[Senate Hearing 108-320]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-320
AFGHANISTAN: IN PURSUIT OF SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 16, 2003
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening
statement...................................................... 6
Durch, Dr. William J., senior associate and co-director, The
Future of Peace Operations Project, Henry L. Stimson Center,
Washington, DC................................................. 37
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared
statement...................................................... 36
Hagel, Hon. Chuck, U.S. Senator from Nebraska, prepared statement 34
Lindborg, Ms. Nancy, executive vice president, Mercy Corps,
member of InterAction, Washington, DC.......................... 56
Prepared statement........................................... 59
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 3
North, Brig. Gen. Gary L., Deputy J-5 for Political and Military
Affairs, The Joint Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, The
Pentagon, Washington, DC....................................... 20
Rodman, Hon. Peter W., Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense, The
Pentagon, Washington, DC....................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Taylor, Hon. William B., Jr., State Department Coordinator for
Afghanistan, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC.......... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Responses to additional questions for the record from Senator
Feingold................................................... 79
Tomsen, Hon. Peter, former U.S. Special Envoy and Ambassador to
Afghanistan, 1989-1992 and U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, 1995-
1998, McLean, VA............................................... 49
Prepared statement........................................... 51
(iii)
AFGHANISTAN: IN PURSUIT OF SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY
----------
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m. in room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar
(chairman of the committee), presiding. Present: Senators
Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, Alexander, Biden, Feingold, Bill Nelson,
and Corzine.
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
This week, the Senate has been debating the $87 billion
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill for Iraq and
Afghanistan. Though most of the attention to the bill has been
focused on funding devoted to Iraq, the bill includes $10.5
billion to continue military activities in Afghanistan, and
$1.2 billion in assistance to accelerate Afghan reconstruction.
About one third of reconstruction funds are targeted for
bolstering training and support for the new Afghan National
Army and police force. About $300 million will be devoted to
infrastructure, including roads, schools, and health clinics.
It is clear from this supplemental request that President
Bush is committed to succeeding in Afghanistan. Congress must
be similarly committed to this goal. American national security
and prosperity depends on Senate passage of the supplemental
appropriations bill.
Some of the debate on the supplemental has attempted to
juxtapose spending requests for Iraq and Afghanistan with
domestic spending priorities. Such debate may score some
political points, but it is shortsighted. The viability of our
economy and our ability to fund domestic programs in the long
run depend directly on winning the war on terrorism. We cannot
leave Iraq or Afghanistan in a condition that breeds terrorists
or festers as a symbol of American failure in the Middle East.
Such an outcome would expand anti-U.S. resentment, weaken our
international influence, undercut prospects for broader peace
settlements in the region, and possibly encourage other
governments to pursue weapons of mass destruction or terrorist
sponsorship. These potential outcomes would make us more
susceptible to catastrophic terrorist attacks. And if such
attacks occur, Members of Congress must understand that right
behind the tremendous loss of life, the next casualties will be
the future of the American economy and our ability to
generously fund commitments to our seniors, to the education of
our children, and to innumerable other important goals on which
there is a broad consensus in the Congress.
In this context, we should see Afghanistan as not just a
problem, but rather as an opportunity. Afghanistan was the
opening front in the war on terrorism, and visible progress
there will resonate for an international audience. Moreover,
our experience in Afghanistan can help us succeed in Iraq. In
Afghanistan, we have broad international participation endorsed
by a consensus U.N. Security Council resolution. Now, we are
already working successfully with an indigenous national
government, and that government has done thoughtful planning
for the future of its people. Afghanistan still presents
tremendous challenges. As in Iraq, security is the chief
obstacle to achieving our post-conflict goals. The remnants of
the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda continue attacks on United
States and allied forces, as well as on civilians and
international aid workers. The security situation has been
declining over the last few months, forcing the suspension of
critical assistance and undermining reconstruction and
transition efforts. Establishing security is essential to begin
the process of building a viable economy in Afghanistan,
encouraging investment, and developing a private sector that
can generate income and jobs that are not tied to foreign
assistance or the illicit drug trade.
Afghanistan's population is far less educated than Iraq's.
It lacks abundant oil resources that could serve as an engine
for reconstruction. Many areas of Afghanistan lack even
rudimentary infrastructure. The infrastructure that does exist
is often in disrepair.
The Afghan government will require assistance to ensure
that basic necessities that we take for granted, such as
electricity and safe drinking water, are increasingly
available. These challenges must be undertaken amidst the
uncertain process of establishing a broadly supported
constitution and electoral process.
We must also continue to support efforts to improve
education and expand the role of women in Afghan society. I was
encouraged by the progress on these fronts announced last
Friday in a speech by our First Lady to the National
Association of Women Judges. Mrs. Bush noted that four million
Afghan children now go to school, including about one million
girls. She announced efforts to establish a teacher training
institute and to establish, or reestablish, the American School
in Kabul, which had been an important center for education
before the Taliban. She also highlighted the work of the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has helped to edit and
print five million textbooks in Pashtu and Dari. I know of
Senator Hagel's great pride in this program.
An important step to enhancing overall security in
Afghanistan is expanding the reach of forces outside of the
capital, Kabul. We're pleased that our NATO allies took over
the International Security Assistance Force, the ISAF, in
August. This week, the United Nations Security Council built on
this positive development by voting to expand ISAF operations
beyond Kabul. We thank the United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, and
The Netherlands, and others that have led and participated in
ISAF over the past year, for their commitment to the fight
against terrorism.
Another opportunity to enhance security in Afghanistan is
accelerating the deployment and expanding the capabilities of
Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the PRTs. These teams have the
potential to extend reconstruction efforts beyond Kabul in
conjunction with the ISAF. We need to ensure that they have the
resources necessary to continue this integrated mission.
Our hearing today is intended to assess reconstruction
efforts in Afghanistan and to review what else can be done to
advance our political, economic, and security goals in that
country.
We are joined by two distinguished panels representing our
government and the private sector. On our first panel, we will
hear from Ambassador William B. Taylor, the State Department's
Coordinator for Afghanistan; Mr. Peter Rodman, the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; and
General Gary North, Director of Politico-Military Affairs for
South Asia on the Joint Staff.
On our second panel, we will hear from Ambassador Peter
Tomsen, former Special Envoy for Afghanistan; Dr. William
Durch, senior associate and co-director of the Project on the
Future of Peace Operations at the Henry L. Stimson Center; and
Ms. Nancy Lindborg, executive vice-president of Mercy Corps and
spokesperson for the InterAction umbrella group for non-
governmental organizations in Afghanistan.
[The opening statement of Senator Lugar follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Richard G. Lugar
This week the Senate has been debating the $87 billion Emergency
Supplemental Appropriations bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. Though most
of the attention to the bill has focused on the funding devoted to
Iraq, the bill includes $10.5 billion to continue military activities
in Afghanistan and $1.2 billion in assistance to accelerate Afghan
reconstruction. About one-third of the reconstruction funds are
targeted at bolstering training and support for the new Afghan National
Army and police forces. About $300 million will be devoted to
infrastructure, including roads, schools and health clinics.
It is clear from this supplemental request that President Bush is
committed to succeeding in Afghanistan. Congress must be similarly
committed to this goal. American national security and prosperity
depend on Senate passage of the supplemental appropriations bill.
Some of the debate on the supplemental has attempted to juxtapose
spending requests for Iraq and Afghanistan with domestic spending
priorities. Such debate may score some political points, but it is
short-sighted. The viability of our economy and our ability to fund
domestic programs in the long-run depend directly on winning the war on
terrorism.
We cannot leave Iraq or Afghanistan in a condition that breeds
terrorists or festers as a symbol of American failure in the Middle
East. Such an outcome would expand anti-U.S. resentment, weaken our
international influence, undercut prospects for broader peace
settlements in the region, and possibly encourage other governments to
pursue weapons of mass destruction or terrorist sponsorship. These
potential outcomes would make us more susceptible to catastrophic
terrorist attacks. If such attacks occur, Members of Congress must
understand that right behind the tremendous loss of life, the next
casualties will be the future of the American economy and our ability
to generously fund commitments to our seniors, to the education of our
children, and to innumerable other important goals on which there is a
broad consensus.
In this context, we should see Afghanistan as not just a problem,
but rather as an opportunity. Afghanistan was the opening front in the
war on terrorism, and visible progress there will resonate for an
international audience. Moreover, our experiences in Afghanistan can
help us succeed in Iraq. In Afghanistan, we have broad international
participation endorsed by a consensus UN Security Council resolution.
We are already working successfully with an indigenous national
government, and that government has done thoughtful planning for the
future of its people.
Afghanistan still presents enormous challenges. As in Iraq,
security is the chief obstacle to achieving our post conflict goals in
Afghanistan. The remnants of the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda continue
attacks on U.S. and allied forces, as well as on civilians and
international aid workers. The security situation has been declining
over the last few months, forcing the suspension of critical assistance
and undermining reconstruction and transition efforts. Establishing
security is essential to begin the process of building a viable economy
in Afghanistan, encouraging investment and developing a private sector
that can generate income and jobs that are not tied to foreign
assistance or the illicit drug trade.
Afghanistan's population is far less educated than Iraq's, and it
lacks abundant oil resources that can serve as an engine for
reconstruction. Many areas of Afghanistan lack even rudimentary
infrastructure, and the infrastructure that does exist is in disrepair.
The Afghan government will require assistance to ensure that basic
necessities that we take for granted--such as electricity and safe
drinking water--are increasingly available. These challenges must be
undertaken amidst the uncertain process of establishing a broadly
supported Constitution and electoral process.
We also must continue to support efforts to improve education and
expand the role of women in Afghan society. I was encouraged by the
progress on these fronts announced last Friday in a speech by our First
Lady to the National Association of Women Judges. Mrs. Bush noted that
four million Afghan children now go to school, including about one
million girls. She announced efforts to establish a teacher training
institute and to re-establish the American School in Kabul, which had
been an important center for education before the Taliban. She also
highlighted the work of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has
helped to edit and print five million textbooks in Pashto and Dari. I
know of Senator Hagel's great pride in this program.
An important step to enhancing overall security in Afghanistan is
expanding the reach of forces outside of Kabul. We are pleased that our
NATO allies took over the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in August. This week, the United Nations Security Council built
on this positive development by voting to expand ISAF operations beyond
Kabul. We thank the United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany and the
Netherlands, and others that have led and participated in ISAF over the
past year for their commitment to the fight against terrorism.
Another opportunity to enhance security in Afghanistan is
accelerating the deployment and expanding the capabilities of the
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). These teams have the potential
to extend reconstruction efforts beyond Kabul in conjunction with the
ISAF. We need to ensure that they have the resources necessary to
continue this integrated mission.
Our hearing today is intended to assess reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan and review what else can be done to advance our political,
economic, and security goals in that country. We are joined by two
distinguished panels representing the government and the private
sector.
On our first panel, we will hear from Ambassador William B. Taylor,
the State Department's Coordinator for Afghanistan; Mr. Peter Rodman,
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs;
and General Gary North, Director of Politico-Military Affairs for South
Asia on the Joint Staff. On our second panel, we will hear from
Ambassador Peter Tomsen, former Special Envoy for Afghanistan; Dr.
William Durch, senior associate and co-director of the Project on the
Future of Peace Operations at the Henry L. Stimson Center; and Ms.
Nancy Lindborg, executive vice president of Mercy Corps and
spokesperson for the InterAction umbrella group for nongovernmental
organizations in Afghanistan.
We welcome all of our witnesses and look forward to their insights.
The Chairman. We welcome all of our witnesses and look
forward to their insights. But before hearing those, I
recognize the distinguished Ranking Member of our committee,
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
welcome all. I'm anxious to hear your testimony.
Let me begin--Mr. Chairman, you may have done this; I
apologize for being a few moments late--by complimenting the
Secretary of State and the President for a very important
accomplishment at the U.N. today. Ever since the President made
the U-turn in seeking international support a couple of weeks
ago, it's been the hope and expectation of many of us that he
would follow through on that, and he's done it. I think it's a
very important step. Notwithstanding the fact that initially
the Germans and the French and the Russians are saying they're
not going to contribute forces or money, this is--there has
been now a international ratification of the U.S. presence in
the region, the U.N. blessing in the process, and the U.N. is
invested. It took a long time in getting there, in my view, but
it's there, and they're to be complimented for that.
And the reason I mention that, it does relate, in my view,
to the subject of our hearing today, even though that was not
what the resolution is about. We're very slow learners, it
seems, because we still have--which I hope this resolution
reflects an end of--an internecine battle between the civilian
military commanders and the State Department and others about
how we should proceed in Afghanistan. We're going to be told
today how progress is being made, and it's true. There's also a
bunch of malarkey in what we're going to be told today, because
these guys have to say what they have to say.
The fact of the matter is, we've missed an opportunity to
do what many of us on this committee, including the Senator
about to sit down, have been pleading be done from the
beginning. But because there has been this overwhelming
reluctance on the part of some in the administration to get
involved in genuine, quote, ``nation-building,'' we essentially
elected a mayor of Kabul and turned the rest over to the
warlords, and we're paying a price for it now, and I will not
go through in any detail, notwithstanding many of the good
things that are happening.
Ever since the fall of the Taliban, the Pentagon has been
pointedly refraining from taking any active, concrete steps to
support a plan to expand ISAF. Now, you are engaged in an
incredibly disingenuous undertaking, saying, well, the allies
won't do it. And we'd come back and say, we spoke to the allies
in Afghanistan, in Europe, in other capitals, and they said,
we'll do it if you guys will be part of it. We were saying, no,
no. No, thanks. We even stiff-armed the Germans and the French,
who offered to send forces into Afghanistan early on.
So hopefully this nonsense is about to come to an end and
there really is a new policy in the making. Civilian leaders
claim, as I said, none of our allies are willing to supply the
necessary troops. And, as I said, this is always a cynical
argument. When ISAF was first set up, I had a long, long talk,
within months of us getting there, with its first commander,
Major General John McColl, of Britain. He told me that other
ISAF commanders, which they have since reiterated, that any
expansion of the peacekeeping force would have to rely heavily
upon the United States, not for troops, but for logistics, air
lift, intelligence, and extractions capability. Every person I
met on the ground in Afghanistan wearing an American uniform
said, we must expand ISAF. Every one. You'd meet a single
person, and I challenge the administration to give me the name
of any high-ranking official who served in Afghanistan at the
time on the ground actually shooting and getting shot at, who
didn't think we had to expand ISAF beyond Kabul.
But now our allies have come along. The Germans, I think,
in large--for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a
genuine attempt to begin to repair the rift that exists in the
transatlantic relationships here--are already supplying 2000
more troops to a NATO peacekeeping force, and they'll now
supply 450 more.
NATO allies are ready to step up to the plate and take on
additional peacekeeping duties if we're willing to give the
support they need. We, in Congress, have already made it really
clear where we stand. We, last year, passed the Afghan Freedom
Support Act [AFSA] authorizing a billion dollars for expansion
of ISAF. So we don't have to tell you where we stand. We think
it should have been done a year ago.
So let's remember, with all due respect, the key issue
here, for me at least, is the expansion of ISAF in a way to
decrease our own burden of bringing about security in
Afghanistan and give some prospect, some prospect, that there
can be a government there that's going to be able to sustain
itself after we've gone.
I'll never forget walking into a high-ranking
administration official and saying, but we have a security
problem. They said, there's no problem with Afghanistan. And I
said, what do you mean? Ismail Khan is running the show. She
said, that's right. There's no problem. There's security.
Ismail Khan is in charge. We never have been able to have a
situation in Afghanistan where there are not warlords. Now I'm
paraphrasing what was said in a meeting with high-level
American administration officials.
So our allies seem to be ready to begin to help us lighten
the load. Every German, French, and Turkish soldier deployed to
bring security to the Afghanistan countryside potentially frees
up an American soldier to help fight the Taliban, which is--
they're in a resurgent stage, and hunt down al-Qaeda.
And so, again, I have a longer statement, Mr. Chairman, and
I'll ask unanimous consent that it be placed in the record, if
I may.
The Chairman. It will be placed in the record.
[The opening statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Mr. Chairman, in May of last year I voiced my concerns about the
deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. ``If current trends
continue,'' I said in a floor speech, ``we may soon find that our hard-
won success on the battlefield has melted away.''
I wish I could now report that events of the past year had proven
my concerns ill-founded. But while our attention has been focused on
the war in Iraq, we have failed to consolidate our victory in
Afghanistan. As we consider the President's request for $87 billion to
fund war and reconstruction operations on two separate fronts, it is
high time for us to reexamine our policy in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are regrouping at an alarming pace, and continue to
mount ever-bolder attacks from bases in the barely-governable border
region with Pakistan. As recently as March, the Pentagon was still
describing Taliban action as ``onesies and twosies''--small-scale hit-
and-run assaults by one or two men.
Well, this summer the enemy moved up to two-hundreds-ies. In
August, the Taliban launched a series of raids in troop-strength of
over 200. We're not talking about isolated pot-shots, we're talking
about a genuine guerrilla insurgency.
The Taliban and their al-Qaeda confederates roam freely through the
entire south and southeastern portion of the country. Everywhere they
go, they use murder, kidnaping, and the threat of even greater violence
to compel cooperation from the local populace. They target any Afghans
assisting reconstruction efforts. In September, for example, Taliban
thugs murdered four humanitarian workers in Ghazni--for the ``crime''
of providing their community with drinking water. According to the only
survivor of the massacre, the killers said, ``we warned you not to work
for NGOs.''
There is a vicious logic to such bloodshed. The Taliban uses
terrorism to send the local population a vivid message: neither the
Americans nor the central government will protect you.
Our troops, and those of our coalition partners, are doing a
remarkable job in combating the Taliban and al-Qaeda--but they're not
tasked with the mission of providing security for the Afghan people.
What's been the result? Reconstruction efforts in many parts of the
country have been brought to a standstill. Humanitarian groups have
withdrawn from Kandahar and other areas after the assassination of
their staff.
One aspect of the Afghan economy, however, has continued to thrive.
Unfortunately, it's the drug trade. Last year--while the country was
under U.S. military control--Afghanistan returned to its former
position as the world's number-one source for opium and heroin.
In February, at a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee, I
highlighted the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism.
``Warlords, drugs, and terrorists,'' I said at that time. ``The
connection is as clear as a bell: Terrorists use drug profits to buy
safe haven from warlords.''
A few weeks ago, the U.N.'s top narcotics official made exactly the
same point: ``The terrorists and the traffickers are the same people,''
said the executive director of the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime. He
said the U.S. had ignored his pleas to crack down on the drug trade in
Afghanistan, despite the fact that opium and heroin profits are
believed to enrich anti-American warlords.
In 2002, Afghanistan produced 3,750 tons of opium. According to the
UN, this year's harvest will be of a similar size. That's about twenty
times the size of the harvest in the last year of Taliban rule.
And the scale of the profits shows just how lucrative the business
is for narco-terrorists. The drug trade is worth at least $1.2 billion
annually to Afghanistan--an amount equal to the entire sum spent by all
donor countries (including the U.S.) on relief and reconstruction last
year, and more than double the budget of the Afghan government. Other
estimates place the value of the trade twice as high, at $2.5 billion
annually. That kind of money buys an awful lot of cooperation--and the
terrorists know it. In Afghanistan, as everywhere else in the world,
you get what you pay for.
Which leads to the President's budget request: Why on earth are we
STILL nickel-and-diming the effort to fight terrorism by draining the
swamp in Afghanistan?
The President proposes spending $1.2 billion on relief and
reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan in FY 2004. This sum is
inadequate--and there's even less to the proposal than meets the eye.
One-third of the sum is recycled money--funds raided from existing
accounts, and desperately needed elsewhere.
What remains is a mere $800 million in new money--less than one
percent of the overall package!
I say it again: You get what you pay for. If the administration
isn't willing to make good on President Bush's promise of a Marshall
Plan for Afghanistan, we run the grave risk of seeing all our hard-won
military gains evaporate.
But, as I've said before, this isn't just a question of money. More
than anything else, it's a question of security.
``Anyone knows that without security, very little else is possible;
humanitarian workers can't move around, internally displaced people
won't go back to their homes, refugees won't return to the country, the
Afghan diaspora won't be willing to send money in and send in
themselves to try to help put structure back into that terribly war-
torn nation.''
These aren't my words--they're a direct quote from Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld [April 22, 2002].
Everybody who's looked seriously at the issue agrees: the best way
to bring stability to the country would be to expand the U.N.-mandated
International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Since its creation,
the force has been permitted to operate only in the capital--and
because of its presence there, Kabul is now one of the few secure sites
in Afghanistan.
On Monday, Mr. Chairman, the U.N. Security Council unanimously
voted to expand the mandate of ISAF. The impetus for this development
was the offer, by our NATO ally Germany, to send several hundred troops
to the city of Kunduz. Ever since the fall of the Taliban, I (along
with other members of this committee) have been forcefully advocating
an expansion of ISAF. And ever since the fall of the Taliban, the
Pentagon has been pointedly refraining from taking any active, concrete
step to promote such a plan.
The civilian leaders of the Pentagon claimed that none of our
allies were willing to supply the necessary troops. This was always a
cynical argument. When ISAF was first set up, I had a long talk in
Kabul with its first commander, British Maj. Gen. John McColl. He told
me, and other ISAF commanders have since reiterated, that any expansion
of the peacekeeping force would have to rely heavily on the U.S--not
for troops, but for logistics, airlift, intelligence, and extraction
capabilities. Without such support, any Pentagon talk of welcoming an
expansion ISAF is merely empty rhetoric.
Well, thank God for our allies. The Germans are already supplying
more than 2,000 troops to the NATO peacekeeping force, and they'll now
be supplying 450 more. Other NATO allies are ready to step up to the
plate and take on additional peacekeeping duties--IF we're willing to
give them the support that they need.
We in Congress have already made clear where we stand: The
Afghanistan Freedom Support Act authorized $1 billion for the expansion
of ISAF. If the administration wants to back up the President's words
with action, all they have to do is request appropriation of these
funds.
Let's remember the key issue here: expansion of ISAF is a way to
decrease our own burden for bringing security to Afghanistan. Our
allies are willing to lighten our load. Any additional resources we put
into this endeavor will be more than matched by the benefit we receive.
The U.N. peacekeeping effort is a force multiplier: every German,
French or Turkish soldier deployed to bring security to the Afghan
countryside potentially frees up an American soldier to fight the
Taliban, hunt down al-Qaeda, or (God willing) maybe even rotate home
sooner.
This is a turning point--a moment of great danger, but also of
great opportunity. The danger lies in doing nothing--just letting
current trends continue, idly permitting our victory in Afghanistan to
turn into a long-term defeat. The opportunity lies in taking action--
actively supporting the expansion of ISAF, using it to stabilize the
country and lay the groundwork for reconstruction. The President's
massive $87 billion spending request also provides us with an
opportunity: if we spend a tiny fraction of this money on Afghanistan's
recovery--if we provide adequate funding for reconstruction efforts and
for expanded peacekeeping operations--we can help safeguard our own
national security.
You get what you pay for.
I welcome our distinguished guests, and look forward to hearing
their thoughts on this vitally important topic.
Senator Biden. So let me conclude by saying that I really
am prayerful, as they say, that what we're beginning to see is
a reflection of a change of policy of this administration
toward one failed state that we're trying to reconstruct,
called Afghanistan, and preventing another state from becoming
a failed state, called Iraq. Because the one thing I assume we
could all agree on, if we fail in Afghanistan, we are going to
be talking about, in my view, a country seven times as big,
with nuclear weapons sitting on one border, and a country that
is, in its present security leadership, hostile to the United
States on another border, with more than seven times,
probably--I guess it's probably 14 to 15 times the population,
seeking nuclear weapons. And if that is accompanied by the
bookends of us not succeeding and guaranteeing the peace in
Iraq, we're in for, as they say on the east side of Wilmington,
Delaware, a world of hurt that has nothing to do with
terrorism, that goes far beyond terror, far beyond terror.
So I hope you're here to tell us the good news about your
overwhelming enthusiasm supporting expanding ISAF. I hope
you're about to get in the program. Because if you're not, I
think we're in trouble.
I yield the floor.
The Chairman. Well, gentlemen, you have your challenge.
And we look forward to your testimony, in this order--first
of all, Ambassador Taylor, then Assistant Secretary Rodman, and
Brigadier General Gary North.
Ambassador Taylor.
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM B. TAYLOR, JR., STATE DEPARTMENT
COORDINATOR FOR AFGHANISTAN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
WASHINGTON, DC
Ambassador Taylor. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
We're up to this challenge. I think there will be more of
the news that you and Senator Biden have been looking for in
this discussion. I hope there will be a minimum of malarkey and
nonsense, that you will----
Senator Biden. That was a generic assertion. It wasn't
directed to you.
Ambassador Taylor. No, we don't--we're not worried.
But there is good news and bad news coming out of
Afghanistan, and I don't want to be accused of just giving you
the good news. I'll start off with the bad news.
The bad news is--we read about all the time, the security
situation, in particular in the south and southeast, is not
good. In fact, it's getting worse. Poppy is being grown in
ever-broader fields. The violence against civilians, the
violence against the military, the violence against Afghans,
the violence against our aid workers is increasing, in
particular in the south and the southeast, along that belt,
along that border with Pakistan.
The central government is more than a mayoralty in Kabul,
but it doesn't have full control over the entire country. There
are strongmen--some people call them warlords--out in the
countryside that are causing trouble, are harassing Afghans,
that are extorting money from businesses, that are fighting
each other, that are stealing from the government. An example
of that, of course, we were just seeing in Mazar, has been in
the past week, we've seen these kinds of problems.
There's good news, however, coming out, as well. And this
is just the straight--these are the facts. This is not to gloss
it. Women are more free to participate in public life than
they've ever been before, I believe is a fair statement. As
they appear in public, they are increasingly appearing in
scarves, not in burqas. I was there for 9 months, and in the
beginning of my 9-month period, about a year ago now, I would
bet--this is in Kabul, but at--other places will be a little
different, but in Kabul 90 percent of the women in public were
in burqas. When I left last summer, in July, it was down to
about 60 percent, an improvement. And I'm told--I was there a
couple of months ago--it continues to come down. There is
progress here on the social front.
Afghanistan is now governed by a President and an
administration that, although a coalition, not all from the
same party, not all seeing exactly the problems and the
solutions in the same way, but, nonetheless, a government that
has held together for 18 months. It has held together, and it
continues to govern. We're not worried about fighting within
the government. We are seeing politics in Kabul. This is, I
think, an advance over where it had been before.
They are about--the Karzai government is about to publish a
constitution. The constitution has been in the making for
months. It is, by most accounts, a good constitution. It will
respect human rights, equal treatment for women. There are
provisions in there that--at least in the earlier drafts, that
we have problems with, we continue to work with them on.
President Karzai and others on the commission drafting the
constitution listened to these. But our sense is that this is
going in the right direction. It will establish elections for
next summer, for next June.
On this business of the mayoralty of President Karzai in
Kabul, he has taken steps over the past couple of months,
really since the summer, to expand the influence of his
government. He's done this in a couple of ways. One is, he has
fired some Governors. He has switched some Governors. He pulled
some Governors from provinces back up into Kabul. He sent some
of his trusted ministers, people who are clearly loyal to him,
to take the Governor's mansions in several of these provinces.
He has stripped the Governor of Herat of his military title. He
has demanded that the Governors in these various places that
imports come in, that those Governors send in the revenues to
the central government, which they had not been doing. That's
what I was talking about earlier, on stealing from the
government. This has been the demand, and he has now enforced
that demand.
Senator Lugar indicated at the beginning--he actually has
enabled me to shorten my remarks dramatically, because he went
through some of the good things that are going on on the
Provincial Reconstruction Teams, as an example. These small
military teams are in four places around the country right now.
They will be in another four or five over the next 2 or 3
months. These are having a great effect already in the areas
that they are. Do they need more resources? You bet. Or should
we have more of them? Absolutely. And I'm sure we can talk
about that. But the point is, we are getting forces, military
forces, together with civilians, USAID and the State
Department's representatives, in these PRTs, out into the
field, and they are having a good effect.
You both mentioned ISAF and the expansion of ISAF into
other provinces. This could happen in a couple of ways. And the
German PRT is an example of that ISAF expansion. There could be
other models that we ought to talk about.
Disarmament is about to start. Later on this month, on the
25th of October, in Konduz, no coincidence that that is one of
our PRT locations, a pilot program to disarm militias will
start. So in less than 2 weeks. This will be a pilot program
that will be followed with other pilot programs in Mazar, also
a site of a PRT, and in Gardez, one of the first PRTs that we
have. Again, the ability for the United States and Coalition
partners to get out into the regions, out into the provinces,
to improve the security, to improve the ability to provide
reconstruction support, and to demonstrate to the people of
Afghanistan that the Government of Afghanistan is not confined
to Kabul, I think is a major accomplishment of these PRTs.
Reconstruction is accelerating after a slow start, I will
say. The headline of our reconstruction effort is a major road
from Kabul to Kandahar. The President has committed the United
States to completing this road, to paving this road, by the end
of this year. Now, this will connect the capital in the
northern part of the country, if you will, to the second
largest city in the Pashtun Belt. This will have political
benefits, it'll have economic benefits, it has security
benefits if you can drive quickly on this road, if you can go--
right now, in the worst parts of this road, you have to average
about 15 kilometers--about ten miles an hour. It's not hard to
stop a car going ten miles an hour to ask for money; and these
illegal checkpoints up and down this road, that happens. If, on
the other hand, you are able to drive 60, 70, 80 miles an hour,
as the Afghans will, on this road, and are on the paved
portions of this road, security is better, medical care is
better, the benefits of this road are dramatic, and this is a
major commitment of the United States to Afghanistan, from
President Bush to President Karzai.
Failure is not an option in Afghanistan, as you've both
said, but it's still possible. We need to do more. We need to
accelerate what we are doing. As you have both indicated, the
President is asking, in the supplemental that you're debating
right now, for another billion dollars. On top of a billion
dollars, it's $920-some-million that we are now putting in, and
this money will go for security, for reconstruction, for
democratic development. Senator Lugar has already gone through
a lot of this. I won't go through the details, but that's in my
prepared text, Mr. Chairman, which I hope can be entered into
the record.
So, first, resources; second, personnel. You're about to
receive the President's nomination for the new Ambassador to go
out there, and that will be before your committee very shortly.
In addition, there will be a small team of senior advisors who
will go out with the new Ambassador to help move forward, to
help accelerate these programs that we've been talking about.
We've got the resources. Now we're going to talk about adding
people to help move this thing forward, move this
reconstruction work forward.
And, finally, a new focus. So in addition to new resources
and new people, a new focus. Unity of effort, which is very
important in Afghanistan, will be improved very shortly as the
commander of forces, who's been in Bagram, moves down to Kabul.
And this will enable the military commander, the Ambassador,
USAID efforts, the entire embassy work to be all co-located.
This, I think, will also contribute to an acceleration and a
coherence of a policy.
Mr. Chairman, I will stop there, leave it to my colleagues
to--and we look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Taylor follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. William B. Taylor, Jr., State Department
Coordinator for Afghanistan, U.S. Department of State
Mr. Chairman, we have the opportunity to help the government of
Afghanistan succeed this year. Afghanistan is about to adopt a
constitution in December and is preparing for elections next summer.
But there are forces that are determined to block that success. For us,
failure is not an option. But it is unfortunately still possible. That
is why we need to refocus on Afghanistan, provide adequate resources
and support this Afghan government.
Your hearing today is a welcome opportunity to discuss these goals.
One can focus on the bad news coming out of Afghanistan or the
good. There is plenty of both.
Mr. Chairman, Afghanistan remains a desperately poor country, with
tattered infrastructure, a deteriorating security environment in the
south and east, an unacceptable level of poppy cultivation and a
central government whose authority is resisted in the some of the
provinces.
Increased violence against international security and development
personnel and against innocent Afghans is also a cause for real
concern. The security situation all along the border with Pakistan has
clearly worsened recently. It is particularly worrisome that Taliban
units appear larger and better organized. The deterioration has led
some humanitarian organizations to curtail important aid programs,
jeopardizing key development goals in affected areas.
The central government continues to have difficulty extending its
authority and providing services due to financial and other
constraints. Too many regions remain under the sway of local strongmen
supported by private armies that have sometimes only limited loyalty to
the central government; these men terrorize the local Afghans, extort
money from businesses, steal from the government and fight one another.
The fighting in Mazar-e Sharif last week is only the most recent
example.
Poppy production and narcotics trafficking have continued within
Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom began in late 2001. We
estimate that some 30,000 hectares were under cultivation last year and
that the crop this year may be even larger.
But there is good news coming out of Afghanistan as well.
Women are more free to work and to go to school. Gradually, as they
appear in public, women are replacing their burqas with scarves. A
variety of media and press outlets have emerged, representing a range
of political and social viewpoints. Numerous radio stations are up and
running.
Politically, Afghanistan is now governed by a legitimate leader,
selected by Afghans themselves in a peaceful, representative process.
That in itself is unprecedented in Afghan history.
Since the inauguration of his government 16 months ago, President
Karzai and his government have been actively implementing the Bonn
Agreement. They have established judicial and human rights commissions
to try to protect the rights of minorities and women. They have
established a Constitutional Commission that is now finalizing a draft
Constitution that should be released to the public within days and
adopted by a Constitutional Loya Jirga later this year. By most
accounts the constitution will protect human rights, establish a
separation of powers and institutionalize democracy.
The Afghan Government is steadily strengthening the institutional
capacity of its ministries. It has put a systematic budget process in
place and overseen the issuance of a new currency one year ago.
The Government has also established an electoral commission that is
now working with the UN and international donors to prepare for nation-
wide elections next summer.
President Karzai has taken strong steps recently to extend his
government's reach across the country. He has replaced seven governors,
including the powerful governor of Kandahar. He stripped military
command from the governor of Herat. He demanded that governors remit
the customs and other revenues that they collect to the central
government, and he sent his Finance Minister to each of the major
provinces to enforce this demand. President Karzai recently reformed
the Ministry of Defense.
Meanwhile, the Coalition is deploying small military teams around
the country to enhance security, extend the reach of the central
government and help with reconstruction. These Provincial
Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), established in Gardez, Bamiyan, Kunduz,
and Mazar-e Sharif, have been well received by the local population and
have begun to prove themselves to the skeptical NGO community. The U.K.
and New Zealand are leading two of the PRTs, and the Germans are about
to take over the PRT in Konduz. The United States is preparing to
dispatch similar teams to other areas, including Kandahar, Jalalabad,
Parwan, Herat and Ghazni in the next two and a half months. The British
PRT in Mazar played an important role in calming the tensions between
two competing commanders in the region last week.
In August, NATO took over the International Security Assistance
Force in Kabul, the alliance's first major deployment outside Europe.
NATO has given its preliminary approval for an expansion of the ISAF
mandate beyond Kabul, which could further extend security through PRTs
or another ISAF mechanism. In New York, the U.N. Security Council has
just agreed on a UNSC resolution approving the expansion of ISAF beyond
Kabul to the provinces of Afghanistan. The international community and
the United Nations are working very well together in Afghanistan.
The international coalition is building a new Afghan National Army.
This effort, led by the United States and supported by France, Great
Britain and many other nations, will by next summer provide President
Karzai with the single, largest, best trained military force in the
country.
Later this month a pilot disarmament project will begin in Konduz.
This effort will be followed by disarmament pilot projects in Gardez,
Mazar and Kabul.
On the economic front, the major cities of Afghanistan are
experiencing new growth. Shops are full of goods; streets are bustling.
Legal economic growth last year was 30 percent; it is estimated to be
20% this year.
Afghanistan is expected to have the best harvest in 25 years, with
the more stable northern areas producing a significant surplus.
The Afghan people are beginning to see the fruits of international
development programs. The road from Kabul to Kandahar will be paved by
December 31, this year. This will cut the travel time from the capital
to the second largest city from 15 hours to five. Schools are being
built and clinics staffed and equipped.
The Afghan people are beginning to anticipate a more hopeful
future. They are tired of war and the politics of extremism that made
Afghanistan a desperate and dangerous dead end.
The American and international presence in Afghanistan is welcomed
by most Afghans. The concern most Afghans express is that we not leave
too soon, before the job is done. We did that before.
Last month we marked the act of war that took place on our soil two
years ago, and this is the point to stress: Afghanistan no longer
harbors terrorists. It is no longer a threat to the United States and
the world. On the contrary, it is a country whose leaders and people
are committed to a new future as responsible members of the world
community.
The Afghan people have accomplished a great deal--and Congress, the
American people and the international community can take pride in what
we have done to assist them--but the gains to date remain tenuous, and
much remains to be done.
That is why the President announced a new initiative to accelerate
progress in Afghanistan. Let me outline the key components of this
initiative. It consists of new funds, new people and new focus.
As part of the Supplemental Appropriation, the President is asking
for $799 million in additional funding for accelerating success in
Afghanistan. This sum will be augmented by $390 million that is being
reprogrammed from existing DOD and State Department resources, for a
total of almost $1.2 billion to be committed between now and next June.
This will be on top of regularly appropriated funds, which have totaled
over $900 million annually in 2002 and 2003.
This new assistance will be used to address the three major
challenges we confront in Afghanistan: the need, first and foremost, to
improve security; the need, secondly, to accelerate reconstruction; and
finally, the need to support liberal democracy as Afghanistan writes a
constitution and prepares for elections next year.
The most significant challenge today is security, especially in the
south and east along the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban still
has some support. Continued insecurity risks slowing down the essential
development efforts now underway, undermines the credibility of the
central government and threatens prospects for free and fair elections
next year. Therefore, almost half of this package will be devoted to
security: accelerate the training and deploying of the Afghan National
Army, build a new police force, encourage disarmament and
demobilization of militias, and protect Afghanistan's leaders.
Developing the Afghan government's own capacity to address security
threats is in Afghanistan's interests and ours. Afghan National Army
units are already participating in operations against the Taliban.
Strengthening Afghan security institutions is the single most important
step we can take in extending the reach and authority of the central
government. Afghanistan's legitimate leaders must have the capacity to
fill the security vacuum now being filled by local militia leaders and
their forces.
The support for the ANA will help establish and equip the
essential core of a multi-ethnic national army, with
approximately 10,500 soldiers trained by next summer.
Assistance to the police will enable training of 18,000
additional national police by mid-2004 and their deployment
throughout the country. It will also provide training,
equipment and infrastructure for 4,000 members of a new Afghan
Border Police. It will fund a new 2,600-person highway patrol
to protect commerce and travelers on Afghanistan's roads and
end the unapproved tolling stations that are financing private
militias.
Hand in hand with these programs to build the central
government's security capabilities, we will provide additional
funds for programs to disarm and demobilize members of Afghan
militias and reintegrate them into society.
We will also increase funding for measures to provide
physical security to Afghanistan's President, which is critical
to the stability and progress of that country.
About 30 percent of the $1.189 billion package will be for
reconstruction assistance, including roads, schools, health facilities,
small projects and initiatives to provide the framework for private
sector growth. These infrastructure projects will also have a broader
impact, especially roads that will link together the major cities of
Afghanistan, drawing the country together economically and politically.
A top priority for the new funds will be accelerated work on
roads, including the road linking Kandahar and Herat, as well
as over 600 miles of secondary roads that farmers use to bring
their crops to market.
Funds will also be used to build or rehabilitate 150
additional schools--with the target of raising enrollment to 85
percent--and to build 60 additional health clinics that could
reach an additional 3 million Afghans.
Other areas that will receive additional funding include
community-level projects implemented by Provincial
Reconstruction Teams, as well as industrial parks, power
generation projects and other initiatives to improve the
physical and institutional infrastructure for private sector
growth.
The third element of this package, accounting for about 20 percent
of the total, will be funding for democracy and governance programs,
including support for the Constitutional Loya Jirga and elections,
which will give Afghans from every corner of the country a voice and
stake in the country as a whole, and help strengthen Afghanistan's
identity as a nation. Some of our planned governance funding will be
used to help the government pay salaries; that too will strengthen the
authority of central institutions. We will provide technical experts to
ministries and will enhance the capabilities of the U.S. embassy to
support the Karzai government.
We expect that strengthened security institutions, including the
border police, will help address the scourge of narcotics trafficking.
Improved roads will help farmers produce legitimate, perishable crops
that can be competitive in faraway markets, instead of cultivating
poppy. Roads will also strengthen the central government's ability to
respond to reports of poppy cultivation. Other reconstruction and
development programs will offer alternative livelihoods. But I would
stress that our most effective strategy in combating narcotics will be
to strengthen the central government's authority throughout
Afghanistan.
In addition to new funds, the President is sending new people to
Kabul. Your committee will soon consider the nomination of Dr. Zalmay
Khalilzad to be the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. The embassy will be
strengthened by a group of senior advisors to the Ambassador who will
help accelerate the reconstruction efforts. The embassy staff and
security detail will be increased. USAID is sending new people to
manage its programs. These new people will require additional space, as
anyone who has visited Embassy Kabul will attest. The Government of
Afghanistan is allowing us to build a temporary facility right across
the street from the existing compound to house these new people.
Finally, new focus. To enhance unity of effort in Afghanistan the
military headquarters, previously located an hour north of Kabul, is
moving to Kabul so the military and civilian authorities can be co-
located. The Combined Forces Commander's office will be ``right down
the hall from the Ambassadors.'' This will enable us to concentrate our
military, diplomatic and reconstruction efforts to achieve success.
Mr. Chairman, we are at a defining moment in Afghanistan. Our
success in consolidating and building on the progress to date will have
lasting implications for Afghans and Americans alike.
This three-pronged strategy, focusing on security, reconstruction
and democracy and governance is our best opportunity to ensure success.
There is no question that the challenges are daunting and that much
remains to be done. But it is equally true that we have much to build
on, and we have the Afghan people on our side and on the side of their
many friends in the international community. Afghans are eager to turn
a new page in their troubled history.
In February, President Bush and President Karzai reaffirmed
their common vision for an Afghanistan that is prosperous,
democratic, at peace, contributing to regional stability,
market friendly, and respectful of human rights.
With Congress's support, I am confident that we will realize that
vision.
After my colleagues speak, we would be pleased to answer your
questions. Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Taylor.
Let me just mention that the full statements that each of
you have will be made a part of the record, and you will not
need to ask for permission, but proceed as you wish to either
summarize or give the statement. We're here to hear from you in
whatever form would be most helpful.
Mr. Rodman.
STATEMENT OF HON. PETER W. RODMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Rodman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Biden. I'll just touch on a few points, if I may, not read my
whole statement.
I want to thank you and congratulate you both for holding
this timely and important hearing, especially in light of the
President's supplemental request. I agree completely with what
both of you said about what is at stake here, and that is the
administration's commitment, as well. I will do my level best,
Senator Biden, to keep this a malarkey-free zone but I will
take your advice, if I may----
Senator Biden. That's all right. You're in the Congress,
you're allowed to----
Mr. Rodman. Well, we owe you our best judgment. But I will
also take your advice, if I may, not to rehash the debate of
the past. We do have a different perspective on the past. But I
also see a convergence, a lot of things happening now, which,
as you said, you're happy with. So we're moving forward in a
good direction, and that's the spirit in which I think we
should have this discussion.
Let me say a little bit about the security situation. This
is clearly General North's area of competence, but there are
two kinds of security problems. And one is, of course, the
enemy, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are seeking to disrupt.
General North will know the facts better. The second challenge
is the intramural conflicts among the Afghan forces, as we have
a central government that has not yet established its
authority. This is the ``warlord'' issue.
My feeling is that both of these are manageable. The
Taliban and al-Qaeda will seek to disrupt, but we're ready for
them. The fact that they will seek to disrupt and whether they
succeed or not are two different issues. We think we're
prepared for an offensive that they may be launching, And it
may be, at the end of the day, after they test the solidity of
what we are building, that it is the enemy, not we, who have
hard strategic choices to make.
The other issue, the warlord issue, is a political problem.
We believe we have a strategy to deal with that. It is
essentially President Karzai's strategy, but it has a number of
elements. It, of course, is building Afghan institutions, like
the army and police. That's something that we've discussed for
a long time. We also believe, second, that President Karzai has
a well-thought-out political strategy to assert his authority,
and we've seen this since early this year. As Ambassador Taylor
mentioned, in the spring, the President and his Finance
Minister said, OK, the customs revenues will flow to the
central government as they are supposed to do. He replaced
Governors one after the other, and there are other things I
suspect he has in mind. He's consulted with us, and we have
signaled our backing for what he is doing. What we've seen in
the last several months is a President who is asserting his
authority and succeeding because he has prepared the ground
whenever he has undertaken some new step forward.
The third element of the strategy is the PRTs, and we think
this has been a success. This is an idea that was conceived of
about a year ago to advance a number of purposes--to facilitate
reconstruction, to help extend the authority of the central
government--to be, in some sense, a surrogate for the authority
of the central government--and to contribute a little bit to
security. And we've also succeeded, as we've discussed, in
internationalizing it. This is yet another vehicle for
internationalizing the effort. And so we're pleased that the
British and the New Zealanders and now the Germans are engaging
in this. We also think that given what the Germans are doing,
there may be others that will follow along the way they have
done.
And that, the internationalization of the effort, is the
fourth point I would stress. We are very pleased that the
Germans are taking over the PRT. When they suggested doing this
under ISAF auspices, we said fine, and we're prepared to work
out some details. There are issues like deconfliction, which
become a little different in this circumstance, but they are
soluble, and that was our attitude as soon as we heard that
suggestion. And NATO, as you know, in the past week, has
plunged into this exercise after taking over ISAF earlier in
the year. So we're now looking at the question of expanding
ISAF around the country, and the question of how the PRTs fit
into this. All of this is on the table. NATO is addressing this
energetically, and we will do our part to make this work.
So we think this is very positive. It's not as easy as all
that. One of the concerns we have with PRTs under ISAF is,
well, where are the troops going to come from? It's great to
have NATO make this commitment, and we welcome it, but the time
will come when we want to identify forces, and we hope our
allies will identify forces to make this a reality. We will do
our best to encourage this and we welcome it.
I will conclude right there, and say that we agree with you
and the committee on the stakes involved. We don't
underestimate the problems. I agree with Ambassador Taylor on a
lot of things that are negative in the country. We also think
that after 25 years of the nightmare that Afghanistan has been
through, and the fact that even before all of this began 25
years ago Afghanistan was a poor and isolated country, we think
that only 2 years after liberation the country is on a good
track. The American people can look back on the liberation of
Afghanistan as something very positive, and we can be confident
that we're moving in the right direction.
The purpose of the President's supplemental request is to
invest--in a serious and significant way that has a big
impact--in some progress that we think is taking place. We
think the Afghan people deserve that.
Now, what we did in Afghanistan, we did for our own
security, not only out of altruistic motives, and the same is
true of our effort today to ensure that Afghanistan succeeds
and never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Peter W. Rodman, Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, I am pleased to have this
opportunity to testify before the Committee about our policy and our
progress in Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have been through a terrible ordeal over the last
quarter-century. Their country was one of the poorest and least
developed in the world, even before the ordeal began. But then came
Communist misrule, a Soviet invasion, a war of liberation against the
Soviet occupation, and then the Taliban. An entire generation of war
and tyranny left the country's institutions, economy, and social
structure in shambles.
In the two years since Operation Enduring Freedom helped Afghans
liberate their country, we see a nation rebuilding; we also see large-
scale international support for that rebuilding:
The Bonn Agreement filled the political vacuum by bringing
Afghan political forces together in a process to build first an
interim government, then a transitional government, and soon an
elected, permanent constitutional government.
Famine was averted in 2001; tons of hybrid feed were
distributed. A new currency was introduced; International
Monetary Fund arrears were cleared. International development
assistance is flowing in. A national ring road is being built
to promote not only economic growth and regional trade but
national unity.
Two million refugees have returned home.
New security institutions are being built--Ministries of
Defense and Interior, a National Army, national police, and
border and highway police.
This is, overall, a remarkable story. We acknowledge the continuing
problems; no one can doubt how serious some of them are. But how could
these problems be unexpected in a country that has been through such an
ordeal? Recognizing these challenges, the United States is redoubling
its effort to accelerate the pace of the progress being made. This
effort is reflected in the President's Emergency Supplemental
Appropriation request for almost $800 million for Afghanistan and in
renewed efforts to galvanize international support.
the security situation
Let me focus on the security situation.
The Afghan people face two sources of insecurity. The first is the
operations of the enemy--the Taliban, al Qaeda, and spoilers like
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The second is the degree of instability occasioned
by rivalries among local commanders (or ``warlords'') not yet fully
responsive to the authority of the central government.
We take seriously both of these challenges. The Coalition is
working with the government of President Karzai to address them. We
think that neither challenge is a threat to the consolidation of the
political process laid down in Bonn, or to the progress being made.
We have seen the Taliban step up their military activities in
recent months. After operating in only small units, the Taliban have
attempted to graduate to larger-unit attacks, sometimes with more than
100 fighters. The net result so far, however, has been that CJTF-180--
and Afghan forces--have disrupted enemy operations and inflicted
serious casualties on the enemy.
Operations Warrior Sweep (since early August) and Mountain Viper
(since early September) have driven the enemy out of the sanctuary they
sought in the south and southeast; this resulted in the capture of over
800 weapons, grenades, mortars, and rockets, and over 50,000 lbs. of
ammunition. As many as 200 Taliban and other enemy fighters were
killed.
We anticipate that the challenge from the enemy will continue. They
may attempt a fall offensive of some kind. But the Coalition and the
Afghan government are ready. The enemy will certainly test us, but we
expect that this offensive will fail. At that point, the enemy--not
we--will face hard strategic decisions.
We are greatly encouraged by Pakistan's recent military operation--
Operation al-Miwan--against the Taliban in the Federally-Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA). Pakistan's cooperation is crucial.
The second security concern, as I mentioned, is the instability
that remains as the central government gradually extends its authority
over the country. We are working with President Karzai and the
international community in four principal areas to deal with this
challenge.
The first is the development of effective, national, and
professional security institutions, particularly the Afghan National
Army (ANA) and the national police and border and highway police.
This Committee is familiar with our program to build and train the
ANA. In September the Afghan government appointed the leadership of and
activated the Central Corps in Kabul. Eleven ANA battalions have now
graduated from the Kabul Military Training Center, and a twelfth is in
training. Next year, we hope to accelerate the rate of training from
6,000 a year to 10,000. Of the eleven graduated battalions, we have
4,000 soldiers either deployed with Coalition forces or completing more
advanced or specialized training.
ANA battalions have ably conducted presence patrols and combat
operations. The reaction of the Afghan public to ANA presence patrols
has been uniformly positive. As one local leader said, ``Wherever the
ANA goes, stability breaks out.'' The ANA has also performed well in
combat.
The two greatest challenges are attrition--a problem that is very
real but that has recently diminished--and a large gap between the high
demand for the ANA for a variety of missions and the limited supply so
far of ANA units.
In parallel with the building of a truly national army, we have
also worked to help President Karzai and Defense Minister Fahim reform
the Ministry of Defense, so that all Afghans will see it as a genuinely
national institution. In September, President Karzai announced new
appointments for the 22 top positions, introducing greater political
and ethnic balance. This reform process, we expect, will continue.
The Ministry of Interior controls the National Police and the
Border Police. The Department of Defense hopes to be able to support
our State Department colleagues in assisting these efforts as well.
Second: At bottom, the warlord problem is a political problem.
Since last spring, our government has worked with President Karzai in
support of his political strategy to extend his national authority. We
believe he has a well-thought-out strategy, and we have made clear the
U.S. Government's backing of his reform efforts:
Last May, with our support, the central government concluded
an agreement requiring provincial governors who controlled
customs posts to turn over revenues to the Ministry of Finance.
Virtually nothing had been received before that agreement.
Since then, more than $90 million has been turned over, putting
the central government ahead of its revenue projections for
this year.
In 2003, President Karzai and the Ministry of Interior have
replaced about one-third of Afghanistan's provincial governors
and about one-half of its provincial police chiefs--all in a
concerted effort to improve governance outside of Kabul and to
extend the authority of the national government.
In August, President Karzai simultaneously transferred the
governor of Kandahar, Gui Agha Shirzai, to a ministry in Kabul;
changed the governors of Zabol and Wardak provinces; and
replaced Ismail Khan as corps commander in Herat.
This move was a significant assertion of authority by
President Karzai. At the time, the United States made an
important public declaration that it endorsed President
Karzai's reforms to assert the legitimate authority of the
central government and to improve provincial governance.
In addition, more recently, we have supported the efforts of
President Karzai's commission, led by Minister of Interior
Jalali, to find a solution to the frequent military clashes in
Mazar-e-Sharif between Generals Dostam and Atta. Special
Presidential Envoy Dr. Khalilzad engaged himself in support of
this process on his recent visit, and our Provincial
Reconstruction Team (PRT) in the area also played a role in
defusing tensions.
The third dimension of our accelerated effort is the further
deployment of these Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).
The PRTs, as we anticipated a year ago when their concept was
devised, are a flexible instrument for achieving several purposes,
including: to facilitate reconstruction efforts around the country; to
contribute to the facilitation of security where needed; to bolster the
presence and authority of the central government; and to provide
another vehicle for internationalizing the overall effort.
PRTs typically comprise 60-100 military and civilian personnel
representing several agencies in the U.S. Government. Their composition
is meant to be flexible, adapting to the particular needs of a region;
they include a civilian led reconstruction team, engineers, security
and military observer teams, linguists, and interpreters, and a medical
team. The PRTs work with Afghan government ministries, local officials,
UN agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to facilitate
their efforts.
Four PRTs, as you know, are already deployed, and four more should
be deployed in the next few months. The U.K., New Zealand, and now
Germany are taking over some of these teams.
Our fourth line of activity is support for international partners,
including on security issues where they have the lead. We will work
with the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) and with Japan on
disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of militia forces.
We support U.K.-led program against narcotics. We are supporting German
efforts in police training and Italian efforts in judicial reform.
In addition, we welcome the fact that NATO has taken over command
of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, and
that Germany (as noted) has proposed to take over the PRT in Konduz.
The Germans, as you know, have proposed that their PRT in Konduz
come under ISAF. We have agreed to this idea and are working out the
details. We are open, as well, to expanding ISAF's mandate more
broadly--as the new UN Security Council Resolution 1510 earlier this
week now permits. If ISAF's role does expand, some of the issues we
will need to pay attention to are:
That the new arrangements ensure deconfliction between ISAF
and OFF and do not impede OFF operations;
That all these activities support the political strategy of
President Karzai that the U.S. is supporting; and
That the new arrangements be backed by real commitments of
forces from NATO partners.
conclusion
Let me conclude, Mr. Chairman, with an example of how these diverse
strands of policy can come together to help win the war against the
Taliban.
In 2002, Paktia province in the east was considered one of the
areas with the highest levels of enemy activity. Since then, the United
States deployed a PRT near Gardez, the capital, and supported civil
affairs and reconstruction activity. President Karzai replaced the
governor, police chief, and sidelined local commanders who had been
abusing the people. New national police were deployed, and we sent in
the Afghan National Army on presence patrols. PRT activities--sometimes
in concert with ANA deployments--have reinforced stability and won the
confidence of the local population. Together, these reforms and
deployments have transformed the security situation.
As we continue our efforts to improve security and to support
reconstruction, the lesson of Paktia province should inform the work of
all of the departments and agencies of the U.S. Government. PRT team
members, through their patrolling and interactions with local Afghan
elders and officials, have enhanced security. The PRTs are also
extending the reach of the Afghan central government, which now has a
representative at each PRT location. And quick-impact projects like the
building of schools and clinics, or the drilling of wells, have helped
PRTs to develop close relationships with Afghan communities. Our
challenge is to expand the geographical impact of these activities,
both by increasing the number of PRTs and extending their reach through
satellite locations.
While the State Department and USAID are the lead agencies for
Afghan reconstruction, DOD has also gladly supported them. DOD--
primarily through civil affairs teams (300 civil affairs personnel
deployed) and PRTs--is supporting the rebuilding of over 300 schools
and 50 medical facilities, installing over 600 wells, and hiring over
30,000 Afghans countrywide.
I will conclude as I began, acknowledging the seriousness of the
challenges that we and the Afghans face in rebuilding a country
devastated by a quarter century of war. But we have a strategy, and we
are accelerating our effort.
Our goals in Afghanistan clearly have bipartisan support. The
President's Emergency Supplemental request is an opportunity for this
nation to reaffirm and strengthen its commitment. That appropriation
can make a significant difference.
Our nation's role in liberating the Afghan people is a success
story. All Americans can be proud of what we and our Coalition partners
helped accomplish. We did it for our own security, not simply out of
altruism, and that is equally true today of our effort to ensure that
Afghanistan becomes a successful, modern state and never again a safe
haven for terrorists.
Our partnership with the Afghan people continues to grow and
strengthen. The Administration and the Congress have much to do
together to complete what we have begun.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Secretary Rodman.
We'd like to hear now from Brigadier General Gary North.
STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. GARY L. NORTH, DEPUTY J-5 FOR POLITICAL
AND MILITARY AFFAIRS, THE JOINT STAFF, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, DC
General North. Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden, members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to come talk to you
and your colleagues today of these areas of concern of our U.S.
military operations in Afghanistan.
Many of the topics have been covered, and so I would like
to discuss the Afghan National Army [ANA] very briefly and
address the security situation from a military perspective, and
then turn to you, sir, for questions.
In regards to the Afghan National Army, in May 2002 our
Task Force Phoenix, ably assisted by specialist training teams
from other countries, began training the Afghan National Army
to build a multiethnic force under civilian control, which is
very quickly becoming a symbol of national unity in
Afghanistan. Over 11 Afghan National Army battalions have
graduated from the Kabul Military Training Center, with a 12th
in training and a 13th forming. Our intent is to complete the
Afghan central corps training by the June 2004 elections with a
total of 15 battalions.
In January 2004, we plan to accelerate the Afghan National
Army training, increasing the capacity graduated per year from
the current capacity of 6,600 soldiers to 10,000 soldiers per
year. Of the 11 currently graduated battalions, we have over
4,800 soldiers that are deployed as operational soldiers who
have been out alongside with our Coalition Forces or are
completing specialized training to serve in both armor and
mechanized infantry or combat service support battalions. Over
$80 million of donations and pledges of equipment from
international Coalition members have supported this effort.
The successes we are experiencing in the ANA, as well, are
beginning to be reflected in our Ministry of Defense reform
initiatives in the Afghan Ministry of Defense where over 22
candidates have been confirmed for top-tier posts. They bring
strong qualifications to the ministry and adequately reflect
the Afghan ethnic diversity. And these 22 members just finished
their first week of full-assistance training. I received an
out-brief on that today from members in Kabul, and they are
very excited about the opportunities of the future of the
Ministry of Defense reform initiatives.
In regards to the security situation, as Ambassador Taylor
mentioned, it is somewhat tense at times in the south and
southeast quadrants. Our Coalition military forces, including
the Afghan National Army troops, are successfully repulsing
both Taliban, al-Qaeda, and assorted anti-Coalition Force
elements. By all reports, the Afghan National Army is
performing extremely well in combat operations alongside
Coalition elements.
The objectives of our two most recent operations, Warrior
Sweep and Mountain Viper, which have been publicized in the
open press, in both southern and southeast Afghanistan, were to
interdict anti-Coalition Forces by infiltration, deny the enemy
sanctuary, and destroy enemy forces, and these resulted in the
capture of over 800 weapons--grenades, mortars, rockets--and
over 50,000 pounds of ammunition, and as many as over 200
Taliban and other enemy combatants were killed in these
actions.
Additionally, we're greatly encouraged by the recent
Pakistani military activities against anti-Coalition Forces and
Taliban and part of Operation Miwan in the federally
administrative areas. Pakistan's success will greatly enhance
our own efforts along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Gentlemen, at this point I'd like to stop and be subject to
your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Let me just sketch out provisionally the architecture of
our hearing today. We have debate on the floor, as you know, on
the supplemental appropriations bill, and the Chair has been
advised that approximately at 3 o'clock there will be two
rollcall votes stacked one after the other. We have good
participation in this hearing, I hope that will continue, and
what we will attempt to do is to keep the hearing going.
Senator Biden and I will depart and return at some point. And,
likewise, members may wish to stay and ask their questions
while we are absent. But it's important that we all have
opportunities to take advantage of this panel. We have another
very talented panel still to follow. So I would suggest a 7-
minute limit on our first round of questioning.
I would commence by asking Ambassador Taylor a very
specific question. Ambassador Tomsen will testify later, as I
understand, that he recommends that non-military funds for
Afghanistan be moved into a single State Department account
under your control, instead of several separate accounts--at
least at present it appears that way--to improve the efficiency
and the quality of our aid to Afghanistan. Has the
administration considered this proposal? And would having the
funds in a single account improve or speed implementation of
our assistance?
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, in my previous job, before I
went to Kabul, I coordinated assistance going into the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And, as you know, in both of
those accounts there is a single account. There is one line
item, and it's for the former Soviet Union, another one for the
East European countries. And that does help, and Ambassador
Tomsen and I worked together in that time. That's where I met
Peter. And so we know that can work.
We have examined it, in answer to your question. Very
specific question, very specific answer. Yes, we've examined
it. There are pros and cons to this. I see some pros, and
others see some cons. And we will continue to talk about this
within the government. We think it's a good idea.
The Chairman. Well, let me just ask, what can our committee
do, if anything, to accelerate the pros, in this situation?
Now, I don't want to illustrate excessive bias in my question,
but, at the same time, it appears to me we should get on with
it, and I'm just wondering what the problem is.
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, we are, of course, getting on
with it. And it turns out that the supplemental that you're
debating right now will essentially go into four main accounts.
It will go into the police account, into the FMF for the army
that we talked about, to a larger ESF account, economic support
fund accounts, and that has a lot of flexibility within it, as
well. And then, finally, there's an anti-terrorism account that
we use to protect some of the senior people in Kabul.
So those are fairly discreet areas--army, police, economic,
and protection. And so as it stands right now, that is working
out OK. So I think we are making this thing work, and it's--I
will take your concern, your interest, your suggestions back
and we'll continue the pros and cons.
The Chairman. Please do.
Now, I think, Secretary Rodman has pointed out that there
is no profit in rehashing all of the past, and I will not do
that. I would just say that I think that our activities have
evolved over the course of a number of briefings that we have
enjoyed. Some have been with the Secretary of Defense or the
Secretary of State or others. My general perception at the
beginning, after the war was essentially fought in Afghanistan
and before the mopping-up operations continue--they are still
extremely important--continued, was that Secretary Rumsfeld
essentially indicated that our job was a military mission. In
those days, nation-building was really not on the charts. Now,
it was mentioned occasionally, but often in a pejorative way.
Now, bit by bit, we came to a conclusion--by ``we,'' I
think it's the country, the administration--that a successful
Afghanistan was very important to us, very important to the war
against terrorism. The fact that a failed state there could be
an incubator for terrorism again, a recycling of the whole
problem became very alarming.
Nevertheless, the resources to do all of that have not
necessarily followed instantly. We have been preoccupied in
Iraq, and we have other responsibilities. So these we all
understand.
My rationalization of Iraq and Afghanistan is that we are
getting better at it all the time. I object totally with
anybody who thinks we really had a good plan to begin with
anyplace, but I would just add that none of us are that wise,
and we all benefit by experience.
In Afghanistan, our experience is that the capital has a
fair degree of security. We are certainly profiting by having a
President, President Karzai, a constitutional group, and a
number of people, as we've heard outlined, now coming into the
Armed Forces of Afghanistan who fight well and who understand
the centrality of it.
When the three of us--that is, Senator Hagel, Senator
Biden, and I--met with him in Amman, at the World Economic
Forum, President Karzai, indicated to us that he was collecting
some customs taxes, some revenues even at the borders. Clearly
it is a good role for a central government, to have that degree
of recourse. So this is not one in which entire blobs of
territory are covered by warlords with a President nearby in
the capital. There is an extension, but it is tenuous and it is
different and complex.
President Karzai also outlined the constitution, which was
complex. Our committee would like to see the draft of the
constitution at some point. We've been told it's, out there.
And if you would be forthcoming, that would be helpful, because
this is an important constitution to look at in the context of
constitutions in Iraq and maybe elsewhere.
As I heard the President discussing this, there are all
sorts of checks and balances and very unusual clauses. As we
discovered with our Iraqi witnesses the other day, constitution
business is going to be even more complex the harder you lay
down a hand in whatever month you start or try to stop it. But,
nevertheless, it is proceeding.
President Karzai said he had a 5-year plan, a financial
plan. He outlined that. His Finance Minister was with him.
There are some holes in the plan, and this is where we came in.
We can help fill in the holes, as you suggested, or others
could help fill in the holes. But the strength of the fact was
that he had a 5-year plan. He really has some idea, as did his
ministers, of where they were going for 5 years.
I've been troublesome in suggesting the same in Iraq.
Someday it would be helpful to see that. Someday we will see
it. Maybe not today. But they have one in Afghanistan.
Now, are you acquainted with the plan? Obviously. And
you're acquainted probably with the holes or the suggestions.
To what extent is our government able to work hand in glove,
say, with the Finance Minister and with our European allies in
NATO and with others to make certain that that part of it is
sound, and that they are able to finance a progressive
administration?
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, that Finance Minister was the
single person that I dealt with the most in my time in Kabul.
He's very, very good, as you saw. He does have the plan. It's
well worked out. Even the development of that plan, however,
was not easy. As I mentioned before, a Coalition cabinet that
has very diverse representatives in there from a lot of
different parts of the country, as well as ethnic groups, and
sitting in powerful positions to be able to affect that plan.
He was able--and the Finance Minister drove this. President
Karzai, obviously, was standing behind him, but he drove it,
and he was able to come up with a budget last year. And that
budget, as you say, was a 1-year, but then extended out for
several years, 5 years, and he has a very good plan of how to
get there.
So in answer to your first question, we deal very directly,
hand in glove, with that Finance Minister and helping--part of
my job there was to help him mobilize the rest of the
international community.
Another good thing about Kabul and Afghanistan is that the
international community is working very well together, as
you've mentioned. We've got a good U.N. resolution, we've got a
good U.N. team, frankly. We've got Germans and French and
Americans and others all working very closely together, not
just on the army, but certainly on the army.
So that international community came together and focused
on the different holes that they've mentioned to you. They're
not all filled. Part of the President's request in the
supplemental that you're debating will help fill some of those
holes. One of the holes was actually payment of salaries for
civil servants, for bureaucrats, the bureaucracy in the
government and in the provinces, and those are gradually being
filled, and that's part of our plan.
So we appreciate your support on that. We will continue to
ask, on a regular basis, for funds to enable us to continue to
help that government move forward.
The Chairman. That would be great, and some periodic
reports from you as to how that's going, now that at least
there is some scheme, some discipline and outline.
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, one other thing. You mentioned
the constitution.
The Chairman. Yes.
Ambassador Taylor. President Karzai, of course, is in
Malaysia right now. He has taken a copy with him. It's been the
subject of a lot of discussion, debate, changes--some steps
forward, some back, we hear, in those debates. It's within the
Afghan government. Again, this is a very healthy debate that's
going on, an important one that will shape their country, at
least for the foreseeable future.
He has that draft with him. He also left a committee
behind, including Dr. Ghani, the Finance Minister, to work the
final details of that constitution. We have drafts, which I'd
be happy to share with you, with the committee. The final draft
should be the one that will go to the constitutional loya jurga
in December, should be available within days, and we will
certainly get that to you.
The Chairman. We would appreciate that.
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you. Gentlemen, we have a lot of
questions and there's a lot of interested colleagues here. Let
me stick to a few specific subjects, if I may, with one short
preamble.
I hope as we pass, and I believe we will pass, the $87
billion appropriation, which I personally will vote for--
although I think we'll see some changes in the accountability
requirement, the essence of it will pass--I hope the portion
of--assuming we don't get a single State Department account,
which I strongly favor; I am biased in that regard--but even if
it stays the way it is, in essentially four accounts, I hope
that economic account we will be more fastidious than we have
been in the past in terms of directing aid, to direct it to
Karzai so it's through Karzai.
The idea that you would allow--I'm going to use--let me be
anecdotal here--a road to be built in Afghanistan and Ismail
Khan take credit for it, is bizarre. To me, it's absolutely
bizarre. Why--if Karzai didn't have the military capability of
controlling the country, which we all know he didn't, and
hopefully someday will, at last there has--what are the reasons
anybody needs Kabul for? They need Kabul for money. They need
Kabul for something. What value is Kabul to Kandahar, or what
value is Kabul to Herat or any other place, unless they can
dispense it? And so I strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly
urge you, if you haven't already done it--and it would be
helpful, at least to me, possibly the whole committee, for you
to give us a sense of how these funds are actually distributed.
A lot of us used to be local officials. This is a local mayor,
a local councilman. I mean, we understand how--where the dollar
actually gets disbursed to the contractors to build the road
and whether it matters. We have councilmen fighting over
whether or not the money to build the road or the sewer system
in his district was announced by him or announced by the mayor
or announced by the Governor. Well, it makes a big difference
in Afghanistan.
And so I hope you'll fill us in on that. Not now, but at
some point. I may draft a formal question for you so I know how
that works.
But let me move to the security piece just a second, the
ANA, general. And, by the way, I know it sounds so trite just
for us to say it, but you guys do a helluva job. I mean, I've
watch those kids over there, been over there, I mean--they're
not--I shouldn't say ``kids,'' they're--you know, I'm just
getting so old, they seem like kids. They're incredible.
Absolutely incredible. And they are, to use the other
expression we overuse, they are in harm's way. They are in
harm's way. And we've gone down those roads, and at high speeds
with night-vision goggles to make sure--I wondered where in the
hell we were going. I was hoping the driver had his goggles on
as he was going at high speeds to avoid those checkpoints and
so on at night. So it's still an unsafe place.
My question is this. We had testimony--again, I don't want
to go back and rehash who was on first and who was on second.
This is where we are right now. The goal is a--correct me if
I'm wrong now, Ambassador Rodman, or you, general--the goal is
a 70,000-person Afghan army. We initially had--and, again,
understandably, I'm not--again, not a criticism--we had fairly
high expectations that we'd be training this force up pretty
quickly and have--and, by now, it was predicted we would have
considerably larger Afghan National Army up and running than we
do now. I hope our--your counterparts in Iraq keep an eye on
Afghanistan. This malarkey that we're going to have--my word,
I'm not talking about you guys--this malarkey we're going to
have a stood-up Iraqi Army of x-thousand people in the next 18
months is absolutely bizarre, unless it's totally new. It
hasn't happened any other place we've tried it, including
Afghanistan. What is the realistic number--and this is a case
where humility is very much in order. This is a case--my advice
to you, as your staffer here, is go low so you don't have me
repeating what you said to me later when you've given me a high
number and you're embarrassed by it. OK? What is a realistic
number that we think we can get to to have a trained Afghan
National Army that can set foot outside of Kabul and function
without the support, without the support, of international
security force or American forces? What are we realistically
looking at?
Because the American people got it. They figured it out.
You do one of three things. We supply all the force for
security, we supply it with our allies, or it gets supplied
indigenously by trained forces that represent a new army. Tell
me what we have now and what you realistically look at 12
months from now.
General North. Yes, sir. It's an excellent question. And to
humility, thank you for your comment on our young men and women
in the military, both in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I travel quite a bit to Afghanistan, and every time I go
I'm reminded that we've got the best military in the world--
funded, equipped, trained like no other--and, you know, they're
just absolutely phenomenal.
In regards to realism, there is a difference between
Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq had a military, and some of those
people will be able to be trained into a new Iraqi military.
Afghanistan has over 30 years of militia forces that are, at
best, what we would call local thuggery, in some regards. They
are very capable, very tough, very rough individual soldiers,
but they do not have what we envision to build, which is a
professional, disciplined, led by leadership, trained, and able
to operate in something other than small groups of four to six
people at a time.
Realistically, what we have built is a three-phased
approach that started in May 2002, which was phase one, to
build these initial 15 battalions for a central core----
Senator Biden. For the record, how many in a battalion?
General North. Six-hundred is the goal, sir. And so we--our
plan is to build those, the 15 battalions, by the elections of
June 2004. That is phase one. And then we have a second phase
and a third phase, which takes us out to 2008. The number----
Senator Biden. We're talking about--again, so people
listening to us--because we get--it's amazing how informed the
American public is. We leave here, and I'll get in the train,
and the conductor will ask me, ``Now, how many troops is
that?'' We're talking about 9,000, roughly.
General North. That's correct. And with headquarter staffs,
we look at about 10,000.
Senator Biden. Gotcha.
General North. Now, the number 70,000 came out of Bonn II
from President Karzai and his staff, in concert with our
leadership in the international community and the discussion of
what does Afghanistan really need. It's all tied into DDR and--
--
Senator Biden. DDR?
General North. That's demobilization, disarmament, and
reintegration. As you bring down those militia forces led by
the warlords, the regional leaders, and so the--I can't give
you what we believe today, on the 16th of October, what we
envision in the year 2008.
Senator Biden. I see.
Last, my time's up, but I don't want to leave one piece out
here, Senator Sarbanes asked a very interesting question of
Secretary Rodman last time he was here about the pay rate. Our
understanding is that--and maybe it wasn't you, Mr. Secretary,
but it was--the question was asked the last time we had a
hearing on Afghanistan and discussed the military--it was
asserted that the sum of pay for the average Afghan soldier was
about $50, which was less than what it was for the folks in
there cleaning the barracks. Now, I don't know if that's true
or not. Can you tell us anything, now or for the record, about
whether or not the pay is sufficient to attract them out of the
warlord's band? Because when I spoke to a number of other
members of the cabinet, including the Tajiks, one of the issues
was it's awful hard to get these guys to decide they want to be
in the ANA versus staying with their friendly warlord, both in
terms of spoils, money, and pay. Can you talk to that just a
second, about the pay?
General North. Yes, sir.
Initially, the pay scale for the young recruits was set at
$50 a month. Again, this was an issue that those of us who live
in a society where that's not very much money, we thought that
might be too low. We worked with President Karzai and his
leadership, and he agreed that that was the appropriate amount
at the time. Since then, we have raised the basic pay scale for
the young recruit to $75, and as they graduate, they start
getting more, the NCOs get more, the officers get more.
Senator Biden. For the record, could you submit the pay
scale as envisioned? It would be very helpful.
General North. I'd be happy to do that.
[The following information was subsequently provided:]
General North. There is, of course, a component of the pay
scale that we should all appreciate. One, we're building an
army who not only gets a reasonable pay, but we're providing
for the men of the army--and this is of their own accord in my
discussions with them in the field, the best housing they've
ever lived in, a roof that doesn't leak, hot and cold running
water, and three of the best meals they have ever gotten every
day, as well as a uniform that is a professional uniform. And,
on graduation, they get a green beret that they are extremely
proud of.
