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TROOPS, DIPLOMATS, AND AID: ASSESSING

STRATEGIC RESOURCES FOR AFGHANISTAN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 26, 2009

Serial No. 111–81

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

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

——— ———

——— ———

——— ———

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

ANDREW WRIGHT, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 26, 2009 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Barno, David W., Lieutenant General, retired, U.S. Army, and Director,

Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense

University; James Dobbins, director, Center for International Security

and Defense Policy, RAND Corp.; Frederick W. Kagan, Ph.D., resident

scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; and

David Kilcullen, Ph.D., senior non-resident fellow, Center for a New

American Security, and partner, Crumpton Group ................................... 5

Barno, David W. ........................................................................................ 5

Dobbins, James .......................................................................................... 38

Kagan, Frederick W. ................................................................................. 53

Kilcullen, David ......................................................................................... 60

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

Barno, David W., Lieutenant General, retired, U.S. Army, and Director,

Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense

University, prepared statement of ............................................................... 8

Dobbins, James, director, Center for International Security and Defense

Policy, RAND Corp., prepared statement of ............................................... 41

Kagan, Frederick W., Ph.D., resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, prepared statement of ............................ 55

Kilcullen, David, Ph.D., senior non-resident fellow, Center for a New

American Security, and partner, Crumpton Group, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 63

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TROOPS, DIPLOMATS, AND AID: ASSESSING

STRATEGIC RESOURCES FOR AFGHANISTAN

THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Welch, Driehaus, Cuellar,

Kucinich, Flake, and Jordan.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Elliot Gillerman, clerk;

Andy Wright, counsel; Alex McKnight, State Department fellow;

Margaret Costa, intern; John Cuaderes, minority deputy staff director; Dan Blankenburg, minority director of outreach and senior

advisor; Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison;

Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel; Dr. Christopher Bright,

minority senior professional staff member; and Glenn Sanders, minority Defense fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. Good morning. I apologize for being just a touch

late. I have to say, I had my jokes all prepared on General Barno.

I was going to say how he was late. With all that logistical work

that he had been doing over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he

couldn’t get here on time. And you ended up being on time and I

ended up being late. So much for that.

I thank all of our witnesses for being here. I thank Mr. Flake as

well. Before we get started, I do just want to mention that we have

a particular guest with us here this morning. Representative Carolyn Maloney, who does an incredible amount of work on human

rights particularly in this South Asia area of the world, has a guest

in town and that is Dr. Samar. I just want to introduce her and

thank her for her attendance. She is working hard to guarantee the

equality for Afghan women throughout Afghanistan and doing

quite a bit of work on that on the Afghanistan Independent Human

Rights Commission. So thank you for your work and thank you for

joining us here this morning.

We have a quorum present so we are going to begin our hearing

which is entitled, ‘‘Troops, Diplomats, and Aid: Assessing Strategic

Resources for Afghanistan.’’ The meeting will come to order. And

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and the ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements. Without objection, so ordered.

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And I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept

open for 5 business days so that all members of the subcommittee

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

This morning we are continuing what has been somewhat of a

sustained oversight on this committee with regard to Afghanistan

and Pakistan. We all understand that the challenges that we face

in South Asia are breathtakingly complex. Oversight of U.S. programs, deployments, and spending requires an appreciation of the

underlying ethnic tensions, historical grievances, and regional dynamics. The lines of conflict and the aspirations of the people have

unique characteristics that call for serious consideration by U.S.

policymakers charged with achieving U.S. national security interests.

Problems this complex require that we use both a microscope and

a telescope. As such, the subcommittee has spent significant time

during this opening congressional work period to examine and investigate Afghanistan and Pakistan from a variety of different

lenses. I know Mr. Kilcullen has noted that we don’t have the

usual 9 months that it takes for a President to transition into office

and get his key people in place. Consequently, just as the President

is moving quickly on this, Congress has to get itself in a position

to react to whatever proposals the administration may make.

Two weeks ago we held a public hearing featuring a panel of experts explaining the nature of the threats emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last week we followed up with a classified

briefing conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Next Tuesday we will hold a hearing entitled Afghanistan

and Pakistan: Understanding and Engaging Regional Stakeholders

that will explore those countries through the lens of geopolitics and

regional tensions and opportunities.

Today we turn our attention to the kind of footprint the United

States should have in Afghanistan. How many troops, how many

diplomats, how many aid workers do we need? These questions, all

of which involve deployment of U.S. citizens to a war zone, weigh

heavily on those of us with the responsibility of public service. But

at their core, these questions should be preceded by one fundamental question: What are we trying to achieve in Afghanistan?

We hold this hearing as the administration prepares to release

its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategic review. Ranking Member

Flake and I have been in communication with the administration

to ensure that the subcommittee receives a full briefing once this

review is finalized.

While the particulars of the administration’s strategic review are

still being sorted out, we do know some things. For instance, President Obama has already authorized the deployment of an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. The nature of any recommendations for increased deployments of military or civilian personnel beyond this remains a subject of great speculation and debate, although reports have leaked that President Obama is planning some kind of civilian surge as well. Other leaks indicate that

the administration new plan will aim to significantly boost Afghan

army and police forces and to expand covert warfare including air

strikes in western Pakistan.

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Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let us return for a moment to what is the most fundamental of questions. What do we

seek to achieve in Afghanistan? One of our recent witnesses described that our effort in Afghanistan should be a counter-sanctuary objective. I know some of our witnesses here today will address that. Under that approach, we would need to prevent Al

Qaeda or like-minded international terrorists from establishing a

safe haven from which they can plan and execute attacks against

U.S. citizens at home or abroad. Putting aside the fact that Al

Qaeda appears to have established a safe haven in western Pakistan, or has or could likely do so in any number of other places in

the world, and that 9/11 was largely planned in Hamburg and

Miami, it strikes me that a counter-sanctuary strategy differs

greatly from a counter-insurgency strategy. Eliminating sanctuaries requires a fairly small military or covert footprint that is

focused on disruption and containment. Counter-insurgency would

require huge amounts of personnel and resources to ensure security

and to support indigenous efforts to exert police power and extend

social benefits to an ambivalent or resistant population.

I have stated before that we find ourselves at an ideal moment

for fundamental reevaluation of our goals in Afghanistan and our

efforts to protect U.S. citizens from international terrorists. I do not

seek to prejudge our witnesses or the administration’s strategic review.

However, I do think that with precious blood and scarce treasure

at stake, it is incumbent on the administration to come forward

with a compelling case for any U.S. commitments. And it is incumbent on those of us in the Congress to conduct thorough and

thoughtful oversight and to ask tough questions. In the end, we use

the microscope and the telescope to ensure that we do not use a

machete where a scalpel will do.

With that, I defer to my counterpart, Mr. Flake, for his opening

remarks.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today’s hearing is especially important and timely given what the administration is going

through now with this review.

As we all know, this conflict is in its 8th year. During that time

we have seen progress and we have seen regress. In the wake of

the 2001 invasion, we saw significant security gains. The Taliban

network was largely disrupted. Al Qaeda fled to the hills. A short

time later we saw Afghans actually elect a democratic government.

But in a rather swift timeframe our military and diplomatic effort,

which seemed to be paying off at that time, but since 2006,

progress has deteriorated. Having visited in 2004 and again this

past December, I can say that the contrast was stark.

As I am sure our witnesses will describe, security has declined

and the Taliban seems to be regrouping. This, of course, raises serious questions whether Al Qaeda will be resurgent as well. If the

Taliban is, perhaps Al Qaeda is. With an estimated 1,400 NGO’s

operating in Afghanistan—and I found that number difficult to believe but I am told that is correct—some 1,400 NGO’s operating,

nearly 38,000 U.S. troops on the ground, and billions spent, we

need to be getting it right. It is time for a fresh look.

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Since taking office, President Obama seems to have shifted policy

in Afghanistan. On February 17th, he ordered 17,000 additional

troops. This will bring the number of U.S. troops to approximately

55,000, the largest number ever deployed in that country. After

having ordered these troops into combat, however, the President

will receive the results of a high level review of U.S. policy toward

Afghanistan and Pakistan. It seems that following the decision to

dispatch additional troops, the administration will determine what

the policy should be. And as we mentioned in the last hearing, it

seems a little backward to be planning to deploy troops before we

have a strategy. But I hope that this hearing will shed some light

on that.

Today I think we are hearing from what is probably the most

qualified group that has addressed this issue in a while. Dr. Kagan

in particular just returned from 8 days, I know, in Afghanistan on

the ground. With the encouragement and support of General David

Petraeus, Dr. Kagan and the other experts in his party were able

to travel widely and observe many aspects of ongoing operations.

He has published a lengthy review of his findings and I look forward to hearing his testimony today. And that goes for all of the

witnesses as well.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, we have contacted those in the

administration and hope to be apprised as the details emerge on

this new strategy. I look forward to this hearing and thank you for

convening it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Again, I want to receive testimony now from the witnesses that are here. Mr. Flake makes an

excellent point that all of you spent a considerable amount of time

in theater. I think that sometimes the public doesn’t really get that

the people that we invite in to give us advice and counsel actually

take very risky assignments over there for lengthy periods of time.

You go places oftentimes where Members of Congress aren’t able

to go or don’t have the time to really focus on and spend as much

concerted effort there as you have done. So we appreciate the risks

that you take and the efforts that you make.

I am going to introduce the panel right across the board here,

and then we will start going from my left to right.

But first with us is Lieutenant General David W. Barno of the

U.S. Army, retired. He is the Director of the Near East South Asia

Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

From 2003 to 2005, General Barno commanded over 20,000 United

States and Coalition forces in the Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. General Barno

holds a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Military Academy at

West Point and a Masters in National Security Studies from

Georgetown University.

Ambassador James Dobbins joins us again here. He is the Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the

RAND Corp. Ambassador Dobbins concluded his last stint of distinguished Government service as Special Envoy for Afghanistan and

then as representative to the Afghan opposition following September 11, 2001. Ambassador Dobbins holds a B.S. in International Affairs from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He has

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testified previously before our subcommittee. We welcome you

back.

