years prior to the Soviet invasion. Achieving 

these minimal goals will require more military forces, but also a much greater commitment to good governance and to providing for the needs of the Afghan people 

where they live. The coalition will need to use its considerable leverage to counter 

Afghan Government corruption at every level. 

While an expanded international commitment of security and development forces 

can assist in the achievement of these goals in the short term, ultimately Afghans 

must ensure stability and security in their own country. The development of a rudimentary state, even a highly flawed one, that is able to provide a modicum of security and governance to its people is necessary to ensure that American security 

interests will be preserved without a major U.S. ground presence. The successful 

implementation of a better-resourced effort to build Iraqi security forces, after years 

of floundering, is now enabling the drawdown of American forces from that country 

as Iraqi forces increasingly take responsibility for their own security; a similar situation will be the definition of success in Afghanistan, some years from now. 

The ‘‘clear, hold, and build’’ counterinsurgency model was relearned over several 

painful years in Iraq, but at present there are insufficient Afghan soldiers and 

police to implement that approach by holding areas that have been cleared of insurgents. As a result, American troops have had to clear the same areas repeatedly— 

paying a price for each operation in both American lives and in Afghan public support, which suffers from Taliban reprisals whenever we ‘‘clear and leave.’’ 

These lessons are well-understood, but the question remains whether U.S., NATO, 

and Afghan forces can execute them. The paucity of Afghan security forces relative 

to U.S. Marines involved in the summer 2009 offensive in Helmand province was 

troubling and indicative of a security force assistance effort that has not been taken 

seriously enough for much of the past 8 years.10 After an area is cleared of 

insurgents, it must be held by Afghan troops supported by international advisers 

and combat multipliers, including artillery and air support. These operations are 

intended to create the conditions that facilitate Afghan central government reconciliation with traditional local power structures to establish better-secured communities 

that ‘‘freeze out’’ future Taliban infiltration. Since the additional troops we have 

deployed in 2009 won’t be enough to secure the whole country, ISAF and Afghan 

commanders will have to select the most important population centers, such as 

Kandahar, to secure first. These ‘‘oil spots’’ of security will then spread over time 

as more Afghan forces come online and gain more competence. 

Ultimately, therefore, much of the focus on the direct counterinsurgency role of 

U.S. forces should shift over time to a clear focus on developing Afghan security 

forces. More U.S. soldiers are required now to implement a ‘‘Clear, Hold, and Build’’ 

counterinsurgency strategy, but over time responsibility must transition to the 

Afghans to secure their own country. If the first requirement for success in a 

counterinsurgency campaign is the ability to secure the population, the counterinsurgent requires boots on the ground and plenty of them. 

The long-term answer is a significantly expanded, and more effective, Afghan 

security apparatus. The preexisting numerical targets for the development of 

Afghan security forces are not based on the actual security requirements for the 

country. The current end strength targets for the Afghan National Army and 

National Police are 134,000 and 82,000 men, respectively—not nearly enough to provide adequate security in a war-torn country of over 30 million people with very 

rough terrain. The Obama administration’s interagency policy review team recommended a substantial expansion of the effort to build these forces up to those prescribed end strengths, but that will not be sufficient.11 Some argue that the interVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
12 

12See Captain Daniel Helmer, ‘‘Twelve Urgent Steps for the Advisor Mission in Afghanistan,’’ 

Military Review, July/August 2008, 73–81. 13The White House, ‘‘Remarks by the President on a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan,’’ transcript, March 27, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/thelpressloffice/Remarks-by-thePresident-on-a-New-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/. 14See Ganesh Sitaraman, ‘‘The Land of 10,000 Wars,’’ The New York Times, 16 August 2009. 15 Antonio Giustozzi, ‘‘Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop,’’ 42–43. 16See Fontini Christia and Michael Semple, ‘‘Flipping the Taliban,’’ Foreign Affairs, July/ 

August 2009. 

national community should not develop an Afghan security force larger than what 

that country’s economy can support. Under peacetime conditions that concern would 

be important, but basing our security force assistance efforts on the Afghan economy 

rather than a realistic estimate of the numbers needed to impose a reasonable level 

of security is not the appropriate course of action now. The United States should 

initiate a greater international effort to expand the Afghan national security forces. 

If that means the U.S. Government and the international community has to help 

pay for them, that is what should be done—it will still be far cheaper than maintaining substantial numbers of American and international forces in Afghanistan for 

an even longer period of time to do the jobs that Afghans should do. 

Building Afghan security forces will be a long-term effort that will require U.S. 

and international assistance and advisers for many years. Unfortunately, the advisory mission has long been treated as a low priority in practice if not in rhetoric, 

with advisory teams being assembled in an ad hoc fashion and provided with insufficient training and resources before deploying.12 The Obama administration has 

bolstered the effort with the deployment of 4,000 additional troops to serve as advisors.13 But it remains unclear whether the U.S. military—and our government as 

a whole—has truly cracked the code on effectively developing host nation security 

forces. It is as important to address the qualitative problems with the current security force assistance program as it is to solve the quantitative ones. Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC–A) must be reviewed to ensure that 

it has the best organization and sufficient capacity to do its job. The advisory effort 

must have access to the most talented and experienced personnel available—not just 

those left over after the regular units have picked first. It must be structured in 

a way that incorporates best practices for security force assistance and is most 

suited to the specific demands of the Afghan operating environment—not simply 

assembled in the fashion that is most convenient for America’s existing unit structure. It must focus on developing an Afghan security force that can fulfill the mission of countering the insurgency and providing a sufficient, if imperfect, level of 

internal security—not on mirror-imaging the force structure of a more advanced 

Western army dedicated to external defense. And ultimately the entire effort must 

be judged on the quality of its outputs—professional, competent, reliable Afghan 

forces—rather than simply how many armed men in uniform come out of its training centers, an approach that clearly produced poor results in the first 4 years of 

the Iraq war. 

The United States and ISAF also need to get smarter about the way they engage 

Afghan communities at the local level. Insurgencies can be won or lost at the local 

level because securing the support of the population requires understanding the specific issues that cause it to sympathize with one side or another. Additionally, 

insurgencies are rarely monolithic: they comprise numerous local factions and individuals fighting for personal gain, revenge against real or perceived slights, tribal 

loyalties, or other reasons that may have little to do with the insurgency’s professed 

cause. The Afghan insurgency is no different in this regard.14 The Taliban is an 

amalgam of local fighters and mercenary and criminal elements around a hard core 

of committed jihadists; according to one detailed study, approximately 40–50 percent 

of the insurgency is made up of ‘‘local allies’’ fighting for tribal causes or opportunism.15

Based on such analyses, U.S. commanders are interested in trying to ‘‘flip’’ less 

ideological factions and promoting the development of local self-defense militias to 

encourage the Afghan tribes to defend against Taliban infiltration.16 Exploiting divisions within an insurgency paid dividends in Iraq, where the emergence of Anbar 

Awakening and Sons of Iraq played a major role in crippling al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) 

and dramatically reducing violence. Again, this is a simple concept that is much 

harder in practice. Thus far, the insurgency has proven less susceptible to 

cooptation than its fragmented nature might suggest, partly because U.S. overtures 

have been limited and partly because the Taliban still holds a level of legitimacy 

in certain parts of the country. Even in the case of Iraq, the more secular insurgents 

did not turn against the extremists until they were sufficiently alienated by AQI’s 

13 

17See John A. McCary, ‘‘The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives,’’ The Washington 

Quarterly, January 2009, 43–59; David Kilcullen ,‘‘The Accidental Guerrilla,’’ (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2009), 158–76. 18This discussion of the NSP draws upon John Nagl, Andrew Exum, and Ahmed A. Humayun, 

‘‘A Pathway to Success in Afghanistan: The National Solidarity Program,’’ Center for a New 

American Security Policy Brief, 16 March 2009. 

brutal tactics and disregard for local customs.17 The Taliban’s leadership may not 

make the same mistakes. 

This experience suggests that emphasizing tribal engagement or ‘‘flipping’’ less 

committed insurgents is not a panacea that will enable the United States to achieve 

a modicum of security in Afghanistan on the cheap. Local communities are unlikely 

to turn in favor of ISAF and the Afghan Government until these entities demonstrate that they are fully willing and able to drive out the insurgents and provide 

some level of lasting security and competent (read: Less corrupt) governance. They 

won’t resist the Taliban or help the security forces as long as the insurgency 

appears to hold the upper hand while the government remains weak at best and 

abusive at worst. Seizing the initiative from the Taliban and reestablishing the political order’s legitimacy requires securing the population and developing a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of local communities, particularly the conflicts within 

them that insurgents can exploit to their own ends. Simply targeting militant leaders and foot soldiers and then leaving won’t solve the problem, because local populations know that the insurgents will just go underground to avoid U.S. strikes and 

then reemerge to take vengeance on those who collaborate with the government 

once the security forces move on. Security forces that just pass through on sweeps 

and raids will not gain the local knowledge necessary to understand the particular 

drivers of the insurgency within the community nor the ability to identify when that 

community is being infiltrated by outside militants. Attempts to reassert central 

government authority without a clear grasp of local power structures and relationships will only engender more popular resentment against Kabul that plays directly 

into the hands of the Taliban. In short, until the Afghan Government, the United 

States, and ISAF get their approach to local communities right, those communities 

will not decisively turn against the insurgency. That means, of course, that while 

developing anti-Taliban tribal militias and coopting nonextremist elements of the insurgency will be aspects of the new Afghanistan strategy, they cannot be its primary 

components. 

Cultivating a limited Afghan state apparatus that is legitimate in the eyes of its 

citizens and works with, rather than against, local communities is a more important 

element of the American approach to Afghanistan. Since 2001, presented with an 

Afghan central government whose presence at the local level has often been either 

absent, incompetent, or corrupt, the international community has turned increasingly toward nongovernmental organizations for the delivery of services. Yet this 

approach rarely strengthens the perceived legitimacy of the government in the very 

communities whose loyalty to the government is being contested. A renewed U.S. 

commitment to funding grassroots development and governance in Afghanistan 

must accompany the influx of troops. The Afghan Government’s National Solidarity 

Program (NSP) and other programs like it deserve much more American support.18

The NSP has become one of the government’s most successful rural development 

projects. Under the program, the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and 

Development (MRRD) disburses modest grants to village-level elected organizations 

called Community Development Councils (CDCs), which in turn identify local priorities and implement small-scale development projects. A limited number of domestic 

and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) then assist the CDCs. 

Once a CDC agrees on a venture, $200 per family (with a ceiling of $60,000 per village) is distributed for project execution. Afghans contribute 10 percent of project 

costs through cash, labor, or other means. 

Under this model, the NSP has built schools for thousands of children, constructed village water pumps that save many hours of labor, and assembled irrigation networks that have enabled far higher agricultural yields. More than 12,000 

village development councils have been elected, more than 19,000 project plans have 

been approved, and nearly half of these projects have already been completed. The 

NSP is the only government program functioning in all 34 provinces, and it has 

affected nearly two-thirds of Afghanistan’s rural population. Moreover, women— 

whose inclusion is a mandatory component of the program—constitute 35 percent 

of the elected CDC representatives. 

The NSP provides one example of how to establish positive links between the 

Afghan people and the government in Kabul, and there are undoubtedly other models that might offer success stories of their own. The point is that the insurgency 

14 

and the international security threat it represents will not be defeated simply with 

armed force, drone strikes, and alliances of convenience with certain factions, 

although all of those things will play a part. It will ultimately be defeated when 

the Afghan people see tangible evidence that a non-Taliban political order that 

really can offer them a modicum of security and governance. 

CONCLUSION: LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

The United States played a role in creating the Taliban and al-Qaeda: They grew 

and thrived amidst the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal and subsequent 

international neglect. Saint Augustine taught that ‘‘the purpose of war is to build 

a better peace,’’ but America built nothing in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, and the Taliban filled the vacuum that its inaction allowed. Afghanistan 

became the viper’s nest in which al-Qaeda grew, and the United States paid a price 

for its inattention and strategic neglect of the region. 

After the success of a lightning campaign that overthrew the Taliban and chased 

al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, American policy toward the country returned to one 

of benign neglect. Too few soldiers to secure the population, too little development 

assistance poorly coordinated, and too little attention to the Pakistan side of the 

Durand Line allowed the Taliban to regroup, gain strength, and return to threaten 

the young Afghan Government that we created but did not adequately support, particularly in the development of an Afghan Army large enough to secure itself from 

its (and our) enemies. 

The objectives of American policy in Afghanistan are clear, although they have 

not been articulated as clearly as they should have. Over the next 5 years, we want 

to create an Afghanistan from which al-Qaeda has been displaced and from which 

it continues to suffer disruptive attacks. The Government of Afghanistan should be 

able, with minimal external help, to secure itself from internal threats like the 

Taliban or the return of al-Qaeda; it should have the support of its people, earned 

through the provision of a reasonable level of government services (particularly 

security and an improving economy) and reduced corruption, and be determined to 

never again provide a safe haven for terror. 

The question now is not how to achieve our goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan— 

we know the answer to that question. The only remaining question is whether 

America has the will to do what is necessary, or whether we are again determined 

to abandon this supposedly ‘‘unimportant’’ region of the world in the hope that this 

time it won’t blow up in our face. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Mr. Chairman—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator. 

Senator MENENDEZ [continuing]. If I may. Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I have to go to the State Department, and, between votes 

and everything, I don’t know if I’ll get back for the hearing, so, I’d 

ask unanimous consent to include my opening statement in the 

record, expressing my alarm at the escalation that is proposed, as 

well as our focus of our policy initiatives. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be made part of the 

record. And I think the people listening at the State Department 

heard you say ‘‘unfortunately you have to go down there,’’ so—— 

[Laughter.] 

[The prepared statement of Senator Menendez follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW

JERSEY

Thank you, Chairman Kerry, for this important hearing, and I would like to 

thank all the witnesses for coming here today to discuss this important topic. I 

believe Afghanistan is a critical issue in our overall foreign policy and that our ability to work with the international community to successfully achieve sustainable 

stability in both Afghanistan and Pakistan will be a key component to the success 

of our overall foreign policy in the Middle East and our broader efforts against 

terrorism. 

I want to express my alarm with the prospect of a significant buildup of U.S. 

forces in Afghanistan without a clear strategy and metrics for success. I think we 

15 

need to have a clear sense of what we intend to accomplish, how we intend to 

accomplish it, and when we will know if we have in fact accomplished it. 

Thank you, Chairman Kerry, for your attention to this issue and I look forward 

to working with all the members of the committee on this moving forward. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Biddle. 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN BIDDLE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR 

DEFENSE POLICY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. BIDDLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d also like to thank the 

committee for this opportunity to speak with you on an issue that’s 

obviously of vital national importance. 

There are many important questions before the Nation with respect to Afghanistan. Maybe the most important of them is also the 

most fundamental of them: Is the war worth waging? The written 

testimony that is submitted to the record provides my answer in 

more detail, but my bottom line from the statement, is that I think 

the case for waging war in Afghanistan is a very close call on the 

merits. I think the war is neither the obvious necessity that many 

of its strongest proponents argue, nor the clear loser that some war 

opponents see it to be. I think this conflict engages important, but 

indirect, U.S. interests, and I think failure is not predetermined. 

On the other hand, it’ll clearly be a very costly war to wage; and, 

while failure isn’t guaranteed, neither is success; and the result of 

that, I think, is a war that isn’t an open-and-shut case, on analytic 

grounds, either for or against. The case for war, as a result, in this 

instance, turns on a value judgment about excepting cost and risk. 

For me, this balance of cost and risk suggest a close call, but a 

war worth waging. Reasonable people, though, are going to differ 

on close calls of this kind. And I think, in many ways, the most 

important conclusion that analysis can offer is that what we face 

here is inevitably a hard choice between unattractive alternatives 

on either side that, at the end of the day, turns on issues that cannot completely be resolved by analysis alone. There is no easy way 

out of Afghanistan, either way, in 2009. 

