General sees bleak Afghan future without pact

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Depicting a grim future for Afghanistan without U.S. help, the top U.S. military officer said Wednesday that Afghanistan’s refusal to sign a security agreement with the United States may make the fight more difficult this year, embolden the enemy and prompt some Afghan security forces to cooperate with the Taliban to “hedge their bets.”

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent the day with his commanders and troops in Afghanistan working to manage the aftereffects of President Barack Obama’s order Tuesday to begin actively planning for a total withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year. In back-to-back meetings, he urged them to focus on the considerable military work they have to do and not worry about next year.

Dempsey said the possible exit of all U.S. troops was making Afghan military leaders anxious and eating away at their troops’ confidence. He said he spoke with some Afghan leaders after the Tuesday announcement, and they asked him to stay committed to an enduring U.S. presence and told him they were doing all they could to get the security agreement signed.

Frustrated with Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai, Obama ordered the Pentagon to accelerate planning for a full U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of this year. But Obama also is holding out hope that Afghanistan’s next president, to be elected this spring, will sign a stalled security agreement that could prevent the U.S. from having to take that step.

The administration would like to leave up to 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after combat operations end Dec. 31 to continue training Afghan forces and conduct counter terrorism missions. But without the agreement that would give international forces legal standing to stay in Afghanistan, Obama has threatened to pull all troops out.

Obama spoke Tuesday with Karzai, the first direct conversation between the two presidents since June. Karzai has refused to sign the pact.

The impasse is having a negative effect, Dempsey said.

“It is having an effect on the enemy and in some ways I think encourages them, and intelligence supports that,” Dempsey said. And, he said,the uncertainty of a continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan may encourage Afghan security forces in some parts of the country to “hedge their bets.”

“There are parts of the country where it seems to be, there will … be some accommodations between the Afghan security forces and the Taliban,” Dempsey said. “I think a delay in the [security agreement] might accelerate those kind of accommodations. I don’t think it will be widespread by the way, but we do have to be alert to that possibility.”

He also said he expects the Taliban will become more aggressive during the summer fighting season. Noting that the Afghan forces were in the combat lead last year for the first time, he said they did well. “So I think the Taliban has always calculated that they need to up their game this year to confront what they now realize is a pretty credible opponent.”

He added that while the U.S. can wait until after the spring elections before deciding whether to completely withdraw all forces, that decision will have to be made sometime in the summer.

Dempsey said the U.S. is nowhere near the point where the military couldn’t make that decision and successfully get all troops and equipment out by Dec. 31.

While Dempsey visited commanders, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met his NATO counterparts in Brussels this week. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the 19,000 troops from other countries also would pull out of Afghanistan after year’s end without a security agreement.

“Let me stress, this is not our preferred option,” Rasmussen said. “But these are the facts.”

The U.S. and Afghanistan agreed to details of a security pact last year, but Karzai then declared he wanted his successor to sign the agreement.

The longer the U.S. waits to decide on its future in Afghanistan, the more expensive and risky a full withdrawal would become, because the military would have to fly assets out rather than use cheaper ground transportation.

The Pentagon is planning to cut the American force in Afghanistan to as low as 20,000 by midsummer to make it easier for commanders to pull all troops out by Dec. 31 if necessary. There are currently about 33,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Deb Riechmann, Robert Burns and Cassandra Vinograd of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 02/27/2014

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