By John J. Kruzel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2009 -- The U.S. military is building a cadre of officers who each will serve a multi-year assignment dedicated to a narrow piece of the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Known as "Af-Pak Hands," the program steeps officers in the language and culture of the region, and limits the range of their duties and focus on a single area for a four-to-five-year cycle. Officers will serve in a similar job at home and downrange, an aspect of the program military officials say will enable them to create and maintain relationships with the local populace abroad, a lynchpin of counterinsurgency doctrine.

"They'll be a group of experts that will learn to speak the local languages, understand the dialects, become attuned to the culture and remain focused on the problem for an extended period, rather than just on a rotation basis," a military official said, speaking on background.

In a normal rotation cycle, troops returning to the United States from deployment would likely occupy a different job from the one they held downrange. But the continuity of Af-Pak Hands would reduce the learning curve usually attendant to fresh boots on the ground, with officers building on their knowledge of local culture, language and tribal dynamics upon each of multiple, relatively short deployments.

"The idea is that you're not reinventing the wheel each time a new servicemember replaces an old one," another defense official speaking on background said of the program. The department has identified 300 billets that will comprise Af-Pak Hands personnel, including 121 new positions created as part of the initiative.

Af-Pak Hands training began recently, with about 30 officers enrolled in courses taught by the Defense Language Institute, the department's flagship language and cultural training center. Dari, Pashto and Urdu -- the region's three dominant tongues -- make up the 16-week language curriculum.

The initiative comes to fruition as President Barack Obama and his advisors weigh decisions on the next phase of the Afghan war. The debate is said to cover a spectrum of proposals ranging from deploying more troops to a narrower, scaled-down approach that moves away from the counterinsurgency model.

Counterinsurgency is a form of warfare in which a civilian population is in the center of a tug-of-war between an insurgency and the forces attempting to stop it. The Army and Marine Corps in late 2006 published a counterinsurgency strategy written by a host of contributors, and its implementation is credited with helping to reverse violence in Iraq.

"If the strategy remains a counterinsurgency strategy and that's where the White House takes us, then [Af-Pak Hands] will be critical in the 'clear, hold and build' classic counterinsurgency strategy," the military official said. "You want to get to the point where you relate to the general populace and you've built the trust, so that it's more the population pushing the Taliban out than you trying to pull them out."

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, established the program, which has garnered support from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who took command of forces in Afghanistan earlier this year. Career fields that apply include intelligence, special operations, combat arms and engineering, and could include civil-military operators, a military official said.

"The program goes back to a focus that both Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal had on wanting to maintain some continuity, and understanding that the key to the counterinsurgency effort is building the relationships," the official said.

"And your best opportunity to build those relationships is to have the same faces and the same understanding of the language and culture. If you're going to nurture that relationship and really build the trust that you need, it's got to be a sustained effort."

Tours of duty, which are expected to be primarily in the contentious southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, will last six to 12 months, the official said. Duty stations domestically include the Joint Staff's Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination cell in the Pentagon; U.S. Central Command's Center of Excellence or U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla.; and the Joint Special Operations Command in North Carolina, among other possible locations.

The program is being coordinated through the U.S. Central Command, NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, U.S. Joint Forces Command and the military services. Service branches are identifying officers for participation in the program, which will comprise a joint force with members of all branches and possibly a civilian component, a military official said.

Senior Noncommissioned Officers, Military: These soldiers are taking on increasing levels of responsibility in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ray Odierno, U.S. General: The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has been key in leading troops through harm's way.

Greg Mortenson, Philanthropist: Mortenson is furthering the cause of education, particularly for girls, in unstable countries.

Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator: Hatch works to pass bipartisan legislation without compromising his core principles.

Eboo Patel, Activist: Patel is the founder of a national movement promoting interfaith religious cooperation.

America's Best Leaders 2009 - U.S. News & World Report.

His essay (also posted at the Stimson Center's excellent blog on national security spending) lists the similarities. Like GM, the DoD has personnel costs, including generous fringe benefits, that are weighing down the budget and making it more difficult for the Pentagon to adapt to changing circumstances. Second, like GM, the Pentagon's lengthy and turf-protecting decision-making process has resulted in acquisition programs that have not adjusted to changing times. Third, the slump in the economy is going to limit the Pentagon's "revenues" just like it is limiting GM's.

