U.S. ‘rethinking’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, says new defence chief

Washington is reviewing a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2016 to ensure that “progress sticks” after more than a decade of war, new U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter (pictured) told reporters in Kabul on Saturday. Under the current plan, the United States will halve the number of troops in Afghanistan to 5,000 this year, gradually winding down to a “normal” U.S. embassy presence by 2016. That schedule could now change, said Carter on his first trip abroad since swearing in as the Pentagon chief on Tuesday, as the United States rethinks the future of its counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan.

Our priority now is to make sure this progress sticks. That is why President (Barack) Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani’s security strategy, including possible changes to the timeline for our drawdown of U.S. troops.

Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, speaking at a joint conference with President Ashraf Ghani, hours after landing in Kabul

Ghani said he expected to discuss U.S. troop numbers with Obama “in the context of the larger partnership”. The emergence of a small number of militants in Afghanistan aligning themselves with Islamic State, which swept into northern Iraq last summer, has underscored anxieties about the dangers as foreign forces withdraw. Neither he nor Ghani made predictions about peace efforts with the Taliban, after senior Pakistani army, Afghan and diplomatic officials said the Afghan Taliban signalled they were willing to open peace talks.

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