Bin Laden’s Death May Impact Afghanistan, Gates Says

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

SEYMOUR-JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C., May 6, 2011 – The killing of Osama bin Laden “could be a game changer” that affects the situation in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today.

Still, it will take time before the situation clarifies, Gates told about 450 airmen at the 335th and 336th Fighter Squadrons.

“Bin Laden and [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar had a very close personal relationship, and there are others in the Taliban who have felt betrayed by al-Qaida -- [they feel] it was because of al-Qaida’s attack on the United States that the Taliban got thrown out of Afghanistan,” the secretary said. “We’ll have to see what that relationship looks like.”

Officials may know in six months or so how bin Laden’s death has affected al-Qaida operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Gates said.

The secretary described U.S. relations in the region as complex. Using Pakistan as an example, the secretary said he would have been astounded if someone had told him two years ago that Pakistan would have 140,000 troops on its western border with Afghanistan and was going to drive the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida from South Waziristan and the Swat Valley.

“I would have said that’s not going to happen, but it has,” he said.

Pakistan has pulled troops from its border with India and has taken thousands of casualties in the fight against the terrorists. Pakistan also allows a huge percentage of the logistics sent to troops in Afghanistan to flow across their country, Gates said.

The United States and Pakistan are firm partners in the fight against terrorism, Gates said. However, he added, the Pakistanis may be concerned that United States’ current interest in the region may diminish with time.

“At the same time there is no question that they hedge their bets,” he said of Pakistan’s leadership. “Their view is that we have abandoned them four times in the last 45 years, and they are still not sure we are going to stay in the region. They saw us leave after the Soviets were thrown out of Afghanistan in 1989 and they are not confident that we won’t leave again when we have accomplished our mission in Afghanistan.”

Pakistan and the United States have to keep working on their relationship, Gates said. At the tactical level -- across the border with Afghanistan -- the relationship is good and getting better, he said. U.S. and Pakistani forces take turns being the ”hammer and anvil” with the Taliban stuck in the middle.

“I would say it is a relationship we just have to keep working at,” he said.

Fight Against Extremists Stretches Pakistan’s Military

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 20, 2011 – Just as two wars over the last decade have stretch the U.S. Army thin, the Pakistani military is stretched by its fight against extremist groups along the country’s western border, senior defense officials said here today.

At any given time, roughly one-third of the Pakistani army is deployed along the border region. Another third is along Pakistan’s border with India, and the rest is in garrison training and re-equipping.

“There are units along the border that have been in the fight for two years,” said a senior defense official, speaking on background. “That’s a long time. They are stretched.”

While many in the United States want the Pakistani military to do more against terrorist groups in North Waziristan, the truth is it may not be able to do much more, the official said. Pakistani troops – including members of the Frontier Corps – are in Khyber province, South Waziristan and other areas of Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas. North Waziristan, specifically, is a safe haven for many senior Taliban leaders launching attacks in Afghanistan.

The military has launched a campaign against terrorists in Mohmond province – an area they cleared once, but where extremists have re-emerged. And that’s the problem, the official said: once the army clears an area – “and they do that quite well,” he said – the soldiers don’t have a force to turn it over to, and they’re forced to police the region. “The civil capacity does not exist in the region to hold the area,” the official said.

The civil capacity also does not exist to rebuild areas, and the army is stepping into the breach. “They are building schools and roads and water projects,” the official said. “This should be the job of civilian agencies, but they are not available.”

If Pakistan’s army could turn over the policing and development duties, troops would be available for further operations against the extremists, the official said, but they cannot.

The Pakistani military could deploy troops from the border with India to step up the fight against extremists, but Pakistan sees India – a nation with which it has fought four wars– as the foe. India and Pakistan have troops facing each other in Kashmir province. A solution to the dispute over Kashmir, which goes back to the founding of the two nations in 1947, could “unlock solutions” for Pakistan, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with Pakistani reporters.

It was a major move to deploy the Pakistani forces from the Indian border in 2008, and U.S. officials do not expect that to happen again.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials are worried about the spread of radicalism in the nation. While most incidents still are centered on the western border, many incidents have occurred in Balochistan, Sindh and even the Pakistani heartland of Punjab. “They even use the term Punjabi Taliban,” the official said. “And it concerns them.”

The United States is set to provide roughly $3 billion in aid to the Pakistani military in fiscal 2012, the defense official noted.

NATO, Afghan Forces Hold Advantage, Petraeus Says

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2011 – NATO and Afghan forces hold the advantage over insurgents as spring and summer approach, the commander of coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan said in London today.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, en route back to Afghanistan after congressional testimony here, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute that Taliban fighters displaced over the last year from long-held areas in Afghanistan have lost significant capability.

“The infrastructure, the contacts, the relationships, the command-and-control facilities, … [the Taliban lack] all of this that they have established, in some cases, over a period of decades,” the general said. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has recovered four times as many weapons and explosives caches over the past several months than in the same period a year ago, he added, “because we’re in areas where they had to leave behind a great deal.”

Afghan and ISAF forces also have between 100,000 and 120,000 more pairs of boots on the ground than they did a year ago, the general said, while insurgents “will not come at us, we think, in such large attacks as they have in the past” when the harsh Afghan winters have ended.

Petraeus said that as the transition to Afghan-led security responsibility gets under way according to the plan Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced yesterday, ISAF is working to support his efforts to extend governance.

Coalition strategy in Afghanistan is increasingly focused on counterinsurgency’s “build” phase, though needed gains remain in the “clear” and “hold” phases, Petraeus said.

ISAF is working to solidify and expand security gains in central Afghanistan while increasing its defense in depth along the border with Pakistan, the general said.

“We have the best coordination, I think, [that] we’ve ever had between ISAF, the Pakistani army and Afghan forces,” he said.

Pakistani efforts against al-Qaida in northern Waziristan has put “enormous pressure on them … [and] commenced the dismantlement, if you will, of that organization and to force its most senior leaders to go even further underground than they already were,” he added.

The pressure on al-Qaida is evident in the terror organization’s delayed response to world events, Petraeus said. “You only have to look at how, typically, untimely statements by Osama bin Laden are when there are fast-paced events ongoing in the Middle East,” he explained. ISAF, Pakistani and Afghan forces must keep pressure on against al-Qaida, the Taliban and other terrorist networks, Petraeus said.

“In terms of what can lead to a change, I think that developments inside Afghanistan may be the most important lever,” he said. Widespread reintegration of former insurgents into Afghan society would lead to a situation where Taliban leaders “would call up on their cellphone, and no one answers,” he said.

Reintegration has achieved some “modest reductions” already, Petraeus said, and ISAF strategy acknowledges “you can’t kill or capture your way out of an insurgency.”

“With respect to reconciliation and reintegration, there is no question about the seriousness of the Afghan government or President Karzai about this,” he said, noting peace councils devoted to reintegrating former Taliban members have been established in most of Afghanistan’s provinces.

Petraeus said Afghan leaders and international opinion support “constructive discussions that could lead to reconciliation of substantial parts of the organizations that are causing such problems for Afghanistan and the Afghan people.”