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GAO-10-613R 1 (2010-05-05)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaansq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: i GAO Accountibilny I ntegity Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 May 5, 2010 Congressional Committees Subject: Afghanistan's Security Environment In December 2009, recognizing that the situation in Afghanistan had become more grave since the March 2009 announcement of the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the administration concluded a 10-week review of the strategy's goals and the methods needed to achieve them. In announcing the results of this review, the President reaffirmed the core strategic goal of disrupting, dismantling, and eventually defeating extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing them from threatening the United States and its allies in the future. To meet this goal, the President announced his decision to rapidly deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. In addition, he pledged a surge of civilian experts to help enhance the capacity of Afghan government institutions and assist in the rehabilitation of key economic sectors. Since the President's December 2009 announcement, about 16,000 of the additional U.S. troops have gradually deployed to Afghanistan-including about 10,000 as of March 2010 and approximately another 6,000 since that time-and the number of U.S. government civilians present in country has grown by about 200. In February 2010, in what senior Department of Defense (DOD) officials have described as the first step in a prolonged effort to break the momentum of the insurgency where it has been the strongest-southern Afghanistan-U.S., coalition, and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)' launched a campaign to clear insurgent safe havens in the central Helmand river valley. According to DOD officials, the intent of these operations was to pave the way for reconstitution of the Afghan government in Helmand province, and Defense has indicated that similar operations will follow in Kandahar province. We previously reported on security conditions in Afghanistan in November 2009.' This report provides updated information on (1) the security situation as gauged by trends in enemy-initiated attacks; (2) challenges for U.S. reconstruction efforts posed by security conditions; and (3) recent increases in U.S., coalition, and Afghan troops and U.S. civilian presence. To address these objectives, we incorporated information from our past and continuing work and analyzed updated data on attacks. According to Defense Intelligence Agency officials, the data they report on enemy-initiated attacks represent a reliable and consistent source of information that can be used to identify trends in enemy activity and the overall security situation in Afghanistan. 1The ANSF consists of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. 'GAO, Afghanistan's Security Environment, GAO-10-178R (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 5, 2009). GAO-10-613R Afghanistan's Security Environment

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