Afghanistan: How To Define Victory?

White House Struggles To Gauge Afghan Success

By David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker
New York Times
August 7, 2009


WASHINGTON — As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won.

Those “metrics” of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working. Without concrete signs of progress, Mr. Obama may lack the political stock — especially among Democrats and his liberal base — to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence.

That problem will become particularly acute if American commanders in Afghanistan seek even more troops for a mission that many of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters say remains ill defined and open-ended.

Senior administration officials said that the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, approved a classified policy document on July 17 setting out nine broad objectives for metrics to guide the administration’s policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Another month or two is still needed to flesh out the details, according to officials engaged in the work.

General Jones and other top National Security Council aides, including Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, gave an update to top Congressional leaders over recent days.

But as the Bush administration learned the hard way in Iraq, poorly devised measurements can become misleading indicators — and can create a false sense of progress.

That is especially difficult in a war like the one in Afghanistan, in which eliminating corruption, promoting a working democracy and providing effective aid are as critical as scoring military success against insurgents and terrorists.

For instance, some of the measures now being devised by the Obama administration track the size, strength and self-reliance of the Afghan National Army, which the United States has been struggling to train for seven years. They include the number of operations in which Afghan soldiers are in the lead, or the number of Afghan soldiers who have received basic instruction.

White House officials say they are taking the time to get the measurements right.

In some cases, old measurements are being thrown out. Commanders in Afghanistan say they no longer pay much attention to how many enemy fighters are killed in action. Instead, they are trying to count instances in which local citizens cooperate with Afghan and allied forces.

And in drafting a metric important to senior members of Congress, the administration is considering conducting an opinion poll to determine Afghan public perception of official corruption at national, provincial and district levels. This would give insight into how Afghan citizens view police performance at the neighborhood level all the way up to the quality of national political appointments.

But as the architects of similar metrics in Iraq learned, even the best-constructed measures can miss the larger truth.

In 2005 and 2006, for example, the White House was often citing the “rat rate” in Iraq, a measure of good tips from Iraqis about the location of insurgents or the planting of roadside bombs.

“We thought this was a good measure of how well the public was turning against” Al Qaeda and other insurgents, said Peter D. Feaver, a professor at Duke University who served in the National Security Council at the time. “What we discovered was that the rat rate numbers steadily improved over the course of 2006 — and the violence was rising.”

That experience helps to explain why the Obama administration has taken so much time. But some frustrated lawmakers said the delay might prove costly.

“We have been in Afghanistan now for more than seven and a half years,” said Representative Ike Skelton, a Democrat of Missouri and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “These metrics are required to help make the case for the American people that actual progress is being made, or if we need to change the course to another direction. I think that time is not on our side.”

When President Obama unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in March, he emphasized the importance of these measures.

“We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.”

All that now seems unlikely to be completed before his field commanders finish their proposals for carrying out their marching orders. Their recommendations were originally due at the Pentagon within the next two weeks, but Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued expanded instructions for the assessment to the commanders last weekend and gave them until September to complete their report.

Skeptical lawmakers have implored Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to produce what Mr. Obama promised, and they have made specific recommendations of their own.

“The metrics are critically important to keep everyone’s feet to the fire on this and for the public to know how we’re doing and have some ways to measure it and not have just rhetoric,” said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We all share the president’s goal of succeeding in Afghanistan,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “The challenge here is how we are going to define success in the medium term, given the difficult security environment we face.”

Senior White House officials say their objectives are grouped in three main categories: counterterrorism, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The counterinsurgency objectives are highly classified and cover a “full range” of efforts to help Pakistan combat the militant threat in its tribal areas.

Others address Pakistan’s ability to maintain and strengthen democratically elected civilian government; the country’s ability to confront and defeat an internal insurgent threat; and international support for Pakistan, including international donors, the United Nations and the World Bank.

In Afghanistan, they would assess suppression of the insurgency; building and strengthening Afghan security forces; shoring up support for the government and reviving the economy; and garnering support from NATO, the European Union, the United Nations and international donors.

Pentagon: Afghan Review Delayed

Pentagon Says Review Of Afghan War To Be Delayed

By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press
August 5, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asking that "a few other ideas" be taken into account, has extended the deadline for an assessment of how to turn around the war in Afghanistan, an official said Wednesday.

