- Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Today we are joined by General John W. Nicholson,
United States Army.
General Nicholson joins us from Kabul, Afghanistan,
where he serves as the commander
for NATO's Resolute Support Mission
and for U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
Due to the general's demanding schedule today,
we are limited to approximately 30 minutes,
but this briefing will be the first
of many regular operational updates
for Resolute Support Mission,
and we'll be happy to assist you in getting
any unanswered outstanding questions you have
after the brief.
Remarks you have,
and then we will proceed to answer some questions.
Over to you, sir.
- Thanks very much, Adrian.
Good morning.
It's good to be with you all again
and give you an update on the situation here in Afghanistan,
and in particular the implementation
of the South Asia policy.
While we've seen many of you over here
in the last six months,
the last time we spoke was in November.
A lot has happened,
and I'm hoping to put that into some context for you.
The goal of the South Asia Strategy is reconciliation,
and as President Ghani says, it's been a game changer.
Now why does he say that?
Within six months of President Trump's announcement
and the implementation of the strategy,
we had the elements of a peace proposal outlined
by the Taliban in an open letter to America
and a formal peace offer by President Ghani.
His proposal was unanimously endorsed
by the international community
at the Kabul peace process conference
and at the Tashkent conference.
Diplomatic activity picked up substantially at that point,
and a number of channels of dialogue have opened up
between the various stakeholders in the peace process.
Now what's been encouraging is that,
concurrent with this intensified dialogue,
we saw the levels of violence drop to lower levels.
Specifically between February,
when these offers were made,
and the end of April,
the levels of enemy initiated violence
dropped to 30% below the five year average.
Then on 25 April, the Taliban announced their offensive,
and in the months since,
we have seen the violence increase,
but still to a level that is 10 to 12% below
the five year average.
I call this talking and fighting,
and as the SECDEF has said,
violence and progress can coexist,
and that's what we're seeing.
We've seen this in other conflicts,
such as Colombia,
where the two sides were talking about peace
at the same time that they were fighting each other
on the battlefield,
but let me go ahead and unpack some of the violence for you,
because I realize that these reports come back
unfiltered to you,
and let me try to put some of this in context.
With the South Asia policy,
we got additional firepower and additional authorities.
The Taliban have generally then sought
to avoid our airpower
and attack more remote district centers.
The one exception this spring
has been the city of Farah,
and I will come back to that specifically.
So the Taliban, to avoid the casualties
that come from our airpower,
have not sought to gain and hold new ground.
Rather, they have tried to inflict casualties
and gain media coverage,
and so how is this going?
In this period of violence that I outlined,
over 80% of the enemy attacks on district centers
have been defeated by the ANDSF,
meaning the Taliban failed to take their target,
and the 20% of the attacks
where the Taliban were successful
in taking five district centers,
all of those district centers have been retaken
by the Afghan forces,
some of them within hours,
and the longest one that any one was in their hands
was for 10 days.
The one exception to a remote district center
being attacked was the city of Farah.
This attack was conducted by enemy fighters
from Helmand who joined local enemy fighters
in the province of Farah,
and we believe this was an attempt
to divert attention away from them in Helmand
to relieve pressure on them.
They took advantage of bad weather
and collapsed eight police checkpoints
to gain entrance to the city.
They then moved on certain targets in the city,
to include the prison,
to release some of their prisoners,
the bank, and other government buildings.
The local forces defended in place
and prevented the fall of any of those structures
that I mentioned.
The key thing here is, within 18 hours,
over 500 commandos and special police
were on their way to Farah,
and they were moving under the steam, if you will,
of the Afghan Air Force and on their own,
driving to the city.
So within 24 hours of the attack,
these Afghan forces, supported by the Afghan Air Force
and of course enabled by us as well,
drove the enemy out of the city
and into surrounding districts
where they pursued them for a week.
During this pursuit,
a number of these Taliban leaders and fighters
returned to Helmand,
and through some great intelligence work by our Marines,
led by Brigadier General Ben Watson,
they tracked 50 of them to a meeting
in Musa Qal'ah and struck them with HIMARS rockets,
killing dozens of the enemy leaders.
So where does this leave us at the end of that action?
Afghan forces in control of Farah,
and many of the enemy leaders who led the attack
are now being pulled out of the rubble in Musa Qal'ah.
Another example of a failed enemy attack occurred today.
Eight terrorists in a captured Humvee
attempted to penetrate the Ministry of Interior headquarters
in downtown Kabul.
They were stopped,
and in a sharp firefight with special police,
all of the enemy were killed,
with the exception of one, who was captured.
We did lose one friendly casualty and had a few wounded,
but the enemy attack failed
and never was able to penetrate MOI headquarters.
So these are just a few examples
of the improvements we've seen
in the ANDSF fighting abilities,
which of course is the focus of our investment
and one of the key parts of the South Asia strategy,
defeating 80% of enemy attacks,
retaking any fallen district centers,
successfully defending Farah,
pursuing and killing the attackers,
defeating terrorist attacks.
I know many of you have also heard
of the generational change in leadership that's occurring
inside the Ministry of Defense and Interior
with the inherent law.
We'll talk to you about that more
in future sessions that we have with you.
As you know, our counterterrorism effort
is the other key mission,
and our top two targets remain
Islamic State Khorasan Province and Al-Qaida.
Islamic State aspires to spread around the country,
but currently, they are geographically limited
to three areas,
Jowzjan, Nangarhar, and Kunar.
Our CT team recently killed the leader
of the Jowzjan enclave, Qari Hekmatullah,
and many of his fighters,
which caused many of them to fade away
or to flip sides to the Taliban, severely disrupted.
We are maintaining the pressure
on that particular enclave to defeat this group,
and we're also maintaining pressure
on the group in Nangarhar
with what is called Operation Hamza,
which has been going on for the past year
and steadily reducing their space and inflicting casualties.
Finally, I want to highlight the peace movement,
which has sprung up in the wake of a Taliban attack
against civilians in Helmand.
This movement is nationwide.
It's grassroots.
It's not aligned with the government or anyone.
It is calling on all parties to enter
into ceasefires and peace talks.
They have held events in over 20 provinces,
and as I speak a group is now walking
from Helmand to Kabul to present their demands
to the government.
They are courageous Afghans who reflect
the strong desire of the Afghan people for peace,
and this has never happened before in Afghanistan
to my knowledge, over 20 provinces.
So it's important to remember that the Afghans want
and deserve peace after so many years of fighting.
They are fighting not only on behalf
of their own country,
but literally on behalf of all of us
by keeping pressure on the terrorists here
so we don't have to fight them on our own doorstep.
So we appreciate the sacrifices and the progress
of the Afghans in this fight.
I look forward to taking your questions.
Back.
- [Adrian] Thank you, sir.
We'll start with Bob Burns from A.P.
- Thank you.
General Nicholson, a question or two
about the May 24th HIMARS attack
that you made reference to.
To understand that a little better,
could you be more specific about who these 50 people were?
And what would you describe
as the strategic significance of taking out
those particular people?
- Yeah, thanks, Bob.
The senior Taliban leader who was there
was the deputy shadow governor of Helmand,
and a number of other leaders underneath him.
Now we're still assessing the specific names and positions,
but what it looks like it was,
was a group of commanders,
meeting in part to discuss the operation
in Farah that many of them had just participated in,
and they obviously thought
they were meeting in relative safety in Musa Qal'ah,
but our intelligence was able to identify the group
and effectively conduct the strike.
So this was mainly leaders from what we call
the network in Helmand, the Wain network,
led by Abdul Manan, the Taliban shadow governor of Helmand.
Individuals are involved
in drug trafficking in Helmand.
That's their main source of finance,
and in this case, they attempted to again distract us
from Helmand by moving over to Farah
to bring some pressure there.
