As one of those District Centers is taken over within hours the Afghan Security forces are taking it back. They have the ability now, the capability to react much quicker, to move forces all around the country to go back and take over those District Centers. I think thats a sign of progress as they move forward. Again, they have technology, they have the people they have the training. I think the difference this fighting season is getting the right leadership in place, holding the leaders accountable for the welfare of soldiers and police. And then building the moral of the folk as they continue to take the offensive. Theyre very defensive in nature. 80 of the Afghan Security forces are on check points and youre vulnerable to attacks. Thats where theyre taking a lot of their losses on the small check points. Afghan local police were designed to be the guardian tofs village. Theyre supposed to guard that village. But theyve employed them five kilometer, 10 kilometers outside of the village. The taliban sees the soft targets and take over the check point. They roll up the next one, roll up the next one. So theyre learning that as they go on the offense when they do these planned operations, actually the number of casualties are much much less because theyve planned them out, theyve planned the medevac medevac. And when theyre movable theyre not a target for the taliban. President ghani is working that very hard. The Senior Leadership is working that hard. Its in their dna to be on the check points. The Senior Leadership is working hard to get them off that. Well see continued progress. Just to remind folks, i last year it was estimated that 5,000 afghans gave their lives army and police in defense of their nation. This year the pace is a little higher for this time of the a year. Another concern is that a lot of people go awol, they dont complete their service. Before i move on to the last question for you about the future of the Afghan Security forces, how would you describe the Current Situation where theyre losing people through awol or attrition . Attrition has a big issue. Weve done a deep dive on it open worked with ministry of defense to focus on what we can do to help them. Lose probably in the neighborhood of 4,000 per month. A lot of that you would think is battlefield casualties. The biggest case is people who go awol absent without leave. It goes down to leadership. Why are they leaving . You have young soldiers or police that have been fighting for two or three years and they havent had a break. Theyre maybe not getting the right food they deserve. They havent had an opportunity to train. And so when it gets down to leadership and taking care of soldiers and Police Something we take for granted in all of our Services Back here, all of the noncommissioned officers with than they dont have the same thing in afghanistan. Theyre growing it but theyre not there yet. When youre fighting all of the time and need to take a break and you have no other way, you go back home and dont come back. Thats the biggest issue. Were working on leadership, working on ways to retain people. When they enlist in the afghan army this is an all volunteer force. A lot of times we forget about that. And you have somebody that enlists for three years. They want to what we call reenlist, they call it recontracting. You take a young soldier thats been at it loor three years, he doesnt want to reenlist or recontract for five years. He may want to do it for another year or two years but they havent allowed them to do that. Now theyre doing that. And now they have money for bonuses for people who do reapply. I think thats going to grow and maintain the army at a little higher levels than theyve had. It really goes down to leadership and really fighting at some common things about taking care of soldiers, taking care of police. Once they do that i think the soldiers will stay. You know senior afghans told me they dont need adviser to talk to them about patriotism or fighting. They got that down pat. And we know theyve been fighting for many years. They need the right leadership to show them what right looks like to stay in the army and to stay in the police and think theyre making the adjustments now. A final footnote on that. Some people said that the loss rates between kushlties and awol are unsustainable in the Afghan Forces. Would you describe them as unsustainable . Again. Any casualty is a shame. And we have to take shock in that. We can never forget about the sacrifice of the martyrs of the police or the army, the Wounded Warriors that they have. Were starting to incorporate Wounded Warriors plans like we have. I think again, that if they get rid of the attrition piece of it, work very hard on recruiting for the whole year what they do now is they dont recruit during the fighting season. April through october they dont worry about recruiting. And the u. S. Army we look at recruiting all year long. Were trying to have them do that and also make them be accountable. They need a goal to recruit x number of people. Theyre starting to put the measures in place. Once they do that, any that they lose by battlefield losses or any they lose by going awol is not good but i think theyll overcome those. Last question to you before i bring in the audience. When you look ahead to the next 18 months and we look ahead as a United States to our future role in afghanistan, obviously were hoping that the congress will continue to appropriate funds for Economy Development into many years for the future because the after glance dont have a sustainable economic base to pay for them on their own. Were thinking i believe, about two different priorities for us. One is our Counter Terrorism needs, to what extent we want the ability to have american drones, american commandos, american intelligence into the longer term future. The other question is what kind of support does the afghan army and police still need even potentially beyond the time fraim thats projected. What criteria are you examine to evaluate that progress. You talked about air power in other sessions, youve talked about intelligence, medevac. I know there with a few things on your mind. Thank you. Many of the gaps it seems the challenges they had we identified years ago. Onallen before him all identify its going to take a long time to build. Logistics in the u. S. Army is a very very tough things. Logistics and the terrain you have in afghanistan quadruples how hard that is. Being able to take all of the sources, trying to figure out what that really means. That took us many years to do. And so those areas that we identified will continue to work on those. And thats where were really putting the priority on our advisers. Our advisers today are really our weapons system. This fight changed owe the years. Where we had plooiftsrivates and sergeants that were in the fight. I have senior ses civilians senior civilians that are experts in planning programming budgets, that are experts in transparenty accountability oversight, rule of law, sustainability strategic communications, we work on those areas every hard pap and we have metrics that we measure. Every single week i get an update on the functions. Over time well come to a point where were going to say, thats the best we can do or theyre not going to get any farther than that. Or i have six months left and i need to prioritize. Im continually assessing the Afghan Security forces both the police and the army as we go forward. I do think for the long haul intelligence, aviation for sure, it just takes a long time. It takes two to three years to grow a pilot two or three years to grow maintainers. We started late growing their air force. Were going to be there for a while to work hard on the air force. Sustainability is another area. We built a lot of mechanics to work on their Weapons Systems and vehicles but what we didnt do well is we didnt build the middle management. Its going to take time to build or senior commissioner officer to get in there and keep the maintenance going. Those areas well continue to look at. I assess those every week. We make adjustments based on up put i get from the afghans and whats important to them. And i think as we go forward were really looking at what it means post2016 from a u. S. Per secretive on ct as you talked about and then more importantly building an afghan capability for the region. President ghani said he wants to be a regional player in ct as well. The last thing i would mention is nato has come on strong as well to say what role can we play after res lawsuit support. And so the defense minister weve brought together the equivalence and all of the countries come out loud and strong saying they want to continue to contribute to the future afghanistan. And the way theyve gone about that is we did a Needs Assessment saying what do they need two years from now in what areas leadership is an area they talked about. Maintenance, aviation, intelligence. I think youll see nato come on board as we continue to work through that to continue to apply different countrys resource to continue to build on the capability of Afghan Security forces. Nato officers are willing to stay a little longer . I think nato quite frankly is waiting to see where the u. S. Is going to go. Every day were assessing that. I owe back my Senior Leadership at the end of the fighting season an asaysment. And based on that well make decisions on where we are in 2016 and beyond. Thank you very much, general. A question about the Afghan Government and then i want to ask one about the region and wrap up there and go to vonda. We hear various reports about how the president and chief executive officer are doing in wringing along their broader political movements, forming a cabinet. We hear a lot of reports about how long its take fg theing for the cabinet to be formed. Can you explain what you think are the most important highlights if for audience to understand . How well are they doing . Are they starting to make headway or is it an exercise in capping the tensions that are so severe they could explode into conflict or civil war at any time . I think the National Unity government, the construct is the best political conduct to deal with the deep challenges. And whats important to recognize is that this is a very unique arrangement thats been made that hasnt happened in the past in afghanistan. And you need to put it in context, the wider context of where we were a year ago and how did we end up in this arrangement that we have right now. A year ago we still had president karzai as president who had been president and leader since 2002. And every five years theres an election thats held in afghanistan and they had one in frill of 2014. President karzai was allowed to stand as president. So you had a whole new crop of candidates who were standing up. In fact you had 26 candidates declare running as president. When we think there might be a lot of candidates running for president here afghanistan had more of them. But at the end of the day you had eight candidates run frg the election in april of 2014. And in order to win the candidacy, you had to reach over 50 . But no candidate was able to reach that threshold. So the two top candidates, first one was abdullah with 45 of the vote and ghani with a lower percentage forced a Runoff Election. And that Runoff Election happened about two months yards in june which was then contested because of how some of the it switched from abdullah being on top to ghani being on top. And so there was a wide recount that happened for a number of months. So you didnt have an arrangement in place until september. And that arrangement was helped