US pledges ‘to stand by’ Afghanistan

PRESIDENT Barack Obama pledged yesterday that US forces would stand by Afghanistan even after Nato-led troops hand control of the fight against Taliban insurgents to Afghan forces in 2014.

Far from the dusty battlefields of Afghanistan, where more than 2,200 Allied troops have fallen in a vicious nine-year-old war, Obama and Nato leaders flew in to Lisbon for a two-day summit to set a handover date.

“We’ll announce that the transition to Afghan responsibility is about to start, in 2011. We hope this process will be completed by 2014,” Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters as the leaders arrived.

It was Afghan President Hamid Karzai who asked his Western allies to allow Afghanistan’s fledgling forces to take charge of the campaign by 2014, allowing the bulk of the 150,000-strong US-led force to return home.

Even as presidents, prime ministers and generals gathered in the white steel conference centre on the banks of the Tagus, the force in Afghanistan said another of its soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb.

And, in a sign that even fiercer fighting lies ahead, the Washington Post reported the US Marine Corps is preparing to deploy the powerful M1 Abrams main battle tank to the Afghan front for the first time.

“We finally have the strategy and resources to break the Taliban’s momentum, deprive insurgents of their strongholds, train more Afghan security forces, and assist the Afghan people,” Obama wrote in a widely published op-ed.

“Even as America’s transition and troop reductions will begin this July, Nato can forge a lasting partnership with Afghanistan to make it clear that, as Afghans stand up and take the lead, they will not stand alone,” Obama wrote.

“We cannot turn our backs on the Afghan people as before,” he added, in a separate interview with Spain’s El Pais daily.

The Alliance’s summit has been billed as one of the most important in its history, with meetings planned with the beleaguered Afghan leader Karzai and former Cold War foe Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev.

Karzai is in open disagreement with his Nato sponsors over combat tactics, and Medvedev’s Russia has in the recent past been fiercely critical of US missile plans, but the leaders hope both can be won over.

They also hope to unveil the alliance’s new “strategic concept”, a framework to govern how it orders security priorities in a world of multiple new threats and ever tighter defence budgets.

They will unveil plans for a network of radars and interceptors to form an anti-ballistic missile shield to protect Nato members, and allay Russia’s fears by inviting it to take part.