 to introduce Mark Jacobson who is first and foremost a Michigan man. I think it's very important and he has a couple of his professors here who are going to check him out and make sure that he learned everything properly. Mark did his bachelor's degree here in history and went on to earn a PhD at a place that favors red and gray and he has had a very career. He has taught courses in U.S. counterterrorism policy. He most recently returned from two years in Afghanistan where he was the principal foreign policy advisor to the commander of ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force of NATO, which has his headquarters in Kabul. This was not his first tour in Afghanistan. He also had a tour in Bosnia. He has worked on international counter narcotics policy. He worked with Senator Levin on the Senate Armed Services Committee and worked as a member of his investigative team. He's had a lot of experience and he is a frequent speaker on national security issues and it's just our good luck that he was in Ann Arbor and made himself available to us. We really appreciate it and I can't think of anyone who is more current on the subject of Afghanistan beyond a discussion of the current situation in Afghanistan and the challenges for U.S. foreign policy. So please join me in welcoming Maura. Thank you very much Edie. It's a great pleasure to be here today at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and I want to make sure to express my thanks to Dean Collins and the team of the Ford School in particular for arranging this. This is of course a bit of a homecoming for me and I would be remiss if I did not point out two of my former professors in the audience and of course all the great things I have done in part is to you all deserve credit for setting me on the right path and of course the mistakes are all my own. I also I guess this is this is gives me great pride to know that the last time the university hosted someone to speak with some current knowledge of national security issues it was my former boss then Lieutenant General and now director of the CIA David Petraeus. Now the world certainly has changed a great deal since my days as a student but my time in Ann Arbor did give me some clues as to what the future world might look like. My undergraduate work in foreign policy was focused as many of my peers was on the Cold War. We were looking at the Soviet Union Eastern Europe. We had a thriving Russian and East European Studies program here in Michigan but in the autumn of 1989 my professor of political of Soviet foreign policy no less came back from a trip to Hungary and East Germany for those in the audience who don't recall there was an East Germany and a West Germany and he told us to throw out the books that things would never be the same. In many ways the rest of the world seemed not to matter too much as we viewed it through its through this Cold War prism. In fact we had 50,000 Soviet nuclear weapons pointed at us and the destructive power of those seemed incomprehensible. A war between the US and the Soviet Union would not just destroy our nation but could have meant the end of the entire planet. Those were the threats we faced and those were the threats we studied. Moammar Gaddafi was the demon who in popular works of fiction at the time threatened the United States with weapons of mass destruction while Saddam Hussein was nominally our ally. Terrorism was a sideshow to this larger East West struggle and was almost exclusively state sponsored the or a tool of national liberation movements. There was no transnational terrorism as there is today. The names we knew were Black September, the Red Brigades, Bader Meinhof and the IRA. There was no Al Qaeda. There was no cyber threat and there was barely an internet. In fact I was recalling earlier today that my first paper as a freshman at the University of Michigan was one that I actually typed. It was carbon paper and the little whiteout stuff. It took a while for the computer centers that dotted campus including my favorite placed above Rick's bar on Church Street to be set up. But Yugoslavia, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, these were far away places that I paid scant attention to. I certainly wouldn't have contemplated that one day I would have spent more time on the ground at ISAF headquarters than I did here as an undergraduate in Ann Arbor. And again it was about the time I graduated from here that the conflict in Afghanistan set off by about that time that the Soviets departed Afghanistan after a 10 year occupation and we saw the distant causes of the current conflict in Afghanistan begin to percolate. I think historians that look back at this current crisis in Afghanistan may see the conflict there as three different wars. First a war between 2001 and 2003 that the United States and her allies waged against Al Qaeda. And second a war that began to be known as the Forgotten War. This is the time period between 2003 and 2007 or eight where the US failed to deal with a growing insurgency in Afghanistan, largely because of our almost singular focus on Iraq. And thirdly, the comprehensive Civ Mill appropriately resourced campaign that begun in the spring of 2009. While our goals have largely remained the same throughout these three phases, I think it's our understanding of what it would take to achieve these goals that has evolved. Now I say this not to provide simply an academic framework for studying and assessing the war in Afghanistan, but to emphasize that in some significant ways, the campaign only just begun a little over two years ago. It was only in 2009 that we began to get the inputs right. We began to develop the concepts, the ideas, get the right people and of course the required resources to counter a well entrenched insurgency that threatened the Afghan people. Now this is not meant to dismiss the 10 years of conflict or 30 years of conflict if you look at it from an Afghan perspective. We all know the last 10 years since September 11, 2001 have had a staggering financial and psychological impact on us as a nation. More importantly, perhaps, there has been a tremendous cost in terms of those military and civilian volunteers who have given the last full measure of devotion to their country. Likewise, in this 30 year struggle for the Afghans, there have been thousands of civilian casualties. The war in Afghanistan remains complex, but there is no doubt in my mind that we have made significant tangible progress, often described as fragile, but tangible nonetheless, and that we have been able to focus on the essential task of building the Afghan nation's capacity to provide for its own security and governance. Now before I take a look, before I provide you with an assessment of where I think we are today, I'd like to look back a bit. Take a look at the spring of 2009, just before I came to Afghanistan, just to set the stage a bit for what I think we have accomplished in the last few years. Now during my tour in Afghanistan in 2006, we were struggling as the insurgency grew in size and complexity. Under General Sir David Richards, the UK commander of ISAF at the time, we began to develop some of the concepts necessary to wage this comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign, including, importantly, a focus on the civilian and non-kinetic aspects of the struggle. But there was no political will, either in Washington or any of the Western capitals, to resource such an effort, and by the time I left in late 2006, the situation in Afghanistan showed significant signs of deterioration. We did not have the input inputs right, as I said. We had neither the resources, structures, personnel, concepts and commitment required to get the job done. When I returned to Afghanistan a little over two years ago, we were simply failing. There was no doubt the insurgents had the momentum. The Afghan people were tired after decades of war. The NATO alliance was searching for a way out, and news headlines proclaimed that the Taliban were poised at the gates of Kabul. As General Stanley McChrystal wrote in his initial assessment that summer, the situation was serious and deteriorating. And in some ways, neither success nor failure could be taken for granted. Years of neglect in Afghanistan had taken a great toll. And as in Iraq, it took a long time for the United States to accept that it was dealing with an insurgency. To some degree, this was a matter of politics. The Bush administration was, as I said, singularly focused on the war in Iraq, and a diversion of resources to Afghanistan was not part of the plan. But it was also a matter of convincing the military, a military that had a historical aversion to low intensity conflict that dated well earlier than the Vietnam War. It was a matter of convincing the military that they needed to execute in conjunction with other partners in the US government, combined operations in the middle of hostilities. General McChrystal felt passionately that our own battlefield mistakes, our operating concepts and doctrine had put us at a disadvantage. This