Download or read book Recent Developments in Afghanistan and the Proposed Drawdown of U S Forces written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Afghanistan After the Drawdown written by Seth G. Jones and published by Council on Foreign Relations. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States maintains important interests in Afghanistan, even as most U.S. and allied troops are withdrawn in 2014. Seth G. Jones and Keith Crane assess the political, security, and economic challenges facing U.S. policymakers in Afghanistan and evaluate a range of policy options.

Download or read book Recent Developments in Afghanistan and the Proposed Drawdown of U S Forces written by United States House of Representatives and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-14 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in Afghanistan and the proposed drawdown of U.S. forces: Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, hearing held June 23, 2011.

Download or read book Recent Developments in Afghanistan and the Proposed Drawdown of U S Forces written by House of Representatives of the United States Staff and published by . This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Good morning. The House Armed Services Committee meets today to receive testimony on the President's decision to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and the remaining 23,000 surge forces by next summer. My position on the war effort has remained consistent: Afghanistan's stability is vital to our national security. Any removal of forces should be based on conditions on the ground and consistent with the advice of our senior military leaders. Based on the President's speech last night, it is not clear to me that his decision was based on either. At West Point, in 2009, the President committed to a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan by surging 33,000 troops. Every witness before this committee has testified that this strategy is beginning to bear fruit by seizing the momentum from the Taliban. Many Members have been to Afghanistan and seen this progress for themselves. Districts that were once Taliban strongholds are now being contested, and once-contentious regions are being handed over to Afghan security forces. The Afghan National Army and Police [ANA and ANP] are growing in number and beginning to develop the capabilities to secure their country. These gains are significant. We should guard them jealously. I am deeply concerned, therefore, about the aggressive troop withdrawals proposed by President Obama. The President's decision could jeopardize the hard-won gains our troops and allies have made over the past 18 months and, potentially, the safety of the remaining forces. This announcement also puts at risk a negotiated settlement with reconcilable elements of the Taliban, who will now believe they can wait out the departure of U.S. forces and return to their strongholds. Today, I hope to hear more about the details underpinning the President's plan;............. Committee on Armed Services Members MIKE ROGERS of Alabama (AL); MO BROOKS of Alabama (AL); TIM GRIFFIN of Arkansas (AR); GABRIELLE GIFFORDS of Arizona (AZ); TRENT FRANKS of Arizona (AZ); DUNCAN HUNTER of California (CA); LORETTA SANCHEZ of California (CA); SUSAN A. DAVIS of California (CA); DOUG LAMBORN of Colorado (CO); JOE COURTNEY of Connecticut (CT); JEFF MILLER of Florida (FL); TOM ROONEY of Florida (FL); AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia (GA); HANK JOHNSON of Georgia (GA); DAVE LOEBSACK of Iowa (IA); TODD YOUNG of Indiana (IN); NIKI TSONGAS of Massachusetts (MA); ROSCOE G. BARTLETT of Maryland (MD); JOHN KLINE of Minnesota (MN); MIKE McINTYRE of North Carolina (NC); WALTER B. JONES of North Carolina (NC); FRANK A. LoBIONDO of New Jersey (NJ); ROBERT ANDREWS of New Jersey (NJ); BILL OWENS of New York (NY); BETTY SUTTON of Ohio (OH); MICHAEL TURNER of Ohio (OH); TIM RYAN of Ohio (OH); BILL SHUSTER of Pennsylvania (PA); ROBERT A. BRADY of Pennsylvania (PA); TODD RUSSELL PLATTS of Pennsylvania (PA); JAMES R. LANGEVIN of Rhode Island (RI); JOE WILSON of South Carolina (SC); JIM COOPER of Tennessee (TN); MAC THORNBERRY of Texas (TX); SILVESTRE REYES of Texas (TX); ROB WITTMAN of Virginia (VA); ADAM SMITH of Washington (WA); RICK LARSEN of Washington (WA) Witnesses Flournoy, Hon. Michele, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, U.S. Department of Defense; Mullen, ADM Michael G., USN, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Download or read book Recent Developments in Afghanistan written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Recent Developments in Afghanistan and the Proposed Drawdown of U S Forces written by United States Congress and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in Afghanistan and the proposed drawdown of U.S. forces: Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, hearing held June 23, 2011.