The report had been expected next week and now may come in late August or early September, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Officials said last week that a draft of ! the assessment called for changes in the way troops operate and that after the report was finished commanders were likely to ask for more U.S. forces.

Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, flew Saturday to a U.S. air base in Chievres, Belgium, and met Sunday with the commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and several advisers.

"He was very impressed with the briefing he got and the assessment thus far," Morrell said of Gates. "But he wants (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."

Gates told McChrystal to take beyond the 60 days first planned for the review, Morrell said.

Morrell told a Pentagon news conference that he didn't know what the additional ideas were.

The draft called for speeding up the training of Afghan soldiers and police and nearly doubling their numbers to ! roughly 400,000, officials said. Though more foreign trainers would be needed for that, it was unclear whether they would come from the U.S. or allied militaries.

The main recommendations in the draft for change were said to stem from the military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which is now designed to focus less on going after Taliban strongholds and more on protecting the local population - something that affects where troops live and how and where they will fight.

UK: In Afghanistan to topple Al-Qaeda

We're In Afghanistan To Topple Al-Qaeda, Says Armed Forces Minister

By Michael Evans, Richard Beeston and Catherine Philp
London Times
August 4, 2009

British troops are fighting in Afghanistan to prevent Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from using it as a base to plot terror strikes against Britain, a defence minister said yesterday.

Responding to criticism that the Government had failed to explain its strategy in the Afghan campaign, Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister, said British troops were battling against an insurgency that, if it were to succeed, “would provide free rein to the terrorist capacity that inspired, planned and provided support for attacks like those of 9/11, of 7/7, and many more besides”.

Mr Rammell insisted that although al-Qaeda?s main base was now in Pakistan, the presence of British and American troops and forces from 40 other countries in Afghanistan was essential to prevent terrorists surging back into the country. He said that the terrorist threat to Britain would be “significantly greater” if the Taleban were allowed to regain control of Afghanistan, bringing al-Qaeda with it.

“We don?t want to be in Afghanistan for ever, that?s why our strategy is to provide greater security by building up the Afghan National Army, which is currently 90,000 and is rising to 140,000,” he said. Mr Rammell was the latest government minister to try to explain to the public why Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan.

His views were echoed by Nato?s new chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister, who called on European countries to match the US commitment and prevent Afghanistan from becoming “a Grand Central Station of international terrorism”.

Mr Rasmussen said that Nato?s survival could depend on more European troops to dispel the perception that Afghanistan was a US operation. “If the Americans are to continue to regard Nato as relevant, so Europe has to do its part,” he said. General Stanley McChrystal, Nato?s top commander in Afghanistan, is preparing to demand thousands more US troops to train and support a vast parallel surge of Afghan troops, placing him on a collision course with President Obama.

General McChrystal, who will submit a review to the White House and Nato headquarters next week, was appointed by Mr Obama in the belief that he would not demand more troops. His demands, though, are backed by Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who said that without a doubling of Afghan troops, from 150,000 to 300,000, the conflict could be lost.

Middle Eastern counter-terrorist sources said that while Nato was focusing its military effort on Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had been allowed to rebuild itself after the deal signed by Pakistan in 2006 with elders in the tribal regions, which lifted the threat of attack against al-Qaeda. One source told The Times that “2007 was the best year for al-Qaeda since 2001, because many hundreds of foreign volunteers came to fight for them”.

Only the campaign by the Americans, using unmanned Predator spy drones armed with Hellfire missiles and precision-guided bombs, had succeeded in making inroads into the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. In 2008 and so far this year, 20 commanders had been killed, the sources said.

Mr Rammell said that the Government?s strategy embraced Afghanistan and Pakistan. “For Britain to be secure, Afghanistan needs to be secure, Pakistan needs to be secure,” he said, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Of the people arrested in connection with terrorist offences in Europe over the past few years, a significant proportion have been trying to engage in insurgencies in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Some people, he said, believed that the West “brought this on ourselves, that if we hadn?t gone into Afghanistan and Iraq, all would have been well”. He said that George W. Bush, the former US President, could not be blamed for al-Qaeda?s atrocities. “This strand of thinking ignores the reality that the planning of 9/11 took place while Bill Clinton was in the White House and the prospects for peace in the Middle East were closer than they had been for a generation,” he said.

It is understood that a Conservative administration would consider appointing a Minister for Afghanistan who would attend Cabinet meetings when Afghanistan is being discussed and complement the Defence and Foreign Secretaries.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: “The Prime Minister must make clear which minister has primary responsibility for our policy in Afghanistan and the Government should make quarterly reports to Parliament, covering Britain?s objectives, the progress made in achieving them and the resources required.”

Where are the Afghans ??

Dearth Of Capable Afghan Forces Complicates U.S. Mission In South

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post
July 25, 2009

GARMSIR, Afghanistan -- "Six, you've got six," Marine 1st Lt. Justin Grieco told his military police training team, counting the handful of Afghan police officers present for a patrol in this volatile region of southern Afghanistan.

The men filed out! of the dusty compound gate into the baking afternoon sun. On the patrol, U.S. military police officers outnumbered the Afghans two to one -- a reflection of the severe shortfall in Afghan security forces working with Marines in Helmand province.

President Obama's strategy for Afghanistan is heavily dependent upon raising more capable local security forces, but the myriad challenges faced by mentors such as Grieco underscore just how limiting a factor that is -- especially in the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.

The extent of the push by 4,500 Marines into Taliban strongholds of southern Helmand will be determined, to a degree, by whether there are enough qualified Afghan forces to partner with and eventually leave behind to protect Afghan civilians. Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the Marine forces here, said urgent efforts are underway to dispatch additional Afghan forces to Helmand.

But here in Helmand's Garmsir district -- as i! n much of the south -- Afghan forces remain few in number, as well as short of training, equipment and basic supplies such as fuel and ammunition. Some Afghans quit because they are reluctant to work in the violent south; others are expelled because of drug use. The Afghan troops here, heavily dependent on Western forces, are hesitating to take on greater responsibilities -- and, in some cases, are simply refusing to do so.

The Afghan National Police officers mentored by Grieco's team, for example, are resisting a U.S. military effort to have them expand to checkpoints in villages outside the town center of Garmsir as the Marines push farther south, taking with them the Afghan Border Police officers, who currently man some of those stations.

"Without the Marines, we cannot secure the stations," said Mohammed Agha, deputy commander of the roughly 80 Garmsir police officers. "We can't go to other villages because of the mines, and some people have weapons hidden in their houses. We can't go out of Garmsir, or we will be killed."

The border police, too, have resisted taking up new positions. Col. Gula Agha Amiri, executive officer of the 7th Afghan Border Police, complained of his unit's lack of body armor and chronic shortages of ammunition and fuel. "If we have contact with the enemy, we can't fight for more than two hours," he said.

Both police forces have lost dozens of men to insurgent attacks in recent years, the Afghan officers said.

U.S. Army Capt. Michael Repasky, chief of the team that mentors the border police here, remains frustrated at the lack of logistical support. "I've been here five months and haven't been able to figure out why they aren't getting fuel," he said, explaining that the police receive fuel perhaps every two weeks and then run out.

That, in turn, makes the border police officers reluctant to move beyond their headquarters in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, he said. "If they move farther from Lash, it will be harder for them to get what they nee! d. They want a roof over their heads, hot meals, time to rest," Repask y said. "I can encourage them to start a new checkpoint. But the commander can say no, and there's nothing I can do about it."

The overall shortage of security forces in southern Afghanistan exacerbates such tensions. There are about 13,600 Afghan soldiers and 11,000 police officers in the south, and each force is short of 4,000 men for positions that have been authorized but not filled. U.S. military officers say Afghan forces should be doubled to provide adequate security in the south.

"The U.S. force is growing down here, but the Afghan force is not growing nearly as fast," said Col. Bill Hix, who until recently led the Afghan Regional Security Integration Command in Kandahar, another large southern province, overseeing the development of police and soldiers in southern Afghanistan. "We have people who are bleeding and dying, and we need to look hard at how we generate [Afghan] forces."

The shortages of capable Afghan forces means they usually assist wit! h searches and security on operations planned and led by Marines, the mentors said. "Right now, they're just happy with us telling them 'Go there, do this,' " said Stephen Woods, a civilian police adviser with the Marine mentoring team.

There are exceptions. Two police officers buying lunch in Garmsir this week observed a drug sale, shadowed the dealer, detained him and seized 30 bundles of heroin, Grieco said.

Gaining approval for increasing the size of the Afghan forces -- which requires international endorsement -- has been a maddening process, said Hix, comparing it to "negotiating a peace treaty."

