BRUSSELS--U.S. forces will cede the lead role in combat operations in Afghanistan next year, but will keep fighting alongside Afghan troops, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday, as the Obama administration struggled to clear up confusion over its Afghan exit strategy.
Panetta surprised allies on Wednesday by suggesting the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan would end in 2013, the first time Washington had floated such a deadline. On Thursday, Panetta emphasized to reporters that U.S. troops in Afghanistan would remain "combat-ready" as the United States winds down its longest war. But he said the troops would largely shift to a train-and-assist role as Afghan forces take responsibility for security before an end-2014 deadline for full Afghan control.
"I want to be clear: Even as Afghans assume the security lead, ISAF (international forces) will continue to have to be fully combat-ready and we will engage in combat operations as necessary," Panetta said.
Final decisions on the pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and the hand-over to forces loyal to Afghan President Hamid Karzai are not due to be made until U.S. President Barack Obama and fellow NATO leaders hold a summit in Chicago in May. But Panetta's remarks on Wednesday, made en route to a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, appeared intended to begin a discussion over timetables and possibly set the stage for an accelerated transition in Afghanistan.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that while Panetta had not announced a new policy, it was possible and "desirable" to have the transition take place earlier. "The president does not believe that U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan for the sake of staying. They should stay there to fulfill their mission and then he will bring them home," Carney said.
Obama, who withdrew the last of the U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, has been willing to scale down the American presence in Afghanistan more rapidly than some of his military commanders preferred. The United States entered Afghanistan in late 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks to overthrow its Taliban-led government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. Washington provides about 90,000 of the 130,000 foreign troops there.
While U.S. officials insisted there was no contradiction in the U.S. message, comments by a senior NATO official underscored the potential for confusion. "He (Panetta) said the combat role will come to an end but he also said combat will continue. And that's exactly what I'm saying," the NATO official said.
Panetta, speaking in Brussels, said there was a general consensus among members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force that Afghans should take the security lead at some point in 2013, but that ISAF forces would have to continue participating in combat operations in some areas as necessary. "Between now and the end of 2014, we're prepared to engage in combat, whether we're in the lead or the Afghans are," a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity.
NATO officials stressed that while the timelines had not been explicitly spelled out before, given the 2014 deadline, handing lead security responsibilities to Afghan troops would always have had to take place by the middle of next year.
CIA Director David Petraeus told a congressional hearing that Panetta's comments had been "overanalyzed" and were "exactly in line" with the policy started last summer. "If you are going to have it completed totally by the end of 2014, obviously somewhere in 2013 you have had to initiate that in all of the different locations so that you can complete the remaining tasks," he said.
