Washington: President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are charting the course for the war’s end on Friday during a meeting at the White House to discuss the future of the US role in Afghanistan and the 66,000 American troops there.
The two leaders planned a joint news conference Friday afternoon, but White House officials said Obama will not announce any decisions on the next phase of troop withdrawals or whether any US forces will stay behind in Afghanistan after the war formally ends in 2014.
US commanders in Afghanistan have proposed keeping 6,000 to 15,000 US troops after 2014 to continuing pursuing terrorists and training Afghan security forces. But the White House, which tends to favour lower troop levels than the generals, says Obama would be open to pulling all US forces out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
“We wouldn’t rule out any option,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser. “We’re not guided by the goal of a certain number of US troops in the country. We’re guided by the objectives that the president set — disrupt, dismantle, defeat Al Qaida.”
Beyond troop levels, Obama and Karzai are also expected to discuss preparations for next year’s Afghan elections and the prospects for advancing Afghan peace talks with the Taliban.
Friday’s meeting will be the first between Obama and Karzai since November’s US presidential election. Heading into his second term, Obama is shaking up his national security team, including key players who deal with Karzai and the war.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta are both expected to leave their posts within weeks. The president nominated Democratic Sen John Kerry as the nation’s top diplomat and former Republican Sen Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon.
Both Kerry and Hagel are likely to favour a more rapid withdrawal of US forces.
After Karzai met on Thursday with Clinton and Panetta, the Pentagon chief offered an upbeat assessment of the war’s progress.
“After a long and difficult path, we finally are, I believe, at the last chapter of establishing an Afghanistan, a sovereign Afghanistan, that can govern and secure itself for the future,” Panetta said.
The US-led NATO coalition is aiming to turn all combat missions over to Afghan forces by the end of this year. The 66,000 US forces still there are already turning over territory or handing off many combat missions to the Afghans.
Still, the war’s endgame is punctuated with uncertainty, beginning with doubts about whether the Afghan government can build legitimacy by credibly serving its population. Also in question is whether Afghan security forces will be capable of holding off the Taliban after international forces leave.
Panetta told a news conference that he and Karzai had laid the groundwork for the Afghan leader’s White House meeting.
“We made very good progress on, you know, the kind of equipment that we would try to make available to them,” to enable the Afghans to not only secure their borders but also prevent a Taliban takeover, Panetta said.
Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same news conference that US and Afghan officials are developing a common assessment of threats Afghanistan is likely to face in the future. Conclusions from that study will help determine the full range of Afghanistan’s military requirements, he said.
Karzai was greeted at the Pentagon by a ceremonial honour guard, and at a photo-taking session in Panetta’s office the Afghan leader said he could assure the American people that his country “will not ever again be threatened by terrorists from across our borders” — an allusion to the Al Qaida leaders hiding in Pakistan. It was from Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida operatives plotted the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