With the remainder of my time, having summarized where I 

come out, I want to pick up one particularly important aspect of 

the problem, though, and that’s the issue of the interests we have 

at stake in the conflict. 

There are many things to which we aspire for Afghanistan, as we 

would for any country in the international system. We would like 

Afghanistan to be ruled in accordance with the will of the 

governed. We would like Afghanistan to respect the rights of minorities and women. We would like Afghanistan’s children to be 

educated and its people to be prosperous. Normally speaking, we 

pursue these objectives through means other than the waging of 

war. 

When it comes to pursuing U.S. interests abroad that warrant 

the waging of war, there is typically a much narrower subset of the 

things we hope for, for a country, that are considered pertinent. 

And I think, with respect to Afghanistan, those are largely twofold: 

First, that the country not be a base for striking the United States 

or our allies in the West; and second, that the country not be a 

base for destabilizing its neighbors, and especially Pakistan. 

16 

Of these two interests, the first is the more talked about, and, 

I believe, the second is the more important. Afghanistan obviously 

can be a base for striking the United States. It was in 2001, it 

could be again; but, so can many other places. So could Yemen. So 

could Somalia. So could Djibouti. So could potentially dozens of illgoverned spaces in South Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, or even Latin America. If we are going to adopt a systematic 

strategy of deploying multiple brigades of American combat forces 

to deny al-Qaeda potential havens, we are going to run out of brigades a long time before al-Qaeda runs out of havens. This is an 

important concern, but it’s not one that, in my view, constitutes a 

particularly strong argument for waging war in Afghanistan. 

But, while Afghanistan is not unique as a base for striking the 

United States, it is unique as a basis for destabilizing the region, 

and especially Pakistan, where it is located precisely across the 

Durand Line. Pakistan is a clear vital national security interest of 

the United States, for reasons that I don’t need to articulate to this 

committee. Moreover, Pakistan, an actual ongoing nuclear weapons 

state, is in the midst of an active insurgency against a collection 

of heterogeneous insurgent groups, some of which are closely 

aligned with the Quetta Shura Taliban and other factions that 

we’re fighting in Afghanistan. Should we fail in the undertaking in 

Afghanistan, we run the risk of creating a substantial base for a 

variety of insurgent groups whose relationships with one another 

are complex, but potentially dangerous, to destabilize a Pakistani 

state, whose security is vital to the United States. 

Note, however, that the more important of these two interests is, 

thus, an indirect U.S. interest. What we care about most is Pakistan. Our ability to directly influence what happens in Pakistan, 

however, has important limits on it. We cannot deploy 60,000 

American soldiers to Pakistan to assist them in a counterinsurgency campaign. We are politically radioactive in Pakistan. Our 

ability to affect events directly there has very important limits on 

it. Our aid can be redirected in ways that we wouldn’t like. Our 

influence is very partial. 

In a situation in which we see a country whose future is terribly 

important to the United States, but whose fate we have a very limited ability to deal with and affect directly, perhaps the best strategy for us is to invoke the Hippocratic Oath, and at least do no 

harm. And it seems to me that one important way in which we 

could do harm for the prospects for stability in Pakistan is by failing in our undertaking in Afghanistan and allowing chaos, or a 

potential Taliban version 2.0 regime in Kabul, to be a source of 

instability for an already dangerous and difficult situation on the 

other side of the Durand Line. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Biddle follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN BIDDLE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR DEFENSE

POLICY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, WASHINGTON, DC 

The war in Afghanistan had been nearly invisible to the public since 2001–02, but 

this is rapidly changing. In the process, basic questions have reemerged in a very 

different light than they assumed when this war began. What was once the ‘‘good 

war’’ to defeat a clear and present danger from a state that harbored al-Qaeda has 

now become a much more ambiguous struggle to preserve a deeply flawed successor 

17 

government from an insurgency allied with, but separate from, an al-Qaeda that is 

now based across the border in Pakistan. Is this more complex conflict still worth 

waging? 

The answer is a close call on the merits. The debate often treats Afghanistan in 

absolutes: It is either a graveyard of empires in which no outsider can succeed and 

a country where we have no meaningful interests at stake; or it is a war where victory can be assured if we show sufficient resolve and where only success can avert 

a direct threat of attack on the American homeland. In fact it is a harder call. This 

war is neither the obvious necessity that its strongest supporters claim, nor the 

clear loser that its opponents typically see. The war engages important, but indirect, 

U.S. interests. It will be expensive to wage properly, will require many years to 

resolve, and might ultimately fail even if waged vigorously, but failure is not guaranteed and the United States enjoys advantages that other outsiders in Afghanistan 

have not. 

Most defense decisions are ultimately value judgments on how much risk we find 

tolerable and what price we are willing to pay to reduce a risk. The war in Afghanistan poses this problem more starkly than most given the scale of the costs and 

risks on both sides of the ledger here. Analysis can illuminate the costs and identify 

the risks, but especially in close calls it cannot predetermine value judgments on 

how much cost to bear and how much risk to accept. What the analysis shows here 

is that this ledger is close enough for reasonable people to differ. For me, the balance of cost and risk suggests a war that is worth waging, but only barely. What 

is clearest, however, is that neither the case for the war nor the case against it is 

beyond challenge or without important counterarguments. 

I present this argument in four parts: The interests at stake; the war’s likely 

costs; the prospects for success in securing the interests if the costs are borne; and 

finally an assessment of the overall balance of cost and risk in light of this. 

U.S. INTERESTS AT STAKE IN AFGHANISTAN

The United States has many aspirations for Afghanistan, as we would for any 

country. Americans would like Afghanistan to be ruled in accordance with the will 

of the governed; we would like to see minority and women’s rights respected; we 

would like to see its youth educated and its people prosperous. But while we surely 

wish these things for any state, we do not ordinarily wage war to bring them about. 

The U.S. national security interests that might warrant war to achieve here are 

much narrower. 

In fact, they are essentially twofold: That Afghanistan not become a base for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its 

neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither of these two primary security interests can 

be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli. 

The first interest is the most discussed—and the weakest argument for waging 

war. The United States invaded Afghanistan in the first place to destroy the 

al-Qaeda safe haven there, and Afghanistan’s role in the 9/11 attacks clearly justified this. But al-Qaeda central is no longer based in Afghanistan, nor has it been 

since early 2002. Bin Laden and his core operation are, by all accounts, now based 

across the border in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The 

Taliban movement in Afghanistan is clearly linked with al-Qaeda and sympathetic 

to it, but there is little evidence of al-Qaeda infrastructure within Afghanistan today 

that could threaten the U.S. homeland in any direct way. If today’s Afghan Government collapsed, if it were replaced with a neo-Taliban regime, or if the Taliban were 

able to secure real political control over some major contiguous fraction of Afghan 

territory then perhaps al-Qaeda could reestablish a real haven there. 

But this risk is shared with a wide range of other weak states in many parts of 

the world, from Yemen to Somalia to Djibouti to Eritrea to Sudan to the Philippines 

or even parts of Latin America or Central, West, or North Africa, among other possibilities. And of course Iraq and Pakistan fit the description of weak states whose 

failure could provide havens for al-Qaeda. Many of these—and especially Iraq and 

Pakistan—offer bin Laden prospects superior in important ways to Afghanistan’s. 

Iraq and Pakistan, for example, are richer and far better connected to the outside 

world than is primitive, land-locked Afghanistan with its minimal communications 

and transportation systems. Iraq is an Arab state in the very heart of the Middle 

East. Pakistan, of course, is a nuclear power. Afghanistan does enjoy a historical 

connection with al-Qaeda, familiarity to bin Laden, and proximity to his current 

base in the FATA, and it is important to deny al-Qaeda sanctuary on the Afghan 

side of the Durand Line. But its intrinsic importance is no greater than many other 

potential havens—and probably smaller than many. We clearly cannot afford to 

wage protracted warfare with multiple brigades of American ground forces simply 

18 

to deny al-Qaeda potential safe havens; we would run out of brigades long before 

bin Laden ran out of prospective sanctuaries. 

The more important U.S. interest in Afghanistan is indirect: To prevent Afghan 

chaos from destabilizing its Pakistani neighbor. With a population of 173 million 

(five times Afghanistan’s), a GDP of over $160 billion (over 10 times Afghanistan’s) 

and an actual, existing, functional nuclear arsenal of perhaps 20–50 warheads, 

Pakistan is a much more dangerous prospective state sanctuary for al-Qaeda, and 

one where the likelihood of government collapse enabling such a sanctuary may be 

in the same ballpark as Afghanistan, at least in the medium to long term. Pakistan 

is already at war with internal Islamist insurgents allied to al-Qaeda, and by most 

measures that war is not going well. Should the Pakistani insurgency succeed in 

collapsing the state or toppling the government, the risk of nuclear weapons falling 

into al-Qaeda’s hands would be grave indeed. In fact, given the difficulties terrorists 

face in acquiring usable nuclear weapons, Pakistani state collapse is the likeliest 

scenario for a nuclear-armed al-Qaeda. 

Pakistani state collapse, moreover, is a danger over which the United States has 

limited influence. The United States is now so unpopular in Pakistan that we have 

no meaningful prospect of deploying major ground forces there to assist the government in counterinsurgency. U.S. air strikes can harass insurgents and terrorists 

within Pakistan, but the inevitable collateral damage arouses harsh public opposition that could itself threaten the weak government’s stability. U.S. aid is easily— 

and routinely—diverted to purposes remote from countering Islamist insurgents, 

such as the maintenance of military counterweights to India, graft and patronage, 

or even support for Islamist groups seen by Pakistani authorities as potential allies 

against their Indian neighbor. U.S. assistance can—and should—be made conditional on progress in countering insurgents, but harsh conditionality can induce 

rejection of the terms, and the aid, by the Pakistanis, removing U.S. leverage in the 

process. The net result is a major threat over which Americans have very limited 

influence. 

If the United States has few ways to make Pakistan any better, the best policy 

may be to invoke the Hippocratic Oath: at least do no harm. With so little actual 

leverage, the United States cannot afford to make the problem any worse than it 

already is. And failure in Afghanistan would make the problem in Pakistan much 

harder. 

The Taliban are a transnational Pashtun movement that is active on either side 

of the Durand Line and sympathetic to other Pakistani Islamist insurgents. Their 

presence within Pakistan is thus already an important threat to the regime in 

Islamabad. But if the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state or even a major 

fraction of it, their ability to use even a poor state’s resources as a base to destabilize secular government in Pakistan would enable a major increase in the risk of 

state collapse there. Much has been made of the threat Pakistani base camps pose 

to Afghan Government stability, but this danger works both ways: Instability in 

Afghanistan poses a serious threat to secular civilian government in Pakistan. And 

this is the single greatest stake the United States has in Afghanistan: To prevent 

it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an 

al-Qaeda nuclear sanctuary there. 

These stakes are thus important. But they do not merit infinite cost to secure. 

Afghanistan is just one of many possible al-Qaeda sanctuaries. And Afghanistan’s 

influence over Pakistan’s future is important, but incomplete and indirect. A 

Taliban Afghanistan is a real possibility in the long run absent U.S. action, and 

makes Pakistani collapse more likely, but it does not guarantee it. Nor would success in Afghanistan guarantee success in Pakistan: There is a chance that we could 

struggle our way to stability in Afghanistan at great cost and sacrifice only to see 

Pakistan collapse anyway under the weight of its own errors and internal divisions. 

THE COST

What will it cost to defeat the Taliban? No one really knows; war is an uncertain 

business. But it is very hard to succeed at counterinsurgency (COIN) on the cheap. 

Current U.S. Army doctrine is very clear on this: 

[M]aintaining security in an unstable environment requires vast resources, whether host nation, U.S., or multinational. In contrast, a small 

number of highly motivated insurgents with simple weapons, good operations security, and even limited mobility can undermine security over a 

large area. Thus, successful COIN operations often require a high ratio of 

security forces to the protected population. For that reason, protracted 

COIN operations are hard to sustain. The effort requires a firm political 

19 

1 ‘‘The U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual’’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), (republication of: Headquarters, Department of the Army, ‘‘FM 3–24: Counterinsurgency’’), p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 43. 

3 Ibid., p. 23. 

4Seth Jones, ‘‘Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan,’’ (Washington, DC: RAND, 2008), p. 10. 

5The financial costs are also likely to be large. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war in Afghanistan cost $34 billion in FY 2008, and projects that this figure will increase in coming years: Amy Belasco, ‘‘The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and other Global War on 

Terror Operations Since 9/11’’ (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, October 15, 

2008), RL33110, pp. 6, 19. 6 Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson, ‘‘Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in 

Counterinsurgency Wars,’’ International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 67–106 

at 69–71. For all counterinsurgencies since 1900, they find a government success rate of 40 percent; hence the odds have been getting worse over time. See also Ivan Arreguin-Toft, ‘‘How the 

Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,’’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 

93–128, and Arreguin-Toft, ‘‘How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,’’ (New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), which finds ‘‘strong actors’’ winning only 45 of 100 

asymmetric conflicts between 1950 and 1998: p. 97. 

will and substantial patience by the government, its people, and the countries providing support.1

Insurgencies are protracted by nature. Thus, COIN operations always demand considerable expenditures of time and resources.2

A proper analysis of troop requirements for Afghanistan is a more complex undertaking than can be provided here; GEN McChrystal’s staff is now producing such 

an assessment. But it is safe to say that most counterinsurgency theorists see COIN 

as an extremely labor-intensive form of warfare. In fact, the doctrinal norm for troop 

requirements in COIN is around 1 security provider per 50 civilians in the population to be secured.3 If one simply applies the doctrinal rule of thumb to Afghanistan, a state of roughly 32 million people, this crude yardstick would imply a need 

for perhaps 640,000 trained soldiers and police. Many argue that the doctrinal density need not be maintained across the entire country; it is widely believed, for example, that the north and west of the country are safer than the south and east. 

And of course a sound estimate of resource needs would require a much more discriminating mapping of troop needs to specific tasks in specific places. But it is clear 

that COIN in a country the size of Afghanistan can be very demanding of resources. 

Ideally most of these security forces would be indigenous Afghans rather than foreign troops. But some will clearly have to be Americans and other foreigners. And 

the commitment could be very long: Successful counterinsurgency campaigns commonly last 10 to 15 years or more.4

At least initially, the casualties to be expected from such an effort would also be 

heavy. In Iraq, a force of 130,000–160,000 U.S. troops averaged over 90 fatalities 

per month during the most intense period of COIN operations in January to August 

of 2007. Depending on the troop strength ultimately deployed and the intensity of 

the fighting, it is not implausible to suppose that casualty rates in Afghanistan 

could approach such levels. And it may well take longer for those losses to reverse 

and decline in Afghanistan than in Iraq; it would be prudent to assume that fatality 

rates in excess of 50 per month could persist for many months, if not years.5

THE ODDS OF SUCCESS

The aggregate historical record of great power success in COIN is not encouraging. The political scientists, Jason Lyall of Princeton and Isaiah Wilson of West 

Point, estimate that since 1975, the success rate of all government counterinsurgents has been just 25 percent.6 Given the costs of trying, this average offers a 

sobering context. 

