Obama agrees to slow U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

President Obama on Tuesday met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and agreed to keep about 9,800 troops in the country through the end of this year, slowing the planned American drawdown.

But Obama said that he would stick to the current plan to close the remaining U.S. bases and consolidate U.S. forces in Kabul by the end of 2016, effectively ending the longest war in U.S. history.

“This visit is an opportunity to begin a new chapter in the partnership between our two nations,” Obama said. “We agreed to keep in place our close security cooperation. Afghanistan remains a very dangerous place.”

The meeting in the Oval Office came as the administration is deliberating over how many troops to leave in the country beforeending the 14-year mission entirely by January 2017. Vice President Biden and Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah also took part in some of the high-level discussions.

Ahead of the meeting, the White House said the pair would “discuss a range of issues including security, economic development, and U.S. support for the Afghan-led reconciliation process.”

Though the White House announced a plan in May to wind down the U.S. troop presence to fewer than 10,000 forces by the end of 2014, increasing violence and months of political turmoil following Afghanistan’s elections last year convinced the administration to delay the deadline.

Both Ghani and U.S. military officials have been pushing to slow the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Their requests were driven in part by the increase in deaths among Afghan civilians and security forces during the past year.

Shortly before Obama and Ghani appeared, several former U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan and former senior officials from the Obama and Bush administration’s made public an open letter to Obama calling on him to reconsider his plans to end the war.

“A full U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 will unnecessarily put at risk hard-won gains of the last 13 years that came in part through the great sacrifices of American soldiers, diplomats, intelligence officers and development professionals,” the letters states.

Credit: Washington post