The United States will keep as many as 1,000 more troops than planned in Afghanistan for the first part of 2015, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Saturday.
Hagel said the increase, above the original plan for about 9,800 American troops to remain in Afghanistan past this year, was not in response to a recent uptick in Taliban attacks.
The U.S. will keep up to 10,800 troops in Afghanistan for the first few months of 2015 and then restart the drawdown, which is scheduled to reach 5,500 troops by the end of next year.
"(President Obama) has provided U.S. 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," Hagel said at a joint news conference at the presidential palace with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. "But the president's authorization will not change our troops' missions or the long-term timeline for our drawdown."
The U.S. decided to keep the additional forces in the country temporarily because planned troop commitments by U.S. allies for a NATO train-and-assist mission starting in January have been slow to materialize. NATO countries were supposed to contribute about 2,200 troops to the residual force, for a total of about 12,000.
Hagel, who arrived in Kabul on a previously unannounced trip one day after Obama announced he would nominate Ashton Carter to succeed him, was making his fourth and final trip as Defense secretary to Afghanistan. He was brimming with optimism about the prospects for stability, saying he believes the Afghans will stifle the recent surge in Taliban attacks in Kabul.
The Taliban, Islamists who ruled the country from 1996 until ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, regrouped substantially after the U.S. shifted its military focus to Iraq in 2003. They are now trying to destabilize Ghani's new government.
Hagel said they have failed in that effort so far and are not likely to succeed.
"I have confidence in the Afghan security forces that they will continue to meet these challenges," he said.
However, he said it's not surprising the Taliban are able to mount significant attacks in the capital.
"The Taliban are going to continue to have pockets of resurgence, and it's predictable that they would do everything they possibly could to disrupt" the new government.
In September, the United States and Afghanistan signed a long-delayed security agreement to allow 9,800 troops to remain past the end of this year. U.S. and Afghan officials had agreed on terms of the accord over a year earlier, but then-Afghan president Hamid Karzai refused to sign, complaining that U.S. airstrikes had killed Afghan civilians and that the U.S. had made overtures to the Taliban.
Last month, President Obama approved a plan to let U.S. troops protect themselves and allies in Afghanistan. The plan allows airstrikes to aid U.S., allied and Afghan troops, but was not intended to allow offensive operations against the Taliban.
The changes reflect a more cooperative role with the new government in Kabul; Ghani enjoys a stronger relationship with the U.S. than Karzai did.
The United States had a peak of about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, according to the Pentagon. The U.S. combat mission officially ends Dec. 31, and U.S. troops are to be removed entirely by 2017.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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