Panetta Sets End to Afghan Combat Role for U.S. in 2013
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: February 1, 2012
BRUSSELS In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.
Even as the Pentagon pulls back in Afghanistan, it will remain combat-ready, Mr. Panetta said. Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretarys words reflected the Obama administrations eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.
Promising the end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give Mr. Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this year.
Mr. Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of American troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead. It doesnt mean that were not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves, he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.
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 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 Afghanistans 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 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 played down last weeks 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 presidents 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. Sarkozys announcement, a senior American defense official said. So getting exactly to what the French bottom line is hasnt been easy for them, much less for us. The official asked for 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 incidents 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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Nobody care about the breaking news of the day? Can't wait to see what Mitt Romney has to say about this. Can a republican really run on keep our soldiers in Afghanistan longer than they've already been there and win real votes in the middle?
What do you guys think?
I have stated as such many times in threads throughout the years.