So in the macro sense, that pay is a composite. What we get
is the disciplined, integrity soldiers who----
Senator Biden. I wasn't suggesting we're not treating them
well. My only point is, are we being competitive in the
marketplace? And that's the only point I'm raising. Is there
enough incentive under the present system for them to, in
effect, decommission from where they have been and sign up. As
you know, there's a lot of other spoils in the system where----
General North. Absolutely.
Senator Biden [continuing]. Poppy is grown like wheat in
this country.
General North. And it is very tough to compete for those
people who are on the payrolls of a warlord who can pay them
much more. But that's not the caliber of soldier we're looking
for.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Biden.
Senator Hagel.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Gentlemen, welcome.
We appreciate your testimony.
General, you mentioned, following along with Senator
Biden's questions, in your testimony, that you graduated 11
battalions, your objective is to get to 15. Could you give us
some sense of where those 11 battalions are? You mentioned some
are special trained now, but the bulk of those, are they in the
south, southeast? Where are they in Afghanistan?
General North. Senator, the bulk of those battalions right
now are barracked in the Kabul area. These are the central core
battalions in the--from the center part of Kabul out to the
KMTC training center on the eastern portion of Kabul. We
currently, today, have two battalions plus a company in the
field doing training operations in the south and southeast, and
we rotate a battalion in a rotational manner to Gardez to
operate in the area of our PRTs, and that Gardez and to the
southeast of Gardez is well over the July to September
timeframe this past summer, over a thousand members of the ANA
took part in their first combat operations. So we put them in
the field in a rotational basis to upgrade their basic
training, and then in the Pol-e-Charki area in the east of
Kabul, we have barrack capacity when the battalions are not in
the field training to have them in garrison.
Senator Hagel. Any in the west, western part of the----
General North. No, sir, not yet. The west is extremely
stable. If you took a counterclockwise map around the western
part of the country, there's a stable portion. In the north we
have incidents, but the majority of our incidents and the
majority of our focus are in the south and southeast.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Let's stay in the south and southeast for a moment and go
to you, Ambassador Taylor. Both you, I believe, and General
North noted the difficulties we were having in the south and
southeast reconstitution of the Taliban, other forces. I serve
on the Intelligence Committee, so I'm sensitive to the other
issues here. Why is it that they're getting stronger? I think,
in your words, Mr. Ambassador, ``getting worse,'' things are
getting worse in the south and southeast as you led with the
bad news, which we appreciate. Why is that?
Ambassador Taylor. I think for a couple of reasons,
Senator. One is, there is no doubt that the Taliban, probably
supported by some remnants of the al-Qaeda, which you have
heard about in other briefings, are still active. The second
is, in the south, along the border with Pakistan, it is very
difficult for us to--well, it's impossible for us to go across
the border. And the Taliban and the other people who are
disrupting and are killing people on the Afghan side of the
border, can go across the border into Pakistan. So when you
look at a map of where the problems are, what strikes you is,
there's about a 20 kilometer swath of red--red is kind of high
risk, yellow, medium, and blue--the north and the west is
basically blue, there's a swath of yellow, and the red is
really along the Pakistan border. So there's clearly a problem
associated with cross-border operations.
Senator Hagel. May I ask a question on that? And I
apologize. You know, we're all under time constraints here. But
if that's the case, and I'm sure it is the case, you've
identified it. I know it's imperfect, and it's porous all along
there.
I assume, then, you are taking a force structure to match
those reconstitution of Taliban, al-Qaeda, others, working
closer with the Pakistanis, which gets us into how we're doing
there. Give us some assurance that we're doing exactly that, or
something, that is going to deal with this so that the next
time you're up here you're not coming to give us bad news again
that we still have a situation getting worse there, when we
know, as you say, it's a matter of moving back and forth on
that border, especially if the Pakistanis are our allies here.
What are we not doing we should be doing more of? Take all
those pieces in any order.
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, let me do a little bit, but I
know that Secretary Rodman and General North may also have
comments on exactly----
Senator Hagel. You're an old West Pointer Ambassador. Don't
get off on that.
Ambassador Taylor. No, no. I respect that--we do work well
together. One of the things you talked about earlier is how
well the----
Senator Hagel. They teach you that at West Point.
Ambassador Taylor. They do. They do. They teach us some
things.
But on your questions about working with the Pakistanis,
this past week we have seen the beginning of some real progress
that the Pakistani military is putting into the border areas,
putting into border areas where no military has been, whether
it be Pakistani, whether it be Indian, whether it be British,
in 150 years. So they are--the Pakistanis are sending military
forces and getting some forces killed. They had two soldiers
killed there in a sweep of Taliban and al-Qaeda. It's
difficult, as you know, for President Musharraf to go after
Taliban. It's not so difficult to go after al-Qaeda. But he is
doing this, and it is--this is the beginning. Secretary
Armitage--Deputy Secretary Armitage, of course, was just in
Kabul, Kandahar, but also in Islamabad last week, and he had
very clear conversations on this topic with President
Musharraf. And he is very--he is convinced that they are now--
the Pakistanis are now going in the right direction.
Secretary Rodman and General North can describe to you the
military operations that the Coalition has undertaken against
these larger formations of Taliban.
Before I pass it to them, the other thing that is a
problem, that is in answer to your question, ``What is the
problem down there,'' is the slow pace of reconstruction in the
area where the security is worse. It's difficult for NGOs to
work. It's difficult for the international community to work.
It's not impossible. The road that I mentioned, going from
Kabul to Kandahar, goes right through that swath, and we're
taking extraordinary measures to secure ourselves. But we get--
our workers, our construction engineers, our security people
get attacked regularly along that stretch, so--but that just
means it's difficult to work. It's not impossible. We have the
PRTs along the--both in Gardez, hopefully in Ghazni, and we
will in Kandahar, that will provide some security for that. But
the Coalition Forces, as well, are providing security. But----
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Ambassador Taylor [continuing]. I know that Secretary
Rodman----
Senator Hagel. Secretary Rodman.
Mr. Rodman. Just to add, one of the crucial variables is
clearly the cooperation of Pakistan, and it's something we
raise with them constantly. We credit the good faith of the
Pakistani President and leadership when they say that they have
the same interests we do in shutting down the Taliban and al-
Qaeda. And as has been discussed, the objective conditions are
pretty formidable in the border area--the terrain--and the
populations are sympathetic to some of the terrorists. The
operation in Waziristan a couple of weeks ago was the most
important anti-Taliban operation that they have conducted.
So our sense is that the Pakistani Government is committed.
There are elements in the Pakistani Government who we suspect
are sympathetic to the old policy of before 9/11, and that's an
issue. But it's a subject of constant consultation and
discussion, and I have to say, again, the trend is in the right
direction.
Senator Hagel. You say the trend's in the right direction,
but the Ambassador came before us, said things are getting
worse, so I'm a little----
Mr. Rodman. I would say the operation 2 weeks ago was the
most positive and significant Pakistani military operation
against the Taliban, and we consider that a good sign. And I
think we see other signs that they are--the Pakistanis are
coming to grips with the fact that they have to make a clear
decision as a government and enforce it on their own
government.
Senator Hagel. Thank you. General North, would--you have 30
seconds, and I apologize for this. You're worth more than 30
seconds, but I----
General North. In my 30 seconds, my sound bite is, our U.S.
military forces aren't going to match them, we're going to
over-match them.
Senator Hagel. All right, thank you. And one last very
quick answer if you could give it to me, you mentioned the road
between Kandahar and Kabul. Where are we? You were very
bullish, and I agree, and that's a vital lifeline. Where are
we? Are we getting it built? Are we behind schedule, ahead of
schedule?
General North. We are on schedule, Senator. The schedule is
to have it fully paved from Kabul to Kandahar by the end of
December.
Senator Hagel. By the end of----
General North. By the end of this December.
Senator Hagel. This December.
General North. Yes, sir.
Senator Hagel. So you've covered how many miles, then?
General North. We are probably about 200--150, 200 miles.
It is going at about five kilometers a day, is being paved. We
are on schedule to finish that. That's assuming that there is
not a bad security problem, which, as I indicated, there's--
however, we should be--people should be driving Kabul to
Kandahar in 5 hours on a fully paved road by the end of this
year, and it used to--about 2 months ago, when we were there,
it--three months ago--it was 15 hours. This will be a major--so
we are on track now. Next year we'll put more layers on that,
so it lasts 15 years, as opposed to 2 years, but we're going to
get that one paved by the end of December.
Senator Hagel. Well, that's a significant accomplishment. I
congratulate you.
General North. USAID, sir. I will give them credit. They've
done good work on this.
Senator Hagel. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Senator Hagel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Hagel
I thank Chairman Lugar for holding this hearing on Afghanistan.
While much of our attention has been focused on Iraq over the past
year, we cannot lose sight of our interests in helping support the
transition to stability and democracy in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is
the first battle in the war on terrorism, a battle that is joined but
not won, and we cannot fail.
Afghanistan has come a long way in two years. The Taliban has been
driven from power and President Hamid Karzai has given the Afghan
transitional government hope and inspired leadership. But Karzai's
government does not control security throughout Afghanistan. The
security situation is volatile and dangerous. And without security,
there will not be stability and democracy.
In southeastern Afghanistan, in the Kandahar region, the original
regional base of the Taliban, political violence is on the rise. The
Taliban have reappeared and are contributing to these tensions. There
and elsewhere in the country, regional warlords, many connected to the
international trade in illegal narcotics, force their will and
undermine Karzai's authority.
One option to enhance security in Afghanistan is to expand the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul, at least
until a new Afghan army and border patrols are able to do the job. NATO
took over leadership of ISAF in August. Last week, NATO endorsed
expanding ISAF beyond the Kabul. We need to support NATO's efforts.
We are currently debating a supplemental appropriations request
which includes $800 million in aid for Afghanistan. Hopefully it will
pass this week. Even with these additional funds, there is still much
more to do. America cannot shoulder the burden in Afghanistan alone.
Reconstruction in Afghanistan is estimated to cost at least $15 billion
over the next decade. The Tokyo pledging conference in January 2002
produced pledges of $4.5 billion. According to the U.N. Development
Program Donor Assistance Database, donor countries had committed $3.9
billion, and disbursed $1.7 billion. We must encourage our friends and
allies must do more so that the Afghan people experience the full
benefits of liberation.
America's efforts in Afghanistan are directly related to our
interests in winning the war on terrorism, halting the spread of
illegal narcotics, and promoting stability and democracy in central and
South Asia.
I would like to conclude by thanking Senator Lugar for mentioning
the comments by First Lady Laura Bush last week about the contributions
of the University of Nebraska's Center for Afghanistan Studies. One of
our witnesses today, Ambassador Peter Tomsen, was a former faculty
member of that program. The State of Nebraska, and the American people,
are proud of the Center's well-established expertise, long-running
relationship with the Afghan people, and the Center's contributions to
improving educational opportunities for Afghans.
I look forward to the testimony of today's witnesses.
The Chairman. Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Chairman, in order to make the vote,
I'm going to have to ask one question. I regret I couldn't ask
the others. I'll try to followup in writing. But let me just
ask Mr. Taylor and Mr. Rodman.
Why is there such a great disparity, tens of billions of
dollars worth, between the amount of assistance the
administration wishes to devote to Iraq's stabilization and
reconstruction and the amount devoted to Afghanistan? Are
Afghanistan's needs really so much more manageable?
Ambassador Taylor.
Ambassador Taylor. They're not more manageable. They're
less manageable. The time difference, Senator, I think is
important. When we were putting together our request--that is,
the Afghan portion of the supplemental--we were focused, and
are focused, on the time between now and June. And the reason
we're focused on that time period is, that's the time when
we're preparing for elections. We want a moderate government to
emerge from good, solid elections next June. What we're doing
in our acceleration of our work, and it's in the supplemental
appropriation, is to focus on security, improve security, which
is what General North talked about, in terms of accelerating
the ability to train ANA troops, to train more police, move
forward on the DDR, on the disarmament, demobilization,
reintegration program. So that security is one piece, then
these roads that we just talked about. Again, we think that
within 8 months we can put all of that billion dollars to work.
Now, I don't do Iraq, thankfully, but I can tell you that
that $20 billion is over a longer period of time than 8 months.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Rodman.
Mr. Rodman. Just to add to that, there's a difference in
absorptive capacity, given that Afghanistan is a much poorer
country. So to bring it up to an Afghan standard is different
than Iraq, which was more developed. Iraq has infrastructure,
which turns out to be, you know, badly in need of restoration
after years of neglect. So the economic need is different. It's
not clear that Afghanistan could handle orders of magnitude
more than we're providing.
Senator Feingold. I thank the panel.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Russell D. Feingold
I thank Senators Lugar and Biden for holding this important
hearing, and I thank all of the witnesses for being here today. This
week it is particularly important for the committee to focus on
Afghanistan, as the full Senate debates a massive supplemental
appropriations bill that is devoted, primarily, to Iraq. While some in
the administration have been claiming that Iraq is the central battle
in the fight against terrorism--one more justification of dubious
credibility for a misguided policy--a situation that is unquestionably
directly related to the campaign against the forces that attacked this
country on September 11th has, I believe, been neglected. As tremendous
resources and attention are focused on Iraq, the security situation in
Afghanistan is getting worse, and I fear that many of our policy goals
are become more difficult to achieve. So I look forward to this
opportunity to survey the current situation and to hear from the
witnesses before us and my colleagues on the committee about what steps
can be taken to bring our policy onto a firmer footing.
Senator Hagel [presiding]. May I do this, sir? I just got
word we've got about 3 minutes left. And I know you've not
voted, Senator. If you want to run it down a little bit, go
right ahead, but--and then I will hand over my fleeting
authority as Chair of the committee, to the gentleman from New
Jersey, and I will vote. And then the chairman would ask you to
just recess----
Senator Corzine. OK.
Senator Hagel [continuing]. The committee until he comes
back. We'll all be back eventually.
Thank you, Senator.
Senator Corzine [presiding]. Thank you.
I'd ask how the deliverance of international aid, how the
follow-through relative to the Tokyo conference has occurred,
whether pledges have actually--whether the check's in the mail
or the reality of those efforts is followed through.
Ambassador Taylor. Senator, one indication of that is the
Finance Minister, that we talked about earlier, has come to the
conclusion that of that $5 billion that was pledged at Tokyo,
actually $4.5 billion plus a couple of more hundreds of
millions of dollars, to get up to about $5 billion in Tokyo and
subsequently, that that has been committed about probably 90
percent. That is----
Senator Corzine. Committed, but not----
Ambassador Taylor [continuing]. Committed, and a lot of
that is actually in play, is actually working, but committed--
when you're talking about absorptive capacity, as Secretary
Rodman was just talking, it is a matter of beginning the work
on assessing the road, then getting the people in place, and
then that's actually--the work actually gets going. So, yes,
it's in play, it's committed, contractors are moving in.
The short answer, though, is the international community
has come through on those initial Tokyo commitments to the
extent that the Finance Minister Ghani is very concerned that
he does--he's not looking at additional commitments--he doesn't
see additional commitments going out over the next 3 or 4
years. So he would like for us to get back together, as an
international community, and make pledges in response to a new
assessment of ``the needs'' that the World Bank is about to do.
Senator Corzine. OK. I was going to ask whether there were
any garbage trucks, but we'll leave that for another time.
Ambassador Taylor. We're not buying garbage trucks.
Senator Corzine. I think the committee will stand in recess
until we return from the vote.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
The Chairman. This hearing is called to order again. I
apologize to the witnesses and those who are with us in the
hearing for our procedures today, but they're likely to
continue. This is one of those days.
Let me indicate that I know of no Senators presently,
although I could be informed otherwise, who have further
questions of this panel. Now, if I may ask you gentlemen,
however, to stand by temporarily, I would like to recognize the
next panel. We can commence with that testimony; we have the
benefit of that testimony. Some members may return, but many
will stay over for the second vote. It's been my experience
recently that votes often go on well beyond 15, 20, and even 25
minutes. So rather than have all of us wait in suspense, if you
could accommodate us in this way, we would very much appreciate
it.
And I'd just express the appreciation of our panel, to all
three of you, for your testimony, for your forthcoming
responses. So I will excuse you for a moment from the witness
table. If you would, please stand by at least until members
return and we ascertain whether they might have one last
question for you.
At this point, I will recognize the next panel, and that
will include the Honorable Peter Tomsen, former Special Envoy
to Afghanistan, Dr. William J. Durch, co-director of The Future
of Peace Operations Project, Henry L. Stimson Center, and Ms.
Nancy Lindborg, executive vice-president of Mercy Corps, member
of InterAction.
I'm advised that Ambassador Tomsen will return shortly.
Meanwhile, I would like to recognize Dr. Durch. If you would,
please proceed with your testimony. As I indicated to the first
panel, your full statements will be made a part of the record,
so please proceed in any way that you wish.
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM J. DURCH, CO-DIRECTOR, THE FUTURE OF
PEACE OPERATIONS PROJECT, HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER, WASHINGTON,
DC
Dr. Durch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's an honor to
testify before the committee on the question of security in
Afghanistan.
I will submit my testimony for the record and summarize it
briefly here and try not to repeat what's been covered by the
first panel.
The United States has been engaged in Afghanistan for over
2 years now, fighting remnants of al-Qaeda, the Taliban,
promoting political and economic change, but funding of
political stability has been at levels insufficient to promote
rapid recovery. Yet the December 2001 Bonn Agreement is a
schedule for rapid recovery, and, as we've heard, its most
important political milestones are moving looming in 2004. The
people and the peace process both need protection, and we're
finally moving to accelerate the training and equipping of
Afghan security forces to help provide it. But even that
accelerated process is not going to meet the present Bonn
timelines, and direct assistance is needed from ISAF and the
PRTs, which is where I'd like to focus on some of the details,
noting first and briefly some lessons from other conflicts that
bear directly on Afghanistan.
First is the need for local faction leaders to buy into the
peace process. Militia leaders who want to cooperate may not
demobilize their forces unless some sort of change to security
systems is in place. Demilitarization of politics is highly
desirable before national elections to reduce the risk of
return to warfare. And I say, in Afghanistan's case, this would
include specifically the demilitarization of Kabul, as provided
in Bonn.
Third is the importance of cutting off would-be spoilers'
access to commodities they can use to fund resistance to the
peace process. In Afghanistan, that means getting a handle on
opium production, which was 3,400 tons last year, accelerating
to 4,000 this year. Three-quarters of the world's heroin is
sourced in Afghanistan.
The fourth lesson, the need to get neighboring states
onboard. If they play local favorites or take a cut from
illegal commerce, peace and legitimate government most likely
will not survive.
Finally, the great powers, and the United States in
particular, needs to stay engaged. This doesn't guarantee
success, but without it the transition is almost certain to
fail.
In terms of ISAF, in spring 2002 to counter speculation
that expansion would necessarily entail several hundred
thousand troops, my project developed a concept of operations
briefed at the State and Defense offices, to congressional
staff, and NGOs on an ISAF expansion concept. And the most
recent update, which we will post on the Web after this
hearing, calls for an increase to just over 17,000 troops, so
about another 12,000. About 2,700 to provide security in cities
where the U.N. assistance mission is deployed, and we are
deploying PRTs, but the majority, eight- or nine-thousand air
and ground forces, to provide security for repair and use of
roads, as we've been talking about. I think road repair, which
is finally underway, as we have heard, may be the single most
visible and important investment we can make to Afghanistan's
unity and economic growth.
But use of repaired roads will require security. Expanded
ISAF should operate jointly with the Afghan National Army and
with the Interior Ministry's new highway patrol force, and hand
off responsibility to those forces as they gain numbers and
experience.
Germany, as we've heard, has agreed to staff the Gardez
PRT, and prefers, I believe, that it report to NATO ISAF rather
than to Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF]. So this raises the
question, should the PRTs remain under OEF command and control,
or should they be chopped to ISAF now that it's under NATO
command?
The PRT concept has been presented, is highly adaptive to
local conditions. I would suggest that PRTs outside the areas
of greatest insecurity work under NATO ISAF. PRTs in the three
most dangerous regions continue to work for OEF, where a single
chain of command can be crucial. The ISAF highway security
forces on the Kabul/Kandahar road would need to coordinate
closely with OEF, or OEF will need to take on this job until
overall security improves.
I think the PRTs can and should be a kind of trellis for
growing a greater regional security presence, international and
domestic. There's a debate about their functions. The relief
and development community wants and needs security providers.
The PRT planners and commanders argue they can and do act more
effectively on behalf of the central government. However, to
the extent that the PRTs civilianize, then whatever capacity
they have for providing security will probably be limited to
force protection. If ISAF does expand, as suggested, its forces
can assume the principal community security burdens from the
PRTs. I think it would be a good match.
PRTs should usefully emphasize, I think, two sets of
activities--networking and support of law enforcement
infrastructure. PRT commanders need topnotch communications,
not just for themselves, but for the Governor and for his
district officials, and they should be building structures that
civilian aid providers are reluctant or unable to build--
courts, jails, police stations--for use by the police officers
and rule-of-law officials that could be trained at the new
facilities that would be co-located with the PRTs, which I
think is a great idea. They need more ground mobility, probably
some air assets, maybe small unmanned vehicles for
reconnaissance in their areas, and discretionary spending.
The PRTs and their officers are the cutting edge of U.S.
influence at the local level, the avatars of the central
government, and we like to think, since we trust them with the
job, we should trust them with some of the money, provided what
they do is consistent with the Kabul government's development
objectives.
Finally, they need to have public-affairs officers, maybe a
radio broadcast capability, and a small dedicated engineering
team to help them with their work.
Turning to local training, the training program for the
Afghan National Army is going to have 9,000 troops by mid 2004.
As we saw, the national goal is 70,000. Even if training is
accelerated, the nominal force will reach its goal by 2010.
There's welcome acceleration of police training of all
types. These rates will help government goals for police
staffing be achieved by 2006. We might have some trained forces
in the field by the time of the elections. I hope that, if the
supplemental passes, the training facilities can be set up at
breakneck speed so that we might have some trained police in
the field by late winter 2004, because there's a need for
security for the census and for voter registration months and
months before the actual election. And I'm worried that we
won't have sufficient security for that process.
Acceleration of police training is quite welcome, but other
elements of rule of law also need help. There are funds in the
supplemental, but the requested funds for rule of law amount to
36 cents per Afghan. The request for elections and government
support amount to $2.75, roughly speaking, per potential voter.
We plan to pay the national police and soldiers less than $900
a year to provide vital security services, but we're planning
to spend $125,000 per head for expatriate technical advisors,
which may be necessary, but this is a rather great disparity in
compensation.
In the current supplemental, 5 percent less construction
funding for Iraq could more than double the amount of new money
available for reconstruction in Afghanistan. Absorptive
capacity may be constrained, and I do appreciate that, but I
would bet it could absorb more than 36 cents per head for rule
of law. Stability in the country is of vital interest to the
United States. Since time is money and we don't have all the
time in the world, I'd suggest that we use money.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Durch follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. William J. Durch, Senior Associate, The Henry
L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, it is an honor to have been
invited to testify before the committee on the question of security in
Afghanistan and the international community's potential contributions
to it. Since American military operations began just over two years
ago, this Committee has been at the forefront of thinking and action,
in the best bipartisan tradition, to promote America's vital interest
in post-conflict security and stability in Afghanistan. In these
situations we tend to say that ``failure is not an option'' but it's
still a possibility unless we work very hard to avoid it.
The Pashtun-majority half of the country that shares a border with
Pakistan is presently so unstable, for example, that civilian aid
providers cannot access much of it. The United Nations Security
Coordinator has recently declared a substantial part of the South and
Southeast off limits to UN personnel. Attacks on US and allied forces
and aid providers in this part of the country have accelerated sharply
since last spring (see figure 1), as have US and Afghan forces'
engagements of Taliban and Taliban supporters. The border with Pakistan
is porous and many of the Taliban supporters who cross the border to
engage US and Afghan forces are residents of Pakistan's border
provinces. Most rocket and mortar attacks against friendly forces since
the June 2002 Loya Jirga that launched the present transitional
government of Afghanistan have occurred in the Southeast (table 1).
Most of the bomb-related incidents, however, have occurred in or near
Kabul.
The United States has remained engaged in Afghanistan, fighting
remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban and promoting political and
economic change, but funding the latter at levels insufficient to
promote rapid recovery. The December 2001 Bonn Agreement, however, laid
out a schedule for rapid recovery and its most important political
milestones are now looming: new constitution, census, voter
registration, and elections. The people and the peace process both need
protection and, having stressed that such protection needs to be home-
grown, the United States and the international community are finally
moving to accelerate the training and equipping of Afghan national
forces, army and police. Even that accelerated process will not keep
pace with the present Bonn timelines, however. Direct international
help is required: some combination of expanded presence for the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and rapid evolution of
the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept. I would like to focus
my remarks here today on these two security tools. I would like to
start, however, by placing Afghanistan in the context of other post-
conflict peace operations and the lessons that consistently arise from
those operations.
Lessons for Afghanistan from other war-to-peace transitions
Close examination of more than a dozen other internal conflicts and
efforts to help countries make the transition back to a stable peace
yields five important lessons: First, local faction leaders' buy-in to
the peace process is critical; they must be willing to shift their
power struggles from military to political channels and to risk loss of
power in elections. Militia leaders who want to cooperate and become
politicians within the new governing structure may not agree to
demobilize their forces, however, unless some sort of change-to
security system is in place that they consider effective and fair. At
the moment, there is no ``change-to'' security structure for most
localities in Afghanistan. Ad interim, that role may need to be filled
by international peacekeepers, but the faster and more effective are
the training programs for national forces, the more likely will our
friends and allies be to volunteer for such peacekeeping duties because
they will be able to see their relief forces already forming.
The first lesson is closely tied to the second, that
demilitarization of politics is highly desirable before national
elections. If factions' heavy weapons have been cantoned and their
military formations demobilized, there is not much they can do to
promote a rapid return to warfare. That lesson was bitterly learned in
Angola, where more than 300,000 civilians died in a resumption of
fighting after elections that the main rebel leader failed to win.
In the case of Afghanistan, the most urgent case of
demilitarization involves Kabul itself. Only the United States is in a
position to press for the demilitarization of Kabul as provided in the
Bonn Agreement. It should build barracks for Northern Alliance forces,
perhaps at Charikar, between Kabul and the Panjshir Valley, and canton
heavy weapons at Bagram Air Base under American supervision.
The third lesson is the importance of cutting off would-be
spoilers' access to highly portable, high-value commodities that they
can use to fund resistance to the peace process. In Afghanistan, that
means getting a handle on the exploding opium poppy crop (3,400 tons of
opium gum produced last year and more than 4,000 tons expected this
year).\1\ In the past two years, Afghanistan has resumed its former
position as the source of three quarters of the world's heroin, which
now feeds half a million addicts in the immediate region and much of
Europe's heroin consumption, and funds organized criminal cartels and
most likely al Qaeda. Note that, unlike Iraq's main marketable
resource, Afghan heroin is self-aggrandizing (that is, if outsiders and
the government do nothing to hinder it, the market takes off, generates
a narco-criminal economy, provides resources for fundamentalist and
terrorist organizations, and causes major damage locally, regionally,
and globally).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Illicit Drug
Trends 2003 (Vienna, Austria: UNODC, March 2003), pp. 170-180. Owais
Tohid, ``Bumper Year for Afghan Poppies,'' Christian Science Monitor,
July 24, 2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fourth lesson is the need to get neighboring states to support
the peace process in Afghanistan. If they play local favorites, look
away as contraband crosses their borders or take a cut from that
commerce, peace and legitimate government in Afghanistan most likely
will not survive.
Fifth, the great powers, and the United States in particular, need
to stay engaged in the peace process. Such engagement does not
guarantee success--the record of difficult transitions with great power
engagement is mixed--but the historical record elsewhere suggests that,
without it, Afghanistan's transition from war to peace is almost
certain to fail.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ For complete discussion see Stephen John Stedman, Donald
Rothchild and Elizabeth M. Cousens, Ending Civil Wars (Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 1-66.
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Implementing Peace in Afghanistan: the role of ISAF and the PRTs
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), now under NATO
command, and the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept are the
primary quick impact tools at the disposal of the international
community for helping the Afghan government provide security in key
locales during this critical transitional period, while national
security forces are trained.
ISAF Expansion
The Afghan government, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA), and most of the NGO aid providers in the country have
advocated expansion of ISAF beyond Kabul since early 2002. In spring
2002, to counter speculation that such expansion would necessarily
entail several hundred thousand troops, and to give the ISAF debate
some reasonable analytical underpinnings, my project at the Stimson
Center drafted a concept of operations that replicated ISAF-Kabul in
seven other cities, taking into account their population and security
situation relative to Kabul. We briefed the results to key offices in
the Departments of State and Defense, to congressional staff, and to
NGOs, and have posted them on the web, with periodic updates. The
concept calls for an increase in ISAF personnel from the present 5,000
to just over 17,000 troops (for results of the latest update, see
figure 2 and tables 2 and 3). Some of these troops (about 2,700) would
provide security in cities where UNAMA has its regional offices and the
initial PRTs have been deployed. Note that each of these urban areas of
operation would be fairly circumscribed, drawn to encompass the town,
its adjoining airport, and a modest buffer zone, amounting to 1,000-
1,500 square kilometers.
The majority of expanded ISAF forces (8-9,000 air and ground
forces) would provide security for the repair and use of the roads
linking those cities together. The numbers needed for this task were
derived from standard NATO models for protecting lines of
communication, with added air support for surveillance and rapid
reaction. As national forces come on line, the US/international
contribution to this task could increasingly revert to tactical air
cover and intelligence (helicopter mobility and reinforcement,
helicopter reconnaissance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV] surveillance
assets). Expanded ISAF should operate jointly, to the extent possible,
with the Afghan national army and the Interior Ministry's highway
patrol force, and with the Afghan national police, and hand off
responsibility to those forces as they gain numbers and experience.
In mid-2002, the US government lifted its objections to the
expansion of ISAF; in August 2003, NATO formally assumed command of the
force; and, on Monday, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to
expand its mandate to permit operations outside Kabul. It is now up to
the North Atlantic Council to do so. Germany would like to send 450
troops to the northeastern city of Kunduz, where the UN's pilot militia
demobilization and disarmament effort, the Afghanistan New Beginnings
Program, is slated to start soon. It would prefer that deployment be
under the aegis of NATO and the UN mandate for ISAF.
PRT Command and Control
Since Germany has also agreed to staff the Kunduz PRT, this raises
an interesting question of command and control. Should the PRTs remain
under the command of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or should they
perhaps transfer to ISAF, now that NATO provides a standing framework
for ISAF planning and operations? What will better facilitate tie-ins
to central government development plans, to UNAMA, to the training and
equipping of Afghan security forces, and to the extension of the
central government's authority, in fact and in perception? As the PRTs
in the northern tier of the country internationalize (British in Mazar,
New Zealanders in Bamiyan, Germans in Kunduz), are they better viewed
as extensions of OEF or as elements of a separate post-conflict
peacekeeping and reconstruction effort?
Because the PRT concept has been presented as highly adaptive to
local conditions, I would suggest that PRTs outside the areas of
greatest insecurity--that is, outside the South, Southeast, and East--
work under NATO/ISAF but that PRTs in the three most dangerous regions
continue to work for OEF, because a single chain of command can be
crucial where combat is a daily risk. NATO and OEF should be able to
work out cross-support arrangements for NATO's PRTs, although if the
force structure sketched above were to be implemented, ISAF could
provide its own cross-support in most circumstances.
PRT Needs and Priorities
The PRTs' primary goals are local reassurance and extension of
central government influence. They can and should also be a trellis for
growing a greater security presence, both international and local.
There is debate about the details of their functions, however. The
relief and development community wants and needs security providers,
not competing provision of assistance, but they themselves may or may
not be seen locally as acting in the name of the Afghan government--as
opposed to their home government, agency, or organization. PRT planners
and commanders argue that they can and do act on behalf of the central
government, although it is not clear how local actors actually credit
PRT activities--as support from the central government or from
Washington. I sympathize with both sets of arguments, make just two
points: First, to the extent that the PRTs civilianize, with
development experts, agronomists, veterinarians, and the like, then
whatever capacity they have for providing security--which averages one
or two platoons of troops per PRT--will necessarily be directed to
force protection and not community security. Second, if ISAF does
expand as suggested, its forces can assume the principal community
security burdens in their defined areas of operation.
The PRTs can usefully emphasize two sets of activities in any case:
networking and support of law enforcement infrastructure. PRT
commanders need top-notch communications, not only for reachback to OEF
in dangerous circumstances but to promote communications within their
areas of operations. That means satellite phones for use by the
governor and his district officials, in the absence of landlines or
commercial cellular service (which will appear as soon as security is
good enough to protect its relay towers). It means building structures
that civilian aid providers are reluctant or unable to build: courts,
jails, and police stations for use by the officers trained at the new
facilities to be co-located with several PRTs.
To facilitate their work, the PRTs also should be given better
ground mobility and spending authority. Equip them with Humvees instead
of commercial 4X4s. Give them some air assets (small Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles would be ideal). Give them discretionary spending authority up
to some ceiling amount, say, $25,000 per project. The PRTs and their
officers are the cutting edge of US influence at the local level and
the avatars of the central government. Since we trust them with the
job, we should trust them with the money to do the job, provided what
they do is consistent with the Kabul government's development
objectives.
Finally, each PRT should have a public affairs officer to keep the
public and local government informed of what they are doing and where
they are headed. Consider giving each a radio broadcast capacity--
shortwave or FM as indicated by terrain and local listening habits.
Give them each a small, dedicated engineering team, if reconstruction
is to remain in their portfolios.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ I am grateful for a number of these ideas and observations to
Lt. Col. Christopher Allen, former commander of the Gardez PRT. Cited
with permission.
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Rebuilding Afghanistan's security sector
The 18 month old training program for the Afghan National Army
(ANA) will have produced ten battalions, about 6,000 professional
troops, by the end of 2003 and aims to have another 3,000 trained by
mid-2004 when national elections are presently scheduled. The national
goal, set last year at the ``Bonn II'' meeting, is 70,000 soldiers. If
training is accelerated, as proposed by the Administration, to around
10,000 recruits per year, the nominal force goal will be reached in
2010.
There is welcome acceleration of police training of all types in
the Administration's plans. Police training courses are designed to
last about 16 weeks, meaning that each of eight training centers co-
located with a PRT should be able to train between 1,500 and 2,700
police candidates per year (at 750-900 officer candidates per class).
The justification for the supplemental suggests a breakout of 18,000
national police, 4,000 border police, and 2,600 highway patrol officers
trained annually. These rates will meet government goals for police
staffing by 2006 and provide a baseline force to help secure
Afghanistan's electoral process. That process must get underway soon in
preparation for the scheduled June elections, however. By late winter
2004, the training program may have graduated its first class, assuming
that the facilities can be set up at breakneck speed this fall. So we
are looking at perhaps 6,000 newly trained national police to secure a
census (in a country where ethnic background matters a great deal and
the last census predates the civil war) and voter registration; and
perhaps 12,000 by next summer to secure the election (including
protection for candidates, voters, voting places, and integrity of
ballot boxes and vote counts). Localities may therefore have to rely in
large part on local security forces and it is very important that these
forces, and those who pay them, work on the side of transitional
government.
While the acceleration of police training is needed and welcome,
the amount of money proposed to rebuild the other institutions of law
enforcement and criminal justice seems rather meager. Funds requested
for rule of law ($10 million) amount to 36 cents per Afghan, yet
Afghanistan's formal justice system is essentially nonexistent. The
request for elections and governance support amounts to roughly $2.75
per potential voter (using U.S. Census Bureau population estimates).\4\
By contrast, the supplemental requests roughly $125,000 per expatriate
technical adviser. Such advice may be needed but compares rather
unfavorably with the roughly $1,300 per year that AID pays its national
hires or the $840/year that we plan to pay national police and soldiers
to provide vital security services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ U.S. Census Bureau, ``IDB Summary Demographic Data for
Afghanistan,'' available online at : www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/
idbsum?cty=AF
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, in the current supplemental request, 5% less reconstruction
funding for Iraq could more than double the amount of new money
available for reconstruction in Afghanistan. Stability in Afghanistan
is a vital interest of the United States. Since time is money and we do
not have all the time in the world to achieve stability, we better use
money.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Durch.
Ambassador Tomsen.
STATEMENT OF HON. PETER TOMSEN, FORMER U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY AND
AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN, 1989-1992 AND U.S. AMBASSADOR TO
ARMENIA, 1995-1998, McLEAN, VA
Ambassador Tomsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this hearing. Thank you also
for your leadership and commitment in helping Afghanistan to
attain the stability, peace, security, and economic revival it
so desperately needs and so richly deserves.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ambassador Tomsen. The bipartisan Afghan Freedom Support
Act, which Senator Hagel took the lead in sponsoring in the
Senate, and this committee, under the able leadership of
yourself, sir, and former Chairman Biden, advanced to passage,
laid out a clear and comprehensive road map toward success in
Afghanistan. The President signed the AFSA into law in 2002.
Mr. Chairman, there are recent indications that the
Administration is belatedly attempting to implement the
farsighted provisions of the Afghan Freedom Support Act. Since
early September, the Administration is finally matching
concrete action with rhetoric and promises. Its request for
$1.2 billion for Afghanistan in the emergency supplemental,
joined with the $600 million for Afghanistan in the fiscal year
2004 budget, demonstrate the necessary high level of serious
attention--determination and purpose, which has been lacking
since the destruction of the Taliban/al-Qaeda regime. The
administration's approach appears correctly aimed at restoring
lost momentum in Afghanistan, addressing the growing security
threat posed by the ominous Taliban comeback, instilling
interagency discipline both in Washington and Afghanistan while
giving fresh impetus to reconstruction.
Mr. Chairman, I have two suggestions for action by the
committee for you to consider. You've already mentioned the
first one. Thank you, sir.
The second one is Senate support for increased funding for
Afghanistan in priority areas. In this regard, let me draw
attention to the House Appropriations Committee's bill, which
has been reported out. It recommends more funding than the
President has requested in a number of critical areas,
including education, road-building, private-sector development,
irrigation, power generation, support for the Karzai
government's infrastructure, elections, health, anti-narcotics,
and police. Even if both Senate and House approve these
increases, the emergency supplemental request for Afghanistan
reconstruction will still be about 2 percent of the $87
billion.
I would suggest that additional funds also be provided for
expansion of the PRTs. The $50 million requested by the
administration will prove severely inadequate to meet the
ambitious goal of doubling the number of PRTs and ensuring that
the civil affairs projects they implement are not under-funded.
In this connection, I would mention that only $14 million was
allocated for fiscal year 2003 implementation of civil affairs
projects by the PRTs in Afghanistan. The newspapers, New York
Times, Washington Post, other media, report the outstanding
General Petreas' comments in Northern Iraq, only Northern Iraq,
and he says he's spent in 6 months over $25 million so far in
that limited area.
I think I would urge some caution in some of the comments
earlier that Afghanistan's absorptive capacity is limited. I
don't think it is. I think that a lot more could have been
spent and should have been spent so far.
The New York University study, which was headed up by
Barney Rubin, mentions that only $197 million has actually been
spent on projects in Afghanistan to date, despite the $4.5
billion that was pledged.
I have some comments on security, but it's already been
covered in your statement and by others at this hearing.
I would like to suggest two other cautions related to
political as well as security aspects, Mr. Chairman. The first
is that the United States keep out of the Afghan political
briar patch. The U.S. and the international community have a
golden opportunity to support the legitimately chosen and
internationally recognized moderate Afghan regime headed by
President Karzai. President Karzai, Foreign Minister Abdullah,
and their moderate colleagues reflect the democratic
aspirations and moderate outlook of most Afghans. The new U.S.
initiative must, however, avoid a too-tight U.S. embrace of
President Karzai and his regime. Unfortunately, steps by senior
U.S. officials in Afghanistan have already given ammunition to
allegations by the Taliban and other opposition forces that
President Karzai is an American puppet. Such direct U.S.
involvement in Afghan internal politics is ultimately
counterproductive. Afghans want their President to be following
his own agenda, not that of a foreign power.
Unfortunately, an Afghan perception of American
interference emerged from last year's loya jurga. One Afghan
participant in that important event, whom I respect, told me
that of the 1,500 Afghan loya jurga delegates, 1,000 went home
to their villages stating that the Americans manipulated the
loya jurga.
The bottom line is that we should not follow the examples
of British, Soviet, and Pakistani king-making in Afghanistan.
We should remain aloof from Afghan politics, even while
assisting the legitimate Karzai government. We must encourage
cooperation and compromise and let the Afghans themselves
determine the balances in their leadership.
The second caution is a note that the U.S. initiative's new
push should also avoid repeating the blow-back effect created
during the Afghan-Soviet war and the Taliban period. Both
Clinton administrations and the first year of the George W.
Bush administration outsourced most of U.S./Afghan policy to
Pakistan. And Pakistan's policy, managed by the Pakistani
Military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI,
promoted Afghan radicals supported by Pakistani extremist
parties, and, later, al-Qaeda.
Some argue that President Musharraf has been doing as much
as he can since publicly siding with the United States and the
war on terrorism. I don't agree with that. I think President
Musharraf can do more. He should not be permitted to dodge
criticism of ISI's continuing support to the Taliban and other
anti-Karzai radical Afghan militants based in Pakistan.
Last year, President Musharraf, addressing a news
conference, took responsibility for guiding the ISI. The
September 7, 2002, edition of the Pakistani Daily News quoted
him as stating, ``The government formulates policies and tells
ISI what to do. They, ISI, do not do on their own. Hence, if
there is anything wrong, the government is to blame, not the
ISI.'' Therefore, it's most important that the United States
not again be drawn into Pakistan's own maneuvering to put its
favorite Afghans in Kabul.
There are recent developments which, once again, have
raised Afghan suspicions on this score, and I can go into them
if you wish.
Let me end by stating that Afghan reconstruction, when it's
successful, will have tremendous regional and global benefits
for the United States. Success in Afghanistan, Mr. Chairman, is
often set in the context of negative results, such as counter-
terrorism, counter-narcotics, ending violations of human and
gender rights. These are all worthy goals and in U.S. interests
to pursue. But success in Afghanistan will also create positive
results for the region, for the United States, and for the
world. Afghanistan's turmoil has long been an obstacle to
regional economic and democratic development. A peaceful,
developing Afghanistan could instead become a facilitator of
regional economic and democratic development.
Afghanistan is located at the center of Eurasia. Global
trade, transportation, and energy corridors potentially could
crisscross a stable Afghanistan promoting economic cooperation
rather than geopolitical competition among the nearby great
powers of Eurasia. The resulting jump in Eurasian trade through
Afghanistan would encourage the movement of ideas, including
free market democracy along the trade routes, much as Buddhism
and, later, Christianity spread through Asia via the maze of
Eurasian Silk Road trading conduits 2,000 years ago.
The new approach by the administration could, thus,
usefully include a long-term Afghan strategy, which this
committee has recommended previously. This strategy would
incorporate broader regional goals to parallel Afghanistan's
reconstruction goals. It is not farfetched to envision a future
regional ASEAN-type free-trade zone in Central Asia, a U.S.
Government-supported track-2 process toward this goal, or a
Helsinki-style conference in the region to assist stability,
economic cooperation, human rights, and open communication
among the regional states surrounding Afghanistan.
Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by expressing hope that
Congress will approve the administration's request for
additional funds for Iraq and Afghanistan. Success in
Afghanistan will encourage success in Iraq, and vice versa. To
repeat that common refrain, failure is not an option, either in
Afghanistan or in Iraq.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Tomsen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Peter Tomsen, Former United States Special
Envoy and Ambassador to Afghanistan, 1989-1992, United States
Ambassador to Armenia, 1995-1998
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for this hearing.
Thank you also for your leadership and commitment in helping
Afghanistan to attain the stability, peace, security and economic
revival it so desperately needs and so richly deserves.
The bipartisan Afghan Freedom Support Act (AFSA) which Senator
Hagel took the lead in sponsoring in the Senate, and this Committee
under the able leadership of Chairman Lugar and former Chairman Biden
advanced to passage, laid out a clear and comprehensive roadmap toward
success in Afghanistan. The President signed the AFSA into law in
December, 2002. The bill correctly assumed that the well-executed,
quick, American-led military victory over the Taliban-Al Qaeda was only
the first of multiple innings. As in Iraq, securing that victory has
also entailed planning and executing a successful reconstruction
strategy to succeed in subsequent innings.
To this end, AFSA called on the Administration to formulate a
comprehensive Afghan policy and to provide sufficient resources to
fulfill America's share of the costs of Afghan reconstruction. It
correctly stressed the importance of Afghan institution rebuilding,
Afghan ownership of the reconstruction process and careful interagency
coordination to ensure that State, DOD, USAID and the CIA would all
read from the same sheet of music in rebuilding Afghanistan. The bill
recommended the creation of a Coordinator in the State Department to
oversee interagency cooperation. The AFSA further stressed the
importance of ensuring women's rights and implementing an effective
anti-narcotics policy. It set aside one billion dollars for ISAF
expansion to strengthen the hand of the legitimate national government
in Kabul and to weaken the power of the warlords in Afghanistan's
regions.
These sensible recommendations in Congress' Afghan Freedom Support
Act were not just pulled out of a hat. They were the product of a
series of hearings in both Houses of Congress and a great deal of
focused, hard work and well informed deliberation by Senators, members
of Congress and their staffs.
Mr. Chairman, until just last month, most policy and operational
elements in the AFSA had so far either not been implemented, or had
been only marginally implemented. In Washington and Afghanistan, drift,
policy incoherence, interagency compartmentalization and squabbling,
unfulfilled promises, plus under-funded, slow and poorly managed
execution of reconstruction projects continued to characterize the
Administration's approach to Afghanistan--two years after the U.S.-led
coalition's brilliant military victory over the Taliban and Al Qaeda,
and nine months after passage of the AFSA.
a fresh u.s. initiative
Mr. Chairman, there are recent indications that the Administration
is attempting to reverse the drift in its Afghan policy, restore lost
momentum, address the growing security threat posed by the ominous
Taliban comeback, instill interagency discipline in both Washington and
in Afghanistan, and give real impetus to reconstruction. We can lament
that these initiatives did not immediately follow up the military
victory over the Taliban almost two years ago. We can lament that
Congress' recommendations on problems of under-funding, interagency
disunity and lack of a coherent umbrella strategy on Afghanistan
identified in last year's AFSA were mostly ignored.
It is, therefore, most welcome that, since early September, the
Administration is finally matching concrete action with rhetoric and
promises. Its request for $1.2 billion for Afghanistan in the Emergency
Supplemental, joined with the $600 million for Afghanistan in the FY
'04 Budget, demonstrate the necessary high level of serious attention,
determination, and purpose which has been lacking since the destruction
of the Taliban-Al Qaeda regime.
request for senate action
In June, 2002, this Committee stepped up to the plate and
cooperated closely with its counterparts on Chairman Henry Hyde's
Committee in the House to obtain congressional approval of the AFSA.
Below are two recommendations which the Committee could now undertake
to support the Emergency Supplemental. Early attention to these
recommendations in the Senate or in Conference would further strengthen
execution of AFSA's key provisions.
(a) Fortify Ambassador Taylor's position as Coordinator of
non-military assistance to Afghanistan. Ambassador Taylor's
ability to manage reconstruction programs would be
significantly strengthened by placing all non-military funds
for Afghanistan in an account which he supervises. Different
agencies and offices scattered around the government continue
to separately manage their own budgets. This omission has added
to the bureaucratic disunity, confusion and red tape which have
undermined our economic, humanitarian, democracy and security
programs in Afghanistan. Ambassador Taylor brilliantly managed
the U.S. assistance programs for the Newly Independent States
before being asked to assume his current responsibilities on
Afghanistan. He is thoroughly acquainted with the U.S.
assistance bureaucracy; he is known and respected by his
counterparts in the international assistance community.
Centralizing the non-military assistance budget for Afghanistan
under Coordinator Taylor will significantly upgrade the
efficiency and quality of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan.
(b) Senate support for increased funding for Afghanistan in
priority areas. The House Appropriations Committee has reported
out a bill which recommends more funding than the President has
requested in a number of critical areas, including in
education, private sector development and power generation,
support for the Karzai government's infrastructure, elections,
health, anti-narcotics and police. Even if both Senate and
House approve these increases, the Emergency Supplemental
requests for Afghanistan will still be less than 2% of the $87
billion. I would suggest that additional funds also be provided
for expansion of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).
The $50 million requested by the Administration will prove
severely inadequate to meet the ambitious goal of doubling the
number of PRTs and ensuring that the civil affairs projects
they implement are not under-funded.
rising security threats challenge economic, democratic progress
The Administration's initiative on Afghanistan will need to give
priority attention to improving security. The Taliban have regrouped.
Staging from Pakistan, Taliban attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces,
local Afghan government officials and international aid workers have
eroded or stopped reconstruction activity in many areas along the
Afghan-Pakistan border. The Taliban, in cooperation with Al Qaeda and
supported by elements in the Pakistani ISI and Pakistani radical Muslim
parties, will likely next focus on provinces adjoining Kabul as well as
Kabul itself. Confrontations between warlords in some regions of
Afghanistan and increasing criminal activity further undermine
security.
These worrisome security trends could postpone the Bonn
Conference's roadmap of a constitutional Loya Jirga in December and
Afghan elections in 2004. Deteriorating security will also block or
delay implementation of women's' programs, from school attendance to
seeking employment opportunities outside the home. Unable to get their
produce to market due to insecure roads, Afghan farmers will plant more
opium and sell it to the sophisticated opium mafia operating from
Pakistan, Central Asia and Russia. The disarmament, demobilization and
re-integration (DDR) process could also be further delayed.
The Administration has wisely decided to give more attention to
rebuilding Afghanistan's national police force. This emphasis will
improve security throughout Afghanistan, undercut the warlords' local
monopoly of power, and nicely complement the training and equipping of
the Afghan army. NATO ISAF deployment outside Kabul, which the United
Nations Security Council has just approved, will also buttress security
in Afghanistan.
some positive developments
Mr. Chairman, Administration officials from today's earlier panel
have described in detail the Administration's fresh initiative to
regain lost momentum in Afghanistan. This effort will be bolstered by a
number of positive developments in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan enjoyed a bumper wheat crop this year. Two million
refugees have returned--the largest voluntary repatriation of refugees
ever recorded. Sharing of revenue with the Kabul government began last
year with $80 million remitted. So far, about $140 million has been
transferred by warlords to the central government this year. There
appears to be a consensus building on a division of labor between NGOs
and the PRTs. Kabulis, assisted by some foreign investors, are
beginning to restore small business activity which is contributing to a
surge in trade, shopping, and construction in Kabul. Some long-delayed
mega-projects are finally going forward. President Bush's intervention
forced acceleration of work by USAID contractors on the long-delayed
repair of the Kabul-Kandahar road. Millions of Afghan children are back
at school. If security improves, the Bonn process can continue along
its implementation path, although the 2004 elections will almost
certainly choose a President, not a Parliament.
u.s. must keep out of the afghan political briar patch
The U.S. and the international community have a golden opportunity
to support the legitimately chosen and internationally recognized
moderate Afghan regime headed by President Karzai. President Karzai,
Foreign Minister Abdullah and their moderate colleagues reflect the
democratic aspirations and moderate outlook of most Afghans. The new
American initiative's goal to strengthen the Karzai regime and its
reach into Afghanistan's regions and provinces will have beneficial
effects in both the short and long run. As that government revives
Afghan institutions and expands its economic and security presence
outside Kabul, warlord rule and radical Taliban influence will slowly
weaken.
The new U.S. initiative must, however, avoid a tight U.S. embrace
of President Karzai and his regime. Unfortunately, steps by senior U.S.
officials in Afghanistan have already given ammunition to allegations
by the Taliban and other opposition forces that President Karzai is an
American puppet. Such direct U.S. involvement in Afghan internal
politics is ultimately counterproductive. Afghans want their President
to be following his own agenda, not that of a foreign power.
It is well to remember that no country has ever succeeded in
deciding who rules in Afghanistan. The British imposed Shah Shuja--he
was executed by the Afghans. The Soviets for eight years tried to forge
unity between the bickering Khalqi and Parchami Afghan communist
factions. Moscow appointed, removed, assassinated, and exiled numerous
Afghan communist leaders during this period, but never succeeded in
establishing a stable Afghan leadership. In an environment we never
understood, the U.S. reaped similar negative consequences in playing
musical chairs with Saigon generals in the 1960s.
Unfortunately, an Afghan perception of American interference
emerged from last year's Loya Jirga. One Afghan participant in that
important event whom I respect told me that, of the 1,500 Afghan Loya
Jirga delegates, 1,000 went home to their villages stating that the
Americans manipulated the Loya Jirga. A U.S. official recounted to me
that we failed to get a Prime Minister appointed because we were
``outmaneuvered'' by Afghans at the Loya Jirga opposing the idea.
The bottom line is that we should not follow the examples of
British, Soviet and Pakistani kingmaking in Afghanistan. We should
remain aloof from Afghan politics, even while assisting the legitimate
Karzai government. We must encourage cooperation and compromise, and
let the Afghans themselves determine the balances in their leadership.
Our diplomats, military personnel and aid workers should not appear to
be just another faction--or factions--maneuvering within the murky,
emotional Afghan polity. We are far more likely to succeed in
Afghanistan if we are not seen as the latest in the historic queue of
foreigners trying unsuccessfully to select Afghan leaders.
stop outsourcing to pakistan
The new U.S. initiative should also avoid repeating the
``blowback'' effect created during the Afghan-Soviet war and the
Taliban period. Both Clinton Administrations and the first year of the
George W. Bush Administration ``outsourced'' U.S. Afghan policy to
Pakistan. And Pakistan's policy, managed by the Pakistan's military's
Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISI), promoted Afghan radicals
supported by Pakistani extremist parties and later Al Qaeda. Today,
General Musharraf and his allies in the Pakistani military are
following a two-track policy administered by ISI of: (a) cooperating
with the U.S. in hunting down Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan, most of
them foreigners, and (b) continuing to preserve their two-decade-long
investment in radical Afghans, including the Taliban, and the
virulently anti-American Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In the 1980s and 1990s,
Pakistan's ISI, with Osama bin Ladin and Pakistani religious parties,
constructed the extremist Muslim infrastructure straddling the Afghan-
Pakistani frontier. That infrastructure continues to harbor almost all
of the Taliban cabinet, Hekmatyar, and probably Osama bin Ladin
himself.
Some argue that President Musharraf has been doing as much as he
can since publicly siding with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. But
President Musharraf can do more. He should not be permitted to dodge
criticism of ISI's continued support to the Taliban and other anti-
Karzai radical Afghan militants based in Pakistan. Last year, President
Musharraf, addressing a news conference, took responsibility for
guiding the ISI. The September 7, 2002 edition of the Pakistani daily
``News'' quoted him as stating: ``The government formulates policies
and tells ISI what to do. They (ISI) do not do on their own. Hence, if
there is anything wrong, the government is to be blamed, not the ISI.''
The U.S. should not again be drawn into Pakistan's own maneuvering
to put its favored Afghans in Kabul. In the 1980s and 1990s, the CIA
coordinated with ISI in supporting the Afghan extremists, in particular
Hekmatyar, while keeping Afghan moderates such as Hamid Karzai and
Abdul Haq at arms length. After 9/11, moderate Afghan leaders were
stunned when Secretary of State Colin Powell at an Islamabad news
conference seemed to be promoting Pakistan's agenda in calling for
Taliban representation in the post-Taliban government. During CENTCOM
commander Tommy Frank's November, 1991 war strategy visit to Islamabad,
the CIA introduced Afghan warlord Gul Agha to him as one deserving U.S.
support. Gul Agha, with CIA and U.S. Special Forces backing, was
subsequently able to re-occupy the governor's headquarters in Kandahar.
President Karzai recently managed to replace Gul Agha, but only after
seventeen months of the warlord's corrupt, despotic rule which
witnessed a resurgence of Taliban presence in the Kandahar region. This
month's news reports about the release of the former Taliban Foreign
Minister, Mullah Mutawakil, from an American prison in Kandahar has
reignited Afghan suspicions that Islamabad and Washington are again
attempting to manipulate Afghan politics.
afghan reconstruction: regional and global benefits
Success in Afghanistan is often set in the context of negative
results, such as counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, ending violation
of human and gender rights. These are all worthy goals and in U.S.
interests to pursue.
But success in Afghanistan will also create positive results, for
the region, for the U.S and for the world.
Afghanistan's turmoil, for example, has long been an obstacle to
regional economic and democratic development. A peaceful, developing
Afghanistan could instead become a facilitator of regional economic and
democratic development.
Afghanistan is located at the center of Eurasia. Global trade,
transportation and energy corridors potentially could criss-cross a
stable Afghanistan, promoting economic cooperation rather than geo-
political competition among the nearby Great Powers of Eurasia. As in
the Silk Road era, Afghanistan could be the connecting point for trade
along continental North-South and East-West axes, bringing together
markets and economics, moving Caspian basin and Russian Siberian
resources to resource-starved South Asia, and moving Chinese products
west to the Middle East and Europe.
The resulting jump in Eurasian trade through Afghanistan would
encourage the movement of ideas, including free market democracy, along
the trade routes--much as Buddhism and later Christianity spread
through Asia via the maze of Silk Road trading conduits two thousand
years ago. Eventual rising living standards and middle class
development in the broader Eurasian region would follow, reinforcing
democratic and free market currents. So would the success of Karzai
government in restoring Afghanistan to the democratic track it was on
before the Soviet invasion ushered in more than two decades of war.
The Administration's new approach could thus usefully include a
long-term Afghan strategy which will incorporate broader regional goals
to parallel Afghanistan reconstruction goals. The two sets of
objectives would reinforce one another. Bold creativity and thinking
big could produce lasting benefits. It is not far-fetched to envision a
future regional ASEAN-type free trade zone in Central Asia; a U.S.
government-supported track II process toward this goal; or a Helsinki-
style conference in the region to assist stability, economic
cooperation, human rights and open communication among the regional
states surrounding Afghanistan. The Helsinki conference model could
also begin the process of recognizing controversial but de facto
borders, including the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan and
the Line of Control separating Kashmir. Many South Asian and Western
scholars believe that giving international legality to the Durand Line
and the Line of Control is the only way to solve these disputes. A
broadly inclusive Helsinki-style regional conference would give
``cover'' to leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to conclude
productive boundary negotiations. Once the negotiations are underway,
the International Court of Justice in The Hague could assist the
parties in reaching a final resolution.
Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by expressing hope that Congress will
approve the Administration's request for additional funds for Iraq and
Afghanistan. Success in Afghanistan will encourage success in Iraq, and
vice-versa. Failure is not an option in either country.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ambassador Tomsen.
The predicted second vote has commenced, which means that
my colleagues are probably voting and hopefully will be
returning very shortly. I think in fairness to our witnesses,
we will recess temporarily again so that you will be heard in
full and hopefully by a larger audience, Ms. Lindborg. And
then, as Senators return now, if some have questions for our
previous panel, they may wish to raise those. Hopefully, we'll
have some stability after the second vote, and proceed in a
more orderly way with each of our witnesses in our questions.
So, for the moment, the hearing is recessed again, and we
will be back shortly.
[Recess.]
The Chairman. The hearing is called to order again.
Let me ask Senator Biden if he has additional questions for
the first panel. I asked them, and they have patiently stayed
in reserve.
Senator Biden. I apologize, gentlemen. We had back-to-back
votes, and we were being importuned on the floor by an upcoming
vote that relates to things that you have some interest in.
No, I thank you for waiting. But with your permission, Mr.
Chairman, I may have one or two questions in writing. And,
general, I'd like to explore, in a written question, timetables
with you. Again, not looking to hold you down to precise--but
just to get a sense of what we're looking at, in terms of, (a)
the possibility of expanding ISAF, what NATO is looking--what
we're looking down the road and hoping for, and what the ANA is
likely to look like. And then I want to talk a little bit about
police forces. But I will not do that with you now. I may do a
few questions. No hurry in getting back on it. Doesn't have to
be in right away, but I would like it for the record. OK?
And I thank you very much. I apologize for you having to
wait for me to come back.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Biden.
Obviously, we're delighted for you to stay as long as you
wish, but we thank you all, and the panel is excused from
official duty at this point. We hope you'll be responsive to
questions from Senator Biden and others in writing when they
come.
Thank you very much.
Now, we have had initial statements by Dr. Durch and by
Ambassador Tomsen, and I'll call now upon Ms. Lindborg for her
statement.
Thank you for your patience.
STATEMENT OF MS. NANCY LINDBORG, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT,
MERCY CORPS, MEMBER OF INTERACTION, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Lindborg. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Biden. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak about
the challenges in Afghanistan. And thanks especially for the
continued leadership and commitment that both of you have shown
in this issue. It's been very appreciated.
The burden of going last, I'll try not to be too
repetitive, but I will offer a slightly different perspective,
which is one from an NGO that's worked in Afghanistan since
1986, which is the case for a number of our NGO colleagues. And
I've just returned, and we have, until recently, worked without
serious incident in Afghanistan--under the chaos of the
mujadin, under the rule of the Taliban--but in just the last 10
months, Mercy Corps alone has had two staff members killed,
four staff members kidnaped, gunfire sprayed at our vehicles,
two cars burned, and a bomb lobbed at our sub-offices. And
other agencies have had similar experiences. Since September
2002, armed attacks against the assistance community have gone
from about one a month to a current average of one every 2
days. Ten aid workers have been murdered since March.
And I have with me here the latest 15-page weekly summary
from our NGO security network that summarizes the many
bombings, kidnapings, robberies, and killings of Afghan
citizens and army and police members that don't make it into
the headlines, the night letters that are posted at mosques
warning communities not to cooperate with assistance programs.
And on October 6, there was a notice posted on two mosques in
Kandahar city warning all staff members of aid agencies to quit
their jobs within 6 days.
Currently, half of the country's 32 provinces are currently
deemed high risk for aid work, according to UNAMA. It is
clearly in the best interest of a confluence of bad actors--the
poppy growers, the Taliban, and the warlords, and various power
brokers--to keep the country destabilized. And as increasing
parts of the country are declared to be no-go zones by both
national and international assistance workers, communities are
left with decreasing confidence in the future of the new
Afghanistan.
Of particular concern is the impact of this on the Bonn
process, which others have spoken about. I think that basically
in the 22 months since the Taliban failed, the international
community has failed to provide the two essential ingredients
for both security and democracy, as this hearing is focused on,
and that's security in a serious and committed way, and enough
financial assistance.
And this week, I'm pleased both by the comments of the
previous panel, but by the two important opportunities that we
have to signal our commitment to a safe and democratic
Afghanistan. One is the unanimous resolution passed by the U.N.
Security Council on Monday that enables the NATO-led ISAF to
expand. And I know that both of you have been very vocal about
the need to do this. And hopefully now there will be no further
barriers to doing so. And coupled with the opportunity to put
additional funding into Afghanistan, I'm hopeful that that will
help us turn the tide.
I think, as you both know, Afghanistan has been seriously
underfunded as it has struggled to emerge from the conflicts.
There has been a--if you compare it with the per-capita
spending in recent conflicts, such as Rwanda, East Timor,
Kosovo, Bosnia, where there was an average of $250 per person
on an annual basis, in 2002, there was an average investment of
$64 per person in Afghanistan, which is a serious and troubling
comparison.
The additional funds that the supplemental that you're
currently discussing provides for Afghanistan are essential and
can push forward a number of critical programs. I understand
there's been an amendment put forward just this morning by
Senators Biden and Byrd that would put an additional $387
million into the request, and I urge you to support the request
at that higher level.
However, ending the----
Senator Biden. Just for the record, so I can go back to the
floor, it's Byrd and Biden.
Ms. Lindborg. I'm giving precedent to those who are
present.
Senator Biden. No, I know you are. I know you are.
Ms. Lindborg. But I stand corrected.
Senator Biden. I appreciate it very much. I just want
Senator Byrd to hear that.
But I'm kidding. Go ahead.
Ms. Lindborg. Any increase in foreign assistance
underscores the need for a secure environment in which
reconstruction and democracy can be effective. And this is a
lesson that we've learned in a lot of other environments. In
fact, I participated as a member of the CSIS/AUSA blue-ribbon
commission on post-conflict reconstruction this past year,
which included Members of Congress, bipartisan Members of
Congress, military leaders, senior policy experts from the
government, and the international and non-governmental sector.
Really the No. 1 finding was that security is the essential
ingredient for any reconstruction to go forward and that unless
the security needs are addressed up front, the spoilers will
find the weak areas and retain leverage to affect the political
outcomes, they will spoil the peace. And I think this is a
description of what's happened in Afghanistan over the past
year and a half.
I understand that if the Foreign Relations Authorization
bill is passed, it could include an amendment that's based on
some of the findings in this commission. And while I'm aware
the prospects for that legislation remain uncertain, I hope
that it could still be considered in the future.
And I'm also very encouraged to hear that in the coming
year, this committee may focus more heavily on our country's
ability to respond more effectively in post-conflict
reconstruction environments, and I find that very heartening.
However, despite that lesson, as you know, and many, many
calls for an expanded ISAF, until this week it remained
confined to Kabul. Instead, the U.S. response was to create the
PRTs. And I hate to the be only one today to not jump on the
PRT bandwagon, but I think that although they were a creative
experiment, in the four pilots thus far they lacked the mandate
and they lacked the resources to provide either security or
reconstruction. They were not strategically located in insecure
areas. Anywhere they were, aid workers were also able to work,
and they focused on often duplicative efforts to build small-
scale projects such as schools and clinics.
The military has a core competency that nobody else has,
which is the provision of security. There are many other local
and international organizations with the core competency to
provide community development assistance. And I think that as
we move forward, if the PRTs are to be a part of the security
environment, they need to have a substantially evolved mandate
to refocus on security.
The announced expansion of ISAF to the PRT in Kunduz, it's
a good first step, in terms of signaling that it will expand,
but it must go far beyond that, the ISAF must, if it is to
truly and effectively address the security needs of
Afghanistan.
The British have recently begun their version of a PRT in
Mazar, with a much more explicit mandate to provide security
and a focus on disarmament and a reconstruction of large
government infrastructure projects. That's an approach worth
watching if we do intend to remain with the PRT model.
Obviously, the long-term solution is in the development of
the Afghanistan National Army and police. It's far behind
schedule. I was hopeful to hear what the previous speakers had
to say about that, moving that forward.
Finally, I would just note that the solution is not to
channel all assistance through the military or to provide all
aid workers with firearms and military escorts, which I fear is
sometimes the conclusion that one reaches. Rather, we need to
focus on creating the ambient environment, ambient security
that enables Afghanistanis to invest in their future and for
reconstruction, democracy, and development work to go forward.
Aid workers are not asking for armed escorts and guards, just
as the people of Afghanistan are not asking, each and every one
of them, to have armed escorts. Rather, we need to focus on
creating the overall secure environment that allows people to
confidently invest in their future.
I saw a lot to be very optimistic about in my recent visit,
but it was mainly confined to Kabul and to the safer parts of
Kandahar City. There are good things happening. I visited women
who have doubled their income through micro-credit programs and
have exciting plans for the future of their families. I visited
with my Mercy Corps country teams, where people who have worked
for us for 12 years are absolutely committed to staying the
course, despite the very real risks that they face, and they
see this as a critical turning point for their country, and
they are devastated that that future may be slipping through
their fingers.
As you consider the supplemental request that's on the
Floor, I would urge you to ensure that whatever needs to happen
to enable ISAF to truly expand and to truly, in a genuine
committed way, address security needs in Afghanistan, that you
do so. And, second, I urge you to support the increased
allocation in the Byrd and Biden amendment to increase the part
of this supplemental that would benefit Afghanistan.
I don't think that there's so much an absorptive capacity
problem in Afghanistan. There's much more capacity than we're
currently using. There is just security constraints with--there
are many projects that are stalled that could be further
invested in if there was a secure environment that enabled it
to go forward.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lindborg follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ms. Nancy Lindborg, Executive Vice President,
Mercy Corps, Member of InterAction, Washington, DC
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for this
opportunity to speak about the challenges in Afghanistan, and thank you
especially for the continued leadership and commitment you have
demonstrated on this important issue.
I have just returned from Afghanistan last week. Mercy Corps had
until recently worked without serious incident in Afghanistan since
1986, under the chaos of the mujahedin and under the rule of the
Taliban. But just in the last ten months, Mercy Corps alone has had two
staff members killed, four staff members kidnapped, gunfire sprayed at
one of our vehicles, two cars burned and a bomb lobbed at one of our
sub-offices.
Other agencies have had similar experiences, as since September
2002, armed attacks against the assistance community have gone from one
a month to a current average of one every two days. Ten aid workers
have been murdered since March.\1\ And I have in hand the latest 15-
page weekly summary from the NGO security network summarizing the many
bombings, kidnappings, robberies and school burnings that don't make it
into the headlines. Night letters are posted at mosques warning
communities not to cooperate with western aid agencies and threatening
them not to attend the funerals of those killed while doing so.\2\ On
October 6th, a notice was posted at two mosques in Kandahar City
warning that all local staff members working for any international
organization have a deadline of six days to resign from their jobs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Barbara Stapleton, ACBAR Security meeting, October 2, 2003,
Kabul.
\2\ Afghanistan Non-Governmental Organization Security Office
(ANSO) Weekly Situation Summary, Report Number--038/03.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently half of the country's 32 provinces have areas deemed high
risk for aid work, according to UNAMA. It is in the best interest of a
confluence of bad actors--poppy growers, Taliban and warlords--to keep
the country destabilized. And as increasing parts of the country are
declared to be no-go zones by both national and international
assistance workers, communities are left with decreasing confidence in
the future of a new Afghanistan.
On June 17th, more than 80 NGOs issued a call for expanded
International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), citing the chilling
impact of insecurity on the ability of Afghan families to invest in
their own future, on the reconstruction progress and on the process of
elections and voter registration.
Of particular concern is the impact of this rising insecurity on
the Bonn Process, which calls for a new constitution and elections by
June 2004. Elections require an environment free from violence,
intimidation and coercion. Large parts of the south and southeast are
currently too unsafe for election monitors to travel, threatening to
undermine efforts to enable the Afghan people to freely choose their
own government by the June 2004 deadline.
In the twenty-two months since the Taliban fell, the international
community has failed to provide the two essential ingredients for
democracy and reconstruction: security and sufficient financial
assistance. We have squandered precious time and, even more
importantly, the confidence of the Afghan people that we won't walk
away from them again, as many of them believe we did a decade ago.
This week, we have two important opportunities to signal our
commitment to a safe and democratic Afghanistan: On Monday, the United
Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that approves
the expansion of the now NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) beyond the limits of Kabul city, which enables us to make
a genuine commitment to security. And this week you and your colleagues
have the chance to put critically needed new funding into Afghanistan
with the passage of the President's Emergency Supplement Request.
Since 2002, Afghanistan has been consistently under-funded. Despite
early pledges at the Tokyo donor conference in 2002, and an April 2002
declaration of a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan by President Bush,
Afghanistan has only received a fraction of the $10.2 billion the World
Bank/UNDP assessment identified as necessary for the first five years.
The majority of those initial donor pledges have not yet fully
materialized, nearly two years later, and even those funds currently
committed are shockingly low compared to other post-conflict settings.
In 2002, donors spent an average of $64 per person in Afghanistan,
compared to an average of $250 per person in Rwanda, East Timor, Kosovo
and Bosnia.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ In four recent post-conflict settings (Rwanda, East Timor,
Kosovo and Bosnia), donors spent an average of $250 per person in aid
versus per capita expenditures of $64 for Afghanistan. Using that as
the yardstick, Afghanistan assistance would equal $5.5 billion per year
for each of the next four years. At the Tokyo 2002 conference, donors
pledged $4.5 billion in reconstruction funding over five years. Even
more sobering is the contrast to the proposed Iraq annual figure of $20
billion for Iraq for this year alone. CARE International and the Center
on International Cooperation, Policy Brief, September 15, 2003
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is time to launch a new, comprehensive assessment to determine
how much Afghanistan really needs over the next five years to move
towards political stability, security and legitimate economic growth.
The initial World Bank assessment was done quickly and without full
information. It is time to conduct a more thorough assessment and
pledge to respond on the basis of need.
The additional funds for Afghanistan requested in the new emergency
supplemental are essential and will push forward critical programs.
House leadership has already voted to increase the President's request
for Afghanistan, as they have noted the high priority that Afghanistan
represents and the many important projects not yet funded. I urge you
to do the same. However, any increase in foreign assistance funds
underscores the need for a secure environment in which reconstruction
and democracy can be effective, a lesson drawn from the cumulative
experiences of the past decade. This last year I participated as a
member of the CSIS/AUSA Blue Ribbon Commission on Post-Conflict
Reconstruction where a diverse group of bipartisan members of Congress,
military leaders and senior policy experts from the US government,
international organizations and the non-governmental sector considered
how we as a country might better organize our response to the
continuing challenges of wining the peace by rebuilding failed nations.
One key finding of the Commission was that ``Security is the sine
qua non of post-conflict reconstruction . . . if security needs are not
met, both the peace in a given country and the intervention intended to
promote it are doomed to fail. Unless comprehensive security needs are
addressed up front, spoilers will find the weak areas and retain
leverage to affect the political outcomes, vitiating the peace.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Findings of this commission are summarized in ``Play to Win,''
January 2003, a joint report of CSIS and AUSA available at
www.pcrproject.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I understand that if the Foreign Relations Authorization bill is
passed, it is likely to include an amendment that is based on some of
the findings and recommendations of that Post-Conflict Commission.
While I am aware that prospects for this legislation are uncertain, I
hope such an amendment can still be considered in the future, as we
will continue to wrestle with these issues if the last decade is any
indicator. I am also encouraged to hear that in the coming year this
Committee intends to focus more heavily on our country's ability to
respond effectively to post-conflict situations.
Despite these lessons from the past and our continued calls for an
expanded International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), however, those
5,300 troops have until this week been constrained by a mandate to
operate only within the city of Kabul, while the rest of Afghanistan
has spiraled into unrest and violence.\5\ Instead, the US response was
to create Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), small groups of 40--
100 military personnel. Although a creative experiment, the PRTs have
thus far lacked the mandate and resources to provide either security or
reconstruction. They have not been strategically located in those
insecure areas inaccessible to aid workers, but rather have focused on
often-duplicative efforts to build small-scale projects such as school
and clinics. The military has a core competency held by no one else,
which is the provision of security. There are many other local and
international organizations whose core competency is to provide
community development assistance at a lower cost and with greater
expertise if the security environment permits.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ The 4,800 ISAF members in Afghanistan on a per capita basis
equal one peacekeeper per 5,380 Afghans. This is compared with Kosovo
(1 per 48), Bosnia (1 per 58), East Timor (1 per 86) and Rawanda (1 per
3,350) Care International Policy Brief, January 2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The PRTs must have a serious shift in focus and mandate if they are
to play a useful and coordinated role in the expansion of ISAF. The
announced expansion of ISAF to the PRT in Kunduz is a good first step,
but it must go far beyond that to address effectively the security
needs of Afghanistan and reach into the more insecure parts of the
country. The British have recently begun their version of a PRT in
Mazar with a more explicit mandate to provide security with a focus on
disarmament, army and police training, and reconstruction of large
government infrastructure. This approach is well worth watching as a
model for evolving the PRT approach.
