AfPak: Defense secretary Gates sees glimmers

Here's hoping:

In Congress, Gates Sounds Positive Note on Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday that he was more hopeful than he had been in a long time about progress in the war in Afghanistan, but that there would have to be significant improvement a year from now for the American public to support the effort.

Mr. Gates’s comments, made before the Senate Appropriations Committee, were a departure from his previous assessments as well as those of top military commanders that the security situation in Afghanistan was increasingly grim and deteriorating.

He provided few details to support his new view but said his optimism came in large part from Pakistan’s offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Until recently, Pakistan’s army had essentially acquiesced to the Taliban, who had found a haven in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan but are now at war in both countries.

“The newest development of the Pakistani Army taking on these extremists, in Swat and elsewhere, I think, is an extremely important development,” Mr. Gates said. “And the possibility of the Afghans, the Pakistanis, ourselves and our allies together, working against this problem, has given me more optimism about the future than I’ve had in a long time in Afghanistan.”

Mr. Gates did not mention the refugee crisis in Pakistan in the wake of the army offensive. A huge explosion by militants at a five-star hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, that killed at least 11 people had yet not occurred on Tuesday when he addressed the panel.

Mr. Gates did say that he had learned Tuesday morning in a video conference with American commanders in Afghanistan that they believed that 2009 would be the first time in 30 years that Afghanistan would not need to import wheat to feed its people, because its own crop was sufficient [emphasis added--very good harvest is also the belief of the UN].

In addition, Mr. Gates said, he had been told that the price for wheat was almost the same as the price for opium poppies. Afghanistan’s poppy trade helps finance the Taliban insurgency.

“Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but I thought that was pretty interesting,” he said of the higher wheat price, which could present farmers with an alternative to growing poppies.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also appeared at the hearing. Like Mr. Gates, he said the administration had to reverse the trend of violence in Afghanistan over the next 12 to 18 months — about the time of the midterm elections in the United States — and that the military would have to reduce civilian casualties [more here].

“The more we do that, the more we back up, and it hurts our strategy,” Admiral Mullen said of the civilian deaths.