Transcripts For CSPAN2 Afghanistan Reconstruction 20171104 :

I note this is presence of mr. Isa from california. I ask that he be able to fully participate in todays hearing. Without objection, it is so ordered. On september 11th, 2001, radical islamic terrorists killed thousands of men, women and children. Aided and abedded by the taliban spent years in afghanistan plotting, waiting for the moment to strike us at home. Throughout the 90s the United States suffered terrorist attacks at the cobart towers at our embassies in east africa and our uss call. The failure to act, emboldened al qaeda and threatand far more devastating attack. The useful staging ground for al qae qaedas malevolent designs. They responded with a roud of both al qaeda and taliban forces. Yet today, after more than 16 year ins afghanistan, its not clear things are much better than they were after the taliban first fell. Is the taliban on the brink of becoming a terrorist dream all over again . We should just be done with this entire god forsaken place or should we be concerned that isis has a dangerous affiliate in afghanistan that aspires to reach out and strike the u. S. Homeland . How do we get this right or can we . Were here to explore whether the United States has adapt thootd hard lessons we have learned in this long war. Were also holding this hearing to follow up on a of projects this committee has investigated ever the years. Its important to make sure our tax dollars are spent efficiently. I want to insure afghanistan does not descend into chaos. Were fortunate that beor the subcommittee we have the special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to testify on the recent work his team completed regarding systemic corruption and waste in afghanistan. Hes done outstanding work to insure taxpayer dollars are well spent. He will also speak on the recent report on awall soldiers in the United States. 39 of the 152 who went awol were gran granted legal status. These numbers are deeply troubling and im interested to hear how this happened. I can tell you that hes a dedicated publicing servient who has fought corruption and waste for decades. We value your time and appreciate all you have done to help us in this endeavor. Id like to thank him for coming and look forward to hearing his testimony and with that i will yield to the Ranking Member, mr. Lynch for five minutes. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman and thank you to the witnesses for helping the committee with its work. This is an extremely timely hearing on our ongoing military involvement in afghanistan. I also want to thank senator for helping the committee carry out its oversight mandate. The title of the hearing rightly notes the u. S. Has been at war in afghanistan over 16 years. This has panned a generation at the kaush of 714 between 714 billion and 2 trillion in taxpayer dollars and over 2400 u. S. Casualties. While our mission has narrowed to train, advise and assist of the Afghan National defense and Security Forces and excuse me. Sorry. I only got three pages here. Theres some pages missing from my remark. Okay. And our force levels have sharply dropped to over 100,000 to the current estimate of 9800. Its just as critical we have a Clear Strategy. This is why i requested this past june and again with my colleague, mr. Welch that the Oversight Committee hold a hearing for afghanistan and iraq. Regrettably the president recently announced plan for afghanistan fell far short in providing the details necessary. He said nothing about how many more forces needed or how success would be measured. They need clear guidance from their leaders. Mr. Chairman, without a Clear Strategy and plan to carry it out, it becomes difficult to measure success in our Current Mission to train the afghans has been extremely difficult to gauge. For numbers ive been seeking numbers of how many have been trained and for years theyve had had difficulty in getting those figures. This is because it was set up without much metrics and they are still not in place today. A lack of information keeps us from conducting oversight from knowing what were doing right and need improve. I would urge the president to bring to congress a Clear Strategy on how he intends to get this done. The recent decision to retroactively classify certain Security Force related force levels excuse me. In afghanistan. Members of Congress Need to hear from the americans and see from their own eyes what is happening. As a Ranking Member on the National Subcommittee i have a duty as does every member of this house of representatives to carry oversight. The travel restrictions are inappropriate and highly concerning. In addition the classification measures have become much more tightly prescribed in terms of what mr. Saf co and his team can report to congress in an open forum. I will have questions about that to determine what information is being kept from the American Public with respect to our success in afghanistan or lack thereof. It the chair recognized the gentleman from kentucky and the gentleman from north carolina. I ask unanimous content they both be allowed to fully participate in todays hearings although ill be lenient in accepting objections to mr. Massys attendance but without objection it is so ordered. The special Inspector General and accompanied by Senior Analyst for the special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. All witnesses will be sworn in before they testify. So if you could please rise and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear the testimony youre about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing wbut the truth so help me god . All witnesses answered in the affirmative. Please limit your testimony to five minutes. Your whole written statement will be made part of the record and as a reminder the clock shows your remainding time. It will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds left, red when your time is up. And with that the chair recognizes mr. Sofko for five minutes. Thank you. Its a plesher to be here today. Cig cigars new reported of Security Sector assistance to rebuild it Afghanistan Security forshs. With the afghan conflict in a sale mate and with a new strategy for u. S. Sector assistance getting underway, the time is ripe for seeking every opportunity for improvement. In that spirit i appreciate this hearing which i think is an opportune time to look for recommendations for improvement and that is something i would like to offer to you today in my oral presentation. The first recommendation we have is how to utalize better u utalize and align our capabilities with the needs of the afghans. The first thing i would recommend is that dog should establish and lead an interagency Fact Finding Mission to examine the afghan Security Forces current and future needs and realign our Advisory Mission to if had sure that right advisor and units are partnered correctly with the Afghan Soldiers and police. The second thing is we need have someone in charge. So dod and nato should create designated leads for the afghan army and police responsible for coordinating the training Advisory Missions. From the ministerial, to the operational level. Now, the Afghan Special forces and air force have proponent leads right now as part of a comprehensive team in place. That is one of the reasons why both those forces are more successful than their peers and we highlight the best practish in our report. The third thing is we need learn from success. So with the introduction of more than 150 uh 60 blackhawk helicopters, we recommend that you recommend the army immediately reach out to the u. S. Air force to capitalize on their best practices from their training of afghan fixed wing pilots. The fourth recommendation, sir, deals with the fact that our trainers in afghanistan need help and they need help back here in the United States. So we recommend that to insure persistent and comprehensive training while preserving institutional knowledge, we recommend they create an element in the United States staffed with representatives from all the military and civilian age y agencies who are specifically trained for afghanistans advisors to provide additional surport to the Training Mission in afghanistan. It is also critically important that those who are assigned view this as career enhancing. Right now such an assignment would be career ending for many of our military and civilians. The fifth point i would focus on is we need use nato better. To optimize natos participation in afghanistan, we recommend nalto and dod should thoroughly analyze the current advisory needs and each nato companys capabilities as well as their limitations. We also need to better understand the Decision Making process and better synchronize with the force generation schedules. The sixth point i would like to make is we cannot forget the Important Role that state, u. S. A. Id, the department of justice and other Government Agencies play in our fight in afghanistan. To insure an effective whole of government approach in afghanistan we must support not only our u. S. Military but also the civilian agencies such as state, aid and justice in their missions which are highly critical for accomplishing our National Security objectives there. The administration and congress should insure civilian agencies have the resources they need to make important contributions to this mission. Lastly those civilian agencies nide to get out of the embassy. In order to support the civilian agencies ability to conduct their important work in Afghanistan Congress should encourage dod and state to immediately finalize an agreement that permits civilian agencies including cigar to travel under u. S. Military protection without second guessing the well established capacity for providing adequate security. Failure to increase freedom of mov movement for civilian personnel will hobble a whole approach to government oversight, thus putting the entire mission at an unnecessary disadvantage. In conclusion i would urge you that every minute the u. S. Military has to fill in for a missing civilian agency is one minute the military is not allowed to do their job. Thank you very much. Chair now recognizes himself for five minutes. Mr. Sopko, how long have you been cigar . Its going on six years. So how is afghanistan improved and or how has it worsened during your time of inspector gennel for afghanistan . Its mixed. The security situation has deted deteriorated dramatically. The Afghan Military, despite the loss of more casualties is actually doing a better job but theyre up against a very serious opponents. So its mixed. I think the problem now is with the new strategy we really dont know what state and aid are supposed to do as part of that strategy. So were still observing and hoping we can get a better idea on the new strategy going forward. You recently returned from afghanistan and got to meet, i think as you aleeluded to, laut of the folks on the ground. If an american would walk up to you and say whats going on in afghanistan . Its a stalemate and the big question is it a stalemate going down or is it a stalemate going up . And i dont have a good answer for that, sir. Cigar Security Assistance Lessons Learned report is very extensive. What would you say the bottom line of that report is . The bottom line is the u. S. Government was ill prepared to conduct a Security Sector mission. They didnt understand the size and scope of what they were facing. Helping