WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s plan to withdraw some US troops from Afghanistan is a welcome sign the country can start defending itself, President Hamid Karzai said in remarks aired yesterday.
“The number of troops that he announced will be withdrawn this year and the rest next year is a sign that Afghanistan is taking over its own security and trying to defend its territory by its own means, so we are happy with the announcement,” Mr Karzai told CNN in an interview.
“As for the number of troops, we have no opinion on that.”
President Barack Obama unveiled on Wednesday a plan to remove 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year and 33,000 by the end of next summer, a pace some top military officials have said is too aggressive.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen David Petraeus, top US commander in Afghanistan, said in congressional testimony that Mr Obama’s drawdown was riskier than they recommended but they backed the strategy to start winding down the nearly decade-old war.
Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, told CNN's State of the Unionprogramme yesterday the planned drawdown appeared to be politically driven and could allow the Taliban to gain ground.
“The time line is just too darned close. ... The fact that it lines up to have those troops out before the first debate of 2012 is concerning to me mainly because the conditions on the ground have not changed,” Rogers said.
Mr Karzai said information from local sources he has received indicated that “security in parts of the country has improved, that life is better now. Of course, not desirable, but better,” he said.
Military and civilian casualties hit record levels in 2010, the most violent year of the war since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the country’s Taliban government in late 2001.
This year is following a similar trend, with violence growing across the country since the Taliban announced a spring offensive at the beginning of May.
A suicide car bomber killed at least 20 people, and possibly as many as 35, in an attack at a hospital in a remote district of the eastern Logar province on Saturday that damaged the hospital’s maternity ward.
In a separate incident an eight-year-old girl was killed when a bag of explosives given to her by insurgents exploded as she approached a police outpost in southern Afghanistan, the ministry of the interior said yesterday.
The incident took place in the Char Chino district of Uruzgan province. – (Reuters)