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AFTER THE WITHDRAWAL: THE WAY FORWARD

IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN (PART I)

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 19, 2013

Serial No. 113–21

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Chairman 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

AMI BERA, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

(V)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Seth G. Jones, Ph.D., associate director, International Security and Defense 

Policy Center, RAND Corporation ...................................................................... 8

Kimberly Kagan, Ph.D., president, Institute for the Study of War ..................... 22

Mr. Peter Bergen, director, National Security Studies Program, The New 

America Foundation ............................................................................................. 26

Daniel S. Markey, Ph.D., senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, 

Council on Foreign Relations .............................................................................. 52

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Seth G. Jones, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................ 10

Kimberly Kagan, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ........................................................ 24

Mr. Peter Bergen: Prepared statement .................................................................. 28

Daniel S. Markey, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ...................................................... 54

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 82

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 83

Questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Scott Perry, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ................ 84

(1)

AFTER THE WITHDRAWAL: THE WAY 

FORWARD IN AFGHANISTAN AND 

PAKISTAN (PART I) 

TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2013

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA AND

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The committees met, pursuant to notice, at 1 o’clock p.m., in 

room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana RosLehtinen (chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and 

North Africa) presiding. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. This joint subcommittee meeting will come to 

order. After recognizing myself, Chairman Chabot, Ranking Member Deutch, and Ranking Member Faleomavaega for 5 minutes 

each for our opening statements, we will then hear from our witnesses and without objection, the witnesses’ prepared statements 

will be made a part of the record. Members may have 5 days to 

insert statements and questions for the record, subject to the 

length limitation in the rules. 

Before I begin my remarks, I would like to convey my deepest 

condolences to the family and friends of U.S. Army Captain Andrew Michael Pederson-Keel of South Florida who was killed in action on March 11, 2013 while serving our country in Afghanistan. 

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. 

The Chair now recognizes herself for 5 minutes. Last month in 

a State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama announced that the United States will be drawing down our forces in 

Afghanistan by 34,000 troops over the coming year and projecting 

that our military presence in Afghanistan will be over before the 

start of 2015. The President also announced that our forces will 

transition into a support role, handing the reins over to the Afghanistan National Security Forces, ANSF, while our focus will be 

mainly on training and equipping these forces. 

Reports indicate a remaining residual force of 3,000 to 9,000 

troops, while many military commanders continue to push for a 

more robust role, including the Commander of U.S. Central Command, who recommended that nearly 14,000 troops be left behind 

post-2014. The way forward may be debatable, but we should agree 

that the decision must not be made for political reasons. Leaving 

before stability is assured would not only unravel all that we have 

2

worked so hard to accomplish in Afghanistan, but it would undermine the efforts of our men and women who have served so bravely 

and have sacrificed so much in Afghanistan, like the aforementioned Captain Andrew Pederson-Keel. 

Without the proper infrastructure, training, and support from 

U.S. and international forces, Afghanistan runs the risk of plunging into chaos. The national security interests of the United States, 

and indeed of our allies, are at stake because of the real threat that 

the Taliban could retake power and al-Qaeda could reestablish a 

safe haven from which to conduct operations. 

Many allies are worried that the drawdown could lead to a significant increase in violence and terrorist-related activities that can 

further destabilize the conflict. Most see Karzai as an unpredictable leader, yet they are concerned about his possible successor. 

The U.S. must hold Karzai accountable for the lack of transparency, for the corruption problems that need to be corrected, to 

ensure a successful transition to a viable successor. Afghan’s elections are within a year and electoral reforms are needed to ensure 

a free, fair, and transparent election that protects human rights 

and respects minority groups. 

Karzai’s recent actions reveal that he is attempting to play a 

dangerous, but calculated game, aimed at appeasing certain Afghan factions by vilifying the United States. Karzai accused us of 

working hand in hand with the Taliban to spread violence in Afghanistan. These inflammatory comments put the lives of our servicemen and -women in danger. 

The Commander of the International Security Assistance Forces 

and U.S. Forces Afghanistan warned our troops that ‘‘Karzai’s remarks could be a catalyst for some to lash out against our forces. 

He may also issue orders that put our forces at risk.’’

Karzai yearns to be known as the one who kicked out the foreign 

invaders and he fears that he will suffer the same fate as previous 

Afghan leaders before him who were overrun or executed by the 

Taliban. This would open the floodgates from Pakistan, a country 

which has long been an insurgency sanctuary for the Taliban, alQaeda, the Haqqani Network and other extremist elements. Pakistan must do more to prevent extremists from using this area as 

a staging point for attacks against the United States and our allies 

in Afghanistan. 

We must make an honest assessment of our relationship with 

Pakistan and judge its willingness and capacity to work with us in 

order to ensure that Afghanistan does not succumb to the Islamist 

and extremist threats. Pakistan must also do its part by eliminating its ties to foreign terrorist organizations. We must evaluate 

our relationship with Islamabad if we are to continue to provide 

billions of dollars of taxpayer money to Pakistan. Pakistan’s stability remains a vital U.S. national security interest and our relationship is paramount in order to fight regional and global terrorism, to stabilize Afghanistan and to protect long-term national 

security interests. Thank you. 

I will now turn to my ranking member, my friend, my Florida 

colleague, Congressman Ted Deutch. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thanks to our 

witnesses for testifying today. And before I begin my remarks I 

3

would like to associate myself with the chairman expressing my 

deepest sympathy to the friends and family of South Florida native 

and U.S. Army Captain Andrew Pederson-Keel. Our thoughts and 

prayers are with his family. 

After almost 12 years of war in Afghanistan and 2,177 American 

casualties, there is strong opposition among the American public to 

continue U.S. engagement there. Separately, there continues to be 

deep frustration regarding the state of our relationship with Pakistan. But we are working in an area where there are many 

daunting challenges and there are no easy answers. 

In Afghanistan, the economy is dependent on foreign aid, yet corruption is rampant and too often aid is misused. In Pakistan, there 

are numerous insurgent safe havens that are being used to train 

and rearm the Taliban. And when you factor in sectarian tensions 

and regional anti-Americanism, you understand why so many 

Americans want to end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and cut 

off billions in aid to Pakistan. But is now the time to fundamentally alter our strategy of a responsible troop drawdown in Afghanistan? 

Over the next year, the President will be withdrawing another 

34,000 troops. That is now nearly 2.5 million American men and 

women who served our country in Iraq and Afghanistan and have 

returned to their families and our communities. We have an obligation to these men and women to work in a bipartisan manner to 

get our Veterans’ benefits and care in a timely manner, to find employment, and to address the mental health issues necessary to 

stop the rising suicide rate. The sacrifices of those who have served 

and are returning from Afghanistan have helped contribute to numerous sustainable goals there. There are positive stories to tell. 

Under President Obama’s leadership, we refocused our efforts 

and have now largely accomplished his goal of dismantling the core 

of al-Qaeda and ensuring that it can no longer use Afghanistan and 

the border areas of Pakistan to plan or conduct terrorist attacks 

against the United States homeland. Although the Taliban remains 

an active presence in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has 

been decimated which is crucial to our national security. And it is 

important to distinguish that although the Taliban has a reprehensible history in Afghanistan, it was al-Qaeda that provided a direct 

threat to our homeland. 

In addition, largely due to U.S. international aid in Afghanistan, 

since 9/11, the maternal mortality rate has declined by 80 percent. 

Access to basic health services is available to more than 60 percent 

of Afghans, up from 9 percent in 2001. And life expectancy has increased from 44 years to 60 in the past decade. There have also 

been tremendous gains in gender equality. Today, one third of Afghanistan’s 8 million students are female. Women now hold more 

than a quarter of the seats in the Parliament. By the end of this 

year, at least 30 percent of government workforce will be women. 

In spite of all of the challenges Afghanistan is facing, an Asia 

Foundation poll found that the majority of Afghans think that their 

country is on the right track. 

Now if we are going to commit U.S. personnel and resources to 

Afghanistan under the enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement, 

the Afghan Government must take the necessary steps to become 

4

a viable and stable democracy. Significantly improved cooperation 

with the Pakistani Government is critical to the successful drawdown of troops and long-term stability in Afghanistan. Despite 

years of frustration and mistrust, recently exemplified by Pakistan’s decision to move forward with a natural gas pipeline with 

Iran, we do share some core interests with Pakistan. We want national reconciliation in Afghanistan and we do not want Afghanistan to be embroiled in another civil war. These are areas of agreement to work together on. But Pakistan must do more to ensure 

that safe havens along the border are rooted out. 

If any American troops are going to remain in Afghanistan, 

President Karzai must create an environment that enables U.S. 

forces to assist and advise Afghan National Security Forces in securing their country. This means negotiating a bilateral security 

agreement that provides U.S. troops with necessary protections. 

President Karzai must also recognize that his recent inflammatory 

anti-American rhetoric seriously harms our efforts to create and 

ensure stability and security in Afghanistan. 

The most important indicator for future stability in Afghanistan 

is the peaceful transfer of political power that will occur after the 

Presidential elections scheduled in April 2014. As we all know, the 

2009 elections were marred by serious allegations of widespread 

fraud, resulting in the nullification of nearly 20 percent of the votes 

cast. If Afghanistan is going to progress as a sustainable democracy, it must start with free and fair elections in April 2014. 

As I said at the outset, these are difficult challenges and there 

are no easy answers. After 12 years of war and over 200,000 American casualties, we owe it to the Americans and those Afghans who 

have sacrificed so much to get this right. We went into Afghanistan 

to protect our own national security and going forward, this must 

continue to be about U.S. national security. I look forward to discussing with the witnesses the best ways for the United States to 

secure our long-term security interests by helping Afghanistan 

move forward with its pursuit of a stable democracy and I yield 

back. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Deutch. We will 

now hear from the subcommittee chair and ranking member of 

Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, starting with Chairman 

Chabot. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for calling this important joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Asia 

and the Pacific. I am pleased to join your efforts to discuss the implications of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the critical 

role Pakistan plays in successfully achieving a stable, peaceful, and 

independent Afghanistan. 

The Obama administration’s decision to expedite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan poses a strategic risk to the stability and 

security interests of South Asia. The President’s announcement in 

January that an additional 34,000 U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by February 2014 threatens to plunge the region into a state 

in which terrorists will once again thrive. There is no clarity on the 

exact withdrawal plan or what a post-2014 Afghanistan might look 

like. With so many outstanding variables in play, I think a hasty 

retreat is unwise. 

5

In November 2011, the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee, which I then chaired, held a hearing on U.S. policies in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan in which it was discussed how, at that 

time, it was unclear what the plan entailed, when it would occur, 

how it was expected to play out, and what the administration 

hoped to accomplish beyond the 2014 withdrawal date. Now, a year 

and a half later, we know that Afghan forces will start taking the 

lead this spring and U.S. forces will transition to a supporting role. 

We are also told now that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan 

after 2014 and focus on training and counterterrorism, but we do 

not know how many troops. A continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan, however, rests on the finalization of the Status of Forces 

Agreement which President Obama says he hopes is completed by 

the end of the year. 

Following Defense Secretary Hagel’s visit to Afghanistan earlier 

this month, that may or may not happen. 

Former Ambassador Ryan Crocker emphasized nearly 2 years 

ago that the U.S. needed to focus on ‘‘strategic patience.’’ President 

Obama has chosen to ignore that advice. Withdrawing another 

34,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year jeopardizes 

the gains we have made in the south against the Taliban and in 

the east where Afghan and coalition forces are fighting the 

Haqqani Network. The odds that al-Qaeda will reestablish itself 

once the U.S. presence has significantly diminished is only increasing. This possibility becomes more likely once we take into account 

Afghanistan’s corrupt and weak governance, and the insurgents’ 

safe havens allowed to thrive in Pakistan. 

Time and again, the administration has insisted that Pakistan 

must cease its tolerance of insurgents’ safe havens, but Pakistan’s 

leadership has ignored its requests. As a result, our relationship 

with Pakistan has dramatically deteriorated, and there are lingering doubts about whether its leadership is committed to pursuing peace and stability in Afghanistan or in the region for that 

matter. 

This need of cooperation raises concerns about the administration’s lack of a coherent assistance and development strategy with 

Pakistan. Pakistan has been one of the leading recipients of U.S. 

foreign aid in the post-9/11 period, yet its clear lack of support for 

our regional security goals fails to reflect that investment by the 

American taxpayer. 

We know any successful withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, 

rests on the ability of the United States to foster relatively good relationships with Islamabad. We could even settle for lukewarm—

but even that is easier said than done. This particular challenge is 

further strained because of the administration’s failure to put in 

place an effective regional strategy that involves Afghanistan’s 

neighbors, Pakistan and India. 

Two thousand thirteen will be a critical year for Pakistan. It will 

hold parliamentarian elections this spring which could result in a 

new prime minister. Add to that the turnover of its top military position, and we could see huge implications for U.S. security interests. Because of Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal, embedded terrorist networks, turbulent relationship with India, and extensive 

influence in Afghanistan, its internal stability needs to be a priVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:04 Jun 06, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_MENA\031913\80120 HFA PsN: SHIRL
6

ority, otherwise it could become a huge liability for broader objectives in Asia. 

Pakistan is hedging its bets. It continues to support extremist 

groups so that it can maintain an indispensable position in Afghan 

peace talks and deny India, our strategic partner, any significant 

influence. With the severe trust deficiency between our two countries, Afghanistan’s decision to grant Pakistan a central role in selecting Taliban figures for governance positions is very concerning. 

With so many unresolved issues, a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave behind a war between competing factions all 

with vying interests. 

Lastly, there has been much discussion recently regarding notions that Pakistan is having a strategic change of heart. While 

Islamabad claims U.S. and Pakistani interests can be brought into 

alignment, I believe we must remain skeptical of the internal divergent interest that risk undermining U.S. objectives. I hope today’s 

witnesses will touch on the likelihood that Islamabad’s recent gestures are indeed a legitimate effort to cooperate with the U.S. and 

its neighbors. 

I want to again thank Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen for calling this 

hearing. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Chairman Chabot. So 

pleased to recognize now the ranking member, Mr. Faleomavaega. 

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Madam Chair and Chairman 

Chabot. I would like to join my colleagues in welcoming the distinguished panel of regional and security experts who will address the 

way forward toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

I have a particular vantage point as a Veteran of the Vietnam 

War. We all remember President Nixon’s plan for Vietnamization 

of that war. I can clearly state that the future destiny of any nation 

is primarily determined, in my opinion, by the people of that nation 

itself. 

After more than 12 years of the war in Afghanistan, a war that 

began on October 7, 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the American people are experiencing what I consider, 

Madam Chair, a profound sense of battle fatigue. This is a war 

that has lasted longer than our nation’s 8-year struggle for independence against the mighty British Empire and longer than the 

4 years of civil war that cost some 600,000 soldiers their lives. But 

unlike those mammoth struggles that we fought on American soil 

involving issues that clearly had a direct impact on all Americans, 

the war in Afghanistan has been fought in a distant place and only 

directly impacts those service members who answer the call and 

the tens of thousands of our military families that had to be part 

of that sacrifice. And they continue to do this today. 

There are a number in our own country, particularly here in 

Washington, who call for a continued open-ended commitment in 

Afghanistan. They remind one of the American patriot, Tom Payne, 

who wrote and I quote, ‘‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country. For 

them the battle is joined, but it is for the others to do the fighting.’’ 

In my opinion, Madam Chair, the American people never sought an 

open-ended commitment in Afghanistan, nor do they see the goal 

as nation building. They are well aware that Afghanistan has been 

7

called the graveyard of empires. Not even Alexander the Great was 

able to conquer Afghanistan, nor the mighty British Empire or 

even the Soviet Union. Now what makes us think we can do differently? 

I believe, Madam Chair, the goal of the American people was to 

retaliate by going against Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda who 

attacked us on September 11. Osama bin Laden is now dead and 

his son-in-law, the so-called mouthpiece for al-Qaeda, was recently 

captured and brought to the United States. The American people 

believe it is high time to declare victory in the war in Afghanistan 

and to bring our young men and women home. Madam Chair, the Iraq War cost us $2.2 trillion, cost some 4,400 

American soldiers’ lives, and some 137,000 Iraqi men, women, and 

children their lives. What has it produced for us today? I cannot 

say enough of the sacrifices that our soldiers—we cannot even take 

care of our Veterans right now as a result of them having to fight 

in that war in Iraq as we are doing in Afghanistan. 

I would like to note, Madam Chair, that after 60 years, we still 

have 29,000 soldiers in South Korea. There is supposed to be an 

armistice. What are we, the policemen of the world? That is the 

opinion of some of our colleagues here in Congress, I believe. 

Madam Chair, thank you so much. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Will the gentleman yield for a question? 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. We are so proud of our patriots 

who are wearing our nation’s uniform and in that I include my 

daughter-in-law, Lindsey, who has served admirably in Iraq and 

Afghanistan and continues to serve today. And so many who are 

battling it every day. Thank you so much. I wanted to point that 

out. 

The Chair is so pleased to welcome our witnesses. First, Seth 

Jones. Dr. Jones is the associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation as well 

as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. Thank you, Dr. Jones. 

And next our committee welcomes Kimberly Kagan, founder and 

president of the Institute for the Study of War. Dr. Kagan served 

in Kabul for 15 months and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, Mike Mullen recognized Dr. Kagan with the Distinguished 

Public Service Award, the highest honor that a Chairman can 

present to civilians who do not work for the Department of Defense. Congratulations to the entire Kagan family. 

Third, Peter Bergen, welcome, sir. The director of the National 

Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation here in 

Washington, DC, and a fellow at Fordham University Center on 

National Security. He is also a print and television journalist, documentary producer, author of four books, three of which were New 

York Times best sellers and three of which were named books of 

the year by the Washington Post. Do you also cook? No, okay. 

And finally, we welcome Daniel Markey. Thank you, Daniel. Dr. 

Markey is senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the 

Council on Foreign Relations where he specializes in security and 

governance issues in South Asia. From 2003 to 2007, Dr. Markey 

held the South Asia Portfolio on the Secretary’s Policy Planning 

Staff at the U.S. Department of State. 

8

I would like to kindly remind our witnesses that your testimony 

in full form has been made a part of the record. If you could summarize it to no more than 5 minutes that would be great. So without objection, they will be inserted into the record and we will start 

with you, Dr. Jones. 

STATEMENT OF SETH G. JONES, PH.D., ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, 

RAND CORPORATION 

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you other members 

of both committees. 

What I would like to do here in summarizing my remarks is note 

that I am pulling them both from my time as a researcher, spending time in Afghanistan for RAND, as well as at least one major 

tour as a senior civilian within U.S. Special Operations. Had several colleagues that were killed in country, so felt personally the 

loss of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. 

My bottom line, as I will outline it this afternoon is that I think 

it would be detrimental to U.S. national security to withdraw all 

forces from Afghanistan as the U.S. has done in Iraq. I think the 

United States should continue to conduct counterterrorism operations in the country and assist Afghans in conducting 

counterinsurgency operations after 2014, although perhaps with a 

presence and strategy that is more akin to U.S. efforts in other regions such as the Philippines and Colombia based on conditions in 

Afghanistan and the United States today. 

I am going to make that argument based on three points. The 

first one, my assessment, including coming back from areas like 

Kunar, Nuristan, and Nangarhar along the Afghanistan-Pakistan 

border several months ago, I assessed that both Afghanistan and 

Pakistan and the extremely porous border that they share continues to be a hot bed of extremist, radical Islamist militancy. 

There are a range of groups in that region that continue to threaten U.S. security and its interests overseas including al-Qaeda 

which as several panelists here have noted has been weakened, but 

I would say, still retains a core leadership and still has a presence 

up in Kunar, where I was, with foreigners including British citizens training in camps under individuals like Farook al-Qahtani; 

Lashkar-e-Taiba which has conducted attacks in the region and has 

had operatives arrested in the United States for terrorist activity; 

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan which was involved in the 2010 Times 

Square plot in New York City; the Haqqani Network and a range 

of others. 

Based on my assessment of this region, I would say it would be 

detrimental to pull out all U.S. forces. We can talk about the specifics in the Q&A period. I would just point to the situation in Iraq 

after we left. As I look at the numbers there, al-Qaeda in Iraq has 

been involved in an average of 30 suicide and car bomb attacks per 

month this year which is a 50 percent increase from 2011 levels. 

Al-Qaeda has also been involved in Syria. Its main affiliate, Jabhat 

al-Nusra, is probably al-Qaeda’s best armed affiliate group in the 

world now, especially after the raids of several military bases in 

Syria. I think as we have seen in Iraq, U.S. leaving does not mean 

militancy goes away. 

9

Second, I would argue that as the ranking member noted earlier, 

Afghanistan society is improving in many ways. The data is very 

clear. Just to supplement his data, if you look at GDP data, GDP 

per capita rose from $92 in 2001 per capita to $543 in 2011. That 

is a massive increase. Foreign direct investment has massively increased. Infant mortality rates declined from 95 per 1,000 live 

births in 2000 to 73 in 2001. Primary school and secondary school 

enrollment have significantly increased. If you look at the secondary school numbers from 362,000 in 2001, the last year of the 

Taliban reign, to over 2 million today. So what we see is it is a 

more vibrant economy. It is a healthier economy. And it is a better 

educated economy than when we started. 

Based on a range of other data, I would say including if you look 

at some of the improvements in the Afghan National Army, the 

Asia Foundation data is probably best. Afghans believe it has a 

better force today and it needs less support from foreign troops. We 

have made progress on multiple fronts. I think we lose that if we 

leave. Not to put a fine point on it. I would be happy to go into 

more details in the question and answer session. 

Let me just say finally to conclude, I think it is helpful to have 

a discussion about the criteria for an exit. My view is the U.S. 

should exit this region when we have no serious national security 

threats to the U.S. We are not there yet. 

Let me conclude briefly with a quote from the Lawrence of Arabia which I think will be helpful as we think about how to proceed. 

And I am going to substitute the word Arabia—Afghanistan for 

Arabia. Lawrence said, ‘‘Do not try to do too much with your own 

hands. Better the Afghans do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war and you are there to help them, not to win 

it for them. Actually, also, under the very conditions of Afghanistan 

your practical work will not be as good as perhaps you think it is.’’

So with that, I will end. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones follows:]

10


80120a-1.eps

Testimony 

After the Withdrawal 

A Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan 

Seth G. Jones 

RAND Office of External Affairs 

CT-382 

March 2013 

Testimony presented before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Joint Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa and 

Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on March 1 g, 2013 

This product is part of the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates 

to federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight 

bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address 

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its research clients and sponsors. RAN D@ is a registered trademark. 
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80120a-2.eps

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80120a-3.eps

Seth G. Jones 1 

Associate Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center 

The RAND Corporation 

After the Withdrawal: 

A Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan' 

Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa and 

Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific 

United States House of Representatives 

March 19, 2013 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Middle 

East and North Africa and the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. This is an opportune time to 

discuss a way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I have spent time in the region overthe past 

decade in two separate capacities: as a researcher for RAND and a senior civilian within U.S. 

Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. My comments today draw from both experiences, 

combining research and analysis with operational experience on the ground. 

My primary argument is that it would be detrimental to U.S. national security to withdraw all U.S. 

military forces from Afghanistan, as the United States has done in Iraq. The United States should 

continue to conduct counterterrorism operations and assist the Afghans in conducting 

counterinsurgency after 2014. The reason is straightforward: there are several militant groups in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan that threaten U.S. security and its interests overseas, including al 

Oa'ida (which still retains its core leadership along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border), Lashkar-eTayyiba (which has conducted terrorist attacks in the region and had operatives arrested in the 

United States), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (which was involved in the 2010 Times Square plot in 

New York City), and Haqqani Network (which has conducted numerous attacks against U.S. 

forces and the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan) among others. 

While Iraq is obviously different from Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is worth highlighting the 

potential dangers of a complete U.S. military withdrawal. AI Oa'ida in Iraq (AOI) has increased its 

campaign of violence in Iraq and established a foothold in neighboring Syria since the U.S. 

departure. By early 2013, AOI was involved in an average of 30 suicide and car bomb attacks per 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the authors alone and should not be 

interpreted as representing those of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research. This product is part of the 

RAND Corporation testimony senes. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates to 

federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commiSSions and panels; and private 

review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective 

analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the 

world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. 

2 This testimony is available for free download at http://www.rand.arg/pubs/testimanies/CT382.html. 
13


80120a-4.eps

month, an increase of 50 percent from 2011 levels - the last year U.S. forces were in Iraq. In 

addition, AQI has been active in Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra, AQI's affiliate there, has a growing 

number of foreign fighters, heavy weapons, and money, and is now potentially al Qa'ida's bestarmed affiliate in the world. The experience in Iraq should serve as a lesson about the risks of 

withdrawing too early in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

In response to the instructions from both Subcommittees, I have divided my written remarks into 

four sections: security implications of the drawdown, the capacity of the Afghan govemment, 

Pakistan dimension, and a brief conclusion on the U.S. commitment. 

I. Security Implications of the U.S. Drawdown 

The United States continues to face a threat from terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

including along a border that terrorists cross regularly with ease. AI Qa'ida presents the most 

serious threat. VVhile it has been weakened because of persistent drone strikes, al Qa'ida 

continues to survive. It is currently led by Ayman al-Zawahiri and a range of senior leaders, 

including Abd ai-Rahman al-Sharqi, Abu Zayd ai-Kuwaiti, Hamza al-Ghamdi, and Abd ai-Rahman 

ai-Maghreb;' 

In addition, al Qa'ida has developed a "symbiotic" strategy in the region. Since al Qa'ida lacks the 

legitimacy and power to establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan and Pakistan on its own, it has 

attempted to leverage local militant networks in the region. AI Qa'ida has not limited itself to one 

geographic area or one group. As Table 1 highlights, al Qa'ida has established close relations 

with the Haqqani Network and some other groups, though the degree of cooperation varies 

between al Qa'ida and its allies. This symbiotic arrangement provides al Qa'ida some 

redundancy. In addition, some al Qa'ida allies that have traditionally focused on Pakistan, such as 

the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, have become more involved in Afghanistan operations. In 

Pakistan, al Qa'ida hs established close ties with some groups, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban 

Pakistan, Harakat ul-Jihadi-i-Islami, and Harakat ul-Mujahideen, and limited relations with others, 

such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. AI Qa'ida has also recruited a growing number of Pakistanis into its 

senior ranks, such as Abdallah al-Sindhi, Ahmed Farouq, Osama Nazir, and Hassan Gul (the 

latter was killed in October 2012). 

2 
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80120a-5.eps

Table 1: AI Qa'ida's Relationship with Groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan 

Group Comment on Relationship 

AI-Badr Mujahidin Limited support and shelter to al Qa'ida in Khyber 

Pakhtunkhwa 

"·;i~)~I'lta1!~iit:i1l~ifjt<>itjl; .. '.i;, ;Ll'intiGd;<JQ~Pc~l1.:j~lt;l~di\Jj;(.:'\£/)~lkm'~lrnilt~:a.:;l·, •. ¢lIDlng.;' 

Gul Bahadur's Group Limited cooperation. including safe haven, materiel, training 

..cc ~qlinfNc.tl,,\;Ii#:i w· i ;;,;; rCI<JU01lli<,".}:.:;?" 

Harakat ul-lihad-lslami Close relations. including through HUJl-313 

Hezb-c lslarni Gulbuddin Limited cooperation 

Iaish-c-Mohammad Limited cooperation 

Lashkar-i-Thangvi Some cooperation. such as financing, plannin.g for attacks 

·'\;.c'i~:t;r3i:j4Jb\i;., ..... i . , .;'c'Li""fiiA ~ Qc.i4i!.~i!t'sl;:ljlQ.;!\j~iil~ "':;;'7;;; 

Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan Limited cooperation 

Several of these groups - such as al Oa'ida, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, and 

the Haqqani Network - present a threat to the United States and its interests in the region. In 

September 2009, for example, Najibullah Zazi was arrested for planning attacks with al Oa'ida on 

the New York City subway3 Several al Oa'ida operatives, including Saleh ai-Somali (now 

deceased) and Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah, were involved in the plot. According to U.S. 

government documents, Zazi's travels to Pakistan and his contacts with individuals there were 

pivotal in helping him build an improvised explosive device using triacetone triperoxide, the same 

explosive used effectively in the 2005 London subway bombings. In October 2009, Chicagobased David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Sayed Gilani) was arrested for his involvement with 

Lashkar-e Tayyiba and senior al Oa'ida leaders to conduct a series of attacks, including the 

November 2008 Mumbai attack and a plot to attack a newspaper in Copenhagen. Headley's base 

in Chicago made him ideally suited for a future attack in the U.S. homeland. 

In December 2009, five Americans from Alexandria, Virginia - Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Umar 

Farooq, Aman Hassan Yemer, Waqar Hussain Khan, and Ramy Zamzam - were arrested in 

Pakistan and later convicted on terrorism charges. They radicalized in the United States and went 

to Pakistan fortraining and operational guidance. In May 2010, Faisal Shahzad attempted to 

detonate an improvised explosive device in Times Square in New York City after being trained by 

bomb-makers from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. 

3 U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, United States of America Against Najibullah Zazi, 09 CR 

663(S-1), February 22,2010. 

3 
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80120a-6.eps

In sum, there are - and will likely continue to be - a range of Islamic extremist groups in the 

region, most of which are Sunni, that threaten the United States. A withdrawal of all U.S. forces 

from the region would significantly degrade the U.S. ability to conduct counterterrorism operations 

throughout the region and potentially allow a resurgence ofthese groups. 

II. Capacity of the Afghan Government 

There have been notable improvements in Afghan society in several areas thanks, in part, to a 

better functioning Afghan government. After all, the Taliban government that ruled until 2001 

barely functioned. Economic conditions have improved because of the war economy, an increase 

in foreign investment, Afghan entrepreneurship and some progress from the Afghan government. 

Examples include: 

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rose from $92 in 2001 to $543 in 2011 

Foreign direct investment increased from $170,000 in 2000 to $83 million in 2011 

Agrarian output has improved; cereal production, for example, tripled from 1.9 million 

metric tons in 2000 to nearly 6 million in 20104 

Health metrics have also improved from appalling conditions during the Taliban years. Examples 

include: 

The infant mortality rate declined from 95 per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 73 per 1 ,000 

live births in 2011 

Life expectancy for both men and women increased from 45 years in 2000 to 48 by 

2010 

Clean water is more readily available; in 2001, only 22 percent of Afghans had 

access to improved water sources, but by 2010 half of Afghans had access5 

Education has also improved. While data on literacy rates is unreliable, a growing number of male 

and female Afghans are going to school. Examples include: 

Primary school enrollment increased from 749,360 pupils in 2000 to over 5 million in 

2010 

Secondary school enrollment rose from 362,415 in 2001 to 2,044,157 in 20106 

Afghan society is better off today than a decade ago. And Afghans in rural and urban areas are 

now better connected to each other - and the world - than ever before. Mobile cellular 

4 The World Bank, World Development Indicators Dataset, accessed on March 13, 2013. 

5 The World Bank, World Development Indicators Dataset, accessed on March 13, 2013. 

6 The World Bank, World Development Indicators Dataset, accessed on March 13, 2013. 

4 
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80120a-7.eps

subscriptions jumped from 0 in 2000 to 18 million in 2011 T The majority of Afghan households 

now have phones. 

Yet there are still challenges that necessitate a sustained U.S. and international commitment. 

One is the quality of Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan Local Police. which 

continue to require additional help in training. logistics. planning, and intelligence collection. As 

Figure 1 highlights, Afghan perceptions of the Afghan National Army are generally getting better. 

Nearly 95 percent of Afghans view the army as honest and fair, between 85 and 90 percent 

believe it is helping improve security, and a declining percentage of Afghans believe it needs 

support from foreign troops. It is worth remembering that the Afghan government faces an enemy 

that receives considerable aid from states (such as Pakistan and Iran) and non-state actors (such 

as global terrorist groups and their supporters in the Gulf and other locations). Consequently, a 

U.S. presence would be helpful in continuing to ensure the ANA and other Afghan security forces 

stay on this trajectory. 

Figure 1: Afghan Perceptions of the Afghan National Army8 

95

1 

~ 90 I 

" " '" 5 85 ~ 

a: " 

" 80 '" ..c: 

.ao 

::: 75 o 

" "" 

~ 70 

" <! 

l1. 65 

60 

2007 

=_-~:::::::=======:=l ~-ANA is honest and fair 

2008 2009 2010 2011 

with the Afghan people 

-~ANA helps improve 

security 

~-·~·ANA needs the support of 

foreign troops and cannot 

operate by itself 

2012 

Another challenge is corruption. To maintain and build legitimacy, the central government and 

local institutions need to more adequately provide justice and service delivery to the population, 

including countering high levels of corruption. As Figure 2 highlights, however, Afghanistan 

7 The World Bank, World Development Indicators Dataset, accessed on March 13, 2013. 

8 The Asia Foundation, Afghanistan in 2012: Survey of the Afghan People (Kabul: Asia Foundation, 2012), 

p.52. 

5 
17


80120a-8.eps

remains in the bottom 1.5 percent of most corrupt countries in the world, according to World Bank 

estimates. But there have been some improvements thanks, in part, to U.S. encouragement and 

assistance. Two key players in the $900 million Kabul Bank scandal were sentenced earlier this 

month to five years in prison each, though Afghan authorities are seeking to increase the 

sentence. While shorter than most expected, the sentences nonetheless mark limited progress. A 

withdrawal of U.S. forces would likely decrease U.S. leverage in encouraging more systematic 

anti-corruption efforts. 

Figure 2: Corruption in Afghanistan (Percentile Rank among Countries 

Worldwidej9 

4.5 

'" 

~ 4 !: 6 3.5 u 

~ Q/ 3 0"0 

~ ~ 2.5 

~ i: 2 

&~ 1.5 

1 

0.5 

o 

2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 

A final challenge is economic sustain ability. Some economists are concerned about the potential 

for a recession in Afghanistan when international funding from the International Security 

Assistance Force (ISAF) decreases. This might not be as much a result of declining development 

aid, but rather a decrease of services from ISAF activity. How can the United States help the 

Afghan government grow its revenue and productive sectors to help pay for services, investment, 

and security? There are several options that should be more effectively implemented. Examples 

include long-term development of a mining sector that offers substantial benefits from 

Afghanistan's virtually untapped deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and critical industrial 

metals like lithium. In the shorter term, there should be an emphasis on artisanal projects and a 

shift from illegal artisanal mining to legal small-scale mining operations. Afghanistan granted 

negotiating rights on copper and gold tenders last year, blocks in the Afghan-Tajik Oil Basin, and 

gas well refurbishments in Shirbirghan. But Kabul has yet to pass a revised mining law, which has 

stalled further projects. Despite the limited progress in Afghanistan's extractives sector, a 

9 World Bank, World Bank Governance Indicators Dataset, accessed on March 13, 2013. 

6 
18


80120a-9.eps

complete withdrawal of U.S. forces would likely increase the possibility of a collapsed state and 

dampen the prospects of economic sustainability. During the Afghan civil war in the 1990s, there 

was virtually no international investment. 

III. The Pakistan Dimension 

Pakistan has long had a relationship with militant groups in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, Pakistan's 

spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (lSI) Directorate, provided aid to the Afghan 

mujahideen with help from other organizations - including the Central Intelligence Agency. In the 

1990s, the lSI helped support the Taliban. According to declassified U.S. documents, U.S. State 

Department officials understood that "lSI is deeply involved in the Taleban take over in Kandahar 

and Qalat.,,1D lSI officers were deployed to such Afghan cities as Herat. Kandahar, and Jalalabad 

- and stationed in Pakistani consulates - to provide assistance and advice." Another U.S. 

intelligence assessment contended that the lSI was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions. 

fuel, and food," and "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into 

Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces.,,12 

Today. individuals from the lSI and Pakistan military continue to provide some support to Afghan 

insurgents. Indeed, Pakistan is running one of the most successful covert action programs today 

against a major power - and against the United States no less. The U.S. failure to curb Pakistan's 

sanctuary and support is particularly egregious since the United States was involved in an almost 

identical program 30 years ago - with the ISI- against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Islamabad's 

rationale for supporting Afghan insurgents is straightforward and, in many ways, understandable. 

Hemmed in by its arch-enemy India to the east, Pakistan wants an ally to the west. It doesn't 

have one at the moment. Instead, New Delhi has a close relationship with the Afghan 

government. Feeling strategically encircled by India, Islamabad has resorted to proxy warfare to 

replace the current Afghan government with a friendlier regime. With U.S. forces withdrawing 

from Afghanistan, Pakistan could get its wish. 

Yet this outcome was not inevitable. The U.S. made three key mistakes along the way. First, U.S. 

policymakers failed to develop an effective regional strategy that involved Afghanistan's 

neighbors. At the Bonn Conference in December 2001, U.S. and other Western diplomats pulled 

together the regional powers, such as Iran, Pakistan. India, and Russia, to agree on a way 

10 u.s Department of State, From Ron McMullen (Afghanistan Desk), "Developments In Afghanistan," 

December 5, 1994. Released by the National Security Archive. 

11 U.S. Embassy (Islamabad), Cable, "Afghanistan: [Excised] Criticizes GOP's Afghan Policy; Says It Is 

Letting Policy Drift," June 16, 1998. Released by the National Security Archive. 

12 From [Excised] to DIA Washington D.C., Cable, "Pakistan Interservice Intelligence/ Pakistan (PK) 

Directorate Supplying the Taliban Forces," October 22, 1996. 

7 
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80120a-10.eps

forward in Afghanistan. After Bonn, however, there was no follow-on institution to ensure regional 

collaboration, and cooperation quickly devolved into security competition. 

Second, the United States and Pakistan failed to target the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan. The 

United States has conducted drone strikes in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. But 

senior leaders of the Taliban are located hundreds of miles south in Baluchistan Province and 

Karachi. Neither the U.S. nor Pakistan have targeted the Taliban command-and-control network 

there. Instead, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, resides well outside the area 

where drone strikes are occurring. So does the Taliban's inner shura, its most important decisionmaking body. The inner shura provides strategic guidance for the insurgency, exercises some 

command-and-control, and is the largest fundraiser. Indeed, Baluchistan has been so safe for 

Taliban leaders that most have moved their families there and sent their children to Pakistani 

schools. 

Third, U.S. and Afghan leaders failed to co-opt as many former Taliban leaders as they could 

after Bonn, sending them instead to prisons at Bagram air base or Guantanamo. This was a 

mistake. The Taliban represented a faction of Afghan society that could not be indefinitely 

excluded from the country's political and economic life. Consequently, Taliban leaders, including 

several that considering reconciling with the Afghan government, slipped across the border into 

Pakistan. 

According to a RAND study I led in 2008, the success rate of insurgent groups significantly rises 

when they have support from an outside power. Those insurgencies that received support from 

external states won more than 50 percent of the time, while those with no support won only 17 

percent of the time. But that's not all. Insurgents have been successful approximately 43 percent 

of the time when they enjoyed a sanctuary." Afghan insurgents enjoy both outside support and 

sanctuary, a doubly difficult hurdle for the United States and its allies to overcome. Ten years 

after the U.S. helped overthrow the Taliban regime, it is notable that successive U.S. 

administrations have decided not to target the Taliban safe haven in Baluchistan. The Soviet 

Union faced a similar dilemma in the 1980s, when it did not act against the seven major 

mujahideen groups headquartered in Pakistan. 

In his book The Bear Trap, Mohammad Yousaf, who headed the lSI's covert war in Afghanistan 

against the Soviets, wrote that the insurgent sanctuary in Pakistan was essential to defeat the 

13 Seth G. Jones, Counterinsurgency in Afghanis/an (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008). 

8 
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80120a-11.eps

Soviets and win the insurgency." Sadly, Yousafs observation remains relevant today. A 

withdrawal of U.S. forces would likely leave behind an even more chaotic war involving multiple 

sides: insurgent groups backed by Pakistan and Iran; an Afghan government backed by several 

states, including India; and a range of Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and other powerbrokers backed by 

virtually all of Afghanistan's neighbors. 

IV. Conclusion: A Sustained U.S. Presence 

On September 11,2001, Afghanistan was not just a sanctuary for al Qa·ida. The Taliban was also 

an ally. There were disagreements between Taliban and al Qa'ida leaders, as there are between 

most organizations. But Osama bin Laden's decision in the late 1990s to rnove from Tora Bora to 

Kandahar, only a few miles from Mullah Omar's residence, and the Taliban's refusal to hand over 

bin Laden after September 11 indicated a viable relationship. Today, the United States cannot 

accept a situation in which al Qa'ida and its local allies have an unchallenged sanctuary to plan 

and train for terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. Nor can the United States accept an 

Afghan government that is an ally of terrorists. AI Qa'ida's continuing relationship with senior 

Taliban, Haqqani, and other militant leaders - including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - suggests 

that a Taliban-Ied government would be a risky gamble for U.S. national security. 

A viable long-term option may be relying on a limited U.S. Special Operations Force footprint, 

aided by the CIA and a small number of conventional forces. On the military side, it would focus 

on two goals: (1) assist Afghan national and local forces to prevent the military overthrow of the 

Afghan government by the Taliban, and (2) target al Qa'ida leaders and others plotting against 

the United States and its allies overseas. An Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy would 

involve using U.S. forces to conduct several tasks: 

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

Local Police forces 

Conduct direct action operations against high value terrorism targets 

Provide limited "enablers," such as intelligence, civil affairs, and military information 

support operations 

This strategy might require decreasing the number of U.S. and NATO forces to perhaps 8,000-

12,000 by 2015, depending on ground conditions and other factors. This strategy entails some 

risks. It assumes that Afghan National Security Forces and local allies, with assistance from U.S. 

Special Operations Forces and others, would be adequate to degrade the Taliban-Ied insurgency. 

14 Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan - The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower 

(Havertown, PA: Casemate, 1992). 

9 
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80120a-12.eps

It also assumes that Afghan central government institutions would be adequate to establish some 

order and deliver services, at least in key urban areas. Current levels of corruption and 

incompetence raise long-term governance concerns. But this Afghan-led counterinsurgency 

strategy has several benefits. It relies on Afghans to do the bulk of counterinsurgency, though 

with limited U.S. assistance and oversight. It also ensures a steady drop in financial costs of the 

war. While it would be foolhardy to draw too many lessons from other counterinsurgencies since 

they represent different contexts, it is worth noting that small numbers of U.S. Special Operations 

Forces and intelligence units have been successful in helping defeat insurgents (or setting the 

conditions for a peace settlement) in Colombia, Philippines, and a number of other insurgencies. 

But a precipitous U.S. withdrawal and continuing Pakistan support to Afghan insurgent groups 

could lead to Taliban control of part or most of Afghanistan over the next decade. The complete 

U.S. departure from Iraq has allowed AQI to recover and threaten broader U.S. interests in the 

region. Yet the stakes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are much higher than in Iraq, in part since it is 

the region where al Qa'ida was born and its leadership, which is still committed to attacking the 

United States, continues to exist. 

10 
22

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Excellent way to end. Thank you, Dr. Jones. 

Dr. Kagan. 

STATEMENT OF KIMBERLY KAGAN, PH.D., PRESIDENT, 

INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR 

Ms. KAGAN. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, and the 

distinguished members of both committees. It is a great pleasure 

to be here with you today to discuss this vital issue. 

I, too, like Dr. Jones, believe that a successful outcome in Afghanistan is essential to America’s national security here at home, 

as well as throughout the region of Southwest Asia. And I, too, believe and indeed assess that the dismantling of al-Qaeda core, although it is something that has been undertaken over the last decade is far from complete and far from sufficient to achieve our national security objectives in Southwest Asia, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Unfortunately, al-Qaeda is both an ideology and an agglomeration of organizations that rely on one another to perpetuate militancy not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also elsewhere on 

the globe. And unfortunately, that means that dismantling alQaeda core does not actually suffice to complete the reduction of 

the threat of that radical militancy and terrorism against the 

United States or its allies in the West or within the region. 

As Dr. Jones said, there are numerous groups thriving in the 

border lands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, whether it be alQaeda itself, TTP, LET, the Haqqani Network. And what we risk 

in withdrawing from Afghanistan too soon or in leaving smaller 

number of bases than necessary, is undermining the very counterterrorism strategy that we actually as a nation hoped to pursue 

and have continued to pursue through engagement along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in an effort to ensure that other militant groups do not get the capabilities or develop the intention that 

they can execute to cause trouble in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or the 

region as a whole. 

This is one of the issues on which I differ from the opinion of 

many senior administration officials because what we are talking 

about here is not simply whether al-Qaeda’s affiliates have the will 

to attack the United States or its Western allies, we are talking 

about groups whose intentions, wills, and capabilities will change 

over time as our force presence changes, as Pakistani politics 

changes, and as Afghans’ politics change. 

Therefore, we actually have a requirement to continue to defend 

America’s national security that goes above and beyond al-Qaeda 

senior leadership and actually requires a long-term presence, 

though not an indefinite presence, within the region. What does 

that long-term presence mean? What should it look like? Well, it 

needs to be based on the bilateral security agreement that we are 

working through with difficulty with President Karzai to achieve. 

It requires basing for its counterterrorism operations. It requires 

training the Afghan National Security Forces. But most of all, it requires being in Afghanistan for two reasons. One is to help preserve the essential stability of Afghanistan. Essential because 

when Afghanistan is stable, so too is the region. It is a centrallylocated place and peace and stability inside of Afghanistan tend to 

23

emanate outward toward its neighbors and have a stabilizing effect 

on them. Whereas, conflict and civil war inside of Afghanistan tend 

to invite proxy participation by foreign states and competition that 

results in violence, terror and militancy in a greater number of 

ungoverned spaces. 

We have to remain in Afghanistan to prevent Afghanistan from 

once again becoming an ungoverned space wrapped in civil war. 

The Afghans right now are looking to us to commit to them and 

they are hedging against two possibilities. One is the possibility of 

radical success. That, in fact, the policies that they and we are pursuing now will lead them to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan in 

which their political lives and the kinds of changes will continue. 

The other is a civil war which will result not only in their loss of 

power, but in the destabilization of an entire region where this 

militancy will continue to exist. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kagan follows:]

24


80120b-1.eps

The Afghan Endgame 

Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan 

The Weeldy Standard 

February 25, 2013, Vol 18, No. 23 

President Obama's decision to withdraw .mother 34,000 troops from Afgh,mistan over the course of the next year is unwise. It 

greatly increases the risk of mission failure in that important conflict! jeopardizing gains already made in the Taliban heartland in 

the south and compromising the ability of Mghan and coalition forces to fmish the tlght against the Haqqani Nen.vork in the ea5t.lt 

also incrca~cs the risk that a1 ~l.eda ·will be able to reestablish itself in limited safe havens in Mghanistan over tim(', Removing 

troops and capabilities before Afghanistan's next presidential election, sclleduled for April 2014, further exacerilcltes the danger that 

Mghanistan might collapse into renewed ethnic civil war. 

It was not as bad as it might have been, however) and prospects for success in this conflict remain, although the odds grov.· ever 

longer, The president appear~ to have yidded to military realities and the la·w ... of physics on a number of important points. The 

drawdown itself is paced to keep a significant number of American troops in Afghamstan through most of this coming fighting 

se,lson: Around 6,000 troops are to be vvithdrawn between now dnd thlS springj another 8,000 by N ovemberj and the final 20,000 

by Fcbmary 2014. 

S('nior administration officials explained on background that the first stage of this withdrawal is already undeI'\vay and H.'SUItS largely 

from the deployment of bng<ldes configured to conduct training and adVIsing missiOn<> rather them combat. General Joe Dunford! 

the new commander in Afghanistan) will therefore h,we to redeploy only another 8,000 troops while fighting the enemy this 

summer-a far morc manageable challenge than if he had had to redeploy the full 28,000 while still trying to accompli ... h his 

primary mission ofhdping the Afghans defeat our common enemies and consolidate gains. Administration officials also said that a 

sizable contingent of planners and logislicians now in Afghanistan to design and execute the drawdown are not cmmted against the 

total troop numbers-o.o-a vital fact, since ," .. riting and implementing such ,1 plan is a massive undertaking that could well otherlNise 

consume the staffs and commanders who must focus on continuing progress against the enemy and training the Afghan National 

Security Forces (ANSF). 

The president has also postponed ,111 announcement-and) according to administration officials! even the decision-on the size of 

the post-2014 U.S. mditary presl:.'nce in Afghanistan. '1'h,lt postponement is very wise. '111e dIScussion of the long-term presence is 

premature at this slage of the campaign. II is impossible to describe the seCllrity situation in 2015 before the 2013 fighting seJson 

has even begun. And considenng that administration officials were floating the Idea of keeping no troops at all in Afghanistan after 

20 l4when President Hamid Karzai came to Vlashington in January, the deferral of a decision on this matter is a relief. 

Perhaps the most encouraging part of the change in the 1,.-Vhite House decision-making is that - ° according to senior administration 

brierers-plans to cut the ANSF by more th,m 100)000 troops stoarting in 2015 are not [lIlal. It appears that the president is 

considering suppOl'tmg the current force of 352)000 ANSF troops through 2017 instead. Maintaining a large ANSF is absolutely 

vital. It is ahll0 ... t impossible to imagine a &ecurity &ituation in 2015 in which dismissing more than 100)000 trained Mghan soldiers 

anJ police (meaning unemployment for many of them) makes any seme. It i~ equally important to ' .... 'ait until we have seen hnw 

Afghan forces perform after the American and international miSSIon changes in 201S before deCiding on the future size and 

composition of those forces. 

It is still possible) therefore) that coalition and Afghan lTOOpS may be able to hold onto gains already made and even expand them 

over the course of this fighting season. That hope justifies continued support for an important mission, as well as continued 
25


80120b-2.eps

pressure on the Vvhite House to reduce the enormous risks it is assuming in Afghanistan in pursuit of extremely sm,ill rhetorical, 

politICal, and economic benefits. 

The cost afkeeping 14,000 troops in Afghanistan until next February rather than bringing them out hyNovember is budget dust in 

the context of overall defense spending, let alone the national debt, the deficit, or any m<ljor social program. E....-en the cost of 

keeping all 34,000 troops now scheduled to come out over the next year in Afghanislan for another six or eight monlhs would 

hardly register compared V<.'ith other budget items. Administration officials accurately and honestly insisted that withdravving those 

forces increases the !lsk of failure in Afghanistan. Accepting that increased risk-on top of the enormous risks the administr,ltion 

has already accepLed by previous premature troops vvilhdrawals-is difficult to justify. 

The president's decision on Afghanistan was not as bad as it might have been-indeed, it was not as bad as it seemed certain to be 

at the st<llt of this year. It Ie-aves a glimmer of hope for success, which our commanders, troops, and diplomats in the field will exert 

all their powers to keep alive. But it'i"ras still a mistake that puts our nation's security in greater jeopardy. WI,.' hope that the president 

will continue to H'l.'valuatc his mvn willingness to acc(.'pt risk in light of the rapidly diminishing economic and political returns he 

will receIve from lowering force levels. 

The war in _Afghanistan is not yet lost. \Ve are not yet losing, in fact, and success remains possible. But it is absolutely vital that the 

White House give General Dunford some flexibility to adjust the withdrawal timelines, and even to ask for temporaly 

reinforcements, as the situation on the ground evolves. 

Frederick W. Kagan & Kimberly Kagan 
26

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Dr. Kagan. 

Mr. Bergen. 

STATEMENT OF MR. PETER BERGEN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL 

SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION 

Mr. BERGEN. Madam Chair, members, thank you for this invitation. It is really a privilege to be speaking here today. I make my 

comments based on traveling to Afghanistan starting in ’93 during 

the civil wars there under the Taliban, so I have a sense, personal 

sense, of what has changed over time. Many of these changes, of 

course, are very good. I have been traveling to Pakistan since 1983. 

Pakistan just celebrated an enormous milestone on Saturday which 

is the first civilian government to complete its term in Pakistani 

history. As you know, there have been three successful coups in 

Pakistan, many other coup attempts. So the fact that civilian government has completed its term and the Pakistanis will go to the 

polls to elect another civilian government, we are looking at a period when we might have a decade of uninterrupted civilian rule 

which is enormously important as we look to the future of the region. The Pakistani military has no interest at this point in mounting a coup and also probably doesn’t have the capability to do so. 

And so we are a kind of different space. This is an optimistic moment I think for Pakistan, despite all the problems that we know 

exist in that country. 

Another great opportunity is the election which we referred to in 

Afghanistan is both a moment of opportunity and of great peril. If 

this election is as flawed as the 2009 election, this could precipitate 

a return to a new civil conflict. If, on the other hand, this is reasonably fair, reasonably free, and reasonably uncontested, this will set 

Afghanistan down the path to basic ally some sort of political 

agreement that will prevent the renewal of some civil war there. 

On the matter of troop numbers, we can have a debate about 

whether 8,000 is the correct number of 15,000. I think much more 

important is the issue of what we say when we actually announce 

the figure. We have negotiated a great U.S. investment in this 

Strategic Partnership Agreement and a partnership agreement 

that goes on until 2024. We should make it clear that our commitment is until 2024, whether it is 6,000 soldiers or 9,000 or 10,000, 

whatever the final number is, because Afghans have received a lot 

of conflicting signals in the past about our intentions. For instance, 

when the surge was announced of 30,000 troops it was also announced that July 2011 withdrawal date. And that became more 

important in certain Afghans’ minds than the fact that President 

Obama in his first term actually tripled the number of troops in 

Afghanistan from 30,000 to 90,000. But there was real concern 

about this withdrawal date. So we shouldn’t make the same mistake twice. 

On the question of is a civil war likely, I associate myself with 

the comments of Mr. Deutch and also Dr. Jones. I mean there has 

been so much change in Afghanistan, positive change, that there 

is a great deal of investment. There is nothing like going through 

a civil war to prevent the idea—it seems like a good idea. And so 

many people have seen positive changes in their lives. I just wantVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:04 Jun 06, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_MENA\031913\80120 HFA PsN: SHIRL
27

ed to add some to the data that Dr. Jones and Mr. Deutch mentioned. Five million refugees have returned home to Afghanistan. 

There is nothing like a refugee returning home as a signal of faith 

in the future of the country. Relatively few of the millions of Iraqi 

refugees have returned home to Iraq. Iraq is still regarded as too 

unstable. 

There are proportionately, as you probably know, Madam Chair, 

more women in the Afghan Parliament than there are in the halls 

of U.S. Congress. And you can list a whole set of data like this. 

And surprisingly, there has been a lot of discussion about the economy Afghanistan once the ACAP goes out. But if you look at a 

World Bank recent study which was very rigorous and comprehensive, they espoused that the growth rate in Afghanistan will drop 

from about 9 percent to about 5 percent. So the economy may do 

pretty well. 

On the issue of the army, of course, this is a flawed force in 

many senses. The big problem here is the desertion rate. The retention rate now in the Afghan army is 27 percent leaving every 

year. So on the other hand, you are seeing a lot more Afghan soldiers and policemen dying. Now about 300 Afghan soldiers and policemen dying a month. In January, we saw three American soldiers die which was the lowest number in 4 years. So you are beginning to see a real change in the actual—willingness of the Afghan army and police who take casualties in after all, what is their 

own war. 

On the issue of the Haqqani Network, I think it is going to be—

Pakistan is going to continue its basic acquiescence and/or sort of 

lukewarm support for the Haqqanis. That is not going to change. 

When it is in their interest to attack the Taliban as they did in 

South Waziristan and Swat, they will do it and conduct serious 

military operations. Interestingly, we have seen absolutely no evidence. It is hard to prove negatives that Osama bin Laden was getting any kind of official support from the Pakistani Government. 

That is the assessment of the intelligence community. It is also—

we have recovered a number of documents from the Abbottabad 

compound and there is nothing in there to show that bin Laden 

was being supported by the Pakistani Government. 

One final note, in terms of improving the Pakistani relationship, 

2011 was sort of a nadir. I think it is getting better. Pakistan has 

never threatened to close down the air corridor which is absolutely 

vital to our supply effort in Afghanistan. Kandahar Airport is the 

busiest airport in the world, 700 flights a day. Pakistan has never 

even threatened to close that air corridor. And so I think there are 

things that we can build on. What about a U.S.-Pakistani free 

trade agreement? What about something that has often been mentioned in the past which is lowering the very high rate of tariff on 

Pakistani textiles? Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen follows:]

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Peter Bergen 

Director 

New America Foundation 

House Committee on Foreign Affairs 

After the Withdrawal: The Way Forward in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan 

March 19,2013 

1 
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1. Opportunities in Afghanistan and Pakistan and H ow the 

U.S. Might NurtureThem. 

The next year is a moment of real potential opportunity in both 

Afghanistan and Pakistan, and should be treated as such by the 

United States. The problems of both countries are quite well 

known, but less well understood are the areas of strengths in both 

nations; strengths that if properly nurtured and developed will help 

to secure long term U.S. interests in the region. 

This past Saturday, March 16,2013 marked an extraordinary 

moment in Pakistan's history, as this is the first time that a civilian 

government has served its entire five-year term (from 2008 to 

2013). And, for the first time in its history, the Pakistani military 

appears both unwilling and unable to mount a coup against any 

civilian government. The military has mounted four coups since 

Pakistan's independence in 1947. Around six weeks from now, in 

May, Pakistanis will go again to the polls to elect a new civilian 

government for a five-year term, and there is now a good prospect 

for continued, uninterrupted civilian government until at least 

2018. 

While Pakistan's problems are many-in particular its weak 

economy, tiny tax base, chronic energy shortages and oftenfeckless leadership-there are some underlying strengths of its 

institutions that are too often overlooked. Pakistan may have a 

largely ineffectual state, but it has a vibrant civil society. As a 

result of this strong civil society, Pakistan had its version of the 

Arab Spring long before the wave of demands for accountable 

governments emerged in the Middle East. It was, after all, a 

movement of thousands oflawyers taking to the streets protesting 

the sacking of the Supreme Court chief justice by the military 

2 
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dictator Pervez Musharraf in 2007 that helped to dislodge 

Musharraf from power. 1 

Pakistan also has a vibrant media. A decade ago, there was only 

Pakistan TV, which featured leaden government propaganda. Now 

there are dozens of news channels: 2 many of them are conspiracist 

and anti-American, but many of them are also anti-Taliban and 

pro-democracy. 

In the past year or so, the Supreme Court has taken on the lSI, 

Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, successfully 

demanding that the organization produce prisoners who had 

disappeared for years.3 

In November 201 I, Pakistan agreed to a pact with long-time rival 

India granting India "most favored nation" trading status;4 

something that would have been unimaginable a few years back. 

This important development was sanctioned by Pakistan's powerful 

army, which is a significant player in the country's economy and 

understands that one way out of Pakistan's economic mess is to 

hitch itself to India's much larger economy. 

Despite the visibility of the hardline religious parties on the streets 

of Pakistan, in the voting booth, these parties have recently fared 

very poorly. A coalition of pro-Tali ban religious parties known as 

the MMA secured control of two of Pakistan's four provinces in an 

election in 2002 and 11 % of the votes to the National Assembly. 

But the MMA garnered only a piddling 2% of the vote in the 2008 

1 This section draws upon http://www.cnn.comI2012/07123/opinionibergen-pakistan 

2 http://atwar.blogs.nytimes. com/20 1 0/05126/pakistans-opinionated-media-landscapel 

3 http://www.nytimes.comI20 12102/07 Iworldl asia/isi -in-paki stan-faces-courtcases.html?pagewanted=all&J=O 

4 http://www.reuters.com/artic1eI20111l1/02Ius-pakistan-india-tradeidUSTRE7A13VE20111102 

3 
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election.) The showing of the pro-Taliban religious parties in the 

May 2013 election is likely to be equally unimpressive. 

In terms of Pakistan's long term health and stability, the fact that 

the country is poised to enter into a unprecedented era of lengthy 

civilian rule will help erode the Pakistani military's present 

position as having uncontested supremacy in all matters that relate 

to the country's national security, in particular its relations with 

India and with Afghanistan. The military has backed armed proxies 

in both India and Afghanistan to maintain its perceived interests in 

these countries. A more confident civilian Pakistani government is 

over time less likely to support these insurgent and terrorist groups. 

The United States should seek to further cement ties to the next 

civilian government in Pakistan and some concrete ideas about 

how this might be accomplished can be found below in section 5. 

Another great opportunity (and potential peril) will present itself in 

Afghanistan within the next year, when Afghans go to the polls in 

April 2014 for the third presidential election since the fall of the 

Taliban. If that election is perceived as being relatively free and 

fair this would go a long way to ease tensions in the Afghan body 

politic, increase Afghanistan's overall security, and reassure both 

Afghan and outside investors that the country has a promising 

future. On the other hand, if the 2014 election is seen as unfair, 

corrupted and is deeply contested this would likely precipitate a 

vicious circle of conflict, deteriorating security, and capital flight. 

The U.S., therefore, should do everything it can to provide 

technical and security assistance to make these elections go as well 

as possible. But unlike what happed in the run up to the 2009 

Afghan presidential election, the U.S. should not get involved in 

backing certain candidates. This had the unintended etlect of 

5 http://fpc. state. gOY / documents/organization! 1 04699. pdf 

4 
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splitting the opposition to Afghan President Hamid Karzai as key 

leaders of the anti-Karzai opposition all believed that they were 

"America's candidate." It also deeply alienated Karzai, whose 

occasional diatribes against the United States are best understood 

as due to his lingering resentment over this issue. 6 

A key aspect ofD.S. and NATO planning for the Afghan 

presidential elections in April 2014 is that given the fact that there 

are no discernible frontrunners to succeed Karzai, there may be no 

clear winner who attains more than 50 percent of the vote, which 

under Afghan electoral laws would necessitate a run off election 

between the two leading candidates. Therefore security, technical 

and economic assistance for the Afghan elections should be 

prepared to extend into the summer of2014 as its not clear as yet 

when that run ofT might be held. 

The effort to set the conditions for a free and fair Afghan election 

in 2014 is far more important than the pipedream of getting some 

kind of peace deal with the Taliban. Years of U.S. talks with the 

Taliban haven't gone much of anywhere, and predictably so 

because the "moderate" Taliban who wanted to reconcile with the 

Afghan government have already long done SO.7 Second, "the 

Taliban" are really many Talibans, so a deal with one insurgent 

group doesn't mean the end of the insurgency writ large. Third, the 

history of "peace" deals with the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan 

shows that the groups can't be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani 

government and the Taliban in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in 

Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing 

their brutal "emirates," regrouping and then moving into adjoining 

areas to seize more territory. 

6 http://www.npLorg/templates/story/story.php?storyld=174037658 

7 This section draws on http://artic1es.cnn.com/2011-05-

24/ opinionibergen. taliban. talks _I_tali ban-leader-taliban-foreign-ministry-i slamicemirate? s=PM:OPINI 

5 
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80120c-6.eps

Finally, and most importantly: What do the Taliban really want? 

It's relatively easy to discern what they don't want: international 

forces in Afghanistan. But other than their blanket demand for the 

rule of Sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for 

the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state with 

elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What 

about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities? 

It is the outcome of these general elections in Pakistan later this 

year and in Afghanistan in spring 2014, rather than the precise 

number of U.S. soldiers who are posted in Afghanistan after the 

withdrawal of American combat troops in December 2014 that are 

the most critical factors in determining the future of both countries, 

and also in securing the long term interests of the United States in 

the region. 

Last year the United States and Afghanistan negotiated a Strategic 

Partnership Agreement, which ensures America will continue to 

playa supporting role there until 2024. 8 The exact details of what 

that agreement means in practice are still being hammered out (and 

these negotiations may take until November) but they are likely to 

include not only significant U.S. aid but also many thousands of 

American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan for years into the 

future as a guarantor of the country's stability. 

The U.S. military has given Obama a range of options under which 

as few as 6,000 or as many as 20,000 soldiers would remain in 

Afghanistan after 2014. 9 Those forces would work as advisers to 

the Afghan army and mount special operations raids against the 

Taliban and al-Qaeda. While military experts can debate the 

efficacy of, say, 8,000 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan after 

2014 versus 15,000 -- and this is an entirely legitimate discussion -

8 http://www . whitehouse. gOY Ithe-press-offi ce/20 12/05/0 I/fact-sheet -us-afghanistanstrategic-partnership-agreement 

9 http://www.nytimes.comI2013!02!l3/us/politics/obama-to-announce-troops-retum.html 

6 
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-it is worth underlining that whatever the final decision is on troop 

levels, the key point is that the Obama administration and other 

U.S. officials should emphasize very clearly that the thousands of 

American soldiers who will remain in Afghanistan are there to 

support the U.S. long term partnership agreement with Afghanistan 

which stretches for more than a decade. 

This is important to emphasize because Afghans have been 

understandably confused by some of the diflerent signals the 

Obama administration has made about its commitment to 

Afghanistan in the past. Major confusion arose following President 

Obama's December 2009 announcement of the "surge" of30,000 

troops to Afghanistan, which was coupled with the announcement 

that those troops would begin to withdraw beginning in July 2011. 

In many Afghans' minds the withdrawal date became more 

important than the fact that Obama actually tripled the number of 

U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan during his first term from around 

30,000 to a total of90,000. 

Once the post-2014 troop levels are finally determined, the Obama 

administration should emphasize that the U.S. commitment to 

Afghanistan is set to last until at least 2024. This will help in 

multiple ways: First, this guarantee of a long-term U.S. 

commitment to Afghanistan will encourage other NATO countries 

-- and also non-NATO allies -- to maintain some of their own 

troops in Afghanistan to continue to work with the Afghans in 

areas like training the army and police well past the end of the 

NATO combat mission in December 2014. 

Such an announcement will also help reassure Afghans that the 

U.S. won't be simply turning off the lights in Afghanistan in 

December 2014. After the Soviet Union withdrew from 

Afghanistan in 1989, something that was accomplished at the cost 

of more than a million Afghan lives and billions of dollars of U.S. 

aid, the United States closed its embassy in Afghanistan during the 

7 
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George H. W. Bush administration and then zeroed out aid to one 

of the poorest countries in the world under the Clinton 

administration. HI It essentially turned its back on Afghans once 

they had served their purpose of dealing a deathblow to the 

Soviets. As a result, the United States had virtually no 

understanding of the subsequent vacuum in Afghanistan into which 

eventually stepped the Taliban, who rose to power in the mid1990s. The Taliban granted shelter to Osama bin Laden and his al 

Qaeda organization from 1996 onward. 

Also this announcement of long-term commitment to 

Afghanistan's stability by the United Sates will signal to regional 

powers like Pakistan and Iran that the U.S. plans to remain 

engaged in Afghanistan for many years into the future. 

The United States continues to station thousands of troops in South 

Korea more than five decades after the end of the Korean War. 

Under this American security umbrella South Korea has gone from 

being one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the 

richest. It is this kind of model that most Afghans want and the 

U.S. needs to provide so Afghanistan doesn't revert to the kind of 

chaos that beset it in the mid-1990s and from which the Taliban 

first emerged. 

10 this section draws on http://www.cnn.com/2013/01110/opinionlbergen-afghanistantroop-levels 

8 
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2. What are the security implications for Afghanistan and the 

US of drawi ng down the number of troops in Afghanistan? 

Some smart commentators on Afghanistan worry that the Afghan 

civil war will renew itself after the United States and other NATO 

countries withdraw combat troops at the end of2014. In an 

influential July report in the New Yorker, veteran war 

correspondent Dexter Filkins described how Afghans are girding 

for another civil war, and he quoted a former U.S. official based in 

Kabul as saying, "A coup is one of the big possibilities -- a coup or 

civil war." II 

This is overwrought. A return to the kind of civil war in which 

hundreds of thousands died following the Soviet withdrawal in 

1989 and the 1992 collapse of the Najibullah communist 

government is quite unlikely for many reasons, not least the fact 

that the United States is not going to collapse as the Soviet Union 

did, an implosion that precipitated the fall of the Najibullah 

government. When the Russian aid stopped flowing to N aj ibullah, 

he couldn't maintain his military, which opened the way for his 

overthrow. 

Much has been achieved in Afghanistan over the past decade, 

which will not be undone when American combat troops leave at 

the end of2014. Afghanistan just after the November 2001 fall of 

the Taliban resembled Germany after World War II: The country 

had been utterly destroyed, around a third of the population had 

fled, and more than one in 10 of its citizens had been killed in the 

previous two decades of war. Many Afghans had fled for Pakistan 

and Iran during the 1980s and 1990s -- some 6 million out of a 

population of 15 million. 12 

11 

http://www.newyorker.comlreporting/20 12/07/09/l20709fa jact_filkins? currentPage=all 

12 This section draws upon 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/what_wentJight 

9 
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As a result of the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan and the 

enterprising spirit of the Afghans themselves millions of Afghans 

have voted with their feet: Since the fall of the Taliban, more than 

5 million have returned home. l3 By way of contrast, some 2 

million Iraqis left their country during the recent war there. Only a 

tiny fraction of those refugees has gone back. 

The country to which those millions of Afghans have returned is in 

fundamental respects very different from the one it was before the 

9/11 attacks. Let's start with the most obvious point: The Taliban 

are removed from power. This was a movement that gave 

sanctuary not only to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but also to 

pretty much every jihadi militant group from around the Muslim 

world. 

Thanks to the u.S. invasion of Afghanistan, al Qaeda ("the base" 

in Arabic) lost the best base it ever had: a country in which it ran 

something of a parallel state, with training camps churning out 

thousands of recruits, and from which bin Laden and his henchmen 

conducted their own foreign policy, attacking U.S. embassies and 

warships, and planned the deadliest mass murder in American 

history. 

Al Qaeda has never recovered from the loss of its Afghan base. Its 

last successful strike in the West was the July 2005 series of 

suicide attacks on London's transportation system. Meanwhile, the 

war against al Qaeda continues to be fought from Afghanistan. The 

SEAL team that killed bin Laden in 2011 took off in stealth 

helicopters from an airfield in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. 

And the drones that have inflicted heavy losses on other al Qaeda 

leaders continue to deploy from Afghan bases. 

13 http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486eb6.html 

10 
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The chances of the Taliban coming back to run Afghanistan are 

now vanishingly small. Favorable views of the Taliban in polling 

across Afghanistan over the past several years are consistently no 

more than 10 percent. There is nothing like experiencing life under 

the Taliban to convince Afghans that the group cannot deliver on 

its promises of an Islamist utopia here on Earth. And if the Taliban 

have scant chance of returning to power, their al Qaeda buddies 

have even less chance of returning to Afghanistan in any 

meaningful way. Few Muslim countries harbor a more hostile view 

of al Qaeda and its Arab leaders than Afghanistan. 

Afghans have good reasons to fear the Taliban. The group 

imprisoned half the population inside their homes, preventing 

women from having jobs and girls from attending school. 

Although Afghanistan today remains a deeply conservative 

Muslim society, proportionately more women are now serving in 

the Afghan parliament than in the U.S. Congress. And while only 

fewer than 1 million children, almost entirely boys, were in school 

under the Taliban, now more than 8 million children are in school, 

more than a third of whom are girls. 

One of the most common questions pollsters ask is, "Is your 

country going in the right direction?" A poll by Rasmussen at the 

end of December found that 33 percent of American voters 

believed their country was going in the right direction. 14 By 

contrast, a poll of some 6,000 Afghans conducted by the wellregarded Asia Foundation found that in 2012,52 percent of 

Afghans thought their country was on the right track. 15 

This finding isn't so surprising when you consider what remained 

of the Afghan economy under the Taliban. There were just six 

14 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_oCmnerica_archive/rig 

ht_ direction_or _ wrong_track/j anuarL 2013/33 _say _ u _ s _ headingjn Jight_ direction 

15 http://asiafoundati on. org/country 1 afghanistanl20 12-poll. php 

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commercial banks in the entire country, and, according to the IMF, 

they were "largely inactive." 16 There was virtually no phone 

system. 

Afghanistan's GDP in 2001 was some $2 billion -- about the size 

of Burkina Faso's. In a decade, GDP has gone up to $20 billion 

(though a good deal of it is attributable to foreign aid). Today, one 

in two Afghans has a cell phone, which they use for everything 

from getting their salaries wired to them to making utility 

payments. There are also now dozens of newspapers and TV 

channels. Where once Kabul's streets were largely silent, they are 

now a bedlam of traffic and thriving small businesses. 

At the time of the Taliban, only a tenth of the population had 

access to basic health care, a situation made more complicated by 

the Taliban's medieval view of women. 17 Now, almost all Afghans 

have access to more and better health care. As a result, in just one 

decade Afghan life expectancy has gone up an average of 18 years 

from 45 years to 62 years for men and 64 for women. This kind of 

dramatic increase in longevity took four decades to accomplish in 

the United States between 1900 and the beginning of World War 

II. 

Many Westerners have a skewed assessment of the scope of the 

war in Afghanistan, bracketing it with the war in Iraq. But the 

conflicts in the two countries are quite different. At the height of 

the Iraq war in 2006, 100 civilians were dying every day. Today in 

Afghanistan, around six civilians are dying daily in a war in a 

country that has a population roughly on par with Iraq's. And who 

is causing most of those casualties? The Taliban. U.S. and other 

NATO forces have taken care to ensure that their soldiers do not 

contribute to the civilian death toll. Indeed, some American cities 

16 httpJlwww.imforgiextemal/pubs/ftlwpI2009/wp09150.pdf 

17 httpJlwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9130961 

12 
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are today more violent than Afghanistan. In New Orleans, 

residents are now around six times more likely to be murdered than 

Afghan civilians are to be killed in the war. 

3. W hat is the capacity of the Afghan government to address 

various security, crime and corruption issues, as well as the 

threat from the T aliban? 

A key issue facing the Afghan government as the U.S. draws down 

its forces is how will the Afghan economy fare? Should the 

economy collapse, the Afghan government's ability to deal with 

security and crime issues as well as the threat from the Taliban 

would all be substantially eroded. Already, rents in Kabul are 

tumbling and NGOs are laying off staff. Surprisingly, however a 

rigorous and comprehensive World Bank study last year found that 

Afghanistan will continue to have a healthy growth rate dropping 

from its present robust 9 percent a year rate "to closer to 5 percent 

on average until 2018.,,]8 (US yearly growth rates over the past 

four years have been around 2 percent). 

The economic contraction as the U.S. draws down is likely to be 

less severe than might be supposed partly because the hundreds of 

billions of that the US military has spent in Afghanistan over the 

past decade is spending that almost entirely benefits .... the United 

States. The World Bank study points out that "military spending by 

the United States (and other countries) finances the salaries of 

military personnel, investments in weapons equipment and 

systems, sustainment, logistics and research of international forces, 

and operations contracted and paid for outside the country. 

Although it indirectly benefits Afghanistan's economy by 

supporting security, the direct positive impact on poorer 

IS http://wwwwds.woridbankorg/externalldefault/WDSContentServer/WDSP/lB/2012/07/04/00033303 

8_20 120704045213iRenderedIPDF170851 Ov20WPOBoOansitionOBeyond020 14. pdf 

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households appears to be limited. The impact of its withdrawal is 

therefore likely to be muted." 

It is incontrovertible that a good deal of aid to Afghanistan has 

ended up lining the pockets of corrupt Afghan officials. Less well 

understood is that good chunks of the aid have also gone back 

West in the form oflarge salaries and perks for expatriates. A 2008 

report by the British charity Oxfam found that around 40 percent 

of aid to Afghanistan was funneled to donor countries to maintain 

home offices in the West and pay for Western-style salaries, 

benefits, and vacations. 19 

And even less well known is that one of the world's most 

successful aid programs has been implemented in Afghanistan, 

funded by organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International 

Development and the World Bank. Known as the National 

Solidarity Program, the cost-efficient and popular program gives 

modest grants to local self-elected village councils to do with as 

they will. 20 Around 30,000 councils have been set up, and they 

have disbursed some $1 billion for some 60,000 specific projects 

since 2003. As a result, thousands of schools and countless 

irrigation networks have been built, positively affecting the lives of 

about two-thirds of the rural population.21 

The investigation of the troubled Kabul Bank, in which some 900 

million dollars was lost to fraud, shows that the culture of impunity 

for corrupt Afghan officials is beginning to erode. Earlier this 

month 21 officials were found guilty of fraud and two of the 

former heads of the bank were sentenced to five years in prison. 

The Afghan Attorney General's office said last week that it would 

19 this paragraph draws upon 

http://afpakJoreignpolicy . com/posts/20 I 0/08/ I O/keeping~romises 

20 This section draws upon 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/arti cies/20 13/03/04/what_ wentJight 

21 http://www.nspafghanistan.org 

14 
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appeal the sentences as being too soft given the scale of the 

fraud. 22 

(It is worth noting that while complaints are often justifiably made 

about the corruption and impunity of certain Afghan officials, in 

the United States itself according to Bloomberg Businessweek, 

"The fraud analytics firm InterthiILx estimates that there were 

between $1 trillion and $4.8 trillion in fraudulent mortgages issued 

nationwide between 2005 and 2007, yet criminal cases against 

banks for originating such mortgages have been very rare. There 

have been a fhv prosecutions of individuals, a few large civil suits 

brought against banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan 

Chase, and deferred prosecution deals where lenders have paid a 

financial penalty in lieu of criminal charges. But in the wake of the 

financial crisis only one bank in the whole country has, as an 

institution, been criminally indicted for mortgage fraud.") 23 

A key question is the extent to which the Afghan anny and police 

can operate effectively against the Taliban as the U. S. withdraws. 

As yet the Afghan army hasn't shown the ability to conduct largescale operations without significant American support. In addition, 

a big issue for the anny is the extraordinarily high attrition rate. 

Today, a little more then a quarter of the recruits to the army drop 

out every year. As result, NATO is now considering maintaining 

the size of the Afghan anny and police at 352,000 soldiers through 

2018. 24 (Estimates of the size of the Taliban typically are in the 

25,000 range.) 

Despite the inability of the Afghan army to conduct large-scale 

missions without U.S. help, the transition of Afghanistan's 

22 http://www.tolonews.com/enlafghanistanl9781-attorney-general-disagrees-wi th-kabulbank -speci aI-court 

23 http://www.businessweek.com/articlesI20 13 -0 1-311mortgage-fraud-prosecutors-

~ounce-on-a-small-bank 

4 http://www.nytimes.comI2013/03/05/worldieurope/05iht-letter05.html 

15 
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provinces and districts to Afghan army and police control has gone 

somewhat well over the past year. According to NATO, "Afghan 

National Security Forces (ANSF) have been taking the lead for 

security in areas where 87% of the Afghan population lives. In 

2013, it is expected that all areas of the country will have entered 

the transition process and the ANSF will assume security lead 

across the whole country.,,25 

As Afghan forces have assumed more responsibly for security, 

American casualties have dropped. In January, three U.S. soldiers 

died in Afghanistan -- the lowest monthly American casualty count 

in four years. 26 In short, the war is winding down, and the "surge" 

of 30,000 U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan that was completed in 

September has indeed blunted the Taliban's momentum, as it was 

intended to do. 

In 2012 Taliban attacks dropped as much as a third compared with 

the year before. These figures come from the Afghanistan NGO 

Safety Office (ANSO), an organization that has collected data 

about violence in Afghanistan for many years and is far from a 

cheerleader for NATO. 27 In a 2012 report ANSO stated that the 

sharp drop in violence is "the first reliable indicator that the 

conflict may be entering a period of regression after years of 

sustained, and compounded, growth by all actors in the field. ,,28 

The Afghan National Army, which certainly needs to be further 

professionalized, is already the single most admired institution in 

the country. It will not collapse as Najibullah's military did once 

the Russian money flow dried up, not least because the United 

States and other NATO countries will not allow it to do so. 

25 http://www.nato.intlnato_static/assets/pdf/pdC2013 _02120130221_130221-

backgrounder -inteqal-en. pdf 

26 http://artic1es.1atimes.com/20 13/feb/14/world/la-fg-afghanistan-casualties-20 130215 

27 http://www.ngosafety.orglindex.php?pageid=67 

28 http://www.ngosafety.orgistore/files/ANSO%20Ql %2020 12. pdf 

16 
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4. T he relationship between the T aliban and other extremist 

organizations with Pakistan. 

In 2009 as the Taliban marched some 70 miles away from the 

Pakistani capital Islamabad, the army launched major military 

operations in the northern region of Swat and the western area of 

South Waziristan to end the Taliban's control of these areas; 

operations that were generally successful and were done with a 

good amount of Pakistani public support. 

Pakistani offIcials are swift to point out, correctly, that as a result, 

more Pakistani soldiers have died fighting the Taliban than the 

servicemen of the U.S. and other NATO countries combined. 

What of "core al Qaeda," which attacked the United States on 9/11 

and is headquartered in Pakistan? This group hasn't, of course, 

been able to pull off an attack in the United States in twelve years. 

Nor has it been able to mount an attack anywhere in the West since 

the attacks on London's transportation system eight years ago. 

Osama bin Laden, the group's founder and charismatic leader, was 

buried at sea almost two years ago and despite concerns that his 

"martyrdom" would provoke a rash of attacks in the West or 

against Western interests in the Muslim world there has instead 

been ... nothing. 29 Meanwhile, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during 

President Obama's tenure alone have killed 38 of al Qaeda's 

leaders in Pakistan, according to a count by the New America 

Foundation. 

Those drone strikes were so effective that shortly before bin Laden 

died he was contemplating ordering what remained of al Qaeda to 

move to Kunar Province in the remote, heavily forested mountains 

29 This section draws on http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/opinionlbergen-al-qaedadeadly 

17 
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of eastern Afghanistan, according to documents that were 

discovered following the SEAL assault on the compound where 

bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Core al Qaeda is 

going the way of the dodo. 

It was the U.S. intelligence community's assessment within weeks 

of the Abbottabad operation in which bin Laden was killed that 

there was no Pakistani official complicity in bin Laden's five-year 

sojourn in Abbottabad and nothing in the "treasure trove" of 

thousands of pages of documents recovered from his compound 

provided any proof that bin Laden had support from Pakistani 

officials. 

u.S. officials, however, continue to believe that the Pakistani 

government provides some level of support or at least 

acquiescence to the presence of the Haqqani network in Pakistan's 

tribal areas, which unlike a number of other Taliban groups doesn't 

attack the Pakistani state. Given that the Haqqanis are influential in 

eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan wants to be able to have some 

influence in that region after the US drawdown in 2014 this state of 

affairs is unlikely to change. 

In short, ifit is in Pakistan's interests to attack a Taliban group or 

associated extremist group like al Qaeda it will. And if it isn't, it 

won't. In this regard its helpful to recall that the United States 

provided massive support to the Sunni ultra-fundamentalist Afghan 

warlord Gulbudinn Hekmatyar during the war against the Soviets, 

but is now at war with him. 

18 
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80120c-19.eps

5. T he future of US Pakistan relations and US regional 

security. 

U.S.-Pakistani relations -- which were at a nadir in 2011 because 

of a CIA contractor killing two Pakistanis, the bin Laden raid and 

the death of some two dozen Pakistani soldiers during a NATO 

airstrike -- are gingerly improving. Pakistan has reopened the 

ground routes for NATO suppl ies to cross Pakistan into 

Afghanistan, which were closed for months to protest the deaths of 

the Pakistani soldiers during the NATO airstrike. 30 

Tellingly, Pakistan has never even threatened to close the crucial 

air corridor across Pakistan that allows U.S. and NATO aircraft to 

fly into Afghanistan. One can get a sense of how important this air 

corridor is from the fact that Kandahar Air Field near the Pakistan 

border in southern Afghanistan is reported to have the busiest 

runway in the world with some 700 flights landing or taking off 

there every day.31 

Pakistan is the second most populous nation in the Muslim world 

and is armed with nuclear weapons. The United States cannot 

allow such an important country and an ally of the past three 

decades to become an enemy. 

Michael J. Mazarr, professor of national security strategy at the 

U.S. National War College, and myself, together with a group of 

Pakistani economists, journalists and former government officials 

as well as their American counterparts with considerable 

experience in Pakistan, over the course of an examination of the 

troubled U.S.-Pakistan relationship during 2011 determined that a 

key step to improve the relationship would be a shift from a 

relationship in which the U.S. sends aid to Pakistan to one in which 

30 This section draws on http://www.cnn.com/2012/07123/opinionibergen-pakistan 

31 http://www.kdab.afcent.af.millcomkaf/index.asp 

19 
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80120c-20.eps

the emphasis is on trade that benefits both sides. In short, trade 

rather than aid. 32 

Textiles constitute 60% of Pakistani exports, half its manufacturing 

output and a third of its industrial employment. Yet Pakistani 

textiles make up less than 4% of U.S. textile imports. Pakistani 

textile imports to the United States are taxed at roughly 12 percent, 

while those from France are taxed at only 3 percent. The tariffs on 

Pakistani textiles should be reduced. 

A further step should be to negotiate a U.S.-Pakistan Free Trade 

Agreement. Even if such negotiations were protracted, as is often 

the case with such agreements, they would be a signaling device 

showing that the United States is serious about a new kind of 

relationship with Pakistan and would help to assuage the bruised 

Pakistani feelings surrounding the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear 

deal. 

Pakistanis want access to American markets, not more American 

handouts, which in any event come so laden with caveats and 

reporting requirements that a good deal of the aid is never actually 

spent. This is not to suggest that the U.S. should cease activities 

such as the aid that was given to the earthquake victims in Pakistan 

in 2005 and the flood victims in 2010 -- efficacious actions for 

which Pakistanis were grateful -- but rather that the US-Pakistan 

relationship should be reconceived of as not simply a donorrecipient relationship but rather a real relationship through 

increasing trade. 33 Such initiatives on tariffs and trade will surely 

32 the full report can be found here 

http://newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.netlfiles/policydocslN AF _ NWC _Pakistan_Strate 

gy _Report_I. pdf 

33 this section draws upon "Ten Years on: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat Since 

9/11" Testimony presented before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee 

on Emerging Threats by Peter Bergen June 23,2011 

20 
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80120c-21.eps

confront political obstacles in the United States but could perhaps 

gain traction when proposed as an alternative to aid. 

The issue that presently dominates Pakistanis' perception of the 

United States is the CIA drone campaign in their country. Upon 

taking office in January 2009, President Barack Obama almost 

immediately made drones one of his key national security tools. By 

February 2013, he had already authorized 301 strikes in Pakistan, 

six times more than the number of strikes carried out during 

President George W. Bush's entire eight years in office. Under 

Obama, the drone program accelerated from an average of one 

strike every 40 days to one every four days by mid-20 II. 

Using reports from a range of reliable news outlets, the New 

America Foundation, has calculated that over the life of the drone 

campaign in Pakistan, between 2004 and February 2013, some 

1,963 to 3,293 people were killed. New America estimates that the 

confirmed number of Pakistani civilians who have been killed by 

drone strikes during the same time frame is between 261 to 305, or 

10 percent of the total number of casualties. 

The London-based Bureau ofInvestigative Journalism (TBIJ) and 

the D.C.-based Long War Journal also maintain counts of drone 

casualties in Pakistan. TBIJ reports that between 411 and 884 

Pakistani civilians have been killed in U.S. drone attacks, 

representing 16-25 percent of the total casualties TBIJ has 

counted?4 On the low end, the Long War Journal reports that 153 

Pakistani civilians have been killed, representing just 5.6 percent 

of the 2,645 deaths it has recorded over the life of the drone 

campaign. 

In March 2013 following a visit to Pakistan, Ben Emmerson, the 

U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, 

21 
49


80120c-22.eps

emailed the Associated Press that the Pakistani government had 

told him it has confirmed at least 400 civilian deaths by u.s. 

drones. 35 This number is in the range of the low estimate of 411 

civilian deaths estimated by the Bureau ofInvestigative Journalism 

and also comports with the New America Foundation figures 

estimating between 261 and 305 civilians have been killed and a 

further 200 to 330 "unknowns" have also been killed. These 

"unknowns" are individuals who may be militants or civilians, but 

there is not enough public information to make any such 

determination. 

Even if it is the case that over time fewer civilians have been killed 

by drone strikes, the program is deeply unpopular within the 

Pakistani pUblic. 36 During the summer of2010 the New America 

Foundation sponsored one of the few public opinion polls ever to 

be conducted in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas 

where all the drone strikes are located and found that almost 90% 

of the respondents opposed u.s. military operations in the 

region. 37 A Pew poll conducted in June 2012 found that just 17% 

of Pakistanis support the U.S. conducting drone strikes to help 

combat militancy in their country. 

Beginning in 2012, Pakistani officials rarely based their criticism 

of U.S . drone strikes on the incidence of civilian casualties and 

have instead pointed, quite reasonably, to another objection: the 

U.S. violation of Pakistan's national sovereignty.38 The Pakistani 

parliament voted in April 2012 to end any authorization for the 

program, a vote that the United States government has ignored. 39 

35 http://www.foxnews.com/politi cs120 13/03/16/un-official-says-us-drone-strikes-violateP6akistan-sovereigntyl 

http://pakistansurvey. orgl 

38 http://www.guardian.co.uklworld/2012/augl03/cia-drone-strikes-violate-pakistan 

39 this paragraph draws on http://www.cnn.com/2012/07113/opinionlbergen-civiliancasualties 

22 
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80120c-23.eps

Seemingly at least partly in response to the deep unpopularity of 

the drone program in Pakistan, the number of drone shrikes has 

declined significantly since 2010 when there was the greatest 

number of strikes, 122, to 48 strikes last year. 40 This is a good 

development because if the cost of drone program that kills largely 

low level members of the TaIban is deeply angering 180 million 

Pakistanis that is a very high price to pay. 

On Afghanistan, Pakistan has some important common goals with 

the United States, NATO and Afghans themselves. Pakistan does 

not want to see Afghanistan collapse into a renewed civil war, 

which would destabilize Pakistan, nor does it want to see the 

Taliban in charge of the country again. When the Taliban was in 

power in Afghanistan the group resisted Pakistani efforts at 

control, while the Pakistani Taliban have killed tens of thousands 

inside Pakistan. These basic shared goals: No civil war and no 

Taliban control of Afghanistan can help to create the conditions for 

a successful post-2014 Afghanistan 

Pakistan also wants a Pashtun-Ied government in Kabul and for the 

Taliban to have some representation in the south and the east. 

These are also goals the Afghans can live with. Karzai is, after all, 

a Pashtun and given the fact that Pashtuns are the largest ethnic 

group, the next president of Afghanistan almost certainly will be a 

Pashtun. And other ethnic minorities can live with a situation in 

which the Taliban assume a number of provincial and district 

governorships providing they lay down their arms, join the 

political process and recognize the Afghan constitution. 

The Afghans could go a long way to reducing the tensions between 

Pakistan and Afghanistan by recognizing the Durand Line that was 

drawn by the British in 1893 as the border that divided 

Afghanistan from what is now Pakistan. The fact that Afghanistan 

40 http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones 

23 
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80120c-24.eps

doesn't officially recognize this border makes its claims that 

Pakistani-based militias routinely violate this border ring a little 

hollow. Also recognizing the border would reduce Pakistan's 

concerns about a renewed "Pashtunistan" movement that seeks to 

create a country for Pashtuns carved from both Pakistan and 

Afghanistan. 41 And it would be an important confidence building 

measure between the two countries. 

41 http/llcweb2.1oc.gov/cgi-biniquery/r?frd/cstdy.@field(DOCID+afO022) 

24 
52

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. 

Dr. Markey. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL S. MARKEY, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW 

FOR INDIA, PAKISTAN, AND SOUTH ASIA, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Madam Chair, and all of the members 

of the subcommittees. It is a real honor to be here today. 

Now as you have heard so far from the other panelists, I think 

here in Washington we tend to focus on Pakistan and the U.S.-

Pakistan relationship primarily within the context of the war in Afghanistan. And what I would like to do is try to shift the emphasis 

a little bit to really focus on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Pakistan in and of itself because I think that the consequences of a rupture in that relationship would be dire not just for what they say 

about Afghanistan, but for other reasons as well. And why do I say 

this? 

As has been mentioned already a little bit, but I think I can expand, Pakistan is very important both for the counterterror reasons 

that have been mentioned, the regional militancy issues, but also 

because it is a nuclear armed state and to put this in context, 

imagine a Pakistan or a U.S.-Pakistan relationship that was similar to the U.S.-North Korea relationship, keeping in mind that 

North Korea has about 24, 25 million people; Pakistan about 200 

million, keeping in mind that Pakistan has about 100 nuclear 

weapons and North Korea probably has a handful of them. 

Cooperation with Pakistan is significant and important. It is also 

frustrating and inadequate and that we must appreciate. But 

things could get much, much worse in this relationship. We should 

seek to avoid that. Beyond the bilateral issues, there is also the regional question. Look at the map. Look where Pakistan is. Look at 

the location next to India, next to China, along the Arabian Sea, 

bordering Central Asia. This is a strategically-relevant place that 

will continue to be so well into the future, well after the war in Afghanistan ends one way or another. 

Now fortunately, although 2011 and 2012 were very rocky in the 

U.S.-Pakistan relationship, we have seen a shift in tone. Pakistan 

reopened the ground lines of communication, restarted dialogues 

with the U.S. Presented itself as being more eager to be involved 

in the reconciliation process with the Afghan Taliban. Now this is 

driven primarily, I believe, by Pakistan’s anxiety about the future, 

anxiety about the war in Afghanistan. Now that anxiety is not especially new, but the tone has shifted and that we should appreciate. 

And it has shifted primarily because of our actions. If there has 

been a change in Pakistan’s strategic calculations, which I don’t 

think the change is all that significant, it has been driven by a 

more significant shift on our part. And this has already been alluded to. That shift is on our part, has to do with the decisions that 

we have made, the U.S. Government has made to withdraw forces 

from Afghanistan faster and at greater numbers than I think the 

region would have anticipated just a matter of a year or two ago. 

53

And I think this has also been coupled with a far more energetic 

effort on our part, on the U.S. Government’s part, to reach out to 

Afghan insurgents through this process of reconciliation. 

So if there is a change, it has been the change of the United 

States. And what will this mean? What will these changes mean 

for post-2014? I would sketch out two scenarios and we have heard 

a bit of this so far. But if everything works as we hope, that is, 

if we can build the Afghan National Security Forces and transition 

to them over time or on time and bear some of the burden for that 

with our allies; if we can see Afghanistan through the next political 

transition, that is, their Presidential elections; if we can bring the 

bulk of the insurgents on board through some sort of a reconciliation dialogue; and if we can maintain a cooperative relationship 

with whatever new Afghanistan emerges to keep up a fight against 

remaining terrorist cells, that would be great. Then I think the 

United States’ core interests will be met. Pakistan’s interests will 

be met. The region’s interests will be met. Afghans will be pleased. 

But if we can’t do this, if we can’t succeed in this process and it 

breaks down along one or more fronts, then what is likely to happen is the situation in Afghanistan will deteriorate. 

And I am more concerned that perhaps—than at least some of 

my colleagues here, who I am more concerned that we could see a 

spiraling of the insurgency and a downward deterioration into 

worst civil conflict. At that point, the consequence for Afghanistan 

will be dire, but I would also point to the consequence for the U.S.-

Pakistan relationship. There will be mutual recriminations. We 

will blame each other. We already do so. The consequences then 

could be for greater rupture between the United States and Pakistan. So the end game of the war in Afghanistan could set us up 

for a break in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. 

What should we do from this? First, don’t confuse what we are 

seeing with Pakistan as more of a strategic shift. See it as a tactical response to our behavior. Secondly, look for narrow points of 

cooperation where we can with the Pakistanis. We will not agree 

on many important things. We will agree on some. And finally, we 

should use the time that remains in our drawdown in Afghanistan 

where we still are focused with arms, personnel, resources, senior 

level attention, to strike hard at our adversaries and enemies along 

the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, both because they will 

be a threat to us if they persist as others have made out, but also 

because they will be a threat to Pakistan, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and the region moving ahead. So we have a limited 

amount of time to really make a military difference on that score 

as well. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Markey follows:]

54


80120d-1.eps

COUNCILon.. 

FOREIGN 

RELATIONS 

A Pakistani Strategic Shift? 

Prepared statclllcnt by 

Daniel S. Markey, Ph.D. 

Senior 1 iellotvfor india, jJakistan, and South Asia 

Council 0111' oreigl1 l{elatiol1S 

Before the 

March 19,2013 

Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, House Committee on 

Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, House Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Uniled S/,al.es House ({Represenlatives 

/St Session) J I Jth Congress 

I (eaTing on "After the \Vithdrawal: The \\lay lion~:anl in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Part I)" 
55


80120d-2.eps

Chairman Chabot, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Members laleomavaega and Deutsch, and members 

of the SubCOIllinittccs, thank you for inviting IIlC to testify today. 1 would like to subnrit Illy written 

tcstirnony for the rccord. 1 

The United States and Pakistan spent most of 20 11 and at least half of 20 121urchillg from crisis to crisis, 

their relationship teetering at the edge of an abyss. In recent: Illonths, howcycr, 1llOYCS by Islmuabadhayc 

raised hopes in \Vashington that Pakistan might be navigating a "strategic shift" that "\voltld restart Honnal, 

workmanlike cooperation and, more important, would a11O\."\' America to escape from its war in Afghanistan. 

Anyone \\/ho has \vatcheJ the U.S.-Pakistan relationship over the past decade w111 know that U.S. officials 

have long craved a real, honest-tn-goodness shift in Pakistan's mindset, which wOllM see Islamabad abandon 

its dangerous use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft; patch up its relations with India in the east and 

Afghanistan in the west; and build a more prosperous, demonatic, and moderate sOliety. In pursuit of these 

ends, the Obama and Bush Adnllnistrations have courted Pakistan with various e<-unbinations of diplomacy 

and cash. 

More than once since 9/11, the sincere American desire to sec Pakistan change its ways has led U.s. officials 

to interpret Isiaillabad's tactical pirouettes as evidence of a strategic about-face. As a consequence, the 

United States tookillore generous approaches than "\vere warranted and then felt frustrated and betrayed 

when the inadequacies of Isla IlIa bad's "strategic shifts" callIe to light. 

\Vashington need not conlllllt these errors again. India's recent dealings with Pakistan suggest the path 

toward a smarter approach. 

Skeptics will conclude that Pakistan, over and over, has played the United States for a fool. They will fmd 

tIllS latest rOluld of "strategic shift" talk especially galling. llaven't \ve been down this path before? llaven't 

we showered IslarlIabad with billions of dollars in aid only to discover OsarlIa bin Laden, not in a caye, but in 

a high-walled compound near Pakistan's mostprestibrious military academy? I)idn't Admiral Michael 

Mullen, chairman of the U.s. Joint Chiefs of Staff, tell us in 2011 that Pakistan used the terrorist llaqqani 

Network as a "veritable arnl" of its intelligence service? \Ve needn't play the ganle again only to learn, again, 

that Pakistan is wedded to much the SaIne strategy as it has followed since 1947, when in its first war ¥lith 

India it sent irregular Pashnul tribal forces into Kashmir to "'Test that territory frOllI New Delhi's controL 

The skeptics make important points. Tanbrible evidence of Pakistan's latest strategic shift is thus far 

extremely limited, just as in past epis(ldes. Yet when it comes t(l official statements and dipl(lmatic (mtreach, 

there is little doubt that Pakistan is up to something different this time. 

On the rhetorical side of the ledger, Pakistan's anny chief, General Ashfaq Parvez; Kayani, kicked off 

speculation about a strategic shift with his Independence !Jay speech on August 14, 2012. At the center of 

the speech was all extended argUlnent about the threat that domestic extrelnisnl and terrorism pose to 

Pakistarl. After defining extremists as those who seck to force their beliefs upon others, and terrorists as 

extremists who resort to violence, Kayani concluded: "The war against extremiSllI and terroriSllI is not only 

lThi~ tt'~timollY originally ,lppeared Jalluarv 10,2013 as an artide in The lWtenCUlI Interest under the title "h Thi~ Time Different?" 
56


80120d-3.eps

the Army's war, but that of the v",hole nation." Many Pakistanis interpreted Kayani's emphasis on this 

c(mflict inside Pakistan as a telling sign ()f the army's redefined pri()rities (particularly as it came (m a day 

norman), reserved for cOlllmemorating the sacrifices of Pakistan's wars with neighboring India). 

Since August, other top Pakistani officials have echoed Kayani's remarks, and have also taken pains to speak 

about Afghanistan in more constructive ways. In response to allegations that Pakistan continues to use 

Taliban insurgents to project influence into Afghanistan, Pakistani officials have started to argue that 

anxiety, not ambition, drives their regional policies. Looking ahead to the 2014 drawdown of U.S. and 

NATO lISA.!' forces in Afghanistan, Islamabad claims it has every interest in a stable, peaceful, sovereign, 

and independent Afghanistan. Some officials add that Afghanistan need not even be friendly to Pakistan, so 

long as it is not mlfricndly. It is hard to scc any daylight between \Vashington and Islarllabad \vhen Pakistaru 

Foreign fvlillister Hilla Rabbarll Khar observes that, 'The best possible scenario that \VC carl think offor 

2014 is that as elections take place and as transition takes place in AfghaIustan, all.Afghan groups arc ablc to 

dCIllonstratc thcir strength, their will through the election process, not through yiolcncc. And that is a future 

that we must be working toward." 

To be sure, Pakistani leaders have made similar points in the past. Rut there should be no mistaking the fact 

that Islamabad now intends to convince Anlerican audiences that core U.s. and Pakistani interests can be 

brought into alibynment. C:onsidering how terrible relations between Islamabad and \Vashington got over 

the course of2011 and early 2012, such olive branches are espelially striking. They come alongside 

Islamabad's energiled dipkul1atic outreach to \Vashington, Kabul, ~md New DelIll. 

\Vith \Vashington, Islamabad has restarted scveral dialogucs that had crashed to a halt in 20 I I. Scnior u.s. officials vl/ho \vere nlrned away from Pakistan less than a year ago have recently chaired working groups on 

issues like energy and defense cooperation. Trilateral "core group" meetings (U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan) 

have opened the door to anew round of negotiations \vith Talibaninsurgcnts. In particular, Pakistan has 

released at least 18 Taliban prisoners and offered sate passage so that they, and perhaps others, might 

participatc in talks \vith other Afghan COlultcrparts. OYer thc course of 20 12, sCIllor PakistaIu and Afghan 

delegations mct more than twcnty times. Presidcnt Hamid Karzai, among othcr Afghan officials, has 

welcomed these moves and expressed his appreciation for Pakistan's newfound, more constnlcti\'e 

approach. 

Pakistan renewed its outrcach to India well beforc its latcst Illoves with AfghaIustan and thc UIuted States. 

At least by oHicial Indian accomlts, Pakistarl's latcst diplOlllatic surge resulted fronl the fraying of relations 

bet\veen IslaIllabad arld 'Vashington in 2011. Eager to rClllove at least one problcIll frOIll its oycrcrmvded 

agcnda, Pakistarl rc-opened arId energized talks with India, starting with trade and cross-border econonllC 

ties. In. November 2011, the nvo agreed to extend Most l-'avored Nation status to one another. Other hldoPakistaru discussions have opened the door to less onerous travel rcstrictions for businessIllen and Inay pave 

the way for the flill resllInption of a wildly popular series of India -Pakistan cricket Inatches. 

U.s. officials initially saw Islamabad's overtllres to Ne\v l)elhi as marginal diversions-or at best silver 

linings-in the context of Pakistan's generally frustrating behavior. Yet the longer the era of good feeling 

persists, the greater the hope that the normali/.ation process might take on a life of its own. 
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Let's Not Get Carried Away 

lslaruabad's friendly words and constructive diplOIuacy should be taken seriously, but "\-vhat Pakistan has not 

done lllay ultirnatcly prove to be lllorc revealing than "vhat it has. 

To put it differently, over the past 181110nths \Vashington's strategy has shiftcdrllorc than Islamabad's. In 

September 2011, when Admiral Mullen criticized the lSI's links to the Haqqani Network, many in 

Washington (and in Pakistan, tor that matter) asslUlled that the United States had tinally decided to hold 

Islamabad's feet to the fire, had flnal1y determined that Islamabad would pay a price for aiding and abetting 

terrorist groups with American blood on their hands. Perhaps that \vas Mul1en's intention, bllt the Obama 

Administration backpedaled from his statement and the episode had no discernible effect on Pakistan's 

policies. 

Sill1ilarly. a year later ()bama Administration officials, including Secretary ofl)efense Panetta, publicly 

voiced doubts about ",'hether Pakistan's anny would follow through on its frequent hints and strike the 

llaqqani Network's hOlne base of North \Vaziristan, a step \Vashington had sought for years. Panetta 

anticipated that the military caInpaign would take place, but expressed concern that it might not target the 

llaqqanis.lle suggested that Pakistan's army might instead attack only the homegrowninsnrgents (the socalled Pakistani Taliban) that had taken up arms against Islamabad. As of this writing, not only has Pakistan 

failed to go after the Haqqanis, but no rnajor North \Vaziristan carnpaign of any type has rnaterialized. 

Indeed, Pakistan has held its line on the Ha'lqanis and North Waziristan while the United States has shifted 

its expectations and foclls. Under heavy congressional pressure, the Obama Administration designated the 

Haqqanis a Foreign Terrorist Organization in September 2012. Otherwise, \Vashington appears to have 

pu]]ed away from pressure tactics vvith Islamahad. 

\Vhereas U.S. officials had hoped to see Islamabad put the screws to Afghan insurgents on Pakistani soil) 

now \Vashington appears wi11ing to settle for Pakistani-facilitated peace talks with those same insurgents. 

Yes) Pakistan has released Afghan Taliban prisoners and participated in conversations with U.s. and Afghan 

officials about reconciliation. This could be called a "strategic shift", but) crucially, most of the shifting has 

C01ne on \Vashingron's side, where there is now nlore acceptance ofPaldstan's influence over the peace 

proccss than cyer beforc. 

Pakistan's basic position on COlUlter-tcrror cooperation with thc United States is also unchanged. Publicly, 

the civilian goyerIunent rcrnains opposed to the Arnericarl use of dTones. Priyatcly, as far as is possible to 

discern, Pakistan's leaders tacitly accept the drones but prefer to limit U.s. operations to rernote parts of thc 

country ,veIl beyond the range of journalists and rnost of the Pakistani public. As a consequence, 

\Vashington directs strikes only 'within designated "boxes" of territory along thc Afghan bordcr. 

Pakistan's intelligence agency remains opposed to covert U.S. operations on Pakistani soil and has clamped 

down on U.s. visa applications. Some of this is understandable given Pakistan's history of territorial 

inseCllrity. Pakistanis vigilantly guard their sovereignty, and Islamabad has suffered the political blowback of 

high profile incidents like the 2011 Raymond I)avis affair, when a C:IA contractor shot dead two Pakistanis 

in Lahore. Pakistan could nlake itself even less helpful on the counter-terror front by cutting lSI-CIA 
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cooperation entirely. Rut Pakistan c(mld also do a great deal more, and its dealings vl/ith the United States 

sti11 fan far short ofheing fu11, transparent, or friendly. 

Moreover, in luany parts of Pakistan Kayani's aruuirable rhetoric on the need to curb extremiSlU has had no 

discernible consequence. A number of Pakistan's most renowned extremists (including Ilafi/. Saeed, the 

founder of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is responsible for the 200H Mumbai attacks, among 

many other horrific acts of violence) have united under the banner of the "Defence of Pakistan COIIDli}" to 

rally support for an anti-American, anti-Indian, Islanllst vision of Pakistan's future. So long as these groups 

direct their vitriol outward, they appear illuuune £rOIU state sanction. This holds tnle in spite of 

Washington's April 20 12 ofrer of a $10 million reward for information leading to IIafiz Saeed's capture. 

)4'rom India's perspective, Pakistan's inaction on Saeed is part and parcel of a broader problem. Pakistan has 

done next to nothing to bring the perpetrators of the 200H MUll1bai attacks to justice. Pakistani offilials cite 

the limits of their judicial system and an assortment oflegaljtechnical barriers as reasons for slow progress, 

but Indians believe the true story is much siInpler: Pakistan refuses to cut its longstanding support to 

Lashkar-e-Taiha (LeT) or its affiliates. On this score, the Indians are right. Pakistan hanned LeT in 2002, hut 

the group simply renamed itself and went hack to \-vork. Pakistan has also taken steps to limit infi1tration 

into India by LeT and other terrorist groups, but none of these steps have put the anti-Indian terrorists out 

of business. 

Nor has Islalnabad coupled its diplOlnatic outreach to New Delhi with other lneasures on the nrilitary ii'ont 

that ·would signal a genuine stratcgic shift. For instance, Pakistan is building tactical (very sluall, short rangc) 

nuc1car warheads and delivery systems. These wcapons arc intended to deter an Indian invasion that 

Pakistani military planners fear might corne the next time Pakistan-hased terrorists strike India. Pakistan's 

tactical nuclear program is worrisome because it threatens to introdllce nuclear weapons at an earlier stage 

in any future Indo-Pakistani war. Even worsc, if the Pakistanis belieyc they can dcter Indian plUusllluent, 

they nught be luore \-villing to giyc a green light to ncw terrorist proyocations in the first place. FrOlu India's 

perspectiyc, Pakistan looks like it is using its nuclear progralu to keep sub-conventional nlllitary options 

(tcnorism) open. This is hardly a recipe for normalizing the relationship, and hardly a strategic shift:. 

India's Experience 

India's leaders appreciate that Pakistan has not really COlne around to view the rclationslup in fundaluentally 

new tenus. And yet New Dcllu is still ready to talk and to explore areas where its interests oyerlap with 

Islaluabad's. There arc three reasons why. 

First, India lacks serious alternatiycs to negotiations with Pakistan. Since partition in 1947, India has 

repcatedly tried and failed to wall itself otT from its neighbor. Today India is by far the greater powcr, but 

smart Indian p()licymakers understand that military to()ls cannot suhdlle Pakistan with(mt threatening 

India's prosperity and, if nuclear weapons are taken into account, India's very existence. Any plmishment 

India can deliver to Pakistan would COll1e at a prohihitively high price, if only hecause it would disrupt and 

jeopardi/.e business activity and economic growth. )4'or India, desperate to help hundreds ofmil1ions of its 

citizens escape from grinding poverty, such disruptions would be especially painful. 
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Moreover, as Pakistani domestic troubles mount, NevI,' Delhi recognizes that Pakistan's weaknesses are 

more threatening than its strengths. Fearing refugee flows, loose nl,dear weapons and the rise of militant 

Tslamists, Tndia has an interest in making sure that Pakistan does not fan apart at the seams. Tndian 

diplomacy offers Pakistan more space to get its house in order. 

Second, even if Islamabad never intends to change its ways, India can still achieve temporary gains from a 

diplomatic process.llilateral talks are valuable Slll1-ply by helping to wanl off h](lo-Pakistani war for a matter 

of lllonths or years. The ruling h1Clian National Congress party will score political points if India sees peace 

through its next election cycle. And India's econOIllY will benefit fronl freer trade with Pakistan as long as it 

lasts; even ullpenllanent deals can be worthwhile. 

Third, it is conceivable that the diplomatic process of normali/.ation \-vill contribute to a virtllous cycle. If 

diplomacy enables Pakistani businessmen to get richer from their investments in India, they will be more 

likely to ~:hisper words of restraint in the ears of their nation's politicians and generals, and their Indian 

counterparts would do the same on the other side of the border. hI general, as Indian ~U1d Pakistani 

economies hecome more integrated, war gets more costly and the constituencies for peace gain power. 

Uconomic ultegration also has the potential to change Pakistan's political and econonuc trajectory by 

creating jobs for young Illen and \-VOlllen who nught otherwise hun to "dolcnce; by encouragulg un'Csnllent 

in ulfrastnlCture and technology that will nmke uldustry Inore cOlllpetitiYe on the globallllarket and forestall 

the flight of capital and talent; and by loosening the repressive hold of feudal clites who will face a world in 

wluch educatulg their peasants will be Illorc profitable than keeping theill down. The latest Indo-Pakistani 

diplomatic cffort is nowhere ncar achicYing any of these goals, hut the longer it lasts the more space it 

creates for hottom-up peacemaking of all types. 

Tndia is therefore a wi11ing partner in Pakistan's diplomatic olltreach. Yet New Delhi has been careful only to 

meet Islamabad halfway in their dealings. Holding a firm line has been a political necessity for Prinle 

Minister Manmohan Singh, who cannot afford to look weak in front of his domestic audience. Politics aside, 

the Indian commitment to a diplomatic principle of tit-for-tat is also a sound strategy that enables New 

lJellri to nlake the nlost of whatever IslaIllabad puts on the table. If talks yield incremental progress, great; 

but if diplomacy breaks down or India suffers aIlother terrorist attack, India's leaders camlot be blamed for 

beulg overly generous. 

Playulg tit-for-tat has also enabled Ne"\v Delhi to tic specific deillands to specific deliverablcs. POI' ulstance, 

Prime Minister Singh has repeatedly put ofl travel to Pakistan-a trip that would red01lild to Islamabad's 

advantage-lulti! tangible progress is nmde in prosecllting the Pakistan-based plotters of the MlUllbai attack. 

India's diplOlllacy also dc-links the various issues it faces with Pakistan. As a consequence, disappoultulg 

progress on the counter-terror front has not blocked worthy eH(1rts to improve trade ties. 

Follow India's Approach 

\Vith somelnodification, an Indian-style approach to Pakistan comprised oftit-for-tat and de-linkage could 

a.lso we)rk for the United Sta.tes. \Vhere Pakistan is forthccnning, as it now appears te) be with Afghan peace 

talks, the United States should seiL.e opportunities and pocket gains as they COlne. \Vhere Paki.stan 
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disappoints, as it continues to do on military operations in North vVa:rjristan, the United States sh()l1lO 

vl/ithhold favors. Frustration along one front (such as Pakistan's inaction on LeT or its continuing support of 

the Haqqani Network) should not necessarily holO others (like U.s. investments in infrastructure and 

education) hostage. 

President Obama began his first term with ambitious rhetoric about the need to move away from what 

members of his national security team called a "tr~msactional" relationship with Pakistan. By ram}1ing up 

civilian aid to Pakistan, opening a range of diplO1natic dialogues, and intensifying efforts at military and 

intelligence cooperation, \Vashington auned to transfonn Pakistani attitudes about the nature of the 

relationship, to strengthen Pakistan's capacity for constructive cooperation and, by extension, to Inake it 

nlore likely that Islarnabad would choose policies favorable to the United States. 

Owing to the near-col1apse of U.S.-Pakistan relations in 2011, however, the \Vhite House has in many 

respects already retreated to a tit-for-tat, de-linked approach to Pakistan. Over the past year, the Obama 

~uh11inistration has grmvn increasingly sophisticated in its ability to calibrate the flow of military assistance 

to Pakistan in response to Is]amahad's actions. \Vashington suspended military aid vvhen Islamahad closed 

NATO supply routes to Afghanistan, then resumed it when the routes re-opened. Al1 the v..:hile, most of 

\Vashington's development aid for Pakistan flowed undisturbed by the drama over supply routes and other 

security matters. Behind closed doors (not least on Capito] Hill), the Obama Administration has had to 

argue the merits of de-linking civilian aid, weighing its value in pnnnoting Pakistani stability against 

Islamabad's millelpful ~U1dirresponsible behavior on so 111any fronts. 

Fun and public candor about such decisions may he politically and diplomatically impossible. Pllhlicly, U.s. 

diplomats should welcome Pakistan's constructive moves and the prospect of more to come without 

exaggerating or imputing a stratebric shift that has yet to materialize. At the same time, in order to sustain 

and defend a tit-far-tat, dc-linked approach, the Obarna Administration should be honest with itself and, 

when appropriate, with congressional leaders about the tradeoffs the United States is nlaking and those it 

would be willing to nlake dmvn the line. 

\Vasbington should consider, for instance, whether it would halt its support to Pakistan's I '-16 fighter jet 

progranlifPakistan's next anny chief puts his foot down and demands an end to the U.s. drone calnpaign; if 

he accepts drones but expands Pakistan's support to LeT and the I Iaqqani Network; or ifhe threatens 

nuclear war with India. Unless the Obarna Administration knows 'which of its payoffs (or sanctions) arc ticd 

to which actions by Pakistan, it "\vill haye a hard tune calibratulg its responses to Pakistarl's behavior, 

explaining those decisions to officials insidc the U.s. govenllnent charged with implcIllcnting theIll, and 

juStif)TUlg thcIll to Illeillbers of Congress 'who foot the bill. 

Aside from the need for candor, these examples also highlight the first of several important differences 

hetvveen the situations faced hy \Vashington and Nevv Delhi. Unlike India, the United States sends billions 

of dollars of assistance to Pakistan. Since money is funbrihle, a dol1ar \Vashington sends to help huild roads 

or dams frees IIp a dollar in the Pakistani budget that can be devoted to blli]ding tactical nllclear warheads. 

This makes de-linkage harder. \Vashington will be better offifit directs its assistance to specific projects in 

Pakistan rather than deliver general budget support or funneling cash into prognuns that the Pakistani 

goverIlluent would choose to flmd even if \Vashington (lid not. 
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Second, New Delhi has only come to accept its present approach toward Pakistan after decades of 

frustration and hloodletting. \Vashington need not exhaust itself further hefore adopting a similar strategy, 

hut then again, the United States is far more powerful than India, and thus has a greater capability to isolate 

(or assist) Pakistan through military, diplomatic, and economic means. By following India's example and 

accepting a world in which Pakistan continues to pursue policies inimical to American interests, 

\Vashington also accepts an unnecessarily constrained vision of U.S. p0\.ver and influence. 

Noone can argue with the fact that the ambitious approach of the early 0 banla years has failed. Questions 

should be asked, however, about whether that failure was a consequence of the strategy itself, its inadequate 

iInpleInentation, or inappropriate expectations for ho\-v long it might take to work. Should 18 Inonths of 

intense U.S. diplornacy and a fc"\v billion dollars have upcnded Pakistan's dccadcs-long approach to 

Inanaging its affairs at hOIne and abroad? Could any bilateral rc1ationship have withstood a crisis-packcd 

year like 2011' Probably not. 

This does not mean that the United States Gill (or should) now rettlITl to the "tr;ulsforrnational approach" 

f~l\'ored in 2009, hut it does suggest that U.S. policymakers ha\'e more tools at their disposal than their 

Indian counterparts, and that \Vashington need not retreat to New Delhi's level of ambition. In partie-ular, 

the United States shclllid not give up on long-tenn projects desibYTled to promote political and economic 

development in Pakistan just because they have not yet transformed Pakistan for the better. Patience will be 

a virtue; the slcm' and steady application of U.S. power through coercion and inducenlent has the potential 

to yield success where shock therapy has not. 

111ird, India faces the prospcct of an infinitc futurc ofliving next-door to Pakistan. U.S. dealings with 

Pakistan, on the other hand, are framed hy the endgame of the war in Afghanistan and inn-easingly hy 

timetahles for NATO's military drawdown. It is fashionahle now in \Vashington to suggest that with fewer 

forces in Afghanistan, the United States will depend less on Pakistan (and in particular, its supply routes), 

and therefore will have Inore leverage in its future ncgotiations with IslaInabad. A ..nd it is truc that 

\Vashington ,vill retain influencc in South Asia cven as its military prcsence wanes. 

That said, reductions in resources, manpower and senior-level attention devoted to Pakistan's region GUillot 

help but lllake it harder for \Vashington to coerce or cajole IslaIllabad.lly this logic, the period berweennow 

and 2014 would be the best tirne for the United States to use all of the tools at its disposal to brirlg about a 

shift in Pakistan's strategy. GiYen how hard this task has been irl the past, only a highly coerciYe, integrated 

approach of diplornatic, military and cconomic coercion could conceivably hopc to turn the tide. Y ct 

squeezing IslaInabad would be risky for \Vashington, and as a practical Inatter Obarna Administration 

officials appear to haye no stOInach for it at this stage. 

As a second hest solution, the United States should ratchet up its attacks on groups like the Haqqani 

Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba in ways that go well heyond what India can do, whether hy way of drone 

strikes, attacking financial flo",/s, or other military and covert operations. To the extent that \Vashington can 

delll0nstrate its commitment to destroying these groups and to depriving Pakistan of any reason to view 

them as useful proxies in Afghanistan or India, it should make every effort to do so. In addition, \Vashington 

should devise longer-term, post-2014 plans for addressing these sorts of threats after the United States has 

pulled the lion's share of its forces out of Afghanistan. \Vashington had better not take its eye off the ball in 
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Pakistan as it did throughout much of the 1990s as the terrorist threat metastasized. History shows that 

there is no v\iay for the United States to escape the threats posed hy South Asia, at least not for long. 

Risks and Tough Choices 

POlicYlIlakers who take up the reins in the Obama Administration's second terrIl should recognize that a 

poshrre of tit-for-tat and dc-linkage cmIles with other risks as well For instance, Afghan negotiations with 

the Taliban hold hope, but the American desire to see a quick settlement could lead U,S, policymakers into 

concessions easily exploited by Pakistan-hacked insurgents who have no interest in severing ties with 

international terrorists or accepting central tenets of the Afghan constitution. A fig leaf settlement may we]] 

permit NATO to head home, hllt it could also set the stage for renewed Afghan civil war and the return of 

terrorist safe havens to Afghan soil. 

In addition, over the coming year Pakistan's leadership wi11 be playing a complicated political g~une at horne. 

National elections ~md the scheduled retirelnents of the anny chief ~md the supreme court's chief justice by 

the end of2013 all raise the specter of instability and crisis. In similar historical circumstances, Pakistan's 

military has asserted its influence in extra -constitutional ways. A narrowly conceived strategy of de-linkage 

could require \Vashington to overlook such trespasses if the generals sinmltaneously deliver progress in 

Afghan peace talks or cooperation in counter-terror operations. Knowing this, Pakistan's generals would 

have that lIluch less reason to fear any negative consequences ii'mll political interference, at least with 

respect to relations with \Vashington. 

All of this is to suggest that even if the United States steals a page from India's playbook and calihrates its 

response to Pakistan's neV\i policy initiatives, \\'ashington will he forced to make a series of gut-wrenching 

decisions ahout its priorities. A candid acceptance of that reality would, ho\vever, he far hetter than faHing 

into the we]]-worn pattern of hoping that Pakistan has emharked upon a tTlle "strategic shift", interpreting 

Islamabad's tactical moves as evidence of a ne\v mind set, and generously rewarding Islamabad in the hope of 

encouraging and accelerating change-only to lament our naivety if Pakistan fails to deliver. 
63

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Excellent testimony 

and I will speed through the questions so we can get as many 

members as possible. Our exit strategy, the bilateral security 

agreement, and certainly our exit from Iraq was not optimal, as 

President Obama would say about other things. Is the same mistake going to be repeated in Afghanistan, along with legal immunity for our U.S. forces in Afghanistan? 

Another controversial point between Karzai and the United 

States has been the issue of prison transfers from U.S.-run detention center near Bagram to Afghan custody. There have been several delays with the last one coming while Secretary Hagel was 

just in Afghanistan. Why is Karzai so adamant that these transfers 

happen immediately? Why has this been such a difficult issue to 

resolve? With all of the corruption problems surrounding the Afghan Government, can the U.S. trust that government to properly 

secure those prisoners in a manner consistent with our standards? 

And why is Karzai willing to undo all of the good will that had occurred between the U.S. and his government over this issue? What 

is the symbolism or the significance of Bagram for Karzai? 

We will just start down the line. Thank you, Dr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. Madam Chair, this is a very important issue. In 

working with several Afghan ministers along these lines, I would 

note that the Afghan Government more broadly has been more 

amenable to working through these issues than some of the public 

statements from the President would indicate. On issues like prison transfers, I would add other things like night raids and the use 

of Special Operations in villages. Public statements have ended up 

being slightly different from the negotiating strategy of the government in private. 

I think, in part, what we have got to be able to see through is 

that some of these statements, in my view, by the Afghan President are done, in part, for domestic political purposes, to try to 

demonstrate to his constituency, his population, that he is not a 

puppet of the United States. So I think we have to take some of 

his comments into domestic politics, into a domestic politics context. So what does that mean? I think most of these issues, including the Bagram prison transfers, we will be able to negotiate. I 

think we do have to be careful that we do not hand over prisoners, 

as we have seen with individuals like Mullah Zakir, who is the second or third in command—the leading military commander of the 

Taliban that they released. So I think we can hold fast on several 

issues. But I found them in practice more amenable. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Dr. Kagan. 

Ms. KAGAN. Thank you. To expand on Dr. Jones’ point, President 

Karzai is facing an Afghan electorate even if he himself is not running for President in 2014. Certainly, he wants to ensure a smooth 

succession between him and someone who also represents the same 

ideas of Afghan Pashtun unity that he would like to represent and 

symbolize. 

To do so, he is going to play to some of his Afghan audiences by 

reinforcing his commitment to his own sovereignty, something 

frankly that he has emphasized quite a lot in public rhetoric and 

also in private rhetoric over a number of years when it comes to 

64

legal immunities of detainee transfers, Special Operations forces 

privileges, and so on and so forth. 

I think what is essential here is first to recognize that we, the 

United States, are never going to have a total conversion of interests with President Karzai. He is the President of a sovereign nation and he has different interests from ours. But just because he 

speaks actively in public to posture to his electorate does not mean 

that that forms the basis of his policy or the basis of his expectations of the United States going forward. 

It is also vital that the United States does not actually lose authorities over the next year to conduct the kinds of operations that 

we will need to conduct in order to maintain a counterterrorism 

mission. And insofar as President Karzai is bargaining to take 

away some of these authorities, it is okay for us to push back and 

to push back hard in order to make sure that we secure our national interests. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. And in the interest of time, I am 

going to cut you gentlemen off and give time to Mr. Deutch. We are 

in recess, but we expect that we will have votes in just a little 

while. 

