U.S. goal is to end Afghan combat mission in 2013

[Zarvan]

Washington (CNN) -- The United States and NATO want to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year, transitioning primarily to a training role in which Afghan security forces will take the lead, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.
"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013 and then, hopefully, by mid- to the latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role," he told reporters traveling with him to Brussels, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. The result will be that "2014 then becomes a year of consolidating the transition and making sure that those gains are in fact held, so that we can move towards a more enduring presence beyond 2014."
That enduring presence will include "a large civilian presence" involved with development, he continued.
Under Panetta's scenario, the transition would come a year before the 2014 deadline to end the war in Afghanistan that had been set by the Obama administration.
A U.S. administration official stressed that a transition in 2013 is the hope, but "nothing is final" until leaders of the NATO countries convene in Chicago in May.
In a statement, Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Service Committee, called Panetta's timeline "a reasonable goal."
But the committee chairman, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, said it was too early to make such predictions. "Announcing a change in mission in Afghanistan -- before we have even validated the Afghan Security Forces can maintain stability in the areas we have already transitioned and ahead of the fighting season -- is premature," he said.
And Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said in a statement, "There is absolutely no military rationale that I am aware of for suddenly accelerating the current timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. This change is not justified by facts on the ground. While we all share the goal of drawing down our military presence in Afghanistan, this should be driven by developments on the ground in Afghanistan, not by the whims of Washington."
Late last year, Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said U.S. forces will begin to be deployed this year within Afghan units as advisers and trainers, reducing the direct combat role of foreign troops in the country.
Afghanistan's security force exceeds 305,000 and is headed toward 352,000 this year. At the same time, the United States will be withdrawing forces throughout 2012, with the goal of reducing U.S. troop strength to 68,000 by year's end from more than 100,000. There will also be 38,000 troops from other NATO countries.
The U.S. goal is for Afghan forces, advised by Americans, to take the lead.
"That will, in many respects, be a preview of how we'll see our forces postured in the years to come," Allen said in December. "The crossover point where we become largely an advisory, assisting and education force versus a force that is engaged at any given moment in counterinsurgency, that crossover point remains to be determined."
The United States will still maintain its commitment to transition to an Afghan lead by the end of 2014, according to Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby.
"Nothing has changed about the strategy our troops are executing: We are working to prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda and its allies," Kirby said in a statement. "Nothing has changed about the goal of developing strong and capable Afghan security forces."
The news comes a few days after France announced that it will withdraw its troops a year earlier than 2014. That announcement came after four of its troops were killed by an Afghan soldier.
The Obama administration has taken pains to show that the alliance is still strong and committed to the 2014 deadline.
"The end of this process, the end of this transition, the end of this drawdown in which the Afghans fully move into the lead, is slated to be 2014," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said in Chicago on Tuesday. "Just as we made decisions about the pace of our drawdown, other nations will make decisions."
NATO will meet in May in Chicago to discuss the war and to ensure that the 28-member alliance is "aligned on our drawdowns and transition," Rhodes said.
But there are significant questions as to whether the NATO and Afghanistan can sufficiently weaken the Taliban or bring them to the negotiating table.
A leaked NATO report underscores concerns about Pakistan's support of the Taliban. The document revives the longstanding accusation that elements in Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency are aiding the insurgency in Afghanistan.
It says the ISI knows the whereabouts of all senior Taliban commanders, according to a Times of London journalist who has read the classified NATO document.
The Obama administration is trying to get the Taliban to negotiate and has proposed a transfer of some prisoners from Guantanamo to Qatar as a sign of good faith by the United States. The administration said any discussion about releasing the detainees would be preliminary and would hinge on the Taliban renouncing terrorism and agreeing to peace talks.
In addition to the release of Guantanamo prisoners, the Taliban would be allowed to open an office in Qatar.
But that proposed transfer is controversial. In a letter to President Obama on Wednesday, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, a former Marine officer who served in Afghanistan, warned that the release would "send the wrong message to the Taliban."
"Releasing prisoners strictly for the purpose of accelerating negotiations undermines the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and deliberately ignores the threat of a Taliban resurgence," Hunter wrote.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who attended a briefing by administration officials on Tuesday night about the potential release, called it "really, really bizarre."
"This whole thing is highly questionable because the Taliban know we're leaving. They know we're leaving. Put yourself in their shoes." McCain said. "There are many people who are experts in the region who say they are rope-a-doping us."
Even as the United States plans its withdrawal, it is working on ensuring that it can continue to supply troops. The Obama administration is temporarily lifting a ban on military assistance to Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation that plays a crucial role in providing an overland supply route for U.S. military cargo into Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a waiver January 18 under which the United States can provide Uzbekistan with "non-lethal" defensive equipment, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday.