Download or read book U S Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan written by Richard Lee Armitage and published by Council on Foreign Relations. This book was released on 2010 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private and non-partisan deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse "the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation." Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view. Members' affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and do not imply institutional endorsement. Task Force observers participate in discussions, but are not asked to join the consensus. --Book Jacket.

Download or read book Reconstructing the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces Lessons from the U S Experience in Afghanistan written by Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction (U.S.) and published by U.S. Independent Agencies and Commissions. This book was released on 2017-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication is the second in a series of lessons learned reports which examine how the U.S. government and Departments of Defense, State, and Justice carried out reconstruction programs in Afghanistan. In particular, the report analyzes security sector assistance (SSA) programs to create, train and advise the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) between 2002 and 2016. This publication concludes that the effort to train the ANDSF needs to continue, and provides recommendations for the SSA programs to be improved, based on lessons learned from careful analysis of real reconstruction situations in Afghanistan. The publication states that the United States was never prepared to help create Afghan police and military forces capable of protecting that country from internal and external threats. It is the hope of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John F. Sopko, that this publication, and other SIGAR reports will create a body of work that can help provide reasonable solutions to help United States agencies and military forces improve reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. Related items: Counterterrorism publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/counterterrorism Counterinsurgency publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/counterinsurgency Warfare & Military Strategy publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/warfare-military-strategy Afghanistan War publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/afghanistan-war

Download or read book The Fragmentation of Afghanistan written by Barnett R. Rubin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monumental book examines Afghan society in conflict, from the 1978 communist coup to the fall of Najibullah, the last Soviet-installed president, in 1992. This edition, newly revised by the author, reflects developments since then and includes material on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. It is a book that now seems remarkably prescient. Drawing on two decades of research, Barnett R. Rubin, a leading expert on Afghanistan, provides a fascinating account of the nature of the old regime, the rise and fall of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and the troubled Mujahidin resistance. He relates all these phenomena to international actors, showing how the interaction of U.S. policy and Pakistani and Saudi Arabian interests has helped to create the challenges of today. Rubin puts into context the continuing turmoil in Afghanistan and offers readers a coherent historical explanation for the country’s social and political fragmentation. Praise for the earlier edition: "This study is theoretically informed, empirically grounded, and gracefully written. Anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan’s troubled history and the reasons for its present distress should read this book.” —Foreign Affairs "This is the book on Afghanistan for the educated public.” —Political Science Quarterly

Download or read book Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare Implications for Army and Defense Policy written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The defense debate tends to treat Afghanistan as either a revolution or a fluke: either the "Afghan Model" of special operations forces (SOF) plus precision munitions plus an indigenous ally is a widely applicable template for American defense planning, or it is a nonreplicable product of local idiosyncrasies. In fact, it is neither. The Afghan campaign of last fall and winter was actually much closer to a typical 20th century mid-intensity conflict, albeit one with unusually heavy fire support for one side. And this view has very different implications than either proponents or skeptics of the Afghan Model now claim. Afghan Model skeptics often point to Afghanistan's unusual culture of defection or the Taliban's poor skill or motivation as grounds for doubting the war's relevance to the future. Afghanistan's culture is certainly unusual, and there were many defections. The great bulk, however, occurred after the military tide had turned not before-hand. They were effects, not causes. The Afghan Taliban were surely unskilled and ill-motivated. The non-Afghan al Qaeda, however, have proven resolute and capable fighters. Their host's collapse was not attributable to any al Qaeda shortage of commitment or training. Afghan Model proponents, by contrast, credit precision weapons with annihilating enemies at a distance before they could close with our commandos or indigenous allies. Hence the model's broad utility: with SOF-directed bombs doing the real killing, even ragtag local militias will suffice as allies. All they need do is screen U.S. commandos from the occasional hostile survivor and occupy the abandoned ground thereafter. Yet the actual fighting in Afghanistan involved substantial close combat. Al Qaeda counterattackers closed, unseen, to pointblank range of friendly forces in battles at Highway 4 and Sayed Slim Kalay.

Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Download or read book Why We Lost written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.

Download or read book China and Afghanistan written by Huasheng Zhao and published by CSIS Reports. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because China is principally interested in preventing the destabilization of Xinjiang Province, it has broadly deferred to the United States and its Western allies who are leading military efforts, political reconciliation, and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan. Author Zhao Huasheng writes that China's interests in Afghanistan are more limited than those of the United States, and Beijing has no interest in playing a subordinate role "under the dominance of the West" either. Basically China wants the security threat contained, but is not prepared to contribute to the military effort, including opening a transit corridor on its territory. China is prepared to participate in Afghanistan's economic reconstruction, especially when it advances Chinese foreign economic interests.

Download or read book Militants Criminals and Warlords written by Vanda Felbab-Brown and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " Conventional political theory holds that the sovereign state is the legitimate source of order and provider of public services in any society, whether democratic or not. But Hezbollah and ISIS in the Middle East, pirate clans in Africa, criminal gangs in South America, and militias in Southeast Asia are examples of nonstate actors that control local territory and render public services that the nation-state cannot or will not provide. This fascinating book takes the reader around the world to areas where national governance has broken down—or never really existed. In these places, the vacuum has been filled by local gangs, militias, and warlords, some with ideological or political agendas and others focused primarily on economic gain. Many of these actors have substantial popularity and support among local populations and have developed their own enduring institutions, often undermining the legitimacy of the national state. The authors show that the rest of the world has more than a passing interest in these situations, in part because transborder crime and terrorism often emerge but also because failed states threaten international interests from trade to security. This book also poses, and offers answers for, the question: How should the international community respond to local orders dominated by armed nonstate actors? In many cases outsiders have taken the short-term route—accepting unsavory local actors out of expediency—but at the price of long-term instability or damage to human rights and other considerations. From Africa and the Middle East to Asia and Latin America, the local situations highlighted in this book are, and will remain, high on today's international agenda. The book makes a unique contribution to global understanding of how those situations developed and what can be done about them. This title is part of the Geopolitics in the 21st Century series. "

Download or read book The American War in Afghanistan written by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Winner of 2022 Lionel Gelber Prize The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners. The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Malkasian is both a leading academic authority on the subject and an experienced practitioner, having spent nearly two years working in the Afghan countryside and going on to serve as the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, the US military commander in Afghanistan and later the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge, understanding of Pashto, and review of primary source documents, Malkasian moves through the war's multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the light American footprint during the 2003 Iraq invasion; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006, the Obama-era surge, and the various resets in strategy and force allocations that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the 2018-2020 peace talks. Malkasian lived through much of it, and draws from his own experiences to provide a unique vantage point on the war. Today, the Taliban is the most powerful faction, and sees victory as probable. The ultimate outcome after America leaves is inherently unpredictable given the multitude of actors there, but one thing is sure: the war did not go as America had hoped. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major attack on the American homeland was carried out after 2001, the United States was unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, which could not survive without US military backing. The American War in Afghanistan explains why the war had such a disappointing outcome. Wise and all-encompassing, The American War in Afghanistan provides a truly vivid portrait of the conflict in all of its phases that will remain the authoritative account for years to come.

Download or read book The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [This book] explores ... how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future ... [It] investigates ... questions relating to the character of the Taliban, its evolution over time, and its capacity to affect the future of the region.--Dust jacket.

Download or read book Iran s Influence in Afghanistan written by Alireza Nader and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores Iranian influence in Afghanistan and the implications for the United States after most U.S. forces depart Afghanistan in 2016. Iran has substantial economic, political, cultural, and religious leverage in Afghanistan. Although Iran will attempt to shape a post-2014 Afghanistan, Iran and the United States share core interests: to prevent the country from again becoming dominated by the Taliban and a safe haven for al Qaeda.