Nor are current conditions in Afghanistan encouraging. Orthodox COIN theory 

puts host government legitimacy at the heart of success and failure, yet the Karzai 

government is widely seen as corrupt, inept, inefficient, and en route to losing the 

support of its population. The recent election’s results are not yet clear, but widely 

reported electoral fraud could easily reduce Karzai’s perceived legitimacy if he is 

ultimately declared the winner of a disputed contest. Economic and political development prospects are constrained by Afghanistan’s forbidding geography, tribal 

social structure, lack of infrastructure, and political history. The Taliban enjoy a 

cross-border sanctuary in the FATA that the Pakistani Government seems unwilling 

or unable to eliminate. Violence is up, perceptions of security are down, casualties 

are increasing, and the Taliban is widely believed to be increasing its freedom of 

movement and access to the population. And only some of these challenges are 

things Americans can affect directly: The United States can increase security by deVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
20 

7On the vetting and development process, see ‘‘U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency 

Field Manual,’’ pp. xlvii-xlviii. 8 In particular, the doctrine presumes an ideological struggle for the allegiance of an uncommitted public, rather than a highly mobilized ethnosectarian war of identity, as Iraq has been: 

for details, see Jeffrey Isaac, editor, ‘‘The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field 

Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis,’’ Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2 (June 

2008), pp. 347–50 at 349–50. 9See Andrew Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli, ‘‘Is the Chance of Success in Afghanistan 

Better Than a Coin Toss?’’ Foreignpolicy.com [accessed on August 27, 2009 at http://www. 

foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/27/islthelchanceloflsuccesslinlafghanistanlbetterl 

thanlalcoinltoss]. 10See, for example, ‘‘U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual,’’ pp. 7–8, 25, 

35, 37–39, 47 (e.g., paragraph 1–147: ‘‘Support the Host Nation’’). 11For a more extensive discussion, see, esp., Daniel Byman, ‘‘Friends Like These: Counterinsurgency and the War on Terrorism,’’ International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 

79–115. 

ploying more U.S. troops, it can bolster the economy to a degree with U.S. economic 

aid, and it can pressure Karzai to reform, but only the Afghans can create a legitimate government, and only the Pakistanis can shut down the safe havens in the 

FATA. Americans can influence these choices to a much greater degree than we 

have so far. But the United States cannot itself guarantee Afghan reform, and to 

date neither ally seems ready to do what it takes. 

But this does not make failure inevitable. The poor track record for COIN overall 

is due partly to the inherent difficulty of the undertaking, but most analysts also 

believe that many counterinsurgents have made poor strategic choices, and that 

these poor choices have been major contributors to failure. Strategies and methods 

can be changed—it is possible to learn from experience. And the U.S. military has 

learned a great deal about COIN in recent years. 

The new Army/Marine counterinsurgency doctrine, for example, is the product of 

a nearly unprecedented degree of internal debate, external vetting, historical analysis, and direct recent combat experience.7 None of this makes it a magic silver bullet for COIN success, and in important ways it makes underlying assumptions about 

the nature of counterinsurgency that made it an awkward fit for conditions in Iraq.8

But those same assumptions make it a much stronger fit for Afghanistan, which is 

precisely the kind of war the manual was built around. And there is some, albeit 

preliminary, empirical evidence to suggest that the new doctrine’s emphasis on population security as opposed to insurgent attrition has been substantially more successful historically than more-violent, attrition-oriented strategies: Andrew Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli, for example, estimate that since World War II, COIN 

strategies emphasizing population security over insurgent attrition have succeeded 

almost 70 percent of the time.9

One of the doctrine’s remaining shortcomings, moreover, is a problem the Obama 

administration seems likely to address. The published doctrine assumes a very close 

alignment of interests between the United States and its host government: The 

manual assumes that the U.S. role is to enable the host to realize its own best interest by making itself into a legitimate defender of all its citizens’ well-being, and that 

the host will see it this way, too.10 In many ways, the Bush administration shared 

this view, offering assistance with few conditions or strings on the assumption that 

developing its allies’ capacity for good governance was all that would be needed to 

realize better performance. In fact, though, many allies—notably including Hamid 

Karzai and Pervez Musharraf, have had much more complex interests that have led 

them to misdirect U.S. aid and fall far short of U.S. hopes for their popular legitimacy. Some students of counterinsurgency have thus emphasized the need for 

conditionality in outside assistance to reduce this problem of moral hazard: The U.S. 

should not assume that allies share all its interests, and Americans should impose 

conditions, and combine carrots with sticks in order to push reluctant hosts toward 

behavior that could better realize U.S. interests in their broader legitimacy and 

thereby damp insurgencies.11 The Obama administration has made it very clear 

that they intend to combine bigger carrots with real sticks in the form of prospective 

aid withdrawals should the recipients fail to adopt needed reforms. This is an 

important step forward in competing for hearts and minds via effective host 

governance. 

The U.S. military forces that implement this doctrine are also much improved 

over their ancestors in Vietnam, or even their immediate predecessors in Iraq in 

2003–2004—and they are vastly superior in training, equipment, and doctrine to the 

Soviet military that failed in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Soviet methods in the 1980s 

made lavish use of indiscriminate firepower that created enemies much faster than 

it killed insurgents. Soviet troops, moreover, were so poorly trained and motivated 

21 

12On Soviet methods in Afghanistan, see, e.g., Lester Grau, ‘‘The Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan’’ (New York: Routledge, 1998), 2nd ed.; Gregory 

Feifer, ‘‘The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan’’ (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). 

that their commanders were often forced to use elite commando units to carry out 

routine missions; regular Soviet infantry often could not be relied upon to do much 

more than passive garrison duty. And Soviet equipment was almost entirely 

designed for major warfare against NATO in central Europe—the Soviets never 

made a systematic decision to reequip for counterinsurgency.12 By contrast, the U.S. 

military of 2009 has adapted into an unusually proficient counterinsurgency force. 

It did not begin the war this way, but hard experience in Iraq, coupled with an 

almost preclusive training emphasis on COIN since the early years of the Iraq war, 

a new doctrine with a heavy focus on the population-defense methods that have 

proven most effective historically, and systematic reequipment with new mineresistant armored vehicles and other ground-force equipment designed for counterinsurgency has produced a vastly more effective military for this mission than the 

Soviets ever fielded. 

Perhaps most important, the United States is blessed with deeply flawed enemies 

in Afghanistan. Afghans know the Taliban; they know what life was like under their 

rule. And polling has consistently suggested that few Afghans want to return to the 

medieval theocracy they endured before. Most Afghans want education for their 

daughters; they want access to media and ideas from abroad; they want freedom 

from thugs enforcing fundamentalism for all under the aegis of a Ministry for the 

Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Of course, these preferences are secondary to the need for security. And many are secondary to the desire for basic services such as courts free of corruption or police who enforce the laws without 

demanding bribes first. But because most Afghans oppose Taliban rule, the United 

States and its allies enjoy a strong presumption in favor of the Afghan Government 

as long as that government can be made to provide at least basic services competently. The Taliban face an inherently uphill battle to secure compliance with 

their policies that even a modestly proficient government does not. And in a struggle 

for hearts and minds this is an important advantage. 

The Taliban, moreover, are far from a unified opposition group. In fact, to refer 

to the opposition in Afghanistan via a singular noun is in many ways a misnomer. 

By contrast with the Viet Cong of 1964, for example, where a common ideology 

bound the leadership together and linked it to its fighters, the neo-Taliban of 2009 

are a much looser, much more heterogeneous, much more divided coalition of often 

fractious and very independent actors. There is a hard core of committed Islamist 

ideologues, centered on Mullah Omar and based in Quetta. But by all accounts 

much of the Taliban’s actual combat strength is provided by an array of warlords 

and other factions with often much more secular motivations, who side with the 

Taliban for reasons of profit, prestige, or convenience, and who may or may not follow orders from the Quetta Shura leadership. Americans often lament the challenges to unity of effort that flow from a divided NATO command structure, but the 

Taliban face difficulties on this score at least as severe and potentially much worse: 

No NATO member is going to change sides and fight for the Taliban, but the 

Taliban need to be constantly alert lest one or more of their component factions 

leave the alliance for the government side. And this makes it difficult for the 

Taliban to mount large-scale, coordinated offensives of the kind that would be needed to conquer a defended city, for example—such efforts would be hard for any one 

faction or any one commander to accomplish without closely coordinated assistance 

from others, yet such coordination can be hard to achieve in such a decentralized, 

factionalized leadership structure. 

The Taliban also face major constraints in extending their influence beyond their 

ethnic base in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban is an overwhelmingly 

Pashtun movement. Yet Pashtuns make up less than 45 percent of Afghanistan’s 

population overall, and constitute only a small fraction of the population outside the 

south and east. Afghanistan is not primarily an ethnosectarian war of identity, as 

Iraq has been—most Taliban are Pashtuns, but most Pashtuns are not Taliban (in 

fact the government is itself headed by a Pashtun in President Hamid Karzai). 

Afghanistan is a war fought over the Taliban’s ideology for governing, not the hope 

for a Pashtun government. But whereas the government has members from many 

ethnic groups and a presumptive claim to the loyalty of all citizens, the Taliban has 

a much more exclusivist identity and is especially unpopular and unwelcome outside 

its geographic ethnic base. This in turn will make it harder for them to conquer the 

north and west of the country, and acts as a limiter on their expansion in the near 

term. This is not to say that the north or west of Afghanistan are permanently or 

inherently secure; on the contrary, recent trends there are worrisome, and even 

22 

13See, e.g., Olivier Roy, ‘‘Islam and the Resistance in Afghanistan’’ (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1990), pp. 171, 176. 14For estimates of Taliban combatant strength, see David Kilcullen, ‘‘The Accidental Guerilla: 

Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One’’ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 

pp. 48–49; Antonio Giustozzi, ‘‘Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in 

Afghanistan’’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 33, 35, 68. 

these parts of the country will eventually require attention to stabilize. But the 

Taliban’s Pashtun ethnic identity makes it harder for them to expand out of the 

south and east, and this in turn buys time and reduces resource requirements for 

effective counterinsurgency nationally. (It is worth noting that even in their first 

rule, the Taliban never completely secured the north—it was the unconquered 

‘‘Northern Alliance’s’’ hold over contiguous territory in that part of Afghanistan that 

provided allies, a base, and a jumpoff point for the American Special Forces who 

teamed with them to topple the Taliban in 2001.) 

Finally, by all accounts the enemy in Afghanistan today is much less numerous 

than that faced by the Soviets, for example, in the late 1980s. Intelligence estimates 

on insurgents’ order of battle are always imprecise and uncertain. But most sources 

suggest that the Mujaheddin opposing the Soviets by the late 1980s numbered 

around 150,000 armed combatants.13 After 1986, these guerillas were also equipped 

with increasingly sophisticated Western-supplied arms, and especially shoulder-fired 

precision guided antiaircraft missiles. By contrast, the Taliban today are usually assessed at a strength of 20–40,000 fighters, of whom only around one-fourth are fulltime combatants, and who have to date deployed little or no precision weaponry.14

The size of the insurgent force is not necessarily the most important variable in 

COIN, but against the commonplace assumption that the Soviet experience will be 

America’s fate in Afghanistan, we must keep in mind that the situation the United 

States faces is less dire in important respects—including the strength of the insurgent enemy. 

ASSESSMENT

Withdrawal advocates certainly have a case. The stakes are not unlimited. The 

costs of pursuing them are high. And there is no guarantee that even a high-cost 

pursuit of COIN in Afghanistan will succeed given the inherent difficulties of the 

undertaking and the particular challenges of this theater in 2009. 

But while success is not guaranteed, neither is failure. Some governments succeed 

in COIN, and the familiar comparisons of today with the Soviets in Afghanistan or 

the United States in Vietnam pit apples against oranges: In 2009, the U.S. military 

is much more proficient, and the Taliban insurgency much less so, than their forebears. Great powers do not always fail in COIN; the United States is an unusually 

experienced counterinsurgent force today; the Taliban have serious problems of their 

own; and astute strategic choices can make an important difference. This combination gives the United States an important possibility for successful counterinsurgency. 

Moreover, U.S. withdrawal poses important risks, too—and especially, it could 

easily cause an Afghan Government collapse with potentially serious consequences 

for U.S. security. The Taliban’s weaknesses make it hard for them to overthrow a 

U.S.-supported government while large Western military forces defend it. But without those Western troops, the Afghan state would offer a much easier target. Even 

with over 50,000 Western troops in its defense, the Karzai government has proven 

unable to contain Taliban influence and prevent insurgents from expanding their 

presence; if abandoned to its fate the government would surely fare much worse. 

Nor would an orphaned Karzai regime be in any position to negotiate a compromise 

settlement that could deny the Taliban full control: With outright victory within 

their grasp, it is hard to see why the Taliban would settle for anything less than 

a complete restoration. 

A Taliban restoration would put the resources of a state at their disposal. Even 

the resources of a weak state would enable a major increase in funding, freedom 

of operation, training opportunities, planning capacity, recruitment potential, and 

military staging, refitting, reconstitution and resupply for cross-border operations. 

The result could afford al-Qaeda with an improved sanctuary for attacking the 

United States. But even if it did not, it would almost certainly afford Pashtun militants and their allies in Pakistan with a massive sanctuary for destabilizing the 

regime in Islamabad, and thereby create a major increase in the threat to the Pakistani Government and the security of its nuclear arsenal. Even without a state 

haven in Afghanistan, Pakistani insurgents might ultimately topple the government 

in Islamabad, but with the additional resources of an openly sympathetic state 

across the Durand Line this threat is even more dangerous. And this threat conVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
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15 John Mueller, ‘‘Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them’’ (New York: Free Press, 2006); idem, ‘‘How Dangerous are the Taliban? Why Afghanistan is the Wrong War,’’ ForeignAffairs.com, April 15, 

2009; for a debate on this issue, see Paul Pillar, Fawaz Gerges, Jessica Stern, James Fallows, 

and John Mueller, ‘‘Are We Safe Yet?’’ ForeignAffairs.com, September 7, 2006. 16See Ron Susskind, ‘‘The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11’’ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). Susskind argues that Vice President 

Cheney held that any risk of a nuclear attack greater than one percent should be treated as 

a certainty for purposes of U.S. policy. 17On the death rate for 45–54 year olds, see M.P. Heron, D.L. Hoyert, J.Q. Xu, C. Scott, and 

B. Tejada-Vera, ‘‘Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2006,’’ National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 56, 

No. 16 (2008), Table 1; on the rate of life insurance ownership among Americans, see Anna 

Sachko Gandolfi and Laurence Miners, ‘‘Gender-Based Differences in Life Insurance Ownership,’’ The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 63, No. 4 (1996), pp. 683–693 at 691. 

stitutes one of the few really plausible pathways by which al-Qaeda could obtain a 

useable nuclear weapon. 

This danger is real, but it is not unlimited and should not be exaggerated. For 

a U.S. withdrawal to result in a nuclear al-Qaeda would require a chain of multiple 

intervening events: A Taliban restoration in Kabul, collapse of secular government 

in Islamabad, and loss of control over the Pakistani nuclear arsenal (or deliberate 

transfer of weapons by sympathetic Pakistanis). None of these events are certainties, and the compound probability is inherently lower than the odds of any one 

step taken alone. Though these odds are hard to estimate, analysts such as John 

Mueller make a persuasive case that terrorists are more likely to fail in their efforts 

to obtain nuclear weapons than they are to succeed, and the series of setbacks 

needed for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to yield a useable al-Qaeda nuclear 

capability probably implies a compound likelihood that is low in absolute terms.15

But U.S. withdrawal increases all the probabilities at each stage. And the consequences for U.S. security if the chain does play itself out are very severe. Unlike 

the Soviet Union in the cold war (or even contemporary states such as Iran), 

al-Qaeda may be much less susceptible to deterrence, and considerably more likely 

to use a nuclear weapon if they acquire it. One need not accept ‘‘one percent doctrines’’ or other extremist versions of nuclear threat-mongering to be concerned with 

the consequences of a potential al-Qaeda nuclear capability.16 Nor does it resolve 

the issue simply to find that al-Qaeda is ‘‘unlikely’’ to acquire nuclear weapons even 

if the Karzai government falls. When the stakes are high, even low probabilities of 

true disasters can be too high to accept: Most Americans buy life insurance in a society in which the risk of death in a given year is less than one-half of one percent 

for 45–54-year-olds; it is clearly not unreasonable to consider accepting costs to 

address low-probability events.17 If a nuclear al-Qaeda were impossible or virtually 

so, then the prospect could simply be ignored. But otherwise the issue inevitably 

comes back to a difficult value judgment on risk tolerance. This is not a new problem. After all, a central feature of U.S. security policy throughout the cold war was 

America’s willingness to expend large resources to reduce the odds of unlikely 

events: A Soviet bolt-from-the-blue nuclear strike was surely never very likely, but 

the consequences if it ever did happen would have been so severe that the nation 

accepted huge costs to reduce the odds of such a disaster from low to very low. 

