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“This is going to be the first season where we have had a fully-resourced plan to support the Afghans in conducting counterinsurgency operations inside of Afghanistan”
AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: The Chairman of the United States Army Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, said the current war season in Afghanistan is the first season in the last five years that the Resolute Support Mission has a fully-resourced plan to support the Afghan Defense and Security Forces in the fight against insurgents.
Addressing the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Friday, Dunford said insurgents will be defeated by the adopting the plan.
“This is going to be the first season where we have had a fully-resourced plan to support the Afghans in conducting counterinsurgency operations inside of Afghanistan,” he said.
“By no means, as the military dimension of the problem sufficient to achieve strategic success, but I do believe right now that the military dimension of the problem has been accurately addressed. I am confident that we have the right organizational construct, we have the right people and we have the right capabilities in place to address the specific issues that we identified during our failure analysis over the last a few years. We drew from those lessons learned specific issues that had to be addressed when we deploy the force for 2018,” he added.
Dunford said high casualties among Afghan forces, lack of cooperation between different security departments and lack of air and intelligence support for the troops are the main reasons that have impeded the Afghan troops win in the war so far.
“I was just in Afghanistan… couple of challenges we have had. Number one, we have suffered significant Afghan casualties; number two, the cooperation across the Afghan police, Afghan army, intelligence organizations has not been quit what it needed to be; and number three, there were short capabilities, aviation capability, intelligence capability, surface fires capability. What we have done I believe is taking a look exactly what the Afghans need to gain momentum and retain momentum against the adversary,” Dunford said.
He said US and Afghan officials hold talks with Pakistan military and political leaders and that a plan is under implementation to resolve Kabul-Islamabad tension.
At the same event, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said they will win the Afghan war by putting in place the US President Donald Trump’s strategy for South Asia and Afghanistan.
“In South Asia and Afghanistan, uncertainty in the region has been replaced by certainty of President Trump’s South Asia strategy,” Mattis said.
Meanwhile, former chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and nominee for the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States will remain in Afghanistan unless there is no threat from insurgents against Americans.
“I think the course of action that President Trump is taking there is the right one. It is humble in its mission. It understands that we have been there a long time and has an objective of leaving but is not prepared to leave until such time as we can put that kind of position where we can greatly demolish the threat to our homeland from terrorism that may emanate from there,” he said.
