NATO has agreed on a plan to bring its war in Afghanistan to an end within four years.
The nations of the NATO-led force struck a deal on Saturday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to begin putting the battlefield under his control early next year and to move Western troops to a support role by 2014.
While the allies agreed to the target date to end offensive operations, the US warned that “some hard fighting remains ahead” and did not rule out keeping some solders in combat after 2014.
However, the coalition’s second largest troop provider, Britain, set a “firm deadline” of 2015 for withdrawing its fighting force and Spain said its own involvement could be over as soon as 2012.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen vowed the allies would stand by Kabul after its combat mission ends and US President Barack Obama said some US forces could stay on a little longer.
“But my goal is to make sure by 2014 we have transitioned Afghans into the lead and it is a goal to make sure that we are not still engaged in combat operations of the sort that we’re involved with now,” Obama said.
A top White House aide said individual NATO countries would choose when to end combat operations, but he said the US had not yet taken that decision.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban scoffed at NATO’s plans.
“It has become clear that after nine years of occupation, the invaders are doomed toward the same fate as those that tread this path before them,” the group said in an e-mailed statement.
NATO commanders want the allies to send enough funds and military trainers to allow them to boost the total size of Afghanistan’s national security forces to 306,000 from 256,000 within the next 12 months.
Karzai surprised his allies this week by urging US forces to scale down operations and halt hated night raids by special forces, but after the summit he suggested the row had been smoothed over.
“I hope that as we move forward, many of these difficulties will go away and that then our movement to the future will be one without the difficulties that we are encountering,” he said, when asked about the raids.
Obama acknowledged his conversations with Karzai are often “blunt,” but insisted US forces must be allowed to protect themselves while helping their Afghan colleagues build up their strength.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said after the talks he had told Karzai that Canada’s support was conditional on a fight against corruption.
Harper told Canadian television: “What I and others told President Karzai was the support of our governments and indeed our populations depend on the government of Afghanistan’s respect for and its acting upon basic principles — respect for democracy, for the rule of law and fair elections, for human rights, for good governance and for cleaning up corruption.”
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