Americans have long debated whether this judgment was wise. But there is considerable precedent for American governments, of both parties, displaying enough concern with unlikely but dangerous scenarios to expend great effort to reduce the 

odds. 

The net result is thus a difficult value judgment between unattractive alternatives, rather than a clear cut, open-and-shut case on analytical grounds. In this 

context, analysis can exclude certain popular but overstated positions: In fact, COIN 

in Afghanistan is not hopeless; the United States is not without important interests 

in the conflict; to secure these interests does not require a modern, centralized, 

Westernized Switzerland of the Hindu Kush; conversely, success is not guaranteed 

if only we are resolute; U.S. interests in Afghanistan are not unlimited; and the 

most important U.S. interests in the conflict are indirect and concern Pakistan more 

than Afghanistan per se. Analysis can also establish that the likely costs of pursuing COIN success will be high, and it can illuminate the causal pathways by 

which different outcomes can affect U.S. interests in general, or the danger of a 

nuclear al-Qaeda in particular. But with important costs and risks on both sides of 

the ledger, the answer for how much cost is worth bearing for what reduction in 

risk is ultimately a value judgment rather than an analytical finding. This is not 

a judgment on the value of American lives or the moral worthiness of sacrifice or 

resolve. Either course here involves risks to American lives—a choice to withdraw 

is neither more nor less humanitarian, neither more nor less respectful of sacrifice 

24 

or service or others’ suffering, than the opposite. Rather, the judgment here is 

between accepting greater casualties and sacrifices in the nearer term to reduce 

some probability of higher casualties and sacrifices in the longer term. For me, this 

balance is a close call but ultimately favors the waging of war in Afghanistan. But 

reasonable people can differ on such judgments. Perhaps the most important conclusion is instead that the choice is unavoidably hard: What analysis can show is that 

there is no course open to us that is without important downsides—there is no easy 

way out of Afghanistan for the United States in 2009. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Biddle. Very important and competent summary of the challenge, and we’ll come back 

to it. 

Rory Stewart, thank you again for being here. I failed to mention 

your wonderful book that I enjoyed, ‘‘The Places In Between.’’ And 

we look forward to your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF RORY STEWART, DIRECTOR, CARR CENTER 

ON HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MA 

Mr. STEWART. Thank you all very, very much—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you pull the mike, and make sure—— 

Mr. STEWART. Thank you all very much, indeed, for having me. 

One of the bewildering elements in trying to develop policy for 

Afghanistan at the moment is the very large number of justifications which are being put forward at the moment for our presence, 

so that there are people, recently, who have been justifying our 

presence in terms of elections, in terms of human rights; some who 

justify our presence in terms of the credibility of the United States, 

the notion that we can’t be seen to be defeated, even if we can’t 

win. 

The administration’s policy, however, focusing on counterterrorism, and I just want to very quickly address Dr. Biddle’s statements about Pakistan. 

It’s very dangerous, I think, to mount an argument or justification for our presence in Afghanistan based on our interests in 

Pakistan. The relationships between those two countries is, at best, 

as Dr. Biddle says, indirect. It’s far from clear that the most costeffective way of deploying United States resources to address Pakistan is for an attempt to build a state in Afghanistan or defeat the 

Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, if we had more time, you could 

make a number of arguments why United States operations in 

Afghanistan may, in fact, contribute to the destabilization of 

Pakistan. 

In reality, the attempt to create an Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy seems to me a little bit as though we’ve gone into a room with 

an angry cat and a tiger—the angry cat being Afghanistan and the 

tiger being Pakistan—and we’re beating the cat. And when you 

say, ‘‘Why are you beating the cat?’’ the answer is, ‘‘Oh, it’s a cat/ 

tiger strategy. It’s an Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy.’’ But, in fact, 

you’re beating the cat because you don’t know what to do about the 

tiger. And the connection between those two countries is somewhat 

indirect. 

So, to come to the administration’s policy, a very minimal target 

has been set of counterterrorism, and a very maximal definition of 

how to achieve it. In other words, the administration is suggesting 

25 

that the way to achieve the counterterrorist objective, is through 

the building of a state and through a counterinsurgency campaign. 

I believe the problem with this theory lies in the fact that neither 

of those two means are achievable. We are neither going to be able 

to defeat the Taliban through a counterinsurgency campaign, nor 

is the United States or its allies in a position to build a legitimate, 

effective, stabile Afghan state. The reason for believing this relies 

on an understanding of the lack of capacity in the Afghan Government, demonstrated most dramatically recently, of course, through 

the elections, but demonstrated also through the lack of progress 

over the last 7 years. Our counterinsurgency policy, based, as Dr. 

Nagl said, on a notion of ‘‘clear, hold, build,’’ unfortunately owes too 

much to an inaccurate analogy with Iraq. Iraq has, in its government in Baghdad, mass political parties behind al-Maliki. The 

Sunni tribes who’ve been driven out of many areas of Baghdad; 

they felt under pressure, they were coming to us, asking for assistance. Essentially, Iraqi politics drove the success of the surge. 

Those political forces are lacking in Afghanistan. In addition, it’s 

a much more rural country. It is completely implausible that, in a 

country about the size of Texas, with 20,000 villages, we would be 

able, in effect, to garrison the country; in other words, to clear and 

hold it. Even were we to be able to clear and hold it, the build element is extremely implausible. There simply are not the resources 

within the Afghan Government or the Afghan state to imagine that 

we would be able, in any realistic timeframe, to create the kind of 

economic growth, governance, or stability which this project 

imagines. 

What, then, should we do? Well, I believe we should try to adopt 

a much more modest position. The danger facing, I believe, the 

United States and the international community, at the moment, is 

that we’re going to lurch from troop increases to withdrawal, from 

engagement to isolation. What worries me most about the increase 

in troops is that it’s going to create an unsustainable footprint on 

the ground. We already are in a problem with public opinion. Our 

commitment, our will, and our resources are limited. Afghan history suggests that the very worst thing you can do for a country 

like Afghanistan, is to attempt to go from electroshock therapy 

with huge amounts of resources one year to none the next year. 

And yet, I fear, that’s where we may end up being in 5 or 10 years 

if we insist on these kinds of immoderate increases. A light footprint is a more sustainable footprint. That footprint should focus 

on just two things: a very narrow counterterrorist objective, which 

does not require the troop deployments that we’re talking about, 

and the humanitarian objective of contributing, in the way that we 

do in many other countries, to making Afghanistan more stable, 

prosperous, and humane in 30 years’ time than it is today. 

So, a patient, tolerant, long-term relationship with the international community, a sustainable presence, which requires a light 

footprint. 

Thank you all very much, indeed. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stewart follows:] 

26 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RORY STEWART, DIRECTOR, CARR CENTER ON HUMAN

RIGHTS POLICY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MA 

The administration’s new policy on Afghanistan has a very narrow focus— 

counterterrorism—and a very broad definition of how to achieve it: No less than the 

fixing of the Afghan state and defeating the Taliban insurgency. President Obama 

has presented this in a formal argument. The final goal in the region is ‘‘to disrupt, 

dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their 

return to either country in the future.’’ A necessary condition of the defeat of 

al-Qaeda is the defeat of the Taliban because ‘‘if the Afghan Government falls to 

the Taliban, that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as 

many of our people as they possibly can.’’ He, therefore, proposes a counterinsurgency strategy, which includes the deployment of more troops ‘‘to take the fight to 

the Taliban in the south and the east’’ and a more comprehensive approach, which 

aims to ‘‘promote a more capable and accountable Afghan Government . . . advance 

security, opportunity, and justice . . . develop an economy that isn’t dominated by 

illicit drugs.’’ 

This policy is rooted in the preset categories of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, state-building and economic development. These categories are so closely 

linked that policymakers appear to put them in almost any sequence or combination. You need to defeat the Taliban to build a state and you need to build a state 

to defeat the Taliban. There cannot be security without development, or development without security. If you have the Taliban you have terrorists, if you don’t have 

development you have terrorists, and as Obama informed the New Yorker, ‘‘If you 

have ungoverned spaces, they become havens for terrorists.’’ These connections are 

global: In Obama’s words, ‘‘our security and prosperity depend on the security and 

prosperity of others.’’ Indeed, at times it seems that all these activities—building a 

state, defeating the Taliban, defeating al-Qaeda, and eliminating poverty—are the 

same activity. The new U.S. Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency doctrine 

sounds like a World Bank policy document, replete with commitments to the rule 

of law, economic development, governance, state-building, and human rights. In 

Obama’s words, ‘‘security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project.’’ 

The fundamental problem with the strategy is that it is trying to do the impossible. It is highly unlikely that the United States will be able either to build an 

effective, legitimate state or to defeat a Taliban insurgency. It needs to find another 

way of protecting the United States against terrorist attack. 

We claim to be engaged in a neutral, technocratic, universal project of ‘‘statebuilding’’ but we don’t know exactly what that means. Those who see Afghanistan 

as reverting to the Taliban or becoming a traditional autocratic state are referring 

to situations that existed there in 1972 and 1994. But the international community’s 

ambition appears to be to create something that has not existed before. Obama calls 

it ‘‘a more capable and accountable Afghan Government.’’ The United States, the 

United Kingdom, and their allies agreed unanimously at the NATO 60th anniversary summit in April to create ‘‘a stronger democratic state’’ in Afghanistan. 

Whatever this state is, it could come only from an Afghan national movement, not 

as a gift from foreigners. As we have seen over the last 7 years—and most starkly 

in the recent election—Afghan Government is certainly unlikely in the next 5 years 

to reflect U.S. ideas of legitimacy, legal process, civil service function, rights, economic behavior or even broader international assumption about development. Even 

an aim as modest as ‘‘stability’’ is highly ambitious. Afghanistan is a mountainous 

country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant 

ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values. A centralizing constitution may 

well be combined with de facto local independence and Afghanistan is starting from 

a very low base: 30 years of investment might allow its army, police, civil service 

and economy to approach the levels of Pakistan. And Pakistan clearly still does not 

have whatever mixture of state-formation, legitimacy, accountability or effectiveness 

that is apparently necessary to prevent the Taliban and al-Qaeda from operating. 

Nor is it clear that even if stronger central institutions were to emerge that they 

would assist U.S. national security objectives. Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, 

not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more 

assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts U.S. operations. 

From a narrow (and harsh) U.S. national security perspective, a poor failed state 

could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening 

than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan. 

Second, it is highly unlikely that the United States will be able to defeat the 

Taliban in Afghanistan. The ingredients of successful counterinsurgency campaigns 

in places like Malaya—control of the borders, large numbers of troops in relation 

27 

to the population, strong support from the majority ethnic groups, a long-term commitment and a credible local government—are lacking in Afghanistan. 

Nor is Afghanistan, comparable to Iraq. There are no mass political parties in 

Afghanistan and the Kabul government lacks the base, strength or legitimacy of the 

Baghdad government. Afghan tribal groups lack the coherence of the Iraqi Sunni 

tribes and their relation to state structures: They are not being driven out of neighbourhood after neighbourhood and they do not have the same relation to the Taliban 

that the Sunni groups had to ‘‘al-Qaeda in Iraq.’’ Afghans are weary of the war but 

the Afghan chiefs are not approaching us, seeking a deal. Since the political players 

and state structures in Afghanistan are much more fragile than those in Iraq, they 

are less likely to play a strong role in ending the insurgency. 

A strategy of ‘‘clear, hold, and build’’ seems particularly implausible in Afghanistan. In Iraq—which is a much more urban society—it was possible for U.S. and 

Iraqi security forces around Baghdad to ‘‘clear and hold’’ ground because the geographical area was relatively limited. Afghanistan has an overwhelmingly rural population scattered through an inhospitable terrain, the size of Texas and encompassing perhaps thousand villages. Even 100,000 U.S. troops would be far too few 

to hold or garrison even a fraction of such a vast area. In Iraq, a tradition of strong 

central government and a much more educated population with an indigenous 

resource base at least allowed for the possibility of ‘‘building,’’ following the ‘‘clear 

and hold.’’ In Afghanistan the lack of the most basic education and capacity and will 

in governmental structures (and even in the private sector) means that very little 

of substance could be ‘‘built’’ during the time that the United States and its allies 

attempted to ‘‘hold.’’ 

Meanwhile, the Taliban can exploit the ideology of religious resistance that the 

West deliberately fostered in the 1980s to defeat the Russians. They can portray the 

Kabul government as U.S. slaves, NATO as an infidel occupying force and their own 

insurgency as a jihad. Their complaints about corruption, human rights abuses, and 

aerial bombardments appeal to a large audience. They are attracting Afghans to 

their rural courts by giving quicker and more predictable rulings than government 

judges. They can now easily exploit the corrupt practices in the election to portray 

the Kabul government as fraudulent and illegitimate. But our inability to inflict a 

final defeat on the Taliban may not be as dangerous as policymakers imagine. 

If the administration cannot create an effective, stable, legitimate state and cannot defeat a Taliban insurgency it must find another method of protecting U.S. 

national security and fulfilling our obligations to the Afghan people. And if it is 

impossible to build a state or defeat the Taliban, there is no point in deploying a 

hundred thousand troops or spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan. 

The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the 

current level of 90,000 to far fewer—perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: Development and counterterrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state or winning a 

counterinsurgency campaign. A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from 

state-building should not mean total withdrawal: Good projects could continue to be 

undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural 

development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. Even a light 

U.S. presence could continue to allow for aggressive operations against al-Qaeda terrorists, in Afghanistan, who plan to attack the United States. The United States has 

successfully prevent al-Qaeda from reestablishing itself since 2001 (though the 

result has only been to move bin Laden across the border). The U.S. military could 

also (with other forms of assistance) support the Afghan military to prevent the 

Taliban from seizing a city or taking over the country. 

These twin objectives will require a very long-term presence, as indeed is almost 

inevitable in a country which is as poor, as fragile and traumatized as Afghanistan 

(and which lacks the internal capacity at the moment to become independent of Foreign aid or control its territory). But a long-term presence will in turn mean a much 

lighter and more limited presence (if it is to retain U.S. domestic support). We 

should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the 

future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national 

unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 

years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the 

more negative. 

Such a policy can seem strained, unrealistic, counterintuitive, and unappealing. 

They appear to betray the hopes of Afghans who trusted us and to allow the Taliban 

to abuse district towns. No politician wants to be perceived to have underestimated, 

or failed to address, a terrorist threat; or to write off the ‘‘blood and treasure’’ that 

we have sunk into Afghanistan; or to admit defeat. Americans are particularly 

unwilling to believe that problems are insoluble; Obama’s motto is not ‘‘no we can’t’’; 

28 

soldiers are not trained to admit defeat or to say a mission is impossible. And to 

suggest that what worked in Iraq won’t work in Afghanistan requires a detailed 

knowledge of each country’s past, a bold analysis of the causes of development and 

a rigorous exposition of the differences, for which few have patience. 

The greatest risk of our inflated ambitions and fears, encapsulated in the current 

surge is that it will achieve the exact opposite of its intentions and in fact precipitate a total withdrawal. The heavier our footprint, and the more costly, the less we 

are likely to be able to sustain it. Public opinion is already turning against it. NATO 

allies are mostly staying in Afghanistan simply to please the United States and 

have little confidence in our objectives or our reasons. Contemporary political culture tends to encourage black and white solutions: Either we garrison or we 

abandon. 

While, I strongly oppose troop increases, I equally strongly oppose a total flight. 

We are currently in danger of lurching from troop increases to withdrawal and from 

engagement to isolation. We are threatening to provide instant electro-shock therapy followed by abandonment. This is the last thing Afghanistan needs. The international community should aim to provide a patient, tolerant long-term relationship 

with a country as poor and traumatized as Afghanistan. Judging by comparable 

countries in the developing world (and Afghanistan is very near the bottom of the 

U.N. Human Development index), making Afghanistan more stable, prosperous, and 

humane is a project which will take decades. It is a worthwhile project in the long 

term for us and for Afghans but we will only be able to sustain our presence if we 

massively reduce our investment and our ambitions and begin to approach Afghanistan more as we do other poor countries in the developing world. The best way of 

avoiding the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s—the familiar cycle of investment and 

abandonment which most Afghans expect and fear and which have contributed so 

much to instability and danger—is to husband and conserve our resources, limit our 

objectives to counterterrorism and humanitarian assistance, and work out how to 

work with fewer troops and less money over a longer period. In Afghanistan in the 

long term, less will be more. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart and—let me 

begin with this question. Is there not a distinction between counterterrorism and counterinsurgency? 

Dr. Nagl. 

Dr. NAGL. There is, Senator. Counterterrorism is a component of 

a counterinsurgency strategy. Counterterrorism focuses on the 

enemy, where counterinsurgency focuses correctly on protecting the 

people. So, in any effective counterinsurgency strategy, you will 

conduct counterterrorism as part of what you’re trying to do, but 

it is only a part and it’s—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Counterinsurgency is a more expansive strategy, 

is it not? 

Dr. NAGL. That is correct, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Biddle, do you agree with that? 

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Is it possible to wage a counterinsurgency and/ 

or a counterterrorist activity without it being a war? 

Dr. NAGL. Senator, by definition, a counterinsurgency campaign 

is an attempt to support a government that is afflicted by those 

who are illegally using force to overthrow the government or 

change its policies. So, counterinsurgency demands insurgence; 

insurgence makes it a war. 

The CHAIRMAN. Automatically? 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. You agree with that, Dr. Biddle? 

Dr. BIDDLE. I think, certainly, for the situation we see in Afghanistan, it’s important to regard it as a war, yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Stewart. 

29 

Mr. STEWART. I think this a very important question about to 

what extent defeating the Taliban is a necessary or sufficient part 

of protecting the United States against al-Qaeda attack. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, let’s come back, then, to, sort of, basics, 

here. If it is a war, you want to win it. Is that correct? 

Dr. NAGL. That is correct, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you’re going to deploy American troops and 

ask them to sacrifice their lives, it’s important that they do so with 

the notion that there’s a strategy to win. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. What does the counterinsurgency manual say is 

the number of troops needed in Afghanistan to win? 

Dr. NAGL. The counterinsurgency manual, based on historical 

records of previous counterinsurgency campaigns, suggests some 

600,000 counterinsurgents would be required to succeed in Afghanistan. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Biddle, you agree with that? 

Dr. BIDDLE. The figure in the counterinsurgency manual is a reasonable rule of thumb, but is a very crude rule of thumb. General 

McChrystal is in the process now of doing a much more detailed 

troop-to-task analysis that I trust will have a much stronger basis 

for a specific troop recommendation. If one is going to apply the 

doctrinal rule of thumb, the doctrinal rule of thumb in the manual 

is one trained, capable counterinsurgent per 50 members of the 

population to be defended, which implies a figure roughly in the 

neighborhood of what Dr. Nagl said, yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 troops. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, yes. I mean, among the complications here is 

that many people believe that the north and the west in Afghanistan, for example, is less threatened than the south and the east. 

And hence the need to—— 

The CHAIRMAN. It’s less threatened today. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Sorry? 

The CHAIRMAN. Today. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I actually think that that—— 

The CHAIRMAN. But, is it—— 

Dr. BIDDLE [continuing]. Assessment is seriously problematic, 

and that the north and the west today are in many ways—the best 

way to think about them is, they’re where the south and the east 

were in 2003, 2004. So, I share your concern. But, important in 

generating—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, the point is, if you’re going to think about 

this policy intelligently, you can’t just look at it today and say, 

‘‘Well, the west and the east, or the west and the north, are doing 

fine.’’ The presumption is, if 27 percent of the country was under 

Taliban a year or 2 ago, and now it’s 37 percent, that’s growing. 

So, you know, this troop relationship to what is necessary is really 

fundamental to the choices that we make about whether it is in our 

interest to fight a counterterrorist activity versus a full-fledged 

counter-—you know, counterinsurgency, and whether or not one, in 

fact, will allow the other. I mean, this is—really takes a lot of discussion, and it’s more than I’m going to get in the 7 minutes I 

have. But, you got to go down this trail. Do you need to have X 

30 

number of troops in order to provide sufficient security so the 

counterinsurgency can take hold? 

Yes. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir, I believe you do. The vast majority of those 

forces should be Afghans, not Americans, so I would like to see 

400,000 Afghan National Security Forces, more than double— 

roughly double what we were currently planning to build, and I believe that those forces, with minimal American assistance, advisers, air power, would be able to secure Afghanistan. I believe that 

that’s probably 5 years away. 

The CHAIRMAN. And what would be the expectation of the American people as we go forward, here, in terms of the cost that you 

would envision over that 5-year period? And with what level of, 

sort of, guarantee of success? 

Dr. NAGL. Senator, I believe that we should expect to spend, over 

the next 5 years of that effort, probably as much as we have spent 

in lives and dollars over the preceding 8 years. I feel that cost very 

deeply, as I know you do. But, I would point out that we have been 

spending that for 8 years in Afghanistan to date, and the situation 

is getting worse. We’ve tried the light-footprint counterterrorism 

option, and it has not succeeded. There is no reason to believe that 

it would get any better or any easier with the Taliban getting 

stronger. 

The CHAIRMAN. But, let me stop you there for a minute. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. You say ‘‘it has not succeeded.’’ Al-Qaeda is not 

in Afghanistan, is it? 

Dr. NAGL. To my knowledge, it is not, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the goal of the President is to prevent 

al-Qaeda from being in there and attacking the United States, 

correct? 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, that is one of the goals of the President. 

The CHAIRMAN. The second goal is to prevent the destabilization 

of Pakistan. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Those are the principal goals. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. I agree. 

The CHAIRMAN. We are doing better in Pakistan. 

Dr. NAGL. We are, yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. And there is no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

Dr. NAGL. That is correct, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. We just knocked out a major al-Qaeda figure in 

Somalia without 67,000 troops on the ground. In fact, we don’t 

have any American troops on the ground, except for the moment 

that they were there to do what they did. 

Dr. NAGL. Correct, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Does that tell us something about the potential 

of a lighter footprint in Afghanistan? 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, it tells us that you can conduct counterterrorism 

with a light footprint; you cannot conduct counterinsurgency with 

a light footprint, and—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Exactly the point I’m trying to—— 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

31 

The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. Get at. But, isn’t the President’s 

goal fundamentally counterterrorism, or is it linked to the counterinsurgency that is critical to preventing the destabilization? And is 

it, as Mr. Stewart has suggested, in fact critical to that destabilization? And he actually offered the notion that it might be possible 

that’s it creating more destabilization. Have we, in fact, thoroughly 

examined that? 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, we—I have, at least I believe—I do not claim to 

be an expert on Pakistan. I agree with Steve that the reason that 

counterterrorism will not work in Afghanistan, although it does in 

Somalia, is because of the presence of Pakistan next door to 

Afghanistan. Pakistan, I believe, is the key to the puzzle. Pakistan 

is America’s vital national interest. And I am convinced that American counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan 

have contributed to the more effective Pakistani counterinsurgency 

campaign. 

The CHAIRMAN. And let me make it clear. As I said in my opening comments, Pakistan is central, and I agree with that assessment. And I have—I’m not—you know, I haven’t determined that, 

in fact, the counterinsurgency component won’t be critical because 

of Taliban, but I think we have to examine this. I mean, this is 

fundamental to what we have to really come to some kind of firm 

conclusion on, because it is going to be critical to the numbers of 

troops and to the type of commitment that we make. 

Mr. Stewart, if you’d just comment quickly on this question of 

the destabilization, and then I want to turn to the other Senators. 

You asserted that it may be, in fact, that the presence of these 

troops is, in fact, a destabilizing, rather than a stabilizing, factor, 

and I want you to—— 

Mr. STEWART. Yes, I mean, I—— 

The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. That out. 

Mr. STEWART [continuing]. I think it’s destabilizing in two potential ways. One of them is, as Pakistan military and the Pakistan 

Government complains, it often involves this squeezing and pushing insurgents across the border into Pakistan. And second, it provides some of the material of ideological resistance to the United 

States within Pakistan that we’re perceived by the majority of the 

Pakistani population to be engaged in an occupation of Afghanistan. 

But, more importantly, I think that the strongest argument 

against this is that if it has some negative and positive effects, 

those are very minor compared to the real drivers of the problem 

in Pakistan. Pakistan will not stand or fall on Afghanistan. It’s 

about the Pakistani Government, it’s about the Pakistani military, 

it’s about the Pakistani economy and the Pakistani society. There 

may be some positive results, there may be some negative results. 

But, by and large, Afghanistan is far less important to the future 

of Pakistan than we’re suggesting. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the final question—and I apologize to my 

colleagues—Dr. Nagl, you helped write this field—this manual on 

counterinsurgency. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

32 

The CHAIRMAN. And General Petraeus adopted it, correct? So, 

this is the military’s current doctrine about troops needed for 

counterinsurgency. 

Dr. NAGL. Correct, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. So, when you say 500,000 to 600,000 in order to 

guarantee success, we’re not playing around with some sort of light 

figure, here. This is something you guys sort of settled on in a 

fairly rigid analysis. 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, it is—as Steve suggested, it is more of a rule of 

thumb than a guarantee. There are no guarantees in war. But, historically, successful counterinsurgency campaigns have relied on 

large numbers of troops on the ground to protect the population, 

particularly host-nation security forces. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, if we’re going to make the kind of decision 

we’re being called on to make, if I were President in this circumstance, if we’re studying the stakes the way we are, I want a 

guarantee. You know, Roosevelt took his guarantee, in a sense. 

Truman did. We were committed to that. And I—and as a former 

troop, let me tell you something, that’s one of the things that I 

missed the most back then. And I would want to make sure we 

have that for the troops today. 

So, you know, I’m looking to make the soundest decision we can 

with what’s necessary. I think the American people have to consider this, if that’s what it’s going to take to guarantee success. 

Senator Lugar. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Without oversimplifying the problem that you’ve all addressed, 

most Americans believe the United States entered into conflict in 

Afghanistan because of the presence of al-Qaeda training camps 

there that were believed to have played a direct role in the attacks 

on Washington and New York on 9/11. Now, the existence of such 

camps had been known before, and they had been attacked at least 

once during the previous administration. But, nevertheless, the 

camps were there, and there were demands by our Government 

that the Taliban, who were apparently, at least to us, running the 

country, ought not to protect those camps, and that the United 

States should be able to eliminate them. At the time, the Taliban 

resisted that idea, and, as a result, we went in with military force 

not only to enforce the closing of the camps, but also to involve ourselves in the governance of the country. 

Now, experts may have known more about the internal situation 

in Afghanistan than most of us or the American public, but, by and 

large, we discovered that the central government was very weak, 

and there were so-called ‘‘warlords,’’ or provincial governments, 

that for all intents and purposes were more meaningful for most 

citizens in many areas of the country. This situation existed in part 

because of transportation problems and other historical dilemmas. 

Now, as a result, it seems to me we’ve attempted to do a number 

of things; and you’ve talked about them today. We have had some 

success in rooting out at least most of the al-Qaeda that we know 

about, but, at the same time, we have not decided, or maybe even 

discussed, what our feelings ought to be with regard to the Taliban. 

Now, generally our feelings are negative. But, I offer an alternative thought—and I’ll ask you, Mr. Stewart, to comment first on 

33 

this. What if we were to discover, as some writers have discussed, 

that there are different degrees of Taliban, in terms of their antipathy to the United States or their responsibilities for Afghanistan— 

namely, some Taliban that we could deal with in a pragmatic way? 

And what if we rediscovered—we won’t call them ‘‘warlords,’’ but 

various authorities out in the hustings who, in fact, were doing 

some governance work, and doing it at least fairly efficiently, even 

if not democratically, and without the problems of people looking 

in and seeing that there was a degree of corruption or what have 

you? 

I’m just probing as to if, Mr. Stewart, your theory that by having 

a presence which becomes overwhelming, we create more problems 

for ourselves without having any real effect on Pakistan, is correct. 

If we had fewer people, and they were more politically adept in 

weaving together a governance of Afghanistan, and perhaps they 

said, ‘‘We understand that President Karzai may have some problems of personal or official corruption; maybe his brother does, too; 

but that seems to be fairly common in many governance positions 

all over the country.’’ We are probably not going to be able to cure 

this problem altogether as much as we might abhor it. After all, 

we say President Karzai is a national figure we ought to plan to 

work with, as we do with the other regional leaders, in addition to 

finding more partners such as the good Taliban or whoever else. 

Now, under those circumstances, is it conceivable that we could 

pull together a situation in which Afghanistan did have stable governance and thus posed less of a threat to its neighbors? This 

would give us options, which we may already have, of discovering 

that there may be Taliban in 30, 40, or 50 countries, depending 

upon the breadth of your imagination as to where they are, thus 

making apparent that Afghanistan is not the source of ‘‘al-Qaeda 

in all these nations.’’ The Taliban is not the objective; it is still people who are plotting to bomb Washington and New York City 

again, or to think of conspicuous terrorism that would give advantage to whoever doesn’t care for us in the world. 

Would you probe the politics of this situation as I’ve tried to 

describe it? 

Mr. STEWART. I think, Senator—I mean, you voice a very important point. The Taliban are clearly an extremely, often horrifying 

and unpleasant group. There are many things that we object to 

very strongly about the Taliban. Unfortunately, working in a country like Afghanistan, we need to have a vision of a better future, 

but we need to have quite a pragmatic and moderate path toward 

that future. Through brutal terms, ‘‘ought’’ implies ‘‘can.’’ We don’t 

have a moral obligation to do what we can’t do. So, that will really 

mean working in southern Afghanistan, particularly, trying to 

identify who the most powerful, effective, legitimate figures are in 

those areas. And some of those people may be associated with the 

Taliban, and some of those figures, as you suggest, Senator, are 

not, in fact, people who are of great concern to the United States. 

The majority of the people that we’re killing and fighting are 

semiliterate villagers who would be pressed to find the United 

States on a map. It also means, unfortunately, that we may have 

to make compromises with the more progressive members of the 

34 

provincial powerholders, which is another way of saying, in brutal 

terms, ‘‘the better warlords.’’ 

This doesn’t mean that we should be working with everybody, 

but, if we take the analogy of the Balkans, we are in a much, much 

better position now than we were in the Balkans 12 years ago. We 

worked in the Balkans with people who are now in The Hague. We 

did that on a deliberate strategy, knowing that things would improve, and that we weren’t going to work with those people forever. 

We did elections in the Balkans, which were very flawed in the 

early days and which have got better now. 

So, what I’d like to see, following on from what you’re talking 

about, Senator, is, first, not to get to hypnotized by the idea that 

these people are a critical threat to United States national security; 

second, that, although we can perhaps do less than we pretend, we 

can do more than we fear; and that if we had a genuine long-term 

vision for how to move forward, that accepted, as you said, that, 

fundamentally, the problems in Afghanistan are political problems, 

they’re problems that are better addressed by political offices, and 

there’s a real danger that a heavy military footprint will create 

parallel structures and undermine the sense of responsibility in the 

Afghan Government to address these problems themselves. 

