Washington, September 17: President Barack Obama’s aides Wednesday gave lawmakers a list of benchmarks to measure progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, pledging an honest and dispassionate study of US war strategy.
The list of metrics, presented in a closed-door session of a Senate committee, measure progress towards objectives laid down by Obama in a major speech in March setting a new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The administration, working on the basis of assessments by interagency teams, US personnel abroad, US intelligence agencies and outside sources will present a report every three months to the president, Congress and the public.
“Here we have an administration that is designing metrics, that is embracing the idea of accountability,” a senior Obama administration official said on condition of anonymity.
“We have taken this seriously, there is a process in place and we are going to see where it leads us,” the official said.
The metrics were presented amid rising pressure from Obama’s allies in Congress to prove that the Afghan mission can be successful, despite worsening security and rising combat deaths among foreign troops.
The process will take place alongside military assessments contained in General Stanley McChrystal’s strategic review of the war, and a possible follow-on request for more combat troops.
The document begins by repeating the goal of the war strategy as declared by Obama: “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat” Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
For gauging success in defeating the Afghan insurgency, the benchmarks include the level of insurgent-related violence, “public perceptions of security,” the percent of the population living in areas under insurgent control and the percent of “key lines of communication under government control.”
For developing “self-reliant” Afghan security forces, metrics include the level of trust and confidence among Afghans in the army and police, the “effectiveness” of joint Afghan and NATO operations and the “level of corruption” within Afghan security forces.
Under the objective of promoting a more capable Afghan government, indicators include Kabul’s ability to collect revenues, public perceptions of the country’s courts, action against corruption, support for human rights, interdiction of “high-profile narco-traffickers” and efforts to carry out reconciliation at national, regional and local levels.
In Pakistan, objectives including measuring efforts to enhance stable civilian government, the fight against insurgents and the work of the international community to stabilize the country.
One section of the assessment which evaluates progress against terror networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be classified and not made public.
Another benchmark under the same objective cites the Afghan government’s “ability to hold credible elections in 2009 and 2010.”
Recent presidential elections in Afghanistan were plagued by claims of massive fraud, with European Union observers branding 1.5 million votes from the election as suspicious.
“Well, guess what — that one is not going to get a glowing rating,” said the official.
Each objective under the benchmarks will be the responsibility of an official or team of officials in Washington from the State Department, Defense Department and the intelligence community.
A parallel assessment team will be set up to ensure that the administration teams are not painting an overly rosy picture of progress, and tasked with developing a separate report, the official said.
The so-called “red team” will be drawn up by the Director of National Intelligence.
The official explained the rationale behind the system.
“There is a chance here that we are going to be kidding ourselves because after all this a high priority for the Obama administration.”
–Agencies