LISBON: NATO leaders endorsed on Saturday a plan to start handing Afghan forces command of the war next year with the aim of ceding full control by 2014.
“We have launched the process by which the Afghan people will once again become masters in their own house,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference following a summit of Allied leaders.
Afghan forces will start taking the lead in security operations next year starting in some districts and provinces, and gradually spreading throughout the country, he said.
“The aim is for Afghan forces to be in the lead countrywide by the end of 2014,” the NATO chief said after signing the plan along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Rasmussen promised the alliance would stand by Afghanistan even after the transition.
“We will stay after transition in a supporting role,” he said. “President Karzai and I have signed an agreement on a long term partnership between NATO and Afghanistan that will endure beyond our combat mission,” he added.
“To put it simply, if the Taliban or anyone else aim to wait us out, they can forget it. We will stay as long at it takes to finish our job,” the NATO chief said.
On the other hand, the Taliban said NATO was heading for defeat in Afghanistan after the alliance announced plans to begin withdrawing troops from the country from next year.
“It has become clear that after nine years of occupation, the invaders are doomed towards the same fate as those that tread this path before them,” the group said in an emailed statement.
“Their troop surges, their new strategies, their new generals, their new negotiations, and their new propagandas have been of no avail,” it added. The Taliban said the withdrawal plans were a sign the 150,000-strong foreign force, which is mostly made up of US troops, had “exhausted” itself.