was especially the case with regards to a reliance on tactics that increased Afghan civilian casualties and thus put a wedge between Western forces and the Afghan population. Additionally, the configuration of our forces was all wrong. The US was operating with insufficient unity of command in its own structure, and the alliance as a whole and our inexperience with language and culture exacerbated the problem of working with our Afghan partners. Perhaps most importantly, our operating culture, the way we waged war in Afghanistan, was distancing our forces physically and psychologically from the very people we sought to protect. General McChrystal and General Petraeus at the time commander of US Central Command set about to change this culture and do things, quote, dramatically differently, even uncomfortably differently. In every action they argued, how we traverse the country, how we use force and how we partner with Afghan forces, we must redefine the fight. Both had learned this during their time in Iraq. In short, the strategy in 2009 was not about trying harder. It was about finding the political resolve to invest sufficiently in the struggle and fundamentally changing the way our forces were conducting the campaign. The objective of this new struggle would truly be the will of the Afghan population. We would protect the Afghan people and the Afghan people, the population against all threats. In December 2009, President Obama reiterated that the goal of the United States in Afghanistan was to deny al-Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government, strengthen the capacity of the Afghan security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future. Now in order to accomplish this, ISAF had to regain the initiative and it was imperative to reverse the momentum that had developed during the years of the forgotten war. This would require a locally focused, bottom up approach that spent a great deal of its effort on helping to develop good governance and develop a capable Afghan security force. This war would not be one by ISAF, but one by the Afghan people. Specifically, this meant seeking rapid growth and approved effectiveness of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, which we know collectively as the Afghan National Security Forces or ANSF. This also meant expanding the partnering concept at all echelons. This was not an embedded training team concept that had been used in the years past, where a few military personnel would work with a large number of Afghans. This was a one to one or one to three ratio of allied to Afghan forces who would fully integrate with the Afghan fighters that is physically co-locate, live, train, work, sleep, and plan and execute operations together. This initiative was specifically designed to increase ANSF quality and accelerate ownership of Afghan security. Indeed, in my own view, embedded partnering has become one of the most important drivers of ANSF capability and without it, it is unlikely that there would be any hope of developing Afghan forces at the rate required for what the Afghans call their journey to self-reliance. The surge of forces requested in late 2009 and provided by the United States and our NATO allies not only provided the cadre of institutional trainers required to develop the ANSF at an increased rate, but also served as the bridge needed to fight the insurgents directly while learning through partnership to operate effectively on the battlefield. Significantly, the new strategy also realized that developing Afghan national security forces could not be a standalone course of action. The dual threat in Afghanistan was and remains today that of the insurgency and most people would argue more importantly a crisis of confidence of the Afghan people in the capacity of their own government. Accordingly, the counterinsurgency campaign could not succeed without addressing how to help Afghans to develop responsive and accountable governance at all levels. The insurgency has never had a great deal of support, perhaps 10% of the population was and is in support, but the Taliban, the Akhani network, the HIG have all derived their strength in the fact that the Afghan government has been weak and has been unable to provide basic rule of law and justice and tackle the issue of predatory corruption. So where are we today? I have found that many of the media snapshots and academic assessments of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan simply fail to acknowledge where we were two short years ago. I understand the frustration that I see in the capitals I visit with regards to 10 years of war. I understand that there is a natural disconnect at times between what is happening on the ground and when we watch it from a distance and I also understand my own bias. I certainly am invested in what's happening in Afghanistan. I have always been objective, I'm sorry, I've always been optimistic about it. I hope I've always been objective and I've always been honest up front that the reason I went back to Afghanistan in 2009 was that I believed we could get the job done. That said, I've greatly valued the assessments I see out there because the journalists in particular spend a great deal of time on the ground in a particular place and are not focused on one set of people. They'll run around and talk to the local elders, they'll talk to the children, they'll talk to the women, they'll talk to the soldiers, they'll talk to the Afghan fighters and they'll even talk to the insurgents at times. But I think these studies miss the bigger picture. There are definitely places where things have gotten worse but in many significant ways things have gotten better over the last 24 months. There's a higher GDP in Afghanistan than there was 10 years ago. Afghans have access to basic health services. School enrollment has gone from about one million in 2001, mostly boys, to over seven million of which almost 40% are girls. The Afghan Parliament actually has more women as a percentage of that body than there are in the US Congress and much of the country when you speak to individuals is eager to take responsibility for its future. To avoid the risk of being accused of telling one side of the story I want to address now not only what is going well but what is not going well. I do believe we have some serious challenges ahead and that some of these, while not insurmountable, if not properly addressed, could sow the seeds of eventual failure. In my own view one of the most important tasks of 2009-2010 was re-energizing the alliance and developing the political resolve to properly resource a new alliance strategy. As Napoleon famously said he'd rather fight against the coalition than any other type of army. Anyone who's read the histories of the Napoleonic Wars can tell you that it was very often that the coalition commander spent more time managing the coalition than they actually did fighting against the enemy. Things haven't changed much and keeping the coalition together was a prerequisite to executing our operations in Afghanistan. A strong political commitment is also a prerequisite of this long-term effort and the concept of in-together-out- together, which was a bit shaky when I arrived in 2009, was reaffirmed in several conferences in 2009 and 10 culminating in the Lisbon summit of November 2010 where the alliance recommitted not only to in-together- out-together but also to an enduring partnership with the Afghan government that would last well beyond 2014. This commitment to an enduring partnership is exactly what will help lead to a sustainable Afghan security force and over the long term. In short I believe we have gotten the security inputs right. The match of the appropriate counterinsurgency ideas and concept matched with the right command structures and level of resources has allowed the coalition and our Afghan partners to halt the momentum of the insurgency. Central to this has been a truly extraordinary set of military leaders, senior officers, generals, some of which are household names other which aren't. But also international civilians such as Ambassador Mark Sedwell and Ambassador Simon Gas, the NATO senior civilian representatives during my time in Afghanistan. But I also must give credit to individuals such as the UN special representative of the Secretary General Stefan de Mistura whose masterful diplomatic engagements have helped the Afghans in numerous ways including in helping them to recognize some of their own mistakes that they've made. Likewise the European Union special representative Vigoda Sushakis has demonstrated that this is not just a U.S. war in support of the Afghans. This is a Western and this is not not just a Western struggle but also between the UN and the EU we have been able to bring in moderate nations from moderate Muslim nations from outside the European community. There are Jordanian troops at ISAF. There are troops from the UAE. There are Malaysians. There are also troops from nations. You would wonder why they have an interest in Afghanistan, Tonga, Mongolia. In fact I was looking just the other day and all but two EU nations, European Union nations are involved in the ISAF operations. In short, or why I mentioned this is that success in counterinsurgency is about having the right people. What's common about the individuals I have named the Petraeuses, the Macrystals is that they understand not only the nature of counterinsurgency but they have been able to execute and face with a host of political problems emanating from the outside. The former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson once noted to colleagues during a discussion of alliance politics that if you can't handle three rings what are you doing in the circus. These diplomats have done an extraordinary job in Afghanistan managing the three rings and more. Specifically over the past two years counterinsurgency operations that is the NATO operations conducted in junction with the Afghan forces have produced gains in the south in Kandahar and Helmand, the seat of the insurgency. Again, these are not successes in the periphery. These are successes in the birthplaces of the Taliban leadership, the Taliban insurgency. And although there have been some high profile attacks in Kabul recently the security in the cities has improved significantly over the last two years. Now I've reviewed the recent UN reporting that suggests that argues that violence has increased sufficiently but I disagree with their assessment especially as we suspected that 2011 would be a much more violent year than 2010. In fact in Helmand enemy initiated violence was down by 30% this summer. Throughout the course of 2011 we have seen violent we have seen insurgent initiated attacks decrease overall. In Helmand enemy initiated as I said in Helmand enemy initiated violence was down and there were notable improvements in areas such as Naderli, Marjah, Garms are areas that may mean little I suspect would help if I would have brought a map. But these are areas that were firmly under Taliban control only a few short years ago. It's only fair however to note that violence was up significantly in some areas in Helmand such as the Kajaki district which has remained contested for years. In Kandahar there's been progress in cities such as Argendaw, Pangewe and Mullah Omar's hometown of Zare but violence did increase overall as expected but in fewer districts as anticipated. Analysts will go back and forth over whether or not it matters that violence is conscious violence is down but concentrated in fewer districts or more dispersed. But I think it's significant that where the insurgency that in the south where the insurgency grew there are fewer places where people are willing to actively support the Taliban. Indeed ISAF and Afghan forces have made progress in arresting insurgent momentum and the Taliban are much less effective at governing and controlling the population than they were a few short years ago. They have shifted their campaigns to those of intimidation attacks intimidation and attempt to win back areas where they once had this influence and control. Unfortunately violence increased overall on the east most notably in Ghazni and Wardak provinces. While there were some gains in areas such as coast Laghman, Lohgar and Nangahar where insurgent forces can no longer operate with impunity I think it is important to recognize that there are some places where we are going to have to adjust and potentially increase our level of effort. I think that the insurgent main effort in 2011 was generally in the south and southwest so I think if you look at this a bit more look at this a bit holistically it's important to note that they did not regain the initiative where they focused where they focus their efforts. Well I think one has to be very very very cautious in seeing shifting tactics as signs of desperation there are Afghans who believe the shift by the insurgents to a campaign of assassinations intimidation is a sign of desperation. There are Afghans who specifically think that the use by the Taliban of women and children as suicide bombers are signs that the insurgents have lost the ability to win the hearts and minds of the population and instead are focusing almost exclusively on these intimidation campaigns. What I would be more comfortable in saying is that beginning in 2009 for perhaps the first time since 2000 2001 the insurgents in Afghanistan have been on the defensive while they remain resilient they have had to react to what the Afghan and ISAF forces are doing. Initially in fact the Taliban tried to respond to the change strategy by issuing their own guidance to protect the population and focus on governance projects. But the insincerity of this approach was seen very quickly by the Afghan people as they noticed that the insurgents were still targeting girls schools and that the number one killer of Afghan civilians remained improvised explosive devices left on the side of the road by insurgents. In fact the IEDs currently cause half of the civilian casualties of insurgent cause casualties in Afghanistan. Now the establishment of the NATO training mission in 2009 the implementation of robust training regiments in the partnering of Afghan and NATO forces has had a revolutionary impact on the quality of Afghan national army and Afghan national police forces. Indeed prior to 2007 and 2008 the focus was on recruit field and then train a program which focused entirely on quantity over quality and resulted in high numbers of untrained Afghan forces entering into the field with little hope of effectively tackling the insurgents. A shift to recruit, train and field only where national support from the US and Japan has helped to bring the Afghan national security forces up to a strength of just over 300,000 troops. The ability of the Afghans to keep up with the pace of recruitment and retention required to keep this level of forces and grow the size of the Afghan national security forces is in my view a clear demonstration of the willingness of everyday Afghans to take action and risk their own lives and to determine their own future. The growth of the ANA and ANP remains strong and is on track to reach their target of 352,000. Now in terms of quality the Afghan national army of Kandax or battalions have started to take over more responsibility from ISAF and NATO forces and the NATO training mission has been able to shift to building those enablers, logistic and support units that will be required for the Afghan national army to operate independently. As general David Rodriguez the former head of the ISAF joint command just recently noted the Afghan drill sergeants are even beginning to get that same cocky swagger that the US drill sergeants often have. One Afghan drill sergeant proclaiming to him that the Afghan troops he were training were wonderful. We've already won. We just don't know it yet. The outcomes, the effectiveness of the Afghan national security forces is of course what's more important, more important than the inputs. It's not just the level of effort we put in. It's what we get out of that. Operational effectiveness continues to improve, especially with 95 percent of the Afghan forces now partnered. In fact in May 2011 the first Afghan Kandak was assessed as fully independent. By the time I left theater there were three additional Kandaks in the queue for this sort of rating and in fact 73 percent of the Afghan national army units are now rated as effective with assistance or better which is exactly where they should be in order to begin the process of transition to full Afghan security lead. Most importantly I would argue over the last year the ANA doubled the number of operations it's successfully led and arguably has been doing some things even better than coalition forces. Likewise the Afghan national police are making some progress, are making progress, the truth be told they were an even worse state in 2009 than their army counterparts and still lag behind in some instances. NATO and the European Union are working together to develop a curriculum that balances the need for community policing with the need for the Afghan national police to be involved in paramilitary operations alongside the ANA. Indeed this is a true coalition effort as the United States does not have the capacity to train paramilitary police and this is a mission that's been taken up by the Italian carabinieri, the French gendarmerie and other members of the European gendarmerie force. Likewise the Afghan civil order police, the Afghan gendarmerie continues to improve with 75% of the units being rated effective with assistance or better, vice a 40% at that level when I arrived in 2009. The challenge for these police is that they are so effective that their operating tempo was much higher than we expected and the Afghans have to watch the retention rates in those units to ensure that they can keep up the pace of operations. Finally the Afghan local police program run by the Afghan Ministry of Interior. Essentially it's an armed community watch that works side by side with US special forces. This has become trends are suggesting that this