brokered by secretary kerry and the United States. In order to wring the leaders together in order to try to help govern the country together. This was a very unique thing. As i said before yb you just had president scar zie at the helm and now you had the unique argument where ghani was president and abdullah who was the chief who had handled daytoday operations. And so this is this is very very different. But whats fascinating to see is how both leaders have a very different approach to common problems but how their strengths actually have a real tendency to compliment one other if theyre able to Work Together on the issues. And whats most fortunate is that both abdullah and ghani are generally on the same page when it combs to broad based policies. When it comes to security they agree. When it comes to regional relations, they agree. When it comes to womens rights they agree. When it comes to reconciliation they have a broad understanding that they need to move forward. Those are key things. That shouldnt taken lightly with regards too the earlier challenges that we had previous you lis. Where are the challenges that they face . They face difficulty in regard to personnel agreements. This has led to a prolonged time to name a cabinet. Its important to put anytime a wider historical context. Even when president karzai was president , it took him many month to put together his cabinet. But under the current government its a bit more unique now. Where are the benefits that come from this. While it does take greater time in order to kind of come to an agreement on an individual and have them go through parliament once that agreement is made, that agreement is much stronger because both of them are able to reach it and also deal with their own constituencies who fundamentally disagree. But if theyre able to reach it it strengthens the bonds of the decisions they have. Weve been able to have an entire cabinet formed except for the minister of defense. And it was a real surprise that he was not able to pass parliament a few weeks ago. Its good that hes still serving in an acting capacity. But whats also important is to look at some of the other senior government positions with regards to governors. Where more than twothirds of the governors have been placed and theyre looking now at other sub national leadership. And whats important, i think to kind of keep in the back of your mind is that the more time that evolves with this National Union government in place the stronger the bond is. They have a greater vested interest in working through some of the daytoday problems they have then kind of throwing that away. While there are challe they face others outside the government saying things need to be changed, they do recognize that, they definitely hear that, but its not at the point they want to bring this down. Theres too much of a vested interest. They know that the whole country recognizes the value of the International Community in afghanistans kmu future and they want to work through those things. If i add very quickly, the last three our formonths weve heard that in a few weeks the National Government will fail it will fall and they continue moving forward. And as matt said, over time they continue to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other. When theyre together i actually think they compliment each other than they work very well. And again on all of the National Level strategic issues, theres no daylight between them. Its about picking people as they have to satisfy different groups that have helped get where they are is where they come into issue. Theyre working very hard at that. Everybody understands president ghani had to get some medical treatment done on his foot and he went to germany. And i talked abdullah before they left. Over the last several days, theyve been talking every single day. Yesterday they did a teleconference from germany back to afghanistan and talked about the issues at hand. Between them they understand how important this is. They know this is a tough fighting season. They know that the National Government is the way to go. 80 of the people in afghanistan said that the National Government is our only way forward. Ive talked to civilian leaders and what they will tell you is there are people out there trying to do things 0 to keep the National Government from moving forward but at the same time they understand how important it is. I think theyre not going to let that happen. Again i feel good about the future of the government. And its their appreciation, both gone any and abdullah and their teams around them of the International Community. That rang so clear when both of them came here to washington in march. When ghani addressed congress with both of them making the rounds on the hill, meeting senior u. S. Leadership and expressing their appreciation for all of the sacrifices that america has given and to be able to Work Together as a partnership is something that really cant be spoke about enough. Before i ask you about the broader region and maybe to mention anything about the peace talks as well, and recognizing that the ambassador is not hear joining us is there anything that one could say that ghani and abdullah have begun to deliver for the Afghan People . Obviously making a government work and continuing the fight and preserving the securities in the big cities, thats already a lot. I dont want to be unrealistic. Its only been nine months, ten months now 11 but still. Is there anything else you would point to by continued modest growth in the economy, any Development Program thats got their signature on it. Anything thats a good hopeful sign of where this government is going in afghanistan . I would the Economic Issues have something they view as top priority. And i would say its right on par with security and they both go hand