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Obama admin. delays Afghanistan withdrawal to 2014
The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to remove emphasis from Barack Obama's pledge that he would begin withdrawing US forces in July 2011.
Administration and military officials say the new policy will be on display next week at a NATO conference in Lisbon, where the administration hopes to introduce a timetable that calls for the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014. This is when the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, said Afghan troops could take over security, three senior officials said.
The Pentagon has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets its NATO allies.
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What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December review of the strategy will be less expansive and will offer no big changes in strategy, the officials said. So far, the US Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, has not submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of the officials said.
The shift has already begun privately and came in part because US officials realized that conditions in Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal. ''During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully transition to the Afghans? Of course, we are not going to fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011,'' said one senior administration official. ''Right now, we think we can start in 2011 and fully transition some time in 2014.''