A top Pentagon official conceded Wednesday that coalition forces are not winning the battle against an increasingly deadly insurgency in Afghanistan, adding that the U.S. would revise its strategy for the region to include militant safe havens in neighboring Pakistan.
"I'm not convinced we are winning in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in sobering testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. The testimony came nearly seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's former Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mullen, who also revealed that U.S. and Pakistani military officials met Tuesday aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, said he was already "looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region" that would cover both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he told lawmakers.
"We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan ... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."
Mullen said he's also urged Pakistan to "let us do more to help them" against extremists who have "grown bolder" and now have the ability "to launch ever-more sophisticated — even infantry like — attacks against coalition positions."
'Struggle that will take time'
Mullen was speaking after the United States stepped up its campaign of attacks against militant targets inside Pakistan with missile strikes from unmanned drones and a raid by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos.
The increase in U.S. attacks has sparked an outcry from Pakistani leaders and potentially complicated the challenges facing newly elected Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The admiral said U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan blamed militant safe havens in Pakistan for launching bolder, more sophisticated attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan.
"Add to this a poor and struggling Afghan economy, a still-healthy narcotics trade there and a significant political uncertainty in Pakistan, and you have all the makings of a complex, difficult struggle that will take time," he said.
He also warned that time was running out on the ability of the West to provide Afghanistan with vital nonmilitary assistance for Afghanistan including roads, schools, alternative crops for farmers and the rule of law.
"These are the keys to success in Afghanistan. We cannot kill our way to victory and no armed force anywhere, no matter how good, can deliver these keys alone," Mullen said.
Mullen acknowledged that President Bush's announced troop increase in Afghanistan — one Army brigade and one Marine battalion, about 5,000 troops — will not adequately meet the request of three brigades announced by the ground commander in Afghanistan.
He called those additional troops a "good start," adding that he didn't know when additional troops could be provided.
Mullen emphasized that what he called a "consensus view" among the military chain of command on the troop level recommendations in Iraq and Afghanistan announced by the president.
Meeting details
Mullen on Wednesday also told reporters about the meeting aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean.
Mullen played down any expectation that the day-long meeting would lead quickly to progress against militants operating in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region.
"It's just going to take some time," Mullen said at a Pentagon briefing. "Expectations for instantaneous results I think are probably a little bit too high."
But he said: "I came away from the meeting very encouraged that the focus is where it needs to be."
The meeting at sea was the fifth between Mullen and Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and took place amid mounting U.S. concern about insurgent violence in Afghanistan following last week's suicide bomb attacks on a major U.S. military base in the southeast and the combat deaths of 10 French elite troops.
Also in attendance were U.S. Commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, who takes over responsibility for the Middle East and South Asia next month; top NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. David McKiernan; U.S. special operations chief Eric Olson and Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is currently in charge of the Middle East and South Asia region.