Clearly the long-term solution for Afghanistan is the development
of its own national army and police force. Efforts to create either
force are currently far behind schedule, with only 4,000 of the 70,000
proposed army force trained to date. According to the most optimistic
assumptions, the central government will only have 9,000 soldiers to
deploy by mid-2004. The police training effort is similarly behind
schedule. The requested supplement funds will be a critical boost to
these efforts, but until these forces are prepared to take a more
active role, we must address the security gap that exists now or risk
all the progress already seen in Afghanistan.
The primary purpose of my recent trip to Afghanistan was to meet
with the Mercy Corps country team and with colleague agencies to
determine how and if we might be able to continue operations in the
current and very dangerous environment. In various meetings held in
Kabul and Kandahar, I heard many excellent and constructive
recommendations worth considering: Patrol key roads in insecure
regions, increase attention to the border areas through which a stream
of Taliban fighters pass. Stop assistance to the many militias under
warlord command. Roll out regional training of the Afghan National Army
and local police to increase their presence beyond Kabul. Refocus the
PRTs to have a security mandate and position them in insecure areas
that aid agencies cannot reach.
The solution is not to channel all assistance through the military
or provide all aid workers with firearms and military escorts. Rather,
we need to focus on creating ambient security, a secure environment
that enables Afghans to invest in their future and for reconstruction,
democracy and development work to go forward. Aid workers are not
asking for armed escorts and guards, but rather a strategic deployment
of peacekeepers into those areas most insecure and an increased focus
on hastening the longer-term solutions of Afghan army and police
training.
As you consider the President's Emergency Supplemental Request, I
will close with two key recommendations:
1. I strongly urge you to ensure that ISAF has all the
resources needed to expand beyond Kabul with a clear and
genuine commitment to provide security in key provinces. Both
Chairman Lugar and Senator Biden have strongly supported this
in the past, and the UN Security Council resolution adopted
unanimously on October 13 finally opens the door to achieving
this important goal. Expanding ISAF only through the PRTs as
currently configured or into already secure parts of the
country will not be enough. A flexible and more strategically
deployable ISAF is critical for immediate and short-term
security, while the slow process of training Afghan police and
army members continues.
2. I urge you to support the increased House allocation of
$1.176 billion for Afghanistan within the President's Emergency
Supplement Request. These funds are critical. The House
increase is a bi-partisan reflection of the high priority that
Afghanistan must be given. These funds are a badly needed boost
to Afghan assistance and will hopefully serve as a prod for
other nations to join in with substantial packages of their
own.
In my recent visit to Afghanistan, it is apparent there is much to
be hopeful about--there is a building boom in Kabul and Kandahar and
evidence of flourishing new businesses. More than two million refugees
have returned and a record four--five million children have returned to
school, up from three million last year. With your support, we can help
ensure this progress is not jeopardized and instead moves forward even
more quickly.
Thank you again for your ongoing support and important leadership
on these issues.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Lindborg.
Let me suggest to my colleagues that we sort of take 10-
minute turns and take advantage of this expert panel that we
have before us.
I'd like to ask you, Dr. Durch, as I tried to sketch out
with your testimony, the 17,000 troops that you mentioned--
these are international forces as I understand it--how close
are we to having 17,000 presently? Is that an idea of what we
have there now, or our goal? It was not clear to me where they
come from and how many we anticipated.
Dr. Durch. Thank you, sir. Yes, 17,000 would be the goal.
There's about 5,000 to 5,500 in Kabul now. The Germans want to
put 450 troops into Kunduz, which, on my model, is about the
right number for that town.
I was not proposing forces to blanket the country, but to
have areas of operation like Kabul in the other seven cities,
but then critically link them together so that you get a kind
of a necklace effect and provide security that people can use,
once the roads are repaired, for commerce.
The Chairman. This is sort of a minimal number, as you say,
for cities with comparable security as Kabul and a little bit
of a link.
Dr. Durch. Yes.
The Chairman. Now, you listened to Ms. Lindborg, and she's
talking about an overall security atmosphere, not requiring
security with each aid worker and what have you. At the same
time, I'm trying, as I'm sure most listeners to this would be
doing, to think through how we ever get to that kind of
atmosphere, even with 17,000 people. You know, early on, when
many of us questioned this by the ratios of population or
square miles in Bosnia, for example, or Kosovo, to the numbers
of people we had, the results were very, very starkly different
from Afghanistan. This is a very thin situation and a pretty
large country. I'm curious as to how we get to a point ever,
really, of having this confidence on the roadways, quite apart
from the cities, that would be sufficient for aid people, and
NGOs and what have you, to simply go out and to do good.
I thought Ms. Lindborg made a very good point that the
Taliban and the warlords and the poppy growers and what have
you, are people who almost have a vested interest in chaos or
indifference from the international community, but they're not
a majority of the country necessarily. Where do the people
stand? Are they supportive of the United States? If you had
pollsters going out now as the Pew Foundation has been doing
with countries all over the world, asking, ``What's your
general feeling about Americans these days?'' how would things
stack up? Is there, in other words, a supportive community for
us or for the Germans if they are to go out, or for anybody
else among the 17,000--or are, in fact, they likely to be
targets in the same way the aid workers are?
Dr. Durch. Senator, working backward, I don't have active
poll data that I can give you. We could certainly look it up
and check. I do know that in terms of the expansion of the
international security presence, my sense is that there's
widespread support for that, and it's been asked for for almost
2 years, and that support still exists.
The ISAF expansion that I was sketching is a component of a
larger system of security. That's why I've given them a very
specific task. And in the larger studies, we've always said
that this number is contingent on Operation Enduring Freedom
still being there to engage the primary problem from the U.S.
perspective in the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. So that remains
the American job.
These guys have a limited task of security in the towns and
over the roads as we get the roads fixed so that we don't have
to pay attention to everything. I think the PRTs can coexist
with an expanded ISAF as a visible American fix-it presence on
the ground if they get some more resources, and I think all
these things can work together.
And then behind it all, we have the army, the highway
patrol, all of these local resources that we're training up
that we should have been, I think, training faster, that we're
now reaching an appropriate rate, but, again, the rate of
training for them and the timeline for Bonn are beginning to
collide. But that's ultimately the issue. The international
forces are a stopgap measure. But also, I used the analogy of a
trellis for the PRCs. ISAF itself is a trellis. I would like to
see the Afghan forces come join international forces, gain
field experience, hand off, so the internationals can move onto
the next task or go home. And I think the faster it looks like
we're training local forces, the more we're likely to get
contributions from our allies to expand ISAF, because they see
a light at the end of the tunnel. They see a replacement force
that's already in hand or in training. And by all accounts, the
training is very good, and I think the new plans are very good.
We have--if you were to set Iraq aside, which is a very
large set-aside, I understand, but comparable peacekeeping in
the Balkans, let's say, we have drawn down more forces from the
Balkans over the last 2 or 3 years than would be needed for
this concept in ISAF, and many of the same countries provide
troops to both missions. The troop providers for ISAF currently
have provided, like, two-thirds to three-quarters of the troops
in IFOR and in SFOR and KFOR, which were historically the most
dense, in terms of peacekeepers to people, of any mission. We
went in very strong, 50 to 1, basically. Iraq is about 150
Iraqis per U.S. soldier. So by Balkan standards, we're thin. In
Kabul, the deployment is thinner still. So it is a risk. I
think it's a risk we have to take, because the alternative is,
I think, even greater risk to the international community and
to the transition.
The Chairman. But initially now, we have 5,500 ISAF people
there now. We need 17,000. We're still 11,500 short on the ISAF
part of it.
Dr. Durch. That's right.
The Chairman. Now, I ask this, because this is going to be
difficult to fill. When I visited Germany in August, we went
through their manpower situation, and the Chancellor said,
``We're going to help out in Afghanistan. Don't want to touch
Iraq, but this is where we're going to make our contribution as
a NATO partner,'' which is helpful. But essentially the
Germans, as I understood their figures at that time, have about
25,000 personnel who do this sort of thing wherever they are.
Only a third of those do they deploy abroad at any one time.
Dr. Durch. Right.
The Chairman. Another third are in retraining, another
third are in refreshment and recuperation and so forth, which
is not unlike other forces. They have thirds. But I said,
``Well, are you going to have any more?'' And they said,
``Well, we might go to 30,000 at some point.'' That would be
instead of having, say, 8,500 available, or maybe 10,000. But
that's it. And this is a pretty big country.
You extrapolate into the other situations. Some of us in
the Senate talk about people being sent here and there, but the
fact is with the large countries of the world, there are not
many people that go here and there. And I am trying to add up--
how you get to 17,000 is a tough thing to do unless the United
States does it. Now, at that point, we still come back to the
mission of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. By this time, they should
be subdued, but they aren't. In fact, their forces are very
busy on the borders. We're asking for more cooperation from
Pakistan, and getting some. But, at the same time, anybody who
is in an armed forces out there is still engaged in very, very
tough straits, looking for the last remnants or sometimes,
unfortunately, being attacked by them. So all that's going on
in the background, with this very thin ISAF force that we've
already discussed. I'm just trying, in my own mind's eye, to
think through how we come to some degree of closure on the very
basics of a thin security situation given the potential
participation. Do you have any suggestions, or have you written
on that subject?
Dr. Durch. Most of our European allies are contributing
something to peacekeeping someplace, mostly in NATO operations,
as opposed to U.N. Most of the major third-world contributions
are contributing to U.N. operations, so the Bangladeshis, the
Pakistanis, the Indians contributing substantial forces in
Africa, for example.
The political situation in Afghanistan is such that
probably Pakistani and Indian forces, not so good.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Durch. Russian forces, not so good.
I suspect that if you sat NATO down, if you sat the EU down
and really had a serious heart-to-heart talk and said, look,
guys, if you don't want to do Iraq, we have another problem
here that really needs some assistance. Seventy-five percent of
the world's heroin is constructed there. Most of it comes your
way. You've really got a national security interest in
controlling this problem. So help us out. Twenty-five, thirty-
thousand deployable troops, yes, I--some of that has to do with
volunteerism versus conscription, and it's a complicated
problem for the Germans; it might be a little bit less
complicated for our friends in Paris. The Dutch have done one
tour; they could probably do another--the Belgians, the Swedes,
the Norwegians, and some others. I think probably if it were,
in fact, assigned No. 1 priority, which I think it ought to be,
for our friends in Europe, they could come up with the troops
to deal with this modest increment, I think. As I said, they
basically demobilized that many from the Balkans in the last 2
or 3 years, and they kept them there for years on end.
The Chairman. So that's the one prime suggestion, that we
have this heart-to-heart talk with our NATO allies and say,
this is the No. 1 objective for NATO. Now we need to
collectively get to the 17,500.
Dr. Durch. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Well, thank you.
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you. Let me pick up where you and the
chairman left off.
I couldn't agree with you more, doctor. I think that this
is a place where we may be able to do some real good, allow
everybody to save face, and really begin--I mean this
sincerely--allow everybody to rebuild the relationships that
have been badly fractured between, among us and our NATO allies
and us and the EU. We're kidding ourselves if we suggest this
is not--there has not been some real damage done to the
relationship.
And we, at one point--there were serious people talking
about the possibility of total NATO deployment if NATO,
including the French, were prepared to participate. There's
probably a maximum of 30,000 people if they did everything that
they--that could be done. And it seems to me this is the place
where--we had a colleague we both served with for a long time,
Lawton Chiles, and I'll never forget one day on the Floor, I
had been here only a couple of years, and he was my seat-mate,
and there was a bill that didn't seem like a very big thing,
and it passed. And Lawton was ecstatic. And I looked over to
him, and I said, ``Lawton, what's the big deal?'' He said,
``Joe, it's so seldom when conscience and convenience cross
paths in American politics. It's time to celebrate.''
Well, this is a place where conscience and convenience, I
believe, cross paths, with a little bit of diplomacy. The
French are fully capable of supplying up to 5,000 forces in
Iraq, if--I mean, excuse me, in Afghanistan, if they chose to.
It's going to be a long haul. It's a big push. The Germans can
do more. NATO generally can do more. And the Turks and maybe--
and, again, I'm not the President or the Secretary of State,
but it seems to me one of the things I'd be working on now is
that the Turks are ready to provide a division, there is real
question whether or not the governing council in Iraq is
prepared to accept them even if they're there. It seems to me
this is a place where--even though the Turks had one time
around the barrel in Afghanistan, this may be--knowing now the
international community has put its stamp on this, and if
they're convinced we will provide the lift capacity, the intel,
et cetera, which I assume this is--all rests on. If we don't do
that, then none of this matters. So I think there's a
possibility here, with a awful lot of hard work and a little
bit of luck, this may be able to be done.
But my question relates to--assuming that is done--and I
have--and thank you very much for your specificity. I mean, you
laid out here 17,000--total forces 16,520--how they are spread
out from Kabul, to Kandahar, Herat, et cetera, and you have a
rationale behind why that number is needed in those places,
including garrisoned forces, based on the threat level and
population level for highway security as well, in addition. So
have this access, as the chairman said, connecting the dots.
And we were in Afghanistan shortly after, quote, ``we won.''
Every minister I spoke to, from Kanuni on, was making the point
that none of this does much good--it doesn't do much good to
open up a university in Kabul if something can't get on the
road in Herat and make the trip to the university. And so how
are we going to connect this, and how was commerce going to
thrive if you did not have the ability to transit the country?
But one of the things we--propositions we started off
with--and this is more like a monologue than a question, and I
apologize for this, but--was that we were--we had a brief
moment there, in my view, where the sponsoring interfering
surrounding five nations, who have historically decided to get
their piece of the action on the ground that they'd protect as
their own interest within--I mean, think about Afghanistan.
Here you have Afghanistan divided ethnically--Pashtun, Tajik,
et cetera--yet there's never been, to the best of my knowledge,
in recent history, a desire to split the country. It's been who
can dominate the country, who can be in charge of the country.
As opposed to the Balkans, as opposed to the situation in the
former Yugoslavia, where there was no desire to maintain, other
than among the Serbs--there was a desire to break off into
smaller pieces. And each of these factions within the country
had their sponsor, whether it was Iran or Pakistan or
Tajikistan, et cetera, and there was a brief moment there where
they were all prepared to have an ISAF force come in, because
we would essentially become the apartheid cops. They weren't at
all sure that any of the surrounding countries were going to
continue to be their sponsors, they weren't at all sure,
relative to us and/or their competing forces, they could
sustain their dominance in their particular area. So as I met
with the warlords and the man we're about to confirm as
Ambassador, I hope, who had--was there at the same time, when
we met with each one of the various warlords, they're all ready
to accept international forces at the time, not because they're
so noble, but they figured their best bet to maintain their
influence and not have anyone else trench upon their authority
was to have that occur.
It seems to me that it's a very different circumstance
right now. They seem fairly secure. Again, I'll stick with
Ismail Khan as an example. He seems fairly secure in his
position in western Afghanistan. And he seems--and I don't want
to overstate this--to have maintained very good relationships
with the Iranians.
And so my question is this, how would you characterize--
let's start with you, doctor, but also you, Mr. Ambassador,
and, Nancy, you, as well, because you're there more than any of
us--how engaged are the sponsors--the Iranians, the Pakistanis,
et cetera--in interfering with and maintaining their
traditional relationships with the warlords or ethnic groups
within, Afghanistan? I'm not looking for an essay, but just
generally, is it increasing, diminishing? Is it helpful,
hurtful?
Dr. Durch. Senator, my impression is that the Pakistani
engagement is serious and perhaps mixed. The Iranian engagement
is serious, and it depends on whether you're talking about the
government or the hardliners, who basically control the
military and foreign policy. In terms of the north, it seems a
little more quiescent. But I think I would defer to Ambassador
Tomsen for a more detailed explanation.
Senator Biden. Ambassador.
Ambassador Tomsen. Thank you. And I'd also later defer to
Nancy. As you mentioned, she's been out there.
Iran is, of course, predominantly Shi'a, and it doesn't
have much of an ability in 85 percent Sunni Afghanistan to make
inroads. It could pay off people, it can reach out to the
Shi'a, but it's always been limited by this factor. It's also
been limited by an antipathy toward Iran by most Afghans. This
is very historical. It goes back to invasions from Iran into
Afghanistan. Great suspicions there.
So their ability to interfere is limited. They have
interfered, especially the revolutionary guards, the security
side. They want to maintain some influence in Afghanistan, much
as they want to maintain influence on the other side in Iraq
with certain groups, usually radical Shi'a groupings.
In regards to Pakistan, I'm afraid we've had about 25 years
of Pakistani interference and a buildup of Pakistani assets in
the radical Islamic groupings in the North-West Frontier
Province, Madrassas, the infrastructure along the Indo-
Pakistani frontier. That infrastructure is still there. It
spews out fighters that go into Kashmir, as well as into
Afghanistan. Many of the fighters in Kashmir are from
Afghanistan. Most of the fighters that died at the Indian
Parliament were from Konar Province in Afghanistan, taken out
by the ISI. Plus, you have most of the Taliban cabinet still in
Quetta and areas along the North-West Frontier Province,
including the Defense Minister, former Defense Minister.
I was on a TV show, Senator, yesterday with Ahmad Rashid,
and he just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and
Baluchistan, and he said that the Taliban operations now remind
him of the Taliban operations in 1995 and 1996, when they were
moving in quite substantially into Afghanistan. And he
anticipated that this would get worse, not better.
Senator Biden. I think he's right.
Ambassador Tomsen. Yes. So our diplomacy with Pakistan, our
bilateral diplomacy, is extremely important. It's more
important than the expansion of ISAF, in terms of security in
Afghanistan. There's one face of ISI which cooperates with us;
there's another face of ISI which is still protecting and
feeding this asset that they've built up over 25 years. They're
waiting for the Americans to leave, and Musharraf is still
playing both sides of the street, in my judgment.
The other states neighboring Afghanistan have a
geopolitical reason to cooperate with the Coalition in
Afghanistan.
Senator Biden. Ms. Lindborg, do you have anything to add?
Ms. Lindborg. I would add a couple of observations, and
certainly from the perspective of having worked for over a
decade in both Quetta and throughout the southern part of
Afghanistan. Our base of operations has historically been in
Kandahar, Helmut, and Uruzgan. And we are seeing, over these
past 10 months, a very strong resurgence of the kind of
individuals who were quite active, as when we were there, under
the Taliban. And the night letters that are saying, you know,
you can't listen to music, you can't go to the funerals of
those who were killed for working for assistance agencies, are
becoming more and more in evidence. They're being posted in
the--they're not even night letters anymore, they're day
letters, and we see the traffic going back and forth. So I
would echo and support what Peter said about that being
absolutely vital.
I would add to that a couple of points, and that is, you
know, during the bombing, the people in one of the districts in
Uruzgan, which is the traditional seat of the Taliban, actually
defied the Taliban in order to protect the Mercy Corps office
there. They kept our vehicles, our computers from the Taliban,
because they understood that they were the ones--that the
community people were the ones who would ultimately benefit,
and they said, you know, hands off on this.
And to get to your question, Senator Lugar, there is, I
think, still a strong reservoir of support and goodwill among
the Afghan people. When I was there last week, it was evident
that we are well supported and well received once we're in the
communities where we're working, and it's the traveling between
the communities that becomes extremely dangerous.
To get to the point of how do you--when we're dealing with
a scarce resource, how do you address security, I think we're
very well aware of that challenge, and I think there are
strategic things that we can do that we have not yet done. We
can more strategically deploy peacekeeping forces on the
primary roads. You can increase border activities. We can
decrease support for some of the warlords, in addition to
what's coming across the border from Pakistan.
As I mentioned in my testimony, there is this confluence of
actors who benefit from having a destabilized Afghanistan. It's
not just the Taliban, it's the huge opium industry, and there's
all the various warlords, power brokers, who don't want to have
a strong central government, and they're all able to
opportunistically work together right now and keep out
development.
Senator Biden. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I may proceed in one
followup on a point with the Ambassador.
Mr. Ambassador, one of the most difficult things, I find at
least, to explain to my constituency, the public at large, the
press, is how all these dots are connected. For example, I'm of
the view--and I'd like you to critique what I'm about to say--
and I'd like an honest critique if you disagree, because I have
respect for your view--I have thought the calculus for
Musharraf has been the degree to which he thinks U.S. policy in
the region from Pakistan to Turkey is well thought out, totally
committed, and fully engaged, and likely to succeed. It's the
degree to which he is willing to increase the risk to him to
take on this historically ungovernable province in the
northwest, as well as the ISI's cozy relationship with the
Pashtun for decades.
And if I were to draw a graph, graph this relationship
immediately after the bombing, quote, ``succeeded'' and before
we went into Iraq--this is not an argument not to go into Iraq,
but before we went into Iraq--the degree of cooperation was
rising relative to him cracking down on his own intelligence
services and his willingness to take on the more radical
elements within his country. So the degree to which we seem to
be--have an incoherent or not totally coherent policy in
Afghanistan--I mean, in Iraq and/or even in the Middle East,
Israeli-Palestinian issue, that that heated up his radical
base, is the degree to which he backs off.
And so what I'd like to posit here is--for your
consideration, and either one of you can chime in; this is the
last thing I will ask--is as much of an advocate for the
international security force that I have been from the
beginning, if the Lord Almighty came down and said you could do
one of two things, you could have an incredibly robust
international security force put in place immediately or you
could show significant success with international support in
Iraq, as well as in--on the road map, which do you want? I
would take the latter in order to secure Afghanistan.
Ambassador Tomsen. You mean the road map?
Senator Biden. The road map and--I mean, the two pieces
here.
Ambassador Tomsen. Yes.
Senator Biden. There's basically three big pieces we're
dealing with--I mean, there are many more, but you can divide
it anyway you want--Afghanistan, Iraq, and the road map, the
peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To the
extent that it looks like we're failing and/or not succeeding
or not internationalizing the two most western problems we have
in the region, that is Iraq and the road map, is the extent to
which it seems to me the calculus for Musharraf and his
government is, I'd better cut my deal, make my peace, make my
accommodation with the more radical elements of my own country,
rather than go out and be cracking down on anybody.
Is that a calculus that is inaccurate. Well, I mean, in
other words, how do these relate--or do they relate? Maybe they
have nothing to do with one another. But I don't know how we
succeed without Musharraf--and it may be indirectly--I mean,
the chairman was saying, how do you get to 16,200 or 17,800?
And even if you do get to that number, is that enough in an
environment where you don't have much greater cooperation--not
marginally better, but much better cooperation--this is Joe
Biden part, and I don't want to lay this on the chairman--but
much better cooperation with the Pakistani Government in
dealing with the Pashtun and all that that entails, from the
Taliban to al-Qaeda, cooperation, et cetera.
Do you understand what I'm trying to get at?
Ambassador Tomsen. I do. I think so.
Senator Biden. Talk to me about that for a second, if you
would.
Ambassador Tomsen. The way I'd approach the answer is that
Musharraf and the Pakistani generals who are running Pakistan
think, and have some evidence for this, that the Americans are
not good finishers; you could go around the world to different
places and gather up arguments in this regard--and then when
they look at Iraq and the road map and they look at the
strength of the United States and its abilities to meet its
commitments around the world, and then they look at
Afghanistan, how long will the United States be in Afghanistan,
he makes his calculations on--major calculations from that sort
of scenario. But his main analysis, point of analysis, will be
the situation in Afghanistan and the situation in Pakistan, of
course. And he has the generals around him. He wants to keep
their support. Of course, he has the Pakistani religious
parties. And he has this infrastructure that the generals,
through ISI, have built up along the frontier for the last 30
years, and they're not going to sweep it away. And they're
going to try to play both sides of the street, and he'll go as
far as he needs to with the Americans on picking up al-Qaeda
types or--and maybe moving a regiment up to a part of the
frontier, but they will continue to play both games at once and
watch us very closely to see how we will proceed, and also to
see how things are proceeding in Afghanistan.
In the meantime, this infrastructure, with the Taliban in
it and the al-Qaeda and people like Gullboddin Hekmatyar, who
has come back from Iran and is now shifting between Konar
Province in Afghanistan in the area near Chitral on the
Pakistan side, and he's sending people up into Uruzgan, as far
as Uruzgan, too, they will continue to operate freely from
northern Pakistan into Afghanistan, and they will not be
inhibited. ISI knows every meter along the frontier. They know
where--if Osama bin Laden is still there, they know where he
is. They certainly know where Mullah Omar is, and they know
what all of these Taliban leaders are doing and what operations
they're mounting across the frontier. Even though they say, we
don't have total control, they certainly know everything that's
happening. And, in my judgment, they could be doing--Musharraf
could be doing a lot more to control Taliban-al-Qaeda
activities.
Senator Biden. What pressure points do we have? You're
President of the United States, you have an altar call with--to
use an old phrase--with General Musharraf. What do you tell
him? What pressure points--is it productive for us to lay in
conditions with the Pakistanis about aid issues relating
directly to economic aid, or military aid, with the Pakistanis?