Mr. Deutch. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As we look forward 

to 2014, a key factor to stabilizing Afghanistan for the future and 

really to ensure our own national security interest is to improve Afghan governance. And as several of our witnesses have said today, 

corruption has been rampant in Afghanistan for many years. In 

order to have long-term legitimacy, the central government has to 

root out corruption at the highest levels and it seems that a good 

opportunity to show that will be in the Presidential elections in 

2014. 

Mr. Bergen, you had said in your testimony that the elections 

represent both a great opportunity and a potential peril for the 

country. I agree with you. What are the chances of a peaceful transition of power? Is Afghanistan capable of running free and fair 

elections? And what should the United States do, what can we do 

to help the Afghans prepare for the 2014 elections? And are there 

lessons to learn from the 2009 elections to help ensure that 2014 

is not a repeat of those? I will start with you, Mr. Bergen. 

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you, sir. In 2005, Afghanistan had a Presidential election in which the turnout was 70 percent and there 

hasn’t been a Presidential election in this country since 1900 where 

there was 70 percent turnout. So there is nothing inherently Afghan about not being able to conduct their reasonably good election. Two thousand nine was flawed. We played a little bit of a 

role, the United States, in the sense that we privately told a number of different Afghan leaders that we are backing you which had 

the unintended effect of splitting the opposition to Karzai. We 

shouldn’t make that same mistake again. 

The election is something that we can provide security assistance 

to and technical assistance to. At the end of the day, it is a U.N. 

mission more than a United States kind of government mission. 

And we should be cognizant of all of the issues we have just discussed, that something that is reasonably free and fair enough in 

65

which we don’t sort of back, seem to be backing anybody in particular, that will be very, very useful for Afghanistan’s future. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Dr. Kagan, do you have thoughts on what would 

constitute free and fair enough? 

Ms. KAGAN. Afghans tend to settle their political differences 

through compromise and negotiation. And since they have a Presidential, rather than a parliamentary system, what we should expect to see is a negotiation among the political leads of Afghanistan 

in advance of the election to make different power sharing agreements that will fall into place depending on the outcome of the 

election. 

What is free enough and fair enough I think is a very important 

question. But what is more important is what is actually going to 

convey a degree of legitimacy on the government and a capability 

to govern the country which is absolutely necessary to prevent the 

kinds of security vacuums that will give rise to al-Qaeda. 

Mr. DEUTCH. But isn’t legitimacy going to be based ultimately on 

whether the election is perceived to be free and fair, Dr. Jones? 

Mr. JONES. Yes, they are. Frankly, I think that the challenge 

with this election as opposed to previous ones is assuming President Karzai does not run, you are going to have a range of individuals with questionable national legitimacy that may have greater 

incentives to stuff ballot boxes, pay individuals to vote, intimidate. 

So this is partly an information issue. I mean one thing the U.S. 

has to do with several of its allies is to continue to collect information on anything about voter fraud, payment of information, intimidation, and to get involved both privately and publicly in calling 

this out. I think if that is made very clear very early on, that may 

deter some of the voter fraud that may be likely in next year’s elections. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Dr. Markey, can we deter that voter fraud? Can we 

prevent it from happening? 

Mr. MARKEY. I am pretty skeptical about the prospects for the 

upcoming election. I mean, look, the last one was deeply flawed 

and we were heavily present. The next one we will be much lighter 

footprint, fewer people around the country. Our capacity to police 

it, our capacity to have leverage over the process, I think, are just 

going to be much, much more limited. I think we will see the kinds 

of abuses that you are talking about. I would broaden the conversation a bit though. I would say first of all, the elections will be important and they will to some—possibly, if they happen at all given 

the kind of instability that may emerge, they may ratify the kind 

of process that Kim is talking about, a kind of internal dialogue. 

But that dialogue is probably also going to have to include questions about the constitutional system and the constitutional order 

there, if in fact, it is going to bring on board some part of the insurgent movement. I mean if that is the plan, if part of the plan is 

reconciliation, you are going to have to bring in people who are now 

outside the political process. 

So the elections may be kind of a capstone to that. Will still be 

ugly and messy, but will have to be more of a ratification of a 

broader dialogue than a simple, neat process. 

66

Mr. CHABOT [presiding]. The gentleman’s time has expired. The 

gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, who is chairman of 

the Eurasia and Emerging Threats is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And to 

my friend, Mr. Faleomavaega, I would like to suggest that his analysis of the war weariness of the American people is right on target. 

And what I wanted to remind him of earlier and just remind us 

is that Mr. Faleomavaega is a combat Veteran and also the Samoan people have contributed a great deal to our military over 

these last 10 years of conflict. I just wanted to put that in the 

record. 

I find it a little bit disturbing that we are talking about—from 

what I just said, that we need to make sure America remains there 

and has military forces there after 2014. There is a contradiction 

there. And the fact is, the American people don’t want to stay in 

that part of the world. Let me just note that the optimism of this 

panel, especially the last two members here about Pakistan, let us 

just note, things have changed in the last 20 and 30 years. I mean 

you can see it, even before the testimony today, people were describing Pakistan in a different way than what we would have 20, 

30 years ago. 

Pakistan is no longer our ally and India is no longer the ally of 

the Soviet Union. What we have now is an ally in India and an 

enemy in Pakistan, not because we are declaring they are our 

enemy, but because Pakistan has declared itself an enemy of the 

United States. Nobody but an enemy would take the murderer, the 

terrorist who slaughtered 3,000 Americans and given him safe 

haven and then arrest the man who helped us bring justice to that 

murderer and arrest him and call him a traitor. 

Pakistan has declared themselves—it is about time we realize 

that Pakistan is the source of many of the problems that we have 

there, rather than being optimistic that Pakistan is going to 

change. 

Let me get on to this about Afghanistan. We have imposed 

Karzai onto the Pakistanis. Karzai had no popular base of support 

and instead of letting the king, King Zahir Shah, play his rightful 

role in bringing about a new type of government, a new government in Afghanistan, we superimposed Karzai on them and in fact, 

our Ambassador Zal wrote their constitution which is totally contrary to their own national patterns of life. It is the most centralized constitution government in the world today. The President appoints the Governors. What would happen to the President appointing the Governors in our country? There would be a lot of conflict there over who was going to hold power, because once you establish absolute power people fight over it. 

Let me just suggest I think that we have done in Afghanistan 

since driving out the Taliban and let us note it wasn’t the United 

States that drove the Taliban out. It was the Northern Alliance 

with the support of the United States. Then we created an 

unsustainable government, an unsustainable governmental sector 

of that society. It is unsustainable because it is contrary to their 

decentralism and we put people in power that didn’t have any popular base of support or ethnic base of support. 

67

Well, if it is unsustainable, how can anyone suggest that we remain in Afghanistan and just have more of our people killed like 

this poor captain down in Florida who the chairman is lamenting 

and who represents all of the people killed in all of our—throughout all of our districts as well? So why should we stay knowing that 

the government is an unsustainable government that we created in 

the first place. You have 21 seconds to answer that. 

Mr. CHABOT. Is it directed at anyone in particular? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Whoever. I made comments. Go ahead. Mr. 

Markey, do you want to take me on about Pakistan? 

Mr. MARKEY. Sure, just on that. I think you are right in a sense. 

Pakistan has been incredibly frustrating and at times would be better characterized as an adversary or enemy, particularly with respect to our differences in Afghanistan. But let us be careful what 

we wish for because they could be an even worse enemy than they 

currently are. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. They are friends with China. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman 

from Samoa, who actually is the ranking member of the Asia and 

the Pacific Subcommittee, Mr. Faleomavaega, you are recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I generally don’t 

like to oversimplify a given issue, but as a matter of historical perspective, I want to share my view with our panelists. We were in 

Korea for 3 years, and 30,000 of our soldiers lost their lives. We 

were in Vietnam for 10 years, and 60,000 of our soldiers lost their 

lives with some 200,000 of our men and women wounded and 

maimed for life. And some 2 million Vietnamese women and children killed in that terrible war. Then we were in Iraq for some 8 

years; and 4,400 soldiers lost their lives. There seems to be a consistency of the pattern and look at how long we tend to stay once 

we start a war. It seems like it is always easy to start a war, but 

to end itqu seems to be really, really difficult as my good friend 

from California is expressing the very same concern that I have. 

I understand Dr. Jones and Dr. Kagan both are of the view that 

we should continue to stay in Afghanistan. I think we need to go 

back to the very beginning, why we ended up in Afghanistan. It 

was due to the attack on the American people on September 11th. 

Guess what? Nineteen terrorists attacked our country. Fifteen were 

savvy Arabs, one Egyptian, one Jordanian. Not one Iraqi among 

the 19 terrorists who attacked us. I think the whole world, even 

our country, was in favor of pursuing Osama bin Laden. He was 

the instigator. He is the one that organized al-Qaeda. We need to 

go after them. Where? Because he was in Afghanistan. But what 

happened? We shifted gears and said, ‘‘No, not just Osama bin 

Laden. We need to go after Saddam Hussein.’’ And for other reasons we missed the whole purpose of why we were in Afghanistan, 

which was to go after al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. 

And then of course, we added the idea that we need to do a little 

regime change. Added to the problem with the Taliban at one time 

controlled Afghanistan and an entirely different set of situation 

where the Taliban, they didn’t attack us. The Taliban has no intention of attacking our country. In fact, they want us out of Afghanistan. Let them do their little thing. 

68

The fact of the matter is that 12 million Pashtuns live in Afghanistan and this is where the Taliban has its base, with some 27,000 

Taliban, as I understand it. But on the borderline with Pakistan, 

there are 27 million additional Pashtuns that live there. So is it 

any surprise that Osama bin Laden was able to stay in Pakistan 

for nearly 5 years until we were finally able to locate his whereabouts? 

My concern is that it is very easy for us here to say, ‘‘Oh, we 

need to leave our soldiers there.’’ I believe that this should be the 

very last act the Congress, the administration, or our Government 

makes when we put our men and women on the line in harm’s 

way, it better be for the final security of our national interest. 

Some have said the war in Iraq was a war of choice, the same way 

that the war in Afghanistan is a war of choice. Where do we really 

come into sensing this balance where we have to be there and the 

fact that we send our soldiers in harm’s way to do this to protect 

our national interest? 

I know your position and I respect that, but I just cannot believe 

that we are going to be there another 10 years or the suggestion 

that it is vitally critical to our national interest that we stay in Afghanistan. Could you elaborate a little more on that, Dr. Jones? 

Mr. JONES. Yes, sure. And I sympathize with the range of your 

comments on other theaters including Iraq to some degree. But let 

me just say this, two things. One is that the American presence in 

the strategy can vary quite a bit. The U.S. has played a very useful 

role in undermining and countering terrorist and insurgent groups 

with a limited presence in the Philippines and Colombia and a 

range of other places that does not require large amounts of money, 

large numbers of boots on the ground, and large numbers of Americans dying. So I do think there is some variation in how we proceed 

that may look like other cases. 

The last thing I will note is my concern right now in Afghanistan 

is that we look up in Kunar province where we have current alQaeda training camps, small, they are there because they have a 

local Taliban ally in that case. It is a district-level commander. 

That is the situation I want to make sure if we leave too quickly 

that that stuff doesn’t spread. 

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I am sorry, my time is up. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. Bergen, let me ask you a question. You mentioned in your 

statement that you felt it was a mistake that the administration 

had announced the surge in Afghanistan and basically, at the same 

time, announced that we are pulling out by this date. What do you 

think were the consequences of announcing that when they did? 

What could have or should have happened differently? What do you 

think were actually the results of that? 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes, I mean this is all in the context of trickling 

the number of troops in Afghanistan from 30,000 to 90,000 which 

happened under President Obama. But unfortunately, people and 

the media of which I am part of, sort of seized on the part of the 

speech where it said the drawdown was going to start in July 2011. 

I think the problem with that is that Afghans do actually want us 

to stay, generally speaking. They are not happy about some of the 

69

things that have happened, but they see us as a guarantor that the 

Taliban won’t come back and a guarantor that neighboring countries, whether it is Iran or Pakistan, don’t take too much of a role 

in the future of their country. 

And so I think in retrospect July 2011 was a mistake. So let us 

learn from our mistakes when we announce the new level of troop 

numbers and we have already negotiated the Strategic Partnership 

Agreement. Let us point out that the Strategic Partnership Agreement is still 2024 and these are not combat troops. These are advisory troops, some people doing counterterrorism. So the concern 

about large numbers of American soldiers dying in post-2014 we 

have already seen the numbers are in single digits right now every 

month as opposed to much larger numbers we were seeing before. 

So I think just learn from this error, if possible. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. Let me shift gears. Recently, the IranPakistan pipeline, also called the peace pipeline, gained some momentum. The pipeline was inaugurated this month in the southern 

Iranian port city of Chah Bahar by President Ahmadinejad and 

President Zadari. Iran offered Pakistan a loan of $250 million to 

$1⁄2 billion to work on the 781-kilometer portion of the pipeline inside Pakistani territory. Russia and China have also indicated their 

willingness to help Pakistan to construct the pipeline. In January, 

U.S. Consul General Michael Dodman said the State Department 

would impose sanctions against Pakistan if it finalized the deal 

with Iran. 

Taking into consideration that once a country is dependent on a 

particular source for their natural gas supply, it is extremely difficult to change course, how do we assist Pakistan to diversify its 

energy sources in order to reduce its desire to partner with Iran? 

And would you recommend that the U.S. impose sanctions on the 

foreign companies that are involved in this pipeline project and 

should U.S. assistance to Pakistan be conditioned on its continued 

support for the pipeline? 

Dr. Kagan, do you want to take that or Mr. Markey? 

Mr. MARKEY. Thanks. First of all, I would say, to me, the pipeline is deeply problematic and there are all kinds of reasons to oppose it. It also appears to be a political stunt and I believe it s a 

stunt by the Pakistani outgoing government to attempt to portray 

itself as more anti-American and more independent than many 

Pakistanis have believed up until this point. And it is also a stunt 

to try to show that they are doing something to meet Pakistan’s energy needs that is tangible when they haven’t met those energy 

needs over the past several years. 

And so in that category, and recognizing that this is a pipeline 

that is proposed to go across some of Pakistan’s most difficult territory through Baluchestan Province which is going to be very difficult to build and I believe almost impossible to build and certainly 

impossible to build on the timeline that they have in mind, I would 

suggest that while we should do everything to oppose the pipeline, 

including threatening sanctions should they turn it on, and including suggesting an alternative, a pipeline from Turkmenistan, TAPI 

pipeline that would probably meet their energy needs as well or 

better and would pose none of the problems that this Iran pipeline 

does pose, that that should be the package that we go ahead with. 

70

That doesn’t mean imposing sanctions now, but it does mean leveling threats and making it clear that those sanctions would be imposed should they open such a pipeline down the line. But as I say, 

it is years away if it ever happens. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. My time is about ready to 

expire so I will now turn to Mr. Wilson, the gentleman from South 

Carolina. Five minutes. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being 

here. I am particularly concerned about insider attacks. Over the 

weekend, I had a very sad opportunity to participate in a visitation 

for a very dedicated young American who has done so much for our 

country. She is retired Sergeant 1st Class Inez Renee Odom-Baker 

of Cayce, South Carolina. She was murdered during an insider attack this month as she was serving with dedication to help the people of Afghanistan as a civilian contractor. My sympathy to her two 

sons, Andrew Odom and Larry Mitchell, Jr. and family. 

Dr. Kagan, for you and your colleagues, what assurances can you 

provide to the families of personnel serving in Afghanistan that improved security is in place to reduce the number of insider attacks? 

Ms. KAGAN. I cannot possibly myself give guarantees to the families of those who are in Afghanistan. And the issue on green on 

blue attacks is something that is meant to be of concern to all of 

us because it is a strategic opportunity that the Taliban is taking 

that disaffected individuals within the Afghan army who are not 

affiliated with the Taliban. The Afghan Government is unfortunately not able to deal with it entirely because, frankly, our proximity to, partnership with, and continued interaction with the Afghan National Security Forces is so essential to the long-term outcome and stability in Afghanistan. Despite these attacks and despite the threat that they pose to the men and women who serve 

in military and civilian capacities we actually need to persist with 

that close partnership in order to achieve our strategic objectives 

over the long term, namely a degree of stability in Afghanistan and 

an ability for that army to have the capability to defend its own 

country’s borders so that ultimately we can reduce our forces and 

come home. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. If any other would like to comment? 

Yes, Dr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. Yes, just a couple of things. One is the levels of insider attacks were at a historical peak last year. Both ISAF and 

the various components made a concrete effort to improve and I 

was out there looking at some of this, the vetting process for the 

Afghan local police and the Afghan national police and the Afghan 

national army which seems to have reduced by the end of the year 

in some cases, the number of green on blue attacks, including the 

collection of information, monitoring of cell phones conversations 

and some cases with active Taliban or Taliban sympathizers to 

make sure if there are any problems with current Afghan national 

or local security officials that those are dealt with. 

I think there has been a greater recognition, some vetting has 

been improved. But I would say the other thing I would just comment on is this is one area where I do think we have to push back 

on the President of Afghanistan. Comments like the United States 

is collaborating or has common interests with the Taliban has the 

71

potential to cause an increase in insider attacks if that is the message that the President of that country is sending out to his forces. 

So I think a very strong pushback to him that those statements actually are counterproductive because they threaten the security of 

U.S. forces operating in there would be helpful. 

Mr. WILSON. If Mr. Bergen or Dr. Markey, do you have—and indeed, I appreciate the efforts of vetting and I was happy to hear 

even to the point of monitoring cell phone conversations, it is particularly important to me. I am very grateful. Thanks to my wife, 

Roxanne, we have four sons serving in the military today. They are 

Veterans of Iraq serving with Bright Star in Egypt and Afghanistan. And so our family truly is appreciative of any effort to make 

sure that insider attacks are eliminated, reduced, and so again, I 

want to thank all of you for being here today and I yield back the 

balance of my time. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman yields back and we would like to 

thank you for also serving this country, as well. I want to apologize 

to my Democratic colleagues. I went over here twice in a row. The 

gentleman from California is also the ranking member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade Subcommittee. Mr. Sherman is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I doubt very much whether we are going to see 

a peaceful, unified, progressive state in Afghanistan, but I have no 

doubt that there will be those advocating for unlimited American 

resources, treasure, and blood to try to achieve that objective. 

Dr. Jones, I want to thank you for your pointing out that we can 

have antiterrorist presence in Afghanistan involving tiny fraction 

of the cost and casualties than we have experienced over the last 

several years, especially since the surge. 

And I believe it was Dr. Markey who suggested a U.S.-Pakistani 

free trade agreement. Again, there is no—you did not? Excuse me. 

Mr. Bergen. I would point out that the cost of that to American 

workers has to be calculated among the other costs that those focused on this area would have the taxpayers and people of America 

pay. 

Now the Taliban would not be in business in Afghanistan if it 

was hunted down by the Pakistani national security enterprise as 

if it was a true enemy of Pakistan. So the question I have and I 

will ask you to accept the premise whoever volunteers to answer 

this, that indeed we installed Karzai. There are few who doubt 

that. Why did we choose to install someone who was so distrusted 

by Pakistan or at least elements of the ISI that they have chosen 

to keep the Afghan Taliban as a potentially useful asset for future 

involvements in Afghanistan? Why did we not install somebody in 

Kabul that the Pakistanis could unite behind and view those who 

waged war against Kabul as enemies of Pakistan? Do I have someone? 

Yes, Dr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. My understanding is the record is fairly straightforward on this and that is the U.S. envoy to the Bonn negotiations, Ambassador Jim Dobbins at the time actually ran. He said 

this in his book that came out several years ago that he ran President Karzai’s name by the ISI directly and—or actually gave them 

the opportunity to provide their top choice as he did with the IndiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:04 Jun 06, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00077 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_MENA\031913\80120 HFA PsN: SHIRL
72

ans, the Chinese, and others and President Karzai was their—was 

the ISI’s choice as their most palatable option in Afghanistan. That 

view clearly changed over the next several years, but I think for 

the record, that point anyway appears to be fairly straightforward. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you. Dr. Markey, do you have a view on 

that? 

Mr. MARKEY. I think it is important to just take us back to that 

early period and to appreciate the extent to which we, the United 

States, believed that the Taliban were truly a spent force. And I 

think that most of the countries in the region also believed that 

they had been thoroughly beaten and that this was a very winnable prospect and that Karzai, if it is true that the ISI were willing to accept him as sort of a best of bad alternatives candidate, 

they were willing to do so because they believed at the time that 

the war had been won by us, that it was over. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Another view is they just view whoever we installed in Kabul is somebody who would only be there for a year 

or two and they would sweep him aside and put in whoever else 

they wanted which is the other story I have heard. 

Mr. MARKEY. Possibly, but there was a pretty dramatic and convincing route of the Taliban at that time. And their ability to reconstitute themselves took a matter of years. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Whether it was the Taliban or someone else, the 

idea that the government we installed would survive against whatever group the ISI put together. Anyway, I want to shift to a completely different subject and that is Pakistan which I believe is far 

more important to us long term than government. 

