KABUL, Afghanistan — The American troop surge in Afghanistan is over.
More than a week ahead of schedule, the American military says it has completed what it called the “recovery,” meaning withdrawal, of the 33,000 surge troops it had sent to Afghanistan by the fall of 2010.
The milestone, which still leaves 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, went nearly unremarked here, with no statement from President Hamid Karzai or the United States military commander, Gen. John R. Allen, or even from the American ambassador. It was announced on the other side of the planet, by the American Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, during a visit to New Zealand.
“As we reflect on this moment, it is an opportunity to recognize that the surge accomplished its objectives of reversing Taliban momentum on the battlefield, and dramatically increased the size and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces,” Mr. Panetta said.
“What did the surge give us?” a senior American official reflected on Friday. “We’re going to hit a point where, I won’t say that’s as good as it gets, but now it’s up to them to hold what we gave them. Now really it’s Karzai’s turn.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as a matter of military policy.
The surge brought American troops to a high of 101,000, along with as many as another 50,000 coalition troops, mostly from NATO countries. Over the past three years, the increase in American troops helped to enable an accelerated training program, the senior American official said, with the Afghan police and army more than doubling in number by this year, to 300,000.
President Barack Obama ordered the increased surge troops at the urging of his military commanders in December 2009, and they poured into the country over the following seven months, most dramatically in southern and southwestern Afghanistan, denying to the Taliban longtime strongholds like Marja and Kandahar.
At the time, however, he insisted it was not an open-ended commitment of new troops and ordered that they return home by the end of September. Until Mr. Panetta’s announcement, military officials here had said the last of the surge forces would not be gone until Sept. 30.
The withdrawal has been taking place gradually, however, over the past five to six months.
While Panetta called it an “important milestone,” it went little-remarked in Afghanistan, partly because the gradual nature of the drawdown has not caused any apparent significant change on the ground so far.
The end of the surge was not even mentioned during a farewell speech and news conference by Simon Gass, the NATO senior civilian representative to Afghanistan for the past 18 months.
“As I depart from Afghanistan I feel that we are now within sight of handing over a security platform which will be sufficient for Afghanistan to be stable beyond 2014,” Mr. Gass said, speaking in Brussels on Thursday. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be peaceful, because the insurgency is still there.”
Similarly, Jan Kubis, the top United Nations representative in Kabul, in a speech Thursday to the Security Council in New York surveying the situation in Afghanistan, made no reference to the end of the surge.
While Taliban activity has been greatly curtailed by surge forces in the insurgents’ traditional areas in the south and west, they responded by increasing their efforts in the east and infiltrating even in northern areas where they previously had little presence.
The senior American official said that the surge forces had helped make Afghanistan’s cities relatively safe, although the insurgency remains a force in rural areas even in parts of the south.
“Eighty percent of the violence affects 17 percent of the population,” he said, adding that a large portion of the violence is clustered in just 10 of Afghanistan’s approximately 400 districts.
The insurgents also shifted increasingly to the use of roadside bombs and suicide bombers, instead of small arms and ground attacks. That greatly increased the number of civilian casualties, more than three-fourths of which are attributed to insurgents’ attacks, according to United Nations figures. For the first time this year, the overall civilian casualties began to decline in number, according to both NATO and United Nations figures, compared with last year.
However, the level of violence remains higher than it had been before the surge forces came. In the first six months of 2012, for instance, 1,145 civilians were killed, compared with 1,267 in the same period of 2010, when surge forces were only just arriving.
((ends))
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Auckland, New Zealand, and Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan.
More than a week ahead of schedule, the American military says it has completed what it called the “recovery,” meaning withdrawal, of the 33,000 surge troops it had sent to Afghanistan by the fall of 2010.
The milestone, which still leaves 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, went nearly unremarked here, with no statement from President Hamid Karzai or the United States military commander, Gen. John R. Allen, or even from the American ambassador. It was announced on the other side of the planet, by the American Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, during a visit to New Zealand.
“As we reflect on this moment, it is an opportunity to recognize that the surge accomplished its objectives of reversing Taliban momentum on the battlefield, and dramatically increased the size and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces,” Mr. Panetta said.
“What did the surge give us?” a senior American official reflected on Friday. “We’re going to hit a point where, I won’t say that’s as good as it gets, but now it’s up to them to hold what we gave them. Now really it’s Karzai’s turn.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as a matter of military policy.
The surge brought American troops to a high of 101,000, along with as many as another 50,000 coalition troops, mostly from NATO countries. Over the past three years, the increase in American troops helped to enable an accelerated training program, the senior American official said, with the Afghan police and army more than doubling in number by this year, to 300,000.
President Barack Obama ordered the increased surge troops at the urging of his military commanders in December 2009, and they poured into the country over the following seven months, most dramatically in southern and southwestern Afghanistan, denying to the Taliban longtime strongholds like Marja and Kandahar.
At the time, however, he insisted it was not an open-ended commitment of new troops and ordered that they return home by the end of September. Until Mr. Panetta’s announcement, military officials here had said the last of the surge forces would not be gone until Sept. 30.
The withdrawal has been taking place gradually, however, over the past five to six months.
While Panetta called it an “important milestone,” it went little-remarked in Afghanistan, partly because the gradual nature of the drawdown has not caused any apparent significant change on the ground so far.
The end of the surge was not even mentioned during a farewell speech and news conference by Simon Gass, the NATO senior civilian representative to Afghanistan for the past 18 months.
“As I depart from Afghanistan I feel that we are now within sight of handing over a security platform which will be sufficient for Afghanistan to be stable beyond 2014,” Mr. Gass said, speaking in Brussels on Thursday. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be peaceful, because the insurgency is still there.”
Similarly, Jan Kubis, the top United Nations representative in Kabul, in a speech Thursday to the Security Council in New York surveying the situation in Afghanistan, made no reference to the end of the surge.
While Taliban activity has been greatly curtailed by surge forces in the insurgents’ traditional areas in the south and west, they responded by increasing their efforts in the east and infiltrating even in northern areas where they previously had little presence.
The senior American official said that the surge forces had helped make Afghanistan’s cities relatively safe, although the insurgency remains a force in rural areas even in parts of the south.
“Eighty percent of the violence affects 17 percent of the population,” he said, adding that a large portion of the violence is clustered in just 10 of Afghanistan’s approximately 400 districts.
The insurgents also shifted increasingly to the use of roadside bombs and suicide bombers, instead of small arms and ground attacks. That greatly increased the number of civilian casualties, more than three-fourths of which are attributed to insurgents’ attacks, according to United Nations figures. For the first time this year, the overall civilian casualties began to decline in number, according to both NATO and United Nations figures, compared with last year.
However, the level of violence remains higher than it had been before the surge forces came. In the first six months of 2012, for instance, 1,145 civilians were killed, compared with 1,267 in the same period of 2010, when surge forces were only just arriving.
((ends))
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Auckland, New Zealand, and Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan.