Kilcullen: 5-10 years in Afghanistan ?

Adviser Sees 10-Year U.S. Role In Afghanistan

By Anne Gearan, Associated Press

Washington -- An incoming adviser to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan predicted Thursday that the United States will see about two more years of heavy fighting and then either hand off to a much improved Afghan fighting force or "lose and go home."

David Kilcullen, a counte! rinsurgency expert who will assume a role as a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been highly critical of the war's management to date. He outlined a "best-case scenario" for a decade of further U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan during an appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Under that timeline, the allied forces would turn the corner in those two years, followed by about three years of transition to a newly capable Afghan force and about five years of "overwatch."

"We'll fight for two years and then a successful transition, or we'll fight for two years and we'll lose and go home," Kilcullen said.

"I think we need to persist," he said, but with "some pretty significant limits on how much we're prepared to spend, how many troops we're prepared to send, how long we can do this for."

Kilcullen was speaking for himself, and it is not clear that McChrystal shares his dark assessment. McChrystal is assembling what aides describe as! a blunt summing up of a war his predecessor called a stalemate. That review is due within weeks and may lead to a request for additional U.S. forces beyond those President Obama has already sent to Afghanistan this year.

The report is expected to recommend changes in the way the United States and NATO organize and manage the war. Ahead of those recommendations, the Pentagon set up a new command center, an ultra-secure war room where people from a mix of services and disciplines sit together. The command post is supposed to quickly process information for McChrystal and bulldoze some of the Pentagon's legendary bureaucracy.

Separately, the Obama administration is developing new measures of success in Afghanistan, something top military leaders promised Congress months ago. Some of the yardsticks would apply to the Afghan government, some to its armed forces and police and some to the United States.

Adm Mullin: Bush Administration caused current Afghan problems

Mullen Decries 'Culture Of Poverty'

Top officer sees Afghan neglect, military in hole
By Sara Carter, The Washington Times
August 6, 2009

The top U.S. uniformed military officer Wednesday offered a bleak assessment of the war in Afghanistan, saying that years of neglect before the Obama administration had starved the U.S.-led effort of funds and diplomatic heft - a condition he called "a culture of poverty."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times that nearly eight years after the war began, the U.S. military is still digging its way "out of a hole" and has not reached "year zero" in the campaign to turn back Taliban advances and gain the trust of the Afghan people.

"What I do see and have seen over the last two or three trips is something that I call a 'culture of poverty' and it isn't just that we've under-resourced it - we've under-resourced it for a significant period of time," Adm. Mullen said.

He said a strategy devised since President Obama took office is intended to reverse these negative trends and hinted that another assessment to be completed late this month or in September might assign more military and civilian personnel to the war and to Afghan development.

"We now have a strategy which is a civilian-military campaign plan, a civil ian-military strategy," he said.

The administration has sent an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan for a total of 68,000. Casualties are at an all-time high since the U.S. toppled the Taliban in 2001, with 45 Americans killed in Afghanistan last month alone.

Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has called the situation in Afghanistan "a dysfunctional, wasteful mess."

A report titled "The Taliban's Winning Strategy in Afghanistan," by Gilles Dorronsoro, a South Asia analyst and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said "Defeating the Taliban would require at least 100,000 new reinforcements as long as the Afghan-Pakistani border remained open to insurgents. Neither the United States nor NATO is willing or able to pay the human and fiscal costs of reinforcements at this level."

The Taliban "have efficient leadership, are learning from their mistakes, and are quick to exploit the weaknesses of their adversaries," Mr. Dorronsoro wrote. He added that the militant group was building strength in the north of Afghanistan as U.S. forces surge in the south and east.

Adm. Mullen did not disagree with this assessment, saying the Taliban has become more effective and sophisticated in recent years. He said that the U.S. has 12 to 18 months "to start turning this thing around."

He added that he and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have put together a new team, including Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

"I have taken my best people and given them to McChrystal," Adm. Mullen said. "He literally has an open book or a blank check to get the best people we have there on the military side because this is a top priority. We're at war. We're losing young people and I want the absolute best people we've got."

Gen. McChrystal is due to release a new assessment Wednesday that is expec! ted to ask for more U.S. and allied forces and to set new goals for th e Afghan army and police forces. However, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said Mr. Gates has extended the deadline until late August or early September, the Associated Press reported. "He wants [Gen. McChrystal] to take into consideration a few other ideas; he had to address some additional issues in this review of the situation on the ground," Mr. Morrell said.

Queried about the sudden appearance of two Russian nuclear submarines off the U.S. East Coast, Adm. Mullen said he did not consider the patrols a sign of resurgence of the Cold War. "I'm not alarmed by it. I'm very mindful of it and keeping an eye on it," he said.

Asked why Russia would make such a move, Adm. Mullen replied: "Some of this is to show that [Russia] can" after years of watching their military infrastructure fray.

