The last of U.S. surge troops sent to Afghanistan in 2009
have left Afghanistan. About 68,000 American troops remain
Washington (CNN) -- Nearly three years
after it began, the surge of U.S. troops to Afghanistan is
over.
In December
2009, on President Barack Obama's order, an additional
30,000 troops headed to the war-torn country hoping to
stabilize it and quash what was then widely viewed as a
Taliban resurgence despite just more than eight years of
war.
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Now, the last
several hundred of the extra troops have left Afghanistan,
according to a senior U.S. defense official.
Payoff? Assessing the Afghan surge
That still
leaves about 68,000 American troops still in the nation, as
was the case in late 2008. And violence continues to rage in
parts of Afghanistan, including numerous high-profile
"green-on-blue" attacks of late in which men dressed in
Afghan police and military uniforms open fire on other
Afghan security officers and coalition forces.
If all goes
to plan, the withdrawal of U.S. troops will continue as more
security responsibilities are handed over to Afghan
authorities.
NATO leaders
this May signed off on Obama's exit strategy that calls for
an end to combat operations next year and the withdrawal of
the U.S.-led international military force by the end of
2014.
After that, a
new and different NATO mission will advise, train and assist
an expected 350,000-strong Afghanistan force, NATO Secretary
General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said.
Obama
committed to the surge following years in which the U.S.
government poured troops and resources into the war in Iraq,
giving the Taliban time to rebuild and start retaking their
traditional stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
At the time,
progress toward having Afghan forces prepared to take over
security in their country had seemingly stalled.
Earlier this
month, the deputy commander of international forces in
Afghanistan said NATO-led forces had made progress. Yet Lt.
Gen. James L. Terry also noted the continued efforts by
insurgents to "divide the coalition from our Afghan
partners."
One example
of how the insurgency can strike, seemingly at will and
around the country, is last week's brazen assault on a
coalition base in southern Afghanistan that killed two U.S.
troops and destroyed six coalition fighter jets, as well as
a suicide attack in Kabul on Tuesday that killed 12 people.
Violence rages as surge troops depart Afghanistan
The senior
combat leader in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, said last
month that insurgent violence in southern Afghanistan was
down 3% over 2011 levels, but admitted it was not
"statistically significant."
However,
while violence levels may not have changed much, Allen said
the significant change was where the violence had moved.
"We have
pushed hard on the insurgency to push them out of the
population centers, much of which was cleared last year, and
we've continued to push them into an increasingly smaller
series of areas, districts, where we have, in many respects,
contained them," said Allen, head of NATO's International
Security Assistance Force.
Mark
Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington-based analyst
organization German Marshall Fund, positively pointed to
signs that "the insurgency is not the monolithic structure
it was back in 2009, when people said they were at the gates
of Kabul."
NATO restricts Afghan operations after 'green-on-blue'
killings, anti-Islam film
Yet
Jacobson, a former NATO adviser to Gen. David Petraeus when
the now CIA director was the top commander in Afghanistan,
also added flatly, "We have not seen as much success as we
had hoped for."
"Did the
surge provide the necessary impetus in terms of security and
the support of government and other activities so the
Taliban and the insurgency would be brought to the table? I
don't think that has happened as quickly as people had
originally hoped," said Jacobson.
The effort
to train Afghan forces isn't over, even as the coalition
troop withdrawal continues. Marine Gen. John A. Toolan, head
of allied forces in southern Afghanistan, said last April
that he'd seen improvement in Afghan security forces. Still,
he added more work needs to be done in intelligence, combat
medicine, special operations, artillery and criminal
investigation.
"As the
conventional forces leave, special operations forces will
continue to be required because their (Afghan military)
special operations capabilities are going to take a little
bit more time to nurture and mature," according to Toolan.
Opinion: Green-on-blue attacks show there's no easy way out
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