Al-Qaeda Heads Terror ‘Mafia’ With Afghan Nexus (Update1)

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates highlighted links between al-Qaeda and militants in Afghanistan and beyond to drive home the need for a surge of U.S. troops amid congressional skepticism.

In a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Gates, Clinton and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended President Barack Obama’s plan to increase U.S. forces fighting the war in Afghanistan by 30,000 to 98,000.

The three faced questions today from Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on whether al-Qaeda’s diminished strength in Afghanistan negated the need for deepening U.S. involvement. The Obama administration is emphasizing the potential of instability in Afghanistan to ripple through the region and worldwide.

The U.S. has increasingly come to see the various militant groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond not as separate “but as part of a syndicate of terrorism,” Clinton told the committee. “At the head of the table, like an old mafia diagram, sits al-Qaeda.”

Afghanistan, along with areas across the border in Pakistan, remains the nexus of al-Qaeda’s operational and propaganda strength, Gates said. The U.S. has provided extensive resources to fight terrorism globally, he said.

“It’s important to recognize where the whole nest is and to deal with that as well,” Gates told the panel.

Easing Anxiety

Obama’s top officials have begun a campaign of congressional and public appearances to ease Democrats’ anxiety over extending a war that already has dragged on for more than eight years. The officials are also trying to lessen Republican concerns that a simultaneous plan to begin a drawdown of troops in July 2011 will hamstring the effort.

There have been “misunderstandings” about “what that date meant,” Clinton told reporters aboard her plane before leaving for a NATO meeting in Brussels today.

“Starting in 2011 we will be prepared for a responsible transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan security forces based on the conditions as we evaluate them at that time,” Clinton said.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Foreign Relations panel, and Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican, questioned whether increasing the number of U.S. forces in the war by 30,000 to 98,000 would serve the purpose of protecting national security and justify the cost, estimated at about $30 billion.

“I still remain concerned that additional troops will tempt us beyond a narrow and focused mission,” said Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president in 2004.

Risky Strategy

Lugar raised questions of whether the U.S. is focusing too much on an insurgency in one area to quell a terrorist movement with cells in far-flung locations including the U.K., the U.S. and Somalia.

“We have to ask whether the costs of this deployment are justified in our overall national security context and whether we are mistakenly concentrating our forces,” Lugar said.

Other members of the committee were more critical, including Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who said he opposes what he sees as a “risky and unsustainable strategy in the region.”

National Security

Obama is pursuing “a war that no longer serves our most pressing national security interests,” Feingold said.

Mullen and Gates cited ties between al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group alleged to be responsible for the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

India has demanded that Pakistan prosecute members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group who it says carried out the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people. Pakistan acknowledged the raid was planned on its soil.

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan last month charged seven people, including Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a Lashkar commander, with involvement in the attacks. The group’s founder has been put under house arrest.

Al-Qaeda is providing Lashkar-e-Taiba “with targeting information and helping them in their plotting in India, clearly with the idea of provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan that would destabilize Pakistan,” Gates said. Al-Qaeda is “taking advantage of the situation in the region to play a very destabilizing and dangerous role.”

Potential Threat

That connection illustrates the potential threat of allowing Afghanistan to again become a safe haven for al-Qaeda, Mullen said. The Taliban harbored the group before being ousted in the U.S. invasion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Mullen said he was “struck” that “a terrorist outfit could literally generate that kind of attack and then bring two nation-states closer to conflict.”

Clinton said after today’s hearing that the U.S. is “encouraged” that, beginning tomorrow at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Brussels, there will be “a number of public announcements about additional troop commitments, additional civilian assistance and development aid as well.”

NATO will contribute more than 5,000 additional troops, the alliance said today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward DeMarco at edemarco1@bloomberg.net