lets say with a new personnel system. This was designing and building an entire military and police force. The other problem is we were totally misaligned in our capabilities with their needs. Disorganized, did not fully understand and utalize nato for the things that they could provide and we have detailed a number of problems with getting two complicated systems having military officers in the u. S. Try to teach police. Having air force pilots teaching police, having people who knownothing about personnel systems. That was the big problem that we found. So i think that you were able to brief this report to the administration during their afghan visit. The new strategy announced fwhier administration reflect any of your recommendations . Yes, it does. I cant say we can take credit for that but at least they agree with many of our recommendations. I think one is for train, advise, assist to work you have to drive it down below the core level. So you have to get down tbelow and thats a number of provisions. I think mr. Cunningham maybe can given you more details. He participated in all it briefings. Yes, sir. So we participated with the attorney general and joint staff and one of the big things we talked about was the realignment of our capabilities. The current units going out were already in predeployment training prior to the release of our failure analysis and what we were told is the new units will have the proper training going forward. Cautiously optimistic but we do know our recommendations did go forward to boeththe secretary of defense and the white house. Great. Mr. Sopko, how will we know if dod and state have acted on your recommendations and what outcomes can we expect to see on the ground . We have things being identified do i have to hold another hearing . Are we going to get a sense in the congress in relatively short ord eer that some of these chans being made, particularly in thE State Department because i think theres been frustration with how theyve handled some of this stuff. I think there are some low hanging fruit tat you can pluck right now and i think and i hope the administration will pluck those to draw that analogy, press them into good policies and ive touched on fooivt or six of them. Theres a number of things that can be done right away. Shortterm turn around. Simplest is have the army pick up the phone and call the air force on the Lessons Learned. The best practices from training a29 pilots. It was fantastic. But as far as we know the army hasnt picked up the phone yet. This stove piping is going to be our death and thats one of the things and im happy to provide and discuss and i know mr. Cunningham, we can give you more of those examples of these are fast turn arounds you should be seeing administration do. Ill recognize the Ranking Member. I want to give you great credit for holding this hearing and drilling dune on this issue. I appreciate it. And again thank you, mr. Sopko, mr. Cunningham for your good work. Mr. Sopko, going on six years now. Theres nan institutional memor i think you offer us thats helpful. I want to talk about the limitations on your travel. Ive bichb to afghanistan a dozen times. I know rothers here have been frequent flyers to afghanistan and pakistan on the other side of the border. In the past weve had no problems getting into kandahar city, put us in strikers. Were able to drive right down to the pakistan border. Weve had wide access, in our past oversight investigations in afghanistan. But of course at that time we had had 100,000 troops or thereabouts and so the assets were plentiful and we had great cooperation from general doneferred and other generals going back to general petraeus. Whats the situation there in terms of your own travel . Ranking member lynch, our travel has been restricted. Some of this is because of the point you made. We no longer have 100 100 120 coalition forces. Something general dunford spoke about recently. This is a serious program. And i know president has tried to do something about that. My concern and i will say this. Youre a high visibility target when you travel, when the chairman travels, even someone as lowly as i am a high visibility target. So you cant use restrictions on your travel the same for the average diplomat or sigar employee. But even with then there has been a growing reluctance by thE State Department to let hpeople go outside of the embassy, even to the green zone and i think the classic ill site you two examples and i dont want to take too much of your time. But one was the u. S. Military wanted me to see an afghan base and to see how they were protecting the taxpayers dollars by setting up a system to protect fuel. I was to walk 100 feet with a u. S. Military assigned protection detail that goes over multiple time as day and the ambassador refused to let us go, even though general kaiser and nicholson wanted us to see that. That is the problem. Okay. I get the sense of that. Tell you what, im sure this committee will be having on afghanistan pretty soon. If you could make a lirs of sites you need to get out to ive had great cooperation may be we can combine our resources and plan ahead and make sure you get to where you need to go. The important thing is there was an you are you my time to come sorry. The other question i had was so, we have classification issues in place for the last 14 or 13 years and now, we have new classification issues. What am i being denied what is the American Public denied access to under the new classification reading . I would ask to be made part of the record, we have a seven page document laying out everything classified. Its casualty, for strength, equipment operational readiness, attrition figures as well as perform assessment meaning using th