Expert panel debates Afghanistan strategy during Senate hearing

Washington, 17 September (WashingtonTV)—A panel of experts on Afghanistan debated the question of US troop numbers and strategy needed to stabilize Afghanistan, during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [SFRC] in Washington on Wednesday.

The senators heard comments from three witnesses who presented differing viewpoints about the US military engagement in Afghanistan. Rory Stewart, director of Harvard University's Carr Center on Human Rights Policy, suggested a “light footprint” of US soldiers on the ground. In contrast, John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, argued for an increase in US troop presence. And Stephen Biddle, senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, advised a middle-of-the-road approach.

In his opening remarks, the committee chairman, John Kerry, cautioned that the military should not be relied on to solve the Afghanistan quagmire, suggesting that the U.S. should rethink its mission in that country.

“No amount of money, no rise in troop levels, nor any clever metrics will matter if the mission is ill-defined or ill-conceived,” Kerry said.

Warning that time was running out, Kerry went on to say that the U.S. must balance its military engagement in fighting insurgents with efforts to improve the lives of civilians.

“We are in a race against time. In a region suspicious of foreign troops, an open-ended obligation of large numbers of US troops risks consigning us to the same fate as others who’ve tried to master Afghanistan. No matter how long we remain there, history should teach us that there will be no purely military solution in that country. What’s needed instead is a comprehensive strategy, one that emphasizes the need for the right level of civilian effort as much as for the right military deployment to provide security for that other effort to take hold,” Kerry said.

Kerry, who has said that the United States is involved in a “global counter insurgency”, proposed that the US air raid in Somalia against an al-Qaeda figure earlier this week – which succeeded without a permanent US troop presence in that country – could be a possible model for a new Afghanistan strategy involving fewer US troops.

His comments sparked a debate among the panelists regarding the right balance needed to build both a successful counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaign.

Nagl replied, “It tells us that you can conduct counterterrorism with a light footprint, you cannot conduct counterinsurgency with a light footprint,” adding that the analogy with Somalia was inaccurate because due to the presence of Pakistan next door neutralizes the success of counterterrorism in Afghanistan.

“I am convinced that American counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan have contributed to the more effective Pakistani counterinsurgency campaign,” he said.

Biddle, who agreed with Nagl’s assessment that Afghanistan needs counter-insurgency, which takes a broader approach to fighting rebels, said: “Should we fail in the undertaking in Afghanistan, we run the risk of creating a substantial base for a variety of insurgent groups whose relationship with one another are complex, but potentially dangerous to destabilize a Pakistani state whose security is vital to the United States.”

However, Stewart disagreed with linking the case of Afghanistan to that of Pakistan.

“It’s very dangerous I think to mount an argument for a justification for our presence in Afghanistan based on our interests in Pakistan,” he said, offering a metaphor comparing a weak Afghanistan to a cat, and a much stronger Pakistan to a tiger.

“We’re beating the cat, and when you say ‘Why are you beating the cat?’, the answer is ‘oh it’s a cat-tiger strategy, it’s an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy.’ But in fact you’re beating the cat because you don’t know what to do about the tiger,” Stuart said.

The danger of increasing troop presence, Stuart said, is the lack of long-term sustainability, since at some point they will have to be withdrawn and the US will go from “engagement to isolation.”

“A light footprint is a more sustainable footprint. That footprint should focus on just two things: A very narrow counterterrorist objective which does not require the troop deployments that we are talking about, and a humanitarian objective,” Stuart said.

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that there would be no quick decision on whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan.

His comments came one day after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers that the U.S. would likely need to deploy more troops to Afghanistan to battle a deepening Taliban insurgency.

Source: WashingtonTV correspondent in Washington

© WashingtonTV 2009. All rights reserved.