{"id":4155,"date":"2015-10-15T15:26:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T21:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2015-10-15T15:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T21:26:26","slug":"obama-outlines-plan-to-keep-5500-troops-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/obama-outlines-plan-to-keep-5500-troops-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Outlines Plan to Keep 5,500 Troops in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan October 15 at 1:38 PM<\/h4>\n

President Obama said Thursday he will keep 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan into 2017, ending his ambitions to bring home most American forces from that war-torn country before he leaves office.<\/p>\n

The president\u2018s decision came after an extensive months-long review that included regular discussions with Afghanistan\u2019s leaders, his national security team and U.S. commanders in the field. The move reflected a painful, if predictable, reality on the ground in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has seized new territory over the last year as Afghan troops have taken over the vast majority of the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfghan forces are still not as strong as they need to be,\u201d Obama said Thursday morning from the White House, explaining his decision. \u201cMeanwhile, the Taliban has made gains particularly in rural areas and can still launch deadly attacks in cities, including Kabul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama said he will also dramatically slow the pace of the reduction of American forces and plans to maintain the current U.S. force of 9,800 through \u201cmost of 2016.\u201d The post-2016 force would still be focused on training and advising the Afghan army, with a special emphasis on its elite counterterror forces. The United States would also maintain a significant counterterrorism capability of drones and Special Operations forces to strike al-Qaeda and other militants who may be plotting attacks against the United States.<\/p>\n

\"taliban-in-afghanistan<\/a><\/p>\n

The revised troop plans came after Afghan forces were driven from Kunduz, the first major city to fall to the Taliban since the war began in 2001. Two weeks passed before the Afghans, with some support from U.S. planes and Special Operations advisers, took the city back from the Taliban. Militants are now threatening other cities.<\/p>\n

\u201dThe bottom line is that in key areas of the country, the security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there\u2019s risk of deterioration,\u201d Obama said.<\/p>\n

The president praised the Afghan government, under the leadership of President Ashraf Ghani, as a willing partner, and he lauded the Afghan troops, who have taken significant casualties. Both were critical factors in his decision to keep U.S. troops in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single day, Afghan forces are out there fighting and dying to protect their country,\u201d Obama said. \u201cThey are not looking to us do it for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president insisted that his decision to abandon his plans to bring home U.S. troops was not a \u201cdisappointment,\u201d even as he acknowledged nation\u2019s war weariness after more than 14 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. \u201cI do not support the idea of endless war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His decision to keep troops in Afghanistan follows the surprising collapse of much of the U.S.-trained Iraqi army last summer under pressure from Islamic State militants. Republican critics have charged that Obama withdrew troops too quickly from Iraq, precipitating the collapse of the Iraq Army and the rise of the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

The president didn\u2019t mention the Iraqi failures in his statement from the White House. White House officials said the collapse of Iraqi forces didn\u2019t influence Obama\u2019s decision, and that the two situations weren\u2019t comparable because the Afghan government was eager to maintain a long-term U.S. presence. Such conditions didn\u2019t exist in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Afghan officials on Thursday welcomed the move to keep 9,8000 troops in the country. \u201cIt\u2019s very positive in light of the continued problems that this region is facing,\u201d said Mohammad Daud Sultanzoy, a presidential candidate in 2014 who is now allied with Ghani. \u201cOur security have shown the will and capability to fight, but we still need the support of our allies, especially the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ghazni province, where Afghan forces are locked in a bloody fight with the Taliban, Gen. Sayed Malok called it a \u201cgood decision at the moment, but a temporary solution.\u201d He called for a more robust effort to train and equip Afghan forces.<\/p>\n

The decision is a significant departure from the exit plan that Obama announced in a White House Rose Garden speech in May 2014. In keeping with his promise to \u201cturn the page\u201d on the costly wars launched by his predecessor, Obama said then that he would reduce the U.S. footprint to around 1,000 troops, all based in Kabul, by the end of 2016.<\/p>\n

It is also a stark illustration of how persistent militant threats have stood in the way of Obama\u2019s promises to end the ground wars that have dominated U.S. foreign policy since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p>\n

In addition to a resurgent Taliban, al-Qaeda appears to have staked out new ground in Afghanistan, far from the group\u2019s mountain enclaves along the Pakistan border. Last week, U.S. forces launched a major operation against al-Qaeda in Kandahar, launching 63 airstrikes on militant training bases.<\/p>\n

Administration officials portrayed the decision as a natural extension of a strategy that was making progress, rather than an indication that the president\u2019s original plan had failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone ever intended that the job, so to speak, would be finished\u201d despite Obama\u2019s timetable, said Lisa Monaco, a senior White House official. \u201cWe always said that we would continue to have a presence there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new plan, the U.S. military will retain bases in Kabul, as planned, but also have forces at Bagram air base and at bases outside Kandahar and Jalalabad, the largest cities in Afghanistan\u2019s southern and eastern regions.<\/p>\n

Obama emphasized that Afghans would continue to take the lead role in the fighting, with Americans providing advice and some counterterrorism support from bases outside Kabul. \u201cThese bases will give us the presence and the reach our forces require to achieve their mission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The larger force of 5,500 troops is projected to cost about $15 billion a year, or about $5 billion more than the smaller, 1,000-person Kabul-based force would have cost.<\/p>\n

Although U.S. deaths have fallen off dramatically in recent years, the change may also mean more U.S. casualties. So far this year, 25 American service members and civilians have been killed in the country.<\/p>\n

Obama emphasized that the relatively small American military presence, down from 100,000 at the war\u2019s peak, wouldn\u2019t decide the war\u2019s outcome, and emphasized that peace talks offered the sole viable solution to the long, bloody civil war.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy now, it should be clear to the Taliban and all who oppose Afghanistan\u2019s progress, the only real way to achieve the full drawdown of U.S. and foreign troops from Afghanistan is through a lasting political settlement with the Afghan government,\u201d Obama said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan October 15 at 1:38 PM President Obama said Thursday he will keep 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan into 2017, ending his ambitions to bring home most American forces from that war-torn country before he leaves office. The president\u2018s decision came after an extensive months-long review that included regular discussions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4159,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions\/4159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}