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Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tour a crafts bazaar in Kabul on Tuesday as they attend an international conference on Afghanistan.
AP photo
KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. and its international partners agreed Tuesday on a roadmap for Afghan forces to take the lead in securing the nation by 2014 amid doubts that they would meet the first goal — for the Afghans to assume control in certain areas by the end of the year.
At a one-day conference in a locked-down Afghan capital, President Hamid Karzai said he was determined that his soldiers and police will be responsible for all military and law enforcement operations by 2014.
“This is a national objective that we have to fulfill, and we must,” Karzai told reporters after the conference, attended by more than 40 foreign ministers and other dignitaries including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Talk of a 2014 date — which corresponds with the end of Karzai’s term — enables politicians to tell their war-weary publics that the war will not drag on indefinitely, draining resources at a time of economic hardship and rising death tolls.
It also sends a signal to the Afghans that the Western commitment to the country will extend beyond July 2011, when President Barack Obama says he will begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Nonetheless, it leaves open the question of whether the Afghans will be ready to manage their affairs, even four years down the road.
The international community supported Karzai’s 2014 goal and endorsed a phased-in transition for Afghan policemen and soldiers to take the lead in the country’s 34 provinces.
“I can’t give you names of provinces, but our goal is to hand over lead responsibility to the Afghans when conditions permit,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
At a NATO meeting in Estonia in April, Fogh Rasmussen was more specific, saying transition was likely to start before the end of the year.
“Our aims in 2010 are clear: to take the initiative against the insurgents, to help the Afghan government exercise its sovereignty, and to start handing over responsibility for Afghanistan to the Afghans this year,” Fogh Rasmussen said at the time.
While officials at the conference insisted that transition was on track, there is internal discussion from Kabul to Washington to NATO headquarters in Brussels that the beginning could slip until least mid-2011, and perhaps later, according to a coalition official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the Afghan security forces are not ready and details of the plan for handing over control of certain areas is still undecided.