President Obama has abandoned his election pledge to end America’s longest war, announcing that thousands of troops will remain in Afghanistan when he leaves office in January 2017.
Despite unveiling plans last year for America’s military presence to be reduced to about 1,000 by the end of his presidency, Mr Obama said 5,500 troops would stay in Afghanistan because the country’s forces were still not as strong as they needed to be.
The abrupt change in policy follows warnings from top US generals that Afghan government forces, trained by western troops at a cost of $65 billion, are not ready to counter growing threats from the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
America has 9,800 troops in Afghanistan. Under the new plan they will be reduced to about 5,500 late next year or in 2017 and based at Kabul, Bagram, Jalalabad and Kandahar.
Under the previous plan, 1,000 troops would have been stationed at the US embassy in Kabul. Speaking at the White House yesterday, Mr Obama said: “As commander in chief I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.” He admitted that 14 years after US troops first went into Afghanistan the security situation was “still very fragile” but insisted that America would stick to “two narrow missions” – training Afghan troops and hunting down the remnants of al-Qaida.
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Last week the top commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, called for “strategic patience”, a clear signal of Pentagon unease, issued days after Kunduz became the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban since the war began in 2001.
The White House was warned that Afghan troops were not capable of countering growing threats from the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which is estimated to have 3,000 fighters in Afghanistan.
In Washington, there are doubts over whether a US force of 5,500 will be sufficient to hold together a country that is in dire straits economically and is led by two former rivals, President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive, whose power-sharing deal has led to slow-moving government.
The current US force of 9,800 was itself a compromise. US commanders had lobbied for at least 13,000. Britain ended its combat role in Afghanistan last year, but has maintained a force of at least 450 that is taking part in a Nato effort to train Afghan security forces.
President Obama yesterday repeated his call for a “lasting political settlement” in Afghanistan.