By Ankit Panda
The United States will keep just shy of 10,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
In a speech on Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama clarified the trajectory of the United States’ war in Afghanistan. While it has been known for some time that U.S. and NATO troops would formally withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, little was known about the precise number of troops that the U.S. would be willing to leave behind as part of the U.S.-Afghanistan Bilateral Security Agreement (an agreement that has yet to be signed). Obama noted that according to the latest timetable for the Afghanistan withdrawal, the United States would reduce its troop count from 32,000 to just shy of 10,000. The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan peaked at 101,000 in 2011. The withdrawal will continue well into 2015 and 2016, with the troop presence halving in both of those years.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan will allow for U.S. military resources to be used to fight terrorism across the Middle East and North Africa, Obama said. Obama will deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point tomorrow and is expected to broadly outline his foreign policy priorities in the coming year, including the implications of the Afghanistan withdrawal for U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa. He is also expected to address some of the criticisms of his administration’s handling of the crises in Syria and Ukraine. In his speech on Tuesday, Obama did not mention the implications of the withdrawal from Afghanistan for the Asia-Pacific region. Part of the “Pivot” or “Rebalance” to Asia — broadly the policy the United States aims to pursue in the Asia-Pacific — is to reallocate U.S. military assets from the Middle East and Afghanistan to East Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat