The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan wants several thousand more troops from the U.S. and its allies to help break the “stalemate” in the 15 year-old war, which he told members of Congress has lately seen increased Russian involvement to bolster the Taliban and undermine the U.S. and NATO.
“In your overall commander's assessment, are we winning or losing?” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.
“I believe we are in a stalemate,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson told senators that there is “adequate resourcing” for counterterrorism work, but there is a “shortfall of a few thousand” troops for the mission to “train, advise and assist” the Afghan forces. This is a NATO mission, he noted, so the needed troops could come from the U.S. or allies.
Currently, there are more than 13,000 NATO troops deployed to the country, including 8,400 U.S service members.
Adding more forces to the training mission would “enable us to thicken our advisory effort across the Afghan ministries and do more advising below the core level,” Nicholson said.
He told senators he is currently in discussions with U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis about boosting troop levels. And in the “coming weeks,” when Mattis has a chance to consult allies and visit the theater, “then we’re going to be able to discuss this in greater detail.”
President Donald Trump has shied away from outlining a vision for Afghanistan. And it is unclear how he will respond to this request for additional forces, although Nicholson told senators his “initial impression” of the administration is that it is “open to a discussion of an objectives-based approach” on upping troop numbers.
Besides the immediate troop needs in Afghanistan, the president must contend with questions about sustaining a potentially long-term counterterrorism mission — as well as reconstruction projects and spending.
“Trump should immediately make a joint announcement with President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan without a timeline for withdrawal,” Nicholas Morrow, former special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, recently wrote in The Cipher Brief.
“In the announcement, President Trump should state that the U.S. will continue to conduct counterterrorism operations and strengthen the Afghan military and police. … This will both send a signal to the Taliban that they cannot wait out a Trump Administration to achieve better negotiating terms and instill confidence in the Afghan forces and government by demonstrating America’s long-term commitment to their success,” Morrow wrote.
And former CIA Chief of Station Kevin Hulbert told The Cipher Brief that “the country will probably fall to the Taliban in 30 days after we leave, causing a lot of people to wonder why we spent all that blood and treasure on Afghanistan.”
In his testimony, Nicholson also highlighted the increase in external actors interfering in Afghanistan, notably Russia and Iran.
Russian involvement in the country has “become more difficult” in the last year, he said, noting that “they have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban.” The Russians are pushing a narrative that the Taliban are fighting ISIS, while the Afghan government is not — and therefore, there could be a “spillover” of the terrorist group into the region.
“This is a false narrative,” Nicholson told senators.
The Afghan government, along with U.S. counterterrorism forces, is “successfully” fighting against ISIS in Afghanistan, he said.
Russia’s intent in Afghanistan is to “undermine the United States and NATO,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson noted that Russia’s position is “surprising,” especially given the Taliban’s involvement in the narcotics trade and the “detrimental impact” that is having on Russian society.
Morrow told The Cipher Brief that “as demonstrated by Russia’s increased meddling in Afghanistan and overt support for the Taliban, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin would like nothing more than to use his old KGB games to flip the tables and turn Afghanistan into another Vietnam for the United States, like we did to the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.”
In part, he said, it is also Iran’s intent to undermine the U.S. and NATO, although the relationship between Tehran and Kabul is more complex given the “mutual interests” between the two, particularly with trade, water rights, and counter-narcotics, among others.
According to Morrow, “only President Trump’s quick reaffirmation of the United States’ long-term commitment to security in Afghanistan will counter the hedging strategies of regional powers,” such as Pakistan and Russia.
The U.S. establishing “an enduring counterterrorism platform in Afghanistan” is “critically important to our national security and preventing an attack on the homeland,” Nicholson told senators. Afghanistan has the world’s “highest concentration of terrorist groups” in the world, with 20 of the 98 designated organizations operating there, he said, making this “an enduring commitment to keep pressure on these groups and help the Afghans move towards a successful end state.”
Success going forward will likely involve maintaining this CT effort, destroying ISIS and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, helping the Afghan security forces and government extend their control and working with the country for an Afghan-led process of reconciliation with the belligerents, Nicholson told the committee.
Nicholson also said he agreed with the finding from the recent Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report which stated the Taliban controls 15 percent more territory than it did in 2015.
The intensified campaign by the Taliban has resulted in increased casualties among Aghan security forces. Nicholson said that “we’re very concerned about the level of losses” of the Afghan National Army. The current recruitment replaces those losses, but it does not allow the Afghan security forces to get to their full authorized strength, which they are below, he said.
John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, recently told The Cipher Brief that although there have been successes in Afghanistan, “particularly in the areas of health, education, and security,” lots of mistakes have been made.
“As bad as the security situation is, overall, you have a functioning military that goes and takes the fight to the enemy where it can and tries to hold ground. That has been a tremendous improvement from what it was when we came in 15 years ago,” he said. “But we could have done more, we could have done it better, we could have done it faster, and we could have done it cheaper if we had done proper planning, stuck to our strategies, done good oversight, and held the Afghans’ feet to the fire with strong conditionality, which is something we have failed to do until recently in Afghanistan.”
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