Harrison recommends weapons acquisition policies that are less technologically ambitious. More controversially, he recommends less generous fringe benefits for servicemen, especially retirement pay.

Rather than cutting compensation, those looking for savings, flexibility, and a more nimble military should examine the option of rolling back the headcount increases since 2003 in the Army and Marine Corps. According to a Congressional Budget Office study (see page 7), reducing the Army's headcount by 65,000 active and 9,200 reserve would save over $90 billion over 10 years. F-22s and DDG-1000s are not the only things that cost a lot of money.

With unresolved commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, this sounds like a ridiculous idea. But the next leadership team at the Pentagon will face a very stressful budget challenge. The U.S. is facing asymmetric challenges on the high end (space systems, cyber, air and naval anti-access) and on the low end (terrorism, political subversion, global non-state challengers). Pentagon leaders will find themselves in the world after Iraq and Afghanistan, sooner I expect rather than later. What utility will the large general purpose ground forces built up for those wars have in the world after those wars?

In today's debates about how to proceed in Afghanistan, the relationship between counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations needs to be clearly understood. First and foremost, we should acknowledge that, in light of our original counter-terrorism goals, our Afghan and Pakistan policies have been remarkably effective. There is no need to panic. We invaded Afghanistan eight years ago to prevent another terrorist attack on our nation, and we have been successful. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacked us three times in three years: at our African embassies in August 1998; the USS Cole incident in October 2000, and finally on our homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. In the eight years following Sept. 11, they have failed to attack us on our soil. In fact, al Qaeda can count only one terrorism attack in the entire West (London, 2005), with perhaps "partial credit" for another (Madrid, 2004).

This, by any standard, is a failure on the part of al Qaeda and a testament to the effectiveness of our worldwide counter-terrorism programs. And that success is a product of aggressive intelligence operations that reach from the mountains of Afghanistan, through foreign capitals around the world, and all the way to the streets of New York City. It has been no accident; the US military, the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department, and others should be credited. However, in Afghanistan, we have continually moved the "goal posts" of our counter-terrorism success in the name of a counterinsurgency campaign. The initial objective of kicking out al Qaeda has now morphed into an ambitious program of "reinventing Afghanistan" as a modern state...

More at The Washington Times.

Those of us in the Bush administration who were responsible for its "Afghan Strategy Review" kept our mouths shut when we handed over the document to the Obama transition team last fall. We didn't want to box in the new administration. And when President Barack Obama and his advisers rolled out their own Afghanistan strategy on March 27, I was quietly pleased. It came to basically the same conclusion we had: The paramount goal was to squash terrorism through counterinsurgency and better governance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promised the press corps at the time that its strategy would be "fully resourced." Later, in August, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was leaked. It was a road map to implement precisely the Obama strategy that was announced in March.

But one key element of both the Bush and Obama strategies is getting lost in the debate - that we must apply the military and economic resources for the time required to achieve our goals. As the Obama administration's March 27 White Paper notes, "There are no quick fixes to achieve US national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan." The average counterinsurgency war lasts a decade and a half; the successful British campaign in Malaya in the 1950s, for example, took 12 years. Even if Gen. McChrystal gets the 40,000 additional troops he has requested, there is unlikely to be short-term progress in meeting any of the security "metrics" that opponents of the war in Afghanistan will try to insert into the defense appropriations for carrying out the president's strategy...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON, DC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 26, 2009

Contact: Frederick Jones, Communications Director, 202-224-4651

Chairman Kerry Delivers Speech on Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) delivered a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations' Washington, DC office today titled, "Afghanistan: Defining the Possibilities."

Below are Chairman Kerry's remarks, as delivered:

Thank you, David, for your kind introduction and more importantly for your terrific reporting over the years. David's most recent book, The Inheritance, makes the point that while President Obama took office with great promise, his predecessor left him with some very thorny problems and few good options. And nowhere is that inheritance more fraught than in Afghanistan. On day one, this Administration assumed responsibility for a war heading from strategic drift to a dangerous decline. Now it falls to all of us to get this right.

I recently traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the culmination of several months of asking tough questions and reexamining the assumptions that will drive decisions of enormous consequence. I believe President Obama has been right to deliberate and take the time necessary to find the best policy. And Americans are right to be asking whether the objectives are achievable and worth the sacrifice, questions tragically underscored by the deaths of 14 American troops and civilians in two helicopter crashes today. Many of us know too well the price of sending troops into a war where the strategy hasn't been fully thought through. The responsibility never to put troops in that position lies not just with the President—though it is his principal decision—or the generals, but with all of us, as Americans.

