AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Nearly two years after President Barack Obama ordered 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to tamp down the escalating Taliban violence, the last of those surge troops has left the country, U.S. officials said Thursday.
The withdrawal, which leaves 68,000 American troops in the war zone, comes as the security transition to Afghan forces is in trouble, threatened by a spike in so-called insider attacks in which Afghan army and police, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have been attacking and killing U.S. and NATO units.
And it’s called into question the core strategy that relies on NATO troops working shoulder to shoulder with Afghans, training them to take over the security of their own country so the U.S. and its allies can leave at the end of 2014 as planned.
The number of U.S. forces there peaked at about 101,000 last year, and they have been leaving slowly over the past several months.
The surge was aimed at beating back the Taliban to give the Afghan government and its security forces the time and space to take hold. The key goal was to ensure that the Taliban did not regain a foothold in the country that could allow it once again to become a safe haven for terror groups. And there was hope that Taliban members would be willing to come to the peace table.
Military commanders say the war strategy is on track and that they have made broad gains against the Taliban. And U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has characterized the insider attacks as the last gasp of a desperate insurgency.
But other top military leaders, including U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are worried about the impact of the attacks on the troops. Dempsey called them a “very serious threat” to the war campaign and has declared that “something has to change.”
BABY BORN ON U.K. BASE
Hours after a British soldier in Afghanistan told medics she was suffering from stomach pains, the Royal Artillery gunner unexpectedly gave birth to a boy — the first child ever born to a member of Britain’s armed forces in combat.
Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that the soldier told authorities she had not been aware she was pregnant and only consulted doctors on the day she went into labor.
The soldier, who arrived in Afghanistan in March, delivered the child Tuesday at Camp Bastion, the vast desert camp in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province where Prince Harry is deployed and a Taliban attack last week killed two U.S. Marines.
“Mother and baby are both in a stable condition in the hospital and are receiving the best possible care,” the ministry said in a statement.
The U.K. does not allow female soldiers to deploy on operation if they are pregnant. Although the soldier’s child was conceived before her tour of duty began in March, she is not likely to face censure.
Britain has sent female soldiers home from wars after they became pregnant — including about 60 from Afghanistan — but hasn’t previously had a serviceman go into labor in a war zone.
In 2009, the U.S. military in Iraq issued a policy that could punish soldiers who became pregnant there and their sexual partners — then quickly rescinded it after a storm of criticism.
The British soldier, a citizen of Fiji, is one of about 500 British military women serving in Afghanistan.
She also is among about 2,000 Fijians who serve in the British military, even though the country became independent from Britain in 1970.
Information for this article was contributed by David Stringer of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 09/21/2012