Even after such approval, many hurdles remain, particularly in the south, he said.

"It's a challenge to get people down here," said Hix, adding that units that deploy to southern Afghanistan often suffer higher rates of unauthorized absences. "The guys think there is a monster down here." Drug use in the forces is another problem, according to U.S. and! Afghan officers. "We lose 5 to 10 percent of every class in the polic e force to opiate use," Hix said.

Training the police and army poses other challenges, he said. Police officers and soldiers -- the vast majority of them illiterate villagers -- require extensive training, but during a war only so many can be pulled away from their jobs at any one time.

Building training and other facilities for the forces and providing them with equipment remain slow because of red tape and contracting rules, he said. It takes 120 to 180 days to start work on a training facility and often more than a year to 18 months to field new equipment, such as the 1,000 Humvees on order for the Afghan army in the south. "We can't swing the money cannon quickly enough to adapt," Hix said.

Still, Hix said, the Afghan forces have made significant progress in the south. In the past year, the training capacity for regional police has doubled and the rate of those absent without leave has halved.

Despite the problems, Hix said that replacing foreign ! forces with homegrown ones is the only viable long-term solution, in part because the latter cost far less. "We should not be substituting U.S. troops for Afghans, which is what we are effectively doing now...in trying to secure and stabilize Afghanistan," he wrote in an e-mail.

U.S. and Afghan officers urged greater emphasis on professionalizing the Afghan police, which are at least as critical as the army in a counterinsurgency campaign but have received far fewer resources. Residents also have complained about corruption among police officers, the mentors say.

The police's law-enforcement role in Garmsir is limited because many of the officers are illiterate, Grieco said. "Paperwork, evidence, processing...they don't know how to do it," he said. "You can't get a policeman to take a statement if he can't read and write."

Increasing numbers of residents are coming to the police station to report problems, said Staff Sgt. David Dillon, one of Grieco's! team members. Still, as a patrol moved through the local bazaar, the police barely interacted with civilians, troubling their mentors.

Shopkeepers and residents eyed the patrol silently and did not respond to greetings in Pashto. An Afghan boy swore in English at one of the Marines, who responded: "Go home."

"They're still a little hostile towards us," Woods said. "They will throw rocks. They will give you that look. They don't trust us."

Maleki visits Tomb of Unknowns @ Arlington

Al-Maliki Honors U.S. Sacrifice In Iraq

PM's gesture a departure from tough talk at home

By Ken Dilanian and Aamer Madhani, USA Today
USA Today
July 24, 2009

ARLINGTON, Va. — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose disparaging comments about U.S. troops have drawn criticism from American officials recently, visited Arlington Cemetery on Thursday and laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.Flanked by honor guards from each branch of the armed forces, al-Maliki stood respectfully at attention during a brief ceremony.

After a 19-gun salute, the U.S. Army Band played the national anthems for Iraq and the United States. A single bugler then played Taps.

Al-Maliki left without making public comment, as is common practice at such ceremonies.

The display of gratitude toward the more than 4,300 U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war was a departure from al-Maliki's recent tone — and a potentially risky political move for him back in Iraq.

Prior to last month's deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq's cities, al-Maliki trumpeted the occasion as a "victory" for Iraq over the American "occupiers." He also compared the withdrawal to Iraq's 1920 revolt against British colonial rule. In a speech on June 30, which he dubbed "National Sovereignty Day," he failed to mention the U.S. military's role in helping bring down violence in Iraq.

Ambassador Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to Iraq, told USA TODAY last week that al-Maliki's comments have been "at times tough to take."

Al-Maliki, who met President Obama in Washington earlier this week and spoke with Pentagon officials Thursday, has been trying to distance himself from the U.S. presence in Iraq and burnish his image as a nationalist ahead of national elections in January.

Both U.S. officials and Iraqi political allies of al-Maliki in Baghdad said the prime minister's decision to visit Arlington was a genuine gesture.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the visit was not the result of prompting by Americans. "Maliki requested the visit to Arlington Cemetery in order to pay tribute to the servicemembers who died in Iraq," Odierno said in a statement.

Ali al-Allaq, a member of Iraq's parliament and political ally of al-Maliki's, said that some of his comments have been blown out of proportion. He's said that al-Maliki has commended American troops over the years for their sacrifice and noted that the prime minister thanked the U.S. during his Wednesday news conference with President Obama.