What began as a fact-finding trip ended with several days of talks with President Karzai to resolve a dispute over the Afghan presidential elections. You may have read that it takes Three Cups of Tea to make a deal in Afghanistan—well, let me tell you, it took us a lot more than that. I came home with a fresh reminder of the extraordinary challenges we face, but also with the belief that there is a way forward.

David Sanger mentioned that in 1971 I asked the Foreign Relations Committee "how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Thirty-eight years later chairing the Committee, I keep that question very much in mind. This journey, however, begins in a different place. In September 2001, mass murder was plotted against us from Afghan soil, and we needed to remove the threat. With certainty, we all know why we invaded Afghanistan. It was not a mistake to go in. We now have to choose a smart way forward so that no one is compelled to ask whether we've made a mistake in staying.

The easiest way to make a mistake is to tolerate a debate that sells our country short. In recent weeks, politics has reduced an extraordinarily complex country in an extraordinarily complex region and a difficult mission to a simple, headline-ready "yes or no" on troop numbers. That debate is completely at odds with reality. What we need, above all, what our troops deserve-- and what we haven't had-- is a comprehensive strategy, military and civilian combined.

After eight years of neglecting Afghanistan as Vice President, Dick Cheney has come out of retirement to criticize President Obama for taking the time to examine assumptions before sending troops into war. This from the man who in 2002 told America that "the Taliban regime is out of business, permanently." I think this is the one time I wish Dick Cheney had been right.

But tragically, he wasn't and he isn't today, and that's why we have to make tough choices about Afghanistan now.

Make no mistake: because of the gross mishandling of this war by past civilian leadership, there are no great options for its handling today. One American officer captured well our lack of a strategy when he said: "We haven't been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years. We've been fighting in Afghanistan for one year, eight times in a row." That is our inheritance.

President Obama began his strategic reevaluation in March of this year, after he did what he promised to do and sent an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan—the most recent of whom just arrived in country. Now he is wrestling with what comes next, with the knowledge that all options involve real costs and significant risks.

I believe if we redefine our strategy and objectives to focus on what is achievable as well as critical, and empower the Afghans to take control of their own future, that will give us the best chance to succeed. Yes, legitimate questions remain about just what it takes to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. Yes, Afghanistan is but one of a number of pressing national threats, challenges, and priorities. The $243 billion price tag is staggering. And yes, many of our stakes there are indirect. But make no mistake: the costs of failure are very real.

In 2001, Al Qaeda maneuvered with impunity in Afghanistan. Today we have killed or captured many top leaders, and few remain there. As a result of this reality, many Americans are legitimately asking, why commit our soldiers and tens of billions of dollars to prevent Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, when they could organize the next attack from Somalia, Yemen, Frankfurt or even from an internet chat room? People want to know, why stay in Afghanistan? And especially, why consider an increase in troops?

First, we start from the premise that Al Qaeda remains at the center of our mission. They still want to attack us, they are still trying to attack us, and we have interrupted plots globally over the last few years. But it's an awful lot harder to plan new attacks when they are boxed in, harassed, and living in fear. We are, as we ought to be, committed to hunt Al Qaeda wherever they go. Bin Laden and his deputies in Northwest Pakistan haven't gone far, and to keep them on the run, we must prevent the Taliban -- with long-standing ties to Al Qaeda—from once again providing terrorists with an unfettered Afghan safe haven, just across a border that many there view as mere abstraction.

We must also remember that our Afghan mission takes place in the context of a global counterinsurgency. If we, the United States and our allies, are perceived as incapable of doing the job, I think it would help extremists recruit and raise doubt —not just in the region, but globally—about our resolve and our effectiveness. And I can only imagine the many conversations Americans will have with leaders from around the world when you sit there and you say, "we have to do this" or "you have to do that," and they say, "what are you committed to doing? And why should we believe that you are?"

Second, what happens in Afghanistan has an impact on Pakistan. Pakistan is not only the headquarters of Al Qaeda today but could eventually become the epicenter of extremism in the world. We have enormous strategic interest in the outcome of the struggle in Pakistan. It is a fragile democracy that is fighting a determined insurgency. It has a full nuclear arsenal and a longstanding, sometimes violent rivalry with its neighbor, India. While stabilizing Afghanistan is not going to solve all of our problems in Pakistan, instability in Afghanistan can only increase the risk of conflagration where the world can least afford it: next door in Pakistan.

