Honourable chairman and members of the committee, thank you so much for inviting me to share my thoughts. I too was invited late last night, and unfortunately I don't have a written document to share with you.
A lot can be said. One is perplexed with the complexity of the topic and about how to size it down to seven to ten minutes, but let me try to highlight or underscore certain issues.
I think the best way to look at the situation in Afghanistan is to ask how to get from where we are to where we need to be. Obviously, where we need to be means Afghanistan being more or less stable, so that NATO forces can begin withdrawing.
Before I jump into that, I want to highlight something that is very disappointing to me as an analyst: the huge amount of poverty of thought that exists globally on this issue. This poverty of thought is intellectual more than anything else. It is caused by three things. First, there's the sheer superficiality of knowledge about Afghanistan—and of course about other areas, but since we're dealing with Afghanistan, we'll stick with that. Number two, there is very little knowledge of the complexity that is Afghanistan. Number three is that there are just too many voices, and the real crux, if you will, of the matter is drowning within those voices.
So where are we right now? We are witnessing a surge in the insurgency, both in terms of actual fighting, the guerrilla-style fighting, and suicide bombings.
We're also seeing this in neighbouring Pakistan, which wasn't the case, at least a year and a half ago—in the last year and a half we've witnessed an uptake in Pakistan. The Pashtun areas of Pakistan are undergoing a Talibanization, if you will.
The debate, the discussion, amongst NATO states, at least at the surface level and to the global audience, shows a sense of disarray concerning what needs to be done. What is the objective? How are we supposed to reach it? All of this is boosting the confidence of the Taliban.
I can tell you for a fact, based on intelligence, what every single Taliban commander is telling the fighters who are under his command is: these people are going to leave; they're only here for a short period of time; and our job is not to win the battles but to make sure they leave sooner rather than later.
So this debate about whether we should stay, whether this is a military conflict, whether we should engage in combat, engage in development work—all of that is only adding to the confidence of the Taliban while we're debating the whole issue.
Of course, the Taliban are being approached. There's a lot of talk about a negotiated settlement. What does that mean? Do we negotiate from a position of relative weakness? Do we allow the other side to dictate terms that at this point in time are not favourable by any stretch of the imagination?
Negotiated settlement also assumes that we know who to negotiate with. We tend to look at the Taliban as this one email address or one door that we can knock on and they'll come out and say okay, we're ready to talk. That's not the case; neither do we have an address, nor is this a monolithic entity.
Quickly going through what the Taliban constitute today, there are at least three categories. I agree that these are theoretical categories and that reality is much messier, but as an analyst, I can't help but come up with theoretical models.
One type of Taliban are those who are in country, in Afghanistan, who are commanders who report back to the Shura, led by Mullah Omar. They're based in Afghanistan; they're waging the insurgency there. Then there are Taliban who are connected to elements within the Pakistani state and society; and then there are Taliban who are connected to al Qaeda.
These are three separate, very broad categories. These are not factions. These are not well-defined groups but broad categories. How can we begin to talk about negotiating when the Taliban themselves are a complex phenomenon?
I mentioned earlier that the insurgency is growing. Of course, this is not the nineties: the Taliban are not taking over territory; that's not what they're aiming for. They're aiming to make life difficult for NATO forces so that the whole idea or confusion in NATO capitals about this perhaps not being the right mission, that we need to modify it, that we're not sure what we're doing, is exacerbated in our minds, so that one day we will pick up and leave. Will that happen? I don't know, but that's what they're trying to do.
We did not see Taliban activity in the Herat region; that's not a traditional Taliban area. North of Kabul we're seeing activity in Kapisa and Badghis provinces, and even along the Turkmen border, which are all areas of operation. Obviously, the supply lines are not running that long. We're not talking about infantry, but about the ability to stage attacks. The recent attack on the Serena Hotel is an eye-opener to all of us as to the enhanced capabilities of this insurgency.
We tend to talk about either military conflict or negotiated settlement as if it's a black and white dichotomy, an either/or situation. It is not, because every military conflict ends with a negotiated settlement—and each side knows that. There is no war for the sake of war; we're not going to be in Afghanistan for the long haul or just for the sake of occupying the country. We need to get beyond that and to understand how to reach a negotiated settlement. Right now it is too early for a negotiated settlement, because we don't know what that negotiated settlement would look like, let alone try to negotiate it.
Pakistan is in disarray because of the political turmoil and the growing jihadist insurgency. Pakistan has a large role to play in the future stabilization of Afghanistan, so we need to see how that plays out.
Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the American experience in Iraq. There was a time, when the regime was disbanded, when we saw a de-Baathification process. Now we're seeing a re-Baathification process. Perhaps the solution lies in bringing back certain pragmatic or moderate Taliban—but we're not there yet.
There's a question of why we need to stay in Afghanistan, and this is becoming the hallmark of the debate. We definitely need to develop institutions, but what are the primary institutions that we need to develop and upon which every other institution will rest? These are the security institutions, the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army. But they're not there yet, and they're not going to be there for a very long time. We need to admit that and to acknowledge it. Until such a time, we need to be able to support these institutions.
You see, you can't build anything when you're being shot at. If you're being shot at, you're going to shoot back. Our troops, our NATO forces, are having to do two things: develop, and keep the Taliban from shooting at them, and of course at those in Afghanistan who support the NATO mission. We can only hope that by 2011 the ANP and ANA can increasingly begin to take responsibility for security, but that is something we can't discuss in greater detail because this is a very futuristic assessment.
I think that ground reality will determine in 2011, or in the years to come, where we stand. Instead of having this lack of a coherent policy and allowing this to become a political debate or a punching bag for a political vendetta, I think the politicians should let the technocrats, the military commanders, the intelligence officials, and the experts give them the ground reality upon which any further policy is to be based.
Am I running out of time?