"All Iraqi people appreciate all that the U.S. has done," Allaq told USA TODAY. "We thank the Americans for all they've done, and now it is time for them to play a different role."

Al-Maliki also understands that he still needs U.S. support, said Ghassan Atiyyah, the executive director for the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy, a London-based non-profit group. There are still about 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and their role is critical to training Iraqi troops and maintaining security as al-Maliki deals with unresolved political issues, hesaid.

"Maliki knows playing the anti-American card has proven in recent Iraqi history to be an effective strategy," Atiyyah said. "(But) without the Americans' involvement, he knows there could be chaos."

He cited several remaining threats to Iraq's security including potential meddling from neighboring Iran and tensions between Kurds and Arabs over disputed territory in northern Iraq.

At a separate event earlier Thursday, al-Maliki said there could be some flexibility to a security agreement signed in December that mandates the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. "If Iraqi forces need more training and support, we will re-examine the agreement at that time, based on our own national needs," he said.

The 2011 deadline was insisted upon by al-Maliki's government in negotiations with President Bush's administration last fall. Obama has said — and repeated again in al-Maliki's presence Wednesday — that the withdrawal date will not be modified.
Madhani reported from Baghdad.

Petraeus: Afghan-Pak problems are the same

Petraeus: Afghan, Pakistan problems are really one

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Military Writer


WASHINGTON – U.S. policy to win in Afghanistan must recognize the poor nation's limitations and its neighborhood, especially its intertwined relationship with U.S. terrorism-fighting ally Pakistan, the top U.S. military commander in the region said Thursday.

Army Gen. David Petraeus, who became a household name overseeing the war in Iraq, now oversees the older, smaller and less promising fight in Afghanistan as well. He predicted a long war in Afghanistan, without quantifying it.

Petraeus told a Washington audience that a winning strategy in Afghanistan will look different from the one in Iraq. He offered few specifics as the incoming Obama administration assess its options in the 7-year-old Afghanistan war that has gone much worse than anticipated, just as U.S. fortunes have improved in Iraq. He also suggested the United States and its partners may one day have common purpose with Iran, another Afghanistan neighbor, in stabilizing and remaking that country.

"There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan, indeed nearly every aspect has been hard and that will continue to be the case in 2009 and the years beyond," Petraeus said in an address to the United States Institute of Peace.

The address was part of a conference highlighting world trouble spots at the moment of political transition in the United States. The institute released a sober outline of problems in Afghanistan as part of the session.

The report said the U.S. and its partners have shortchanged Afghanistan by focusing on short-term goals pursued without a cohesive strategy or clear understanding of how the decentralized country works. It suggested President-elect Barack Obama should refocus the U.S. war and rebuilding effort in Afghanistan and think of the project as the work of at least a decade.

Petraeus' own review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is expected to be presented to Obama the week after he takes office Jan. 20. The plan would shift the focus from the waning fight in Iraq to the escalating Afghan battle.

President George W. Bush's in-house Iraq and Afghanistan adviser has already done a separate assessment; it has not been made public.

The U.S. is rushing 20,000 American troops into Afghanistan to combat a Taliban insurgency that has sent violence to record levels. U.S. officials have warned the violence will probably intensify in the coming year. More U.S. troops, 151, died in Afghanistan in 2008 than in any other year since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

A suicide bomber struck U.S. troops patrolling on foot in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least two soldiers and three civilians and wounding at least nine others, officials said.

Petraeus linked Afghanistan's fortunes directly to Pakistan's, where a U.S.-backed civilian government is struggling and the country's ability to control militants along its border with Afghanistan is in doubt.

"Afghanistan and Pakistan have, in many ways, merged into a single problem set, and the way forward in Afghanistan is incomplete without a strategy that includes and assists Pakistan," and also takes into account Pakistan's troubled relationship with rival India, Petraeus said.

On Iran, Petraeus said he would leave the details to diplomats. But he suggested that the longtime U.S. adversary could be part of a regional effort to right Afghanistan. Afghanistan's strategic location and recent history both as a cradle of terrorism and source of most of the world's heroin make it of interest to nations from the West to the Middle East and beyond.

"Iran is concerned about the narcotics trade — it doesn't want to see ... extremists running Afghanistan again any more than other folks do," Petraeus said.


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