Dr. Frederick W. Kagan is a Resident Scholar at the American

Enterprise Institute. He served as an Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He holds

a Bachelor of Arts degree in Soviet and East European Studies and

a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet Military History from Yale University.

Dr. David Kilcullen is a partner at the Crumpton Group, a strategic advisory firm based in Washington, DC. He has previously

served as a Senior Counter–Insurgency Advisor to the Multinational Force-Iraq under the command of General Petraeus and as

a Counter-Insurgency Advisor to then Secretary of State

Condoleezza Rice. A native of Australia, Dr. Kilcullen holds a Ph.D.

in Politics from the University of New South Wales.

Again, I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available

today and for sharing your substantial expertise. It is the policy of

the subcommittee to swear you in before you testify so I ask you

to please stand and raise your right hands. I don’t think any of you

have anybody else that is assisting in your testimony.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. The record will reflect that all of the

witnesses answered in the affirmative.

I will just tell those of you, I think you all know that your full

written statement will be put into the hearing record. Some of the

statements are quite long. In fact, some have introduced a chapter

in a book. I suspect we are not going to listen to the entire chapter

on that. But we ask that you keep your remarks as close to 5 minutes as you can. We are as liberal as we can be on that because

we want to hear what you have to say. Then we will move to questions and answers. General, if we could start with you, please?

STATEMENTS OF DAVID W. BARNO, LIEUTENANT GENERAL,

RETIRED, U.S. ARMY, AND DIRECTOR, NEAR EAST SOUTH

ASIA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY; JAMES DOBBINS, DIRECTOR, CENTER

FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY,

RAND CORP.; FREDERICK W. KAGAN, PH.D., RESIDENT

SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC

POLICY RESEARCH; AND DAVID KILCULLEN, PH.D., SENIOR

NON-RESIDENT FELLOW, CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY, AND PARTNER, CRUMPTON GROUP

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL DAVID W. BARNO

General BARNO. Thank you, Chairman Tierney and Ranking

Member Flake. Thank you for the invitation to offer my views

today on looking at strategic options on the way ahead in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I continue to serve in the Defense Department in my current position, but my views that I will express today are my own personal

outlooks. They are informed not only by my 19 months in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005 as the overall U.S. commander but also from continued engagement and visits there including a 3-day trip in January of this year to Regional Command–

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South, Kandahar Province, Zabul Province, and Helmand Province.

More importantly, my youngest son just returned from a 1-year

tour in Afghanistan where he served as an Air Calvary scout helicopter platoon leader in 101 Airborne Division with 6 months in

Regional Command–East in Jalalabad and six more months in and

around Kandahar. So I appreciate this not only from the perspective of a former commander there but also now as the father of a

soldier, as are so many fathers and mothers out there of our troops

that are serving oversees. And I anticipate he will be returning to

the theater sometime in the next year and a half or so.

I will try and touch on some of my more extensive written comments in my observations up front here this morning. First and

foremost, I would characterize a bit of diagnosis. I think, as I have

looked at this over the last several years, in part in the aftermath

of the transition to NATO which happened at the end of 2006, that

the overall enterprise in Afghanistan in many ways has been drifting toward failure. I think the trajectory that we are on today—

hopefully which will be changed dramatically by the President’s

planned announcement I believe tomorrow—the trajectory that we

are on today is not a success trajectory. We have to make some

substantial changes in our approach and the overall, you know,

leadership, outlook, and organization perhaps in the effort to move

us toward success.

I think first we need to talk a bit about what are the goals in

Afghanistan and, to the chairman’s question, what are we trying

to achieve in Afghanistan. I generally would characterize those as

five key goals that I think are unchanged for the United States in

many ways from our earliest days there. The first of those and the

most important is that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are defeated in

the region and denied usable sanctuary in that part of the world.

The purpose of that, of course, is to prevent further attacks on the

United States and our allies. Second, I think Pakistan has to be

stabilized as a long term partner to the United States. It must be

economically viable, friendly to our interests, no longer an active

base for international terrorism, and in control of its territory and

its nuclear weapons. Third, I think a stable and sustainable Afghan

government has to exist that is legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan

people, capable of exercising effective governance, and in control of

its territory. Fourth, I think NATO must succeed. We have made

a commitment that is irreversible at this point that the military

mission is going to be led through the NATO alliance in Afghanistan. We cannot allow that to fail. And we must ensure that our

objectives there are cast such that trans-Atlantic alliance is preserved and that U.S. leadership in that alliance helps us to deliver

success. Finally, I think that we have to ensure the region is confident of American staying power and commitment as a long term

partner, one that is not going to leave as we have done in the past

but stays there and shares the challenges in front of our many

friends in the region there.

There are three basic first principles that I think we need to

touch on to accomplish this as we look at perhaps some changes

in our approach in the next several years. Some of these are well

known but they tend to be absent in some cases when implemented. First is the Afghan people have to be the center of gravity

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of this effort. We have to focus, I think, our upcoming counter-insurgency efforts on securing the population, providing them the

time and space to have economic and political growth, and ensuring

that their day to day lives are viable and that they have hope for

their future. Second, I think we need to focus on creating true

unity of effort in the overall military and civil enterprise in Afghanistan. And that is not only between the military effort and the

civil effort, but also even within the military effort where we have

41 different troop contributing nations. In some cases we almost

see 41 different approaches to the fight in Afghanistan. We have

to meld that into a singular approach. I think U.S. leadership is

key in doing that. Then finally, I think we have to take a simultaneous top-down from Kabul and bottom-up from provinces and districts approach to build success at the grassroots level. This is often

led by our military units, especially in the southern half of the

country which is the most dangerous portion, what I term the

counter-insurgency zone. We have to build this from the bottom-up

and the top-down, not simply achieve greater success in Kabul.

I think I will pause there and I will defer my comments on Pakistan until we get into the questions and answers. But Pakistan is

obviously part of the problem and part of the solution. I don’t accept the idea that we can’t achieve progress in Afghanistan unless

we achieve success in Pakistan. But the two of those nations are

very clearly interrelated so we have to have an interrelated policy

that addresses both, recognizing that they are individual nationstates. And I will again defer further comments until questions and

answers. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Lieutenant General Barno follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much, General. Ambassador.

STATEMENT OF JAMES DOBBINS

Mr. DOBBINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me back.

You know, it was only 2 years ago that Iraq was hopeless and Afghanistan was the good war. Today, Iraq is the success and Afghanistan is the quagmire. I think it is worth reflecting on this.

What it demonstrates is that dramatic change is possible and that

turnarounds are possible. I think what we have to focus on is how

we can turn around the situation in Afghanistan.

Now, there are reasons to be cautious. Afghanistan is larger and

more populous than Iraq. It is more isolated and inaccessible. It is

far poorer and less developed. And it has been in civil war for 30

years.

Yet we still have advantages in Afghanistan that we lacked in

Iraq. First of all, the American presence in Afghanistan remains

more popular than it ever has been in Iraq. Second, Karzai retains

more popularity as a leader in Afghanistan than any Iraqi leader

has yet been able to secure. Third, we have far more international

support for our efforts in Afghanistan than we ever have in Iraq.

Fourth, levels of violence have remained much lower in Afghanistan than they were or indeed still are in Iraq. That is right. The

levels of violence in Afghanistan are still somewhat lower than

they are in Iraq. Fifth, Afghanistan’s neighbors and near neighbors, with the partial exception of Pakistan, helped form the Karzai

government, fully accept its legitimacy, and wish to see it succeed.

Finally, sectarian animosities in Afghanistan are less intense than

in Iraq.

Now, these conditions are changing and for the most part they

are changing for the worse. Afghans are becoming increasingly critical of our presence. President Karzai is losing domestic and international support. Violence is increasing and civilian casualties are

climbing, threatening to generate new refugee flows and exacerbate

tensions among ethnic groups. Thus the shift in attention from Iraq

to Afghanistan has come none too soon.

In my written testimony I have suggested eight different tacks

that we should be taking, some of which I think the administration

either has or is about to embrace. I will only name them here and

be happy to go into greater detail in response to questions. First

of all, I think we need to unify the NATO and American command

chains. At the moment, General Petraeus is in command of only

about half of the forces in Afghanistan. If we expect Holbrooke and

Petraeus to pull off in Afghanistan what Petraeus and Crocker

pulled off in Iraq, I think we have to make sure that the military

side of our effort and the Allied effort is under his control. Second,

I think we need to do the same on the civilian side. Congressman

Flake noted that we have 1,400—or was it 14,000, I can’t quite remember—NGO’s. That is just symptomatic of the effort that is

needed to coordinate the civilian effort. Third, we need to bolster

both the civilian as well as the American military presence in Afghanistan. I do think that is underway. Fourth, we need to institute a bottom-up component to our counter-insurgency strategy to

complement the top-down approach we have followed to date. This

involves empowering local Afghans to help defend themselves. It

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also involves trying to do what we did in Anbar with the Sunnis,

that is to co-opt at least some components of the insurgency and

put them on our payroll instead of the Taliban’s. Fifth, we have to

pay more attention to Afghan insurgent activities in the Pakistani

province of Balochistan as well as the attention we are already

paying to their activities in the North-West Frontier Province.

Sixth, we need to support the upcoming Afghan elections while remaining scrupulously neutral among the possible candidates. That

means neither supporting Karzai nor criticizing him to the point

where it looks like we are actually opposing his candidacy. Seventh, we need to intensify our engagement with Afghanistan’s

neighbors. Eighth, we need make stabilizing and pacifying Pakistan a global priority, not just an American priority.

President Obama and other administration officials have stated

that the United States should scale back its objectives in Afghanistan. If this means matching our rhetoric to our resource commitments, I am all for it. If it means allowing Afghanistan’s downward

spiral into civil war to continue, I am not. It is possible that a more

modest statement of American objectives in Afghanistan, one focused on ensuring that the country does not again become a sanctuary for international terrorists, can help in coopting some of the

insurgents who may be willing to break their ties with Al Qaeda.

Such an effort has to be approached very carefully, however, let it

open new fissures in the country even as others are healed. If Afghanistan’s Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara populations—backed as they

will be by Russia, India, and Iranian patrons—conclude that the

United States is reducing its support for the national government

in Kabul in order to accommodate Pakistani-backed Pashtun insurgents, then we are likely to see a resumption of the large scale civil

war along a north/south divide which racked Afghanistan throughout the 1990’s and led to Al Qaeda’s introduction in the first place.

American commanders may have local opportunities to bring insurgent elements over to our side and they should be encouraged to

do so. But any effort to engage the insurgent leadership at a national level needs to be conducted by the government in Kabul with

the support of the larger international community if this effort is

not to tear the country apart.

How then should we describe America’s purpose in Afghanistan?

Our job is neither to defeat the Taliban nor to determine the future

shape of Afghan society. While free elections, rule of law, capacity

building, counter-narcotics, and economic development may not be

our objectives, they are important components of a strategy designed to protect the population and win its support. The American

purpose should be to reverse the currently negative security trends

and ensure that fewer Afghans are killed next year than this year.

In any counter-insurgency campaign, this is the difference between

winning or losing. If more Afghans are killed in 2010 than 2009,

we will be losing. If less are getting killed, we will be winning.

That is how we will know. If as a result of our efforts the current

rise in violence is reversed and the populous made more secure, the

Afghan people will be able to determine their own future through

peaceful rather than violent competition of ideas, people, and political factions. This has already begun to happen in Iraq. Our objective should be to give the Afghans the same chance.

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[The prepared statement of Mr. Dobbins follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador. Dr. Kagan.

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK W. KAGAN

Mr. KAGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, Mr. Flake,

for inviting me to participate in this hearing on this outstanding

panel where I suspect we will find not a tremendous amount of disagreement.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is too bad because we really thought we were

going to get a lot of disagreement. But in other words, it might not

be too bad after all.

Mr. KAGAN. Well, it is a little hard because I think if you look

at this problem, there are elements of it that are incredibly complicated and there are elements of it that are fairly straightforward. If the problem were simply preventing Al Qaeda from reestablishing safe havens in Afghanistan—and I don’t think it is—

and if it were the case that it was possible to do that with some

sort of counter-terrorism approach that relied primarily on Special

Forces and long range missile strikes—which I don’t believe is the

case—then we could actually have a discussion, I think, about alternatives. But unfortunately the problem in Afghanistan is much

greater than that. It is more significant than that. Also, unfortunately, I am not really aware of a case in the last 10 years when

the pure counter-terrorism approach has worked. So I don’t find

that to be an appealing intellectual alternative to try to pursue because it has been tried on a number of occasions and it has failed.

Al Qaeda is not actually susceptible to that sort of defeat, in my

view.

But stepping back from it, I think it absolutely right to ask the

questions, why are we in Afghanistan and what are we trying to

achieve? I would submit that the reason we are in Afghanistan is

because of the extremely important geopolitical role that Afghanistan actually plays in an area that encompasses a billion and a half

people with a lot of nuclear weapons. The key point here is that

what you are seeing in Afghanistan, among other things, is a great

game being played out between India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran,

China, and now us for regional objectives.

We know well that the Pakistanis are supporting elements of the

enemy groups—both the Quetta shura Taliban and the Haqqani

network—which are, I think, the greatest threat to stability in Afghanistan. They are doing that for a variety of reasons but largely

because it is a part of the competition with India. And I don’t think

that they will stop doing that unless it is made clear to them that

those groups will not succeed and that there will, in fact, be a stable Afghan state backed by the West, not just the United States

but backed by the West, that will make impossible the success of

the proxies that the Pakistanis are preferring. And I think it is important to phrase it in that way because I think that unfortunately

it is not just the case that the Pakistanis are acting defensively

here out of fear that we will leave, although they are doing that.

Even if we were not going to leave, even if they knew that we were

not going to leave, the Pakistanis will still be concerned about the

degree of Indian influence in Afghanistan, which will be significant.

Indian companies invest in Afghanistan. India has an embassy

there which was, not coincidentally, attacked some time ago. This

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is not something that would easily go away. The Pakistanis have

to be convinced not just that there will be a government that they

are happy with in Kabul but that their preferred proxies will lose.

This is an incredibly important thing for Pakistan. And that is one

of the things that I want to emphasize here.

We have gotten into the habit because we have forces fighting

and dying in Afghanistan of thinking about Pakistan as the country that we need to help us in Afghanistan. The problem is that

has it reversed. The truth of the matter is that Pakistan is more

important to us strategically than Afghanistan. It is a country of

173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons. And it is host to at

least four major terrorist organizations, two of which are focused

on destabilizing Pakistan, one of which is focused on destabilizing

the entire region, and one of which is focused on destabilizing the

entire world. Now the question is, how can we best influence what

goes on in Pakistan? How can we best understand what these

groups are trying to do? And how can we best try to address the

problem?

Right now we have the advantage of being in contact with the

rear areas of all four of those groups in Afghanistan. When I was

east of the Kunar River a short walk—for an Afghan, not for me—

away from the Pakistani border, it was very apparent that the degree of visibility that we have on groups like the TNSM, like

Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba,

and like Al Qaeda from Afghanistan is something that is irreplaceable. And if we were to withdraw prematurely from Afghanistan,

if we were to abandon our efforts there, not only would those

groups flourish but we would lose an ability to understand what

they are doing, to influence their behavior, and to influence also

Pakistani behavior toward them.

That is why I think it is time for us to stop focusing so much

on the region as it can help us in Afghanistan. We need to understand also the upside benefits of getting it right in Afghanistan,

which include helping generate leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan in a variety of ways, helping us to get the Pakistanis to focus on their own

internal issues—which we have to be very concerned about—and

also keeping us in close contact with enemy groups that are a real

threat to global stability in a very fundamental way.

Last, I just want to say, and I know that the committee is aware

of this but I am not sure that the American people are, the situation in Afghanistan right now is nowhere near as bad as the situation in Iraq was at the end of 2006. Just to put a number on the

table, the height of attacks in Afghanistan is less than a quarter

of the height of attacks that we saw in Iraq. I was in Iraq in May

2007 at pretty much at the peak. Dave Kilcullen was there in much

more dangerous positions than I for much longer in that period.

And we both know, he more than I, what that kind of violence

looks like in a society. That is not going on in Afghanistan right

now. And I think that if we pursue a sound policy and resource it

appropriately, there is no reason why that should happen in Afghanistan. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kagan and the report from

Newsweek follow:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Dr. Kilcullen.

STATEMENT OF DAVID KILCULLEN

Mr. KILCULLEN. Thank you. We have four basic problems in Afghanistan. I thought I would just talk about them quickly and then

directly address your issue about counter-sanctuary versus counterinsurgency.

I think that there are four key things. First, we failed to effectively protect the Afghan population. We haven’t made them feel

safe. That is especially true in the Pashtun parts of the country

which is basically the bottom half, the southern half of Afghanistan. Second, we failed to deliver the rule of law and effective governance to the Afghan people. That is something that has happened across most of the country. When I say we, here, I am not

just talking about the United States. I am talking about the whole

international community as the Afghan government because we all

have responsibility in that.

The third problem is we failed to deal effectively with the active

sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. I want to echo what Fred

Kagan just said about those points. Finally, we failed to organize

resources or structure ourselves to do any of those three things. So

we are not securing the people, we are not delivering governance,

we are not dealing with the Pakistan problem, and we are not

structured or organized to do any of those things.

So there is a requirement to reorganize the effort and there is

a requirement to resource it adequately. But we also have to look

at what is our strategy? What are we trying to do here and is it

effectively delivering on those three requirements that I first talked

about?

You put up the dichotomy between counter-sanctuary and

counter-insurgency. That is exactly the debate that I think has

been happening in Washington for the last couple of weeks, so it

is an accurate reflection of the issue. I would characterize what

some people have called counter-terrorism plus as the idea that we

just want to deny an Al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan or Pakistan and that what we need to is essentially be able to strike and

disrupt terrorist targets that emerge in that region. There are a

couple of problems with that. I think that it is kind of a false dichotomy because you actually cannot do counter-terrorism without

also doing a fairly substantial amount of counter-insurgency.

I hope you will bear with me but I used to do this stuff for a living so I want to explain to you what happens when an intelligence

asset is working with a Special Forces asset to target a terrorist.

Your intelligence asset has to have eyes on the terrorist target and

it has to know where the target will be, not now, but in flight time

plus preparation time plus approval time for the strike asset. So

if I am the intelligence asset and my strike asset is a Special

Forces unit, if the Special Forces unit is close by, if it is a 10

minute flight away and it takes half an hour to get ready and it

takes 5 minutes to get approval, then I have to know where the

terrorist target is going to be in 45 minutes time from now. That

is hard but it is possible. If my strike asset is a naval ship in the

Indian Ocean and my strike method is cruise missiles and it takes

me eight to twelve hours to get approval out of Washington, then

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I need to know not where the target is going to be in 45 minutes

but where it is going to be tonight. That is almost always impossible. That is why we didn’t get Osama Bin Laden during the

1990’s. That was the setup. We had intelligence assets on the

ground, approval from Washington, and our strike assets were in

the Indian Ocean.

So that means that if you are going to do effective counter-terrorism, you have to have bases close to the target. And let us say the

strike asset that you are talking about is a Special Forces unit of

50 people. That means that you have to have those guys on a base

and you have to protect them effectively, which is probably going

to take about a battalion—about 600 people—and you will need to

have lines of communication, logistics units, and all sorts of support assets like helicopters and airfields and so on to make that

work. And that means that you need to have a relationship with

the local population because if you are going to have a base in

someone’s area, you have to have some kind of relationship with

them where they are willing to give you the information to find the

enemy and so you don’t have to continually defend the base against

attack. And that means that you have to deliver to the population

some kind of quid pro quo. Most fundamentally, you have to protect

them against terrorist retaliation for them tolerating your presence

or helping you. But you also have to help them with governance,

development, rule of law, and a certain variety of other things in

order to just function in the environment.

So what all of that long-winded explanation means is that it

turns out that if you are going to do counter-terrorism effectively,

you need bases in Afghanistan. If you are going to have bases in

Afghanistan, you have to do a certain minimum amount of counterinsurgency for those bases to be viable. And it turns out that minimum level is quite high.

The logic that I have just gone through is exactly the logic that

the United States used in establishing air bases in Vietnam in

1965. We wanted to strike the North Vietnamese using aircraft. We

needed to protect the aircraft. We needed to secure the areas

around the bases. And we found ourselves dragged in gradually to

a much larger commitment than was initially envisioned.

So the reason I am laying this out for you is to say we can pretend that we are doing counter-sanctuary. We will actually be

doing counter-insurgency. And I think it is better that we don’t pretend, that we think up front about what the requirements are likely to be.

The final point would be to say that the numbers of troops deployed, the numbers of diplomats that you put in the field and the

aid spent—how many dollars you are spending—the overall raw

number of those figures is actually less important than the effectiveness of their delivery on the ground. Right now some aid agencies that are working in Afghanistan are spending 80 percent in

overhead and only 20 percent of their effort is actually reaching the

Afghan population. Similarly we have some allies who are sitting

on forward operating bases and extremely rarely are they getting

out and dealing with the population. An Afghan provincial Governor said to me, look, you have enough troops to secure my province, you just have to get off the FOB, the forward operating base.

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Another meeting that I was in was between an European ally and

an Afghan provincial Governor. The Allied commander said, you

know, we are not sure that you guys are ready to take control of

the province if we leave. The Afghan Governor laughed in his face

and said, if you left tomorrow the only difference it would make

would be that we would inherit your base. You don’t actually get

out of your base and do anything. So it is not just how many troops

we have, it is what those troops do. They have to focus on securing

the population. That means close interaction with people and delivering effective governance, rule of law, human rights, all those

sorts of things that we need to deliver so that we can deal with the

terrorist threat.

So I will stop there and perhaps put forward to questions and answers.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kilcullen and the report from the

New Yorker follow:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Doctor. Thank all of you for your enlightening testimony. On that, we are going to go into our question

period here which you are all familiar with. Unfortunately, we are

still stuck in this 5 minute rule but we will try to relax it as much

as we can. And I don’t mind if any of my colleagues have a followup question they want to interrupt me with on this so we get a

subject matter all the way out.

First of all, you started where we ended with the need to have

cooperation amongst our allies. On these bases we visit at various

times different PRTs and they are operated differently. You know,

wherever you go there are some that never get off the base. I won’t

mention any countries but, you know, some have wine for lunch.

You know, they are in there for a 5-month turnaround period, they

hang around, and the locals say they never get off the base and

that as soon as they came into the rotation and the other people

left, the insurgents came back. Then you have other people who

come in and they say this other group came in and they were very

effective in protecting us.

Are we going to be able to exert the kind of leadership that the

United States historically has had with NATO and other international efforts or are the relationships so poisoned that is going

to interfere with our ability to do that? And if that is the case, how

successful can we be?

Mr. KAGAN. Well, the short answer is that the relationships, I

think, are not so poisoned that this cannot be dealt with. One of

the things that I found very cheering on this last trip on my visit

to RC-South was the staff down there where you have a Dutch

commander and a British deputy and an American deputy and a

hodgepodge staff like that. I think there is an understanding in

that area that we have to coordinate our efforts better and we have

to make this work. And I think that plans to bring in a British Division headquarters down there will make that easier.

We should remember that we do have allies who are willing to

get off the bases and who are willing to go fight very hard, particularly in RC-South but also in RC-East. The French fight very hard

without caveats in RC-East. The Poles fight very hard without any

caveats in RC-East. And I think that progress can be made in RCSouth where the biggest fight is. So I think the relationships are

not poisoned to the extent that this is not fixable.

I think, however, that the command relationships in the theater

are such that this is very difficult. I want to highlight a point that

I think all of us are concerned about, that the absence of a three

star American headquarters in Afghanistan parallel to the position

that Lieutenant General Odierno held in Iraq under General

Petraeus during the Surge is a major problem. It puts a tremendous amount of burden on General McKiernan to not only do all

of the political coordination with 41 different nations and 1,400

NGO’s but also to do all of the military coordination among all of

the different units that are going on with an inadequate staff and

with no subordinate operational commander. I think that is one of

the biggest problems that we have had in coordinating this effort,

frankly. And I think that is something that really needs to be addressed as a matter of priority as we think about changing our

strategy and fixing this problem.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Well, to use General McNeil’s favorite

term—kinetic—there are a lot of populations of some of our allies

who are sending a clear message politically to their leadership that

they don’t want their forces getting involved kinetically on this.

General, what do you think about the prospects of changing that

local atmosphere to enable some of these governments politically to

change the relationship there?

General BARNO. I think the structure we have in Afghanistan

today is basically split between north and south. The northern part

of Afghanistan—and you could draw a line right across the country,

an equator, if you will—north of the equator is what I would characterize as the stability zone or the peacekeeping zone. The NATO

countries that have selected to go there have done so very deliberately because their populations, and in many cases their governments, are only willing to have their forces in Afghanistan to do

peacekeeping.

I was at the Munich Security Conference in February and I

picked up one of the Conference newspapers. There was an article

written by the German Defense Minister. The title of the article,

and it had a picture of German troops in Afghanistan, the title of

the article was Bundeswehr: A Peacekeeping Force, Bundeswehr

being the German military. But that would have been unthinkable

10, 15, 20 years ago. That was not what the Bundeswehr was. But

then European militaries in many cases, not in all cases, but in a

number of cases have moved into a political world where their support is only contingent on the type of missions they do and the only

justification is peacekeeping in the view of their populations.

So if you are in the north, I don’t think your population or your

government are going to change and suddenly drop your caveats

and be willing to fight in the south. If you are in the south, and

as Fred points out we have a number of very capable allies down

there with us in the south, they are going to continue to support

that. But they are on a timeline as well. They are very concerned,

from what I heard at Munich, about the popular will of their nations to continue this fight. So I think the United States is going

to have to continue, and really I hope the new strategy that comes

out will really highlight reasserted American leadership in Afghanistan. This will not work without us being behind the steering

wheel—with our friends and allies there—but we are going to have

to be behind the steering wheel. And we in some ways have not

been for the last couple of years.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you want to say anything, Doctor?

Mr. KILCULLEN. Yes, just a quick comment. I think that we have

spent a lot of time in the last 2 or 3 years, certainly I did when

I was working for Secretary Rice, trying to convince the Europeans

to fight in Afghanistan. I think we have a better chance of doing

that now that there is a much more receptive attitude to the

United States in European capitals than there was even 6 months

ago. But I think ultimately we are not going to get very far by asking the Europeans to do something that is politically impossible for

them. We should be focusing on things that they are willing to do

which would include governance assets and aid dollars, but also police. The Europeans have a very substantial, about 5,000 person organization that does stability policing, kind of gendarmarie,

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carabinieri kind of capability. I expect that to be discussed in

Strasbourg next week.

And more police effort would be an extremely important way of

shifting the effort away from chasing the bad guys toward protecting the population and displacing the Taliban from their current de

facto role of law and order in the south of the country. So I think

the allies are very important. We should be focusing them on police, aid, governance. And hey, if they can give us more military assets that is great, but I don’t think it is particularly likely prospect.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ambassador, with Mr. Flake’s indulgence, we will

let you weigh in.

Mr. DOBBINS. Just briefly, I made a couple of suggestions in my

written testimony designed to address the difficulty of coordination.

One would be to create a multinationally staffed office in Kabul,

the function of which would be to coordinate, standardize, resource,

and support the two dozen PRTs in the country, over half of which

are not American. They need a coordinating mechanism. NATO

can’t do it because NATO doesn’t do economic affairs. The U.N.

isn’t going to do it because it is essentially a mixed military/civilian

mission. So it will have to be ad hoc, something special. We created

these kinds of institutions in Bosnia. We can create one that can

funnel resources and standardize their approaches to the extent

that is possible.

The second, and I mentioned this in my earlier testimony, would

be to create a major NATO command in Tampa to give Petraeus

a major NATO command and to make him responsible to the North

Atlantic Council as well as to the President of the United States.

Thus McKiernan would come under one command chain rather

than the two command chains that he currently comes under.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of you. This

was very enlightening. I heard some things that I hadn’t thought

of before at all. The first one was Dr. Kagan mentioned the influence, or the worry from Pakistan about the influence of India in

Afghanistan. How do we address that? Is there a way for the

United States to address that, to mitigate fears that the Pakistanis

may have about Indian influence?

Mr. KAGAN. With the caveat that I am not a South Asia specialist and certainly not an India specialist, I think the short answer

is no. I think that, you know, we have to keep in mind that Pakistan as a state and the Pakistani military in particular are defined

by the threat from India and opposition to India. And I think that

it is a multigenerational task to wean Pakistani leadership away

from that sense. I think that we can certainly make efforts and we

should certainly make efforts. People have spoken about a regional

security architecture, trying to find ways of having the Indians and

the Pakistanis reassure each other. But I am skeptical about any

short term benefit from that. So that is why I think the key is to

demonstrate to the Pakistanis first and foremost that the current

strategy they are using—that is, destabilizing Afghanistan against

our interests—will fail, not that it is not desirable necessarily from

their standpoint but, that it simply is impossible.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. Ambassador Dobbins, I liked what you

said about coordination of the PRTs. I think those of us who have

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visited Afghanistan and have seen and met with some of the individuals involved or have been briefed by them here recognize that

there is very little coordination even among our own, let alone

among the other nationalities that are there. There seems to be

very little sharing of best practices among them and very little coordination. So it seems to me that we are wasting a lot of resources. So your idea of having some kind of coordinating arm

seems to make a lot of sense to me.

With regard to the counter-sanctuary, Dr. Kilcullen, you mentioned that is kind of what we did or tried to do in Vietnam for

a while. What other examples are there of this strategy being employed? And are there any successful examples? Anybody, General

if you want to chime in or anybody else? Are there successful examples of that strategy being employed?

Mr. KILCULLEN. It depends upon how you define success. But I

would characterize our approach to Somalia as one of basically

counter-sanctuary, also right now and at various other times in the

past, actually, in relation to the Horn of Africa. The problem with

the counter-sanctuary approach is that one of two things happens.

Either you end up focusing solely on killing the terrorists and forgetting about the stability of the general region where you are

working, and ultimately the problem gets bigger, or you get

dragged into stabilization operations as we did in Somalia in 1992

and as we did in Vietnam in 1965, that are designed to support

strike or support counter-sanctuary. And they kind of drag you in

which means that you don’t think ahead to what the resources are

likely to be that are required. So I am not aware of any successful

examples long term of a pure counter-sanctuary approach. But we

have tried it in various places. In fact it is a preference that most

Western democratic powers have because we like to avoid commitments of heavy troop numbers on the ground. It is not exactly

counter-sanctuary but one of the things that we did in Bosnia in

the early part of the fighting in the Balkans was designed almost

like counter-sanctuary, just to contain the problem and prevent it

from spilling over and not ultimately deal with the main causes of

it. Of course, that failed and we had to engage much more heavily

in order to deal with the problem. You could also characterize what

we did in 2005 and 2006 in Iraq as an attempt to walk back to a

counter-sanctuary approach. Again, that dramatically failed and we

had to get in and take control of the environment.

Mr. FLAKE. General, do you have any thoughts on that?

General BARNO. Very briefly, I think in effect what Pakistan is

doing today in their tribal areas is a failing counter-sanctuary

strategy. Because they are not able to or they have chosen not to

have a population centered counter-insurgency strategy, they are

operating simply with strike operations out there. The effect is that

the terrain is still not inhospitable and the population is not inhospitable to the terrorists because, you know, the terrorists occupy

that terrain far more than the Pakistani military and security

forces do. So it is a very, very difficult strategy to be able to execute successfully. I think that most if not all of us would agree that

there is a place within your counter-insurgency strategy for a

counter-terrorism pillar or counter-sanctuary pillar, but countersanctuary in and of itself most of us I think would say can’t be a

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successful strategy, at least in the circumstances we have today out

there.

Mr. KAGAN. May I comment?

Mr. FLAKE. OK, go ahead.

Mr. KAGAN. Thank you. I think just to put a very fine point on

this, we killed many, many senior Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006, and we discovered that the insurgency or the terrorist groups are able to replace their leadership

faster than we can kill them in many circumstances. I have heard

similar quotes from guys involved in the counter-terrorism effort in

Afghanistan. They are saying, hey, we have killed 22 HVTs and,

you know, they just bring new ones.

I am not aware of any case where this has worked. We have tried

it at levels ranging from no U.S. troop presence including, as Dave

Kilcullen pointed out, the 1990’s in Afghanistan and recently in Somalia where it doesn’t seem to be working—and it certainly didn’t

work in Afghanistan—to high U.S. troop presence surrounding

bases with a lot of Special Forces guys going around and actually

killing a lot of leaders as in Iraq and as the Pakistanis have done

in their tribal areas. It has failed there, too. So I think that it really is time to say that we have tested this method and that there

is a lot of empirical evidence to think that it will fail.

Mr. FLAKE. I will wait for the second round for some more.

Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Driehaus, you are recognized for

5 minutes.

Mr. DRIEHAUS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank

you gentlemen so much for coming here today. I think you have appropriately explored the complexities of the situation in Afghanistan. I had the opportunity to visit Afghanistan a few weeks ago

for the first time and as a former Peace Corps volunteer who has

spent many years in sub-Saharan Africa, I was profoundly impacted by the poverty that exists in Afghanistan as well as the

complexity of the long term economic sustainability of the country.

That is really what I would like to get at.

I believe that a surge in troops can, in fact, provide temporary

security for the Afghan populations. However, I am very concerned

about the long term sustainability of our efforts. I would like to approach it from two different angles, really: the economic development sustainability over the long term and also the rule of law.

I was saddened to learn of almost a complete breakdown in the

rule of law. And it doesn’t seem to me that our efforts are very sustainable over the long term without establishing significant rule of

law. Now, that doesn’t necessarily have to be centralized. It could

be a decentralized structure similar to what they have in Botswana

where there is a traditional structure that mirrors a centralized

structure.

But when I looked at the PRTs, there didn’t seem to be a lot of

consistency with regard to the PRTs. And there is the ability or the

temptation, perhaps, for a great deal of corruption when it comes

to the PRTs dealing with the local population. When I heard stories

of literally bags of cash being used in development efforts, little

alarm bells were going off all over.

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So I guess what I am asking is what do you suggest when you

look at the PRTs and you look at the economic sustainability of

some of these efforts? What steps do you think have to be taken

in order to lead us down a path where the funding is being accounted for with the appropriate mix between military and NGO

and AID resources? What do you believe is necessary for long term

sustainability on the economic side?

Mr. KILCULLEN. I might pick up the rule of law piece if that is

all right, sir.

Mr. DRIEHAUS. That is fine, we will start with that one.

Mr. KILCULLEN. Right now in Afghanistan, the Taliban are running 13 sharia law courts across the south of the country. When

you hear the term sharia law court you think of women getting

stoned for adultery and hands getting cutoff and so on. That does

happen, but actually about 95 percent of the work that these courts

are involved in is what we would call civil or commercial law. They

issue i.d. cards; they issue title deeds to land; they sort out disputes relating to water, grazing rights, properties; they do divorce

law. They are essentially delivering the rule of law, mediation, and

dispute resolution at the local level to villages, districts, and tribal

groups.

This has been a very important source of their control because

in a counter-insurgency environment or in a civil war environment,

the population feels lethally destabilized and it feels like it has no

way to be safe. These guys are providing, you know, a normative

system with rules to follow. And if you follow these rules you will

be safe. That is one of the things that gives them an enormous

amount of attraction to the Afghan population. If you contrast that

with our approach——

Mr. DRIEHAUS. Could I ask just for a second, if I might, Mr.

Chairman, the sharia law is obviously based on the traditional Islamic law. Are there more traditional judicial structures that exist

in the countryside that are based upon the traditional norms versus sharia law?

Mr. KILCULLEN. There are. However, the tribal structure and the

community structure in a lot of parts of Afghanistan is very heavily

eroded by several decades of war and conflict at this stage. Tribal

custom, in some Pashtun parts of the country a very specific code

of behavior, is still valid. But what the Taliban have tended to do

is come in and replace a lot of that with their own control through

a sharia system.

If you contrast that to what we did, the Taliban are focused on

delivering a service to the population at the local level. What we

did after the Bonn Conference, the Italians were given responsibility for the justice sector and the Germans were given responsibility

for the police. Both those countries started building institutions at

the level of the central state. So we set up a supreme court and

we trained supreme court judges; we wrote a law code; we trained

prosecutors and attorneys. This is all happening at the central

level. Meanwhile, the Taliban were in at the grassroots delivering

something to the population.

In terms of the police, we built a police academy and structures

of command and control and so on in Kabul but we didn’t deliver

effective police, community policing, to the population at the local

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level. The Taliban also took that on. The United States got tired

of the German approach in 2005 and we took it over. We actually

made it worse by turning the police into a counter-insurgency force

and sending them off to fight the insurgents out in the countryside

instead of being in with the population in local areas delivering,

you know, fairness, rule of law, and justice to the population.

So I think we need to be taking is a much more bottom-up approach that focuses on competing with the Taliban. And you have

to compete with the Taliban on the basis of an agreed set of, you

know, human rights, rule of law principles. The PRT officers who

are doing the rule of law program are hampered by the overall

structural approach that we have taken which has been top-down.

We need to move to more of a bottom-up where we negotiate with

local populations, come to an agreement, and enforce protection

and population security at the local level.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Driehaus. Ambassador.

Mr. DOBBINS. Just on delivery of assistance and public services,

one of the most effective delivery methods is called the National

Solidarity Program, which is an Afghan run program to deliver

small level projects to villages and towns based on what councils

in those villages and towns say they want. So it is a bottom-up approach defining the projects and then the Afghan government delivers the resources. Naturally, it is being funded by international

assistance and so far the United States has only put in 5 percent

of the total and we are 50 percent of the total aid for Afghanistan.

So that is a very low allocation. I think one of the things we ought

to be doing is increasing the resources available to this Afghan run

institution and then using the PRTs to support and facilitate its activity in areas that are contested.

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

minutes.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman. I would just like to make

some observations and ask for members of the panel to respond.

In assessing the reports that we have received over the last year

from Afghanistan, I think it is fair to say that the hoped for security that we wanted to bring to the people of Afghanistan doesn’t

exist. We haven’t achieved security for the people. Currently there

is no or limited capacity to hold the borders. There is no or limited

capacity to govern. There is no real focus on Afghanistan and I

would respectfully submit to the administration that just sending

17,000 troops doesn’t mean that you have refocused the mission.

There are limited military resources available for the United

States of America. There are finite resources with respect to our

domestic economy. We have a poor track record there with awful

strategic thinking. We have a war and an occupation in Iraq which

wasn’t necessary and a occupation in Afghanistan that has been

dubious. We still haven’t looked at the implications sufficiently of

the fact that Pakistan seems to be core to so many of these problems to begin with.

Does it cause any of you to start to rethink the underlying assumptions about our military presence there and what is achievable, particularly if you look at it though the lens of historically the

British and the Russians? I would just like to hear your response.

