Gen. John Nicholson, the leader of the fight in Afghanistan, said Friday that the “stalemate” in the country means the fight has reached an equilibrium where the Afghan government controls the majority of land.
Nicholson, who spoke with reporters at the Pentagon during a visit to Washington, was responding to remarks by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday in which he characterized the Afghanistan mission as “roughly a stalemate.”
Nicholson said the fight has reached an equilibrium in which the government controls about 70 percent of the country, while the enemy only controls about 10 percent. The remaining 20 percent is contested space.
“This is a positive in the sense of the majority of the population’s under control of the government forces, and this is primarily the population centers and so on. And then the enemy is primarily in more rural areas that have less impact on the future of the country,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson spoke mostly positively about the Afghans’ capability to defend themselves, saying that while Afghan troops are still getting support and advice from Americans, he believes they could defend regional capitals by themselves.
The United States has 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, a number set to draw down to 8,400 at the end of this year. Nicholson said the U.S. will stay under the lower troop cap by positioning some capabilities “over the horizon” that could be called in from other places in the region if needed and by realigning the advisory structure in the eastern and southern parts of the country as new troops rotate in.
