New Afghan Assessment Will Not Address Additional U.S. Forces

13 August 2009

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer
 

Documents & Texts from America.gov

Washington — Defense Secretary Robert Gates says a new assessment of the military situation in Afghanistan will not contain specific recommendations for additional ground forces from the U.S. and NATO commander, Army General Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal’s assessment is expected sometime between the Afghan presidential and provincial elections on August 20 and a NATO meeting in September, Gates said at a Pentagon press briefing August 13. The assessment is designed to reflect how to implement a strategy proposed by President Obama on March 27. The assessment is usually presented by the commander to the president and may be the subject of a hearing for members of Congress.

Any future increase in forces will be treated separately from the assessment of the security situation, the defense secretary said.

Gates said it is essential for U.S. and NATO forces to ensure adequate security so that Afghanistan’s more than 17 million voters can safely cast ballots throughout the country. There are 41 candidates seeking the presidency and 3,324 candidates vying for 420 provincial council seats. President Hamid Karzai is seeking re-election.

“The role of the Afghan and international military forces is to support an election administered and organized by the government of Afghanistan. The goal is to provide a security environment as conducive as possible to holding a fair, credible election free from violence and intimidation,” Gates said.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Cartwright, said at the briefing that with the additional security forces there from the U.S. Marines and Army, a better security mix has been achieved to make the elections secure.

Cartwright added that as McChrystal makes his assessment, he is doing so without the entire security infrastructure in place yet.

But Gates also cautioned that in the view of military commanders in Afghanistan and assessments in Washington, the security picture remains mixed. He said security missions now and in the near term are designed to roll back the Taliban and create a lasting security and government presence — “a presence that can give the Afghan people confidence that they will be protected from intimidation and retribution.”

Asked if it might take decades to rebuild the economy, establish viable Afghan security forces and rebuild institutions to operate the country, Gates said that it is necessary to make a distinction between building institutions and developing the economy, and defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida could occur in a few years, but helping to build institutions and develop the country economically could take considerably longer.

“The larger part of it, economic development and institution-building, probably is a decades-long enterprise in a country [that] has been through 30 years of war and has as high an illiteracy rate as Afghanistan does and low level of economic development. So that is a long-term prospect, but it's also one of those areas where virtually all of our international partners and nongovernmental organizations are committed to that side of the equation for an indefinite of period of time,” he said. “But that's what we do all over the world in developing countries.”

“In terms of the security situation, I think you're looking at a much shorter time frame,” Gates added.

On March 27, the president announced his plan to provide additional support to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which have been battling with Taliban forces bent on retaking control of the country. The United States has about 58,000 forces currently in the country and the force level is expected to rise to 68,000 later this year. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force has about 39,000 troops serving in Afghanistan.

The Taliban regime that supported the al-Qaida terrorist group was routed from the country in late 2001 after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

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