WASHINGTON _ The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that several thousand more troops were needed to train and advise Afghan forces and break the "stalemate" in their fight against the Taliban.
Army Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the troops could come from the U.S. or its allies, although he did not give a specific number.
"I believe we're in a stalemate," Nicholson told committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., when asked whether the U.S. is "winning or losing" in a conflict that has stretched for a decade and a half.
There are 8,400 U.S. troops in the country, conducting counterterrorism operations against insurgents and training and advising Afghanistan's military, along with 6,400 troops from NATO countries. Last year, then-President Barack Obama announced that he would keep that number until the end of his term, instead of dropping it to the previously planned 5,500 by early 2017.
In a phone call in December, Trump reportedly told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that he would consider a troop increase to stop the country's security situation from deteriorating, but he devoted little attention to the conflict during his presidential campaign other than to call the situation in Afghanistan "a mess." He did say troops would probably have to stay there "because that thing will collapse in about two seconds after they leave."
The Trump administration has not outlined a plan for the 16-year-old conflict, however, instead focusing on border security and asking the Pentagon to devise a strategy to defeat the Islamic State. The president gave Afghanistan only passing mention during his speech Monday at U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for military operations in the Middle East. He thanked "everyone serving overseas, including our military personnel in Afghanistan."
Asked about increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday only that Trump would "heed the advice of the generals and Secretary Mattis."
"That conversation has yet to happen," he said at a White House news briefing.
In his seven-minute statement at his confirmation hearing, Secretary of Defense James Mattis also mentioned the conflict only briefly. However, he is a strong supporter of the NATO coalition that is leading the advising and training efforts, and given his own experience in Afghanistan _ he once headed Central Command _ is expected to take a hard look at operations on the ground.
Nicholson also raised concerns that Russia's involvement in Afghanistan has become "more assertive" and "more difficult" over the past year.
Russia is "now meddling in Afghanistan in an apparent attempt to prop up the Taliban and undermine the United States," the commander said.
"They have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban," he told the panel. "This narrative that they promote is that the Taliban are fighting Islamic State and the Afghan government is not ... and that therefore there could be spillover of this group into the region."
Nicholson said that was a "false narrative," claiming that in the last year the Afghan government, with help from U.S. counterterrorism forces, had cut the number of Islamic State fighters by half and reduced the territory they hold by two-thirds. The Russians have also undermined them by "initiating a series of meetings in Moscow to which the Afghans have not been invited" to discuss the future of the country, he said.
At the hearing Thursday, McCain criticized the troop limits imposed by the Obama administration, which he said "tied the hands of our military in Afghanistan."
"Instead of trying to win, we settle for just trying not to lose," he said. "Time and again, we saw troop withdrawals that seemed to have a lot more to do with American politics than conditions on the ground in Afghanistan."
The U.S. and its allies reaffirmed their commitment to Afghanistan at a NATO summit last year, pledging about $800 million to support its security forces through 2020. Under the current funding structure, the U.S. provides roughly $3.5 billion a year to finance the Afghan forces.