Given the balance of our strategic interests, it should give serious pause to military and civilian strategists alike that the current balance of our expenditure between Afghanistan, where there is virtually no Al Qaeda, and Pakistan, where there is, tallies thirty-to-one. That's why, regardless of what happens in Afghanistan—and especially if we want to reduce the need for boots on the ground over the long haul—it is vitally important that we intensify our support and improve our cooperation with Pakistan.

So these are the stakes: preventing Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and destabilizing Pakistan and the region. The challenge is to establish realistic goals about how to do that. That starts with a clear definition of success. I define success as the ability to empower and transfer responsibility to Afghans as rapidly as possible and achieve a sufficient level of stability to ensure that we can leave behind an Afghanistan that is not controlled by Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Absent any truly good choices, we must ask a simple question: What is doable?

Achieving our goals does not require us to build a flawless democracy, defeat the Taliban in every corner of the country, or create a modern economy—what we're talking about is "good-enough" governance, basic sustainable economic development, and Afghan security forces capable enough that we can drawdown our forces.

The truth is, we do need to maintain a sustained long-term commitment to the Afghan people, something we do in many countries around the world as a matter of securing America's national security interests. Doing so gives them the assurance they need to reject the Taliban, whom most already despise. But the nature of our commitment must evolve away from a U.S.-military dominated effort and toward support for Afghan institutions and Afghan answers. And it only makes sense to continue moving forward if our commitment is reciprocated by the Afghans themselves in the form of improved governance and increased Afghan capacity—civilian and military—something that President Karzai and his Cabinet and I discussed at great length.

That's why the cornerstone of our strategy must be to empower and transfer responsibility to the Afghans. That's the whole ballgame. Which means that we need to ask ourselves at every turn: "will this help the Afghan people take responsibility for their country?"—and where the answer is no, we probably shouldn't be doing it.

So how do we get there? Our strategy has to be informed by two basic truths. First of all, we can't draw down large of numbers of troops today in order to shift to a narrow counterterrorism mission. Second, we simply don't have enough troops or resources to launch a broad, nationwide counterinsurgency campaign. But importantly, nor do we need to.

We all see the appeal of a limited counterterrorism mission— and no doubt it is part of the endgame. But I don't think we're there yet. A narrow mission that cedes half the country to the Taliban could lead to civil war and put Pakistan at risk. Moreover, the hardest part of counterterrorism operations isn't killing the terrorists, it's finding them. Developing intelligence assets and capabilities should be one of our top priorities because it lets us transition to a more limited presence that still safeguards our interests. And I believe there are ways to set up various platforms and capacities to achieve that far more effectively than we are today. But for now, we need boots on the ground to get that kind of information.

On the other hand, we cannot and should not undertake manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operations on a national scale in Afghanistan. Most experts say it would take 400,000 to 600,000 effective international and Afghan troops for a fully-resourced COIN effort. That is not what General McChrystal is saying, but it is encompassed in many people's thoughts of what they wish to happen in Afghanistan. Fortunately, achieving our defined mission does not require such a commitment. We don't have to control every hamlet and village, particularly when large non-Pashtun sections of the country are already hostile to the Taliban. Our allies, together with the populations of these non-Pashtun areas, which make up about 60% of the country—Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, Hazara—can help to reduce America's principal effort to the southern and eastern theatres—and limit it to major population centers.

We have already begun implementing a counterinsurgency strategy—but I believe that right now it needs to be as narrowly focused as possible. We must be very wary of overextension. And I am particularly concerned about the potential for us to be viewed as foreign occupiers. Riding around in an armored personnel carrier, as I did when I was there, and seeing the faces through the window of Afghans watching these monster vehicles go by, you get an eerie sense of the disconnect that Afghans must experience. It was an image I recognized from forty years ago—a stare that I came to know and understand. Look—we are not the Soviets. We're not there to colonize, to conquer, to remake Afghanistan in our image, or to impose an ideology on its people. But it is too easy for our well-intentioned presence to be misread, and for civilian casualties to stoke resentment and resistance. The Administration is right to be deeply concerned by the reality that, as our footprint has increased, so has the number of insurgents.

