Blog Posts tagged with "senate"

I'm flying over the Caspian Sea, returning from three days in Afghanistan.  It was an eventful visit, my tenth over the past twenty months or so.

I'm with AFG CHoD General Karimi at an honour guard ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan

The key impression I take back to NATO is one of progress, especially in the security sector.  I am heartened especially by the addition of over 70,000 Afghan National Security Forces since the beginning of 2010.  Their quality is improving as well as their numbers, with both the Army and the Police scoring over 80% in approval polls among Afghans nation-wide.  Their marksmanship scores have almost tripled and their literacy rate is climbing rapidly, as over 90,000 of the 270,000 total have completed some level of literacy training.

An ANA recruit at Kabul Military Training Center said, “The Taliban wanted to keep me in the dark. The Army is teaching me to read and write so I can come into the light and make my own decisions.”   This is a very inexpensive and positive part of training the Afghan Security Forces receive and will reap long term dividends for stability in Afghanistan.  It was an idea Ambassador Richard Holbrooke helped me to understand a couple of years ago and it shows real promise.

While corruption and a stubborn insurgency continue to hamper progress, my sense is that three transitions are in progress in Afghanistan.

Meeting with Gen. Petraeus before he finishes his time in Afghanistan.

The first is a leadership transition among the NATO military forces.  General Petraeus is departing, and is being relieved by the highly qualified and gifted Marine General John Allen.  The three-star operational commander is also changing out, as is the three-star training commander.  In both cases, the officers selected have extensive combat experience and impeccable records.  We are carefully managing this important leadership transition within the NATO command structure to ensure it is smooth.

A second transition is the most obvious one: from coalition-led security operations to Afghan-led security operations in seven key provinces and districts, representing over 25% of the total population.  This includes Kabul, where the Afghan security forces have had the lead in repelling several recent insurgent attacks.  Even the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel was largely defeated by Afghan Forces, and was contained within hours, causing only a handful of casualties.  As a point of comparison, the Mumbai attacks in 2008, where a similar number of terrorists struck, killed or wounded nearly 500 and paralyzed the vastly larger city for two days.

This key security force transition will be the crucial leading edge of our effort to give full, across-the-nation Afghan leadership in all security operations by the end of 2014.  General Petraeus and I are both confident this transition is on track and it begins in earnest next month.

The third transition is really just beginning, and I would call this the "deep transition."  This is preparing both the 48-nation coalition and the Afghan government for the post-2014 period.  There will clearly be a large reduction in coalition forces from our current level of over 140,000.  This will cause not only military changes, but also important economic changes.  We need to think now about the bridging strategy for the Afghan economy to ensure the bottom doesn't fall out suddenly post-2014.

This leads to the need for work to define what the post-2014 period should look like in terms of partnership between Afghanistan and the coalition.  With an important meeting in Bonn in December and the NATO summit next spring in Chicago, there are good opportunities to establish the plan.  Certainly long term sustainability of the rapidly developing Afghan Security Forces should be part of that.

I'm watching great NCO training at Camp Ghazi, Afghanistan.

We've invested a great deal in Afghanistan, and I believe our efforts have a reasonable chance at succeeding over the next several years.  There will certainly be setbacks like the current Kabul Bank crisis, terrorist attacks, and ongoing governance issues, as well as a complex situation with Pakistan to manage; but in the end, the effort will be worth it.

We must ensure that Afghanistan does not fall back into Taliban hands and again become a base for terror, and our commitments -- those of 48 troop contributing nations and more than 70 financially contributing nations -- should be honored.

It won't always be smooth sailing, but I think we're on the right course.

Adm. James Stavridis
Commander, U.S. European Command and
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe