WASHINGTON- The Chairman of the United States Army Joint Chiefs ofStaff, General Joseph Dunford, said the current war season in Afghanistanis the first season in the last five years that the ResoluteSupport Mission has a fully-resourced plan to support the Afghan Defenseand Security Forces in the fight against insurgents.

Addressing the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Friday, Dunfordsaid insurgents will be defeated by the adopting the plan.

“This is going to be the first season where we have had a fully-resourcedplan to support the Afghans in conducting counterinsurgency operationsinside of Afghanistan,” he said.

“By no means, as the military dimension of the problem sufficient toachieve strategic success, but I do believe right now that the militarydimension of the problem has been accurately addressed. I am confident thatwe have the right organizational construct, we have the right people and wehave the right capabilities in place to address the specific issues that weidentified during our failure analysis over the last a few years. We drewfrom those lessons learned specific issues that had to be addressed when wedeploy the force for 2018,” he added.

Dunford said high casualties among Afghan forces, lack of cooperationbetween different security departments and lack of air and intelligencesupport forthe troops are the main reasons that have impeded the Afghantroops win in the war so far.

“I was just in Afghanistan… couple of challenges we have had. Number one,we have suffered significant Afghan casualties; number two, the cooperationacross the Afghan police, Afghan army, intelligence organizations has notbeen quit what it needed to be; and number three, there were shortcapabilities, aviation capability, intelligence capability, surface firescapability. What we have done I believe is taking a look exactly what theAfghans need to gain momentum and retain momentum against the adversary,”Dunford said.

He said US and Afghan officials hold talks with Pakistan military andpolitical leaders and that a plan is under implementation to resolveKabul-Islamabad tension.