From CSP and The New York Times:
NATO Focuses on Timetable for Afghan Withdrawal
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: February 2, 2012
BRUSSELS — The top NATO official said Thursday that NATO forces in Afghanistan would move gradually from a combat to support role by 2014, but that combat would continue during that period and that NATO remained committed to the principle of “in together, out together.”
Notes from the front lines.
Related
Panetta Says U.S. to End Afghan Combat Role as Soon as 2013(February 2, 2012)
Taliban Captives Dispute U.S. View on Afghanistan War(February 2, 2012)
The statement by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, capped a day of confusion at the headquarters here of the military alliance. The disarray began after the American defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, surprised at least some NATO officials when he said Wednesday that the United States wanted to step back from a combat role in Afghanistan by as early as mid-2013, more than a year before most American and NATO forces are set to go home.
Defense officials said Thursday that Mr. Panetta was speaking of stepping back from a “lead” combat role, although they did not define that.
Mr. Panetta’s comments appeared to reflect the White House’s desire to extract itself as quickly as possible from an unpopular war, but on Thursday Mr. Panetta’s advisers and some NATO officials appeared concerned that other countries might hasten their exit from Afghanistan. Defense officials said throughout the day that the United States would continue in combat operations as needed through 2014 and that a residual international force would remain in 2015.
The United States has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 American troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.
Mr. Panetta had offered no details of what stepping back from combat would mean, saying only that the troops would move into an “advise and assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where American forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success at best.
The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. American troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.
At the same time, Mr. Panetta had said the NATO discussions would also focus on a potential downsizing of Afghan security forces from 350,000 troops, largely because of the expense of maintaining such a large army. The United States and other NATO countries support those forces at a cost of around $6 billion a year, but financial crises in Europe are causing countries to balk at the bill.
“The funding is going to largely determine the kind of force we can sustain in the future,” Mr. Panetta said.
He and his team also played down last week’s announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that his country would break with its NATO allies and accelerate the withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan by pulling back its troops a year early, by the end of 2013. Pentagon officials said Mr. Sarkozy and the United States might be more in tune than it appeared, although they acknowledged confusion about the French president’s statement and said their goal was to sort it out at the NATO meeting.
“A lot of policy officials in Paris were scrambling” after Mr. Sarkozy’s announcement, a senior American defense official said. “So getting exactly to what the French bottom line is hasn’t been easy for them, much less for us.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing the internal deliberations of another country.
Mr. Sarkozy made the announcement after an attack by a rogue Afghan soldier who killed four unarmed French soldiers on a training mission. There have been similar episodes of Afghan troops’ killing of American forces, most recently involving the death of a Marine in Helmand Province this week.
The senior defense official said the Americans considered the attacks as “isolated incidents,” although “obviously very disturbing.” He said vetting procedures for Afghan security forces were being reviewed.
Mr. Panetta said he would also seek to reassure NATO that although budget constraints and a focus on Asia were forcing the United States to withdraw two combat brigades — as many as 10,000 troops — from Europe, it was not abandoning its allies. The United States, he said, would try to make up some of the difference by rotating more troops in for training exercises in Europe.
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