Ambassador Tomsen. I'd list three pressure points, sir. One
is what I talked about at the end of the statement--the
constituencies in Pakistan--economic especially, but others, as
well--that would benefit enormously if Afghanistan were stable
and the trade routes would reopen across Central Asia;
Pakistani light industrial goods could go north into Russia,
energy could come south in the Caspian. That's one argument I'd
make.
Another is geopolitical. Their biggest concern in the
Pakistani military is Indo-U.S. relations. And as the Indo-U.S.
military relationship continues to go forward, it's going to
spook them more and more. And if they----
Senator Biden. In which direction?
Ambassador Tomsen. Yes, it could spook them in two possible
directions, one to accommodate us more and the Afghans more,
and the other is to turn more toward developing further this
extremist variant, which they have created, and make it even
more dangerous, and try to develop more instability inside
Afghanistan, and centers for Islamist influence inside
Afghanistan. They could go that way, too. But they wouldn't
have much support for that route, Senator, in this day and age.
Saudi Arabia is cracking down on funding, money-laundering and
extremism in Saudi Arabia. The Syrians are less active. So
there's not many--as opposed to, say, 10 years ago when they
were developing the Taliban, there's not many allies that the
Pakistani military can turn to, and it is a geopolitical or
geo-strategic vice which is moving against them if the United
States and India and Russia should cooperate more, and some of
that cooperation would be targeted against Pakistan.
The final point, pressure point, is economic. In the
supplemental, you have $200 million, for instance, set aside
for Pakistan in loan guarantees. But that is linked to
Pakistan's total cooperation in the war on terrorism, which
Musharraf says that he cooperates in now, and the President
could mention that, as well, and maybe point out things that we
know that they're doing, and say, we'd like to see these things
stop. We want to see this proceed that is, even more help for
you, but we can't do it, our hands are tied by Congress.
Senator Biden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Biden.
Let me ask you, Ambassador Tomsen, you mentioned, and I
just jotted down, ``keep out of the political briar patch'' in
the politics of Afghanistan, which is probably always good
advice. But Senator Biden's question has been linking problems
in Pakistan with Afghanistan. Some observers that we have heard
indicate they believe that the United States, in our feelings
that there ought to be fair and democratic elections in
Pakistan, helped accelerate an election in Pakistan that
resulted in some unfortunate aspects. The results apparently in
two provinces very near Afghanistan have members that appear to
be Taliban supporters. When President Musharraf came and had
coffee with our committee, we asked him very candidly about all
of this, and obviously he was not happy with those results.
Especially since people were advocating, as members of
parliament from those areas, that he be separated from one of
two responsibilities, he indicated he was not about to bow to
all of that. But the fact is, democracy worked. The people
expressed themselves, and the results were not very salutary
for Musharraf or for us.
I don't think the Senator from Delaware and I really know
exactly who would elect whom, nor would we try to divine what
the constitution will be. If you heard an earlier panel, they
said that they're going to get a copy to us in due course.
There will be a debate about that. There are many who would
observe that democracy, if it does proceed--and you've
suggested some antecedents that are important that require
security--the census, voter registration, these sorts of things
take some doing. In the panel we had on the Iraq constitutional
procedures and their elections, we have discovered that there
are some pressures from other countries that they get on with
this constitution right away. In fact, our own Secretary of
State has suggested a fairly accelerated timetable as he's
tried to negotiate with friends at the U.N. And yet we've found
people are disagreeing as to who ought to elect the people who
devise the constitution.
What are the roles and who votes on those? In other words,
this is very, very tough going. Afghanistan will be having
elections. We don't know how that may come out.
You're probably right, we should not get involved in the
briar patch, but, on the other hand, Americans probably do care
a lot about how that election comes out. For example, if
Taliban supporters--not the Taliban themselves, but rather the
people who generally have that point of view--came back, and
wanted to adopt the Sharia Code again, and put women back in
the position they were in before, and say, that's democracy,
that's the way we feel about these things, a good number of
Americans understandably would be very upset about that. Now,
we could say, well, that's the way it goes, you know, we did
the best we could, and we have fostered a constitution, and we
got some pretty good rolls and people finally came to the polls
and they came in good numbers--but then where would we be? You
know, we're maybe back to square one in the war against
terrorism. After all, the problem before was neglect. We all
left. Taliban came in and, by and large, we saw the results of
this. They weren't very happy, we think, for the Afghan people,
but clearly they weren't very happy for us with camps and
people who used the camps and finally attacked us.
So to what extent is our democratic ethic, our tolerance
for whatever happens in Afghanistan, going to contribute to
security for us? In other words, if at the end of this we have,
in fact, a country that, by a democratic election has elected
people who are going to bring hostility for Americans, and who
are going to lend them support to the war of terrorists against
us, what do we do about that?
Ambassador Tomsen. Well, if that would happen, you know, if
the Taliban would win the election and come to power in
Afghanistan, we'd be in very difficult circumstances, indeed.
The Chairman. And they did in Pakistan, just across the
border. They just got there and had an election, and we
encouraged it.
Ambassador Tomsen. But what I'd like to say is, I think
there is about a 1 percent chance that that will happen, and
I----
The Chairman. Now, why is that? Why are you so optimistic
about it?
Ambassador Tomsen. Even in Pakistan, sir, it's a coalition
government, in Baluchistan in the North-West Frontier Province.
There is not a extremist majority, although they have a
plurality in each place. In all of the elections in Pakistan's
history for their national assembly, the religious parties
never got over 6 percent of the vote, and that's the national
scene. And they never did that well before this election after
9/11 in Baluchistan in the North-West Frontier Province.
If things go well in--oh, one more point is that the
mullahs, the Pashtun mullahs, are in control of the Taliban.
But, in Afghanistan and also Pakistan, you have the tribal
aristocracy, which has traditionally run the tribal areas, and
they are anti-extremist, and there's always been political
competition between them.
If our security and reconstruction programs are successful
in Afghanistan, we need to do better than we have for the last
2 years. We will see definitely a loya jurga like we saw last
June, which is filled out by mostly tribal and clan leaders
from around Afghanistan, mullahs. And over 50 percent of
Afghanistan is non-Pashtun, and they don't like the Pashtun
mullahs who brought the Taliban.
In fact, if I could reinforce what Nancy mentioned earlier
to you in answer to your earlier question, the Afghan
population does not want to see either the warlords or the
extremists come back. They hate them. They're anti-warlord and
they're anti-Taliban. Also, the Afghan population, as a whole,
wants peace. You see this overwhelming desire everywhere after
23 years of war and destruction. So here, too, reconstruction
and security programs, if they go better in Afghanistan and we
begin to make progress, I think you'll see a leadership like
Hamid Karzai emerge again in Afghanistan, from a loya jurga
process or election process.
[A follow-up response was forwarded to Chairman Lugar by
Ambassador Tomsen.]
October 20, 2003
Dear Chairman Lugar,
During your hearing on Afghanistan last Thursday, you asked whether
elections in Afghanistan might result in a victory for Afghan Muslim
extremists. You noted that religious coalitions had won provincial
elections in Pakistan's NWFP and Baluchistan Provinces.
There was not enough time to answer your question at the hearing.
Hence, this follow-up letter.
Historically, the traditionalists have won Afghan elections to the
National Assembly (1965 and 1969 Afghan elections) or to Loya Jirgas.
Most of the rural population in Afghanistan is divided into tribes
(south, east) and clans (the north). The rural populace generally
elected their local khans to represent their interests in Kabul. While
conservative and religious, these local leaders were relatively more
wealthy, prestigious, educated and experienced in running local jurgas
through which community disputes are settled. (The jurga is not only
national, it is a vehicle to solve any dispute over water sharing, land
ownership and even intra-family disputes. When asked, I advise
Americans wishing to provide assistance to Afghans to set priorities
through the village or district jurga, run by the elders. Let the jurga
help decide--and provide manpower plus other inputs.)
The rural mullahs, who rose to prominence during the jihad, had
marginal influence in the National Assembly and last year's Loya Jurga.
This is partly because the tribal and clan leaders seek to exclude
them; and it is partly because they are not at home in a democratic
process. Rural mullahs were mostly strong supporters of the Taliban--
Mullah Omar's approach was to convene religious meetings to sanction
his decisions as ``Emir,'' such as not to hand over Osama bin Ladin. In
effect, the tribal/clan local leaders around the country dominated last
year's Loya Jurga. It is interesting that Hamid Karzai head of the
Pashun Popalzai tribe, was chosen as President in a secret ballot,
receiving over 80% of the vote. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai,
assassinated by the Taliban/Al Queda in 1999, was Deputy Speaker of
Parliament in the 1960s.
On the downside, a lot of money continues to flow from religious
centers in the Gulf through Pakistan to more senior Afghan clerics,
like Rabbani and Sayyaf. They will challenge Karzai in the next
presidential or National Assembly election, running on a ``Mujahidin,''
anti- U.S., anti-Western platform. If elected, they would re-institute
a Taliban style totalitarian Muslim extremist dictatorship at home, and
an anti-U.S., anti-Western foreign policy abroad.
My own opinion is that Rabbani, supported by Sayyaf, will lose if
facing Karzai. Rabbani was discredited by his tenure as ``President''
during the destructive Civil War period. More important, the great
majority of Afghans, Pakistanis and Tajiks, suffered greatly under
Rabbani's Islamists, and the following Taliban, rule. They oppose both
the Jihadis and the warlords.
The key to electoral success of Karzai and the moderates in the
constitutional Loya Jirga, the planned National Assembly elections
(scheduled for June, 2004 but likely to slip), or a direct presidential
election will be accelerated progress in reconstruction and security.
Rabbani and Sayyaf will try to argue that the Afghan people's misery
has not been eased by the Western supported moderates--their Islamist
rule will better deliver the goods. As Nancy said during your hearing,
so far we have failed to provide enough, and also effective, assistance
to advance reconstruction and security by the Karzai regime. Let's hope
the new ``push'' the administration is highlighting will fill this gap.
IFES should also have a civic education program on elections since
there have not been elections in Afghanistan since the 1960s.
If rendered wisely, international assistance will bolster the
Karzai regime's ability to demonstrate to Afghan voters real progress
in reconstruction and economic development areas, while improving the
security situation and sidelining the warlords.
Should Karzai, Abdullah and their allies succeed in the planned
constitutional Loya Jurga this December and in the 2004 elections, this
result would have a healthy influence on further democratic, human
rights, anti-drugs and security progress inside Afghanistan, and also
importantly on Pakistan and Iran in all of these areas. In this
connection, the Pakistani military's requirement that candidates in the
last Pakistani election have a college degree was interpreted to
include Madrassa graduates. This proviso, which was meant to help
religious party candidates, helped produce the religious coalitions in
NWFP and Baluchistan. I have heard--but cannot confirm--that the
Pakistani courts have since reversed the requirement.
Kind regards,
Peter [Tomsen]
Ambassador Tomsen. But maybe we should turn to Nancy, too,
who knows the internal scene as well----
The Chairman. Well, indeed, we should. Would you comment on
this?
Ms. Lindborg. Well, I would simply add that, you know, the
concern has been, since the fall of the Taliban, that without
security we'd recreate the conditions that enabled them to rise
in the first place. And the only real incentive for people to
support the Taliban the first time around was the extraordinary
insecurity that existed just prior. And we are back in that
stage again in those crucial parts of the country, the south
and southeast, where without an alternative, they will turn
again to the Taliban, No. 1, because they have a track record
for having provided a secure environment, nothing else, but
they did create security. And No. 2, there is pressure for
them, for the communities, to not support alternatives. They
are being threatened by these night letters. They are--there
are killings going on there in direct pressure to not support
alternatives. And all of this, I think, underscores and points
to how essential it is to not give more time for the confluence
of spoilers to become more entrenched. I think that it's
essential that we move quickly to provide the secure
environment, even if it's only in strategic places, you know,
identified as road security or those parts of the country that
are the least secure, that are those parts of the population
that, left alone, which is currently what is occurring as more
and more parts of the south and southeast become no-go zones,
that left alone they will return to their support for the only
alternative being presented to them, which is the return to
Taliban rule.
The Chairman. We've discussed NATO and the message that we
need to have there, that is, the persuasion or desire consensus
to get to the 17,500, which is, sort of, not diminimus, but an
important goal. We're at 5,500 people in that category, so
that's some distance away, which gets to the security point at
whichever level we're talking about. But what I wonder about is
your perception as observers not just of Afghanistan, but of
the international scene. I wonder whether other countries see
the problem in Afghanistan, and the potential crisis of a
return to prior conditions. As you say, Ms. Lindborg, the
Taliban offers security; maybe that's the reason people let
them go to begin with. They provided some security. Absent
international commitment, including our own, but hopefully not
exclusively that, we could have a recurrence of this. But do
European countries see it that way, or do other countries
outside of Europe? In other words, is this a priority for
anybody but us?
I ask this, because in other contexts, sometimes states
from European countries say, we understand your anguish from
September 11 and the tragedy that occurred in the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. We can understand why you're angry
about that and why you would then say to the Taliban, either
give up al-Qaeda or we come after you, but, on the other hand,
we don't anticipate somebody's going after the Eiffel Tower or
the Brandenburg Gate. You know, this is really not in the
cards. We are not the focus of the war on terror or anybody
else. That's your problem. So if you want to solve it, more
power to you. And we say, well, after all, we're NATO allies.
We're together. And to his credit, Lord Robertson, a great
advocate for this, really went way out on the limb and offered
leadership well beyond what our Department's intention, in my
judgment, was prepared to do.
Now, we've come along, and we all agreed in the first round
not to rehash month by month all of the evolutions that have
come up with this. But, on the other hand, I'm still troubled
by the fact that I just don't see out there how we get to the
17,500 arithmetically with NATO, with the Europeans, if the
staying power is what Pakistan is looking for, or the Afghans,
too. I just feel that this is coming up short, even as you've
got the road map of how it might be successful, in part because
other nations really do not see, troubling as it may be, that
the Taliban would come back and that essentially bad things
would happen to Afghans. But they would say historically that's
been going on for a long time. What's new? You know, here you
have a radical adjustment that you're suggesting, that there
might be new life for this country and for the people that are
there. But if so, you're sort of on your own, America. You are
going to have to, sort of, make it happen. And then this
requires quite a bit of argument in our politics as to the
resources we have to make it happen, given other commitments or
other problems that are on the trail that we're wrestling with
as we speak on the floor.
Can any of you offer some general comment as to why
Afghanistan becomes interesting to the rest of the world in a
way that we would like to see it interested--reform, change,
democracy, human rights for women, other things that are
important for us? Do other nations really share that? And if
so, do you think they're prepared ultimately, even under strong
persuasion, to bring to the floor the resources and money and
personnel?
Do you have a thought, Ms. Lindborg?
Ms. Lindborg. I'll say two quick things and then pass it to
my colleagues, who I'm sure have much more to comment on.
But, first of all, I think that the tremendous amount of
heroin that's flooding Europe out of Afghanistan is certainly
of interest to----
The Chairman. So that's a handle, at least. We ought to
speak to everybody about the idea that if you've got a drug
problem in your country, if you're a Brazilian or an Argentine
or what have you, you've got a problem in Afghanistan.
Ms. Lindborg. And I believe that it affects Europe much
more than it does us on the--I mean, that's the prime market
for Afghans in heroin.
Second, you know, my understanding is that the U.S.
Government did not support the expansion of ISAF. And either
actively didn't support it or we opposed it from--depending
upon who you talked to when.
The Chairman. Yes, we're very conflicted, and Senator
Biden's reflected that very well.
Ms. Lindborg. And I think we've seen from the past--and
certainly the Balkans were an interesting example of this--that
when there isn't that leadership, others are not going to step
up to the plate.
And, third, I think that all--certainly Afghanistan is
sensitive to the notion or the perception of an occupying
force, and it's an extremely sensitive question, which is why
having a U.N. mandate for an international force is a critical
component for the peacekeeping force. And if we, this
government, has dropped its objection and actively supports it,
which my understanding, is a shift, and to do so under a U.N.
mandate, my hope is that that will change the nature of the
debate and the nature of the response.
The Chairman. Ambassador Tomsen.
Ambassador Tomsen. Yes, thank you. And I'd defer also to
our colleague on the right here.
I think Senator Biden's tactics, diplomatically, are
splendid. That's the way to go with the Europeans. Look at Iraq
and look at the importance of Afghanistan. The Europeans will
tick off all of the points that we tick off on the importance
of succeeding in Afghanistan.
Another argument that we can make, sir, is what's in my
statement, the positive outcome of stability in Afghanistan,
which is located right in the center of Eurasia and will open
up those global trade routes--east, west, north, south--and
help Pakistan and South Asia generally, as well as Iran and
other countries. We should not forget that side of the
argument.
I want to add something here about Afghanization. Nancy
touched on it. We have to proceed gingerly in Afghanistan,
because the Afghans are very sensitive. We don't want to join
that long queue of foreigners who have attempted to choose
Afghan leaders, because we will fail. The Soviets were there
for 8 years. They tried all the tricks that they tried in
Eastern Europe and Mongolia and elsewhere, they assassinated
Afghan leaders, they played musical chairs, and they failed,
and they failed miserably. If we get the image in Afghanistan
of an occupier, we're going to have problems.
So I also agree with Nancy's point, to the extent that you
can internationalize this under a U.N. mandate and still get
the job done--I want to quickly add that--we should do that.
The Chairman. Dr. Durch.
Dr. Durch. Senator, I'd like to endorse both sets of
comments just made. I think, you know, we have a larger common
project with our European allies in terms of the values we
assign to democracy and human rights and open markets and human
dignity. And I think the European Union's been working on a
project for the last half year trying to knit itself--half
century--trying to knit itself together and is only beginning
to reach out now with an active foreign policy. We saw one
military extrusion in the Congo this summer, which worked
pretty well.
So I think we need to encourage that, not necessarily as
a--you know, a separate pillar. Maybe through NATO, and
Afghanistan gives us an excellent lever to do that.
I think we need to think about this like NPR thinks about
fundraising. We need to extend some matching grants to our
allies and give them something to match, whether it's logistics
support or communications or whatever it is, and knowing that
they'll have reach-back to the OEF will protect and we'll
protect them. And cast it as a common objective.
In terms of Afghanistan being a serious problem for a
generation, well, sometimes you get inured to chronic pain, but
it doesn't mean you have to suffer it if there's an
alternative. I think we can come up with the troops. I think if
we accelerate the training of local forces and stress that, and
stress that the money's going to be there to build the rule-of-
law institutions that go behind them, and if the elections go
OK, then this will look like a time-limited enterprise, that
we're really helping to stand something up that will have some
chance of being stable when we let it go.
A final remark, though, going back to my initial points,
that one of the five lessons that we know from history is that
a troubled country that's surrounded by sharks, essentially, is
probably doomed. And so we really have to stress the role of
Pakistan, getting them onboard with the peace process, not
undermining it and getting their own border situation under
control. How we do that, I would defer to my more learned
colleagues. But if we don't do that, then we're really on a
treadmill and we're running backward.
The Chairman. I think that's a good point, the neighborhood
is a very difficult one, and we have foreign policy issues with
a number of the neighbors.
But let me defer now to my colleague.
Senator Biden. I just want to make one somewhat
provocative, not suggestion, but comment. I wonder what history
would have said had we decided, instead of going into Iraq,
that we went into the North-West Province of Pakistan with
150,000 American forces to get al-Qaeda and the remnants of the
Taliban, I wonder what that would have done. And I'm being
obviously very provocative, but--because I--maybe I've been
hanging around with the chairman for too many years. An awful
lot of the theories that we come up with as to how to proceed
in American foreign policy run up against reality. And the
reality is, as long as Pakistan is unwilling or unable to deal
with the radicalization or the maintenance of a radical
province, among other things, as long as there is essentially a
no-man's land where there is safe haven for the Taliban, for
extremists to go either into Kashmir and/or into Afghanistan, I
don't know how you solve this problem. I don't know how you--
other than--I guess what you're saying, Nancy, is success
begets success, or one of you said it earlier in a different
context, that to the extent that we show staying power, to the
extent that we stabilize things on the ground, to the extent to
which we then have--increase our leverage of being able to get
Islamabad to act responsibly, to get the Iranians to back off,
to get, you know, whatever. But, you know, there is, sort of,
that immovable object. You've got a province that hasn't been
governable for--correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Ambassador--
forever. And it is essentially what--you know, if you think of
the Wild West, it's the no-man's land where the bad guys could
hang out for respite and before they headed back into--all the
way from Albuquerque to Dodge. I mean, you know, they--so what
do you think would have happened had we--when the next
President comes along or this President says, I'm not going to
sustain this any longer. We're going in. I want to tell you,
Musharraf, we're going in, and we're going to find, you know,
root out the Taliban, if we could. I'm not sure we could.
Talk to this again----
Ambassador Tomsen. Well, there's some 20 million people
there in those two provinces. There are 140 million altogether
in Pakistan. So I think it would not be advisable. I think it's
one of those cases where it's easy to get in, but hard to get
out, and you wouldn't accomplish your objective. Indeed, in
this particular area, things would get worse, rather than
better.
The answer, though, is Musharraf and his government. They
can do much more. They do have instruments to influence and, in
many areas, control Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier
Province, not only through security forces, but through
economic means. And they could certainly stop over 80 percent
of these incursions that are going into Afghanistan attacking
our troops, attacking the troops of the Kabul government,
police posts, et cetera. They could certainly stop the
overwhelming majority of those activities if they wanted to.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you both. And, Ms. Lindborg, as they say, keep
your head down.
The Chairman. Well, we both very much appreciate your
testimony; likewise, your patience with all of our floor
problems. We have been delighted to have this opportunity, the
two of us, to question you more extensively. And we have, I
believe, established a good combination for the record of your
initial papers as well as the questions and responses.
We look forward to staying in touch with you and we hope
that you will continue to furnish good counsel to our
committee.
With that, our hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:13 p.m., the committee adjourned, to
reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]
----------
Responses to Additional Questions Submitted for the Record
Responses of Amb. William B. Taylor, State Department Coordinator for
Afghanistan, to Additional Questions for the Record Submitted by
Senator Russell D. Feingold
afghanistan
Question 1. How do you think the Afghan people view their situation
since the fall of the Taliban government? What is the visible evidence
that they are better off now than a year ago?
Answer. The large majority of the Afghan people see that they are
better off now that the Taliban are gone. The people of Afghanistan
enjoy more freedom and equality, greater security, and better
opportunity today than two years ago. While some Afghans are frustrated
with the pace of reconstruction, the visible evidence is irrefutable.
Afghans are better fed; agricultural output increased 82% in 2002 and
will increase again in 2003. Life expectancy is increasing, thanks in
part to USG construction of health clinics and provision of rural
health care to over 2.5 million Afghans. Girls and boys are returning
to schools, with approximately 200 schools, 25 million textbooks, and
in-service training courses for 1,600 teachers provided by the USG.
Under the transitional government of Afghanistan legal reform, police
training, and infrastructure development are all improving the everyday
lives of Afghans. A new constitution will be decided upon by a
representative Loya Jirga this year and Afghans will participate in
free elections next year. Perhaps the most evident sign of change is on
the streets of Kabul, women are free to walk unescorted, kites are
flying, and music is playing--all were banned under the Taliban.
Question 2. The Afghan government has accused Pakistan of doing too
little to prevent militants from regrouping on the borders. Since
September, Pakistan has begun to raid tribal villages in search of al-
Qaeda and Taliban remnants and has made arrests. Why is Pakistan
conducting raids now, when they didn't conduct raids earlier? How
effective are these efforts? How can the United States do a better job
at pressuring Pakistan to increase their efforts at rooting out al-
Qaeda and the Taliban? What is your assessment of the goals of Pakistan
in Afghanistan?
Answer. For the United States to succeed in its goal of a stable,
democratic and prosperous Afghanistan, we must also be successful in
Pakistan. Within these broader objectives, we are working with both
countries to end the security threat from their common border area. The
United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan's other neighbors all share
with the current government of Afghanistan a common objective in seeing
Afghanistan emerge as a non-threatening, stable, prosperous, and
democratic country. In the past two years, Pakistan has apprehended
over 500 suspected Taliban/al-Qaeda suspects, including Rhalid Sheik
Mohammad and Ramzi bin al Shibh, and Pakistan ranks fourth in the world
in the amount of terror-related assets frozen. These people are as much
of a threat to Afghanistan as to the United States, Pakistan, or any
other country. For over a century, the tribal areas along the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border have had substantial autonomy. However, recognizing
the significant threat that insurgents pose to regional stability,
Pakistan recently mounted successful operations in the tribal areas,
netting eighteen suspects and killing eight. Pakistan recognizes that
the problems along its border are a threat to it, and is responding to
our requests for increased control in these areas. They are expanding
government control in these areas for the first time in 150 years. The
increased presence on the ground is helping to make them more effective
in capturing Taliban and al-Qaeda. We are helping to make their efforts
more effective with intelligence cooperation, funding for equipment and
computer databases, a national criminal fingerprint system, and
construction of border posts and roads.
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