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Afghanistan's president says that the US should "re-examine" its plans to withdraw its forces from his country, just days after the official end of combat operations there.

Last week, NATO forces closed down "Operation Enduring Freedom," the campaign it has run in Afghanistan since 2001, in what The Christian Science Monitor described as "a small Sunday ceremony that made it clear that NATO was not interested in calling a great deal of attention to the occasion."

Some 13,000 troops, mostly American, will remain in the country to help train Afghan forces and to conduct "counterterrorism" operations "against the remnants of Al Qaeda," US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said. These forces in turn are due to withdraw by the end of 2016.

But President Ashraf Ghani told CBS's 60 Minutes in an interview aired Sunday night that "Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines should not be dogmas."

"If both parties, or, in this case, multiple partners, have done their best to achieve the objectives and progress is very real, then there should be willingness to reexamine a deadline." Asked by [interviewer Lara] Logan whether President Obama knows this, Ghani replies, "President Obama knows me. We don't need to tell each other."

President Ghani's comments appear to be a tacit admission of what many analysts have noted: Despite the "end" of the Afghan war, Afghanistan remains embroiled in a conflict that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

Indeed, the Taliban, which NATO removed from power in 2001 and which have since waged a resilient guerrilla war funded by opium sales, promised to continue to fight following what it called the Western forces' "defeat." The Monitor wrote that according to a Taliban spokesman, NATO rolled up its flag in an atmosphere of failure and disappointment without having achieved anything substantial or tangible.

The Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy wrote that the past year has been one of the deadliest in Afghanistan, with more than 4,000 Afghan police and military and nearly as many civilians killed in 2014. And despite Obama's claims that the US is "safer, and our nation is more secure" due to fighting in the Afghan war, Mr. Murphy writes that "There's no evidence to support that claim, and plenty to suggest the war has been a long, self-inflicted wound on the country."

The job of scattering old Al Qaeda was accomplished by 2003. By the time Bin Laden was killed in a daring US raid in 2011, he was living comfortably in the Pakistani military garrison town of Abbottabad. Mullah Omar, the titular head of the Taliban, has likewise lived in Pakistan for years.

Afghanistan is a poor, far away country. While Al Qaeda was based there ahead of 9/11, what is less often repeated is that much of the operational planning for the attacks were conducted in Hamburg, Germany.

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Afghanistan: US should 're-examine' withdrawing from country (+video)

Even though NATO's mission in Afghanistan formally ended last week, there are growing indications the war there is far from over.

Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland spoke to Ambassador James Jeffrey and James Carafano about the countrys security outlook.

There is increasing concern that the NATO drawdown in Afghanistan will allow the Taliban to fill the void left by coalition forces.

They are certainly going to try. Unfortunately, once again weve put a deadline at the end of 2016 for the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. forces Taliban will then try to sweep things up after then, said Jeffrey, a visiting fellow with the foreign policy think tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

U.S. officials are closely watching to see how Afghan security forces take the lead. To help with the transition, the countrys president has suggested the U.S. "re-examine" its withdrawal plan.

Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, says its become a numbers game on how many American troops should remain. 10,000 is at the low end of the number its not the safe number that everybody wanted -- probably like 17,000-20,000 -- but its a number thats enough to keep the U.S. in the game.

Jeffrey, who served as a senior adviser on Iraq to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, says lessons from Baghdad should be followed in Kabul. We withdrew all of our forces and the Iraqis were OK with that at the time, then ISIS came in and the result is we got our troops back in there we dont want to lose one third of Afghanistan to the Taliban; lets keep the troops [there].

This administration doesnt want another Iraq, said Carafano. The president doesnt want part of his legacy that they completely walked away and have a meltdown.

He added, Im not sure that 2015 is the year of catastrophic change in Afghanistan, but what we do in 2015 is really going to determine what happens after that. A successful Afghanistan makes that part of the world better we dont need another major area falling apart on us.

Original post:
Taliban sees opportunity to gain ground in Afghanistan

Published January 05, 2015

Afghanistan's president has suggested that the U.S. "re-examine" its plan to withdraw all of the American-led coalition troops from the country by the end of 2016.

"Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines should not be dogmas," Ashraf Ghani told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired Sunday evening.

"If both parties, or, in this case, multiple partners, have done their best to achieve the objectives and progress is very real, then there should be willingness to re-examine a deadline," he added.

When asked if he had made his view clear to President Barack Obama, Ghani said "President Obama knows me. We don't need to tell each other."

There was no immediate response from the White House, State Department, or Pentagon to Ghani's remarks Sunday night.

The U.S. and its NATO allies marked the formal end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan last week. On Thursday, 13,500 soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force, almost 11,000 of them American, transitioned to a supporting role for Afghanistan's military.

The handover of primary responsibility for battling the Taliban represents the ultimate test for the 350,000 strong Afghan army. Critics have long questioned the local troops' morale, discipline, and competence in the face of Taliban attacks. According to a United Nations report, 2014 was the deadliest year on record for non-combatants in Afghanistan, with at least 3,188 civilians killed in the intensifying war. By comparison, at least 4,600 members of the Afghan security forces were killed by fighting last year.

Ghani also told CBS that he was concerned about the possibility that Islamic State fighters could make their way to Afghanistan. However, that concern was refuted by ISAF commander Gen. John Campbell, who said that "This is not Iraq. I don't see [Islamic State] coming into Afghanistan like they did into Iraq. The Afghan Security Forces would not allow that."

Campbell also described the Afghan National Army as "the number one respected institution in Afghanistan. Couple years ago, I probably wouldn't have said that, but today it is."

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