We'll provide more details as we learn more
about the identities of those who we struck.
- Just a quick follow up on my second part
of my question about do you see
a broader strategic significance for having
to get these people,
or is this just a one off kind of event?
- I think our goal in Helmand has been
to disrupt that network.
As you know, Helmand's been the financial engine
of the insurgency.
The Taliban draws 60% of their revenue from narcotics,
criminal activity,
and this group in Helmand in particular
are very involved in criminal activity.
They seek to continue instability
so they can profit from the drug trade,
so by striking this group,
we do strike at a group that is involved
in drug trafficking.
More importantly,
because of the money they derive from drugs,
this has been one of the more well equipped
and well paid Taliban networks,
but by killing leaders,
we will achieve a disruptive effect in Helmand.
I would not call it strategic significance,
but it definitely has a significant local significance
in terms of the fight in Southern Afghanistan.
- Next, to Corey Dickstein with Stars and Stripes.
- Thank you, sir.
I want to ask,
the attack this morning on the Interior Ministry,
there was an A.P. photo that came out
that appears to show the attacker wearing
the old army universal camouflage pattern uniforms,
wearing a 101st Airborne Division patch on his sleeve.
I'd like to know how often are the enemy able
to get uniforms like that,
that might get them easier through security checkpoints
or something like that?
And how concerning is that?
Is there anything you guys can do about that?
And we've also reported
that ISIS, KP is claiming that attack.
Is that accurate?
- Yeah, thanks for the question.
Well, obviously it's a concern if the enemy
is wearing old uniforms that might cause a hesitation
or a delay.
In this case, they were in a captured Humvee.
They were wearing old style Army uniforms.
The good news is that the guards at the gate,
the Afghan guards,
immediately recognized these as old uniforms,
called on the terrorists to exit the vehicle
so they could be checked out,
and at that point the fighting started.
One of the attackers I'm told
detonated his suicide vest
and actually killed himself and some of his colleagues
as they were conducting the attack.
They never gained entrance to the MOD,
or, excuse me, the MOI headquarters,
and the Crisis Response Unit Triple Two,
which is the special police reaction unit
on menace alert status inside the city,
quickly reacted and killed all these terrorists
before they could gain entrance to the MOI.
So it was a short, sharp fight.
It obviously concerns us that terrorists
have captured vehicles and captured uniforms,
but again I point to the alertness
and the quick reaction by the Afghan Security Forces
on the scene.
They did exactly what they were supposed to do.
Sadly, one of our Afghan comrades was killed
and a few more were wounded,
but the attack failed.
- Follow up, I apologize.
Have you seen them use that tactic before though,
commandeering American uniforms
to try to launch an attack?
And do you guys, does it look like this was an ISIS attack?
- We believe it was a Taliban, Haqqani attack,
but we're still developing that information.
This tactic tracks with their tactics in the past,
but more to follow on that as we learn more
about the identity of the attackers.
We have seen uniforms used in the past.
Frankly, it's been well over a year, I think,
since we've seen that,
but we'll get back to you with more details,
and we at this time do not believe it was an ISIS attack.
- Wyatt Goolsby from EWTN.
- Thanks so much, and, General, thanks so much for this.
You had mentioned the violence
that the Taliban is carrying out against civilians.
I want to follow up on that
because the State Department yesterday
put out a report talking
about international religious freedom,
highlighting Afghanistan,
and actually said the Afghan branch
of the Islamic State and the Taliban, quote,
"continue to target and kill members
"of minority religious communities."
Is there any insight you can give
about what the Taliban,
exactly how they're targeting civilians
and religious minorities,
what kind of attacks they're carrying out?
- Yeah, thank you for the question.
So the first thing I'd say is that the Taliban,
in their public statements,
contend that they don't attack civilians
and they encourage their leadership not to,
and so they make a point of this every year.
But of course, as we saw in January,
let me give you an example,
the Taliban had an ambulance packed with explosives
that they drove to a hospital and detonated,
which killed or wounded well over 100 civilians.
So this is an example of a Taliban style attack,
using an ambulance to gain entrance to a hospital,
and then detonating it next to a hospital,
so this is the nature of the violence.
Another example would be I mentioned the suicide attack
at a wrestling match in Helmand
that precipitated the peace movement,
again, going into a sporting event,
not a security event at all, and killing locals,
and this brought out an enormous reaction by the locals.
Now I wouldn't say that either one of these two attacks,
as an example, were religious or sectarian in nature.
Most of the sectarian style attacks
we've seen in Afghanistan have been conducted by ISIS-K,
and the Islamic State Khorasan
has been focused on the Shia population,
and so we've seen indiscriminate bombing
of voter registration sites,
religious gatherings, et cetera,
and so that's our principle concern
when it comes to that here.
Although it's not unprecedented,
and of course we all know
from the days of the Taliban
some of the acts they took
against the Shia minorities were horrendous,
to include, for example,
the destruction of the cultural heritage,
blowing up the Buddhists,
and fighting many Shia in those days,
so but recently, I'd say it's ISIS-K has come
to the fore as the ones who have been principally focused
on sectarian violence against another religious group.
- [Wyatt] Very much.
- With AFP.
- Thank you for doing that.
I would like to go back to the report
of the recent report of the SIGAR
about the billions of dollars
that have been wasted in Afghanistan
in the last few years,
and he said especially that
because the reconstruction effort
or stabilization effort was lead by the military,
it overestimated its ability
to reform the government institution.
I wanted to know if you agree with that assessment
and if you changed the way
the stabilization funds are used now.
- Yeah, thank you for the question.
So we welcome the SIGAR reports.
They really help us to see ourselves
and help us to continually improve how we do business.
This particular report on stabilization
primarily covered the period of counterinsurgency,
which was the period of ISAF.
This mission ended in 2014,
and what you saw at that time was many
of the resources that had been given
to the military under the counterinsurgency campaign
were removed at that time.
So now that we are in a period of time
called train, advise, assist,
and since I've been the commander,
we've been only in that role,
we no longer are involved in the large scale projects
that were mentioned in the SIGAR report on stabilization.
I think it's fair to say that we need
to learn from this period.
We need to look at how we make the best use
of resources to move forward.
It's important to note, though,
that in the 17 years of this war,
there have been tremendous strides
in social progress inside Afghanistan,
for example, health care,
women's education, life expectancy.
Again, access to health care has reduced
some of the infant mortality and maternal mortality.
Clean water, polio vaccinations,
all of this has resulted in an increase
in life expectancy in Afghanistan
from the early 40s to almost 60 years old.
What we do by improving the living conditions
of the Afghan people ideally
is reduce the potential for recruitment
into terrorist groups because their stake
in society, their life, is better.
That, however, is not the purpose
of the Resolute Support mission,
and that is not the purpose of the South Asia policy.
We are here, focused on providing training,
advice, and assist to the Afghan forces
and doing a counterterrorism mission
to bring this war to a peaceful conclusion.
The final point I'd say is that there are many,
many donors here in Afghanistan
that are focused on the areas that you've mentioned.
So at the Brussels donor conference in 2015,
over $15 billion in intents to pledge
were made by members of the international community,
and that these donations are going to assist
in many of the areas,
but the military is no longer
in this business in Afghanistan.
- If I can follow up, the report also say
that corruption was aggravated by the fact
that money was spent in regions
where the military left afterwards,
that the military left,
so do you think that corruption is less invasive now?
- Ma'am, I would ask to be able to examine that correction.
I'm not familiar with that specific issue
that you raise there,
but I would be happy to take a look at it
and provide you a response later
once I've had a chance to see the specifics
of that particular citation.
- Alright, next to Phil Stewart with Reuters.
- Hi, General.