has become critical for successes in separating the population from the insurgency. Indeed there's some reporting indicating that the insurgents fear the Afghan local police even more than they do ISAF. As one ANSF senior officer when you put ISAF into an area it could take them years to understand the dynamics of what's happening. If you put the Afghan national army in it's going to take the months or years to figure it out as well. But the local population already knows who the power brokers are. They already know who the insurgents are from the first day they begin to operate. Indeed the Afghan national security force response to the recent complex attack on the intercontinental hotel in Kabul illustrates the incredible degree of capability that has developed over the last several years. During that attack the Afghan crisis response unit with only limited ISAF support kept casualty figures notably low when looked at in relation to similar operations conducted not only within but outside of Afghanistan in countries with well developed counter-terrorism force capabilities. This operation reflected a sophisticated understanding of the threat that actually exceeded that of the ISAF forces this is not something that could have been done a few short years ago. Indeed many commanders at ISAF are seeing that the units they work with are all ready to be let go of a bit and may even perform better once they're given a bit more room and flexibility to operate. As General Bill Caldwell recently noted in a speech to the Foreign Policy Research Institute the Afghan people are increasingly trusting and valuing their soldiers and police as evidenced in the thousands who are showing up at their recruiting stations every month. Additionally an Asia Foundation poll recently found that 92% of Afghans viewed the Afghan National Army favorably while 84% viewed the police's favorably. Similar polling has shown that nearly 70% of southern Afghans those in Kandahar and Elmond viewed the Afghan security forces favorably which is a significant indicator in the region that as I mentioned before is truly the heart of the insurgency. The challenge, of course, is not just to continue to improve ANSF effectiveness so that NATO and ISAF forces can begin to recover their surge forces and to move into a position of tactical and finally strategic overwatch but to ensure that the Afghan national security forces are on a path to a sustainable force. What remains is to make the gains enduring and to figure out how to reduce the amount of spending which I think currently is about six to eight billion dollars a year to a sustainable level for the for the international community and then to ensure that the Afghan security forces are such that the Afghans can afford to pay for them on their own in the time beyond 2014. Now, while this may seem daunting what I'm actually more concerned about what really keeps me up at night are the issues of governance rule of law and the ability of the Afghan government to provide basic justice. The problem of predatory corruption continues to create legitimate grievances that drive the insurgency. As I mentioned earlier while the Taliban are not popular they are often viewed as harsh but fair while Afghan officials are viewed as unfair, incompetent and corrupt. If the government cannot adjudicate basic problems between its citizens such as land disputes then the Taliban will continue to step in to fill that void. If the Afghan government cannot establish basic rule of law then a whole host of problems including narcotics trafficking will continue to flourish and drive the insurgency. While ISAF and the international community have taken significant steps to ensure that our own development and stabilization aid is channeled into the right hands and does not drive corruption there is still some work to be done. Contracts are currently vetted for their coin or counter insurgency impact most importantly companies are now disbarred if they are found to be engaging in corrupt practices they are disbarred from business dealings with ISAF and US forces. The Afghans have taken some measures to deal with that corruption which is driving the insurgency but much more work is needed in terms of institutional corruption. While this may indeed be a long term problem it's critical that the Afghan people see their government taking actions deliberate actions against those who would steal from the pockets of their own country then. There has been some progress in terms of more children in schools and more robust ministerial structures and even the civil service. Civil servants in difficult areas such as Ghazni I mentioned before are being recruited to fill critical district position and provincial positions. The civil service commission continues to make progress in terms of merit-based appointments this is opposed to patronage appointments in other words Karzai not selecting individuals to go based on their allegiance to him but individuals who get these positions based on their skills their skills and ability to get the job done. Karzai has begun the process of making sure that merit-based appointments are made at the deputy provincial governor level. NATO the NATO rule of law field force which field support mission which stood up this spring is working with the government of Afghanistan to provide specific security and logistical support to allow civil servants to operate in the justice system. Polling indicates that most Afghans will use formal or informal justice systems either the courts or Shuras or community councils if they are available to them. So thus a concerted effort is needed on the part of the government of Afghanistan and ISAF to make sure that the security structures are in place to allow formal and informal justice systems to flourish. Basic services are being provided at a greater rate in 2011 than in 2010 but in some cases for example electricity we have and in some cases we have increased electric availability by 25% but there's still a long way to go. As an aside I was speaking to someone about this yesterday where despite the increase of power availability in the south in Kandahar what we've discovered is that now that electricity is available the population wants to go out and buy TVs and radios, iPods, iPhones. So our estimates as to what the average electricity consumption would be has just been completely blown out of the water. I take that as an indicator of progress. You do not see freedom of movement, you do not see people focusing on buying TVs and iPhones when the insurgency is bearing down on you. There happens to, one other point I would make on that note is that in 2001 there were 50,000 cell phones in all of Afghanistan estimated but now they're close to 12 million and this is a population of 25 to 30 million. Similarly the Afghans have profited, the population has profited by increasing trade with its regional neighbors. Indeed the Afghan, Pakistan transit and trade agreement while still requiring the implementation protocols has been agreed to and could reduce Pakistani barriers to Afghan exports to the Indian market which would greatly increase the potential per capita income of Afghan farmers. Where I get concerned is that there are structural problems that continue to plague the stabilization, governance and development efforts undertaken by the international community. In short, we still don't play well with others. There is no unity of command when it comes to governance, development, stabilization activities, the civilian side of the house. There is of course unity of command on the military side but the most that can be hoped for on the civilian side is a unity of effort. There are civil military plans, the coordinated execution is still inconsistent and individual nations largely run their own stabilization development efforts and only through the kindness of their own hearts do they have to coordinate with others in the international community. If there are to be more effective programs of stabilization in Afghanistan, it is going to take doing things dramatically differently, uncomfortably differently in terms of the large scale operations in this insurgency played environment. Now even if the international community gets everything right, successful governance rule of law and justice programs will require independent action by the Afghan government. If the Afghan government is unwilling to make the necessary merit based appointments and sure proper salaries for civil servants or weed out the institutional corruption, then the international community efforts will be fleeting at best. While security is certainly a prerequisite to governance and development, in the end the war will be won or lost by the actions of the Afghan people. The challenge now is to work with our Afghan partners and for the international community and the Afghan government to put the same level of effort into developing subnational governance and to tackling corruption as was done on the security front in 2009 and 2010. There are of course three sides to a coin campaign. It's not just about