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In meeting after meeting with his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, this spring and summer, President Trump angrily hammered home two questions:

He wanted to know why the U.S. military wasnt winning in Afghanistan, and he asked, repeatedly, why, after more than 16 years of war, the United States was still stuck there.

The presidents two questions have defined a contentious debate over whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to halt two years of Taliban gains. And they have exposed a potentially deep philosophical rift with McMaster, a three-star general.

H.R. heard the first question and seized on it, said a senior White House official who is close to McMaster. But he never heard, or didnt want to hear, the presidents second question.

The debate over Afghanistan strategy, which McMaster had initially hoped to have resolved by May, continued Thursday when the president and his national security adviser met in the Oval Office. Trumps reluctance to commit to a new strategy reflects the paucity of good options in Afghanistan and the dim prospects for peace.

[Behind the front lines in the fight to annihilate ISIS in Afghanistan]

It also highlights a contradiction at the core of Trumps foreign policy. On the campaign trail and in conversations with advisers, Trump has said he wants to win and project strength. But he also has called for ending costly commitments in places such as Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The charge for McMaster is to craft a strategy that addresses these contradictory impulses a desire to simultaneously do more and less in the world and define the presidents America first vision.

McMasters challenge is made more difficult by the stylistic differences that separate the two men. McMaster arrived at the White House in February determined to run an a political process that would surface the best national security ideas from the vast federal bureaucracy and present options to the president.

But Trump has shown little interest in a methodical and consensus-oriented approach. Impatient and determined to shake up U.S. foreign policy, Trump solicits input not only from McMaster but also from friends, family members, Cabinet secretaries and other counselors.

In a disorderly West Wing in which decisions are evaluated not by ideology but by their impact on the Trump brand and their fealty to the presidents campaign-trail promises, McMaster has struggled to become a dominant foreign policy force.

McMasters biggest asset is the respect he commands from a Washington foreign policy establishment that has grave doubts about Trump. Senators and the people the president talks to say, We love H.R., said a senior administration official in describing the dynamic between the two men. The president is very proud of him.

But McMasters approach has also spawned a fierce rivalry with key players from Trumps campaign, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who views Trump as a revolutionary figure on the world stage.

McMasters allies have accused Bannon and his protege Sebastian Gorka, a cable-news mainstay, of waging a concerted campaign to minimize the national security advisers influence. Bannon and Gorka have recently become a more regular and outspoken presence at meetings led by McMaster and his team on Afghanistan, the Middle East and the administrations national security strategy.

McMaster, meanwhile, has in the past two weeks dismissed three National Security Council officials who were viewed as disruptive forces and were seen as close to Bannon.

Sometimes you have very forceful differences of opinion among the presidents senior advisers, said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is close to McMaster and Bannon. H.R. is indispensable in helping the president hear all those viewpoints and have the information he needs.

For now, though, those conflicting viewpoints have produced as much chaos as consensus, frustrating the president and fueling speculation about McMasters job security. Trump insiders see retired Marine general John F. Kelly, the presidents new chief of staff, as a natural McMaster ally who is seeking to tame the White Houses internecine fights and force the president to stick to a schedule.

McMasters friends and colleagues are sympathetic to his challenges.

He had not worked in D.C. before, so this was certainly a new environment for him, but I have always seen him lead, said Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He sets very clear goals. ... When were in those meetings, hes all about getting options on the table for the president.

This portrait of the McMaster-Trump relationship is based on interviews with more than 20 senior Trump advisers, NSC officials and friends of both men. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer frank appraisals.

McMaster arrived at the White House after the ouster of his predecessor, Michael Flynn, and with few ties to the president or the Trump administration. Cotton, who recognized Trumps affinity for generals, brought him to the presidents attention.

There arent that many people who earn decorations for valor who also have best-selling PhD dissertations, the senator said of McMaster, referring to the generals book, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser, helped him forge relationships with other Cabinet members and counseled him on how to connect with Trump, according to other administration officials.

McMasters first big task, though, was not winning over his boss but earning the trust of his staffers many of whom were on loan to the NSC from other federal agencies and had been disparaged by some Trump administration officials as Obama holdovers.

McMaster tried to ban the term. In his first staff town-hall meeting, he emphasized that as a nonpartisan Army officer he did not vote a message he delivered repeatedly during his first months. McMaster wanted the NSCs professional staff to know that he valued its input. He was also sending a message, perhaps unwittingly, to the president, who demands loyalty from his staff and regularly boasts of the size of his electoral-college victory.

