Afghanistan Strategy: Few Tough Questions, Fewer Detailed Answers

At the end of June, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of the ninth American commander in Afghanistan and the 17th commander of that war overall.  The U.S.-led coalition has been fighting there for 16 years and ten months.  Senior commanders and political leaders have acknowledged the war is a stalemate.  Years of Department of Defense reporting and senior leader hearings testify to the difficulties with the war and the reasons for the stalemate.  Many open source articles and books explain why, what at first looked like, a successful war, with the Taliban taking flight, then saw the regeneration of the Taliban and the onset of a protracted war of attrition with increasingly grisly bombings and violence year after year.  Civilians have been victims of much of the violence.  A strategic stalemate after almost 17 years of war is disconcerting. 

What was a bit perplexing about the nomination hearing for the next commander among a long line of commanders in Afghanistan was the dearth of detail.  During the hearing on 19 June, the senators posed a few tough questions about the gravest obstacles to success in Afghanistan and did not exact substantive answers.  The most recent unclassified biannual Defense Department report on progress in Afghanistan, released in early July shortly after the nomination hearing, included more detail than the answers that the senators demanded of the new commander.  The recent report makes clear that Pakistan’s most lethal and reliable Islamist terrorist proxy, the Haqqani network, “continues to be an integral part of the Taliban’s effort” to pose an existential threat to Afghanistan, and that the region has the “largest concentration” of terrorist organizations in the world.

Most importantly, the June DoD report notes that the Taliban and the Haqqani network retain freedom of movement in Pakistan and that Afghanistan faces a continuing threat from an externally supported insurgency.  Pakistan is the principal source of external support.  This is not a recent epiphany.  Issued by DoD since 2009, these reports have regularly stated that the sanctuary in Pakistan and the material support emanating from Pakistan sustain the Taliban insurgents and prevent their defeat.  The report from last December state that “the externally supported Haqqani Network remains the greatest threat to Afghan, U.S., and coalition forces.” The June report omits this fact, but it does stipulate that compelling Pakistan to curb its support for “proxy terrorist and militant groups” is a focus of the regional dimension of the current strategy.

Pakistan, a nominally major non-NATO ally of the U.S., is the single biggest incubator and exporter of Islamist militant groups that kill and maim Afghan, American, and coalition soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan.  Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Directorate provides support and sanctuary to the Taliban. This prolongs the stalemate and prevents the Taliban’s defeat.  The U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan partners will not end the war, or will not end the war successfully unless they can end the sanctuary by stopping Pakistan’s inimical strategic behavior.  Pakistan, in reality, behaves as an enemy in its strategic calculus.  By pretending to be an ally it deludes and dissembles with risible impunity.  Even though these facts have been unclassified in years of reports and testimonies, the Senate Armed Services Committee did not delve into this grave problem during the nomination hearing. Excerpts of the few tough questions and the responses provided at the nomination hearing appear below, along with more detail given by the author from a variety of open source publications:

SENATOR REED:  Can you give us a sense now from your great experience in the region as to where we are with regard to Pakistan and how effective they will be in assisting our efforts?
GENERAL MILLER: Senator, as I look at Afghanistan -- and I've looked at it for quite a number of years -- it is obviously a very tough neighborhood with some tough neighbors. As I look at Pakistan, Pakistan must be part of the solution, and we should have high expectations that they are part of the solution, not just diplomatically but from a security standpoint as well.