US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta on Saturday clarified that NATO forces will not stop fighting in Afghanistan in 2013, but he confirmed that the US hoped to hand over the combat lead to Afghan forces that year.
According to a report in the Foreign Policy magazine, many European and NATO officials at the 2012 Munich Security Conference were still a little miffed they had to learn about the strategy shift in the newspapers two days ago. On the way to Brussels to attend the NATO defence ministers meeting on February 2, Panetta made news by saying that US forces will transition out of a lead combat role next year.
“Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013,” Panetta said. “Hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013 we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role.” According to the report, on Saturday morning in Munich, sitting beside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Panetta made the same announcement again, but this time with a bit more nuance.
“Our bottom line [in Afghanistan] is ‘in together, out together’. As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014. Our discussions included considerations about how ISAF will move from the lead combat role to a support, advise, and assist role as Afghan security forces move into the lead,” he said. “We hope Afghan forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013. But of course ISAF will continue to be fully combat capable and we will engage in combat as necessary thereafter.”
European officials in Munich said they understood the reason for the new milestone, which was to give the Afghans some time to adjust to having the combat lead while NATO forces are still present in large enough numbers to help them out, especially if there are bumps along the road.
But several NATO and European officials were shocked and some were even a little miffed that Panetta had made a major change in the messaging over the Afghanistan war without giving them a heads up.