Eighteen months ago, we wrote the first country-wide operational- level comprehensive campaign plan that included our Afghan partners. That combined team of both ISAF as well as the three security ministries -- the minister of interior, the minister of defense, and the national director of security -- all put that plan together.
Now one of the important concepts was to concentrate and synchronize our efforts, where it most -- where it was most important: population centers, commerce routes and areas of economic potential. That's the shaded area on the map in front of you.
Now the Afghans, they were the ones who told us and guided us to those key areas, based on their knowledge of the human and the physical terrain of Afghanistan.
The process started a yearlong effort to get everybody on the same sheet of music, synchronizing efforts in time and space.
Our first foray using this strategy was down in the central Helmand River Valley, a coordinated civil-military effort on both the international community and the Afghan partners. That's number one on your map.
While there were almost immediate security effects through the partnered operations that we conducted there, the Afghans, supported by the international community, of course, had a tougher time building government capacity in the wake of the security gains.
But the partnered team learned some significant lessons during those operations that they were able to apply in the summer and fall of 2010 in Kandahar City and its environs. And that's number two on your map.
Several of these lessons included the need for prior planning to prepare government activities in advance. We all had to improve the complementary effects of the conventional and special operations forces. The minister of interior learned some lessons on recruiting and training police forces, which were much more effective in the follow-on operations. And we all learned that building local political bodies that represent the people is an iterative process. And if more and more people are mobilized, the representative councils become more representative and more effective.
So now in Arghandab -- a district just outside Kandahar City that you know has been a tough place since the first time we really went in there and stayed, beginning in July 2009, was a Taliban stronghold, and people could not move around without fear. In that 18-month period, the district governor was killed, the district police chief was maimed, and there were no government officials or police present any place with -- but the district center, which some of the Afghans described as a combat outpost.
I was there two weeks ago, and there were 16 government employees working with a new district governor. There's a new police chief who has a police force that's out and about. And the people on a Friday afternoon, Afghan family time, were out picnicking in the Arghandab River Valley -- a significant change from 18 months ago.
Now throughout this time, in other regions of the country, in Kabul City, Kabul province, as well as the east, the north and the west, we made smaller but steady gains.
In Kabul City, number three on your map, there were very few spectacular attacks in 2010. In fact we went almost seven months without one, which is the longest on record in the last several years.
There were also several important high-visibility events, like the Kabul conference and the peace jirga, that were conducted without incident, with the Afghan national security forces in the lead.
We started to expand the Kabul security zone both east and south; in the east, saw gains in discrete areas, in Jalalabad, out in Nangarhar, which is at number four on your map, as well as pockets in Logar and Wardak, just south of Kabul City.
The east, of course, as you know, has difficult, complex and physical terrain, and there's much work to be done there.
Up in the north, we focused on Baghlan.
And what's important in that area is the intersection of two of the main commerce routes. So we expanded the security around that intersection and increased the freedom of movement in that area in the north. And if you look at number six, going around counter-clockwise on your map, that's very important, because that's the last place that the Ring Road has to be completed -- of course, an important commerce route to connect the west and the north. And we made security gains in both Baghdis and Faryab.
Herat, number seven on your map, is a bustling city, largely free from violent incidents and ready to transition to Afghan lead very soon. In general, last year, saw the implementation of a plan that demanded focus and synchronization. And we all saw that where we do that, we make steady progress.
Our immediate focus right now is to accelerate certain effects throughout the wintertime, the time that traditionally sees less violence, when the enemy refits, rearms, re-trains and prepares for the upcoming spring and summer operations. And while this is going on, we're conducting shaping operations to make the environment of the enemy much more inhospitable than it was last year. And I can tell you more about that later if you'd like.
Now, we just finished a review and update of that plan that we began last year. And there is now expanded participation in those planning efforts. So the U.S. and U.K. embassies, other civilian players; as well as, very, very, importantly, the Afghan ministries -- civilian ministries of the independent director of local governance and the minister of rural rehabilitation and development also participated in that plan -- altogether helping to bring better coordinated effects to a common plan.
So we're going to stick with the current approach. We're going to continue to expand the security areas outward from the central Helmand River Valley and Kandahar City and its environs, connect these two secure areas and also connect them out to Weesh-Chaman, which is just southeast of Kandahar City, an important commerce route from the central Helmand River Valley out to Pakistan. We'll also continue to expand the Kabul security zone and continue the slow but steady progress in the north and west; important this year, of course, to build the durability and the sustainability of the Afghan National Security Forces.
And as you know, we put a tremendous effort last year to get the infantry forces fielded to increase the number of boots on the ground for the Afghan security forces. And this year NTM-A [NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan] will focus on logistics, the other enablers, the engineers, to support the long-term sustainability of the Afghan army.
There are tremendous efforts being made in both literacy as well as leadership training; again all important things to sustain the Afghan army in the future and add to -- add quality to the quantity that we produced last year, which was 70,000 new Afghan National Security Forces.
And as you know, we focused most of our attention on the army, and we'll continue the army moving forward, but of course, the police needs more emphasis and we're adjusting our emphasis to support those efforts now.
We'll continue to support the building of the local governance that serves the people. And again, I'm confident that we have the right approach; that where we focus our efforts together, we see progress; and that we're helping to set the conditions for the people to participate more fully in building a better future for themselves.
Defend the ring road, hit the Taliban in the south with our main effort, and work on the eastern border areas; while working on beefing up local government services and Afghan security forces, and supporting economic activity with security and government capacity. The "shaping operations" I assume mean special operations campaigns in areas that we don't yet have major conventional forces in yet, in order to disrupt the enemy to keep them from sallying forth into the main campaign areas and to make them more vulnerable when we do move on from the southern focus to other border areas in the east. That would include our drone strikes in Pakistan, too, I assume.
This map from the briefing shows our campaign in Afghanistan:
The green and yellow shaded areas are the overall focus while the yellow in the south is our main effort right now.
I outlined this broad picture back in January 2009 when I guessed what we would do. Close to a year ago, I noted that the ring road that provided the basis of my guess was indeed the geographic feature of focus for the surge. I also think that just in terms of numbers, we have enough to win.
In my original post, I wrote that while we could never really stomp the enemy down as long as they had a sanctuary in Pakistan where their real strength lied, we could do well enough to draw down our forces in time. Today, we don't think we must have a perfectly pacified Pakistan frontier area to win in Afghanistan, as Rodriguez stated when asked about Pakistan's failure to move into North Waziristan:
Well, again, it's about the whole thing. If they go into every place but North Waziristan, that would be significant and would be really helpful to us, even if they didn't go into North Waziristan. ...
That's not a mission stopper in my mind. And again, everybody, whether it be the Pakistani leadership, the U.S. leadership or the international leadership, is all focused on that issue now about Pakistan and encouraging them to do more and we are, too.
The Pakistanis have done enough, in other words. Still, we don't have much of a choice but to accept that Pakistan won't be a full partner in the trans-border threat, so how much of that is just bending to reality is unknown. But I think it is the right way to look at it.
We're doing fine. Things could go wrong, of course: Our enemies could adapt and do better. We could screw up. We could just have a string of bad luck. Or we could lose our nerve. War is messy. Until we win, winning isn't enough to be comfortable. Like I've said before, I worry a lot. But we sure aren't losing, no matter how many people who formerly called Afghanistan the "good war" want to pack up and run away now.
