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Mullen, general split on Taliban resurgence

The Taliban is not “resurgent” in Afghanistan, said the U.S. general who commands the 42,000-member NATO force there, contradicting the Defense Department view, expressed most recently before Congress during two hearings Wednesday by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen.

In his written statements submitted for the record to the House and Senate armed services committees, Mullen said, “In Afghanistan, we are seeing a growing insurgency, increasing violence, and a burgeoning drug trade fueled by widespread poppy cultivation.”

At a Wednesday morning press conference at the Pentagon, Army Gen. Dan McNeill agreed with the second two points but took exception to Mullen’s claim of the insurgency’s growth.

“Admiral Mullen has his view,” said McNeill, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force for the past year. “I’ve got mine, too.”

The differing assessments by the two four-star leaders come as officials grapple with the way forward in Afghanistan, where the U.S. in 2001 attacked the al-Qaida extremists who hatched the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and drove from power the Taliban government that harbored them. A Jan. 30 report by an independent commission concluded that “Afghanistan stands today at a crossroads” despite the 6½-year effort to stabilize the war-torn nation.

The Taliban, which was never completely eradicated and regained strength over the past two years, suffered significant battlefield setbacks in 2007. But the group may be attempting to grow, McNeill acknowledged.

“I believe they probably are recruiting,” he said. “They’ll have to recruit if they want to keep the same level of force that they went into 2007 with, because a considerable number of them were killed.”

And what is most relevant, he said, is the large number of insurgent leaders who were killed or captured. “Many of those were jihadists who cut their teeth fighting the Soviets,” McNeill said. “They were good at their skills. They’re no longer on the battlefield. That’ll be very helpful.”

Mullen’s statement seemed to echo his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on Dec. 11, when he said the Taliban “has grown bolder in recent months, particularly in the south and west.” But, to be fair, he also added that the group had lost a “significant” amount of leadership and failed to reassert itself, “reverting instead to terror attacks.”

Here, McNeill and Mullen agree: The increased violence that marked 2007, McNeill said Wednesday, was due to allied battlefield successes that drove the Taliban to begin using more suicide bombers and other high-profile tactics.

In addition, McNeill said his operational concept was to “stay outside of the wire, advance against the enemy.”

“We exposed ourselves to a lot more things than the force has exposed themselves to in times past,” he said. “And that, more than anything, created the increased levels of violence that are so often referred to in the news, and that people failed to realize what caused those.

“They were very successful in staying in the press, and they continue to be,” McNeill said of the Taliban. “But they have done little on the battlefield.”

The numbers don’t lie. Afghanistan was a more violent place in 2007. According to retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and now director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, acts of violence in Afghanistan rose from 900 in 2004 to 8,950 last year. At the same time, roadside bomb attacks increased from 325 to 1,469; suicide bombings rose from three to 130.

Still, McNeill said he feels he’s making progress on the security front, pointing to the degradation of insurgent leadership.

“They didn’t achieve any aims in 2007, other than to stay in the newspapers,” he said.

McNeill said that given Afghanistan’s size and geography and the tenets of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, he should have a force of 400,000 to get the job done. Since that’s not possible, he said ISAF employed a strategy of focusing efforts in the 10 percent of Afghanistan’s more than 390 districts where more than 70 percent of the violence took place.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called on NATO allies to provide more troops in Afghanistan. McNeill said he believes Poland will increase its troop strength and helicopter force in Afghanistan by summer, and that the British may add more troops. He also said there could be “some announcements” of additional commitments from certain nations during this week’s informal meeting of the 26 NATO defense ministers in Vilnius, Lithuania.

But, McNeill said, according to counterinsurgency doctrine, the most effective force is the police, not the military. And while the Afghan army has made “great progress,” he said, the police are as much as 18 months behind in terms of development. While Congress has provided the funds needed to help develop the police and allied nations have increased the number of police trainers in Afghanistan, “we clearly need more police mentors.”

The 1,000 Marines being sent this spring to help train the army and police “will satisfy some part of that,” McNeill said. Another 2,200 Marines will join ISAF at the same time in a combat role, officials have announced.

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