Hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
 
SUBJECT: THE PRESIDENT'S FISCAL YEAR 2004 SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST FOR IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
 
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR TED STEVENS (R-AK)
 
LOCATION: 106 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: DOV ZAKHEIM, COMPTROLLER, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE;
 
PETER RODMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE;
 
GENERAL PETER PACE, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
 
BODY:
SEN. PATTY MURRAY (D-WA): Thank you very much, General, and thank you to all of you for coming here to talk about the administration's plan for funding. I think we all agree that we need to bring stability to Afghanistan, as we're discussing today in Iraq, but we want to make sure we're making the right investments and that's why I think these hearings are so important.

General, on September 7th, President Bush said that we would help Iraqis restore basic services such as electricity and water, build new schools, roads and medical clinics.

This effort is essential to the stability of those nations and therefore to our own security. Secretary Zakheim said today that this funding would fund the construction of about 130 schools and 90 hospitals among other things and yesterday, Secretary Rumsfeld said these projects are helpful in securing the support of the people, therefore an instrumental part of our security plan.

General Pace, could you share with this committee what the effect has been of these kinds of investment in terms of our reception in the area for troop morale, for how the people in those countries view us?

GEN. PACE: Yes, ma'am, I can try. There was a poll that was published yesterday that basically said that the Iraqi people believe that currently their conditions were worse off than they were before the war but that overwhelmingly they believe they had to go through this process to get to what they really believe will be a better future. I believe part of that is because they do now see that while security is being provided, basic security is being provided by the Coalition forces, that in fact the electrical power grid is coming back on line, that water is being produced, that schools are being rebuilt and repopulated. I think about 90 percent of the schools are in fact up and operating and about the last 10 percent are being rebuilt.

So there are many, many areas in which what the Coalition Provision Authority, Ambassador Bremer and his team are doing to assist Iraqi people in gaining self-governance, that that expectation of a better tomorrow in fact makes the Iraqi people more willing to work with those security forces who, understandably, they'd rather not have in their country. They'd rather we not be there. We'd rather we not be there and collectively, we can get to the point where they are prepared to take over their own security and they are prepared to take over their own government.

SEN. MURRAY: You can notice why I'm asking this. It's because our constituents are asking us why we're building schools and hospitals and I think what I hear you say -- and I want it to be clear to me. You're saying that we'll see a reduction in violence and terrorism if people there see an improvement in their social and physical infrastructures like schools and health care clinics. Is that correct?

GEN. PACE: My short answer would be yes, ma'am. My longer answer would be that there were about 400,000 Iraqi young men who had arms, who were part of the Iraqi army. That's what they're trying to do. They're going to give us a little bit of time here to see whether or not there is going to be a job for them, if there's a future for them. If they don't see prospects of a better future, they're going to revert to what they know what to do. They will take up arms again. They will potentially be those who we had to fight against. If you don't give people hope, they're going to revert to basics. I truly believe that schools and hospitals and roads and electricity and water and the like give people a hope of a better future and they are then willing to be a little patient with the military operations that are going on around them.

SEN. MURRAY: Mr. Secretary, did you have something you wanted to add to that?

MR. ZAKHEIM: No. I think it covers it quite well.

SEN. MURRAY: Okay. If we draw that conclusion for Iraq and Afghanistan, would it be fair to say that perhaps it's an approach we should take in other countries, where there's highly developed terrorist infrastructure? If you're saying to me, if they don't have schools and hospitals and health care clinics, that terrorists will be much more attractive to them, is that my understanding of that? And if that's the case, should we be looking at doing that in other countries that support terrorism or have a lot of terrorist infrastructure in them?

GEN. PACE: I believe that part of the solution to terrorism worldwide is what your U.S. military can do for you but military operations will not solve the terrorist problem. It is the society and environment from which the terrorists come and anything that can be done to change the education processes in those societies. To give the people a better standard of living that allows them to want to be part of that society instead of wanting to take it down is of benefit. I hope that answers --

MR. ZAKHEIM: May I add, it's a good question. I can say that, for precisely the reason you've given, the United States, since the war on terrorism has begun, has given priority to a couple of key countries that are on the frontline, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan. And I'm sure there are others but these have become priority countries for assistance and not only in the military field, but precisely in order to help them be successful as moderate members of the Muslim world and so on because the battle is not just a military battle.

SEN. MURRAY: Okay. I appreciate that very much.

General, I have another question I asked yesterday about Afghanistan that I want to ask you today too because I'm very concerned about it and that is a report by the Human Rights Watch that Afghan army and police troops in both southeast and Kabul City are breaking into homes, robbing families, raping women and young girls, kidnapping Afghans, holding them for ransom. And what I'm hearing is that because soldiers are targeting women and girls, many of them are now staying indoors, especially in the more rural areas of the country, and it's making it really impossible for them to attend school or go to work or participate in any kind of activity. And in many place, the human rights abuses are driving many Afghan families to keep their young girls out of school.

I'm very concerned about those reports and I wanted to ask how the investments you have in your proposal to us will specifically help the vulnerable population like women in the security plan.

GEN. PACE: Ma'am, I'll start and I'll let Dr. Zakheim talk to the dollar part. I want to make sure I've got it right. The accusation from whoever it is is that the Afghan National Army --

SEN. MURRAY: The Human Rights Watch group.

GEN. PACE: That the Afghan National Army?

SEN. MURRAY: Correct.

GEN. PACE: Regardless of who, it's totally unacceptable. But if it's folks that we have trained, it would make it doubly egregious. I do not know the answer to that question, ma'am. I will find out and I'd like to that for the record but I'd like to find out. What we do know about that, I can tell you that it is not what we're teaching the Afghan National Army, that is totally counter to --

SEN. MURRAY: That's not my question. In fact, I was just handed the story here and it says the Human Rights Watch believes that human rights conditions in Afghanistan, which, of course, had improved dramatically with the collapse of the Taliban, are now in a state of deterioration and that families are now living in a constant state of fear. Most of the country is in the hands of warlords and gunfighters. That is who I was talking about from the Human Rights Watch who are saying that kind of fear and that kind of world that they're living in is now keeping a lot of families -- keeping their young girls home. And we just talked about the importance of making sure they are educated and participating in society.

And I want to know specifically what is in this plan, if we're going to make an investment, that it's going to make sure that those families are not living in a constant state of fear. As I said at the beginning, we're asking to spend a lot of money in reconstruction. We want to know that it is the right kind of investments that will bring about stability rather than throwing money at a plan and hoping to hear that, a year from now, things are going better. We know, in Afghanistan, we've been here several years. This is what we're seeing now. So let's make the right investments now. That's why I'm asking this.

MR. ZAKHEIM: Sure. Basically, as I understand it, the abuses have been done by some of these, in effect, warlords' troops. And so, therefore, you get back to the basic problem of how do you deal with them and they are being dealt in a number of ways. Some of them are political. Some of them are things we're funding. For example, we're going to be working with the Japanese on disarmament. That whole program, to disarm some of these warlords people, to get them other jobs, obviously goes to the heart of some of this.

A second area is the Afghan National Army itself.

The more you have an army that's properly trained in proper ways by us, by the British, by the French --

SEN. MURRAY: How much money is for training of the Afghan army?

MR. ZAKHEIM: Well, we've got for the ANA --

GEN. PACE: Two twenty million.

MR. ZAKHEIM: That's right, $220 million for the Afghan National Army plus we've asked for authority to spend another $300 million out of the Afghan Freedom Support Act so that essentially we could train literally as many as we could get our hands on and properly do it. We're training battalions. The goal is, I believe General Pace said, is about 12,000 troops. So that's another aspect of this.

The third aspect obviously is the work of ISAF. If you're in Kabul, you've seen that there are some women who can go around without burqas on. There are girls' schools. I mean, it really depends on where you are and what the overall security environment is. So we're attacking this from a number of different vantage points and that is a significant amount of the funding that we're either asking for either in authority or in direct dollars to go to the heart of the problem.

And, of course, as you know, it's not just the women that you cite. There are others who are vulnerable, if you're from the wrong ethnic group, if you're Shia, for example. Clearly what we have to do is create a security environment for basically ordinary folks and that goes to the heart of what the ANA training is all about.

SEN. MURRAY: According to the New York Time, 45 women presented President Hamid Karzai with their own Afghan Women's Bill of Rights in Kandahar. It's a document that guarantees an education, health care, personal security, support for widows with the freedom of speech, and guarantees of rights to orphans, disabled women and widows. I hope -- my time is up -- but I hope that we have the right kind of funding to make the social and physical investment in a country to allow young women the opportunity to be educated and participate because I guarantee you, a year from now, if we're sitting here having these hearings and we've invested a vast sum of our taxpayer dollars into bringing security and we're still seeing young women who cannot go out of their homes and are not being educated and continuing disruption and fear in their lives, it will leave a lot of us wondering if we've made the right investments. That's why I'm asking these questions today.

MR. ZAKHEIM: We have worked with the State Department, Senator, to actually build schools. I visited an all girls' school. It really is quite amazing to see these young girls and their teachers learning modern subjects and some girls as old as 16 in the equivalent of the sixth grade because they're trying to catch up. Again, what is needed is essential government that has the reach to pursue the education programs. That's a lot of what we're trying to do here to enhance the power of the central government, through the PRTs, the provincial reconstruction teams, through the training of the Afghan National Army and through the programs that allows the central government to deliver services.

The central government is clearly committed to this. It's the kind of Afghanistan they're looking forward to. And again, a lot of what we are doing now, that $1.2 billion, is precisely to create conditions in that country so that what you're talking about doesn't happen and the education of women, the education of minority groups of whatever kind, dealing with the disabled in a 21st century way can in fact take place.

SEN. MURRAY: Thank you.

Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. STEVENS: Thank you very much.