McMaster began by compiling a list of 15 strategic problem areas that would guide the councils work. And he spoke broadly of his concern that U.S. power and influence had been on the decline for much of the past 16 years, said current and former White House officials.

The president has views that are different than where the establishment has been, and the president appreciates that General McMaster is taking those views and coming back with strategies that give the president options, said Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser.

One of the places McMaster would try to arrest the slide was in Afghanistan, where he had served in 2010 and 2011 and was personally invested. Fewer and fewer Americans understand what is at stake in the wars in which we are engaged, he had said in a 2015 speech at Georgetown University. How many Americans could, for example, name the three main Taliban organizations we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The American strategy Trump inherited had been defined by the Obama administrations focus on withdrawing American forces and ending the war.

One key to a better outcome, McMaster argued, was an open-ended commitment that would demonstrate American resolve and compel the Taliban to enter peace talks. McMasters version of America first in Afghanistan meant negotiating from a position of strength.

Among his biggest challenges was holding the attention of the president. In classified briefings, Trump would frequently flit between subjects. We moved very quickly from news to intelligence to policy with very little clarity on which lanes we were in, said a U.S. official who took part in the briefings. McMaster would act like the tangents didnt happen and go back to Point 2 on his card.

Trump had little time for in-depth briefings on the Afghanistans history, its complicated politics or its seemingly endless civil war. Even a single page of bullet points on the country seemed to tax the presidents attention span on the subject, said senior White House officials.

I call the president the two-minute man, said one Trump confidant. The president has patience for a half-page.

Another problem was overcoming the presidents skepticism that winning in Afghanistan was even possible.

On Afghanistan, McMaster wanted something that would appeal to the presidents instincts as a promoter, U.S. officials said.

The solution: The general dug up pictures of Kabuls Massoud Circle from 2005 and 2015 to show how businesses and traffic had returned to the once-desolate area. And he asked one of his Afghanistan experts to find a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul.

The goal was to give the president the idea that Afghanistan was not this hopeless place, said one U.S. official familiar with the briefing, which included several pictures of the country.

The briefing did not change Trumps position, which had been shaped by his two years on the campaign trail and his sense that the American people had lost sight of the wars purpose. The strategy review that McMaster had hoped to complete by early May ahead of a NATO conference where he hoped to secure pledges for more European troops remains stalled.

At McMasters urging, Trump earlier this summer signed an order giving the Pentagon the authority to send as many as 3,900 more troops requested by commanders to Afghanistan. But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, concerned about the absence of an approved strategy and chastened by Trumps doubts about the war, has not authorized the forces to go.

At a meeting last month, the president angrily complained that the United States was not winning in Afghanistan, suggested firing the current commander and questioned whether sending more troops to the country would be folly, said U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. The first detailed accounts of the meeting were reported by NBC News.

The fight over the Afghanistan strategy points to a larger problem with the relationship between McMasters NSC and the West Wing. During his six months on the job, McMaster has raised morale among the career staffers, who describe him as open and accessible.

He has put in place a rigorous and structured process that integrates the views of agencies across the government.

Less clear is whether any of that work is resulting in new policies. A Pentagon strategy aimed at defeating the Islamic State was completed in early March but still has not been approved by the president, officials said.

The administration instead has worked piecemeal to give U.S. commanders in Iraq and Syria more latitude to increase the pace of military operations. Potentially divisive questions about the United States long-term goals and military presence in the region the same issues being debated in the Afghanistan review remain unresolved.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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National security adviser attempts to reconcile Trump's competing ... - Washington Post

CNN has spoken to more than half a dozen currently serving military and civilian defense officials who say the fate of Nicholson as the commander of some 13,000 US and international forces in Afghanistan is being discussed in administration circles.

Officials emphasize that no decision has been made to replace Nicholson.

Because he is a serving officer, Nicholson could be removed with a simple announcement that he is being replaced with another commander. If the decision is taken, it's not known if he would agree to retire or demand to be fired as General David McKiernan did when Defense Secretary Robert Gates replaced him in 2009 as the Obama administration adopted a new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The thrust of White House criticism of Nicholson appears be that he has been unable to win the war in Afghanistan. While Nicholson is respected, he has also caused some irritation in senior defense circles. His public comments seeking more troops have been seen by some as getting ahead of a White House decision.

One official told CNN "it's just personalizing the President's frustration," by singling out Nicholson. White House adviser Sebastian Gorka says the President "absolutely" has confidence in General Nicholson. The Pentagon was less effusive, with spokesperson Dana White issuing a statement saying simply, "Secretary Mattis has confidence in General Nicholson's leadership."

It's widely believed Defense Secretary James Mattis and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, support Nicholson staying in his role over a public firing of a respected general who has spent much of the last 15 years on repeated combat tours in Afghanistan commanding large numbers of troops in the field.

The White House meeting also took place before retired General John Kelly was appointed to be the President's chief of staff. It's not clear to what extent Kelly may be willing to protect Nicholson.

But the calendar may provide a less dramatic solution if the White House wants to remove Nicholson.

Nicholson took command in March 2016 for a tour of duty that typically does not last longer than two years. But several recent commanders have served shorter tours for a variety of reasons. Typically the Pentagon would start looking for a replacement candidate to recommend to the President months in advance for a senior job like Afghanistan.

This could all lead to Nicholson still being replaced in the coming weeks or months pending what might be a controversial confirmation process for a new commander. Some military officials believe the current national security adviser, Lt. General H.R. McMaster, could be a likely replacement. McMaster is a three-star general but would still have to face Senate confirmation.

Officials familiar with the White House meeting say Trump looks at the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and sees success. But when it comes to Afghanistan, he doesn't see a winning effort. Mattis has also said the US is not winning in Afghanistan and Trump is looking for a strategy he can be assured will lead to a win.

The chatter about Nicholson, who also has strong relationships on Capitol Hill, sparked an immediate reaction from Arizona Sen. John McCain seeking to defend Nicholson.

"He has earned the trust and admiration of those he has served with. And he has earned my full confidence," the Republican chairman of the armed services committee said.

McCain has been publicly critical of the Pentagon, Mattis and the White House for not settling on a new strategy for Afghanistan.

"Six months ago, General Nicholson testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and warned that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan," McCain said in a statement Thursday. "The reason for this failure is a lack of successful policy and strategic guidance from Washington over many years, which has continued in the first several months of this new administration. Our commanders-in-chief, not our commanders in the field, are responsible for this failure."

Mattis had promised McCain a strategy for Afghanistan by mid-July, but missed that deadline when the administration could not agree on what to do next. Multiple officials say the options still being discussed range from a complete withdrawal to adding to the 8,400 US troops already there. Nicholson has advocated for adding a few thousand US troops specifically in order to "buy time" for the Afghan forces to be better trained and look after their own security, one official close to him told CNN.

McMaster has backed sending more troops, so if that option becomes the approved strategy it might bolster the case to send him to Afghanistan, several officials say.

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Is the top US commander in Afghanistan in Trump's crosshairs? - CNN

A relentless air-and-ground campaign against the Islamic State (IS) affiliate in Afghanistan does not appear to have radically diminished that militant groups ability to inflict deadly attacks or prevented it from expanding its geographical reach in the war-torn country, analysts asked to assess progress against such radicals' fighting capacity in Afghanistan told RFE/RL.

U.S. and Afghan forces have waged a relentless campaign to destroy Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K) since that IS offshoot emerged in 2015, with Washington and Kabul claiming their campaign has killed hundreds of militants and commanders, including its leaders.

But speculation at the group's demise has proved premature as it has expanded to at least five provinces, from Nangarhar, Kunar, and Nuristan in the east to Jawzjan in the north and Ghor in the west. ISIS-K has also continued to carry out a series of high-profile attacks seemingly targeting members of the mainly Shi'ite Hazara community.

U.S. military officials have maintained the group is on the retreat, although reports this week claimed an exasperated U.S. President Donald Trump recently told his top officials that we aren't winning...we are losing the war in Afghanistan to militant groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS-K.

Analysts say ISIS-K is neither a monolithic group nor a direct extension of the extremist group in Iraq and Syria -- representing more of an alliance of splinter groups from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban with elements of regional militant groups such as Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Jhangvi.

These kindred groups have simply rebranded themselves to attract funding and replicate the success of IS militants in the Middle East, say analysts.

Remarkably Resilient

The group is proving remarkably resilient in Afghanistan because it hails from the region and has operated there for a long time, says Ahmad K. Majidyar, a South Asia and Middle East expert. It is not an alien group that has relocated from the Middle East to South Asia.

Majidyar says it is also no coincidence that the ISIS-K emerged in the wake of the Pakistani Armys military offensive starting in 2014 that drove myriad militant groups from Pakistans lawless tribal areas into eastern Afghanistan, where ISIS-K has set up its headquarters.

NATO's spokesman in Afghanistan, U.S. Navy Captain William K. Salvin, told RFE/RL that ISIS-K was on the run in Afghanistan." He added that the number of ISIS-K militants is down to around 1,000 from a high of 3,000, although he acknowledged the group had expanded its activities to western and northern Afghanistan.

In April, the U.S. military in Afghanistan dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), dubbed "the mother of all bombs," in an effort to destroy IS hideouts in a complex of tunnels and bunkers in eastern Nangarhar Province. U.S. officials said the bomb killed over 90 militants, though fighting in the area has continued.

Tapping Into Sectarianism

Instead of being a death blow to the group, ISIS-K has continued to carry out a series of attacks targeting the Hazara minority.

In the latest attack, ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the western city of Herat, killing at least 32 people. In its deadliest attack to date, the militants killed over 80 people in twin suicide bombings targeting a protest staged by members of the Hazara minority in July 2016. At the time it was the deadliest attack to hit the Afghan capital since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, says ISIS-K has managed to tap into growing sectarianism that has been metastasizing in Afghanistan.

Former Taliban leader Mullah Akhar Mansur was trying to avoid playing the sectarian card and blatantly ethnic discrimination and got rid of local commanders for that -- and they joined ISIS-K, she says.

Fighters Relocating From Middle East

The resilience of ISIS-K fighters in Afghanistan has fueled concerns of a possible spillover into Afghanistan from the fighting in Syria and Iraq.

There is little evidence yet of fighters relocating from Iraq and Syria, although Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Dawlat Waziri said this week that the government had observed an increase in numbers of foreign fighters and weapons entering the country.

Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, says there is good reason to believe that some IS fighters are coming to Afghanistan from the Middle East as their strongholds and safe havens are destroyed there.

IS militants have lost large swaths of the so-called caliphate they declared in 2014. Iraqi government forces last month recaptured the northern city of Mosul, IS's last remaining stronghold in Iraq. Meanwhile, U.S.-backed Syrian Kurd and Arab fighters are fighting to recapture the city of Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria.

They may see Afghanistan as an attractive destination because of its large lawless spaces and rampant instability, says Kugelman. Those conditions work to any terror group's advantage.

There are also fears about Afghans who have fought alongside IS militants in Syria and Iraq returning to their homeland.

They are destined to return in the near future -- if they have not already, says analyst Majidyar. Those fighters are battle-hardened and poisoned with sectarian beliefs, which could pose serious challenge to Afghanistans sectarian harmony and fragile stability.

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Islamic State Proving Resilient In Afghanistan In Face Of Targeted Campaign - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

An online fundraiser for the pregnant wife of a soldier killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday has raised more than $32,000 in its first day,Army Times reported.

The money will go to support the wife of 25-year-old Spc. Christopher Michael Harris of Jackson Springs, North Carolina, according to the description of aGoFundMe account set up by a friend.

Britt has recently discovered that she and Chris were expecting their first child, wrote Jenny Ann Stone, who created the fundraising page. During this time, money should be the absolute least important thing on her mind.

The page has a goal of $50,000.

Funds pledged to the account will supplement survivors benefits paid out by the Defense Department a tax-free $100,000 gratuity and Servicemembers Group Life Insurance, which automatically enrolls all service members for a $400,000 death benefit, Army Times reported.

Harris was one of two soldiers killed during an attack in Afghanistans Kandahar Province,Fox News reported. The other man who died was 23-year-old Sgt. Jonathon Michael Hunter, of Columbus, Indiana. Both men died when an explosive device detonated near their convoy, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Both soldiers were part of the 82nd Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry Regiment.

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Fundraiser for wife of soldier killed in Afghanistan tops $32K in first day - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Contractor training Afghan troops

Eric Prince, the former CEO of Blackwater, argues for expanded use of contractors in Afghanistan. Some of his proposals deserve attention.

The idea apparently resonated with the White House (though not with Secretary of Defense Mattis) and has continued to get attention. Prince is widely regarded as the spawn of Satan because of the many controversies surrounding Blackwaters conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, so commentators have lined up to criticize his proposals. Many of his proposals are, indeed, highly debatable, such as creating an army of contractors and establishing a viceroy.

But there are three policy points that Prince gets right, and these deserve more discussion:

Mark Cancian

First, as Prince points out, the US needs, and has always lacked, people who stay on the ground for years and really know the turf. The Vietnam War had John Paul Vann, who spent seven years in theater and knew everyone. The Afghan War had Carter Malkasian. In two years working with Afghan leaders, he had enough time to understand their problems and win their trust.(Learning to speak the language also helped.) But these individuals were unique. The military has nothing comparable.Service membersrotate quickly because long deployments stress the force and reduce retention, and few speak the language outside of a few foreign area officers. They stay in theater seven months to a year. Thus it is said that the US does not have 16 years of experience in Afghanistan; it has one year of experience 16 times.

Further, the military personnel system discourages building such expertise because such assignments would hurt careers. Military personnel, particularly senior enlisted and officers, need to move through a set series of assignments to be competitive. Captains need to command companies, majors need to be operations officers, lieutenant colonels need to command battalions. Getting sidetracked by a long assignment outside established units makes individuals uncompetitive, irrespective of whatever guidance senior leaders might give promotion boards. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency does not even raise the possibility of such long tours.The military and counterinsurgency community understand this problem. Many commentators, from Tom Ricks to RAND have noted the need for such a cadre, but nothing has ever happened. (Creating roughly half-a-dozen regional regiments is a favorite cause of Breaking Defenses editor.)

Afghan non-commissioned officer training.

Contractors provide a different and much more flexible personnel system. They can hire people with the right qualifications, often prior military, and put them in place for extended periods because both sides know that that is the deal. They can leverage existing skills and do so without many of the constraints of the military system, like age or the need to retain for a 20-year career.Getting the right contractor into the right billet is not automatic, it takes effort, but the mechanism is there.

Second, creating viable Afghan security forces is the only way well be able to pull our forces out without causing a collapse behind us. Long-term embeds down to the lowest levels, as Price suggests, might be the way to accomplish that. Our current approach of using generalists however brave and well intentioned who turn over rapidly is not working. Most Afghan units, outside of special forces, although fighting and dying, are not very effective.The U.S. Army is building regionally aligned security force assistance brigades to provide such capabilities, but that effort is just beginning.

A British officer fights mutinying Indian soldiers in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857/

Prince points to the 19th century army of the East India Company as a model.That army failed, revolting in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. (In any case, creating a whole contractor army is highly debatable.)But the success of the successor British India Army of the Raj is undeniable.It maintained peace on the subcontinent and fought effectively in both World Wars.One reason the British were so successful with Indian forces was that many military personnel went native, integrated fully, learned the language, and took up local customs, including Indian dress. British officers and NCOs spent entire careers with Indian troops. Deep acculturation also avoids the mirror imaging that Price, and many others, criticize; other militaries dont need to be structured and equipped like the U.S. military.

Third, if the US really wants to play a long game in Afghanistan, it will need to reduce the wars visibility. Its hard to do that with large numbers of Americans wearing uniforms because servicemembers get so much attention, and DOD keeps pointing to them.

Continuous stories about deployments and stress on military personnel remind the public about the war. Thus, the political questions constantly arise: how are we doing and when will the war be over? On the other hand, one of the tenets of counterinsurgency is that it takes a long time and requires strategic patience. Some go on for decades. As FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, notes: Counterinsurgency operations may demand considerable expenditures of time and resources. The population must have confidence in the staying power of both the affected government and any counterinsurgency forces supporting it.

In supporting the decades-long Colombian counterinsurgency, the US deployed no military units but instead used contractors extensively.As a result, the war stayed off the publics radar, and the US was able to sustain a long-term effort that culminated in the 2016 peace agreement and, in effect, surrender of the insurgents. Yes, there is an element of cynicism in substituting contractors for military personnel and capitalizing on the publics lack of interest in contractors, but the world is what it is and decision-makers must deal with it.Reduced visibility is something every White House looks for, and this White House (like the two previous administrations) is anxious to avoid an endless war.

The US already has a lot of contractors in Afghanistan 26,000 according to the most recent report of whom 9,500 are Americans. Two-thirds perform base functions like logistics and communications support, 13 percent are in security, only 3 percent in training. Using contractors is not an either-or proposition, but a question of changing the manpower mix.

Texas National Guard soldiers in Afghanistan.

If the US were to rely more on contractors, it should apply the painful lessons learned of the last two decades. The early years of the Iraq war were marred by extensive abuses. Although contractors were generally effective, government contracting organizations were overwhelmed and unable to provide the oversight necessary. As a result, many safeguards are now in place, from a beefed-up contingency contracting capability, to regulations holding contractors accountable to military authorities, to doctrine on how to employ contractors.

Prince proposes that the Afghan government employ contractors, which, among other effects, gets around prohibitions on contractors performing inherently governmental functions that exist in US law. However, the Afghan government is almost certainly unable to efficiently and effectively exercise control over this much money and capability. The U.S. would need to be in charge.

So we should take these points seriously, even if some of Princes other recommendations are debatable, and many people dont like his past. Yes, the military personnel system might be changed to accomplish some of these goals, but changes during 16 years of war have been modest, so there is no reason to believe that major shifts are near. Maybe a different manpower balance could do better.

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Contractors in Afghanistan: What Erik Prince Gets Right - Breaking Defense