PAL-C
Representatives Raise Afghanistan Troop Increase Concerns with U.S. Officials
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Pakistan and Afghanistan, David Sedney
Pakistani
officials must evidence claims of militant spillover; US officials must ratchet
down public calls for Pakistan to "do more" and ratchet up resourcing the
Pakistani military
ISLAMABAD,
December 23, 2009 - Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi today commented
on the new US Afghanistan policy stating,
"As a result of the military
surge, there could be more violence in Afghanistan which could, in turn, result
in further influx of militants and refugees from Afghanistan into Pakistan."
Three
weeks earlier, however, representatives from the Pakistani American Leadership Center
(PAL-C) publicly raised this concern with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense David Sedney, and received the following response:
Q:
Taha Gaya with the Pakistani American Leadership Center. I just wanted to
raise a question that Mr. Lemons and Mr. Nawaz both touched upon, and that was,
Mr. Lemons, in speaking, talked about the balloon effect, where if you have a
surge in Afghanistan, that's going to drive insurgents, possibly, elsewhere,
most likely to Pakistan. And then Mr. Nawaz raised the issue of capacity
of the Pakistani army to deal with, maybe, that influx of insurgents. I
know when the Pakistani army entered in South Waziristan, before doing that,
they signed some ceasefire agreements with other tribes in South Waziristan,
and also in North Waziristan. So if we do find this influx, aren't we
just setting Pakistan up for, essentially, the creation of a safe haven, where
the Pakistani military is busy in South Waziristan. They don't have the
ability to go after these new insurgents. So those new insurgents will
just hide out in Baluchistan, in North Waziristan and create problems for NATO
and ISAF forces in Afghanistan?
MR.
SEDNEY: First, on the spillover effect - and I won't call it a balloon
effect; I'll call it a spillover effect - the government and military of
Pakistan raised that issue beginning a year ago, when we put the additional
33,000 troops, including about 10,000 troops in Helmand this summer.
We have seen
no evidence - and the Pakistani government, intelligence and military has
provided us no evidence that, that has had any effect of that spillover effect
that they are concerned about. I know we had the prime minister speaking
about this just a day or so ago in Pakistan. And we understand the fears
of the Pakistani government, based on what happened in 1979, in terms of the 10
years of refugee flows out and what, again, happened during the civil war in
the '90s in terms of the impact on Pakistan.
So we
understand why Pakistan is concerned. But the facts on the ground simply
don't show that. As NATO - I'm sorry, as ISAF has ramped up over the last
several years, there has not been that spillover into Pakistan that the
Pakistani people and government are so concerned over. The refugee flows
have not begun. There's absolutely no data to support those fears
yet. So is it a legitimate fear? Yes. Is there
evidence? No. And I think that goes back on why I have been perhaps
a little bit at disagreement here. The Taliban effort in Afghanistan is
very much a local effort, area-by-area.
Yes, they've
expanded what they're doing in Afghanistan, but it's very much a part of a
yearly campaign plan. But the actual fighters that are used in every
area, by and large, are local fighters, sometimes augmented by people from
Pakistan. But they're local fighters who are recruited through a variety
of means. So the fight in Afghanistan is very much a valley-by-valley
fight. And the local people don't really have many places to go.
And then finally, a big part that I didn't mention of the president's strategy,
and something that President Karzai endorsed, is the reintegration and
reconciliation of those exact fighters.
We've
already started, in some small ways. This process has to be
Afghan-led. President Karzai and his government have bought onto
it. Gen. McChrystal has brought out Gen. Graham Lamb, who's already put
in place a lot of the building blocks for that strategy. There's an
Afghan government strategy that matches with that.
So in order
to prevent that kind of balloon effect, what we have to do is ensure that the
fighters who we wish to defeat are not pushed other places. Our objective
is certainly not to kill all of them; our objective is to bring them back into
the Afghan polity. And this is a fascinating subject. I can't wait
to continue discussing it with the ambassadors and the defense attaches over at
the Pentagon, which I have to do now. Sorry.
