AC: "The Taliban will
continue to fight as long as U.S. troops or foreign
troops want to be there."
Monday, September 21, 2009
Length: 8:53
LARGE (102.6 MB)
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SMALL (10.8 MB)
Michael is back in New York, and in light of the
leak of General McChrystal's report to the
president, takes part in a panel discussion about
the future of Afghanistan, along with Peter Bergen
and Rory Stewart.
ANDERSON
COOPER: In the leaked report, General McChrystal
describes how Taliban insurgents are more dangerous
than ever. We know they're operating now in the north
and the west, not just in the traditional south and
east.
He also says Afghanistan's government is riddled with
corruption. We know that. And that, as a result,
Afghans are suffering a crisis of confidence. Those
are his words.
The general says he needs more U.S. troops to win the
mission.
For President Obama, none of this is welcomed news.
Let's dig deeper with CNN national security analyst
Peter Bergen. Also, Rory Stewart, a former British
soldier and diplomat and now director of Harvard's
Carr Center for Human Rights. He also wrote a great
book, "The Places in Between," about his solo walk
across Afghanistan in 2001, and our own Michael Ware.
Rory, you don't support sending more forces into
Afghanistan. What do you think needs to be done
there?
RORY STEWART, DIRECTOR, HARVARD'S CARR CENTER FOR
HUMAN RIGHTS: I think what we need to define is that
a long-term sustainable strategy, the last thing
Afghanistan needs is for us to increase troops and
then run out the door again. We've seen a lot of boom
and bust. It needs a patient, long-term relationship.
And that probably means a lighter relationship.
Because I don't think the U.S. taxpayers, U.S. voters
are going to put up with having 100,000 or 200,000
troops on the ground indefinitely.
COOPER: Peter Bergen, is that how much it would take?
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well,
you know, classic counterinsurgency doctrine suggests
that you would need 600,000 soldiers and cops in
Afghanistan to control the place.
Right now there's about 150,000 Afghans and some
100,000 international forces. So do the math. I mean,
it's nowhere near the point where you need to be. In
General McChrystal's assessment, he's asking for an
Afghan army of 240,000. That's going to take a long
time.
It's not really a matter of, you know, clearly,
there's no political will to send large numbers of
American forces into Afghanistan now. And the way
out, the only effective way out is to build up the
Afghan national army. Not an easy thing to do.
COOPER: And Michael, I mean, everyone seems to admit,
look, there is no -- even the soldiers say, the
Marines say there is no military solution. And, yet,
politically, there's hardly any civilians on the
ground in a lot of these areas. And the Afghan
government is just riddled with corruption. And so
we're trying to bolster in these areas a government
which has not traditionally represented its people.
MICHAEL WARE: Well, a government that doesn't exist.
I mean, America is not going to win this war. Let's
face facts. I mean, we're now at the point where we
could lose this war. The Taliban will continue to
fight as long as U.S. troops or foreign troops want
to be there.
So the whole idea is to put enough military pressure
on the Taliban war machine to parlay that pressure at
the negotiating table or to bring a political
solution.
Now President Obama has to man up and decide: is he
going to fight this war or is he going to oversee an
American defeat?
Now, he needs to put more troops on the ground.
That's not going to be the only solution. You're not
going to build the Afghan forces up in time; no way
in hell. But there is something else that's in the
wind. We saw it in Iraq. It's already begun in
Afghanistan. The U.S. is backing a program by the
Afghan government to draw upon the old warlords, to
draw upon the tribal forces just like we saw with the
awakening councils...
COOPER: Essentially to pay off the people, people who
might have been fighting us.
WARE: Might have been fighting you or have been
sitting on the sidelines or drawing upon the
traditional tribal system that's being ignored by
America.
Now these people will be able to fill the vacuum. If
you put a local warlord or tribal leader in command
of his area, you give him the money to pay his troops
and to arm them, you put it in their interest, there
will be no Taliban in that area. And if there are,
they'll be dead.
COOPER: I want to get Rory's opinion on this, and
Peter's, as well, in a moment. We're just going to
take a short break. We'll have more on the other
side. Peter Bergen, Michael Ware, Rory Stewart, stay
with us.
COOPER: We're talking about Afghanistan with Rory
Stewart, Peter Bergen and Michael Ware.
Rory, a couple things. You say more troops is not the
answer because why? You think it alienates more
people than it actually helps?
STEWART: I think the fundamental problem is about
public opinion in the United States. I think it
creates an unsustainable presence. A very big fragile
edifice that we're not going to be able to maintain.
And a country like Afghanistan is going to take 30 or
40 years for us to make much difference there. It's
such a fractured society -- there's so little
literacy, there's so little capacity in government --
it's not likely that you're going to turn anything
around in two, three years.
So we need to reframe this. I think General
McChrystal will get his troops. I don't think the
president has much choice now. He should have never
allowed the general to submit this report if he
wasn't going to give him the troops. But those troops
won't last long. They'll come down again in four or
five years time. And my guess is we won't be in a
significantly different situation when those troops
come down.
Then we have to begin the very long, difficult
process of dealing with a very poor developing
country, facing a very wild, tribal fringe.
COOPER: Peter, what is happening now is essentially
nation-building. I mean, it's what the Marines are
doing in Helmand province. And it's really not, A,
the traditional purview of the Marines. And there are
not enough forces to go into all the areas that the
Taliban is in right now.
BERGEN: Well, one of the striking things on our trip,
Anderson, one of my takeaways, was that a classic
counterinsurgency doctrine would suggest that 80
percent of the effort be nonmilitary and only 20
percent military.
Yet, in Helmand, you know, 99.9 percent of everybody
you encounter on the U.S. side is a soldier. I think
we met maybe two or three civilians in Helmand who
actually worked directly for the U.S. government. So
there's a real mismatch between the resources that
are available and the resources that are really
needed.
The Obama administration has talked about a civilian
surge for Afghanistan. It hasn't really -- that
hasn't really happened yet for all sorts of reasons,
including the security situation and recruiting the
right people.
COOPER: Peter, you -- I'm sorry, Michael, you talked
about the likelihood of more troops actually going.
The mission, though, is very different than hunting
al Qaeda. That's sort of the way it's being presented
as, you know, these troops are kind of knocking down
doors, looking for al Qaeda. But you don't hear
commanders on the ground talking about al Qaeda.
WARE: Well, what's al Qaeda got to do with the war in
Afghanistan? They're not in Afghanistan. And they
haven't been, basically, since the invasion. They're
in Pakistan.
You've ended up with an eight-year fight for
Afghanistan against Afghanis, against the Afghan
Taliban. Now, we don't know how to fight that fight.
You need Afghanis doing it. But not enough Afghanis
have it in their interest to oppose the Taliban.
So President Obama's dilemma is going to have to be
fixed with some creative solutions. He's just got a
few years left in this term where he can actually
fight this war and get it to a better position before
his next electoral cycle. And I think he needs to do
that by thinking outside the box.
Sending more troops is going to be a part of it. But
unleashing local forces, whether they're in Afghan
uniforms or not, who are on the U.S. side for one
reason or another, is going to be the only way.
That's going to sate the public back home; it's not
going to take as many troops. And it's actually going
to be the only way, an Afghan solution. It will be
bloody; it will be messy. And there will be knock-on
effects later, but what else are you going to do?
COOPER: Rory, there are some who say, well, look, we
did that before with, you know, the Mujahideen
against the Soviets. And it ended up having long-term
results, which you know, hurt the United States.
STEWART: Anderson, the problem is that none of this
adds up. As Peter Bergen has been pointing out, what
we're doing at the moment doesn't fit the
counterinsurgency doctrine or the theory that we've
been given. We don't have enough troops. We don't
have a credible effect as a legitimate Afghan
government. We don't control the borders.
So what exactly is happening here? I think we're
pursuing a policy which is really a half policy. It's
not properly resourced. It's not properly thought
through. And we're dealing with a country that's so
fragile, so poor, so traumatized.
All those things you talked about -- the problems
after the Soviet Union, the problems when we left
before -- will occur again, because we don't
necessarily have the wherewithal or the resources or
even the ideas of how we're going to fix it. So what
I'd like to see is the present administration
acknowledging that and coming up with a strategy
which doesn't attempt to do the impossible.
COOPER: So what is that, protect the cities? Don't
kind of chase after the Taliban in remote areas? I
mean, sort of conserve where the forces are?
STEWART: I think we need to focus on only two things.
One of them is a very narrow definition of U.S.
national security, which effectively is about al
Qaeda. And as we heard, al Qaeda are basically in
Pakistan. So that's not very difficult. That's
something we can do with Special Forces.
The second thing is to try to see what we can do for
the Afghan people. Not a blank check obligation. But
we can aid the Afghan people in ways over a long
period, and that's going to be the kind of project we
do all over the world. It's going to involve
development. It's going to involve diplomats. And it
might involve a light troop presence, which stops the
Taliban from taking the cities. But it's not about
building the states, and it's not about winning a
counterinsurgency.
COOPER: We're going to have to leave it there. Rory
Stewart, I appreciate you coming on the show. We'd
love to have you on again. Michael Ware, as always.
Peter Bergen, as well.