Gates: Duration of OEF a ‘mystery’ - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Gates: Duration of OEF a ‘mystery’

How long will U.S. troops be fighting in Afghanistan?

It’s a mystery, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

Gates, a former Director of Central Intelligence, didn’t mean to sound flip. But, he said, “In the intelligence business, we always used to categorize information ... in two ways: secrets and mysteries.

“The secrets were things that were ultimately knowable; mysteries were those where there were too many variables to predict,” he said at a Pentagon news conference. “And I think that how long U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan ... is in that area.”

The variables are many. They include:

• The ability of U.S. and NATO troops to tamp down violence.

• Foreign service officers’ ability to help build strong governmental structure and reduce corruption at all levels of the Afghan government.

• Building an economy and creating jobs that are viable alternatives to the illicit poppy trade and fighting for the Taliban.

• The outcome of the Aug. 20 presidential election.

And “the enemy has a vote,” as Gates pointed out.

He said the administration needs to be able to show progress “within a year,” pointing to the new White House strategy that stresses U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine — and the application of that strategy by the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal, on the job barely two months and bolstered by a 2009 influx of U.S. troops that has brought the total in-country to 62,000, is completing an assessment of the situation for Gates.

Another 4,000 U.S. troops will begin arriving in September to help train Afghan security forces, which officials say is key to internal Afghan stability. Gates once again expressed his concern about creating too much of a U.S. troop “footprint” in Afghanistan and said no requests for additional troops have been received from McChrystal.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said he did not disagree with Gates’ “mystery” construct.

But, added Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, “things that I would look for that would tell us that we’re moving in the right direction — to the end of the significant engagement part of this and more into the holding side of this — would be when we can start to turn over certain areas and responsibilities to either the Afghan national army or the Afghan national police for security.

“When that security is in the equal interests of us and the people there and they acknowledge it and they contribute to it ... then you start to have a sense that things are going to move” away from daily violence and more toward the “the stability, the holding, and the building side of the equation,” Cartwright said.