Taliban Are Gaining Ground-- US Senate Intelligence Committee

The heads of the US Senate and House intelligence committees said Sunday the Taliban was gaining ground; just days after President Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan and touted the progress made in the war on terror.
“I think we’d both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger,” said Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein on CNN’s “State of the Union,” news show while sitting with Republican Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan.
Discussing her recent trip to Afghanistan, Ms. Feinstein, a Democrat, pointed to increased attacks and the geographical spread of the Taliban’s influence. She also highlighted madrassas in Pakistan that “are fueling a new generation of fighters.” “[Afghan President Hamid] Karzai believes that the Taliban will not come back. I’m not so sure. The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces. They’ve gone up north. They’ve gone to the east. Attacks are up,” she told CNN.
Rogers, agreeing with her on the Taliban’s impact, added other reasons for what he assessed as the group’s increasing strength. “This is a huge problem. And what we have found is maybe the policies, the announced date of withdrawal, the negotiations with the Taliban, have worked against what our endgame is here,” Rogers said. He added: “And we ought to have a hard discussion about saying, listen, war is when one side wins and one side loses.” Their comments came just days after Obama spoke of a slowing force within the Taliban.
“Over the last three years, the tide has turned. We broke the Taliban’s momentum,” Obama said. “We’ve built strong Afghan security forces. We devastated al Qaeda’s leadership, taking out over 20 of their top 30 leaders.”
The president added the administration was in “direct discussion” with the Taliban, saying the group can be a part of the country’s future if “they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence, and abide by Afghan laws.” “Many members of the Taliban from foot soldiers to leaders have indicated an interest in reconciliation. A path to peace is now set before them,” he said. “Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan security forces, backed by the United States and our allies.”
The Defence Department said last week in a report to Congress that its surge of 33,000 extra troops in Afghanistan ordered in late 2009 had weakened the Taliban but that the insurgency remained resilient.
The report said overall insurgent attacks declined in 2011 for the first time in five years, even though violence increased in areas surrounding the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar, a region where US efforts have been focused since 2009. Rogers said there was a danger that Obama’s announcement of a date of withdrawal of US combat forces in Afghanistan - 2014 - and Washington’s decision to hold talks with the Taliban could undermine the US objective of denying a safe haven to terrorists.
“The first priority is to deny safe haven and that means a strategic defeat of the Taliban and we have to also defeat the safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” said Rogers, a Republican. The Obama administration is due to pull the last of its 33,000 surge troops from Afghanistan by this fall, leaving around 68,000 US soldiers there.
Rogers and Feinstein both said the United States should designate the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent group believed to be based in Pakistan, as a terrorist organization.
“They’ve killed nearly 500 US troops. They are based in Miran Shah (in Pakistan) This is something we have to be very aggressive to put an end to,” Rogers said.