The
current American force in Afghanistan of 9,800 troops will remain in
place through most of 2016 under the Obama administration’s revised
plans, before dropping to about 5,500 at the end of next year or in
early 2017, senior administration officials said.
Some
of the troops will continue to train and advise Afghan forces, while
others will carry on the search for Qaeda fighters and militants from
the Islamic State and other groups who have found a haven in Afghanistan, they said.
In
abandoning his ambition to bring home almost all American troops before
leaving office, Mr. Obama appears to be acknowledging that Afghan
security forces are still not near ready to hold off the Taliban on
their own.
The insurgents are now spread through more parts of the country
than at any point since 2001, according to the United Nations, and last
month the Taliban scored their biggest victory of the war, seizing the northern city of Kunduz and holding it for more than two weeks before pulling back on Tuesday.
Yet even before Kunduz fell to the Taliban, the administration had been under growing pressure
from the military and others in Washington, including Congress, to
abandon plans that would have cut by about half the number of troops in
Afghanistan next year, and then drop the American force to about 1,000
troops based only at the embassy in Kabul by the start of 2017.
Now,
instead of falling back to the embassy — a heavily fortified compound
in the center of Kabul — the administration officials said on Wednesday
that the military would be able to maintain its operations at Bagram Air
Field to the north of Kabul, the main American hub in Afghanistan, and
at bases outside Kandahar in the country’s south and Jalalabad in the
east.
All
three bases are crucial for counterterrorism operations and for flying
drones that are used by the military and the C.I.A., which had also
argued for keeping troops in Afghanistan to help protect its own assets.
There
was no set date for the military to decrease the number of troops in
Afghanistan to 5,500, said the administration officials, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Mr.
Obama’s announcement. The pace of that troop reduction would be
determined largely by commanders on the ground, and the timing would
also most likely provide flexibility to whoever succeeds Mr. Obama.
President
Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan had also pressed for Mr. Obama to keep more
troops, and many in Washington who have worked closely with the Afghans
over the past several years were loath for the United States to pull
back just when it had an Afghan leader who has proved to be a willing
partner, unlike his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.
Mr.
Ghani is acutely aware of his country’s need for help from the United
States and its NATO allies. The American military has repeatedly stepped
in this year to aid Afghan forces battling the Taliban, launching
airstrikes and at times sending Special Operations troops to join the
fight, despite Mr. Obama’s declaration that the American war in
Afghanistan had ended.
But
the recent fighting in Kunduz also exposed the limits of foreign forces
now in Afghanistan, which total 17,000, including American and NATO
troops. It took only a few hundred Taliban members to chase thousands of
Afghan soldiers and police officers from Kunduz, and the Afghans
struggled to take back the city even with help from American airstrikes
and Special Operations forces.
During the fighting, an American AC-130 gunship badly damaged a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing at least 22 patients and staff members — and not a single insurgent.
Mr. Obama apologized for the attack, which may have violated guidelines
laid down by the administration for the use of force by the military
after the American combat mission ended last year. Under the rules,
airstrikes are authorized to kill terrorists, protect American troops
and help Afghans who request support in battles — like those in Kunduz,
recently taken over by the Taliban — that can change the military
landscape.
The
idea behind the guidelines was to give troops leeway and to keep
Americans out of daily, open-ended combat. But how much latitude Mr.
Obama would allow the military moving forward was unclear.
The
senior administration officials who disclosed the new plans were
circumspect about many of the details, saying more aspects of the
American mission next year and beyond would be disclosed when the
president made his announcement.
The officials emphasized that the decision to halt the withdrawal had come after a review that began in March when Mr. Ghani visited Washington, suggesting that the administration was not simply reacting to the news out of Afghanistan in recent weeks.
“Obviously,
we’re mindful of the dynamic security situation, and we’re watching and
seeing how the Afghan security forces engaged quite tenaciously in the
fighting for Kunduz,” one senior administration official said.
“But this posture and this number,” the official added, “has all been under discussion for months.”
It is not the first time the administration has revised the withdrawal plans. During Mr. Ghani’s visit in March, Mr. Obama announced
that the United States would keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through
2015, instead of cutting the force in half, as had been originally
planned. At the time, the White House still maintained that almost all
the troops would be pulled out by 2017.
But
with the situation in Afghanistan continuing to deteriorate, the
military presented the administration with new options this summer. The
plan that has been decided on for 2017 and beyond hewed closely to a
proposal made by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, then the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
The
officials said that 5,500 troops, along with contributions from NATO
allies, which have yet to be agreed upon, would provide enough power to
protect the force and continue the advisory and counterterrorism
missions.
Finances
were also a consideration, they said. Keeping 5,500 troops in
Afghanistan would cost about $14.6 billion a year. It would have cost
about $10 billion a year to maintain the much smaller force based at the
American Embassy, one of the officials said.
Source: The New York Times
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