President Obama is expected to announce Tuesday whether he will keep additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the end of 2016, his national security team said.
Obama’s decision reflects months of discussions with new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who has asked the White House to slow the drawdown of the final 9,800 U.S. troops still there.
Based on current plans, the military will continue to close bases and cut the U.S. presence there to 5,500 troops by the end of 2015, and then draw down the remaining troops through the end of 2016, leaving only a residual force of about 1,000 troops who would provide embassy security and maintain an office of security cooperation in Kabul.
Ghani has asked the White House to slow the drawdown this year, so that the closure of bases and departure of troops does not destabilize gains made against the Taliban during the spring, when violence typically resurges.
In a call with reporters Friday, Jeff Eggers, the National Security Council’s senior director for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said keeping those security gains is important to the White House.
“It wouldn’t be at this level of discussion, at this intensity if it weren’t important,” he said.
In preparation of a decision to potentially keep more U.S. bases there open longer, talks within the administration and with the Pentagon “have been focused on the near term — the impact on the [drawdown] plan, how if at all it needs to be adjusted,” Eggers said. “Real decisions are being taken on whether or not those bases will close on schedule.”
Both Eggers and the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dan Feldman, said the U.S. sees momentum and a more positive relationship with Afghanistan’s new government and is invested in shoring up the country’s security. The two presidents have held multiple rounds of talks about extending the U.S. troops since Ghani took office six months ago.
Eggers said Obama is expected to announce his decision during a press conference with Ghani at the White House Tuesday, which will follow a day of talks on security and the Afghan economy at Camp David.
