LOS ANGELES: The US-led military coalition could begin transferring some security responsibilities to Afghan forces as early as next spring, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview to be published Monday.
Gates told The Los Angeles Times that given faster-than-expected progress in training Afghan army units, those forces could assume primary responsibility for security sooner in less violent areas, freeing up Nato troops for operations elsewhere.
“With more Afghan forces, we can be on a path to transition in more places around the country,” Gates is quoted as telling the paper, which posted an article based on the interview on its website late Sunday.
“The success with the army in particular, I think, bodes well for in fact beginning to have some transitions maybe as early as this spring, but certainly beginning in the summer.”At the same time, Gates played down the possibility of rapid cuts in US troop levels starting in July 2011.
President Barack Obama has said the 30,000-troop increase he ordered late last year would start to reverse next July.
“There is no question in anybody's mind that we are going to begin drawing down troops in July of 2011,” Gates told The Times. But so far, “there hasn't even been a discussion of a steep decline quickly” at the top levels of the administration.
According to the paper, his comments were a pointed rebuttal to lower-level officials in Washington who have privately asserted that Obama will rapidly withdraw troops beginning next summer.
Obama has been strongly criticized for saying US troops will start coming home in mid-2011. Opponents say it sends out the message America is not in the fight for the long-term and adds to the Taliban's resolve to wait it out.
But the top US military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, disputed that interpretation and pointed out that when Obama announced his strategy for Afghanistan at West Point military academy in December 2009, he also greatly boosted America's military commitment.
“One was a message of substantial additional commitment, an additional 30,000 troops, again more civilians, more funding for Afghan forces, authorization of a 100,000 more of them and so forth, but also a message of increased urgency and that's what July 2011 really connotes,” Petraeus told NBC's “Meet the Press” program.
Grilled on the drawdown start date, he was asked by the interviewer: “Could you reach that point and say 'I know that the process is supposed to begin but my assessment as the commander here is that it cannot begin now?'”
Petraeus replied: “Certainly, yeah. Again, the president and I sat down in the Oval Office and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice.” – AFP
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