In a potential major shift in policy, US military commanders want to keep at least a few thousand US troops in Afghanistan beyond next year, citing a fragile security situation highlighted by the Taliban’s capture of the northern city of Kunduz this week as well as recent militant inroads in the south.
Keeping any substantial number of troops in Afghanistan beyond next year would mark a sharp departure from US President Barack Obama’s existing plan, which would leave only an embassy-based security cooperation presence of about 1,000 military personnel by the end of next year.
Obama has made it a centerpiece of his second-term foreign policy message that he would end the US war in Afghanistan and get US troops out by the time he left office in January 2017.
About 9,800 US troops are in Afghanistan. The top US commander in Afghanistan, Army General John Campbell, has given the administration several options for gradually reducing that number over the next 15 months. The options all call for keeping a higher-than-planned troop presence based on his judgement of what it would take to sustain the Afghan army and minimize the chances of losing more ground gained over more than a decade of costly US. combat.
The timing of a new decision on US troop levels is unclear. Campbell is scheduled to testify to Congress next week on the security situation, including the effectiveness of Afghan security forces after a tough summer of fighting.
The Taliban’s takeover of Kunduz, a city of 300,000, marked the militants’ first capture of a major city since the US invasion ousted their government 14 years ago in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US.
Republican critics of Obama’s approach to transitioning from the wartime occupation of Afghanistan to full Afghan security control called the fall of Kunduz a predictable consequence of Obama’s calendar-based troop reductions.
The loss of Kunduz may prove temporary, but it has underscored the fragility of Afghan security and hardened the view of those who favor keeping US troops there beyond 2016.
According to US officials, Campbell’s options would postpone any major cuts in troop levels this year and give him more leeway on the pace of any reductions next year. The options, officials said, include keeping as many as 8,000 troops there well into next year and maintaining several thousand troops as a counterterrorism force into 2017.
The options would allow for a gradual decline in troop numbers over the coming year, depending on the security conditions in Afghanistan and the capabilities of the Afghan forces, who sustained heavy combat losses this year and last.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry have suggested the importance of the US continuing its counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, even into 2017.
KUNDUZ
In related news, US airstrikes hit Taliban positions overnight around Kunduz as Afghan troops yesterday massed on the ground ahead of what is likely to be a protracted battle to retake the city.
Also overnight, fierce fighting was underway for control of Kunduz’s airport, a few kilometers outside the city, before the Taliban retreated under fire, residents said.
US Army spokesman, Colonel Brian Tribus, said there were two new airstrikes and that US and NATO coalition advisers were at the scene “in the Kunduz area, advising Afghan security forces.”
Among NATO experts backing Afghan troops were coalition’s special forces advisers, he said.
Roads in and out of the city were blocked and the Taliban — believed to have joined forces with other insurgent groups to boost their numbers — released about 600 prisoners from the Kunduz jail. The insurgents also set up checkpoints to ensure no one leaves.
Information from inside the city remained sketchy.
The UN special representative in Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, said he was concerned about reports “of extrajudicial executions, including of healthcare workers, abductions, denial of medical care and restrictions on movement out of the city.
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