The Joint Chiefs chairman said that Russian navy officials had advised him in advance last year when they sent a warship through the Panama Canal to Venezuela. U.S. officials said they were not told in advance of the submarine patrols.

Adm. Mullen, who has visited Afghanistan 10 times, said it was crucial to gain the trust of the Afghan people, who have endured 30 years of conflict since the Soviet invasion.

Many Afghan citizens and officials have expressed concern that the U.S. will abandon the country again as it did in 1989 after the defeat of the Soviet occupation.

"That trust was badly broken when we left [Afghanistan] before and it was badly broken in Pakistan ... when we sanctioned them [over their nuclear program]," he said. "It's going to take a lot of time to develop."

"I liken it to somebody who has been starving for a significant period of time and all the sudden you put all the food they need in the world there - they're just not going to come back overnight," he said. "So there's a culture of poverty there which is very much a part of where we are in terms of resources and this isn't j! ust on the military side - this is on the civilian side."

"I'm digging myself out of a hole in Pakistan and in Afghanistan," Adm. Mullen said. "So there's an argument to be made that I haven't gotten to year zero yet with respect to that long-term relationship, and then that gets reflected in how the people look at this. Which I understand completely."

More Marines &soldiers for Afghanistan

Senators, Advisers Urge Obama To More Than Double Afghan Forces

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
Reuters
August 5, 2009

President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and defense officials urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen by Aug. 14, according to a military official familiar with the review.

McChrystal won?t suggest in his report how many additional U.S. or NATO troops would be needed to train those Afghan forces or to boost the U.S. fighting effort, the official said. Any discussion of U.S. or NATO troops will come in the weeks after McChrystal?s assessment is submitted.

In a meeting last week with Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the deputy national security adviser who oversees Afghan policy at the White House, Levin said a substantial expansion of Afghan forces is essential, according to his spokeswoman, Tara Andringa.

In a May 19 letter to Obama, 17 Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Levin, a Michigan Democrat, Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, urged a doubling of Afghan forces. They cautioned Obama against “taking an incremental approach” that “does not reflect the realities on the ground.”

The U.S. already has agreed to fast-track the buildup of combined Afghan security forces to 134,000 Army personnel and 96,800 police -- 230,800 in all -- by 2011, according to U.S. Central Command.

The Department of Defense has requested $7.5 billion for fiscal year 2010 to fund the expansion. Training and equipping 160,000 additional forces, as the lawmakers and officials are urging, would balloon costs and require thousands more foreign military advisers, a commitment the Obama administration has been reluctant to make.

Senators argued in their May letter that building Afghanistan?s own forces would be far cheaper than sending more U.S. soldiers. “For the cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans,” the senators wrote.

A similar message was drummed home by a dozen civilian national security experts in meetings with McChrystal and in a written report they gave him after a month in Afghanistan assessing ground conditions.

McChrystal asked the analysts from the secretary of defense?s office, the Congressional Research Service, Washington research institutions, the European Union and a French think tank for help in preparing his assessment.

The calls for the administration to raise the targets for more Afghan forces echo comments to reporters last month by Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines leading an offensive in Afghanistan?s Helmand province. He said he was “not going to sugarcoat it. The fact of the matter is we don?t have enough Afghan forces” partnering with U.S. troops.

More Afghan troops would bolster U.S. efforts to conduct joint operations, said Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander for NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. is the lead nation in the coalition.

“I do see a need for a greater capacity within the Afghan national security forces,” Scaparrotti told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday via video link from Afghanistan. “General McChrystal has stated we look at not only building their competency but building their capacity at a quicker pace.”

Lieberman, who has long advocated an expansion of Afghan forces, said the commitment “is a decision that we have avoided making for far too long.”

“Every day we continue to drag our feet and fail to commit to the indigenous security forces” hinders the fight against extremists and delays the pullout of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Lieberman told Bloomberg News in a statement last month.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, predicts doubling the size of the Afghan Army would likely be a five-year, $25 billion commitment that would require 12,000 U.S. military trainers. Those troops would have to be reassigned from other duties.

The realization in Washington “of the scope and scale of what would be required in Afghanistan is frankly causing waves,” said Nagl, a member of the Defense Policy Board that advises the secretary of defense. He is president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“The national security community, broadly speaking, recognizes the importance of a much larger Afghan Army” as a prerequisite for an eventual exit by U.S. troops, said Nagl. “The administration has not yet decided to pursue that path.”

Jones, Obama?s national security adviser, in June said the president?s strategy to boost civilian assistance should be given time to work before further commitments are made.

In February and March, Obama pledged 17,000 additional U.S. ground troops and 4,000 trainers, all of whom will be deployed by the end of September, said Major John Redfield, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

There are 63,000 U.S. troops and 40,500 non-U.S. NATO forces in Afghanistan, the highest number since the war to oust the Taliban regime began in 2001.