Lt. General Mark A. Milley.
During a Pentagon news briefing on September 4, 2013, Lt. General Mark A. Milley (commander of the 3rd “Phantom” Corps out of Ft. Hood, Texas) spoke frankly about the war in Afghanistan, saying at one point “This war is not over.”
His statement caught many in attendance at the briefing by surprise.
The commander’s comments came in response to a question from Bob Burns with the Associated Press who asked about the Taliban.
“This war is not over”, he said. “This is a very resilient enemy. It’s an adaptive enemy. And I don’t think for a minute that the Taliban or their kind are going to kind of fade away into the dust here in the next year or two. That’s not going to happen.”
In response to a question from Joe Gould from the Army Times – who asked about “complex attacks” ( like those in Ghazni that resulted in Afghan, Polish and one American casualty from the 10th Mountain Division) the commander said this:
“we do expect that the enemy will try to do what’s called generally high profile attacks, or what we call complex attacks, which involve dismounted forces, suicide bombers attempting to breach, et cetera… That one on FOB (Forward Operating Base) Ghazni was a significant attack, involving multiple suicide vehicle car bombs and an attempt by suicide bombers to penetrate the perimeter, inflict significant amounts of casualties. Unfortunately, we lost a great American there from the 10th Mountain. That was a tough fight. It was tough attack. And the defenders did well. And we were – in my opinion, the enemy completely failed in achieving any kind of operational or strategic effect from that particular attack.”
See article: Drum Soldier killed in Afghanistan http://www.armytimes.com/article/20130830/NEWS/308300026/Drum-soldier-killed-Afghanistan
He continued:
“We do expect more of those (type of attacks) against fixed sites and/or key infrastructure in Kabul, political sites, et cetera. And they have had several to date as well, so there’s been – in the Kabul area, for example there been 13 high profile attacks since the beginning of May, about seven of them against ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) facilities and the others against Afghan facilities. And in all of them, I would argue that they were a resounding failure, both in terms of trying to make a political statement on the part of the enemy and/or having any kind of military, strategic or operational effect. You know, one of them – they blew up a suicide bomber in the parking lot of the supreme court and they murdered a whole bunch of civilians. Another time, they attacked an international office of migration, a representative of the United Nations, very sold target. And they attacked the Red Crescent in Jalalabad.”
In response to a question about the number of Taliban foot soldiers on the ground, as compared with 3 years ago – the commander said:
“As a broad kind of comment you’re probably looking at something as low as 10,000 or 15,000 armed combatants, and maybe as high as 20,000 – 25,000 armed. And it’s not (just) Taliban. It’s multiple groups. So you’ve got Haqqani. You’ve got HIG. You’ve got TMJ. You’ve got Al.-Qaeda. You’ve got IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan). And you’ve got four or five other named groups…You’ve got a potpourri of radical groups that generally have similar types objectives…” (Source: Department of Defense, Pentagon http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx… ).
Note: III Corps is a corps of the United States Army headquartered at Fort Hood, Texas. It is a major formation of theUnited States Army Forces Command.