Read the
full transcript here.
In an off-the-record meeting at the White
House on December 10, 2009, with officials from the National Security Council, Department
of Defense and Special Representative Ambassador Holbrooke's team,
representatives from PAL-C again raised concerns about effects of the troop
increase in Afghanistan including the announcement of a troop withdrawal date
within 18 months and the apparent lack of a commensurate effective economic/civilian
assistance increase predicated on governance reforms and a political reintegration
strategy for southern Afghanistan.
(For more excellent analysis on these issues
by five leading Pakistan experts click here.)
PAL-C representatives also raised the issue
of senior U.S. government officials calling on Pakistan to "do more" against
militants in North Waziristan and Balochistan without providing Pakistan with
an increased capacity to take on those challenges.
Central to increasing the Pakistani military's
capacity to take on militants in those areas and to continue to wage a successful
campaign against militants in South Waziristan is the provision of specific counterinsurgency
and counterterrorism military equipment, particularly attack and lift helicopters,
night vision equipment, body armor and counter-IED devices.
In 2009, four U.S. Department of Defense programs appropriated by the National Defense Authorization
Act (NDAA) made limited progress towards this end:
Pakistan:
Mi-17 Helicopters ($80M)
This
program is designed to help improve the Pakistani Army's airlift capability to
support counterterrorism operations on their western border against enemies
common to both Pakistan and the United States. Providing this capability will
enable the Pakistan Army to take more effective action against terrorists,
militants, and insurgents in efforts to secure and stabilize the border region
between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Equipment/Training
Included:
Four Mi-17 Medium Lift helicopters, spare parts packages.
Pakistan:
Aviation Maintenance Shelters for Increased Operational Readiness Rates in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas ($3.1M)
This
program is designed to help improve the Pakistani Army Aviation units' ability
to maintain their fleet of helicopters. This program will allow the Pakistan
Army to maintain a higher operational readiness rate, improving their ability
to respond to and sustain the fight against the enemy in the FATA.
Pakistan:
Special Operations Forces Counterterroism Package ($17M)
This
program is designed to assist the Pakistan Army in achieving increased special
operations capacity to support counterterrorism (CT) operations on its western
border against enemies common to both Pakistan and the United States.
Equipment/Training
Included: Sniper
rifles and accessories, radios, Night Vision Devices (NVDs), GPS units, Combat
Lifesaver kits, body armor, assorted Special Operations Forces (SOF) field
gear.
Pakistan:
Ground-Based Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Capability for
Counterterrorism Operations ($12.8M)
This
program is designed to improve the Pakistani Army's intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance ISR capability to support counterterrorism operations in the
FATA. This program will assist the Pakistan Army in achieving an acceptable ISR
capacity to support border monitoring, CT missions, and vital infrastructure
protection, and to ensure national security on its western border against
enemies common to both Pakistan and the United States.
Equipment/Training
Included:
Electronic warfare systems, portable intelligence nodes.
The ability of such programs to grow in size
and effectiveness has now been increased with Congressional funding for the
$400 million Pakistani Counterinsurgency Fund (PCF) which will remain available
until September 30, 2010 and the $700 million Pakistan Counterinsurgency
Capability Fund (PCCF) which will remain available until September 30, 2011.
The plan outlined in the "Pakistan Assistance
Strategy Report" which uses PCF funds to update Pakistan's 32 AH-1 Cobra attack
helicopters and arm Pakistan's existing fleet of 24 Bell 412 helicopters provides
an excellent example of productive uses for these funds but much more must be
done, including the fulfillment of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pledge "to consider any request from the Pakistani Government to help the police force, because I agree completely that they're the front line of defense."
Rather than incrementally inching up our
assistance, it is far more productive to frontload our security assistance now
and finish the job, particularly as anti-Americanism and Pakistani resentment
at American demands to "do more" grows, as demonstrated by this editorial in Dawn.
To
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efforts to create a better tomorrow for the Pakistani American community and
the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.