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General BARNO. Maybe I can dispatch this briefly. I think it is

important also to reflect the broader context of our participation

there. Clearly we all recognize that it was initiated because of 9/

11. But I think the reason that it is important for us to succeed

in this area is because of the strategic neighborhood showing up on

that map there that this represents. If we look at the global threats

to American security today, I think I could make a pretty reasonable argument that the principal threat to American security, to

the security of the American people, comes from this region. So in

terms of having military forces there to prevent that threat from

being realized, to roll that back and to reduce that, to help our civilian counterparts to be able to establish a stable region that is

economically viable and that has a reasonable degree of governance

and rule of law so that it doesn’t go off the edge of the cliff and

become once again a launching ground for attacks on the United

States or our allies, I think that is an extraordinarily important

and valuable objective. And our military forces, again in concert

with the civilian dimensions of this, are, I believe, essential in

order to achieve that objective. I don’t see any other means by

which to do that. We certainly have had some problems which I

clearly recognize in the last 2 to 3 years in Afghanistan. But I have

also seen what success can look like in Afghanistan. I think with

a revamped effort here in the next 2 to 3 years we have great prospects to turn this around.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you see any hazard in which a more extended

occupation would fuel a more extensive insurgency?

General BARNO. I don’t view this as an occupation. But more importantly, the Afghans I talk to—and I had this discussion with Afghan and Pakistani military officers yesterday here at my Center

in D.C.—the Afghans violently reject the idea that this is an occupation. They want the international forces there. The polling that

is done even in the population very much supports in the 50 to 60

plus percent range the presence of international forces there as the

only thing that can keep Afghanistan from descending back into

civil war and to chaos. So this is not viewed that way even though

we see a lot of media reporting that would indicate that. The objective measures in Afghanistan say that is not how it is looked at.

Mr. KUCINICH. Does anyone else want to try to respond to that?

Mr. KILCULLEN. We often hear this graveyard and empires argument. You know, the British couldn’t hold Afghanistan; the Russians couldn’t hold Afghanistan; the Persians couldn’t hold Afghanistan. Why should we think that we will be able to succeed in Afghanistan. The fundamental difference, which the Russians never

had and the British never had, is that we have a very substantial

level of support from the Afghan population.

There have been some recent polling figures that have really supported that. I am going to quote to you from the less positive one.

The more positive ones are, you know, let us discount them and go

to the most negative which is the ABC, BBC, and AID poll that

was conducted on January 30th this year. President Karzai’s approval rating in Afghanistan at the moment is 52 percent.

Mr. KUCINICH. How do they poll the tribes?

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Mr. KILCULLEN. It is a poll across the whole of the country and

it is based on a cluster method. So it is not tribes they are polling

but villages and districts.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I think it would be interesting to

look at the methodology of some of these polls since they are being

used to try to interpret public opinion.

Mr. TIERNEY. You should feel free to do so, Mr. Kucinich. I am

sure there are available publically.

Mr. KILCULLEN. You can get the poll online and it has a whole

section on methodology, which is worth taking a look at. There is

extensive polling that happens in Afghanistan. I am quoting from

the least positive. Eighty-two percent of people polled want the current government in power. Only 4 percent see any benefit in the

return of the Taliban. Eighty-five percent of people think that the

Taliban are the greatest threat to stability in Afghanistan. Interestingly, 63 percent of people support the presence of U.S. troops

which is slightly higher than those who support the presence of

other international troops. Sixty-three percent is enormous levels of

support compared to anything that we have ever had in Iraq or any

of the other campaigns that we have been in.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you know what the percentage was of the

American people who first supported the invasion of Afghanistan?

Mr. KILCULLEN. These numbers have gone down about 20 percent in the last 2 or 3 years so we are seeing a drop in support.

But it is a drop from an extremely high level. So I think to say that

the Afghans don’t support the occupation is just not based on fact.

The Afghans do support the presence of the international community.

Mr. KUCINICH. I would respectfully dispute the relevance of polling on these national security issues. That is on both sides.

Mr. KILCULLEN. Let me offer two other comments. I mean, polling is one of the measures we have right now. It is not the only

measure. But if we are going to dispute the polling numbers we

have to have something other than polling numbers to dispute

them with. The other point I would make is American popular support for the presence in Afghanistan is important but America is

1 of 41 countries that are contributing to the effort. The most important player is actually the Afghan government, in my view.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. There are so many questions we are going to ask and we have narrowed the panel down

here a little bit so I think Jeff and I will have a chance to do that

if you have the patience for us.

To keep Afghan support, would there be a recommendation to

limit the air strikes and the raids that have been going on? I hear

people talking about shifting our policy to more of one of defensive,

protective ideas and—correct me if I am going too far—that we

think that perhaps having the offensive, continual strike aspect of

it has not been terribly effective because they keep replacing themselves over and over again.

But also we are getting the indigenous population more than a

little riled up about the collateral damage that occurs. Whatever

drop in those polls may have occurred may somewhat be related to

the effect of the air strikes and the raids, which we heard earfuls

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of when we were over there on our last several visits and that and

seem to have a tremendous impact. That is understandably not a

poll, but it is just various groups that we talked to.

Mr. KAGAN. I agree with you. I think that what we have been

doing has been very problematic, not so much the approach of

going after key leaders, but I think it has to do with very specific

tactics that we have tended to use on the ground. At the end of the

day, night raids on villages are just a really bad idea unless you

really, really, really have to do it. You run into old Pashtun views

about how, you know, when the cattle rustlers descend on the village at night, every red blooded young man with an AK has to run

out and fight them. And you can explain to them all you want that

cattle rustlers don’t have helicopters, but the fact remains that

there is that instinct to come out and do that. There are other ways

of conducting those kinds of raids. I think that the command is

very sensitive to this.

The issue of collateral damage is a very interesting one and I

would like to just drill down on that for 1 second because this is

a question of a major cultural difference between Iraq and Afghanistan that we need to understand. The amount of collateral damage

that is being done in Afghanistan is absolutely trivial compared to

the amount of collateral damage that was done in Iraq with infinitely less complaint from the locals about the collateral damage.

We rubbled Fallujah and Ramadi and the complaint was not about

the collateral damage on the whole. One JDAM goes astray in Afghanistan and you have a huge uproar about it. Now, part of that

is because the enemy we are facing has a magnificent information

operation campaign, the best in the world that I have ever seen.

We have not been able to counter that effectively. But part of it is

an Afghan tradition that is different from Iraqi tradition, Iraqis are

much more comfortable fighting within their population. Afghans

are very uncomfortable fighting within their population centers.

That is why you see rural insurgencies in Afghanistan rather than

urban insurgencies.

So I think this is an issue that can be dealt with by appropriately modifying our tactics, techniques, and procedures for these

kinds of raids. And I think that you will find over time that the

command has taken this onboard and that appropriate changes will

be made.

Mr. TIERNEY. Now, I think it is generally agreed across this

panel and the last panel that we talked to that most of Al Qaeda

if not all of Al Qaeda are situated now in Pakistan and that what

we see going on in Afghanistan is various insurgencies that have

more localized ambitions and tensions. One of the principal arguments that we always hear for keeping troops at higher levels in

Afghanistan is that we can’t let Afghanistan fall to the insurgents

because we are afraid they will invite Al Qaeda back in and that

Al Qaeda will have a safe haven from which they will cause problems.

So I have two questions related to that and that I seek an answer on. One is, I think that assumes that the problems of 9/11

happened because of Afghanistan when, in fact, most of the planning seems to have happened in Germany and Florida. It certainly

could have happened whether or not Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.

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Second, there are other ungoverned areas from which Al Qaeda is

operating right now in Pakistan. It could be Somalia; it could be

Sudan; it could be any number of countries out there and I have

not heard anybody make the recommendation that we send enormous numbers of troops into those areas and start any of this sort

of tactics and strategies we talk about here.

So if the principal threat to America, General, as you said, comes

from this region, how is that so? Why is the principal threat from

this region not just by nature the fact that these people that have

bad intentions toward America plan in places like Pakistan, Sudan,

Somalia, Algeria, or wherever it might be? Why don’t we treat Afghanistan the same way we treat those regions in terms of what

actions we take to be defensive?

General BARNO. I think that is a very good question. I would

argue that the threat, to put a fine point on it, is Al Qaeda and

Al Qaeda is resident in this region. They are not as physically

present today in Afghanistan as they have been in the past but

they are very interested in reasserting that presence. They are in

Pakistan because in some ways they have been pushed out of Afghanistan, mostly as a result of our response to 9/11. But they are

still alive and active. And they require a sanctuary to be effective.

They require protected areas to think, to plan, to train their

operatives, and to have essentially a home base. Our presence in

Afghanistan is going to prevent that from recurring if we sustain

it in the country of Afghanistan. It is also going to have a positive

effect on Pakistan and their ability to keep pressure on Al Qaeda.

In an unclassified setting we can’t talk, obviously, about what the

United States may be doing directly against Al Qaeda inside those

tribal areas. We read about inferences in the newspaper about that

regularly. But I think our presence in Afghanistan is an insurance

policy against Al Qaeda resuming its full capability in Afghanistan

and in Pakistan. If we are not there, the likelihood of the Pakistanis putting pressure on them and being effective with that, I

think, is extremely low. So success in Afghanistan will give us a

much stronger position and likelihood of success in pressuring Al

Qaeda and hopefully disrupting and destroying Al Qaeda inside of

Pakistan.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does somebody else want to take a stab at that?

Ambassador. I mean, I still have some questions left, General, after

you gave me that answer. Ambassador.

Mr. DOBBINS. I will just say that the proximate danger is not

that Afghanistan is going to fall to the insurgents. That probably

wouldn’t happen even if we left. The Indians, the Russians, the Iranians would support the northern half of the country.

Mr. TIERNEY. That was one of my next questions.

