The United States will keep an extra 1,000 troops in Afghanistan into 2015, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday during a surprise visit to Kabul.
The increase, which is to cover shortfalls from other NATO countries, means the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will be 10,800 troops at the beginning of the year, rather than 9,800 as previously planned.
“The force generation effort for Resolute Support is several months behind where we hoped it would be at this time,” Hagel told reporters. “As a result, President Obama has provided US military commanders the flexibility to manage any temporary force shortfall that we might experience for a few months as we allow for coalition troops to arrive in theater.
“This will mean the delayed withdrawal of up to 1,000 U.S. troops,” he said.
Hagel said the extended deployment would not change the U.S. mission of advising and assisting Afghan forces, but the remaining troops would be available to provide “limited combat enabler support” to those forces as well.
Pentagon officials previously had said the other mission for the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan — counterterrorism — could be defined to include continuing operations against the Taliban.
Hagel’s visit to Kabul also settles the question of whether he had snubbed President Obama at Friday’s announcement that Ashton Carter would replace him. Hagel had been expected to attend the ceremony but defense officials said shortly before it began that he would not be there.
Flight time between Washington and Kabul is about 22 hours, which means Hagel would have been en route to Afghanistan at that time.
