BRUSSELS—U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has told NATO allies America will take a new look at its plans to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, a British official says, a fresh indication that U.S. involvement in the country is not waning in the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Wednesday that “Carter told us the troop numbers and the dispositions are being looked at again.”
The American reassurance to NATO allies comes on the heels of Obama’s decision last week to give the military wider latitude to support Afghan forces against the Taliban, both in the air and on the ground.
Far from ending the two wars he inherited from the Bush administration, Obama is wrestling with an expanded set of conflicts as his presidency nears an end, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, a Taliban resurgence has upset Washington’s exit strategy, which called for troop reductions from 9,800 to 5,500 by the end of 2016.
But Carter told reporters that Obama has indicated his willingness to re-examine force levels based on the intensified fight against the Taliban and Carter expects Obama to do that as the year goes on.
Carter’s comments came as NATO allies agreed to extend their Afghanistan training mission and keep troops in all four sections of the country in 2017.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the allies “will have what we call a flexible regional approach, meaning that we will continue to be of course in Kabul but also out in the different regions.”
The alliance also is “now working on the final decisions for our exact force numbers into 2017. So that’s something we will decide later on this year,” Stoltenberg said.
The U.S. troop-cutting plan is facing renewed scrutiny in light of the Taliban’s resurgence. Former U.S. commanders have urged Obama to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan into next year.
NATO’s decision to maintain a regional presence essentially shelves earlier plans to consolidate forces in and around Kabul, the national capital, next year. NATO will retain its hub-and-spoke system, which has headquarters in Kabul and Bagram, German troops working with Afghan forces in the north, Italian troops doing the same in the west, and U.S. forces in the southern region around Kandahar and in the east in Jalalabad.
