Afghanistan hearings on Capitol Hill
Today, 9:30am: Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry, House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFA)
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Questions await
Five
U.S. citizens from the suburbs of northern Virginia were arrested at
the home of an activist allegedly affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammed in
Sargodha, a town in Punjab province in Pakistan, after going missing
from their U.S. homes about a week ago, and are currently being
questioned by Pakistani authorities on suspicion of links to terrorism (NYT, AP, BBC, Telegraph, Dawn). JeM was involved with the 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal
reporter, and an assassination attempt on former Pakistani President
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, though its roots are fighting Indian forces in
the disputed Kashmir territories (AJE, Bloomberg, AFP).
The families of the men, aged 19 to 25, contacted authorities out of concern that their sons had made a "terrible decision" (AP). One
of the men reportedly left behind a "disturbing" 11-minute video
suggesting "young Muslims have to do something," with "jihadist
overtones," but legal authorities caution that they do not have
evidence that the tape was intended as a farewell, while a
Washington-area imam said yesterday that there were no early signs the
men had been radicalized (Wash Post, AP).
However,
recent reports say that a police source in Sargodha said the five men
have told FBI investigators that they went to Pakistan to take part in
jihad, while security officials report that the men were allegedly
planning to strike "sensitive installations" in Pakistan (CBS, AP, Reuters, AFP, McClatchy, AP).
Three Pakistanis have also been detained, one on suspicion of links to
the 2007 suicide attack outside the Pakistani air base at Sargodha (AJE).
Another
U.S. citizen who allegedly traveled to Pakistan with suspect
motivations, David Headley, yesterday pleaded not guilty to charges of
helping coordinate the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that left some 160 people
dead, and of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper (WSJ, AFP, BBC).
Headley reportedly told investigators he has been working with the
Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba since 2002, and his next hearing is set
for January 12, 2010. India is planning to seek Headley's extradition (Reuters).
The hearings continue
The
head of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, yesterday told the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S.'s involvement in Afghanistan
could last for years and cost at least $10 billion annually to fund an
adequate Afghan security force (NYT).
The U.S.'s rapid expansion of Afghanistan's army and police will be
supplemented by a renewed effort by the United States to hunt
terrorists in the country, the general told Congress (AP, Wash Post).
"We actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the
overall strategy," General Petraeus said, though he declined to provide
details in the open hearing.
General Petraeus said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he expects casualties to rise in the next six months, cautioning, "This will be a longer and harder fight" than Iraq (WSJ, LAT).
During the Senate hearing, he also cautioned that observers should
"withhold judgment on the success or failure of the strategy in
Afghanistan" for a year. The general praised the Pakistani military for
its recent campaigns in the tribal regions, but noted that Pakistan has
"not directly engaged the sanctuaries of the Afghan Taliban groups in
Pakistan" (AFP, Dawn).
Top
U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal sat down
yesterday with CNN's Christiane Amanpour for an in-depth interview
about the insurgency, the role of Pakistan, and the meaning of "defeat"
(CNN). A transcript is available here (CNN).
Funding and polling
The
Afghan National Security Forces have seen a much-needed bump in
recruitment following a recent pay raise, as nearly 2,700 Afghans
applied in the first week of December -- about half of this month's
recruiting objective (Wash Post, AP, NYT).
The American commander in charge of training Afghan security forces,
Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said yesterday that a key issue in
boosting the forces is ensuring a balance of Afghanistan's ethnic
groups; currently, Tajiks make up 27 percent of the population but 41
percent of the officers.
A new New York Times/CBS poll finds
that following U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the nation last
week about his Afghanistan strategy, public approval of his handling of
the war there jumped 10 points, to 48 percent, while 51 percent of
those surveyed approve of the president's decision to send 30,000 more
troops to the Afghan theater, compared with 43 percent disapproval (NYT). The full results of the poll are available here (NYT).
Cheaper internet
A
$70 million project to lay fiber optic cables in Afghanistan will bring
the price of internet access down drastically, according to the
minister for communications and information technology (Pajhwok). In a country of some 30 million people, only one million have internet access.
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