I am convinced from my conversations with General Stanley McChrystal that he understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area—and I'm grateful to the General for his time both in Afghanistan and recently on the phone. But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast. We do not yet have the critical guarantees of governance and development capacity—the other two legs of counterinsurgency. And I have serious concerns about the ability to produce effective Afghan forces to partner with, so we can ensure that when our troops make heroic sacrifices, the benefits to the Afghans are actually clear and sustainable.

With that in mind, decisions about additional troops should be informed by an assessment of the following three conditions.

First, are there enough reliable Afghan forces to partner with American troops—and eventually to take over responsibility for security? The quickest way out of Afghanistan for our troops is to speed up the training and mentoring of the Afghan National Army and police so that they can defend their own country. The current goal is to increase the number of trained Afghan National Army troops from 92,000 to 134,000 by December 2011 and General McChrystal reportedly is trying to complete that within the next year. Key to that will be giving them as much on-the-job training as possible, as soon as possible. Partnering with Afghans is also a crucial way to relieve the palpable strain of having foreign troops on Afghan soil.

The second question to ask is, are there local leaders we can partner with? We have to be able to identify and cooperate with tribal, district and provincial leaders who command the authority to help deliver services and restore Afghans' faith in their own government.

Third, is the civilian side ready to follow swiftly with development aid that brings tangible benefits to the local population? When they support our troops, Afghans need to see their lives improve.

General McChrystal himself has made clear there is no purely military solution and the number of troops misses the point entirely. His now-famous assessment said there is an "urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way we think and operate." Ladies and gentlemen, McChrystal's words hit the nail on the head. And the key now is to make sure that civilian leadership guarantees that.

The bottom line is that deploying additional troops won't result in sustainable gains if the Afghan security, civilian and governance capacity isn't there -- and right now, as our generals will tell you, in many places, it isn't. Several were very frank that they were confident about the security side, but they also said their work will fail without an effective civilian strategy. Progress on this front is expected in the coming months with a significant influx of U.S. civilians and efforts to work with the Afghan government to implement reforms.

That's why the right debate isn't simply about how and why and when to deploy troops. It's not how many troops that matters most -- it's what they do. The debate ought to be about how best to create conditions that foster progress in Afghanistan. And you can't have a serious discussion about numbers until you have answered these questions.

Under the right circumstances, if we can be confident that military efforts can be sustained and built upon, then I would support the President should he decide to send some additional troops to regain the initiative. But let me be clear: absent an urgent strategic imperative, we need a valid assessment by the President and other appropriate civilian authorities -- not just the military -- that those three conditions will be met before we consider sending more soldiers and Marines to clear new areas.

And it is important to remember that, even if President Obama gives the green light for more troops, as of now the military can only deploy one brigade roughly every three months. According to our senior military leadership, by the end of 2010 we will have a good idea whether our strategy is working. So it is important to remember that we will have ample opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy as we go forward.

Progress on governance will be key, and we will have an opportunity to measure that. When I arrived in Afghanistan, there was a real worry that an electoral deadlock would drift into an extended period of chaos that benefitted the Taliban. Over several days of talks with President Karzai, I got to know him a lot better. We spoke about our families and Afghanistan's history, about his father's assassination and his own journey home from Pakistan, and discussed his aspirations for the country and his concerns about the US --Afghan relationship; he voiced his worry that Afghan Pashtuns were being treated unfairly, and yes, we even vented over the frustrations of Presidential elections.

President Karzai and Dr. Abdullah's decision last week to agree to hold a run-off election shows that both men are —to put their country ahead of politics. But that result is not an end in itself. It will only matter if we use it as an opening to strengthen our partners and fix the problems of governance. The truth is, the decisions made and actions taken in the weeks and months ahead will be what really give meaning to that moment. If this is to be a turning point, we must strengthen the capacity of the Afghan government and insist that its leaders embrace lasting reforms. This must include addressing the problems caused by corrupt officials at every level of government. Obviously that won't be easy, but it is essential to any chance of success.

To achieve good governance, we also have to redefine the Afghan government beyond Kabul. Just as US city and state governments are expected to deliver education, sanitation, and electricity regardless of who sits in the White House, the Afghan government has to have a face at the district and provincial levels. A more decentralized approach increases accountability and provides better services.

