Obama Tells Pentagon: Plan for Full Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Photo Credit: NATONATO defense ministers began two days of talks in Brussels on Wednesday, frustrated by yet another unmet target date for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a bilateral security agreement pivotal to any ongoing foreign troop presence in the country beyond year’s end.

Signing of the BSA is a prerequisite for the concluding of a separate status of forces agreement between Afghanistan and NATO. Its member states had hoped for clarity before this week’s Brussels meeting, but the ministers will now discuss “the way forward in Afghanistan” without knowing whether the Alliance will in fact have a future role there.

On the eve of the meeting, President Obama, in a phone conversation with Karzai, effectively conceded that the mercurial Afghan leader will not sign the BSA before he leaves office after April elections; advised him that the U.S. was now preparing for a full troop withdrawal by the end of 2014; but also left open the possibility of signing the document “later this year” – that is, with Karzai’s successor – thereby allowing a proposed post-2014 counter-terror and training mission to proceed.

“However, the longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any U.S. mission,” the White House said in a summary of the phone call. “Furthermore, the longer we go without a BSA, the more likely it will be that any post-2014 U.S. mission will be smaller in scale and ambition.”

The BSA, designed to govern the presence of any U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the Dec. 31 end of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force mission, was drawn up over many months of often difficult negotiations, and approved by a gathering of tribal elders last November.