Afghanistan: the long war will get longer

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"It is going to be a long, hard fight," Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "But the consequences of abandoning this fight will be worse than the fight itself."

Crocker told the panel that the Taliban and Al Qaeda clearly intend to "outlast us and regain the operational space they used to attack the United States."

Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, and committee chairman, agreed.

"There is no doubt, and you will not find an analyst who disagrees, that if Afghanistan is allowed to tumble into chaos, the resultant Taliban regime will grant Al Qaeda free reign to pursue its agenda," Kerry said.

Kerry emphasized that the purpose of today's hearing was to consider reconciliation among the warring factions in Afghanistan and if that should be a practical goal of U.S. policy.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-IN, the committee's ranking Republican, expressed some doubt.

"I, for one, am interested in the degree to which our Administration believes reconciliation to be intrinsic to our objectives in Afghanistan," Lugar said. "With finite resources, we must identify those roles and missions that are indispensable to achieving our objectives and those that are not."

Lugar added that "if reconciliation is indispensable" it must be properly funded and led.

Crocker said reconciliation is necessary.

"To be successful, reconciliation must be led by the Afghan government," Crocker said.

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency consultant from the Center for a New American Security, said that holding negotiations with the other side "is the way you win these things."

"But you need to negotiate from a position of strength," he said.

Kilcullen and Crocker both said that not only do the Taliban need to be defeated in the field, but also throughout the society, by minimizing corruption, building infrastructure and establishing reliable  governance that includes all the nation's tribal and ethnic groups.

Crocker quoted Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan: "You cannot kill your way out of an insurgency."

Kilcullen said it was also essential for Afghanistan and Pakistan, its neighbor to the south, to work together for Afghanistan's stability.

Sen. Kerry referred to the Wikileaks controversy that broke on Sunday, when thousands of U.S. classified documents appeared on a whistleblower website. Many of those documents described U.S. frustration with elements of the Pakistani secret police that were, allegedly, assisting Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, whose strongholds straddle the mountainous border region between the countries.

"Apparently all of the documents cover events that occurred before December of last year, when the President introduced his new strategy for the war, which was clearly designed to address some of the issues raised in these documents," Kerry said.

That the Pakistani secret police is assisting the Taliban is not a new allegation, Kerry said.

"We've been dealing with that for some time now and, I believe, we've made some progress," Kerry said.

He said that Pakistan has come to understand that the fight against Islamic extremism is as crucial to Pakistan as it is to Afghanistan and the U.S.

"How do we work together with our allies in the best possible way? - that's the question," Kerry said.

Zainab Salbi, founder and CEO of Women for Women International, told the senators that reconciliation would be furthered by bringing other Muslim countries into our partnership and named Turkey as a fitting ally.

She added that we "must hold Pakistan accountable for its actions."

Stephen Cohen, senior fellow for Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute, said leaks like that of the documents at Wikileaks can cramp critical policy decisions.

"The papers show nothing that we did not know, including the wild and disorganized world in which intel analysts must live," Cohen said. "Much of what is there is wrong or disinformation, raw material not the finished product. But it may have an impact on how people perceive the war."

Kerry asked if the President's timetable for the beginning of a troop withdrawal impacted prospects for reconciliation.

The answer he received was a resounding "Yes."

"Talking with U.S. officials, I understand that the July 2011 date does not mean that we are backing out of Afghanistan," Crocker said. "But I am worried how our allies and our adversaries are reading the President's date."

The Taliban see July 2011 as the calendar date they need to hold out until, he said.

"We have to broaden the time frame and clearly communicate that position to the Afghan people and the Taliban," Kilcullen said. "The best way we can communicate our resolve to the Taliban is through military action."

"We need to give war a chance," Cohen said.

"Impatience is rising in the U.S.," Crocker said. "But the road to 9/11 started with the last time we pulled out of Afghanistan, following the Soviet withdrawal. 9/11 shows us that disengagement is worse than engagement."