Thanks for talking to us.
I want to follow up on your remarks
about talking and fighting and the peace movement.
First of all, how much talking is going on right now
that you're aware of?
And on the peace movement,
you've mentioned their calls for a ceasefire.
What would be the impact on your ability
to pressure the Taliban
and if these calls for ceasefire
actually gain some momentum?
Would that be detrimental to your campaign?
And I still had one other follow up question
on something you said.
- Thank you.
First off, on talking and fighting, again,
common to many, the stages of many conflicts,
Colombia's the most recent example,
where as the negotiating teams
from each side were meeting,
I should point out they met in secret.
This is how they were able to advance the talks.
So I think what you're seeing right now
is a lot of the diplomatic activity
and dialogue is occurring off the stage,
and it's occurring at multiple levels,
so you see mid-level,
senior level Taliban leaders engaging with Afghans.
So let me give you a few examples without naming names
because again part of the ability to advance this
is it's conducted in a confidential manner.
But we see outreach from Taliban fighters
who are tired of fighting,
who are concerned about the effect
of this continued fighting on their country.
We've seen some public calls by Taliban leaders.
For example, a Taliban judge in Northern Afghanistan
called on the Taliban leadership
to accept President Ghani's peace offer.
We've seen comments from some former Taliban members,
who are no longer actively part, calling on this,
but the most significant are the dialogue
that's occurring between various stakeholders,
and what I mean is you have international governments,
international organizations, external nations,
internal Afghan leaders,
both in and out of government,
all of whom are engaged to varying degrees
of dialogue with either those who work
with the Taliban or actually some
of the Taliban leaders themselves.
And I think this explains why we have never seen
a formal response to President Ghani's peace offer,
is that there is a robust dialogue going on
inside the Taliban.
I would also refer you to the open letter
from the Taliban to America
and President Ghani's peace offer.
When you lay these documents side by side,
you'll find there's a few key differences,
but there's many points of intersection,
and so this is what leads me to the conclusion
that there's tremendous potential
to advance the reconciliation dialogue,
and again I don't want to go any further.
My diplomatic colleagues are the ones
that are involved in this,
and their ability to be successful depends
in part upon the confidentiality of the process.
- And, sorry, on the ceasefire?
And then I want to double check something you said
on the enemy initiated violence,
but on how would a ceasefire affect you?
- Yeah, yes, so, well, first off,
a proposal, for example,
came from the peace movement for this.
First and foremost, these are questions
for the Afghan government to consider.
So remembering we're here in our NATO role
and U.S. is part of that,
training, advising, and assisting the Afghans,
so the NATO mission is a non-combat mission,
so from that perspective,
that would not have an impact on that part of our mission.
Okay, now, in terms of the combat enabling
of the Afghan forces that we do
under our U.S. authorities,
that would have an impact there,
but again that would be a policy decision
that our government would have to consider
on the potential benefits.
Again, the end state of the policy
is to achieve a reconciliation.
So I think again our government would need to consider,
would this move us forward towards that end?
And I think that would be the key consideration,
less so than the effect
on our train, advise, assist mission.
Now in our counterterrorism mission,
we're focused on groups other than the Taliban,
so that would be the key decision point there.
Again, not wanting to get in front
of my political leadership,
this would be a decision taken at those levels
to look at the impact on our range of missions.
- (mumbling) You said enemy initiated violence
was 30% below the five year average.
We had been told in previous years
that there was no longer reliable data
on enemy initiated attacks because of the inability,
the smaller U.S. intelligence footprint in Afghanistan.
How confident are you on these numbers,
especially the five year trend?
And are these based on Afghan statistics,
or are these based on your own intelligence collection?
Thank you.
- Yeah, thanks for the question.
So this data goes back to 2013.
As you know, we've been collecting it for years.
So the data, much of this is Afghan reported,
coming to us, so standard deviation is probably increased.
The thing that's significant though
is the fact that it was 30% is statistically significant.