We are not doing too well in attracting friends among the Pakistani public, even with our public diplomacy. Pakistan speaks a variety of different languages. What should we do to reach out to the 

different communities that make up Pakistan? Should we be doing 

more, for instance, the Sindhi language with our broadcasting 

through Voice of America and through public diplomacy? Or should 

we adhere to the view of some in Islamabad that we should treat 

Pakistan as a purely Urdu-speaking country? 

Who wants to answer this one? Dr. Bergen. 

Mr. BERGEN. To some extent it is not what we say, it is what we 

do. Right? The thing that really angers the Pakistanis the most 

right now is our drone program. And the Afghan Parliament is basically an April——

Mr. SHERMAN. I am asking about broadcasting in the Sindhi language and you are talking about our drone program? 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, I am going to say it doesn’t matter what we 

say in Sindhi, Urdu, or Punjabi or Pashtu or any language if we 

have things that anger them at a very basic level. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay. Do I have another response? I agree that 

the drone program has angered many in Pakistan and as the apprehension and death of bin Laden on their territory, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. It doesn’t mean we 

shouldn’t do the best job of public diplomacy that we can do. And 

I yield back. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. The bells 

that you heard here mean we have votes on the floor. Several members have already headed over, so we are going to head over now, 

73

so we are in recess. We will be back in probably a half hour, maybe 

less. Thank you very much. We are in recess. 

[Off the record.] 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN [presiding]. The subcommittee is now back in 

session and I am going to recognize Mr. Kinzinger to take a slow 

5 minutes. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I will take a slow 5 minutes. Thank you, Madam 

Chair, and thank you all for waiting through the votes and being 

here. It has actually been a pleasure to listen to you. 

Ms. Kagan, it is great to see you. Thank you for all your hard 

work and I point you out just because I know of your work well 

and I appreciate things that you have done. Actually, I have to 

admit I was very bothered earlier when I heard America basically 

in essence, in a round about way, referred to as an empire when 

somebody had mentioned that Afghanistan is the deathbed of empires like for some reason America has somehow been chasing the 

vast natural resources in Afghanistan or the huge copious amounts 

of oil. I will tell you that Afghanistan in my mind, although U.S. 

interests are at stake, was a war that was fought out of frankly, 

I think, moral justification; an entire culture that believes that 

women couldn’t even be in the same room as men. You hear about 

people that would have their nose and ears cut off because somebody in the family committed a crime and they would be used as 

payment. Frankly, I think what America has done and what the 

Western world has done in Afghanistan has been frankly pretty 

amazing. 

I also want to briefly explore the issue of the surge and the surge 

in Iraq. When President Bush added troops to Iraq it wasn’t the 

addition of the troops that really made the difference. It was that 

in that time the enemy believed that America could not stand the 

heat of the improvised explosive attacks of the attacks that were 

going on, the massive casualties, and thought that President Bush 

would eventually say we are done. We can’t take it any more. 

And not only did the President not say that we are not done, he 

said we are going to send more troops in and we are going to win 

this war. And what you saw when that happened was on a dime 

the war in Iraq turned. And the war in Iraq went from a bloody 

100 American troops lost a month to a massive shift and a victory, 

frankly, for the United States that I feel and I am afraid that we 

squandered away a year ago. 

In Afghanistan, and this is my first question, we talked about 

the 2014 timeline. I think it was Mr. Bergen that had mentioned 

the second you say we are surging troops, but they are leaving, so 

basically the last troop going in is actually going to cross paths 

with the first troop leaving from the initial entrance, you send a 

message to the enemy and the Taliban have saying. They say 

America has the watches, but we have the time. So you send a 

message to the Taliban and you say hey look, we are sending more 

troops, but just wait your turn. I know you have been fighting this 

war for decades, just fight it a few more years because we are out. 

It sends the wrong message. 

So the question I have for the four of you and please answer very 

briefly, what is up with the year 2014? Is there a reason that 2014 

was actually picked? Is there a reason on the ground? Or was 2014 

74

used because of a political concern back here at home? It is palatable to the American people. Because I think, as I heard my colleagues on the other side mention, when you use American troops 

you have to do so very judiciously. I agree. When you use American 

troops though, you should never make a decision that involves 

American troops based on politics at home or it is time to leave. 

So let me just ask. I will start with you, Dr. Jones. What is special about the year 2014 or is it politics? 

Mr. JONES. I think the answer, it is a political decision. Period. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Dr. Kagan. 

Ms. KAGAN. I concur. Two thousand fourteen does not make 

sense from the perspective of what we are trying to accomplish in 

Afghanistan. The choice of 2014 was a political decision. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Mr. Bergen? 

Mr. BERGEN. I think it is a little more complicated than that. 

This was a decision that was arrived at with the Afghan Government and also with our NATO allies which number, I think, 21 in 

Afghanistan right now. And we have negotiated a Strategic Partnership Agreement until 2024. So it is not like we are turning the 

lights off in 2014. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Dr. Markey? 

Mr. MARKEY. No doubt that it has a political component, but the 

original 2014 suggestion, I believe, actually came from President 

Karzai and then was latched on to by the administration. Just one 

quick point, it did send a wrong message to the Taliban. It sent the 

wrong message to the entire region, so it was beyond just the adversaries. It was our allies, as well as the regional players. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I agree with you and I appreciate you bringing 

that up because in the Middle East it seems that we like this idea 

of if you smile really well, and the West if two people get in a fight 

one person says I am sorry and you have an agreement then. In 

the Middle East, it is frankly strength. And the second you say we 

are eager to get out of here, you have just shown the enemy they 

can outlast us. 

My last point, and it is not a question. It is a point. Vietnam, 

we can look back at the Vietnam lessons and say we should or 

shouldn’t have been there. I will argue that a different day. But at 

the end of Vietnam, we left people that have stood up and fought 

for a southern government that fought for freedom. We ended up 

leaving them high and tight, high and dry, and a lot of people died 

as a result. 

Now the next major war we get involved in, Iraq and Afghanistan. The implications of the United States leaving—and the Western allies—I don’t mean of everybody—leaving Afghanistan at a 

time when frankly a lot of people have stood up and said I will put 

my life on the line to defend a new Afghan Government and to defend freedom and to defend the women’s ability to go to school and 

to be human, frankly. If we leave, I think that sends a message to 

the rest of the world that if we ever have to do something like this 

again and it is ignorant of us to think we never will, it would be 

very hard to get locals on our side when we ask them to support 

the United States or the Western world again. 

With that, Madam Chairman, thank you. I yield back. 

75

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. And so pleased to 

yield to another combat veteran, Congresswoman Gabbard. Thank 

you. 

Ms. GABBARD. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate the insight that each of you have shared today, as well as 

the variety of opinions that have been voiced by our colleagues on 

the committee. Really my question is centered around more specifics. Each of you has touched on at one point or another, using 

different words, about the necessity to remain in Afghanistan specifically, but what does that actually look like? What does that actually mean when you are talking about numbers of troops on the 

ground? I think Dr. Jones mentioned during one of his responses 

to the questions saying that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you 

have tens of thousands or over hundreds of thousands of troops 

that remain there. 

I would like to know your thoughts on specifically what going forward that looks like and how long that will be required in order 

to achieve the goal that you have stated that you feel are important 

to our national security? 

Mr. JONES. Very briefly, the way I envision this right now, one 

option any way because I think there are a range on the table is 

on the military side, we can talk about civilian presence later. The 

goal I think has got to be to focus on training, equipping and advising Afghan national army, Afghan national police, and Afghan local 

police forces, conducting direct action operations against high-value 

targets. And then providing some limited enablers such as intelligence, civil affairs, military information, support operations. 

Based on a range of estimates, including the size of Afghan National Security Forces and others, one could envision, depending on 

allied commitments of forces anywhere between 8,000 to about 

15,000 American forces. 

The question on timing and a lot would depend not just on the 

numbers because I think we get into a numbers game pretty quickly. It also depends on the strategy one uses and other factors, how 

you deal with the sanctuary. The sanctuary is a key component, 

should be a key component of any strategy in Afghanistan because 

the leadership structure has not been targeted and sits across the 

border in Pakistan, especially the Taliban’s command and control 

node. 

My one last comment along these lines is I think on the timeline 

and exit, I can’t put a year there because I think it is a conditionsbased one that ties in very closely to the threat to the U.S. homeland and its interests overseas coming from this area. When that 

threat goes away, I think it is time to go. 

Ms. KAGAN. I concur. I don’t think that there is anyone here on 

the panel who believes that there should be an indefinite number 

of troops committed to Afghanistan indefinitely. We are in a process of drawing down, in part because of the changes that the Afghan security forces have themselves experienced. During our 

surge, they, too, have surged. But it is absolutely vital that our 

withdrawal of forces remains conditions based, based on conditions 

of the ground, that the commanders in Afghanistan have the flexibility to bring in the units that they need to hold the bases that 

76

they need and conduct the logistical support that they need in 

order to do the missions that Dr. Jones has mentioned. 

Therefore, as we look at the drawdown, it is very important, really quite vital, that it not happen faster than conditions on the 

ground permit. 

Ms. GABBARD. Thank you. I think it is just important to note the 

distinction. I know there were some comments made that militancy 

does not go away when the U.S. leaves. Car bombs and attacks 

that are still continuing in Iraq, al-Qaeda’s presence in Syria, I 

think it is something we can all agree on that the threat from alQaeda exists, not only in Afghanistan, but in other places. And it 

is one that is based on an ideology, not based on a commitment or 

allegiance to a specific country which is why I think it is most necessary for us to stay focused on what is the mission at hand, what 

is the specific threat that is facing our country, and recognize forward looking what will be required to address that threat, not just 

in Afghanistan, but across the entire regions, stay focused on those 

counterterrorism activities. 

And so I think when we look at that threat as opposed to a noble 

cause of trying to bring stability to an unstable region, and essentially acting as a police force or nation building in different countries which we would all love to be able to do, but because of limited resources and assets, don’t have those capabilities. Thank you. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Mr. Connolly is recognized. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for 

holding this hearing. Welcome to our panel. 

I was talking to a nonprofit representative who has been doing 

a lot of work in Afghanistan and one characteristic he made was 

from his point of view once the United States withdrawal is met, 

the deadlines are met, that what is left behind is sort of a situation 

that will muddle along. It is not going to collapse. It is not going 

to look like Saigon in 1975. There are some enduring institutional 

changes that we will have helped leave behind that actually will 

make a positive difference and that that is probably the best we 

are going to look for and that is probably what the likely situation 

is going to look like on the ground for some period of time. 

Would you all agree with that characterization? 

Mr. Bergen? 

Mr. BERGEN. Basically, yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. That is succinct. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. We are not used to that. 

Ms. KAGAN. I would disagree with that characterization. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. You would disagree. 

Ms. KAGAN. I do. I think that we have made some very fundamental changes to the situation in Afghanistan, but I do not know 

that Afghanistan will muddle along. I think that, in fact, the potential for rekindling a civil war in Afghanistan, for state collapse, for 

state withdrawal, exists. And our path out of Afghanistan can accelerate or decelerate that kind of collapse and help to ensure that 

Afghanistan—to ensure that Afghanistan continues to muddle 

along. We need to make sure that there is support to the Afghan 

Government. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Dr. Jones. 

77

Mr. JONES. I think part of the answer to your question depends 

on identifying a handful of key variables that could push this in 

a roughly muddling along in a positive way to very badly destabilizing. I would just point to at least three off the top of my head. 

One is the activity of neighbors. Increases in weapons, money, 

other resources from the Iranians, the Pakistanis, the Russians, 

the Indians, and other countries in the region could lead this to 

something very different from muddling along. The early 1990s, in 

my view, in Afghanistan similar scenario, was not muddling along. 

It was deeply destabilizing. 

Second, are we talking about a U.S. combat presence ending or 

simply the U.S.—and focusing on train and equip, or does the U.S. 

leave period? What the U.S. does on a military perspective, if it 

stays and does some training versus combat, that could vary those 

outcomes. 

The third, frankly, is the quality of Afghan governance. The 2014 

election, if that goes badly and you get fracturing among say Tajiks 

and Uzbeks up in the north who do not support the direction of the 

government, will tend to rip the fabric apart in ways that I think 

would be worse than muddling along. So the elections, the neighbors, U.S. presence, combat or otherwise, I think are several variables that will impact that. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yes, Dr. Markey. 

Mr. MARKEY. I think these are all reasonable concerns. I think 

muddling along should actually be seen as pretty good success and 

muddling along will only happen if a degree of resources continue 

to flow both to the Afghan National Security Forces and more 

broadly to the Afghan state. I mean it is not self sufficient. So muddling along, I think, should be seen as pretty decent and we should 

be concerned about some of these downside risks. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yes, given the alternatives. Two-part question 

real quickly about the Taliban. The same person observed part of 

what will help the muddling along positive scenario is actually the 

intense dislike for any return of the Taliban in most of the country 

and that that is pretty clear. 

Secondly, I wonder what your opinion is about can Taliban be negotiated with? Count me a skeptic, but there are those that say 

they could be. 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes, and no. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. I only have 28 seconds. I really appreciate that. 

Dr. Jones, can you match that kind of succinctness? 

Mr. JONES. No. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. We have got a bunch of Calvin Coolidges up 

here, Madam Chair. 

Mr. JONES. Very quickly, the intense dislike, yes. But an insurgent group that has outside sanctuary and outside support can 

overcome intense dislike in a country. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Bergen’s answers, Madam Chairman, remind 

of the story I told about Calvin Coolidge. He is at a dinner party 

where a woman sat next to him, President Coolidge, and said you 

have got this reputation for being so laconic and I bet somebody 

$100 I could get you to say three things. He looked at her and said 

you lose. 

78

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Connolly. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. DeSantis, this is a tough act to follow. 

We need a historical joke. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Well, I do appreciate Calvin Coolidge. He is a 

very underrated President, so I thank my colleague from Virginia 

for invoking him. 

In terms of the footprint that you recommend, Dr. Jones, and I 

agree. In terms of having folks there, I think you recommended between 8,000 and 12,000. Sometimes people say oh, just throw some 

Special Operations forces in there. But you don’t just throw Special 

Operations forces in there. You have got to have at least some conventional forces to support them and obviously, intelligence and the 

CIA component as well. 

Where does that put you in terms of what the administration has 

said in terms of numbers? Do they want a total or have they left 

the door open for this type of strategy? 

Mr. JONES. Well, it is unclear right now. They have opened the 

door for numbers, possibly numbers along these lines by 2014, but 

the question is for how long? And I think this goes back to Mr. Bergen’s point earlier. Without a better sense of what this means in 

2015 or ’16 or ’17, I think those numbers are partly meaningless 

because locals will look at the longer-term commitment. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Now given the fact that obviously there is a lot 

of things going on in Afghanistan, we probably really didn’t understand when we went in in 2001. Tribal society, they have certain 

customs that are different from ours. What is kind of the best case 

scenario in terms of what we can reasonably expect of an Afghan 

Government because a lot of constituents and Americans will say 

they really believe that we need to fight terrorism, but they think 

that Afghanistan, like those people will just never have a decent 

government. So can you guys just give your assessment on that? 

Mr. JONES. I can very briefly comment. If you look at even the 

most stable period of Afghanistan’s history, let us say 1929 to 1978, 

government that controlled some key urban areas, some key lines 

of communications on roads, but had tribes, sub-tribes, and clans 

involved in adjudicating controlling key parts of rural Afghanistan. 

I think that is your best bet in the future, a limited central government and a range of tribal, sub-tribe, clan and other actors that 

continue to influence in rural areas. 

Ms. KAGAN. I think it is important that the American people 

know that Afghans see Afghanistan as an entity though. And that 

one of our goals in Afghanistan is keeping a united state surrounded as it is by unruly neighbors. And that the mythos that the 

Afghans don’t want to recognize themselves as a state even though 

they find tribe and clan and locality of prime importance is a misconception that Americans impose on Afghans. 

Mr. BERGEN. Just to answer that, the first modern Afghan state 

was founded in 1747 so it is an older country than the United 

States and even the Taliban doesn’t want to devolve. It is a strong 

nation, but a weak state. 

I think what is realistic is let us look at their neighbors. You 

have Iran which is a theocratic autocracy. You have Uzebekistan 

that boils dissidents alive which is a Soviet-style regime. And you 

79

have Pakistan which has had four military coups. So by those 

standards, Afghanistan is already looking reasonably good. And my 

prognosis, in the 1970s, Afghanistan was a tourist destination, so 

within living memory there is a whole different Afghanistan. So it 

is not dream-a-vision that you have somewhere. It is somewhat 

functional. 

Mr. MARKEY. I agree with a number of these points, but I would 

actually also focus on our capacity, the Afghan capacity to keep together and build up a more successful National Security Force. The 

army, and our ability to keep it together, their ability to keep it 

together and not to see that fracture will be very important to national unity. Above and beyond these concerns, I mean there will 

be all kinds of corruption, war lordism. I mean these kinds of 

things can happen, but it really falls apart if the one institution of 

national security also collapses. 

So if I were to put my finger on something, that would be the 

thing I would put it on and that is something that I think we are 

capable of helping them along with over a reasonable time frame. 

Mr. DESANTIS. And then finally, and anyone can take this. There 

was a comment made by someone earlier in the hearing about the 

Taliban, they don’t really want to come attack America over here, 

whatever. I guess in your judgment when they allowed al-Qaeda to 

operate, obviously that was a huge—the regime got crushed after 

9/11. Would they want to work with al-Qaeda again as the U.S. 

withdraws? Or is that something that they view that as a mistake 

that they had made, that yes, they are Islamic fanatics and they 

do that, but they didn’t have the desire to export terrorism. Is that 

accurate? 

Mr. JONES. I think very briefly it is impossible to generalize 

about the Taliban. The inner Shura has expressed some concerns 

about al-Qaeda, but we see local al-Qaeda commanders developing 

a relationship with local Taliban commanders, meaning that part 

of the answer depends on what level of the organization you are 

talking about. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Mr. DeSantis. Thank 

you to all the members and all of our wonderful staffers who make 

this look easy, but most especially to the panelists. Thank you for 

excellent testimony and thank you to the audience as well. With 

that, our joint subcommittee is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:32 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(81)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

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JOINT SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

WASHINGTON, DC 20515-6128 

Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman 

Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific 

Steve Chabot (R-OH), Chairman 

March 13,2013 

TO: MIl:MBIl:RS OF THIl: COMMITTIl:Il: ON 1l0R[lGN AFFAIRS 

You are respectfully requested to attend an OPEN hearing of the Committee on Foreign Mfairs to be 

held jointly by the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Alrica and the Subcommittee on Asia and the 

Pacific, to be held in Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building (and available live on the Committee 

website at vv\vw;forei.~l1iJllirs.hQgffig~lY.)' 

DATE: 

TIME: 

SLJBJIl:CT: 

WITNESSES: 

Tuesday, March 19,2013 

1:00 p.m. 

Afterthe Withdrawal' The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Part I) 

Seth G. Jones, Ph.D. 

Associate Director 

International Security and Defense Policy Center 

RAND Corporation 

Kimberly Kagan, Ph.D. 

President 

Institute for the Study of War 

Mr Peter Bergen 

Director 

National Security Studies Program 

The New America Foundation 

Daniel S. Markey, Ph.D. 

Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia 

Council on Foreign Relations 

By Direction of the Chairman 
83

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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

Day __ T"'u"'e"'s"'d"'a)L' __ Date ___ -'3"-'I'-19C!.V-'I.e.3 ___ Room ___ -"2"-1'-'72"---__ _ 

Starting Time _-,I-,oO",'Lj'f'-' LLm,--_Ending Time 3.32 n.111. 

Recesses' UdSto 3:LL) L-to __ 1 L-to _J L-to _J L-to __ ) L-to __ 1 

Presiding Member(s) 

Chairman Hm'-Lehtinen, Chairman Chabot 

Check all 4the jol/owing that apply: 

Open Session [{] 

Executive (closed) Session D Televised [{] 

TITLE OF HEARI~G: 

Electronically Recorded (taped) [{] 

Stenographic Record [{] 

After the Withdrawal: The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Part I) 

SUBCOMMITTlm MEMBERS PRESENT: 

Ros-Lehtinen, Chabot. JJlilson, Kinzinger,. CottOIl, Perry, "Veher, DeSantis, .lUeadows. Yolto, Deutch, 

Connolly, Faleomavaega, Sherman, Bera~ Frankel, Gabbard, Grayson, ,~leng, Cicilline, Kennedy 

NON-SUBCOIVIl\lITTEE l\lEl\IBERS PRESENT: (itfark 'fvith Lin * if the)' I.1re not members o!fld! committee.) 

HEARiNG \'Tr,NESSES: Same as meeting notice attached? Yes D No 0 

(If "no" please lIst he/ow (md include litle. agency, departmeY!t, or organizutwn.) 

STATEI\IENTS FOR THE RECORD: (List any statements submitred/or th~~ record) 

SFR-Perry 

TIME SCHlmULED TO RECONVENE ___ _ 

or 

TIME AD,)OIJRNED _____ _ 

Subcommittee Staff Director 
84

[NOTE: Responses to the above questions were not received prior to printing.]

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