Insights from a military commander

Yesterday I saw a senior U.S military commander in Afghanistan speak in New York. The event was off the record, so I cannot tell you who he was or cite direct quotes. However, this individual was on his way to House and Senate committee hearings, so there should soon be on-the-record version of these insights soon...Here are some of the most noteworthy points of his presentation:

• On the narcotics problem, he argued that the issue is less about aggregate aid and more about coming making the fractured inter-agency process work. I was shocked to learn that the counternarcotics team has five people to manage a $1 billion project (by way of comparison, there are 450 army personnel for the program on training, which has approximately the same budget.) He also noted that...MORE

• ...Congress would be looking into this, but problems of stovepiping make this a difficult issue to address.
• He noted that there were now 3,000 British soldiers in Helmand as compared to 150 US personnel there last year. When put in that perspective, that’s a major shift. I hadn’t realized that the presence in Helmand--currently a top hotspot--was limited to a PRT last year.
• He said that the addition of the 82nd Airborne to the 10th Mountain Division (which was scheduled to return but will stay for four more months) will permit for the first time a combat brigade "at the ready" for offensive operations. I’m not sure precisely what this distinction is, since US forces are consistently engaged in “offensive” operations, but it’s an interesting distinction for a military commander to make. He implied this would make a difference in the success of operations.
• He said that the long term threat is the irretrievable loss of legitimacy by the government of Afghanistan. Absolutely right, and surprisingly frank.
• He quipped that we can expect an article in the New York Times in 2007 about how incompetent the US Army and the State Department are in running the police training program: you heard it here first…. He was also pretty blunt in criticizing the Germans in their police training failures.
• His concern over the lack of progress in justice sector, which he reiterated several times, suggests he understands the stakes here.
• In response to a question, and speaking on a solely personal level, he expressed disappointment with China’s lack of effort in Afghanistan. Beijing, he argued, should see that helping in Afghanistan is in their interest both as a resident of the neighborhood and also to show they can engage constructively on the international stage.
• He noted that since Ahmadinejad was elected, Iranian intelligence has been much more active. He suspects it is either to hedge against a conflict with the US or to exert its influence in Afghanistan. Iran, he said, has no interest in seeing the Karzai government fall.
• He was dismissive of claims that Pakistan is playing a double game vis a vis the Taliban. (Note--his comments may have colored by the fact that the military attache from the Pakistan embassy was in attendance; I've heard from others that in private his views on the situation are different...) In any case, his talk adopted the party line that Musharraf’s government is doing all it can do.  This has not always been the case within the US military, where some officials have stated the obvious in that not everyone within the Pakistan government is playing on the same team. Perhaps they’ve gotten flak for this so are toning it down, or he was sensitive to the presence of the attache.

Comments

[Joel Hafvenstein]

Hey, Carl. The Helmand PRT was only launched in Sept 04, with just over 100 Iowa National Guard boys under Marine command. They ran patrols around the provincial capital and periodic runs into the further districts, but obviously couldn't have much of an impact on the province. In the spring of '05, the Iowans left and a slightly larger contingent of Texas National Guard moved in. They were there when the province went to hell in May-June. The Brits arrived a month or so later, and were the first serious military presence in Helmand. In part, that was because from 2002-2005 the province was much calmer than, say, Kandahar or Zabul. NATO didn't think they'd need a major force there, just a token group to encourage NGOs to come back to work in Lashkar Gah.