security and stabilization or governance activities, but it's about setting the conditions so that there can be an eventual political reconciliation. We are clearly not there yet, and if there was not enough distrust already, the recent assassination of former President Rabani, the chair of the High Peace Council, while not a block to eventual reconciliation has probably set potential talks about talks back several months. Indeed, the reconciliation of lower level fighters will continue and has already resulted in bringing hundreds off the battlefield, but there must be a larger political reconciliation that brings the Taliban into the process without Talibanizing the process. This is something the former speaker of the Afghan Parliament, Yusuf Kanuna used to say, you must bring the Taliban into the process without Talibanizing the process. What do I mean by that? Well, that means setting red lines so that the Taliban, if they come into government, be here by the Constitution and don't seek to throw it out. I do believe we will continue to see individuals from the Hizbih-Islami Gulbadeen, the Hig, to continue to be part of the government. In fact, many have already foresworn armed violence and have rejoined society. I do think there are significant fractures in the Kedeshura Taliban, the Afghan Taliban. I'm less confident that there'll be reconciliation in the near future with the Hikani Network, an organization that has less of an ideological and more of a criminal organization. Their insurgency is designed to intimidate to further their own limited goals and the increased chaos in Afghanistan is what serves them well. Reconciliation is also about those who have struggled against the insurgency. And in the end, there will need to be, as I said, an acceptance of the Constitution, acceptance of the rights of women in society and protections for ethnic minorities. I think, in fact, we should look at reconciliation as not just something that will be from the top down, but will take place as numerous parallel actions as local insurgent fighters and local villages and districts come to an understanding. In that sense, it's about the villages bringing in the insurgents and reconciling with the insurgents and bringing back, as President Karzai said, the upset brothers back into society. The international community will, of course, have a role. Any sustainable reconciliation will need to have US and Western support. But it is also going to require, and this is a tough part as well, major changes from the Pakistanis whose actions to date have been mixed at best. I do believe over the past several years that some Pakistani military leaders have begun to understand that failure in Afghanistan is not in Pakistan's best interests. But this is only some Pakistani military leaders. The conventional wisdom has always been that a fractured Afghanistan is good for Pakistan, but this is because the Pakistanis continue to look at things through the lens of the threat they perceive from India. But the fracturing of Pakistani society, the rise of extremism on all fronts, the development of a Punjabi Taliban worries the leadership in Islamabad. The Pakistanis, however, still believe that they can separate the threat of the Kedashura Taliban and the Tariki Taliban, the Pakistani TTP. The Pakistanis have focused some of their counterinsurgency efforts on the TTP, but they've ignored the dangers and even facilitated the Kedashura Taliban, most importantly by continuing to provide sanctuary within Pakistan's borders. General Petraeus put it best, I think, in his recent testimony to the US Senate when he noted that the situation was akin to having numerous poisonous snakes in your backyard and believing that they will only bite the neighbor's kids. Arguably, the ISI has believed that in the event of an Afghan Taliban return to power, that the Afghan Taliban would ally with Islamabad and the ISI. I think this is myopic and dangerous. The natural ally of the Afghan Taliban is the Pakistani Taliban. Likewise, Pakistani support of the Haqqani network has added significant fuel to the fire and will stunt the ability of any eventual political reconciliation to take hold in the region. Pakistan must face the reality that rather than looking at Afghan through this Indian lens, they must begin to take a larger regional approach to their own security. It's true that if the war, it is true that if the war in Afghanistan simply ended tomorrow, there would be a range of security issues that remain in the region, the Indo-Pakistani disputes in Kashmir being most important. But there are also significant watershed issues in the region that need to be resolved between Afghanistan and Pakistan and more seriously Afghanistan and Iran. There are regional approaches and regional cooperation that is having some degree of positive impact. There is enormous investment by the Iranians in the western part of Afghanistan. There's cooperation on rail lines, roadways, and electrical infrastructure. And this will help the region begin to move down the road for the betterment of their population. But first, there's an immediate danger posed by extremism that straddles the Afghan-Pakistan border and requires significantly more cooperation between Kabul and Islamabad. Now, lest you walk away thinking that, that I'm telling you this is hopeless, let me reiterate that I'm not. It is difficult, as is everything in Afghanistan, but the right foundation is there to defeat the insurgency and there is proof of concept. While the central Afghan government is not beloved by all the Afghan people, the district and local governance do serve the people and the population of Afghanistan is increasingly seeing their government at all levels as that organization which can best serve them to fix the problems they have. As I stated early on, one of the great changes in the last two years has been the added commitment to see things through in Afghanistan. I think that there was a time where we viewed July 2011 in the recovery of the surge as the end of the campaign. Rather, it's the deliberate beginning to transitioning to Afghan lead. You cannot transition to Afghan lead. The Afghans cannot take responsibility for their own security if you continue to have high levels of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. The question has always been finding the right balance, removing enough forces while not pulling the rug out from underneath the Afghans. Security transition has already begun. It began in Kabul a while ago, although formally the initiation ceremonies for the first tranche of provinces took place late this July. The announcement of a second tranche of provinces to transition should be complete sometime in the next few weeks. But again, this is not a rush to the doors, a rush to the exit. Transition is a deliberate process that is going to take several more years to complete. Even then, as I mentioned, beyond 2014, there will be a commitment to Afghanistan and it will remain robust, though it will focus on institutional training, advising and assisting, rather than combat operations. Secretary General Rasmussen made this very clear last week at the Defense Ministerials that the NATO nations have agreed to this enduring partnership and we will, quote, live up to it. The challenge for the diplomats and political leadership, of course, will be to ensure that not only do we live up to it, but that also the Afghan government does its part to ensure that transition is well executed and irreversible. There is much to be done. I just would like to conclude with a few thoughts on what this means in terms of our understanding of the future security environment for the United States. My former professors taught me well that historians can't see into the future. We leave that, I think, for the political scientists to predict for us. But there is no doubt that just like Afghanistan, wars will continue to be complex. They will never be ideal. We don't get to choose the type of war we go into. The enemy still gets a vote. I know it's more desirable for politicians and certainly for military officers and civilians to have as an easy conflict. In fact, a few weeks ago, I had a senior officer tell me that how he yearned for the days of the Cold War when, quote, things were easy. But there are no, there are rarely any more tanks crossing the borders to signify the start of a war. And there are even less frequency do you see formal signing ceremonies to signify the end of the war. Of course, now I worry that I say this, that I'll end up like Dean Atchison and we'll have a problem on the Korean Peninsula where there are tanks crossing the border. So that's my caveat. But I do think that we don't always get to choose our wars. And that this is particularly important because if we did choose our wars, I doubt we would choose insurgencies. They are extraordinarily complex because they require civilian actions that are regimented and executed with military precision. In fact, I was reminded the other day that, or I'm reminded now of another change since my time here as an undergraduate. Back then the world was round. Now it's flat. And it's almost impossible for the US to extricate itself entirely from the world, which I see unfortunately signs in Washington and hear statements by some political candidates that it's time for us to disengage and to just focus on what's happening in the United States. America cannot detach from the world. And it's naive to think we can simply retreat from involvement in the world just as it's oversimplistic to think we can simply avoid quagmires when we do engage. I think about the beginning of conflicts such as that in Bosnia, Kosovo, and I think even if you go back and look at the Second World War, you see that often in the beginning of a conflict things are uncertain. They appear to be intractable, but this is why there are certain actions that need to be taken and why it often requires an incredible amount of resources to carry through these things. I would conclude by saying that this should also be a warning of why it is so important to avoid war, to avoid conflicts, and to make sure we can do everything in our power to preclude these situations even if it means early humanitarian or civilian side intervention so that we can perhaps mitigate the problems in an area and not have to send in military force as a last resort. Well, again, I think your questions are certainly more important than what I have to say and I've tried to touch on a few issues here in the hopes that I might get your own thoughts on these, so at this time I'd be happy to answer your questions. Bob Axelrod in the sights of public policy. You gave only passing mention to America's economic ability to sustain the level of activity that we've had and I wonder, and for example, if the super committee doesn't come up with a buzz of cuts necessary then we have a large automatic decrease in defense spending well before the plan. Do you think the United States has the economic power and the will to sustain the plan that you would advocate of gradually reducing our commitment to Afghanistan and keeping up the economic side of it for many years after that? Yeah, obviously the super committee bit is the real potential monkey wrench here. Let me answer the question first though. Yes, I think we do have the ability to sustain the recovery of the surge and the eventual withdrawal of US forces at the rate we plan to right now. I think the challenge is that, let's say it's worst case in the super committee does not come to an agreement, the challenge is gonna be for our long-term readiness. I think that operations and maintenance, current programs, the operations in Afghanistan are going to continue to be funded. I was thinking the other day that, boy wouldn't this be a great time where you had a supplemental budget and you didn't have it wrapped up in the baseline, makes things easier, but what I'm more worried about are the cuts outside of the Department of Defense. The proposed zeroing out of USAID's budget, the proposed cuts to development programs, governance programs, this is just simply naive. This is what is going to create more problems for us. It's going to cost the United States more in the end and it's not good national security policy and I am fairly confident that the wise heads in Congress are going to prevail. Well, I'm not, there are certain things I won't get into kind of the tactics of how you do this, but again, I would just quote Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, made a fairly impassioned plea at the Council on Foreign Relations a few weeks ago, saying that look, this is part, you have to think of this as part of our national security program. As I said before, these are not cannon shots anymore. When you deal with, you take a look at instability in Sub-Saharan Africa, take a look at problems in the Andean Ridge, you take a look at South Asia. The way you deal with the instability that in my view tends to generate conflict as you deal with it, deal with it early and USAID is on the front lines there, arguably even Afghanistan today. USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, they're, I call them USAID's special forces, although they don't really like that phrase, but this is what they do when they engage in their out in the field and they're the firefighters for USAID. This is how you, this is not a situation where you simply always want to use military force to deal with your problems. I mean that for, whether it's practical or ethical, these are issues, military force is there for the last resort. Juan, introduce yourself first. I'm Juan Cole, I'm the city department. Thank you very much for your overview and for sharing with us things that come out of an experience on the ground of great complexity. I'm more pessimistic than you are watching it and being able to apply. And it's because of things that you, at least I didn't hear you address. Like it seems fairly clear that a lot of people at least in Afghanistan think that the 2000 and that nine parliamentary elections were deeply flawed. There have been commissions which have looked into how many exactly the senior parliamentarians in the union kicked out of parliament, some say nine, some say 40. Parliament itself met this summer to think seriously about impeaching Karzai over these kinds of issues. And it's very contentious. And of course, you mentioned unionist, but when you're having part of this as project push-toon kinds of conflicts, then it's widely thought that Karzai stole the presidential elections the following year, which deeply damaged his credibility in some quarters, and opened them, then I think to this talk about impeachment and so forth. And then, he and his political cronies appeared to have stolen the bank couple blind, and some of them were buying nice real estate in Dubai, and then real estate market in Dubai collapsed. And some of the Scandinavian countries and so forth have ceased to be willing to give them low guarantees because of these banking regularities, which as I understand it would no better contributed to arrears and pay for the military, which may have contributed to the remarkable statistic of 26,000 defections from the National Army in the past six months. Well, just as I said, just looking at this from a distance, the political corruption, the stealing of elections, the illegitimacy, the defections from the military, and then how well it trained this military really, at what point have they ever independently taken territory back away from the Taliban and districts in Buristana where they were kicked out. It doesn't look to me like it's going well, not to mention the President's brother being blown up and the former President getting blown up. And again, I understand if you're on the ground and you're dealing with the real situation and you see the argument growing and maybe gaining some capacities, that you can take cues there that I can't see. But from a distance, it doesn't look to me. I think that's fair. I mean, and I think that there are many in Washington who share your views entirely. There are a couple of areas though I would disagree a bit more in terms of interpretation. For example, I actually see what's happened with Parliament over the last year as a sign of strength in Parliament and the success. Let me go back to the presidential election. There was a U.S. Senator who was speaking with an Afghan elder about the election just after the time where Abdullah conceded. And he said, well, how can you stand for this election? This was corrupt, things didn't work. He said, hold on a second here. This is our election. We ran it, we did it. We know it wasn't perfect, but it's ours. Now the Afghan politicians constantly bring up certain U.S. election that took place, but I have no doubt in my mind that there were, I mean, despite what happened with the corruption, I think had there been absolutely no corruption in the presidential election, Karzai would have won. There was corruption on both sides, Abdullah supporters and Karzai supporters. There's no mistaking that that destroyed Karzai's credibility among some. However, I also think that I think the parliamentary elections in 2010, yeah, so long ago, it blitzed. No, it was after 2009. The new parliament that was seated, 2010, went much better. In fact, one of the, I'm glad you brought up the ethnic issues. One of the challenges with the parliamentary elections was that in Ghazni province, for example, where you have a 50% Hazara, 50% Pashtuns, the entire slate that won were Hazaras. This was actually because the corruption, the ballot stuffing was caught. So the International Election Commission actually did a pretty good job stopping the corruption. It would have been better in terms of ethnic balance had they not stopped the corruption, another one of the ironies. But the reality was that Hazaras ran a particularly effective grassroots campaign. And this is the part I love. The Afghans, the UN actually was fairly satisfied with what happened out there. A lot of their interviews brought out the fact that Pashtuns in Ghazni didn't consider the Pashtuns on the slate to be their Pashtuns. But these are Karzai's Pashtuns. We don't want them, we want our Pashtuns. Now, let's get to the crisis of January 2011 in terms of parliament. The reason I say I think this was, we have to look at this in a little different way, is one, Karzai conceded in the end. He ceded parliament. The, about 50% of the candidates who won in 2010 considered themselves independent, which was particularly important because while they could not even get an assemblance of order enough to elect a speaker until 20 or 30 tries into it, at the same time, I think this parliament has been more aggressive with regards to Karzai than the Kenuni parliament. The Kenuni parliament was about cutting deals in a traditional way. This group won't cut deals. This group votes down budgets. It's their only power up-down vote on the Afghan budget, but they're actually using it pretty effectively. They're getting what they want. So I guess I'm looking at it a bit differently. The other part with that is the crisis over which parliamentarians would be unceded was a direct result of Karzai being unable to have his way with the ceding of parliament. But he's frankly failed in that regard too. At first it was gonna be 63. I think last count were down to nine and I think within the last eight weeks or so was after I had left, there was an agreement reached. What's interesting though is the way the Afghan system is set up is the Supreme Court reports to the president. So this means if you say, well let's bring it to the Supreme Court, there's a belief that they'll largely vote in favor of Karzai. I think that's fair too. But at the same time, this hasn't exactly happened. They're trying to, the palace is trying to save face and really playing to the Southern Pashtuns who support Karzai, but at the same time they know they can't do things like unseat 63 candidates because they will lose the backing of the international community. I think what's particularly important is the timing of all this too. And this came in the midst, you had mentioned Kabul Bank and the IMF. Now this is one of the immediate concerns and this is where the Afghans are going to have to give in. The basic issue is what happened at Kabul Bank happened. I mean, there's no doubt that the money needs to be restored. People need to be prosecuted for it. People, officials need to be removed. In some cases that's been done. I doubt the Afghans will be able to recover the money. Minister Zakowal says it exists. We can recover 400 million. That all went down in the Dubai real estate market. It just doesn't exist anymore. More importantly though, again, now Zakowal could get parliament or has to get parliament's approval to basically set up bonds so that public money is used to provide liquidity to Kabul Bank. What I think is amazing is parliament's willing to do so but there are conditions attached to it. So again, getting back to where parliament is pushing the limits of its very narrowly defined powers. However, if you don't have an IMF agreement, I mean, that's a game-ender. There's no doubt about that. And I think it just took, I think it just took the Afghans a long time to realize they would have to give in on an audit, a full audit of Kabul Bank, and frankly, it was easy bank. There have been some very sensitive negotiations between our Department of Treasury, the World Bank and the Afghans on it. The good thing is they're talking and looking at ways through it. The bad part is I just think it was taking Zakowal and Karzai a long time to realize that they're going to lose this in the end. But I agree with you, without some changes there, those are game-enders. We had a discussion a little earlier today about Karzai in 2014. I happen to think he already has some of his close advisors kind of looking at which one of them is going to be the heir apparent. At the same time, people wonder whether or not Karzai is going to change the constitution and run again. And the question I posed is, well, if Karzai runs again, which requires a change in the constitution, what's a fair price for that? What's a fair price for a third Karzai term or a third term constitutionally? Is it greater powers for parliament where they can truly impeach? Is it a complete ban on acting ministers so that if Karzai does not nominate a slate that's approved by parliament, he can't simply put someone in as a patronage appointment. Maybe there's a way to make where there's a fair price for a third Karzai term, or maybe a third Karzai term is the price for greater powers for an independent judiciary and for parliament. Greetings, Erica Brown, I'm the commissioner of the Judicial Council. We had an ambassador from the city, here she's the ambassador who was with the wrapping movement a few weeks ago. He was generally, I don't want to put words in his mouth, so he was more optimistic about Iraq than he was about the U.S. And he had a few different reasons for that. One being he thought that Syracan-Athensian was not necessarily not because it based on lessons learned from the Iraqi church and that Athensian was more of a civilian than he was. And so I was wondering about that. Another thing he said that I thought was interesting was he was more optimistic about Iraq because of oil and he had incentives to kind of colorize because of oil profit. And I was wondering if anything, if anything has been done in Athensian to kind of mimic that, and then there's what you know he was saying, something that would maybe replace. Sure, I'll address all of that. I think one of the great ironies is that I don't believe we would have been as capable of dealing with the current situation in Afghanistan without the experience of Iraq. I mean, I did not support the U.S. going into Iraq. I think it was one of the greatest strategic blunders of the modern era. At the same time, you can play the counterfactual and say, well, where would our troops, where would our generals and our civilians get that experience and finally realize that it's an insurgency? I mean, it's possible we would have had a new counterinsurgency manual without Iraq, but I just don't think so. I think it's one of the great ironies. While a lot of experience, while the experience in Iraq has helped to shape some of the way we dealt with the insurgency in Afghanistan, there's no doubt in anyone's mind who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq that Afghanistan is not Iraq and Iraq is not Afghanistan, we all base our approaches on our past experience and there's no doubt that General Petraeus and General McChrystal in their experience in Iraq shaped some of the ways that they dealt with difficult politicians, for example, or thought about the population. But I think what made them both masterful was their ability to separate their experience, was their ability to do that and at the same time, clearly separate that experience from the new inputs they were getting. In other words, they didn't simply try and take a one size fit all approach and say, well, we had a Sunni awakening in Iraq, therefore, let's get a Pashtun awakening in Afghanistan. That's not the way I think they've looked at things at all. In terms of the surge, I have no issues with the size of the surge that we did in Afghanistan. I think it was appropriate to the task. It met the political requirement of keeping the alliance together. If we would have had a surge that no one could agree upon, then you have no alliance. It's wonderful to have an alliance in Afghanistan. It actually shows the population that you're not there to occupy. One was the last time an alliance of 49 nations occupied a single nation. It also, I think that the, there are, well, there's a lecture for another time, there are all sorts of advantages to having a coalition. But I think that where I was more concerned and remain more concerned about the surge is in its recovery. Not on the military side, but we have to ensure that the civilian expertise, the level of civilian effort stays is much greater now during this time in Afghanistan, or during the next few years in Afghanistan. I worry about a recovery of the civilian surge in Afghanistan. The Afghans are much more capable on the security side right now than they are in terms of governance. Finally, your last point on wealth. There's no doubt that there's great mineral wealth in Afghanistan, but this is not going to provide short-term solutions. I mean, Afghanistan's a poor nation. General Karimi, their chief of staff, was asked by one of his soldiers once, where are GPS's? We want GPS's, and he said, we're a poor nation, you get maps. I mean, that's just, that's the short term. There is estimated trillion dollars in mineral wealth, but it's going to take a long time to get that out. Afghanistan has great natural resources in terms of gas and oil, timber. But again, I don't see, I think the estimates will take till 2025 before the Afghans to be able to sustain their government effectively. I can't remember the World Bank figures on where Afghanistan gets its money from, but it's not generated in Afghanistan. The tax codes are