 

[RPK]

U.S. plans to halt Afghan combat role early, Kabul surprised | Reuters

(Reuters) - The United States appears to have taken Kabul by surprise by announcing plans to end its Afghan combat role earlier than expected, and coinciding with a secret report that the Taliban is confident it can grab back control of the ravaged country.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking on Wednesday, said the United States would stop combat operations before the end of 2013 as it winds down its longest war.

"A decision to push this a year earlier throws out the whole transition plan. The transition has been planned against a timetable and this makes us rush all our preparations," a senior Afghan security official, who could not be named because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, told Reuters on Thursday.

"If the Americans withdraw from combat, it will certainly have an effect on our readiness and training, and on equipping the police force," the official said, adding that his government had not been informed of the change in plans.

The United States, which led the NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, has previously said it would withdraw most combat troops by the end of 2014.

Panetta said the U.S. troops would shift next year to a supporting role, training and advising Afghan troops who would take charge of a country that has been at war for more than three decades.

A faster end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan could give President Barack Obama an election-year lift.

It may also demoralise Afghans who fear a return to the austere rule of the Taliban and hope that reconciliation between all parties would deliver a better alternative.

People like hotel waiter Yama, 19, expressed alarm at the prospect that U.S. troops will cease combat sooner.

"Everything Afghanistan has built during the past years would be destroyed, robbed and sold to neighboring countries," he said.

Many Afghans have long been suspicious of neighbouring Pakistan's intentions, and would like to see it tame Afghan militant groups it is accused of supporting.

Ties between the countries have been strained in recent months, but Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said on Thursday after her trip to Kabul a day earlier that "a lot of ill will had faded".

She said Pakistan had played no substantial role in reconciliation efforts but would encourage insurgent groups like the Haqqani network and the Taliban to lay down their arms and pursue peace if asked by Afghanistan.

"We would be able to do whatever we have, whatever tools we have, we would want to exploit to be able to assist the Afghan people," she told a small group of reporters in a briefing on her trip to Kabul this week.

"We are willing to do whatever the Afghans expect or want us to do."

MILTANT GROUPS AS PROXIES

Pakistan has long been accused of using militant groups as proxies in Afghanistan to counter the influence of its rival India there, allegations it denies.

Despite her enthusiasm over ties with Kabul, Khar cautioned the nascent peace process is far from producing breakthroughs.

The United States believes Afghanistan cannot be pacified without strong cooperation with Pakistan.

But ties have been damaged by a series of events including the unilateral U.S. raid that killed Osama bid Laden on Pakistani soil in May last year, and a NATO cross-border raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

Islamabad is currently reviewing ties with the United States and parliament is expected to soon make recommendations on a new direction for the relationship.

Panetta's announcement immediately drew criticism from Obama's most likely opponent in this year's race for the White House, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"Why (in) the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the day you're pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense," Romney told a rally.

Panetta has also been criticised by some lawmakers for moving too swiftly to extract U.S. troops.

"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013 and then hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013 we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise-and-assist role," Panetta told reporters on his plane to Brussels for a NATO defense ministers' meeting.

The announcement came as allies like France are themselves looking for a quick exit from Afghanistan. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tough re-election campaign of his own, announced he would pull out French troops by the end of next year.

He urged other members of the North Atlantic alliance to do the same, threatening to upend a well-settled strategy approved at a summit in Lisbon two years ago that calls for the transition to Afghan security leadership by the end of 2014.

The United States has been trying to draw the Taliban into reconciliation talks with the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. But a key part of its strategy has been to increase military pressure on the Taliban to persuade it to join peace talks.

TALIBAN CONFIDENT ON CONTROL

In a classified report obtained by British media, NATO said that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, remained confident despite a decade of NATO efforts that it would retake control of Afghanistan.

"Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact," according to an excerpt of the report, published by the Times of London and the BBC.

Panetta insisted that the new timetable was in line with a previous NATO strategy agreed in Lisbon.