Senator LUGAR. I appreciate the answer. My time is up. 

Many would say that the discussion I’ve suggested, and you’ve 

conducted with me, offers a strategy that compromises the usual 

tenets of American foreign policy. We are for human rights, we’re 

for democracy, we’re for doing it the right way in terms of elections, 

and all the rest of it. And it’s not that we’ve become obsessed with 

the thought that everybody else must follow us, but many would 

find it very disappointing for us to say, ‘‘Let us take a look at warlords who may not be quite so bad, but, nevertheless, may be effective,’’ or to say that, ‘‘As a matter of fact, Taliban, with all of their 

practices, are not exactly people we want in any governance in the 

United States, but there may be elements of that group that it 

would be pragmatic to work with.’’ It must be pointed out that 

we’re now talking, as the chairman has pointed out, about options 

involving hundreds of billions of dollars, which we don’t have in the 

United States—we’re borrowing this from other countries—to 

finance this war. We’re risking American troops, and talking about 

risking some more. These circumstances suggest that some unorthodox thinking may be required. 

And I appreciate your colloquy with me. I wish we had more time 

to visit along the panel. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Senator, the question of time is important 

here, and I’m going to consider, obviously, even, you know, recalling a panel, if necessary, if we think that there’s more to be discussed, because I think this has to be thoroughly vetted. It’s very 

difficult sometimes in these settings, but I’ve tried to do some of 

that in the roundtable manner that we’ve done. We’re going to continue this. I can promise people, it will be thorough. 

Senator Feingold. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Chairman, I really do want to thank you 

for holding this hearing on the alternative strategies to achieve our 

objectives in Afghanistan. 

35 

I want to thank the witnesses for agreeing to testify. 

There has not been adequate discussion regarding the significant 

risks associated with our current strategy in Afghanistan, or about 

the potential alternatives, but I think that’s begun to change in the 

last month. And actually a portion of the testimony and the hearing—of this hearing and the comments by these two Senators, I 

think, could represent something of a turning point with regard to 

this, as we look forward. 

My primary concern with our current strategy is that our massive military footprint may be breeding militancy in the region and 

could push militants into nuclear-armed Pakistan. That is why I 

have mentioned the need for a flexible timetable to drawdown our 

military presence in Afghanistan. 

The support of both the American and the Afghan people may 

well depend upon our clearly stating that we do not intend to 

occupy that country indefinitely. Indeed, recent polls have shown 

that 58 percent of Americans oppose the United States mission in 

Afghanistan, and 51 percent of Afghans want the United States 

forces to leave within 2 years. 

Now, I want to be clear, no one is talking today about abandoning Afghanistan. We are simply discussing the serious possibility that our massive military operations may be destabilizing the 

region. I happen to think the Taliban is thriving primarily due to 

poor governance. We must carefully evaluate whether, and to what 

extent, there is a military—a military—solution to that problem. 

Meanwhile, our top priority must be to develop the long-term strategy to keep pressure on al-Qaeda globally. 

And, you know, I was going to start off by asking what, essentially, Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar have already had you talk 

about, and that is that—whether or not military operations in 

Afghanistan may, in fact, be creating more militants in the region, 

and could be contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan. 

So, let me just ask Mr. Stewart the alternative—the opposite. 

How would you respond to critics of your proposal who argue that 

a smaller military presence would allow for increased Taliban 

influence in Afghanistan, and that that, in their argument, would 

actually destabilize Pakistan? 

Mr. STEWART. That’s very difficult. To start with, of course, this 

is a very, very unpredictable country. Nobody predicted the rise of 

the Taliban properly in 1994, 1995. Nobody predicted that President Najib would stay in power after the Soviet Union withdrew. 

So, I’m not going to stand here and say that we can predict it. 

There’s a significant risk that a reduction in a military footprint 

would mean that the Taliban could consolidate some of their holds, 

particularly in rural areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan. 

And we need to make a decision on that basis. We need to accept 

that risk. And we need to think about what we’re going to do with 

that risk. 

Personally, I think the Taliban is not in a position to capture a 

major city. They’re not in a position to take over the country. 

They’re not the Taliban of 1994. They no longer have powerful Pakistani military support or planes or artillery or tanks. They discredited themselves when they were in government. There’s a much 

36 

stronger opposition from the minority groups in the north and the 

center. They’re not in a situation of civil war. 

I believe, with United States support, financial support, primarily to the Afghan Army, and a light American military footprint, we should be able to prevent the Taliban from taking major 

cities in the country without too much problem. All right? 

Is this Taliban presence going to destabilize Pakistan? Well, for 

that we’d have to defer to the Pakistanis. But, my sense, coming 

from the Government of Pakistan, is that they do not see that as 

the primary threat to their country. They believe that they can contain and manage the situation in Afghanistan. As I say, Pakistan 

is a much, much larger country than Afghanistan; it is the tiger 

to the cat. What destabilizes Pakistan, of course, ranges all the 

way over to the Indian border, and includes very basic social-economic indicators in that country, and the movement of religion and 

ideology in that country. 

The presence of Afghanistan of some Taliban troops, I don’t think 

is likely to be the decisive factor in the collapse of Pakistan. 

Senator FEINGOLD. I really appreciate that answer. 

Dr. Biddle, if we were to pursue a middle-of-the-road option, 

where we reduced the size of our footprint but remain engaged, to 

support the Afghan security forces and then use our leverage to 

contain any outside support for the Taliban, do you believe that an 

outright defeat of the Afghan Government by the Taliban would be 

likely? 

Dr. BIDDLE. I think there are a variety of middle-way options 

that are attractive. The trouble is, they all have shortcomings, militarily, that I don’t think have been adequately discussed. 

One of the them, for example, a shift in U.S. emphasis from combat to training and advising, if it’s done without a substantial troop 

strength to do the training and advising and mentoring and partnering, runs the substantial risk of allowing the Taliban to gain 

control of the country while we’re in the process of training, and 

it also undermines the efficacy of the training that we conduct. 

In many ways, the business of building up an indigenous military, where there is not one at the moment, is a poor analogy to 

many kinds of educational activity. It requires a great deal of 

learning by doing, and it requires a great deal of close cooperation 

with Western mentors in the conduct of actual combat operations. 

I very much agree with Dr. Nagl, that the development of an 

indigenous Afghan military force is absolutely necessary if we’re 

going to get out of this with our interests realized. To do that, however, I think requires a more substantial U.S. investment than 

many who would like to see a middle option are prepared to provide. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Stewart, what percentage of the people 

currently fighting alongside the Taliban would you estimate share 

al-Qaeda’s international terrorist agenda, and what percentage are 

fighting us because we are there? 

Mr. Stewart. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can I just intervene? And I won’t take it—— 

Senator FEINGOLD. Yes, OK. 

37 

The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. From your time. But, could you just 

quantify that, what you just said: ‘‘It’ll require a substantially 

greater investment’’? Can you put us—— 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, again, I’m reluctant to prejudge General 

McChrystal, who’s now calculating precisely that number. Some 

figures I’ve seen are on the order of one American per three 

Afghans to be trained. But, again, there’s a very detailed analysis, 

now ongoing, that, unfortunately, as an outsider, I don’t have the 

resources to compete with. And I hope that analysis will be made 

public shortly. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks. 

And thank you, Senator Feingold. 

Senator FEINGOLD. I’ll just repeat, Mr. Stewart, the question. 

What percentage of the people currently fighting alongside the 

Taliban would you estimate share al-Qaeda’s international terrorist 

agenda, and what percentage are fighting us because we are there? 

Mr. STEWART. This is a very complicated question to answer, of 

course. There are links between those two groups, but, broadly 

speaking, there is a distinction which is worth maintaining. 

Al-Qaeda began, and remains to some extent, a non-Afghan movement. In a sense, the people who are interested in international 

terrorists attacks against the United States, and who even would 

have the imagination to mount those kinds of attacks, have tended 

to be people, in fact, from relatively educated middle-class backgrounds. It’s no accident that Mohammad Atta was a German resident, or that Zawahiri, for example, is a doctor and comes from an 

elite Egyptian family. Most of the people we’re fighting are, broadly 

speaking, peasants and, broadly speaking—I don’t mean that in an 

offensive sense, but I mean in terms of their lifestyle and their 

mindset and the way in which they view the world—they’re not 

particularly interested in international terrorism. And of that small 

proportion that are, far fewer would ever be able to have any serious chance of carrying out whatever ambitions they might have in 

their fantasies. 

So, I would repeat, in terms of protecting U.S. national security, 

we’re dealing with a very, very focused defense against people who, 

by and large, should be distinguished from the Taliban and distinguished from the people we’re fighting on a daily basis. 

Thank you. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Feingold. 

Senator Corker. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the hearing. 

And thank you, as panelists, for being here. I think you all have 

been very good. 

You know, today we had a briefing, talking about metrics. I know 

we’re going to be talking about resources here in the near future. 

One of the things that did occur in Iraq is, there was a discussion 

about what victory might be, and people ended up trying to envision what that might be, and we’ll see if it turns out that way. I 

hope it does. But, in Afghanistan, no one has really been able to 

describe what victory is. You all have different viewpoints here, at 

least there’s two distinct ones. And I wonder if, in a very brief way, 

38 

you might be able to describe to us what you think victory in 

Afghanistan would look like? 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, I would define victory in Afghanistan as an 

Afghan state that is able to secure itself from internal threats with 

minimal external help, that does not present a security threat to 

the region, does not serve as a base for attacks upon its neighbors, 

and that does not harbor al-Qaeda and is opposed to the interests 

on al-Qaeda, worldwide. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I would—— 

Senator CORKER. So, sort of a three-tiered victory. 

Yes, sir. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I would articulate a minimalist conception of what’s 

necessary to secure our interests in Afghanistan. We need only a 

country that is sufficiently in control of its territory, that large contiguous blocks of meaningful Afghanistan cannot be used as a base 

for attacking others. Beyond that, our goals are aspirational. That 

is sufficient for our purposes. I think that can be attained with a 

good deal less than Switzerland and the Hindu Kush. 

Senator CORKER. OK. 

Yes, sir. 

Mr. STEWART. I’d go even further in a minimal direction and say 

that we have two very narrow objectives there. The most important, from the point of view of the United States, would simply be 

that Afghanistan does not in any way pose a majorly increased terrorist threat to the United States. I don’t think we need to get into 

whether that’s involved in state-building or contiguous blocks of 

territory or safe havens. The question is, Is there anything that 

they would gain in that country which would make them better 

able to hurt the United States than they’re currently able to do in 

Pakistan? So, if we could achieve that and, at the same time, follow 

a long and, I think, honorable process of rebuilding Afghanistan, 

with a humanitarian objective and obligation—not with a huge 

amount of resources, but showing that the United States is serious 

about helping the Afghan people and fulfilling our commitments 

over the last 20 years—I think that would be enough. And, broadly 

speaking, to follow on from Senator Kerry, what we’d be looking at 

is a strategy which—I don’t want to put it too boldly, but would 

look on the counterterrorist side a little bit like what we do in 

Somalia, and maybe, on the development side, a little bit like what 

we do in countries like Nepal, but maybe on a more generous level. 

Thank you. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you. And obviously it’s—I think it’s 

going to be imperative for us to first agree on what we think that 

is, because these are very different views as to what victory is. 

So, let me move on to the second one. We’ve talked a lot about 

military presence, here, and the administration has talked about a 

much more narrow focus than being counterterrorism. But, if you 

really look at the metrics that they’re looking at, I mean, this is 

all-out nation-building. I mean, I was there on election day—I’m 

amazed that some of the historic-site-rebuilding. I mean, we are 

nation-building right now in Afghanistan. 

So, I guess my question is, in addition to the security piece—and 

I—you all have talked about different components of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, meaning keeping the population 

39 

safe—what degree of nation-building—economics, highways, judicial systems, corruption—anticorruption efforts—what degree of 

nation-building should be undertaken with whatever military presence we have there? 

Dr. NAGL. Senator, it’s a commonly accepted principle of counterinsurgency that, if you are losing a counterinsurgency campaign, 

you’re not being outfought, you’re being outgoverned. And what’s 

happening now is that the Taliban is providing many essential 

services to the Afghan people; in particular, in the south and in the 

east. It’s providing them with some degree of security and some 

degree of justice. It’s not necessarily a justice or a security that 

they would choose if they had a choice. And, in fact, those—when 

they’re given the option, they support the United States involvement at about 50 percent, and they support the Taliban at about 

5 percent. But, it is better than what the Afghan Government is 

able to give them. 

So, to succeed in this campaign, we have to build an Afghan Government that can provide them with security first, and then with 

some degree of justice and some degree of economic potential, in 

order to provide a more positive alternative than the Taliban 

presents. 

Senator CORKER. So, you have three goals for victory, and a 

pretty all-out nation-building effort to go with it. 

Dr. NAGL. Sir, I would not say that I’m trying to ‘‘build a nation’’ 

as much as I’m trying to build a state that can secure its people 

and care for its people and protect them against—I consider—what 

I consider to be a pretty insidious, vicious, and horrible alternative, 

called the Taliban. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you. 

Dr. Biddle. 

Dr. BIDDLE. I am minimalist with respect to what I think we can 

accomplish in Afghanistan, but I’m also minimalist with respect to 

what I think we need to accomplish in Afghanistan. War, at the 

end of the day, is a competitive undertaking. One doesn’t need to 

meet some abstract, absolute standard. One needs to do better than 

the enemy one’s fighting with respect to most dimensions of the 

problem, including governance. And happily, I actually agree with 

Rory Stewart, that the Taliban has very important weaknesses and 

shortcomings. I think that’s actually an important basis for my 

belief that failure is not inevitable, is that our opponent in this conflict has very important weaknesses and shortcomings; among 

them, their ability to provide a form of governance that the Afghan 

people actually want. 

What’s happening at the moment is that an unpopular Taliban, 

with an unpopular form of governance, is in danger of being in 

direct competition with a government that’s becoming almost as 

unpopular as they are. 

What we need, at the end of the day, is simply to provide an 

alternative to the population that is preferable to a Taliban that 

they don’t want. And I think that’s a rather modest standard which 

I—you know, subject to the uncertainties of war and the difficulties 

of the undertaking, I think is, in principle, achievable. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you. 

Rory. 

40 

Mr. STEWART. I think that state-building is not a national security priority for the United States in Afghanistan. I think it’s a 

good thing, for humanitarian reasons, it’s a good thing for the 

Afghan people, it’s something we should support as a development 

project over a long period. But, it is so problematic. This country 

is so poor. The majority of civil servants don’t have a high school 

education. Forty percent of the people in the country can’t read and 

write. The government is really lacking in legitimacy and popularity; the elections have illustrated that. We could invest 30 years 

in Afghanistan trying to develop the military and the civil service 

in the state, and, if we were lucky, we would make Afghanistan 

and its state structures resemble Pakistan. And I mean that. I 

mean any Pakistani, I think, would confirm that the Pakistani 

military, the Pakistani civil service, its government, its economy, 

its society is in many ways, far advanced than that of Afghanistan. 

And there’s not a great United States national security interest 

involved in trying to make Afghanistan become, over 20 or 30 years 

of investment, more like Pakistan. But, I think, there could be a 

good humanitarian reason for improving things in those directions, 

and it’s one we should support, for humanitarian reasons. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up. 

Thank you for your testimony and very diverse viewpoints. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it’s very, very important lines that I think 

can be—are sort of defined in the three answers, and there’s sort 

of a matrix there, if you will, for some of the choices. And we’re 

going to try to set it up as such. 

But, a really interesting question that we have to look at more— 

and I’m not going to go in it—but, it’s just this question of the 

Taliban. We keep coming back to the Taliban and to what their impact may or may not be. And I was very interested in Dr. Biddle’s 

answer, which came in at a slightly different place from Dr. Nagl. 

And I think it begins to frame the connections that we’ve got to 

look at here, you know. And Rory Stewart very, you know, appropriately said, is it a national security interest, in fact, or is it a— 

you know, some other kind of interest? And that’s something that 

we’ve got to really think through carefully. 

Senator CARDIN. Well, Mr. Chairman—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cardin. 

Senator CARDIN [continuing]. Mr. Chairman, I’m going to follow 

up on the Taliban in one moment, because I do think that is an 

important factor in achieving our mission in Afghanistan. You have 

pointed out many times that the al-Qaeda is not indigenous to 

Afghanistan, and that the Taliban has been somewhat of a support 

system for the terrorist activities. 

You know, one of the things that concerns me is that—I think 

you all have expressed minimalist expectations for what we can 

achieve in Afghanistan, and that makes it difficult for us to want 

to invest to increase combat troops in Afghanistan. I think most of 

us support the President’s mission of trying to disrupt terrorist 

operations, and we want to see that done effectively, but we don’t 

see the endgame here, by adding more combat troops. Of course, 

we’re going to wait to see General McChrystal’s recommendations. 

But, one thing is clear: we need to build up a more functioning sociVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
41 

ety to take care of the population’s own needs. That’s in everyone’s 

interests. I think we all agree on that point. 

Now, Senator Levin has talked about increasing the amount of 

national security forces within Afghanistan. He’s also talked about 

trying to reintegrate the Taliban into Afghan society in a more constructive manner. And I think there is support for this. I just want 

to understand how realistic this is. At least it’s our view that 

al-Qaeda’s not popular in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not really 

zealous when it comes to wanting to fight; at least it appears that 

it’s more pragmatic and economic and political than it is philosophical. 

Our strategies in the Helmand region and elsewhere have been 

to periodically destroy poppy crops, but not really to provide alternative economic opportunities for the farmers. I know that we’re 

trying to change that strategy. It seems to me that we could be 

effective in reducing the influence of the Taliban if we could reintegrate those that are looking for a better life for their families, 

with opportunities—real opportunities—through a real concerted 

effort. To me, that would have much more political support, but I 

haven’t seen an effective policy today. 

Is there promise in trying to disrupt the growth of the Taliban’s 

influence in Afghanistan by directing alternatives to those who 

have joined the Taliban forces—by offering alternatives and other 

crops than poppy—and to really try to deal with this in a much 

more sophisticated way? What’s the prognosis, here? 

The CHAIRMAN. Before you answer, I need to apologize. I need to 

go to a Finance Committee meeting on health care for a brief 

moment. Senator Lugar will chair in my absence. I’m going to try 

and get back, but I can’t guarantee it. 

Thanks. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Reconciliation, as well as economic development and 

the development of an indigenous military, is clearly an important 

part of any successful outcome we might be able to attain in 

Afghanistan. The issue is whether it’s separable from a larger 

counterinsurgency campaign. In many ways, it would be nice if it 

would be, because it would enable us to do this at much lower cost 

and much lower effort. The trouble is, the pieces of the component 

problem tend to interact strongly with one another. 

Take, for example, economic development. It’s very difficult for 

us to provide economic development in an insecure environment. 

The Taliban—— 

Senator CARDIN. Well, part of Senator Levin’s point is that we 

need to significantly increase—and I think the administration has 

agreed on this—significantly increase the security forces, both military and police, in Afghanistan. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes, and as we develop security forces that can provide that degree of protection for the population, a variety of other 

things become possible in lockstep, one being a better prospect for 

economic development, another being better prospect for reconciliation with reconcilable elements of the Taliban. When we say ‘‘the 

Taliban,’’ it’s in many ways a misnomer. This is a very heterogeneous collection of factions that have very different interests, 

very different motivations, very different component parts and 

ways of working. 

42 

In principle, it should be possible to drive wedges between these, 

and reach settlements with an important fraction of what is now 

a collection of those who oppose us and oppose the Government of 

Afghanistan. The trouble we face at the moment is, the perception 

on that side of the frontier, if you like, is that they are ascendant. 

And when they are ascendant, that poses a variety of difficulties 

for a reconciliation strategy, among which being, it’s very dangerous to get caught on the losing side in a negotiated end to a conflict like Afghanistan. 

If the military tide begins to turn and perceptions of the longer 

term trajectory of this conflict change from a high expectation that 

the Karzai government is going fall and will be replaced by a 

Quetta Shura-based alternative to something in which there’s an 

expectation that the Karzai government will survive, and staying 

in the field simply means a long-grinding stalemate, then it 

becomes much more possible for us to reach reconciliation deals, 

either with faction leaders among this collection of factions or with 

the individual foot soldiers that comprise their armed forces in the 

field. It’s very difficult to persuade a $10 Taliban, a member of the 

village who is simply fighting to feed his family, to side with us 

when there’s no expectation that the environment is going to be 

secure and their erstwhile allies will come get them after they accept our offer. 

Senator CARDIN. I agree with what you’re saying, but I think the 

weakness of your position is that it appears to say that we’re going 

to have a large international, primarily United States, military 

combat mission for a long time and, ultimately, the chances of success are unclear. This comes with other negative impacts, with us 

being perceived as an occupation force within Afghanistan. It 

seems that the proper way to do this is to accelerate the training 

of Afghan security forces and be realistic as to what regions we can 

secure and make advancements in, rather than trying to have a 

military combat solution to a problem where we’re trying to build 

up government capacity. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, I do think that the prospects for success, 

while—you know, while nonzero, involve a great deal of cost, and 

potentially a great deal of time. And that’s why I see this as a close 

call on the merits. If I thought that we could succeed without incurring this kind of cost, I would see this as a clear argument for 

proceeding. If I thought that success was impossible were we 

even—even were we to incur the cost, I would see this as a clearly 

inappropriate mission. I think what we’ve got is a very difficult, 

very costly undertaking, which can succeed if we invest the cost 

and the effort, and where we have nonnegligible stakes involved. 

And that’s preciously what makes this, I think, on the merits, such 

a difficult case and such a close call. 

Senator CARDIN. Well, I’m not sure I agree that it’s all or nothing. We do have combat troops there now. We’ve increased the 

number of combat troops. It seems to me we’ve not made progress, 

and we haven’t trained more troops. I think we have squandered 

some time, but I don’t want to see us continue this current policy. 

And I’m not sure the circumstances on the ground give us the prospect that you’re referring to. 

43 

Dr. NAGL. Senator, can I talk to this from my personal experience? 

Senator CARDIN. Well, my time has expired so—— 

Dr. NAGL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Sir, I served in Al Anbar in 2003 and 2004 with the 1st Brigade 

of the 1st Infantry Division. I tried to conduct a comprehensive 

counterinsurgency campaign with insufficient resources. I worked 

to build Iraqi security forces. I worked to conduct economic development. I didn’t have enough boots on the ground to secure my area. 

The insurgents blew up all of my economic development projects. 

They killed my battalion commanders that I trained. I am not 

going to say we went backward during my service in Al Anbar, but 

we certainly did not make progress very rapidly. And I’m—I very— 

I agree with Steve, I very much wish that, with economic development and with training host-nation security forces, that that were 

sufficient. But, the truth is that there is a base level of security 

that has to be provided on the ground. 

Senator CARDIN. And I don’t disagree with that. We have to have 

security for the economics in the region to be successful. The question is, Who supplies the security? I understand the United States 

and international community have a responsibility for training, but 

ultimately, the security has to be provided by the Afghans. 

Dr. NAGL. And, Senator, it’s my contention that I’ve worked with 

the Afghan security forces. They are good fighters. There are far, 

far too few of them to do that now. So, I agree with Senator Levin, 

we absolutely have to build more Afghan security forces, but if we 

do not also provide more security on the ground where we’re doing 

that, an awful lot of those battalion commanders will be killed by 

the Taliban. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you. 

Senator LUGAR [presiding]. Thank you very much, Senator 

Cardin. 

Senator Casey. 

Senator CASEY. Thank you very much. 

And I appreciate the time that all of you have put into this, both 

your presence here today, your testimony in answering questions, 

as well as the experience and scholarship that you bring to this 

issue. 

I want to try to focus on at least two areas, maybe three. I, like 

a lot of other Senators, in the last couple of months had a chance 

to go to both Afghanistan and Pakistan for a limited period of time, 

but, even in a short amount of time, you learn a lot, or at least you 

gain better insights. I was particularly impressed by a lot of the 

fighting men and women who were there starting with the briefing 

General McChrystal as well as the nonmilitary folks gave us. Also, 

I was very impressed by not just his appreciation for, and respect 

for, but the General’s demonstrable—of course, it’s my own assessment, but I think I can judge people pretty well—integration of the 

State Department folks as well. It is one team over there, people 

working from the Department of Agriculture, DEA, you name it, 

USAID—go down the list—brave, committed, capable Americans, 

both military and nonmilitary, doing that work. And it’s really 

early in their assignment. We just changed strategy. So, I hope we 

all don’t make conclusions too early, here. I know, in Washington, 

44 

they want us to. That’s what we do in Washington, we have very 

limited debates, and people go into their political corners, and we 

don’t often have a full debate. 

I was glad that Senator Kerry raised the question of how important it is to have a full and substantive debate about troop levels— 

not the usual political Washington debate, which, candidly, sometimes people in both parties engage in. It’s critically important we 

get that right. 

I think, prior to a serious consideration of the troop question— 

since, technically, right now that’s not before us and there has been 

no recommendation beyond 17 plus 4—I think it’s very important, 

in my judgment, that we listen to and take all information into 

consideration. I have spent a lot of time with some of the questions 

raised by Senator Levin in his speech. 

To this end, the elevation of the number of Afghan Army and 

police—we’ve already talked about that and Senator Cardin mentioned it, as well. On this issue, I have two quick questions, then 

I’ll move to another one. 

The question is, How and then, how many? How do we—if you 

accept the premise that we’re not moving fast enough on developing army and police there, and I think that’s an imperative, for 

a whole variety of reasons—how do we accelerate the training of 

the Afghan Army and police force? And the second question is, How 

many do we need? Is there a metric or is there a ratio that you 

can use for number of trainers, either American or coalition forces, 

training Afghan troops, or not? 

And I’d start with Dr. Nagl, and we can go from there. 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

I absolutely agree that we can, and should, accelerate the training of the Afghan security forces. This has—frankly, this has not 

been a success story for the United States over the past 8 years. 

The effort to build Iraqi security forces also suffered from a slow 

start, but has succeeded to a more than reasonable degree at this 

point. And the Iraqis are increasingly able to provide for their own 

security. There are many lessons that can be drawn from the process of building the Iraqi security forces that can, and should, be 

applied to building the Afghan security forces. 

It’s important to note just what a low point we’re at right now, 

as we speak. So, currently, today, we have less than 50 percent of 

the advisers assigned to the Afghan Army that we say—that the 

United States says are required to train them. And we’ll fill that 

role—those are the 4,000—the 17 plus 4—those 4,000 will arrive 

in-country this month. I expect to see a pretty substantial increase 

in the performance of the Afghan security forces as those 4,000 

advisers catch hold and, for the first time in the 8-year war, we 

fully man our advisers to the Afghan military. So, that’s a huge 

step in the right direction. 

I believe the right answer is approximately 250,000 Afghan soldiers, 150,000 Afghan police. We are currently planning to build to 

about half that level. I believe we can accelerate—we can’t quite 

double our rate of growth, but we can increase it substantially, perhaps a third. I believe that doing so would take the commitment 

of an additional 10,000 or so U.S. advisers and trainers over the 

course of 2010. 

45 

But, I would like to echo something Steve said—— 

Senator CASEY. You mean noncombat troops—— 

Dr. NAGL. Not in—those are—— 

Senator CASEY. Right. 

Dr. NAGL [continuing]. Those are advisers. But, frankly, sir, 

many, if not—an appreciable number of the soldiers we’ve lost in 

combat—and the chairman mentioned that August was the worst 

month of the war for us—an appreciable number of the soldiers 

we’ve lost have been advisers and trainers. So, no one should think 

that, because we’re sending over trainers, that they’re not going in 

harm’s way. They will—and we will lose some in this hard fight 

against a vicious enemy. 

So, another 10,000 advisers over the course of the next—over the 

course of 2010, but it’s important that we mentor units, as well. So, 

they have to have American or international units to partner with, 

which will increase the rate of growth of those Afghan security 

forces, make them more capable, faster. And all of these efforts will 

ultimately lead to an earlier withdrawal, an earlier exit strategy 

that has accomplished our national security objectives. 

Senator CASEY. Because of the prelude to my question, I’m down 

to just about a minute. But, maybe for our other two witnesses, can 

you just give a quick summation? When we talk about that border 

region—I don’t think we’ve spent a lot of time in Washington talking about the extremist—the networks that are there. I’m aware of 

at least three networks—the Quetta Shura, which is in the southern end of the border between both countries; the Haqqani network; and then the so called H-I-Q, or H-I-G network. How would 

you describe the three of them? And are there major differences? 

And does one pose more of a threat to our security, or the security 

of the region, than another? I know that’s a lot, and you’ve got 9 

seconds, but—— 

Dr. BIDDLE. Just very briefly, the most threatening to U.S. national security interests is the Quetta Shura Taliban, which is 

based around the old Taliban government and Mullah Omar. The 

other two factions are people—are lead by people that I wouldn’t 

want to have dinner with, but that I think are less ideologically 

committed and much more radically self-interested; and thus, you 

could conceivably imagine splitting off from the remainder of this 

alliance. 

Were the preconditions for negotiating success present? And 

again, my concern is that, at the moment, I don’t see those preconditions being present. 

Senator CASEY. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Stewart, I know I’m over but I’ll—— 

Mr. STEWART. Unfortunately, it’s an area I know very little 

about, so I have very little to say. Sorry, Senator. I’m not an expert 

on the details. In fact, I would say, as a caution on this, that the 

amount of information available on those groups is considerably 

more limited than is suggested by some of the confident statements 

made about them. 

Senator CASEY. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you, Senator Casey. 

Senator Shaheen. 

46 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Mr. Stewart, I think I understood you to say that one alternative 

we have in Afghanistan is to pursue a narrow counterterrorism 

objective and a humanitarian effort. Can you describe, in about a 

minute or less, how you define a narrow counterterrorism objective? What that would look like, in terms of troops, in terms of support from either the United States or an international effort? 

Mr. STEWART. Yes. I think the central question is, What kind of 

benefit would al-Qaeda find in being based in Afghanistan? How 

would that increase their ability to harm the United States? 

Clearly, our priority isn’t to keep them out of Afghanistan just for 

the sake of keeping them out of Afghanistan; it’s to protect the 

United States. So, we need to look seriously at what we mean when 

we talk about the Taliban providing a safe haven. How safe is that 

haven? What can a very poor, technologically incompetent group 

like the Taliban really do to protect al-Qaeda? 

To some extent, what they did in the leadup to 2001 was not 

much more than saying, ‘‘Pitch your tent over there and we’re not 

going to hand you over to the United States.’’ How much ability do 

they really have to protect al-Qaeda if they built a Quantico-style 

camp against Delta Force or against predators coming in? 

In fact, curiously, one of the things that we’ve learned, is that 

a failed state may be less threatening to U.S. national security 

than a partially formed state. It’s very noticeable that Osama bin 

Laden has chosen to be in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan, a country 

which has considerably more established state structures, and that 

is because, to some extent, he’s protected by Pakistani claims to 

state sovereignty. 

One of the things we may be learning through this period is that, 

in fact, states like Pakistan, or, of course, states like Iran, may be 

proved to be more damaging, more dangerous to U.S. national security, than failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia, where our freedom of operation is so much greater. 

Senator SHAHEEN. But, I guess I still am not clear on what 

you’re saying it would take, in terms of an American effort, to provide just that narrow counterterrorism objective. I understood what 

you said with respect to the ability of the Taliban to support 

al-Qaeda. But, what is not yet clear to me is what it would take 

for the United States to actually ensure that they don’t have the 

ability to support al-Qaeda. 