And so, if this were a matter of a few percentage points,
I'd have less confidence,
but when we talk in percentages like the current 10 to 12%
and the previous 30% that we saw from February to April,
I believe it is significant,
and I do believe it was lower, based on that assessment.
- Alright, sir, so we are at 11:28.
I know you have a 30 minute stop,
so I'd like to do three more questions,
but no follow ups, please.
So we'll go to Tara Copp, Military Times.
- Thank you for doing this, General.
As your command in Afghanistan nears a close,
I wanted to see if you would be
a little more reflective with us
and answer the question of why should the U.S.
continue to send its sons and daughters to Afghanistan?
Why should the U.S. military stay?
- Yeah, thanks for the question.
It's really important, and it's been a long war,
but I would note that in that time,
our country has not been attacked from Afghanistan.
Remember that 21 designated terrorist organizations
exist in this region.
ISIS-K, for example, did not exist in this region
until about 2014, 2015,
and it primarily was created by members of other groups.
So the fact, when you have a large number of groups
in close proximity,
with a significant population to recruit from,
means that there is a threat from this region
to our homeland.
So our choice is fairly simple.
We either keep the pressure on them here,
or they bring the fight to our doorstep,
and so the two principal groups
that we're concerned about there are Al-Qaida
and Islamic State.
Thanks to the great work by our counterterrorism forces,
we have devastated it, Al-Qaida,
but they still exist.
Islamic State has ambitions.
Now again, because of great work by our CT forces,
we've been able to keep pressure on them,
but it's too soon to take the pressure off.
If we are able to achieve a reconciliation
through the South Asia strategy,
and, again, as I've outlined tonight,
we're taking positive steps in that direction,
and we achieve an increased degree of stability here,
again, this is Afghanistan.
There will always be violence,
but if we achieve an increased degree of stability
and a lowering of the violence to a level
that the Afghans can manage,
then it's gonna be much easier
to keep pressure on these terrorist groups,
and that's in the benefit of our nation
and all the nations of the coalition,
and on that last point,
I'd say this is not just an American mission.
There are 39 nations here.
In fact, we have two more that have recently offered
to join, UAE and Qatar.
And so these nations not only contribute troops,
they contribute financially,
and they bring the legitimacy
of a 39 nation coalition to keep pressure
on these terrorist groups.
So preventing these terrorists
from launching attacks out of this area,
again, largest concentration of terrorist groups
anywhere in the world,
is the principal reason why we're here,
and we have been successful in protecting
our homeland from attacks emanating from this region,
ever since 9/11.
(mumbling)
- [Adrian] Tara--
- 17 year conflict, to just from your experience
on the ground there,
what is the primary role then for the U.S.?
And do you see this as really just a really
long term presence to continue to keep
that terrorism threat at bay from U.S. homeland?
- Well, we have a global counterterrorism mission,
of course, that we do to protect our homeland.
I think the key difference here in Afghanistan
is we have a tremendous partner in the Afghan people,
and you've heard the phrase, by, with, and through.
Well, nowhere is that more apparent
than here in Afghanistan.
These Afghan counterterrorist forces
are the best in the region.
I mean, the Afghan Air Force,
they flew their first sortie two years ago,
in an A-29.
Today, they're dropping laser guided bombs.
We provided them UH-60 helicopters in September.
They're flying their first combat missions now.
So these people want to defend their own country.
They view it as a matter of pride
that they are the ones fighting
and, if necessary, dying to protect their country.
They are grateful for our presence,
and, no, I think that,
once we achieve the ends of the South Asia Strategy,
a reconciliation that lowers the violence
to a level that they can manage,
then our presence,
that will be the time to re-assess our presence.
- Alright, now we have time for one more,
so the last one will go to Cami McCormick.
- Thanks, General.
Back in March, you talked about securing,
hardening Kabul with more U.S. advisers,
with special operations and the Afghan police,
re-training them and refocusing on the gates,
stopping explosives coming into the city.
