Additional 1,000 American troops to stay in Afghanistan

KABUL: US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday the United States will keep as many as 1,000 more troops in Afghanistan than planned for the first part of 2015.

At a joint news conference at the presidential palace with President Ashraf Ghani, Hagel said the original plan to cut US troop levels to 9,800 by the end of this year had been abandoned, but not because of a recent surge in Taleban attacks.

Hagel said the US will keep up to 10,800 troops for the first few months of next year and then restart the drawdown, which is scheduled to reach 5,500 troops by the end of 2015.

The US decided to keep additional forces in the country temporarily because planned troop commitments by US allies for a NATO train-and-assist mission starting in January have been slow to materialize.

President Barack Obama “has provided US military commanders the flexibility to manage any temporary force shortfall that we might experience for a few months as we allow for coalition troops to arrive in theater,” he said. “But the president’s authorization will not change our troops’ missions, or the long-term timeline for our drawdown,” he added.

On his final visit to Afghanistan as US defense secretary, Hagel said with striking optimism that he believes Afghans will successfully put down a surge in Taleban attacks in the capital and stabilize the nation.

Hagel arrived in Kabul on a previously unannounced trip one day after Obama declared he would nominate one of Hagel’s former deputies, Ashton Carter, to succeed Hagel, who resigned under pressure Nov. 24.

In an interview with reporters traveling with him from Washington aboard a military aircraft, Hagel was in a reflective mood about America’s longest war. He recalled arriving in Kabul in January 2002 as a member of a congressional delegation when security was so dicey that the lawmakers arrived under cover of darkness and left before dawn. Hagel at the time was a Republican senator from Nebraska.

The Taleban, which had ruled Afghanistan since 1996, were forced from power in late 2001 just weeks after a US-led invasion prompted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But they recovered gradually after the US shifted its military focus to Iraq in 2003, and by 2008 the US was conceding that the war in Afghanistan was stalemated