Mr. DOBBINS. The proximate danger is that the country will descend deeper into civil war, a civil war on the scale that we saw

in Iraq—which is 10 times higher than what it is today in Afghanistan—or civil war such as we saw in the 1980’s and 1990’s—which

was probably 10 times higher than what we saw in Iraq—with five

million refugees generated and a sense of disorder that will invite

in extremist elements. I mean, even if the Taliban were to say, if

you leave Afghanistan we will abandon Al Qaeda, and we left, that

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wouldn’t end it. That would simply deepen the civil war and Al

Qaeda would come right back in with other extremist elements.

Mr. TIERNEY. But I guess my point is, you know, when I go back

to my district, here is what a lot of people say: Al Qaeda is somewhere all the time. All right? They are either in Pakistan or they

are in Somalia or they are in Yemen or they are in all these places

or whatever. So if they go into Afghanistan, they are just in one

more place. You still have to have a policy but the policy that you

have in Afghanistan seems to be radically different than the policy

you have to deal with the Al Qaeda presence in Yemen, Somalia,

Sudan, and Pakistan. You don’t send troops in. You don’t build

bases. You don’t do all of those things there. That is the part that

I am trying to get at here. You know, you have this huge presence.

You are building who knows how many forts out there of various

sizes, sending in more troops, running around battling Taliban—

that we admit are not Al Qaeda—all in the prospect that Al Qaeda

might move back in. Meanwhile, they have set up residence in

other places and nobody is saying, well, it is in the U.S. interest

to go in full force with the military and the rest of the Coalition

into those places. That is something I never really got a satisfactory answer to. And, you know, I think it still begs the question

on this. Doctor, do you want to give it a shot?

Mr. KAGAN. I do. I want to make the point first of all that not

all Al Qaeda is equal. There is an Al Qaeda global leadership cell.

It is located in this vicinity. It had previously——

Mr. TIERNEY. Located in Pakistan.

Mr. KAGAN. Yes. It had originally been located in Afghanistan.

Now it is located in Pakistan.

Mr. TIERNEY. And you don’t recommend sending troops into Pakistan in a full force of 17,000 or 50,000 and going after them, do

you?

Mr. KAGAN. I don’t recommend that, Congressman. But I would

say——

Mr. TIERNEY. But you recommend doing that in Afghanistan

where Al Qaeda leadership is not?

Mr. KAGAN. I have never tried to sell the war in Afghanistan on

the basis of that is where Al Qaeda is and that is where we have

to fight them. I think it is unfortunate that a lot of rhetoric, including from candidate Obama, focused on that interpretation of the

problem. I think that we have to be able to take a broader geopolitical view of this.

But to address just the Al Qaeda question, we know that Al

Qaeda global senior leadership is in Pakistan. We are working in

a variety of ways to cajole and assist the Pakistanis to address that

problem. What I am here to tell you is that it is inconceivable that

the Pakistanis will be able successfully to address that problem if

we do not keep make Afghanistan functional and stable. You can’t

separate these two issues in that respect. So if you abandon Afghanistan, you are also abandoning the effort to get the Pakistanis

to——

Mr. TIERNEY. Can you tell me why that is?

Mr. KAGAN. Absolutely.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let us suppose that Afghanistan reverts back to its

historical premise of fighting each other. This seems to be their

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natural state in some instances or whatever. That happens. Why

is it all of a sudden Pakistan is that much worse off than they have

been in years past?

Mr. KAGAN. Absolutely. First of all, I would make a serious suggestion to the committee that you hold a classified briefing and

bring in as many of the intelligence analysts and experts as you

can from the theater. Have them lay out for you in detail how all

of the enemy groups there are——

Mr. TIERNEY. We had that last week. We did that with the DNI

and other people and supporting groups were there. I am on the

Intelligence Committee; I do it on a regular basis.

Mr. KAGAN. OK. The groups are heavily interconnected. There

are groups on both sides of the border that are related to Al Qaeda

and related to other groups. In particular, the Haqqani network is

moving in the direction of playing a much greater role with Al

Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba and these other very radical groups

than the Mullah Omar Quetta shura is. The problem is that the

Haqqani network has its base in Miram Shah in the federally Administered Tribal Areas but it has a very significant support zone

in Afghanistan in the Zadran Arc in Khost Province. Now, if we

were to abandon Afghanistan, what you would find is that the

Haqqani network, as an example, would absolutely reestablish

itself in Khost Province—its traditional strength—and it would

then immediately, I can promise you, provide facilitation and assistance to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al Qaeda and provide them refuge

from any Pakistani attempts to go after those groups.

If we can maintain Khost as we are now maintaining it, as an

area which is highly contested but where we are going after these

guys—and I frankly think we need to go after them more in that

area—then we create the possibility, and it is only a possibility, but

we create the possibility for Pakistani success against Al Qaeda if

we can move them in that direction to actually be decisive in this

area. If you don’t maintain control of Afghanistan, then I can assure you that any Pakistani success on their side of the border will

be absolutely ephemeral.

Mr. TIERNEY. So you are trying to stop Al Qaeda from doing in

Afghanistan what they have already done in Pakistan and what

they have done in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and everywhere else

they have set up base and been able to operate in somewhat

ungoverned territories. You are just doing it in an entirely different

way. I mean, I hear what you are saying in terms of the fears that

they are all going to move in. I just still don’t make the distinction

of how we treat all these different areas.

The other part, Ambassador, going back to your comments, if

your argument is to put the Al Qaeda situation aside for a second

because there is a bigger, larger strategic need for the United

States to be there and mostly it is because we don’t want to see

Afghanistan break down into civil war again, what is your message

to the American people? The American people are absolutely beside

themselves in the economic situation that is going on right now, exhausted from all the time that we have spent diddling around in

Iraq which was a totally unnecessary place to be, and have now

spent 6 or 7 years in Afghanistan that have turned out to be counterproductive to the point. How do you sell them on the idea that

102

we just don’t want a civil war in Afghanistan so spend another $50

or $100 billion and send more of your children over there and

maybe you can help out?

Mr. DOBBINS. Afghanistan is not a country which is predisposed

to civil war. It is a weak country surrounded by powerful neighbors

which is vulnerable to their manipulation. Left to its own devices,

the Afghans can get along. The ethnic and religious and linguistic

tensions are not as keen as they are in Iraq, for instance, or as bad

as they were in the Balkans. It is a geopolitical question. Afghanistan will be at peace when the Iranians, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and the Russians agree that they have a common interest

in a peaceful, nonthreatening, functioning Afghanistan.

Mr. TIERNEY. But what are we doing in that regard? I mean, I

think that is a point you have made in previous testimonies also.

It an excellent point. But, you know, where are all these countries

that probably have a more immediate interest in this area than the

United States does? I mean, it is the drugs that are going through

Iran and India, up through Russian-stans and into Europe. It is

the unsettled area that affects them more immediately than us. So

where are they in all of this?

Mr. DOBBINS. They have to be involved. In fact, Mrs. Clinton has

called a meeting of regional powers in the next week or two in

order to sustain a dialog. We had a very successful engagement

back in 2001 with most of these countries. But Pakistan remained

ambivalent and not ready to really commit to the agenda that all

the other countries were willing to commit to.

There is no short term answer. The long term objective is to create a regional balance in which all of Afghanistan’s neighbors recognize that a nonthreatening Afghanistan is in their interests and

don’t use it to advance their interests vis-a-vis the other countries

of the region. In my testimony I have a rather elaborate suggestion

about how to do that in terms of an international agreement in

which Afghanistan finally recognizes the border with Pakistan—

which it refuses to do and has consistently refused to do—Afghanistan and Pakistan promise not to use their territory against the

other, the United States and NATO promise to leave as soon as

these other provisions are accepted, and Afghanistan is declared a

permanently neutral state.

I think this is a viable diplomatic objective. It is not something

that is going to come overnight. But sorting out those differences

is, I think, a key to pacifying the area and thus reducing the

sources that create these extremist groups that transit the region

and in at least one case have global objectives.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. One second as I get some information

on what the votes are here for us. There are going to be seven

votes. It will take about an hour on that part. So do you want to

do another 5 minutes and then break and ask folks to come back

or just come back?

Mr. FLAKE. I think we will have a hard time getting people back.

These are the last votes of the day.

Mr. TIERNEY. I am a person who will come back. I know you will

come back as well. So can we break for an hour while we get these

votes done? Is that something that you folks are willing to do, come

back for another half hour or so?

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Mr. KAGAN. Congressman, I am not going to be able to do that.

I have appointments.

Mr. FLAKE. Let me ask Dr. Kagan right now, if I can, about the

war on poppies there. Is it a necessary role for our military—I

know for the first time a while ago, NATO OKed the use of strike

force to go at these—or is it a distraction? I noted a very different

reaction from President Karzai when we saw him in December

than we did 4 years ago. Four years ago he said this was the mother of all battles. This time he dismissed it, saying it was not a

problem. In your view, is this a battle that we have to wage militarily now in order to succeed or is it a distraction?

Mr. KAGAN. Well, it is sort of a little more complicated than that.

I think the problem with the poppy eradication effort is that it has

been sold as a part of the counter-insurgency strategy. I do not believe that it plays a positive role in the counter-insurgency strategy. I recognize published reports say that something like $500

million a year go from the narco-trade to the Taliban. I expect that

is true. When you look at what the poppy eradication effort can do

in terms of how much money it can actually take out of their pockets a year, the range is something between $25 and $50 million a

year. That is not going to make a significant dent in their capabilities over the next few years. Therefore I don’t think that we should

see this as part of the short term counter-insurgency effort. And of

course there are negative consequences from the counter-insurgency point of view of eradicating poppies and pissing people off.

But I do think that since we are concerned with establishing a

stable, legitimate government in Afghanistan and since I do think

that the popular sense of pervasive corruption in that government

stemming from the narco-trade is a major problem in its legitimacy, we absolutely have to take this onboard. I would say that

I echo the sentiments of everyone who has lamented the absence

of an effective rule of law program in Afghanistan. I too lament it

and I think it should be a major focus. I think that having the Afghans convict two senior government officials—and one of them

doesn’t have to be Karzai’s brother—of narcotics related crimes

would be more effective than killing thousands of hectares of poppy

in helping establish the government’s legitimacy.

Mr. KILCULLEN. Could I just make a quick follow on comment?

Poppy production has flatlined in the last 2 years. It hasn’t actually gotten larger. And what we have seen is, in fact, a very substantial shift in geographical focus where most of the poppies are

now being grown in enemy controlled areas, particularly in

Helmand Province. The other big shift, though, that we have seen

has been a vertical integration. Two or 3 years ago, they would

take poppy and turn it into opium paste, then export the opium

paste for sale. Now they are actually producing heroin in country.

That actually creates an opportunity for the military to be involved

in interdiction as distinct from eradication. Eradication hurts the

farmers. If you take two or three fields worth of poppy and boil

them down to 10 kilograms of heroin, the farmers have already

been paid if you interdict the 10 kilograms of heroin later on. So

there is a role for law enforcement and the military in the interdiction part of the process. And that avoids a lot of the eradication

issues that we have had. The final point I want to make is that

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it is a $4 billion industry. The Taliban gets about $500 million out

of that. The farmers get $800 million. The biggest beneficiary of the

narcotics trade is the Afghan government, corrupt officials inside

the Afghan government. So until we change that, I don’t think we

are going to get much progress.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I know that several of you have difficulty coming back in an hour so I am going to try to fire off some

questions here. Will the Afghan elections be an appropriate measure as to whether or not our plan is working? How well they go,

is that a metric that people will be able to judge whether or not

what we decide to do now is actually working?

Mr. KAGAN. No, I don’t think so.

Mr. TIERNEY. Doctor.

Mr. KILCULLEN. Yes, but I think we would perhaps disagree less

than it might appear. I think it is not a measure of whether we

are achieving security who gets elective, it is whether the elections

go off in a safe and transparent manner.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is what I meant.

Mr. KILCULLEN. If that happens, I think we can say we have

done well.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. Dr. Kagan, you disagreed. Ambassador Dobbins.

Mr. DOBBINS. One of the strengths we have there is we have a

legitimate government. We have a government that is recognized

throughout the world and by the vast majority of Afghans as genuinely representative and legitimately elected. That is a treasure.

The government may be more corrupt than we would like, it may

be less competent than we would like, but it is legitimate. If we

lose that, if the election results are contested or are inconclusive

in a way that the result doesn’t clearly represent popular expression, it will be a major setback.

General BARNO. It is a partial metric and it is an extremely important one. It is the strategic report card this year on the entire

enterprise so it has huge political implications as well as military.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Kilcullen quotes in his book Bernard Fall who

said in 1975 that if you are losing to an insurgency, you are being

out-governed, you are not being out-fought. I hear a lot of comments that made it seem to me that people agree on that. How are

we going to get the Karzai government to be better Governors? I

think the similar question is in Pakistan, how are we going to get

that government to be a better government? It goes back to some

of the things the Ambassador put in his written testimony about

perhaps conditioning some of the assistance. The only leverage we

have is the money that we are putting in there. And I am sure that

you probably don’t want to condition the civilian development and

assistance types of things so much. But where the military has

such a large play in Pakistan and when we have to get Karzai to

move in Afghanistan, ought we to be conditioning the military aid

that we give to these countries?

Mr. KILCULLEN. I think that is very true in the case of Pakistan.

In the case of Afghanistan, I think we can do a lot with the

partnering model where we have U.S. troops always working with

Afghan troops and Afghan police. One of the things we found in

Iraq and also in the parts of Afghanistan where we have done this

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before is that when you do that, the performance of all three elements improves. The U.S. troops have a better understanding of

the environment so they do better. The Afghan troops have a model

for how to operate so they do better. And you have a police guy

standing next to a military guy and the military guy is saying, why

are you taking a kickback from that guy, why did you beat that old

lady up, and enforcing a more equitable situation.

Mr. TIERNEY. If we can get the people on, you have about a 1,500

mentor shortfall just on the police side of that.

Mr. KILCULLEN. Yes. And so this is not instead of mentoring. You

don’t necessarily send mentors. You have an Afghan unit next to

an American unit and the unit performs the mentoring function.

Mr. TIERNEY. Doctor, you also said that we need to be reducing

overall force commitment everywhere, not just moving troops from

Iraq to Afghanistan. That would be tantamount to unbogging ourselves from Iraq just so we can rebog ourselves in Afghanistan. Is

everybody fairly certain that we don’t need to be putting large additional amounts of troops into Afghanistan to accomplish the

counter-insurgency that you have all talked about? Or are there

some people that believe that we need to put in some of the numbers that we have read like 400,000 or 600,000?

General BARNO. I think you will probably find some consensus

that 400,000 number, the vast majority of which will be new Afghan security forces, is probably a fairly good number of police and

Afghan national army. The U.S. troop contribution, and we have

seen the front end of that at least, is 17,700. It is not clear exactly

what will be announced tomorrow. But I think we have to be very

careful from a military standpoint—and Dave Kilcullen and I have

written and talked about this—is we have to think about what we

are trying to achieve this year, next year, and the following year

and how much military force we are going to need to do that. Getting that additional several hundred thousand Afghan security

forces together, generated, built, and trained is going to take some

time. The gap filler in a lot of ways will need to be American forces.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Kagan, do you want a shot at that?

Mr. KAGAN. Yes. I just want to say, you know, it is very hard

for anyone to sit in Washington and make evaluations about force

requirements in Afghanistan. But I think when you do go around

to the theater and look at the threat problems and you look at the

gaps, I can see a requirement in Afghanistan for maybe 10 American brigades starting next year and lasting for maybe 12 to 18

months.

We had at the height of the Surge 22 brigades in Iraq. I just

don’t see a requirement for a commitment of that size from the

United States or anything like it. But I do think that there is a

risk that we are going to lowball the estimate of what we need,

possibly in the President’s statement, we will see what he says, but

certainly this year. But I also think that we should not imagine

that we are getting into the slippery slope that leads us all the way

up back to Iraq sort of levels.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me end with this. David Ignatius did an article

called the Roadmap for Afghanistan back on March 19th. At one

point he started talking about the typical Al Qaeda situation. The

process begins with infection as Al Qaeda establishes a presence.

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Next comes contagion as Al Qaeda uses its haven to mount attacks.

Then follows intervention by the United States to destroy Al

Qaeda’s sanctuary and its Taliban protectors. And that produces

rejection as the local population allies with Al Qaeda and the

Taliban against the foreign invaders. For America it is a costly and

self-defeating exercise, which is precisely what Al Qaeda intends.

Dr. Kilcullen quotes a haunting 2004 statement by Osama Bin

Laden. All we have to do is send two mujahideen to the furthest

point east to raise a cloth on which is written Al Qaeda in order

to make the U.S. generals race there to cause America to suffer

human, economic, and political losses. So we are continuing this

policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. I think, you

know, a lot of people are beginning to think that is the case here.

So how do we prevent the Yemens and Somalias and the Sudans

from being more of that bleeding at the same time that you are recommending sort of following that pattern into Afghanistan?

General BARNO. Very briefly, I think this goes back to the geopolitical issue that Ambassador Dobbins points out. Those other

locales you identified—the Yemens, the Somalias—I would call

those very small franchise operations of Al Qaeda.

Mr. TIERNEY. At present.

General BARNO. Yes, correct. And I don’t think they can necessarily become Al Qaeda’s core, Al Qaeda central, without very obvious moves that we are going to see and detect. What in this region we have to be concerned about is the entire region becoming

destabilized by a failure in Afghanistan and a return to civil war,

by a great game not played by the United States but played by

those regional nations in our absence. And the destabilizing country of most worry, of course, is Pakistan. Our efforts in Afghanistan

are aimed and need to be aimed as much at Pakistan, maintaining

stability there, as they are inside of Afghanistan.

Mr. KILCULLEN. I will just make one comment. I think that it is

always a bad idea to invade a country because Al Qaeda is there.

It just creates many, many more problems than you solve by going

in. But we have to remember how we got to where we are in Afghanistan. On the day that Kandahar fell, which was the last

major Taliban stronghold, there were 100 CIA and about 400 Special Forces in country. We didn’t actually invade Afghanistan in a

large scale fashion to deal with Al Qaeda. What happened was the

international community got together in the Bonn Agreement and

later in the 2006 Afghanistan Compact and made a commitment to

the Afghan people to stabilize the country.

So I don’t believe that it is a good idea to go and invade countries

as you quoted because of Al Qaeda. I don’t think that is what we

did in Afghanistan. I think we are there honoring a commitment

to the international community and to the Afghan people. And I

think it is a valid activity for the U.S. Congress to say, all right,

how much are we prepared to spend on that? I think what we need

to do is be very careful about just escalating to success. We need

to say, all right, how much are we prepared to spend and that is

a sufficient amount. So I think this is a very valid activity.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is an interesting point. You know, I think it

was 1,300 Marines and about 1,000 Special Operations people with

some air strikes was the entire October 2001 enterprise there. A

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few weeks later, Kandahar was falling. So I was interested to hear

your take on why it is that we remain in such numbers, and I suspect that is probably very accurate.

I think what I take out of this, first of all, is a great appreciation

for all of you for what you have done in terms of trying to put this

together and contextualize it in testimony. I am personally left

with the idea that there is no way out of this thing without involvement of other people. It keeps going back to Ambassador Dobbins.

In previous hearings it was the same thing. I mean, we are not

going to resolve this without Iran, India, China, Russia, the ’Stans,

Europe, and all these others understanding that they have to pony

up and get involved in this thing.

I appreciate what you said, Dr. Kilcullen about being there because of the commitment that was made but it certainly looks to

a lot of us that the commitment is being paid with American lives

and dollars more so than some others who have probably a more

immediate problem there than we do. I am not sure how we are

going to address that, but I think that is something that we have

to address.

Again, thank you all very, very much. I appreciate all of the efforts that you have made and your being here today. It has been

a substantial help to all of us. Meeting adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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