President Barack Obama's planned troop buildup in Afghanistan came in for more scepticism Thursday with lawmakers zeroing in on how the US will deal with terrorist havens in neighbouring Pakistan. ``What happens in Pakistan ... will do more to determine the outcome in Afghanistan than any increase in troops or shift in strategy,'' said Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Obama has depicted the effort to defeat al Qaeda as the center of his war strategy, but his national address Tuesday contained no details on how he planned to accelerate attacks on the terror network. The US has relied largely on drone-launched missile strikes in recent months, and those operations are classified.
Opening a hearing on Afghan strategy, Kerry, a Democrat, said that it is the ``presence of al Qaeda in Pakistan, its direct ties to and support from the Taliban in Afghanistan and the perils of an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan that drive our mission,'' Senator Richard Lugar, the committee's top Republican, chimed in, saying the president and his administration ``must justify their plan not only on the basis of how it will affect Afghanistan, but also on how it will impact our efforts to promote a much stronger alliance with Pakistan.''
Lugar said ``it is not clear how an expanded military effort in Afghanistan addresses the problem of Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens across the border in Pakistan.'' It was the second day of hearings into Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan _ the largest expansion of the war since it began eight years ago. As with a day of hearings Wednesday before other lawmakers, the committee was questioning Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm.
Mike Mullen. Mullen used his opening remarks to assure Kerry and Lugar that the administration's strategy takes Pakistan into account. ``The linkage between Pakistan and Afghanistan is almost an absolute,'' Mullen said. ``A stable, supportive Afghanistan will make a big difference on how Pakistan sees its future,'' he said.
Both Gates and Mullen sought to underscore the threat that al Qaeda poses in Pakistan, which maintains its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Gates said he considered the dangers to be greater than they were 18 months ago because al Qaeda has become ``deeply involved'' with Taliban forces operating inside Pakistan that are trying to destabilise the government there.