We also need to respect Afghan heritage and work with the tribes. I saw firsthand how powerful tribal elders can be in deciding the future of their communities. We can be strict in using development aid, political support, and even the presence of troops to bolster effective tribal leaders and sideline those who are hostile or ineffective. We stand to benefit greatly if we can build up a better tribal intelligence and personal network across the country, particularly in the Pashtun belt. We have to incorporate Afghan cultural norms, such as local and tribal dispute resolution mechanisms, to help Afghans provide the justice and security they demand. Amazingly, the Taliban actually have ombudsmen to hold their shadow government accountable to the people. The legitimate government of Afghanistan cannot be less accountable than the Taliban, or we cannot be successful.

If effective governance is to take hold—and I believe our mission depends on it—then our Afghan partners must tackle corruption at the highest levels. The fact that the Afghan government has not prosecuted a single high-level drug trafficker damages all our other efforts because it goes to the question of credibility. The narcotics trade -- which generates about 90% of the world's heroin and $3 billion a year in profits -- not only fuels the insurgency, but also finances the corruption that corrodes governance.

Effective governance must also respect women's voices. Afghan women's groups have fought hard to have a seat at the table, and we should support these indigenous efforts because one of the easiest ways to empower Afghans is to empower Afghan women.

Hand in hand with better governance, we need to promote basic sustainable economic development, which persuades Afghans we're on their side. That means the international community must assemble and resource a real civilian strategy to build the base for a stable Afghanistan. Until now, donors have lacked coordination, discipline, and a national plan. Provincial reconstruction teams differ in their mandate, make up, and mission, with dozens of countries carving out their own chunk of Afghanistan. That approach isn't sustainable, and it just doesn't work.

A coordinated strategy of good government and economic development is central to any strategy for success. In a counterinsurgency, the people are the center of gravity and winning their support is the heart of the battle.

Fortunately, the Taliban are far from an insurmountable force. Their brand of extremism rose out of the ashes of the brutal Soviet occupation and America's abandonment. There was literally chaos at the time the Taliban took over. But this is not 1996. Neither we nor the Afghans themselves will let the Taliban return to power. The Taliban do not represent a unified national movement like the one we faced in Vietnam, nor do they currently represent the kind of ethnic divide we faced in Iraq. There are only a few thousand hardcore, ideological, irreconcilable Taliban, about thirty percent of the total. Many other fighters are motivated by anger at a Kabul government they see as corrupt and ineffective. Others are essentially common criminals, using the Taliban cause to justify drug dealing, kidnapping, and extortion. Still others simply seek a daily wage, or the safety of joining a movement on the upswing. So, the Taliban is a loose confederation, with widely varying goals and motivations. Many can be lured away by the right combination of money, diplomacy, reintegration into society, and smart outreach to Pashtun tribal leaders—including those who currently back the Taliban.

If we can provide basic economic development, we will go a long way toward winning over the Afghan people. Afghanistan is an agrarian society whose population is among the poorest on earth. Their needs are simple. They are not asking for their society to be transformed overnight. But they are frustrated by the slow, almost invisible, pace of progress.

Clearly development must be improved, but we have some notable successes to build on. Today, 84 percent of Afghans have access to basic health care—ten times the number in 2002. Infant mortality rates are down 22 percent. Under the Taliban, only 900,000 children were in school -- and no girls. Today, over 6 million children are enrolled in schools, and two million are girls. In 2002, Afghanistan had only 50 kilometers of intact, paved roads. Today, over 2,700 km of roads have been paved and 80% of Afghans now live within 50 kilometers of the Ring Road, giving them access to markets, health, and educational facilities.

These real successes tell us we need to seek out good Afghan leadership and invest in it; embrace a standardized, national approach for international donors to work together; and invest in Afghan-led programs like the National Solidarity Program.

Our international allies have a crucial role to play. The decision by NATO defense ministers to affirm an increase in military and civilian contributions is commendable —and long overdue. NATO ministers must now back up these words with a solid commitment -- including new troops, trainers and development support.

Better integrating individual NATO countries' efforts into a national, unified command structure would also help enormously. The UN must also do more to better coordinate civilian efforts.

So here's the bottom line: the United States cannot do it alone. And there is something wrong with the fact that today we are borrowing money from China to provide security for Afghanistan, so that China can mine Afghan copper. We want all nations to trade with and invest in Afghanistan. We also want their help stabilizing the country.

What happens inside Afghanistan is important to our strategic interests. But our goals and our mission don't end at Afghanistan's borders. No front is more important in our fight against international terrorism than nuclear-armed Pakistan—and chaos next door in Afghanistan would have enormous repercussions there.