arcane. They don't have an industrial base or an agricultural base that can be self-sustaining at this point. But one statistic I think is important, if the Helmand River Valley, or if Helmand was able, and I think in Nimru's, which is the province just to the west, were able to have their full, be up to full agricultural capacity, it actually makes Afghanistan a net food exporter. And food is an issue in that part of the world. Yes? You didn't mention anything about youth trade. You were wondering whether that has improved or the overall situation has gotten better or worse. The time it seems it was getting better and there was at least something different about it. It's grown. Yeah, this is one of those things I think is inconsistent. It has grown in some areas and I think this, well, that's how you look at it. I worked Andy and Ridge in Columbia issues for a while and we always had the same problems. I remember there was a time where we declared or the UN declared Bolivia to be virtually coca-free and now there's coca planting all over. Most of Afghanistan is, for all intents and purposes, poppy-free. I mean, not enough to really make much difference. I mean, you're always gonna have illicit crops being grown. The question is, is the narcotics trade sufficient to drive the insurgency and to what degree is it causing security problems? And it certainly still is in Helmand and Kandahar in the South. The good news is in 2010, and obviously the 2011 figures aren't out yet, but the 2010 figures showed that there was an 80% reduction in poppy cultivation in areas that were secure. I think most folks who study the matter will tell you that you see illicit crop production drop where you have rule of law and security. Now, a surge of forces into Helmand and Kandahar certainly helped with that security. And the question is, how do you sustain it? Now, I think the UN, I don't think that the statistics were for 2010 showed an increase in Helmand. It may have been overall, but it was also a problem because it was a blight on the poppy crop in 2010 as well. And so, I guess the short answer to your question is it's still a continuing problem, but in terms of counterinsurgency, where you focus in terms of dealing with counter narcotics is first on security. You have to provide security in the area. Now, there's another dynamic that I think the Afghans have done a decent job addressing, and here's the dynamic. If I'm a farmer, the farm gate price on saffron or pomegranates, I mean Afghan pomegranates, if anyone wants to go into business, find a way to get Afghan pomegranates into the whole foods here on Washtenaw because they're twice the size of anything you're seeing produced anywhere else in the world. But, yeah, so the farm gate prices aren't bad on saffron, wheat, pomegranate, compared to poppy. However, if I'm a farmer, I have to provide my own seeds for the pomegranates, I have to grow them, take care of them, I have to then harvest them, and then I have to, then I might get taxed by the local insurgents, I have to bring my own crop to market, I might be attacked, I might be threatened. By the time all this is done, it's really not that lucrative to produce pomegranates. But, if I'm growing poppy, the Taliban provide me the seeds, the fertilizer, they help me take care of it, they provide the security, they'll pick it up, they'll take it to market, and I get the profit. And so it skews the entire value chain, and this is where the Afghans are starting to focus where they're doing alternative development activities. Provide the saffron seeds, provide the fertilizer. And while that may not seem sustainable, I mean, we've gotten away with farm subsidies in this country for years. I mean, you can adjust the market while you need to in order to buy time to establish rule of law, and then you wing folks off of it. There are micro experiments where there's been exports of saffron. There are all sorts of crops that people are trying to plant in Afghanistan now, but the key, again, is there enough security for the farmers to be able to do so? Yes, ma'am. When you put the increasing willingness of Afghans to, you know, listen to the military, and you put that as possible, you know, in the case of their recent president, no one example might also be something you need to pay for jobs. Well, that's okay too. I mean, you can, we don't want to see unemployed young males. I mean, that's where the danger is, for example, is often you see programs where a NATO military unit will say, you know what, we're gonna go create jobs, we're gonna pay you to go pick up trash. No one gets paid to pick up trash in Afghanistan. The community just does that, and then you create actually a problem where you're paying a village for something they used to do for free. No, I think there's no doubt that people are joining the military because they need jobs. Now the question then becomes, what do you do over the long term in terms of sustainability? Here's how the theory goes. As things get better, the economy develops, and there are jobs outside of the military to be had. Ashraf Ghani, who is an Afghan, who is just one of the most brilliant people I've had a chance to work with, he has argued that we need to make sure we don't keep focusing on investments in the security side without equal investments in the non-security side. Otherwise we could see a situation where simply the only approach, or the only way to have a job is to be part of the military security establishment, and what some have said is, well, you know, we've seen what happens to nations where the military is everything, and that's not the direction the Afghans want to go. If I could indulge for one second, I didn't address Juan's point on the quality of the Afghan national security forces. I think, I'm actually not familiar with this, think about 26,000 leaving in the last six months, so I'll take a look for that, but I'm just not familiar with it, but look, retention is a problem. However, retention is actually a relatively easy problem compared to recruitment. I mean, retention is often a matter of compensation, often a matter of where you're going to fight. For a while, graduates of the Afghan Military Academy or recruits could actually bribe or pay their way to get certain assignments. That's largely been dealt with. It was a story where the first lottery for commissioned officers was done, a lottery, and Tajiks had to go to the South, Pashtuns to the North, he went where the lottery sent you. Then there was a little glitch while there was some horse trading in the back room, and then ISAF found out about it, and General Wardak and General Muhammadi, much of their credit took care of that very quickly. I think I would say that the Afghan forces are inconsistent. There, as I said, you have about 75% of the ANA and ANP who can operate effectively with assistance. That's just about right for now. If you think about growing the Afghan forces by several hundred thousand over the last two years, don't expect them to operate independently. Where I would be concerned, if we were doing it the way we did in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it was simply, hey, let's see how many people we can get through the six weeks of training, and then we'll call them police, or call them army. That's just, that's a recipe for disaster. When General Bill Cobble took over the NATO training mission, he made sure to, he actually held back some units that didn't meet the standards. The other part is, you consider the institutional training as undergrad. Then they partner. So an Afghan company with an American company, an Afghan battalion with a Canadian battalion. That's graduate school. Even in the U.S. system, you go through eight weeks, or 12 weeks now of basic training, you don't go right out for the front lines. You go into the replacement battalion. You go into the, used to be the 82nd Airborne battalion for rookies, essentially, and you get trained up. You partner. You learn how to actually fight in the battlefield. And I think that concept is making them more effective. What we need to watch for though, is to make sure that the way we, I mean, this is what General Allen and General Nicholson are gonna get paid the big bucks for, is to make sure that we keep the right number of NATO troops partnered with the Afghan troops so we can sustain that level of growth. Their special operations forces are wonderful. Their Afghan National Civil Order police, their crisis response units are wonderful. And I also think beyond 2014, we have to remember there will be embedded special operations troops that remain. I mean, this happens all over the world. It's not something new, but again, I'm content with the progress. Would I like there to be more consistency? Sure, but I'm not even sure there's consistency in our own units when it comes to their ability to conduct the counterinsurgency campaign. Some units are definitely, in the US system are definitely better than others. I think we have reached the witching hour. And Mark, thank you very much. Please join me in thanking...