"In the Lisbon discussions, it was always clear that there would come a point which we would make that transition and then be able to hopefully consolidate those gains in 2014," he said.

"So the bottom line is: No, this isn't a new strategy. It's basically implementing what Lisbon is all about."

He said his key message to the NATO allies as they meet on Thursday and Friday to prepare for a Chicago summit in May was that the coalition in Afghanistan needed to unite behind the goals agreed on in Lisbon.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander in BRUSSELS; Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; and Michael Georgy)

WORLD

 

[saiyan0321]

(Reuters) - The United States appears to have taken Kabul by surprise by announcing plans to end its Afghan combat role earlier than expected, and coinciding with a secret report that the Taliban is confident it can grab back control of the ravaged country.

so they lost taliban will ofcourse be back in control in a week.

"Everything Afghanistan has built during the past years would be destroyed, robbed and sold to neighboring countries," he said.

buddy get real no it wont..... uh who am i kidding ofcourse it will hahahaha just kidding not

backed by Pakistan

i cant believe its still going on what is wrong with us media

well that was a given 11 years of war and taliban still controlled most of the region

A faster end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan could give President Barack Obama an election-year lift.

all about the elections he is about to leave afghanistan in a civil war to win elections

 

[Omar1984]

I don't think U.S. will ever voluntarily leave Afghanistan. U.S. still hasn't left Iraq while fooling its people that they ended the war in Iraq.

And they have no plans of leaving these countries. Turn on U.S. media, you will see them bash the one America politician, Ron Paul, who wants to bring all American troops home to the U.S.

U.S. wants to spend all its money on these useless wars.

 

[VCheng]

........................

U.S. wants to spend all its money on these useless wars.

Well, not all of it obviously, just some of it!

 

[bronx]

U.S. wants to spend all its money on these useless wars.

I think the USA wants a stable Afghanistan , which is good for that region.

Also I see more positive observations & comments made by several of their Senators, congressman etc recently ..so hopefully the USA as a nation can control their over-spending and improve the lives of ordinary Americans and the USA economy as a whole.

 

[iajj]

americans are preparing for the endgame in afganistan - while forbidding everyone to do the same.

 

[Omar1984]

I think the USA wants a stable Afghanistan , which is good for that region.

Also I see more positive observations & comments made by several of their Senators, congressman etc recently ..so hopefully the USA as a nation can control their over-spending and improve the lives of ordinary Americans and the USA economy as a whole.

The fact is none of Afghanistan's neighbors and regional powers trust America being in the region. Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China all want the U.S. out, the sooner the better. U.S. has destabilized the region by invading Afghanistan in 2001. The region was much safer before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

 

[Omar1984]

Analysis: Politics drives exit from Afghanistan

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press – 4 hours ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban are not beaten, the peace process is bogged down in internal squabbles and Afghan security forces aren't ready to take control of the nation. Yet the U.S. and its partners are talking about speeding up — rather than slowing down — their exit from the war.

It's becoming dramatically clear that politics is driving NATO's war exit strategy as much or more than conditions on the battlefield.

Political calendars in the West were never supposed to influence the decision about when Afghan forces take the lead and allow international troops step back into support roles or leave altogether. The U.S., Afghan and other international leaders have said repeatedly that transition decisions would not be held hostage to international political agendas.

Then, after an Afghan soldier gunned down four French troops, President Nicolas Sarkozy suddenly announced last week that he was pulling French forces out of Afghanistan early. Sarkozy is facing an opponent in the coming presidential election who wants French forces withdrawn even faster.

Sarkozy boldly suggested that his NATO allies hand over security to the Afghan police and army in 2013 instead of by the close of 2014 — an end date they had all agreed upon at a meeting in Lisbon more than a year ago.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta dropped another verbal bombshell this week at a NATO meeting in Brussels. He said the NATO allies had largely agreed to step back from the lead combat role in Afghanistan and let local forces take their place as early as 2013.

U.S. officials downplayed Panetta's statement, saying it was not a policy change but an optimistic look at the established 2014 end date.

Either way, it shows how badly the Obama administration wants out of the war.

Panetta's comment sounded different from what his predecessor told NATO allies just six months ago. "Resist the urge to do what is politically expedient and have the courage of patience," former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said then.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said no final decision has been made but he noted the issue would be prominent in May, when President Barack Obama hosts the next NATO summit.

That meeting, in Obama's hometown of Chicago, will come less than six months before the U.S. presidential election. There has been speculation that Obama might announce some kind of accelerated pullout or simply underscore how America's involvement in Afghanistan is winding down.

"I definitely think there is a desire to say something appealing by Chicago," said Mark Jacobson, former deputy NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington.

He said Sarkozy's decision to fast-track France's exit clearly reflects his need to address pressing domestic pressure to bring forces home as his presidential re-election campaign begins. Politics, "however undesirable," always accompanies any coalition mission, he said.

Announcing that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan will wrap up earlier than expected would give Obama more good news to report about his foreign policy. Already, the U.S. military has officially declared the end of its mission in Iraq in December 2011 when the last American troops left. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011 during a U.S. raid in Pakistan. And reviled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi fell under a NATO onslaught without a single American casualty.

Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, said U.S. commanders in Afghanistan realize that American public support for the war is evaporating but they don't want to squander military gains of the past 18 months.

"The fear is that President Obama, under pressure from other NATO members and wanting to strike a popular chord with the U.S. electorate in an election year, will announce a drastic reduction in U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2013 at the NATO summit in Chicago," Curtis said.

"By announcing a quicker transition to an Afghan security lead without drastically cutting troop numbers, the secretary of defense may be trying to meet the conflicting U.S. political and military goals," she said.

Assessments of the coalition's progress vary depending on who is asked, but nobody says the war against the Taliban has been won.

The coalition reports that violence is down in some areas of the country, Taliban fighters have lost territory and hundreds of their midlevel commanders have been killed and detained. The insurgency is "clearly on the back foot," says German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan.

The latest Afghan National Intelligence Estimate, however, warns that the Taliban will grow stronger and continue to fight for more territory, according to U.S. officials who have read the classified document. The estimate also warns that the Taliban will use discussions about prospects for peace to run out the clock until foreign troops leave.

It says the Afghan government largely has failed to prove itself to its people and likely will continue to weaken and find influence only in the cities. Meanwhile, peace moves toward the Taliban appear fraught with differences between the Afghans and their international partners over the venue and President Hamid Karzai's complaints that the U.S. is trying to control the process.

Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the development of Afghan national security forces is in a "state of total confusion."

"Major elements of the Afghan security forces cannot possibly be ready to stand on their own by the end of 2014," Cordesman wrote in a report this week.

So far, Karzai has reacted cautiously to the idea that the bulk of the handover to Afghan forces could occur in 2013. He hasn't commented on Panetta's remark, but after France announced it was leaving early, Karzai said: "We hope to finish the transition ... by the end of 2013 at the earliest — or by the latest as has been agreed upon — by the end of 2014."

Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a Karzai adviser who has played a key role in trying to broker peace with Taliban leaders and lure their foot soldiers off the battlefield, said NATO should make sure that the transition to Afghan forces is successful.

"We should not rush up everything," said Stanekzai, who was seriously wounded when a suicide attacker posing as a Taliban peace envoy killed the head of the Afghan peace council last year. "We have to be cautious about the situation on the ground."
Deb Riechmann has covered the Afghan war since November 2009.


The Associated Press: Analysis: Politics drives exit from Afghanistan

 

[Sinnerman108]

Its capitalism... NOT Freedom.

They have spent so much on this war stuff, why would they leave without profit ?

 

[Oldman1]

The fact is none of Afghanistan's neighbors and regional powers trust America being in the region. Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China all want the U.S. out, the sooner the better. U.S. has destabilized the region by invading Afghanistan in 2001. The region was much safer before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

The region was much safer? Really? Depends on who you asking eh?

 

[Icewolf]

if we were helping the Taliban why did they kill our soldiers

 

[PakShaheen79]

I think Americans will wait for a complete meltdown of their economy just like Soviets.

 

[Oldman1]

I think Americans will wait for a complete meltdown of their economy just like Soviets.

Our economy is much more robust than you think. But if you want another Great Depression that led to World War II then its a good thing right?

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Our economy is much more robust than you think. But if you want another Great Depression that led to World War II then its a good thing right?

Its a little different , because the population is higher , and unimaginably higher , if lets say you have situation like no bread in super markets or food is not present , and economy fails

Their would be chaos like POST Katrina as there are huge number of blacks and Latinos now living in USA , before it was just few migrants and Americans etc

So when there is no bread or food or oil in country - what do you think will happen ?

Yep every one will blame the black and Latinos and then all chaos will break lose