WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the U.S. is making plans for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by year’s end in the absence of a bilateral security agreement.
Obama delivered the news Tuesday to Karzai in a phone call, telling him that “because he has demonstrated that it is unlikely that he will sign the BSA, the United States is moving forward with additional contingency planning,” according to a statement released by the White House.
The U.S. and Afghanistan agreed to details of a security pact last year, and the agreement also was endorsed by a council of 3,000 Afghan tribal elders known as the loya jirga. But Karzai caught U.S. officials off guard by then declaring he wanted his successor to sign the agreement.
In his call Tuesday, Obama left open the possibility of reaching a security agreement later this year but said the longer it takes to reach an agreement, the smaller the residual U.S. force that will be left in the country to conduct training and counter terrorism operations.
The White House statement marks a ramping up of pressure on the Afghan government as Karzai has continued to frustrate U.S. goals after 13 years of war. In addition to refusing to sign a security agreement and criticizing the U.S. role in his country, Karzai ignored Obama administration protests this month and freed 65 prisoners accused of killing civilians and soldiers and considered by the U.S. to pose a threat.
Tuesday’s phone call was the first direct contact between Obama and Karzai since June.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel offered his “strong support” for Obama’s decision, which he called a “prudent step” given Karzai’s unwillingness to sign an agreement before the April election for his successor.
Hagel said in a statement that the Defense Department will “ensure adequate plans are in place to accomplish an orderly withdrawal by the end of the year should the United States not keep any troops in Afghanistan after 2014.”
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who arrived Tuesday in Afghanistan to visit U.S. military leaders and assess the security situation inside the country, also stressed the need for the security pact.
Dempsey said that while the U.S. remains committed to helping Afghanistan after this year, “I can’t ask the young men and women to serve in a country without the protections afforded by a bilateral security agreement.”
Obama made the call to Karzai ahead of a NATO defense ministers meeting this week in Brussels, where the future of forces in Afghanistan will be a topic.
NATO’s top commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, said earlier this month that because of political and budgetary timelines, several allied nations that have committed troops to Afghanistan can’t wait long to decide what role, if any, they will play after this year.
Tuesday’s announcement will give more direction for the discussions in Brussels, as military planners now know that one of the options they must prepare for is a complete withdrawal, said a U.S. defense official, who asked for anonymity to discuss deliberations with U.S. allies.
The White House has said that without a security accord, no U.S. troops can remain in Afghanistan beyond this year. The inability to reach a similar pact in Iraq triggered a complete pullout of U.S. forces in 2011.
Obama told Karzai the U.S. “will leave open the possibility of concluding [an agreement] with Afghanistan later this year” under a new government, according to the statement. The longer it takes to reach an agreement “the more likely it will be that any post-2014 U.S. mission will be smaller in scale and ambition.”
It’s unclear whether Afghanistan’s new president will be any more likely than Karzai to sign the security agreement. There is no clear front-runner among the 11 candidates in the race to replace the president, who is constitutionally ineligible for a third term and has not endorsed a successor.
The longer the U.S. waits to make a decision on its future in Afghanistan, the more expensive and risky a full withdrawal would become. With less time to move troops and equipment, the military will have to fly assets out rather than use cheaper ground transportation.
The Pentagon’s biggest challenge will be closing large military facilities, including the Bagram and Kandahar air bases. Shutting down such a base typically takes about 10 months, but military officials said they are prepared to do it in a much shorter - although far more expensive - period if necessary.
Military officials said commanders would still like to have about six months.
The Pentagon is planning to cut the total American force in Afghanistan to as low as 20,000 by midsummer, giving commanders the ability to pull all troops out by Dec. 31 if no agreement is reached. There are about 33,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan.
Obama has not decided how many troops he would be willing to leave in Afghanistan if the security agreement is signed.
Options under consideration include 10,000 U.S. troops, along with 5,000 NATO and other international troops, to remain until the end of 2015 at bases around Afghanistan; a somewhat smaller number, based primarily in Kabul, with the ability to travel around the country as needed; or 3,000 U.S. troops restricted to bases in Kabul and Bagram.
As the U.S. prepares to pull out its combat forces, it also has quietly begun to whittle down the population of detainees it holds at a military prison in Afghanistan. However, it is struggling over what to do with some who are regarded as particularly dangerous, U.S. officials said.
The Afghan authorities have said they will not continue to hold foreign detainees.
Some of those from the Parwan Detention Facility near Bagram air base have been repatriated or resettled in recent months. The transfers takes the number of prisoners to 49, down from 54 in November.
U.S. officials expect to continue repatriating or resettling some detainees, but they said there are no easy options for a subset of inmates suspected of serious war crimes or regarded as a continuing terrorist threat.
Taking some of them to the United States for trial in a military commission, an option officials said is being considered by the Obama administration, could run into political opposition or be stymied by a lack of court-ready evidence.
The Justice Department and the Pentagon are supposed to make recommendations this month on which detainees to prosecute. Officials said the number of people being looked at for prosecution is in the single digits.
Information for this article was contributed by Margaret Talev, Gopal Ratnam, Terry Atlas and James G. Neuger of Bloomberg News; by Karen DeYoung, Adam Goldman and Julie Tate of The Washington Post; and by Julie Pace, Robert Burns, Deb Riechmann, Lolita C. Baldor and Cassandra Vinograd of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/26/2014