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Afghanistan

Status of the Insurgency

The Afghan Taliban-dominated insurgency has become increasingly dangerous and destabilizing. Despite the loss of some key leaders, insurgents have adjusted their tactics to maintain momentum following the arrival of additional US forces last year. We assess the Taliban was successful in its goal of suppressing voter turnout in the August elections in key parts of the country.

Since January 2007, the Taliban has increased its influence and expanded the insurgency outside the Pashtun belt, while maintaining most of its strongholds. The Taliban’s expansion of influence into northern Afghanistan since late 2007 has made the insurgency a countrywide threat. As it has done elsewhere, the Taliban conducts military operations, shadow governance activities, and propaganda campaigns to solidify support among the populace and eliminate resistance to its presence. I refer you to my classified statement for a more detailed discussion of IC analysis of Taliban influence.

The insurgency also has increased the geographic scope and frequency of attacks. Taliban reactions to expanded Afghan and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations undertaken more lethal tactics.

This lack of security in many areas coupled with a generally low government capacity and competency has hampered efforts to improve governance and extend development. Afghan leaders also continue to face the eroding effects of official corruption and the drug trade, which erode diminish public confidence in its already fragile institutions.

Afghan Taliban-al-Qa’ida Links

Al-Qa’ida activity in Afghanistan increased steadily from the beginning of 2006 until early 2009. Nevertheless, the group’s manpower contribution to the insurgency in Afghanistan is likely to remain modest because the group’s core leadership in Pakistan continues to dedicate resources to planning, preparing, and conducting terrorist operations in Pakistan, the US, Europe, and on other fronts.

We assess al-Qa’ida’s ability to operate in Afghanistan largely depends on the relationship between al-Qa’ida operatives and individual Taliban field commanders. Al-Qa’ida fighters rely heavily on Taliban guides to facilitate their movement, lodging, and safety while operating in unfamiliar terrain among a non-Arab population. Al-Qa’ida last year fielded at any one time less than 100 fighters in Afghanistan, while the Taliban has thousands of fighters in Afghanistan. However, this number does not include groups of associated foreign fighters operating inside Afghanistan concurrently and at-times cooperatively with al-Qa’ida.

• We assess that Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar remains committed to supporting al-Qa’ida and elements within the Taliban continue to cooperate with the group in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, al-Qa’ida’s efforts to work with Pakistan-based militants to sustain their terror campaign in Pakistan’s settled areas is adding strains to al-Qa’ida’s relations with the Afghan Taliban leadership.

The safehaven that Afghan insurgents have in Pakistan is the group’s most important outside support. Disrupting that safehaven will not be sufficient by itself to defeat the insurgency, but disruption of the insurgent presence in Pakistan is a necessary condition of making substantial counterinsurgency progress. In my classified statement for the record I have outlined in more detail our assessment of the situation regarding Afghanistan-oriented insurgents in Pakistan.

Security Force and Governance Challenges

Against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s increasingly dangerous and destabilizing insurgency, continued progress has been made in expanding and fielding the Afghan National Army (ANA) but the shortage of international trainers in the field, high operational tempo, attrition, and absenteeism hamper efforts to make units capable of significant independent action. The Afghan National Police (ANP) has received less training and resources than the Army and is beset by high rates of corruption and casualties and absenteeism. Limitations to the ANP’s training, mentoring, and equipping, as well as to the abilities of a force trained to “hold” territory in those large parts of the country that have not been effectively “cleared” hinder its progress and effectiveness. The Ministry of Interior has also remained largely ineffective. We judge the ANA has a limited but growing capability to plan, coordinate, and execute counterinsurgency operations at the battalion level. It still requires substantial Coalition support in logistics, training, combat enablers, and indirect fire.

In 2010, as we, our NATO Allies, other coalition partners, and our Afghan partners increase efforts on the security front, Kabul must work closely with the national legislature and provincial and tribal leaders to establish and extend the capacity of the central and provincial governments. The country faces a chronic shortage of resources and of qualified and motivated government officials at the national and local level. In addition, continued insecurity undercuts the population’s perceptions of the national government’s long term prospects to either win the war, or to persuade tribal and other influential non-state actors to remain neutral or back insurgents.

Kabul’s inability to build effective, honest, and loyal provincial and district level institutions capable of providing basic government services and enabling sustainable, legal livelihoods erodes its popular legitimacy and has contributed to the influence of local warlords and the Taliban. The Afghan Government established the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) in 2007 to address governance shortcomings at the provincial and district level; but the IDLG’s efforts to improve governance have been hamstrung by a shortage of capable government administrators.

Many Afghans perceive the police to be corrupt and more dangerous than the Taliban. The inflow of international funding connected to the international military presence and international reconstruction assistance has brought benefits but also has increased the opportunities for corrupt officials to profit from the counterinsurgency and stabilization efforts in the country. The drug trade has a debilitating effect on the government’s legitimacy, as criminal networks cooperate with insurgents and corrupt officials in ways that decrease security and the average Afghan’s confidence that he will be treated fairly by the authorities.

Status of the Afghan Drug Trade

The insidious effects of drug-related criminality continue to undercut the government’s ability to assert its authority outside of Kabul, to develop a strong, rule-of-law based system, and to rebuild the economy. High wheat prices, low opium prices, and provincial-government-led efforts reduced poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to 131,000 hectares in 2009, down 17 percent from the 157,300 hectares cultivated in 2008. Potential opium production fell only 4 percent, however, to 5,300 metric tons, because good weather following a drought in 2008 increased yields. Potential heroin production is estimated at 630 metric tons, if the entire opium crop were processed.

• High wheat prices and low opium prices during the planting season in fall 2008 encouraged farmers to grow more wheat at the expense of poppy. Wheat prices were nearly three times higher than normal, driven by countrywide food production shortfalls, globally high prices for wheat, and a partial ban on wheat imports by Pakistan, Afghanistan’s main wheat trading partner. Opium prices have been on a downward trend since 2004, most likely because of continued overproduction.

• Recent price trends may lead to a larger poppy crop this year. Wheat prices have dropped by half since the fall 2008 planting season in response to an abundant Afghan wheat harvest last year and global price declines, reducing the profitability of wheat and probably making the crop less desirable than poppy to farmers. However, aggressive governor-led anti-poppy campaigns in some provinces and continued low opium prices caused by persistent overproduction may nevertheless convince some farmers—who are now planting next year’s crop—to grow wheat and other licit crops instead of poppy.

• The Afghan Taliban in 2008 received up to $100 million in opium, cash, and goods and services from the opiate trade in Afghanistan, making the opiate trade the most important source of funding from inside Afghanistan for the Taliban-dominated insurgency.

International Support to Afghanistan

NATO remains committed to supporting ISAF’s mission in Afghanistan and Allies agree building the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is key to Afghanistan’s long-term stability. Allies concentrated in the south and east—the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Poland, Australia, Denmark, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania ,and the Netherlands—conduct the bulk of the kinetic counterinsurgency operations. ISAF partners have been under increasing pressure in the north, where Berlin has remained committed to supporting training efforts. Operational limitations inhibit the ability of other Allies to make lasting improvements to the security situation, yet key allies have the capacity to make new contributions to the ISAF mission. After the release of the US Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy and the NATO Summit in spring 2009, Allies and partners deployed more than 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan—primarily for election security, force protection, and training of Afghan forces. After the President’s 1 December West Point speech, NATO Allies and other ISAF partners pledged approximately 7,000 troops, including the long-term extension of many of the temporary deployments to support the August 2009 Afghan presidential election.

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