Obama’s Remarks on the Strategy in Afghanistan

Good morning, everybody. When I announced our new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last December, I directed my national security team to regularly assess our efforts and to review our progress after one year. That's what we've done consistently over the course of the past 12 months —- in weekly updates from the field, in monthly meetings with my national security team, and in my frequent consultations with our Afghan, Pakistani and coalition partners. And that's what we've done as part of our annual review, which is now complete.

I want to thank Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates for their leadership. Since Joint Chief of Staff Chairman, Admiral Mullen, is in Afghanistan, I'm pleased that we're joined by Vice Chairman, General Cartwright.

Our efforts also reflect the dedication of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, whose memory we honor and whose work we'll continue. Indeed, the tributes to Richard that have poured in from around the globe speak to both the enormous impact of his life and to the broad international commitment to our shared efforts in this critical region.

I have spoken with President Karzai of Afghanistan as well as President Zardari of Pakistan and discussed our findings and the way forward together. Today, I want to update the American people on our review —- our assessment of where we stand and areas where we need to do better. I want to be clear. This continues to be a very difficult endeavor. But I can report that thanks to the extraordinary service of our troops and civilians on the ground, we are on track to achieve our goals.

It's important to remember why we remain in Afghanistan. It was Afghanistan where al Qaeda plotted the 9/11 attacks that murdered 3,000 innocent people. It is the tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border from which terrorists have launched more attacks against our homeland and our allies. And if an even wider insurgency were to engulf Afghanistan, that would give al Qaeda even more space to plan these attacks.

And that's why, from the start, I've been very clear about our core goal. It's not to defeat every last threat to the security of Afghanistan, because, ultimately, it is Afghans who must secure their country. And it's not nation-building, because it is Afghans who must build their nation. Rather, we are focused on disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and preventing its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

In pursuit of our core goal we are seeing significant progress. Today, al Qaeda's senior leadership in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is under more pressure than at any point since they fled Afghanistan nine years ago. Senior leaders have been killed. It's harder for them to recruit; it's harder for them to travel; it's harder for them to train; it's harder for them to plot and launch attacks. In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down. It will take time to ultimately defeat al Qaeda, and it remains a ruthless and resilient enemy bent on attacking our country. But make no mistake -- we are going to remain relentless in disrupting and dismantling that terrorist organization.

In Afghanistan, we remain focused on the three areas of our strategy: our military effort to break the Taliban's momentum and train Afghan forces so they can take the lead; our civilian effort to promote effective governance and development; and regional cooperation, especially with Pakistan, because our strategy has to succeed on both sides of the border.

Indeed, for the first time in years, we've put in place the strategy and the resources that our efforts in Afghanistan demand. And because we've ended our combat mission in Iraq, and brought home nearly 100,000 of our troops from Iraq, we're in a better position to give our forces in Afghanistan the support and equipment they need to achieve their missions. And our drawdown in Iraq also means that today there are tens of thousands fewer Americans deployed in harm's way than when I took office.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/asia/17afghan-text.html?src=twrhp

Holbrooke mentioned Afghan war before surgery

As friends and colleagues from four decades of diplomatic life reflected on the intensity of Richard C. Holbrooke's dedication, many were not surprised to learn that concerns about the Afghanistan war were apparently among his final thoughts.

After Holbrooke's death Monday, The Washington Post, citing his family members, reported that the veteran diplomat had told his physician just before surgery Friday to "stop this war."

But Tuesday, a fuller account of the tone and contents of his remarks emerged.

As physician Jehan El-Bayoumi was attending to Holbrooke in the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, she told him to relax and asked what she could do to comfort him, according to an aide who was present.

Holbrooke, who was in severe pain, said jokingly that it was hard to relax because he had to worry about the difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

El-Bayoumi, an Egyptian American internist who is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's physician, replied that she would worry for him. Holbrooke responded by telling her to end the war, the aide said.

The aide said he could not be sure of Holbrooke's exact words. He emphasized Tuesday that the comment was made in painful banter, rather than as a serious exhortation about policy.

Holbrooke also spoke extensively about his family and friends as he awaited surgery by Farzad Najam, a thoracic surgeon of Pakistani descent.

Holbrooke's statement was seized upon quickly by critics of the Afghan war debate, some of whom interpreted it as a clarion call to end the conflict. Others viewed his comment as a last-breath disavowal of the Obama administration's war policy, which has involved a troop surge - which Holbrooke publicly supported - to combat the Taliban. But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley cast Holbrooke's words simply as "humorous repartee."


Crowley said the comment "says two things about Richard Holbrooke in my mind. Number one, he always wanted to make sure he got the last word. And secondly, it just showed how he was singularly focused on pursuing and advancing the process and the policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Holbrooke's deputy, Frank Ruggiero, has been named to fill his post as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in an acting capacity, Crowley said, adding that no significant move had been made to select a permanent replacement.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121406760.html?hpid=topnews

NATO's 2014 Afghanistan departure date laden with ambiguity

The two-day summit that ended Saturday in Lisbon committed NATO countries to an open-ended involvement in Afghanistan. While the leaders of the European-American alliance set a goal of withdrawing their combat troops over the next four years, they also signed an accord with Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledging long-term military and reconstruction assistance.

They also endorsed a plan to start handing off responsibility for security to Afghan forces next spring, with foreign troops switching to a support and training role and with the aim of completing the transfer within four years.

But NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen officials said the date was not a deadline. Combat operations could continue beyond 2014, he warned, and the pace of the transition will have to be determined by conditions on the ground in each town, district and province.

The meeting brought together leaders of the countries that have troops on the ground, 28 of them members of NATO and 20 others that joined the international force over the nine years that it has slogged away in Afghanistan.

Political support among NATO leaders for an extended military engagement is already wearing thin.

The Dutch ended their combat role this summer, withdrawing their 1,950 troops after four years in Uruzgan province in the centre of the country.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the summit that Canada would not budge from its plans to withdraw its military forces next year. He said the 950 military trainers that Canada has agreed to send in their place will leave March of 2014, regardless of whether other allied forces remain in Afghanistan until the end of that year or beyond.

The rest of the assembled presidents and prime ministers, many with elections looming in the next two years, had clearly hoped to bring home a less ambiguous timetable for withdrawal so that they could face down growing domestic opposition to the war.

Instead, they got a sobering assessment of the situation on the ground from General David Petraeus, the American commander of the 130,000-strong international force.

“After several years during which security deteriorated and governance stalled, we have regained the initiative,” he told them in a prepared statement at the closed-door meeting.

“Continued patience will enable us to sustain it,” he added, “despite the inevitable setbacks that lie ahead.”

Some 150,000 allied soldiers, the bulk of them American, are now deployed in Afghanistan. They have faced their most intensive fighting, and sustained their highest casualties, in the past year as the United States moved in 30,000 extra troops.

British and German leaders, as did President Barack Obama, said they intended to thin out their forces but were prepared to keep some troops in the country if needed beyond 2014.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, in an interview with Sky News after the summit, said some of the country’s 9,500 soldiers would stay on to train Afghan forces or deliver aid. “There will not be British troops in large numbers and they won’t be in a combat role” by 2015, he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, though, was already anticipating a quicker drawdown. Although NATO officials said they could not say where the first transfers to Afghan forces were likely to occur, Mr. Sarkozy told reporters in Lisbon that some 40 districts have been deemed secure enough to be handed over to Afghan security forces.

He said one of them is in Kapisa province where most of the 3,000 French soldiers are deployed, and that one would be transferred next year.

The summit laid bare the frustrations of many of the NATO country leaders with Mr. Karzai.

They acknowledged that Mr. Karzai, as a fellow politician, he has his own constituency to win over by making good on his campaign promise to have international troops transfer authority over his country’s affairs by 2014. But they also publicly admonished him to more to clean up corruption and appoint local officials on the basis of competence rather than political favouritism.

Four years probably will not be enough, according David Sedwill, the top NATO administrator in Afghanistan and the civilian counterpart to Gen. Petraeus. He told the NATO leaders that they can encourage the Afghan government to establish the rule of law, but four years may not be enough.

Mr. Sedwill, a British diplomat, described a visit he made to the city of Marjeh in Helmand province earlier this year after allied forces pushed out the Taliban. The community was traumatized, he said, but less by their experience with the Taliban than by with the “brutal and predatory” Afghan police who were in charge before the insurgents took over.

“By 2014,” he said, “there will still be pockets of tribal, ethnic, criminal and political violence throughout Afghanistan.”

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/natos-2014-afghanistan-departure-date-laden-with-ambiguity/article1807792/