CHICAGO — NATO leaders agreed at a critical meeting Monday on a framework for winding down their combat mission in Afghanistan between now and the end of 2014 and made commitments on the length and ambition of their roles there long afterward.
“In the course of 2013, we expect Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the close of the meeting. “This will allow us to gradually and responsibly draw down and withdraw our troops, but we will remain combat-ready until we have completed our … mission” the following year.
The meeting, part of a two-day NATO summit, comes at a delicate moment for the Afghanistan effort. There is severe war fatigue in the United States and Europe, as well as fiscal constraints placed on NATO members and other contributing countries by a widespread economic crisis.
NATO members are cutting defense budgets, facing public opposition to the war and preparing for months of fighting against the Taliban even as the size of the coalition force decreases.
Rasmussen said he did not anticipate “dramatic” coalition withdrawals next year, despite a shift of the lead combat role to Afghan forces.
Within the broad agreement among NATO’s 28 members and 22 additional countries that are part of the effort, each nation will determine its own pace of withdrawal, coordinated with coalition military planners. About 132,000 international troops are in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them American.
Pakistan border route
U.S. officials have underscored the challenges ahead. One area that remains unresolved is the reopening of NATO’s ground supply routes through Pakistan, which the Islamabad government closed in November to protest a U.S. airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari attended the summit, but President Barack Obama did not hold a formal meeting with him. Instead, Obama had what White House officials called a “brief pull-aside” with the Pakistani leader, together with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on the sidelines of the larger NATO gathering.
In his remarks opening the meeting Monday morning, Obama thanked members of the Northern Distribution Network, a collection of Central Asian nations allowing NATO supplies to pass through their territory and into Afghanistan, for their help, while Zardari looked on uncomfortably.
The northern route is far longer and far more expensive than the payment Pakistan is now discussing with U.S. negotiators. Those expenses are expected to rise as NATO begins withdrawing large amounts of equipment from Afghanistan.
“Obviously, we would like to see a reopening of the transit routes as quickly as possible,” Rasmussen said. He said he met with Zardari and was optimistic that the Pakistani routes would reopen in the “near future.”
The NATO head also said Karzai, whose term ends in 2014, had agreed to significant political reforms and renewed efforts to end official corruption. NATO has been concerned about a lack of progress in electoral reforms, as well as about ongoing commitments to respect human rights, especially for Afghan women.
Approval of the transition plan by members of the military coalition in Afghanistan — known as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF — means that Afghan forces will be in the lead by the end of next year across the country.
After combat mission
Obama said the strategic partnership agreement he signed with Karzai this month guarantees a long-term international presence beyond the NATO combat mission. The agreement is designed, in part, to signal to Taliban leaders that the United States and other nations will not disappear from Afghanistan once the combat role ends.
The agreement ensures that “as Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone,” Obama said.
The administration is discussing with Karzai’s government the size of a follow-on force of U.S. troops that will remain beyond 2014 to provide advice and training for the Afghan force, as well as ongoing counterterrorism operations. Other alliance members are negotiating their agreements, and NATO hopes to replace the ISAF mission with a coordinated training and advisory mission.
Building and equipping a strong Afghan security force has been a primary NATO goal as it prepares to turn over combat responsibility, and alliance leaders also discussed how to pay for it.
In recent years, as the size of the combined Afghan army and national police force has grown toward a target of 352,000, nearly all of the training and equipment expenses have been borne by the United States, which last year spent $12 billion on the effort.
NATO plans, tentatively agreed to by the Karzai government, are that the Afghan force will shrink by about a third beginning in 2015. The administration has estimated the smaller force will cost about $4.1 billion a year. The United States asked its partners to make commitments by the summit to foot at least $1.3 billion of that amount.
Commitments made before Monday, largely by major European countries, were substantial but have not reached that goal.
The plan to both withdraw NATO combat forces and shrink the size of the Afghan force is based on assumptions that the Taliban will eventually reach a political accommodation with the Afghan government and cease fighting.
Other issues
Peace talks that the administration began with Taliban leaders in late 2010 have been stalled since January, and U.S. intelligence has seen indications that the insurgency has begun to fracture over the issue of whether to proceed with negotiations. Similar efforts by Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban and affiliated groups have made little progress.
The first day of the summit focused on broader NATO issues, including an agreement to put a new Europe-based missile defense system into operation. A declaration issued Monday renewed NATO’s invitation for Russia, which opposes the system, to cooperate with a system that will also provide it protection from ballistic missiles.
The alliance also said it was “following the evolution of the Syrian crisis with growing concern” and supported United Nations and Arab League efforts “to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.” Rasmussen said Sunday that NATO has no intention of intervening in Syria.
