Photo credit: © RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneev
President Obama said that the United States planned to leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in 2014 and complete the withdrawal of all the troops by the end of 2016.
By Tawab Malekzad: Washington (VR)—On Tuesday, May 27, President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden announced the timetable for the United States troop’s reduction in Afghanistan. President Obama said that the United States planned to leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in 2014 and complete the withdrawal of all the troops by the end of 2016. The mission for the 9,800 troops remaining in Afghanistan for two year will include providing support for the Afghan National Forces (ANF) and helping the ANF to secure the country against the Taliban. This announcement by the president comes without a signed Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the Afghan government. In regarding to the BSA, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings institute, told Radio VR’s Crystal Park that “the presumption is that once we have a new Afghan government, and that is expected probably in late August, that either of the likely [Afghan presidential candidate] winners, Dr. [Abdullah] Abdullah or Dr. [Ashraf] Ghani [Ahmadzai] would quickly sign such an agreement because they are both in record publicly as agreeing with it and endorsing it.” O’Hanlon also added “on the issue of the numbers. The basic idea, I think is to have 6 or 8 different places in the country where American forces can be present. Partly, to help Afghans where ever they have ongoing difficult military operations … Partly to help with training and the development of the Afghan Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior.” Speaking about the ways in which the BSA might not get signed in the near future O’Hanlon said if “the election process for example could somehow be slowed down or interrupted for various reasons in various ways and that is perhaps to most likely way in which we might see a delay in a signing of [this] agreement.” “Russia of course has not had troops [in Afghanistan] but it has been crucial in helping the [US] with the logistics, getting supplies in to Afghanistan through the so called the Northern distribution network, and if it were not for that strength coalition the mission would have been far less successful” O’Hanlon said. For more here is Park’s interview with O’Hanlon: Source: Article