Mr. STEWART. So, if the only thing you were trying to do is to 

ensure that al-Qaeda did not discover in Afghanistan something 

that gave them a serious comparative advantage, a serious advantage in their ability to attack the United States, I believe you could 

do that with an intelligent use of Special Forces and intelligence 

operatives, whose job would simply be to identify those vary narrow group of people called ‘‘al-Qaeda’’ with an international objective against the United States, and then to eliminate them. If 

that’s the only thing we’re involved in, we don’t need too many 

troops. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Was that not, however, how—what we were 

doing for much of the last 7 years that we’ve been in Afghanistan? 

And it has not—— 

Mr. STEWART. It’s worked—— 

47 

Senator SHAHEEN [continuing]. Accomplished—— 

Mr. STEWART [continuing]. It’s worked very well, Senator. There 

have been no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. They haven’t attacked us 

from Afghanistan. If our only objective is to stop al-Qaeda from reforming, we’ve won. We’ve achieved that objective. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, how would you respond to—I think it 

was Dr. Nagl’s comments, that our efforts in Afghanistan have 

made Pakistan more stable? Would you agree with that? 

Mr. STEWART. I can’t see any evidence that our efforts in Afghanistan have made Pakistan more stable. I would consider Pakistan 

less stable today than it was. And I don’t think that’s largely 

because of our efforts in Afghanistan; that because of eternal Pakistani factors to which Afghanistan is largely irrelevant. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, when we were—I had the opportunity to 

visit, shortly after the President announced that new strategy for 

Afghanistan, and one of the things that I thought I heard from 

those that we talked to was that our efforts were important, not 

just in addressing the Taliban, but because of, as you’ve all pointed 

out I think, the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. 

And isn’t one of the challenges here the fact that if they are successful, whether it’s the Taliban—the bad Taliban, however we 

want to describe them—or al-Qaeda, that the potential for getting 

access to nuclear weapons because of the situation in Pakistan is 

one of the real challenges, and that that’s part of what we’re trying 

to address here? And so, I guess, if what we’ve done is to move 

al-Qaeda into Pakistan by the efforts that we’ve had on the ground 

in Afghanistan, how does that access to nuclear weapons in Pakistan and the potential destabilization there get affected by our 

reducing a footprint there to just what you’re describing as a narrow counterterrorism object? And I guess I’d like for each of you 

to answer that question. 

Dr. BIDDLE. Well, I suppose I’ll start. I think the question of the 

security of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal turns centrally on the 

question of the survival of the secular Pakistani state. As long as 

the state survives, and as long as the state’s writ runs, I think 

there’s a reasonable basis for confidence that that arsenal is secure. 

The problem is precisely if the Pakistani insurgency succeeds 

and either the government falls or the state collapses. And again, 

to the extent—to the extent that there is a serious United States 

national security interest uniquely engaged in Afghanistan and not 

elsewhere, it is precisely the concern that chaos on the other side 

of the Durand Line could have effects that would swamp what may 

be marginally deleterious effects of the United States presence on 

Pakistani public opinion now with the enormous massive problem 

of a hostile or—either a hostile state on the other side of the 

Durand Line or simply an uncontrolled environment of violence in 

which factions hostile to the Pakistani Government are running 

rampant. 

This raises the issue that underlies several of your questions, 

which is, What is the meaning of a haven in this—in today’s environment, with the Internet and with the ability to plan in remote 

locations? And I disagree, fundamentally, with Rory Stewart on the 

function that havens provide and the ability of the United States 

48 

to thwart geographic havens with Special Forces strikes or with 

drone attacks from a distance. 

What havens do is not to provide real estate for the construction 

of tent farms where you can conduct training seminars. What 

havens do is to protect insurgent organizations or terrorists from 

human intelligence penetration on the ground, which is the primary threat to their survival. The efficacy of our drone attacks 

turns, importantly, on our ability to find intelligence on where 

these organizations, and where these individuals, are located. That 

intelligence comes to an important degree—not wholly, but to an 

important degree—from human intelligence through penetration on 

the ground, which would be made extraordinarily difficult by the 

presence of a hostile government that actively prevented people 

from getting access to the members of the organization. That’s why 

control of the government underneath the drones is so important 

to the efficacy of drone-based counterterrorism, and another reason 

why, again, I think the problem here is that the component elements of what people talk about when they talk about counterinsurgency are very difficult to pull out of context and make them 

work on their own without the rest. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Do you—you’re nodding, Dr. Nagl, so I assume 

you agree with that. 

Dr. NAGL. I agree with everything Steve said. I’d like to disagree 

with Rory a little bit, though. 

What’s happened over the past 8 years is that the Taliban has 

slowly gained strength, first—we chased it out of Afghanistan into 

Pakistan. It gained strength in Pakistan and started creeping 

across the border. And it has gained strength steadily in Afghanistan, and arguably continues to do so today, because of insufficient 

Afghan and international security forces on the Afghan side of the 

Durand Line. It gained strength in Pakistan, and achieved an 

extraordinary success, in March of this year, by taking the Swat 

River Valley, some 60 miles from Islamabad. At that point, because 

of—in no small part because of very diligent and impressive diplomatic efforts by a number of members of the administration, the 

Pakistani Government, which had ceded the Swat River Valley to 

the Pakistani Taliban, decided to retake it. It did so in a very unsophisticated counterinsurgency campaign, but in a successful one. 

And it is important to note that the Pakistani Government has 

since continued to improve its cooperation with the United States, 

in both counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Any 

withdrawal or retreat on our part from the conduct of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism would put that progress at risk, in my 

opinion. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much, Senator Shaheen. 

Senator Kaufman. 

Senator KAUFMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar. 

I’ve tried to avoid, since I’ve been in the Senate, making statements before I make these. But I think the last two statements, by 

Dr. Biddle and Dr. Nagl, go a long way to explaining what I think 

is going on in Afghanistan. 

And the other thing I’d like to point out, which has not been 

raised, because I think it’s a basic misunderstanding of the AmerVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\55538.TXT SENFOR1 PsN: BETTY
49 

ican people—and that is, we left Afghanistan in 2003. We spent 

almost as much money in Iraq in 2008 as we spent in Afghanistan 

from 2003–2008. This is not like we’ve had a failed policy. We had 

the Taliban beat before we left, which is one of our big problems, 

in terms of convincing the people in Afghanistan to be with us, 

because we left in 1990 and left in 2009. 

We’ve talked a lot—I think there’s a lot of confusion here about 

what you can do, in terms of ‘‘build,’’ if you don’t do ‘‘clear’’ and 

‘‘hold.’’ There’s been a number—I think, half a dozen comments, I 

think, here. So, Dr. Nagl, could you kind of just explain the difficulties—you did a little bit of it, in terms your Anbar—but, just the 

difficulties with doing the ‘‘build’’ part, the economic development, 

the governance, and all those other things, when you do not ‘‘clear’’ 

and ‘‘hold’’? 

Dr. NAGL. Yes, sir. 

The peril of fighting an insurgency—in a conventional war, the 

hard part is killing your enemy. He’s relatively easy to identify. 

You shoot the tanks that don’t look like yours. In an unconventional war, an irregular war, a counterinsurgency campaign, the 

hard part is finding the enemy. And Steve has talked to the importance of having a good base, a government that is willing to allow 

you to conduct the kind of human intelligence that is essential to 

finding out who the insurgents are. If you have not provided that 

security network, the insurgents have freedom of action. You own 

only the ground you’re standing on at any given point in time. And 

the insurgents, in particular, tend to operate through night letters. 

Very good article, in the Post on Monday about Kandahar, in which 

the Taliban has a great degree of control over what happens inside 

Kandahar, and they drop night letters through the front doors of 

people who are working with the United States, with the international community, with the Government of Afghanistan. And 

they tell them that, ‘‘If you continue to work for the government, 

if you continue to work for the security forces, your family will be 

killed, you will be killed.’’ And they follow up on enough of those 

to make that a credible threat. Those sorts of night letters, which 

happen in the absence of a stable security network provided by 

counterinsurgent forces, make real progress impossible. 

And, unfortunately, the Taliban is gaining strength in Kandahar. 

I believe that Kandahar is the next—is the locus of the Talibanbased insurgency inside Afghanistan. I believe it has to be cleared 

out. I believe that if it is not cleared out, any efforts we make to 

conduct economic development, to build Afghan security forces, will 

be crippled by the Taliban’s ability to infiltrate and to destroy, at 

night, what we’ve built during the day. 

Senator KAUFMAN. Mr. Stewart, I agree with a great deal of 

what you said, and your insights, but I was a little confused about 

Bosnia. It seems to me, in Bosnia, we did the ‘‘clear’’ and ‘‘hold,’’ 

and then we did the ‘‘build.’’ And without the ‘‘clear’’ and ‘‘hold,’’ 

which we need troops to do—combat troops, local—so, is Bosnia 

really a good model for how we should be preceding in Afghanistan, 

under any circumstance, or any of the circumstances that you, kind 

of, spelled out? 

Mr. STEWART. I think Bosnia is a symbol of hope. It’s a symbol 

of how the complicated, messy engagement of the international 

50 

community, and particularly the United States, can, in the long 

term, do good in a fragile conflict zone. But, it’s not a good analogy, 

as you suggested, Senator, from the point of view of the huge differences between those countries. Afghanistan is almost the limit 

case. So fragile, so poor, so traumatized, so lacking in basic structure or education, that the kinds of advances, which, in Bosnia, at 

its best, really involved simply liberating Bosnian capacity, reinforcing—in some cases, simply reconstructing things that had been 

there before. In Afghanistan, honestly there wasn’t much there 

before. And I suppose—I’m absolutely with a lot of these concepts, 

if they could be done. And the only thing that I’m saying is that, 

on the basis of my experience in Afghanistan, that progress is 

much more difficult in that country than one could imagine, that 

even were you able to ‘‘clear’’ and ‘‘hold,’’ the ‘‘building’’ part, as 

somebody who runs a development project, always takes four times 

as long, and you always achieve a quarter as much as you hope, 

simply because of the lack of capacity on the ground. So, it’s really 

a note of pragmatic caution. 

Thank you. 

Senator KAUFMAN. Great, thanks. That was my—Dr. Biddle, as 

you know, in town, here, there’s a lot of talk of the kind of Somalia 

raid or having—I mean, the same thing went on in Iraq. We can 

leave Iraq, but we’re going to leave 35,000 troops behind. And 

when we find a terrorist, we can—can you, kind of, talk a little bit 

about what the problems are of using a Somalia-type-raid approach 

as a policy in Afghanistan? 

Dr. BIDDLE. Yes. I think one source of insight is to look at 

Somalia itself. We have been, in principle, able to conduct raids 

from offshore in Somalia since the 1990s, and yet the country has 

continued to descend, and security, especially since foreign forces 

left Somalia fairly recently, has gotten worse, not better. 

We will occasionally be able to find a target, and we will occasionally be able to kill an important leader. That’s a different thing 

from being able to do enough to prevent a place from getting worse 

rather than better, and to prevent people that we find threatening 

to us from operating there. 

And I think there are a variety of challenges facing this kind of 

counterterrorism from offshore approach. One of them, which I 

think is the most important, is the one I alluded to earlier, that 

counterterrorism from a distance centrally requires intelligence 

information on where the targets are. If you cede control of the government and you cede control of the country, you lose the ability 

to find the targets. If you can’t find the targets, none of the rest 

matters. 

Second, if we’re going to do this kind of attack with things like 

drones, for instance—drones are not wonder-weapons; they are 

large, slow airplanes, without pilots, that tend to spend a long time 

over a specific point of territory. It doesn’t take very much of an 

air force to clear the skies of American drones of the kind that we 

prefer to use for these kinds of campaigns. 

We depend on the host government in Pakistan for a variety of 

key enablers for the success, whatever it may be—and that’s 

unclear—of this campaign. One of them is intelligence; another is 

51 

a benign airspace of the kind that these drones are designed to 

require for successful operation. 

A third enabler that we require for this kind of campaign is basing that enables these drones to maintain the kind of dwell time 

over target that they require in order to be effective. At the moment, it has been reported that the Pakistanis provide the basing. 

Pakistan and Afghanistan are remote, landlocked countries for 

which basing is difficult to find. 

In general, I think what this suggests—for the case of standoff 

counterterrorism, in particular, but, by extension, to the larger collection of middle-way options that I understand are popular—is 

that they depend on a variety of things that you tend to lose if you 

take them out of the larger context and try and do them alone. 

Senator KAUFMAN. Thank you very much. 

I had—can I have one more question, since I’m the last one? I 

wanted to ask Dr. Stewart—and this is not, like, a devil’s-advocate 

hypothetical; I mean, I really think this would happen. 

If, in fact, we leave Afghanistan, and if, in fact, the Taliban takes 

over Afghanistan, and if, in fact, the Pakistan Taliban does what 

they did before, is move out of Swat Valley and move toward Islamabad, with the support—nothing to worry them in their back—with 

the support of the Taliban from Afghanistan, isn’t that—I mean, 

what do you think the probability of something like that happen? 

And that would be incredibly—as we know, would be incredibly destabilizing to Pakistan. 

Mr. STEWART. I think this is a very important worst-case scenario to end with, because, of course, that is the major problem. I 

mean, as Dr. Biddle said from the beginning, our real issue here 

is not actually counterterrorism, our real issue here is what kind 

of situation we have in Pakistan and what kind of situation we 

want in Pakistan. 

On the probabilities of it, I would say, personally, very, very low. 

I don’t believe the Taliban in Afghanistan are in any position to 

take over the country, have planes, control the airspace, deny the 

United States from having bases in that country. So, I think we 

need to be realistic, that even a reduction in troops would be 

extremely unlikely to lead to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. 

But, if I follow it right through to your worst-case scenario, if you 

imagine that very worst-case situation, if you imagine even the 

possibility that they invite back in al-Qaeda, but, most importantly 

of all, if you imagine that somehow the Pakistani state, which—far 

stronger than the Afghan state—I mean, as they revealed in the 

Swat Valley, and as John was saying, I mean, who are really capable, when they want to, of showing real muscle. I mean, there’s 

much more capacity in the Pakistan Government than the Afghan 

Government. It’s largely a question of will. It’s whether they want 

to do this. It’s not that they lack the capacity to do these things. 

But, were Pakistan to fall, were there to be some sort equivalent 

of an Iranian revolution in Pakistan, that would have massive and 

very deleterious effects on the United States foreign policy position 

worldwide. 

So, I certainly think everybody in this room agrees that our No. 

1 priority is to stop Pakistan going in that direction. The question 

is, How much relevance does our talk about counterterrorism and 

52 

our talk about Afghanistan have to the question of the future of 

Pakistan? And my view is, perhaps not as much as we pretend. 

Thank you. 

Senator KAUFMAN. I want to thank all the panelists. This has 

been an excellent discussion. 

And I want to thank the ranking member and the chairman, in 

his absence, for having this hearing. I think it’s been very, very 

helpful. 

Thank you. 

Senator LUGAR. Well, I join you, Senator Kaufman, in thanking 

the chairman for scheduling this hearing. 

In a sense, all the members are reading, as you are, that General 

McCrystal has given documents to the administration, which they 

are reviewing. It’s not clear how long they will analyze these documents before we know something about them. Beyond that, there 

at least is a hint that General McChrystal, after a certain indefinite period of time, may also forward some thoughts about troop 

strength and at that point, the administration may have a comment. But, this is why this hearing is especially important for us, 

in terms of constructive education and an exploration, really, of the 

background for whatever decisions may be made, because inevitably we will have some responsibility for that. 

And so, we thank each one of you for your assistance to our 

understanding, and we’re genuinely appreciative, as Senator Kaufman and the chairman have stated. 

With that, the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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