We have a real stake in supporting allies in Pakistan and improving our relationship with the people. That's why we committed to providing the Pakistani people with $1.5 billion for each of the next five years to build schools, hospitals and roads. We need to make clear that we respect their sovereignty as we give Pakistan vital breathing space to deal with its difficult domestic problems.

These are serious challenges for Pakistan's civilian, military, and intelligence leaders. Historically Pakistani intelligence services have used the Taliban as a hedge, and there is a real concern that that continues. If we falter in Afghanistan, factions within Pakistan may well determine it is in their interest to strengthen their dealings with extremists. The good news is that right now, many Pakistanis recognize that they face an existential challenge from within their borders.

The Pakistani military has demonstrated firm resolve with its current offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan and they deserve great credit for that. We need to be doing as much as possible to assist the Pakistani military as they go after domestic extremists. Nothing will do more to help tighten the vise on the remnants of Al Qaeda. America and the international community must reassure Pakistanis that tackling this challenge will lead to a lasting partnership with real economic and security benefits.

We should be reaching out regionally and globally to Moscow, Beijing, Delhi and Central Asia—and also to Tehran. We should explore ways to cooperate with each of them, because each has direct interests in Afghanistan.

None of this will be easy, but there is a path forward if we focus on what is achievable. We can't build a modern nation from scratch, but we can create policies that shift responsibility and resources to Afghans to build their own country at their own pace.

Last week, I saw this firsthand when I took a helicopter ride from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan to the fiercely contested Helmand Province. This area was once the breadbasket of Afghanistan, a place where agriculture thrived on irrigation canals built by American engineers in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, drug traffickers and insurgents have transformed it into the world's largest producer of opium for heroin.

In the district of Garmsir, I met with 275 village elders who had convened a tribal shura in the courtyard of the district governor's office. The elders told me that they were happy that our troops had brought a measure of peace to such a troubled place, where not long ago the Taliban ran rampant.

They were pleased to see better security. They were pleased with provincial Governor Mangal. But they told me in no uncertain terms what they really wanted: "We have no drinking water in my family compound," one elder said. "No wells, no canals, and no infrastructure." In short, even in the midst of the conflict, what they really wanted was basic services —some improvement in their lives.

If we can help Afghans dig the wells and dredge the canals asked for by this village elder in Garmsir, then I am convinced that together we can marginalize the Taliban across Afghanistan. This is a microcosm of what needs to happen wherever our troops are. It underscores how much we need to strengthen our civilian assistance and develop a coordinated approach that targets our resources on the people and places where we can show measurable successes to the Afghan people.

We should remember the words of George Kennan, one of our wisest diplomats and a member of this Council for 59 years. His 1966 testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee was about another war, but it rings true today. He said: "Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country... This is not only not our business, but I don't think we can do it successfully."

We need to stay focused on what we can do successfully: Do what is possible. Support our troops. Choose the right missions. Train Afghans and build capacity. Regain the initiative and reverse the Taliban's momentum.

It is not our mission to determine the political realities of Afghanistan, and it shouldn't be. That job belongs to the Afghans themselves. But, with the right strategy--rightly debated, rightly defined, and rightly adopted-- we can empower the Afghan people to choose their own destiny. We can increase our leverage against extremists, strengthen the democratic government in Pakistan and ultimately do what we all want to do: Bring our troops home. Thank you.

I've been promising for several weeks to have a free downloadable .pdf of One Tribe At A Time. Finally it's here. My thanks to our readers for their patience. On a personal note, I must say that it gives me great pleasure to offer this document in full, not only because of my great respect for Maj. Jim Gant, who lived and breathed this Tribal Engagement idea for years, but for the piece itself and for the influence I hope it will have within the U.S. military and policymaking community.

One Tribe At A Time is not deathless prose. It's not a super-pro Beltway think tank piece. What it is, in my opinion, is an idea whose time has come, put forward by an officer who has lived it in the field with his Special Forces team members--and proved it can be done. And an officer, by the way, who is ready this instant to climb aboard a helicopter to go back to Afghanistan and do it again...

One Tribe At A Time

This is well worth the time to read all 45 pages. I strongly recommend it. MAJ Jim Gant, SF despite his extensive and demonstrated expertise in Afghanistan is being deployed on an Army requirement for a transition team back to Iraq (although he is not without previous experience in Iraq as he was previously on a transition team and was awarded a Silver Star for actions there). There is probably no better field grade officer for the "AFPAK Hands" program than Jim Gant (though he still needs to command a B Team and be a battalion S3/XO when he gets back from Iraq!)

This paper is an excellent example of the application of the Foreign Internal Defense concept of Remote Area Operations (not an exact application but certainly tailored for the tribal conditions that exist in Afghanistan):

Remote Area Operations. Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior CS and CSS resources. (From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.)

One Tribe At A Time

The Army You Have - Dexter Filkens, New York Times book review.

... It took a long time - Iraq imploded, and 32,000 Americans were killed or wounded - but the Army finally righted itself. The temporary buildup known as the surge may have helped stabilize the country, but what really pulled Iraq back from the abyss was that the Army fighting in the later years was vastly different from the one that went in at the start. The Army transformed itself in Iraq, and not a moment too soon.

The story of that transformation, and of the generals at the heart of it, is the subject of "The Fourth Star" by David Cloud, a correspondent at The New York Times from 2005 to 2007, and Greg Jaffe, the Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post. (Cloud and I met once while he worked at The Times, and we contributed to two articles together and shared a byline on a third.) This book is about four generals - David Petraeus and Peter Chiarelli, who led the transformation, and George W. Casey Jr. and John Abizaid, who were ultimately left behind by it. As "The Fourth Star" makes clear, it was only the efforts of Generals Petraeus and Chiarelli, and other like-minded officers, that saved America from a cataclysm in the Middle East.

"The Fourth Star" paints wonderfully dramatic portraits of the four senior officers highlighted here, but at its heart it's a story about bureaucracy. As an institution, the United States Army has much more in common with, say, a giant corporation like General Motors than with a professional sports team like the New York Giants. You can't cut players who don't perform, and it's hard to fire your head coach. Like General Motors, the Army changes very slowly, and once it does, it's hard to turn it around again...

More at The New York Times.

The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army - Greg Jaffe and David Cloud (Amazon.com)

The Pentagon's top military officer oversaw a secret war game this month to evaluate the two primary military options that have been put forward by the Pentagon and are being weighed by the Obama administration as part of a broad-based review of the faltering Afghanistan war, senior military officials said. The exercise, led by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, examined the likely outcome of inserting 44,000 more troops into the country to conduct a full-scale counterinsurgency effort aimed at building a stable Afghan government that can control most of the country. It also examined adding 10,000 to 15,000 more soldiers and Marines as part of an approach that the military has dubbed "counterterrorism plus." Both options were drawn from a detailed analysis prepared by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan, and were forwarded to President Obama in recent weeks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The Pentagon war game did not formally endorse either course; rather, it tried to gauge how Taliban fighters, the Afghan and Pakistani governments and NATO allies might react to either of the scenarios. Mullen, a key player in the game, has discussed its conclusions with senior White House officials involved in the discussions over the new strategy. One of the exercise's key assumptions is that an increase of 10,000 to 15,000 troops would not in the near future give US commanders the forces they need to take back havens from the Taliban commanders in southern and western Afghanistan, where shadow insurgent governors collect taxes and run court systems based on Islamic sharia law...

More at The Washington Post.

Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban's military committee distributed "A Book of Rules," in Pashto, to its fighters. The book's eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army's much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take "the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss." Commanders should generally insure the "safety and security of the civilian's life and property." Also, lest anxious Afghan parents get the wrong idea, Taliban guerrillas should avoid hanging around with beardless young boys and should particularly refrain from "keeping them in camps."

The manual might be risible if the Taliban's coercive insurgency were not so effective. Afghanistan's self-absorbed President, Hamid Karzai, might even consider leafing through it; if he could account for his citizenry's appetite for justice and security half as adaptively as his enemies do, Barack Obama would not be struggling so hard to locate the "good war" he pledged to win during his campaign for the White House.

Afghanistan's deterioration cannot be blamed on one man, and certainly not on Karzai. After the Taliban's fall, he was a symbol of national unity in a broken land—for several years, he was perhaps the only Afghan leader able to attract the simultaneous confidence of northern Tajik militias, southern Pashtun tribes, and international aid donors. The landslide he won in the 2004 election truly reflected his standing. Gradually, however, Karzai seemed to succumb to palace fever and corruption...

Much more at The New Yorker.

FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency

Taliban's A Book of Rules