12:11 PM EST, January 27, 2009
WASHINGTON - After more than seven years of combat, the United States still does not have a unified strategic plan for winning the war against radical Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged today.
"This will undoubtedly be a long and difficult fight,'' said Gates, adding that the narcotics trade and official corruption "at the high levels'' of the Afghan government are impeding the fight.
"Our greatest military challenge right now is Afghanistan,'' he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
With the fighting in Iraq largely subsided, Gates said, "the extremists have largely returned their attention to that region.''
He acknowledged that the coordination of military and political efforts against the Taliban "has been less than stellar.''
The search for a new Afghanistan strategy has been under way in Washington for months, with a thorough White House review completed in the final weeks of the Bush administration and parallel studies by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in the region, and by the incoming Obama administration.
President Obama has vowed to send additional troops, and the top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, has asked for about 30,000 more troops, almost double the number currently deployed there.
But with no overall guiding strategy, top military commanders and civilian officials are in disagreement over what missions the additional troops should be assigned, and how those missions should be coordinated into an overall strategy, officials said.
Among those uncomfortable with sending more troops without a clear strategy was Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who lost his campaign for president last year to Obama.
"We need to develop and articulate a clear strategy with measurable performance goals'' in Afghanistan, McCain said at today's hearing.
"More troops are just a piece of what is required. And we need to address the corruption and narcotics problems much more forthrightly than we have so far,'' McCain said.
Explaining the lack of a strategy, Gates argued that Afghanistan is more complex than Iraq, where Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker forged a unified campaign plan that coordinated military action with political pressure and civilian development work. That effort is widely credited with helping quell the violence in Iraq.
But in Afghanistan, Gates said, the United States is partnering with some 40 countries along with the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and hundreds of private development agencies.
"Figuring out how to coordinate all that, and then how to coordinate that work with military operations, is a very complex business," he said.
Under sharp questioning, Gates also acknowledged that the narcotics trade, which provides some $400 million a year to finance the Taliban, must be brought under control before the war can be won.
In recent weeks, he has changed the combat engagement rules to enable U.S. forces to attack drug lords and drug labs if there is evidence they are financing the Taliban. He asked for patience to see whether this has an effect.
Previously, U.S. combat forces were directed not to engage the drug trade. Instead, NATO and the Afghan government were supposed to handle the narcotics trade, but senior U.S. officials say that approach has not worked.
Last week Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said that the U.S. military role is to support Afghan forces in counter-drug operations and not to take the lead in such attacks. The Afghan government's weak military and police forces, and its own corruption with drug profits, raised some skepticism about whether it would begin now to act aggressively against drug lords.
Gates, asked today if he thought the Afghan government would move against the drug trade in the near future, replied: "Probably not.''
The Pentagon chief, who was appointed in late 2006 by then- President Bush and retained by President Obama, also acknowledged that U.S. air strikes that have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians each year are "doing us enormous harm.
"We have got to do better in terms of avoiding casualties -- and I say that knowing full well the Taliban mingle among the people, use them as barriers," Gates told the committee. "But when we go ahead and attack, we play right into their hands.
"My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem rather than as part of their solution -- and then we are lost," Gates said.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE
