Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee - U.S. Foreign Policy in Pakistan: Implications for Regional Security, Stability and Development
Interview
Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee - U.S. Foreign Policy in Pakistan: Implications for Regional Security, Stability and Development
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REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R-FL): Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for calling this important and timely hearing on an issue of great importance for U.S. interests in South and Central Asia, as well as for our security here at home.
Before I address the subject of this hearing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to note that however great the issues and partisan considerations that sometimes divide members on this committee and in the House as a whole, ultimately our ability to make the process work and secure the public's interests rest upon our ability to trust one another.
I regret that this bedrock requirement has been called into doubt in recent days. And I refer to language, as we've discussed, Mr. Chairman, in the security assistance bill that this committee approved last Wednesday.
As you are aware, Mr. Chairman, prior to the markup, we reached an agreement that I would co-sponsor the bill and seek the support of all of my Republican colleagues if provisions were included in the text that I believed were necessary to prevent North Korea from being prematurely removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and to ensure that any agreement with North Korea be truly verifiable.
The members of this committee then endorsed this agreement when they rendered their unanimous support for the security assistance bill containing the compromise language.
To my great surprise, less than a day after the committee vote, that agreement was essentially tossed aside and my staff was presented with a revised text negotiated between the Democrat majority of this committee and the leaders of the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations Committees which weakened the provisions in this agreement that we had worked out with the chairman, and again, supported by members of this committee. The next text was a fait accompli, as efforts to restore elements of these provisions were effectively ignored.
Mr. Chairman, if we are to proceed in a cooperative manner, we need to be certain that agreements that have been negotiated in good faith with you and the members of the majority will be honored throughout and not unilaterally reopened or set aside whenever circumstances change. And I hope that trust and confidence can be restored.
In our brief conversation before today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, you assured me that this will not happen again. I thank you. I trust you. And I trust that the dedicated, hard-working staff continue our bipartisan approach.
Turning to the subject of today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, the Afghan-Pakistan border region is of critical geostrategic importance, and the United States must continue to work closely with both the Afghan and Pakistani governments to counter common enemies that are exploiting the ungoverned territory in that region.
The recent and highly significant democratic transition in Islamabad opens up exciting new opportunities for the people of Pakistan and for the future of U.S.-Pakistan relations. The United States congratulates Pakistan on the success of its recent elections. Despite enormous odds, the will of the people prevailed.
And although the new government still enjoys strong public support, it also confronts a daunting agenda, from strengthening Parliament and other civilian institutions to bolstering an independent judiciary and the rule of law, and working through challenges of rising energy demand and skyrocketing food prices.
With respect to critically important security challenges, in the long run the best antidote for Islamic militant extremism to terrorism should be a legitimately elected government that can fight this threat with the backing of the Pakistani people.
In the short run, however, new uncertainties have emerged that our two governments must tackle together. The good news is that Pakistan's new government has correctly identified the need to develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan, including economic and social development and the integration of the tribal areas into the mainstream of the greater society.
The goal of this plan is to eliminate safe havens and to marginalize the appeal of local militants. Contrary to popular misconceptions, this new approach largely dovetails with an evolving U.S. strategy premised on the understanding that military efforts alone have not eliminated extremist recruitment, training or operations in the tribal areas, and that countering extremist influence in these areas requires robust economic development and new security capabilities supported by the U.S. and others.
However, the new government is also pursuing problematic new so- called peace agreements with local militants along the Afghan border. The CIA director just a month ago said that the situation on Pakistan's Afghanistan border presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, and to the West in general, as well as to the United States in particular. I look forward to hearing the comments from the witnesses.
And in conclusion, let me just reiterate that it remains in our nation's long-term interest to forge an enduring strategic partnership with a democratic, stable and prosperous Pakistan that remains a strong partner in the campaign against Islamic militants, and which maintains responsible controls over its nuclear weapons technology. We look forward to working with the Pakistani government and the people to accomplish this worthy goal.
And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman
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REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R-FL): Thank you so much --
REP. BERMAN: I recognize the ranking member for five minutes. (Laughter.) Then the gentlelady from Texas.
REP. ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you, Jimbo.
Well, thank you for wonderful testimony. Very insightful. And General, I'm the proud stepmom of two Marines. My stepson and daughter-in-law served in Iraq and she served in Afghanistan as well. Now they're back home at the U.S. Naval Academy, and they're proud of their service and we congratulate you for the great contributions you've made in the past, present, and the future. And they wore the nation's uniform proudly.
I wanted to ask you, gentlemen, about the opium trade and the projections in what we can do. As all of us know, in spite of ongoing international efforts, fighting Afghanistan's narcotic trade, the U.N. officials have estimated a record opium poppy crop was produced last year, supplied 93 percent of the world's illicit opium.
And clearly, opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking constitute serious strategic threats to our security and to the stability of the country of Afghanistan. It jeopardizes the success of post-9/11 counterterrorism, reconstruction efforts.
In a nutshell, what has worked; what has not worked with our counternarcotics policy there, and what must we do to arrest this trend in the future?
MR. PICKERING: It's hard to see, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen that much has worked. It at least is part of our recommendation that we need to get a grip on the problem through a gradual but continuing transformation of our efforts.
We made suggestions. One of those is that obviously we need to find the right substitute crops and the right markets for them, and we need to find a way to support this transition from growing to selling so that we're not putting people in a position where they grow something they can't dispose of.
There's been a strong suggestion by some people that fruit and tree crops are particularly important in the region and there will be a strong market for those. I'm not a USDA specialist, but it seemed to be interesting, and of course once you get invested in that, it's hard to get disinvested -- hard to pull up the trees once they get growing.
But we do know that the drug lords provide everything, from --
REP. ROS-LEHTINEN: Transportation --
MR. PICKERING: -- from agricultural extension, loans, microfinance --
REP. ROS-LEHTINEN: I'm going to cut you off, Ambassador, just to get the general take on it, because I only have a minute and a half.
MR. PICKERING: -- all of that.
REP. ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you, sir.
MR. PICKERING: So we need to do that. We also need to get some of the middlemen who are also government officials out of the business.
MR. JONES: Thank you. I really appreciate that question, because I think the direction of Afghanistan is directly linked to our inability, our international inability to deal with the narcotics problem.
Ninety percent of the products produced, the illegal products, are sold on the streets of European capitals. That money comes back and funds the insurgency, buys the weapons that kills and wounds NATO soldiers and ours as well.
And it is really at the core of turning around that economy from being a narco-economy into an economy as we know it.
REP. ROS LEHTINEN: I'm going to interrupt you there, General, just to see if I sneak in a quick question about new troops, new military assistance to Afghanistan, a French deployment of about 1,000 troops. How meaningful are these new deployments and commit -- (audio break)?
GEN. JONES: The overall request by NATO standards is modest, and it has always been modest. It's been in the thousands of troops, it's been additional helicopters, mobility assets, communications, intelligence gathering, and the things. But if you rack it and stack it, it's modest. And it was modest two years ago, it still remains modest, and I, for the life of me, don't know why it is that we seem to have so much trouble providing those troops. But I want to state that despite that, the overall problems that we need to address are not more military troops. I think you could put 10,000 more troops in there, and you'd still have the same problems. If you don't address the civil-sector reform, if we don't hold the Karzai government to metrics that are deliverable, we're going to continue to mark time.
REP. ROS LEHTINEN: Correct. Thank you, sir.
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