ARM17E30 S.L.C. AMENDMENT NO.llll Calendar No.lll Purpose: To express the sense of Congress on the United States strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES—115th Cong., 1st Sess. H. R. 2810 To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2018 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. Referred to the Committee on llllllllll and ordered to be printed Ordered to lie on the table and to be printed AMENDMENT intended to be proposed by Mr. MCCAIN Viz: 1 At the end of subtitle B of title XII, add the fol- 2 lowing: 3 SEC. lll. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON THE UNITED STATES 4 STRATEGY FOR AFGHANISTAN AND SOUTH 5 ASIA. 6 It is the sense of Congress that— 7 (1) it is in the national security interest of the 8 United States that Afghanistan never again serve as 9 a sanctuary for international terrorists to conduct ARM17E30 S.L.C. 2 1 attacks against the United States, its allies, or its 2 core interests; 3 (2) to secure the national security interest of 4 the United States in Afghanistan, the United States 5 should pursue an integrated civil-military strategy 6 with strategic objectives to— 7 (A) deny, disrupt, degrade, and destroy the 8 ability of terrorist groups to conduct attacks 9 against the United States, its allies, and its 10 core interests; 11 (B) prevent the Taliban from using mili- 12 tary force to overthrow the Government of the 13 Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and reduce the 14 Taliban’s control of the Afghan population; 15 (C) improve the capability and capacity of 16 the Government of the Islamic Republic of Af- 17 ghanistan, to the extent feasible and prac- 18 ticable, to defeat terrorist and insurgent groups 19 as well as to sustainably and independently pro- 20 vide security throughout Afghanistan; 21 (D) establish security conditions in Af- 22 ghanistan necessary to encourage and facilitate 23 a negotiated peace process that supports polit- 24 ical reconciliation in Afghanistan and an even- ARM17E30 S.L.C. 3 1 tual diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Af- 2 ghanistan; and 3 (E) forge a regional diplomatic consensus 4 in support of the long-term stabilization of Af- 5 ghanistan through integration into regional pat- 6 terns of political, security, and economic co- 7 operation; 8 (3) the United States should pursue an inte- 9 grated civil-military strategy that would achieve 10 11 12 United States strategic objectives by— (A) bolstering the United States counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan by— 13 (i) increasing the number of United 14 States counterterrorism forces in Afghani- 15 stan; 16 (ii) providing the United States mili- 17 tary with status-based targeting authorities 18 against the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, 19 al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and 20 Syria, and other terrorist groups that 21 threaten the United States, its allies, and 22 its core interests; and 23 (iii) pursuing a joint agreement to se- 24 cure a long-term, open-ended counterter- 25 rorism partnership between the United ARM17E30 S.L.C. 4 1 States and the Government of the Islamic 2 Republic of Afghanistan, which would in- 3 clude an enduring United States counter- 4 terrorism presence in Afghanistan; 5 (B) improving the military capability and 6 capacity of the Afghan National Security and 7 Defense Forces (ANSDF) against the Taliban 8 and other terrorists groups by— 9 (i) in the short term, establishing 10 United States military training and advi- 11 sory teams at the kandak-level of each Af- 12 ghan corps, and significantly increasing 13 the availability of United States airpower 14 and other critical combat enablers to sup- 15 port Afghan National Security and De- 16 fense Forces operations; and 17 (ii) in the long term, providing sus- 18 tained support to the Afghan National Se- 19 curity and Defense Forces as it develops 20 and expands its own key enabling capabili- 21 ties, including intelligence, logistics, special 22 forces, air lift, and close air support; 23 (C) strictly conditioning further United 24 States military, economic, and governance as- 25 sistance programs for the Government of the ARM17E30 S.L.C. 5 1 Islamic Republic of Afghanistan upon measur- 2 able progress in achieving joint United States- 3 Afghanistan benchmarks for implementing nec- 4 essary institutional reforms, especially those re- 5 lated to anti-corruption, financial transparency, 6 and the rule of law; 7 (D) imposing graduated diplomatic, mili- 8 tary, and economic costs on Pakistan as long as 9 it continues to provide support and sanctuary 10 to terrorist and insurgent groups, including the 11 Taliban and the Haqqani Network, while simul- 12 taneously outlining the potential benefits of a 13 long-term 14 partnership that could result from the cessation 15 by Pakistan of support for all terrorist and in- 16 surgent groups and constructive role in bring- 17 ing about a peaceful resolution of the conflict in 18 Afghanistan; and United States-Pakistan strategic 19 (E) intensifying United States regional 20 diplomatic efforts working through flexible 21 frameworks for regional dialogue together with 22 Afghanistan, 23 Tajikistan, 24 other nations to promote political reconciliation 25 in Afghanistan as well as to advance regional Pakistan, Uzbekistan, China, Turkmenistan, India, and ARM17E30 S.L.C. 6 1 cooperation on issues such as border security, 2 intelligence sharing, counternarcotics, transpor- 3 tation, and trade to reduce mistrust and build 4 confidence among regional states; and 5 (4) the President should ensure that the Sec- 6 retary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and 7 United States military commanders have all the nec- 8 essary means, based on political and security condi- 9 tions on the ground in Afghanistan and uncon- 10 strained by arbitrary timelines, to carry out an inte- 11 grated civil-military strategy as described in para- 12 graphs (2) and (3), including financial resources, ci- 13 vilian personnel, military forces and capabilities, and 14 authorities.