The situation in Af-Pak area is "not fine" and "hunky dory",the US has acknowledged,even as the Obama Administration has said that the policy for the restive region also includes how to deal with Pakistan. "Nobody is here to say that all of our problems dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan are finished," the White House Press Secretary,Robert Gibbs,said. "All our problems are not solved,but we're making progress," he added. "We haven't told you that everything is all fine and hunky-dory. That's quite the opposite of what we've said. We came into office understanding that for seven years,as the (US) President said today,a strategy had been under-resourced and under-funded," Gibbs argued. A commanding general (during the previous Bush Administration) sat in Afghanistan and said he needed more troops,despite the fact that no troops came,he said. "We've tripled the number of troops and resources in Afghanistan. We've created a new strategy that includes how to deal with Pakistan," Gibbs added. Meanwhile,at a Congressional hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq,Ryan Crocker,said the core American goal in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to disrupt,dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda. "I agree,but in my view,this requires denying them a secure operating environment,and that means a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan," he noted. We will not prevail over our adversaries any other way,and that requires time and patience,commodities generally in short supply among Americans,he said. General (David) Petraeus and I used to talk about the difference between the Washington clock and the Baghdad clock and now it's between the Washington clock and the tribal areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan,where there are no clocks,he said. "We have a history in that region. In the 1980s,we were deeply engaged in Afghanistan and Pakistan,fighting the Soviet occupation. We were successful,but once the Soviets withdrew,we also disengaged,even though we could foresee the violence that would wrack Afghanistan as the various factions of the Mujaheddin,united only by the Soviet enemy,tore the country apart," Croker said. "We also withdrew from Pakistan,which went from being the most allied of America's allies to the most sanctioned of adversaries in the space of a year. Our lack of strategic patience at the beginning of the 1990s paved the way to 9/11 a decade later. Both our allies and our adversaries in the region remember that history. Our friends are unsure of our commitment and hedge their bets. Our enemies think they can outlast us. We need to make it clear to both that our determination is equal to theirs," Croker argued.
