Afghanistan "under resourced" for years; challenging place: US

The US has said that Afghanistan has been "under resourced" and "ignored" for years both militarily and economically and now the Obama administration is centrally focused on destroying al Qaeda and its extremist allies from the restive nation.

"It is a challenging place," the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs said, adding that the US President, Barack Obama, is focused on ensuring to meet measurable benchmarks: disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

"This was under-resourced, under-funded, under-manned and ignored for years and that's not going to change overnight. You cannot under-resource the most important part of our war on terror, you can't under-resource that for five or six or seven years," Gibbs said.

Whether it's under-resourced with troops, whether it's under-resourced with civilian manpower, whether it's under-resourced with economic development funding -- and hope to snap your fingers and have that turn around in just a few months, he argued.

"It's going to take some doing. It's going to take more resources, which the President has dedicated to this problem," he said. "I think there is broad agreement that for many years our effort in Afghanistan has been under-resourced politically, militarily, economically," Gibbs said.