US challenges in AfPak

1) Afstan: Trying to reshape Zabul province, RC South:

In Remote Afghan Province, Mullen Finds Daunting Need
Joint Chiefs Leader Assesses War U.S. Is Reshaping

ZABOL, Afghanistan -- In this impoverished province on the Pakistani border, the U.S. military's most senior officer came face to face with the consequences of nearly eight years of American indifference and neglect in Afghanistan.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, sat across from Gov. Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, who nervously stroked his salt-and-pepper beard and ran through his problems. Taliban fighters regularly pass unmolested across Zabol's border with Pakistan. In recent months, they have launched a campaign to blow up the region's roads and force teachers to shut down local schools. This spring, they sliced off the ears of a defiant teacher.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leaves Gov. Mohammad Ashraf Naseri last week after discussing the area's needs. (By Mc1 Specialist Chad J. Mcneeley -- Pentagon)

Enlarge Photo

"Do you have any help here, or are you all alone?" Mullen asked during a visit last week.

Naseri replied that the provincial government consisted of him and four other Afghans. There was no money coming from the central government in Kabul. The only funds in the area came from the harvesting of illegal poppies, which supported the Taliban.

Mullen had come to Afghanistan for the second time in the past month for a closer look at a war that President Obama has vowed to set on a new course. The admiral found a war effort still hampered by a shortage of civilian and military reconstruction experts, an Afghan government that barely exists beyond the capital and a U.S. military command that knows it must work hard to overcome the mistrust caused by years of aerial bombings and house-to-house raids.

In the next few months, the Obama administration plans to move more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers into southern Afghanistan in an effort to drive the Taliban from places such as the southeastern province of Zabol. To prevent the area from quickly falling back into chaos, the president's strategy places a heavy emphasis on rebuilding provincial governments and local economies shattered by more than three decades of war. "Combat operations are not the answer here," Mullen told a group of about three dozen U.S. troops after his meeting with the governor last week. "The answer is development so that people have a way to sustain themselves."

The new strategy, however, is hampered by the heavy demand in Iraq and Afghanistan for civilian and military reconstruction experts. There are only 13 U.S. civilian development experts in all of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban movement is strongest and the local economy is almost entirely dependent on opium production. The top U.S. commander in the south, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, advised Mullen last week that a tenfold increase in the south is necessary to meet the region's needs, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that the State Department is struggling to find 500 civilians to work in Afghanistan. "This is obviously a challenging recruitment," she said.

In eastern Afghanistan, where the reconstruction budget increased 43 percent this year to $683 million, U.S. commanders said they have had to put long-planned reconstruction projects on hold because they don't have enough military engineers, civil affairs soldiers and contracting experts to coordinate with local companies and inspect their work. Last month, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, sent out a classified message to the Pentagon asking for big increases in the number of soldiers in these specialties deployed to Afghanistan, said a military official who had reviewed the document...

In areas of eastern Afghanistan, where the United States has pushed more combat troops in recent months, Taliban fighters seem to have melted away [emphasis added] rather than challenge American combat units. In Wardak and Logar provinces south of Kabul, the size of the U.S. force has increased to almost 3,000 troops, up from about 300 in January.

"The locals will tell you that the Taliban heard that they were coming and simply left," said Maj. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, the deputy U.S. commander in Kabul [more from Maj.-Gen. Tucker here]. U.S. military PowerPoint briefing slides boast of having achieved "almost irreversible momentum" in the eastern part of the country...

The number of Canadian civilians at Kandahar has increased greatly over the last year--as I wrote five weeks ago:

...the Canadian government has an unprecedented military/civilian joint deployment, with civilians now integrated with much of military headquarters, as well as with the Canadian PRT (more here and her). There will soon be over 100 Canadian government civilians in the country.

I also have it on good authority that the quality of our civilians is greatly improved.

2) Pakistan: Trying to reshape the army (now that's ambitious):

Gates Pushes Congress To Boost Pakistan Aid

The Obama administration is lobbying Congress to give U.S. military commanders the same unfettered authority to back Pakistan's war against Taliban insurgents as commanders have in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Seeking to inject the debate over military aid to Pakistan with a sense of wartime urgency, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged lawmakers yesterday to approve the Pentagon request for $400 million this year for the new Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, with an additional $700 million to be requested for 2010. Overall, the administration is seeking as much as $3 billion over the next five years in funding for Pakistan's military.

The new program would significantly expand and accelerate U.S. military training and equipping of Pakistan's security forces, reaching beyond the tribally recruited Frontier Corps and Pakistani Special Forces [more here: "US and Paks...2) U.S. training of Pakistan army to grow"] to include the regular Pakistan army's 11th Corps, which is stationed along the country's western border with Afghanistan [emphasis added--I suspect many in the Pak military would not be best pleased].

The U.S. military's Central Command, led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, would control the funds, targeting them specifically for counterinsurgency training and equipment such as night-vision goggles, helicopters and intelligence capabilities.

The Pentagon seeks "this unique authority for the unique and urgent circumstances we face in Pakistan -- for dealing with a challenge that simultaneously requires wartime and peacetime capabilities," Gates said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee...