Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - U.S. Strategy and Operations in Afghanistan and the Way Ahead

Statement

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REP. HANK JOHNSON (D-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What I've heard this morning is that our success in Afghanistan is dependent on our success in Pakistan. Could you briefly tell us why? And yeah, I'll start with that.

MR. INDERFURTH: Well, the principal reason right now is that as the National Intelligence Estimate in July that was released, the key findings, was that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in these tribal areas of Pakistan. And we have seen for some time a resurgence of the Taliban with a safe haven in Pakistan itself. They're working together; the insurgency that they have crossing the border is placing the Afghan government and our forces in southern Afghanistan at risk.

The militancy, the extremism that al Qaeda Taliban represents is spreading through the tribal areas into other parts. There have been a migration -- there has been a migration of tactics used in Iraq into these areas: the suicide bombings, the assassinations, including, if our CIA is correct, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

So it is dealing with that threat of al Qaeda/Taliban in the Pakistani border areas that is placing both countries at greater risk.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay.

MR. INDERFURTH: And that's why they have to be dealt with.

REP. JOHNSON: And that threat can not be eradicated by military means is --

MR. INDERFURTH: By military means alone.

REP. JOHNSON: So we've got to focus our --

MR. INDERFURTH: It has to be the comprehensive strategy that deals not only with the military threat through intelligence, through military assets, working cooperatively with the Pakistani government, working cooperatively with -- I mentioned the trilateral commission of Afghanistan, Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan have to work on this together too, and there is that trilateral commission that will allow that to take place. We have to enhance that. And again, the appointment of a U.S. special envoy could be a key part in raising the (availability ?) and the viability of that mechanism. So that's what we need to do.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay.

MR. RUBIN: I would say, first of all, we should not lose sight of the fact that the very military in Pakistan with which we are working against the Taliban is the same military that put the Taliban in power and supported them for many years and that they did so for strategic reasons having to do with India, which is partly in response to the question about India. Even Pakistan's activities that are not directly directed at India are part of an overall strategic vision that the military has which is focused on India.

We have a tendency to think that the rest of the world is seeing things the way we do in terms of the threats we identify -- terrorism in this area. For Pakistan, the big threat is India. The big threat to Pakistan in Afghanistan was not extremism as represented by the Taliban but the idea that India might get a toehold -- or before that the Soviet Union, which considered to be close to India -- on Pakistan's northwestern frontier.

So until -- so long as the military still has that India-centric focus and regards the tribal area as a platform for covert operations to balance its much larger foe, India, which it has been doing since 1947, we will have a problem.

REP. JOHNSON: I would assume that dynamic has changed, though, within the Pakistani leadership regarding Afghanistan?

MR. : I believe it has.

MR. BARNO: I'm skeptical about that; I still think that that's a critical core component of how the Pakistani military thinks. And I think one of the things that inadvertently happened when the U.S. announced in 2005 that we were turning the effort over to NATO, and then later at the end of the year we announced we're actually going to withdraw some combat troops, that the Pakistanis, in my opinion, absorb that as the Americans were moving for the exits, and then they had to make sure that their back door was protected inside of Afghanistan.

I was at a conference earlier last year where a senior Pakistani general made the comment that we really need to get out of this counterinsurgency business and get back into major war fighting; that's what militaries ought to be doing. And that's still a very important cultural content of their military. The diplomatic relations of India are significantly better than they've been in many years, but the military, I think, still views this a bit differently and is very reluctant to put their apples in a counterinsurgency basket focused on the tribal areas.

They had very severe results, very negative results in many respects, from their fighting there in '04, and they are not enthused about going back and fighting there again because it's not at the core of their capabilities.

MR. INDERFURTH: May I explain my answer, because I gave a more positive response to whether or not there has been an attitudinal change. I said yes, I believe there has been -- in this way, the Pakistani military and their leadership recognize that there has been a blowback on them by supporting the Taliban during that period as well as jihadist groups in Kashmir. These are coming back to attack them and they realize that.

REP. JOHNSON: Thank you.

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