By Jennifer Kohnke

General Stanley A. McChrystal is commander of international forces in Afghanistan.

Q. You have said that in Afghanistan protecting the population is the top priority. What does that mean you do differently than before?

A. It means we put as much as our effort as we can in establishing security for the population in a given zone, and then we stay there so the other critical parts of governance and development can happen.

Obviously, everything comes at a cost. So it means we don't have as many forces to maneuver in the country as a whole. So we have to rigorously prioritize. Some things will have to be done later.

Q. Is the lonely firebase in the mountains fighting Taliban a thing of the past?

A. In some cases it might be. In some cases it might not be. If the population is in the valley, sometimes putting a small firebase in the mountains can accomplish security for the population.

What I don't think you will see as much of is big unit sweeps or operations where you sweep large areas, then leave. Historically that doesn't work. But almost every counterinsurgency effort tries that and relearns the lesson.

Q. You are doing a review of how you are using intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft. How can you use them more effectively?

A. Typically we think of ISR manned or unmanned aircraft providing full motion vehicle or signals intelligence. The biggest secret of using ISR is knowing what you are doing with it, and that is a lesson that needs to be learned by units.

If you don't know what you are looking for, if you don't have indicators of what you are looking for during sweeps, then it becomes wasteful. A refined intelligence network marries your collection capacity to rigorous analysis. That is most effective. Sometimes you put ISR against a single person or single location for days on end.

Q. You have said the ongoing operation in Helmand province needs to be a public success. What did you mean by that?

A. The Helmand operation was planned some months ago before I came to the command. But it is a good plan and it is well-timed, in a critical area that is both occupied by the Taliban and has a significant number of people who need to be freed from Taliban control. It also sits astride an awful lot of poppy production. By going in now, we are ahead of the planting season. We may be able to convince farmers to go to alternative crops.

The reason I believe we need to be successful is, as we have come in and talked about fighting this war with a more focused strategy, everybody's watching. I don't mean just in the United States or Europe. The Taliban is watching, the people of Afghanistan are watching. If we make a public commitment to effective (counterinsurgency) ops . . . it is important we be true to what we said in the first most visible example of that.

(Through this operation) the Afghans will judge our resolve to see through the new strategy, our resolve to succeed.

Q. Another priority you have outlined is to accelerate the expansion of the Afghan security forces. It sounds like the main way to do that is to expand the partnerships between Afghans and Alliance forces. What improvements do you seek there?

A. Whether we grow the Afghan security forces larger or not, partnering closer is to our benefit. We can do that better than we have in the past.

What we need is a combination of mentoring and partnering. Mentoring involves people who stay with a unit all the time and teach as the unit evolves. Partnering is where you operate together. Our thought is to bring the concepts much closer together. So a unit is operating in a much tighter relationship. Then two things happen. The coalition force gets much better performance on the ground because Afghans are great soldiers and they have huge cultural acuity that a coalition soldier is not going to have. And the other part is, as we operate, we think we can show them best practices

Q. Are there safe havens in Afghanistan for insurgents?

A. If you said a safe haven is a location where you are never under threat, you can't be bombed, you can't be attacked, then you could say that there are no safe havens in Afghanistan.

But I would tell you practically speaking there are areas that are controlled by Taliban forces. There are places ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) and coalition forces cannot go routinely, where insurgents are free to operate, and free to impose a shadow government.

While they are not typical safe havens, the insurgents are more comfortable than we want them to be. And so over time those are areas we intend to reduce.

Q. But those areas are not the first priority? If the population is sparse or rural, you may wait on that?

A. Absolutely, it is a case of prioritizing. Our intent is to prioritize first on those areas where we have significant population centers. In some cases those are also places with a heavy insurgent presence. But the point is to protect the population. If the insurgents are in very remote areas with very little population, then they don't have access to what they need for success, which is population. So we will seek to separate them from the population.

Q. Is there a possibility for a Sunni-like awakening in Afghanistan, like in Iraq, where insurgents laid down their arms and cooperated in building the country? Is there a possibility of getting some of the Taliban to lay down arms?

A. There absolutely is. Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with foreign cadre with them. But most are not deeply ideological or even politically motivated. Most are operating for pay, some are under a commander's charismatic leadership. Some are frustrated with local leaders.

So I believe there is significant potential to go after what I would call mid- and low-level Taliban fighters and leaders and offer them reintegration into Afghanistan under the constitution.

Q. Are you seeing fewer fighters coming across the border, or has it picked up again now that Pakistan's offensive in Swat has ended?

A. I have not seen a huge rise of fighters come across now that Swat has wound down. . . . We have not seen a flood of fighters into Afghanistan recently.

 

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