Can you give us an update on how that's going
and what's ahead, what you're still working on?
- Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, thank you for the question, very important.
So remembering that Kabul's a city of five million,
15 years ago, it was about 500,000.
So it exploded, literally,
growing exponentially in size,
and unfortunately city planning, security, et cetera,
did not keep pace with the exponential growth.
Now let me just give you a few quick metrics.
We're approaching the one year anniversary
of the mega-VBIED that struck in Kabul
on 31 May 2017 that caused over 600 casualties.
You'll note that in the year since then,
we have not had another mega-VBIED inside this city,
and, in fact, we've had a slight reduction
in the number of vehicle-borne IEDs.
I credit this to the Afghan Security Forces,
who have done things like physical security measures,
improved checkpoints, more thorough searches.
Has this caused disruptions in the city?
Yes, in terms of traffic flows and all that,
and the government's working hard to manage that,
but what it's meant,
it's been tougher for the enemy
to penetrate the city with vehicle-borne IEDs.
Now, what we've seen also is a reduction
in Taliban and Haqqani activity,
and this is because of the very focused
counterterrorism effort on the networks
that attack Kabul City.
Now this has been worked on
by Afghan counterterrorism forces,
working with our forces,
that has reduced the number of Taliban
and Haqqani attacks.
Unfortunately, some of that reduction has been made up
by the ISIS-K attacks.
The ISIS-K attacks are different in nature.
They tend to be person-borne suicide vests,
so a suicide bomber.
They're very indiscriminate in terms of who they attack.
As I mentioned before,
they're sectarian in nature,
so we see attacks on places of religious worship,
Shia worship, voter registration in Shia areas, et cetera.
So this uptick in ISIS-K attacks has
to some extent offset the reduction,
and because of the CT effort
and the effectiveness or improved effectiveness
of the ANDSF against Taliban and Haqqani.
We still have a long way to go,
but we're encouraged by the fact
that we have seen that reduction of vehicle-borne IEDs.
In particular around the diplomatic and government zone,
the security has improved
because of these physical security measures and so forth.
We're also seeing increasing professionalism
amongst the Afghan police forces in the city.
The army now is responsible for the gates around the city,
and all of the district commanders
inside the city for the police
have been replaced with new commanders
who are going through retraining.
The minister of interior has started
a model police district program
inside the city and will start,
one district at a time,
improving the professionalism, competence,
training, equipping, et cetera, of the police.
So we're seeing a real concerted effort
on the part of our Afghan partners to achieve improvements.
I also want to flag and compliment our allies
in this regard,
so inside the city,
we have Train Advise Assist Command Capital,
which is run by our Turkish allies.
They have brought in a robust police advising team
to help work with the police.
They also help advise the 111th Capital Division.
We have put SFAB teams,
Security Force Assistant Brigade,
specially trained Army advisers inside the city,
working with these units to improve them.
We also have a force called the Kabul Security Force,
which is led by our British allies,
and we also have other troops inside there,
Danes, Americans, et cetera.
All of these troops are contributing to help
and to improve the Kabul security,
and we're also getting help from JIEDDO,
which is the U.S. DOD organization
which helps with counter-IED
and other force protection measures,
so it's a full court press to improve security in Kabul,
and we are seeing some improvements,
but again a lot of work to do,
and we're staying on it.
- Thank you very much, General.
Do you have any closing words for the group?
- Now, listen, I wanted to extend an invitation
to all of you to come out again.
I know many of you have traveled here
since we last talked in November.
We look forward to hosting you again.
We look forward to the weekly engagements.
We're gonna bring in different subject matter experts
to talk on different subjects.
If you've got particular areas of interest,
please let us know,
and we look forward to either addressing those
in these weekly sessions
or getting back to you one on one to cover down on things.
So again, thanks for the coverage,
and thanks for joining us today.
- Thank you, sir.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a great day.