Washington: Supporting Gen McChrystal's
plan to send additional troops to Afghanistan, a former
American General on Wednesday told US lawmakers that there should
be no Afghan "exit strategy" till the al Qaeda leadership
currently based in Pakistan is eliminated.
Any exit of US forces from the region would not only
give the Taliban and al Qaeda a sense of victory, but would
also have adverse impact on the stability of Pakistan, Gen
(retd) Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe, told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
"We have got about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and
we simply cannot abruptly reverse US policy. We can't abandon
government in Afghanistan. We can't withdraw promptly our
forces there, however much we might want to, without having
adverse consequences far beyond Afghanistan and, especially,
impacting on the government of Pakistan," Clark said.
"We can see experience after experience with this:
al Qaeda would claim credit; terrorist recruitment would
surge; subversion within states allied and friendly with us
would intensify; Pakistan's stability would be further
undercut; and US power and prestige would wane. We would be
dramatically increasing the threat," he said.
The best exit strategy, he argued, would be after the
US and its allies have taken down the complete leadership of
al Qaeda in Pakistan.
"We do believe that there's still substantial al Qaeda
leadership in Pakistan. The discussion of this has been
publicly suppressed, and probably should remain so, but I hope
it will be forced foremost in the minds of the
administration," Gen Clark said.
"In the meantime, in Afghanistan we've got to build an
exit strategy around four factors: Attempting to reduce the
level of violence by seeking a political amelioration of the
conflict; greater assistance to the government of Pakistan in
dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban remaining in Pakistan;
economic development in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and
developing a more capable security structure for the Afghans,"
he said.
Supporting the Obama administration's effort to
provide more economic aid to Pakistan, Gen Clark, however,
suggested that the US should demand more direct action by
Pakistan against the al Qaeda leadership.
"We must encourage and demand that Pakistan take
direct action against the al Qaeda leadership. That won't be
easy because there must be someone in Pakistan who must
believe that if it weren't for al Qaeda being there, that we
would be totally aligned with India," he said.
"So somehow we've got to disabuse the government of
Pakistan of that suspicion, and it's got to be driven down
through the ranks. And we've got to have their wholehearted
support to clean up their own internal security problems.
"For them, it's not just a matter of teaching the
Taliban a lesson and making them skedaddle back into the
Frontier areas, but it's a matter of their taking care of our
principal threat for us, so we don't have to," Gen Clark said.
The General said the US should also be encouraging the
development of the mineral and hydrocarbon resources in
Afghanistan and promoting a long-range gas pipeline that
connects India and Pakistan to Central Asian gas resources.
As far as security is concerned, we have got to give
them the additional security forces they need - primarily, the
police and the militia that they need. We're never going to be
able to walk away from US responsibilities for the support,
for the intelligence, intelligence collection, the logistics.
We tried to do it in Vietnam and it failed, he said.
"There will never be a complete and wholly
satisfactory solution, and so we've got to meet our own
security needs. And the principal security need in this region
is to reduce the continuing threat of al Qaeda, which is
reportedly based principally in Pakistan. It's their decisive
defeat that we must seek," Gen Clark said.
Bureau Report