Afghan transition on track: Pentagon

[1]

Undeterred by the spike in terrorist attacks on its forces inside Afghanistan, the US has said that there is no change in its withdrawal-timeline from the war-torn country.

"We are on track, and we will complete the withdrawal of rest of the surge forces by the end of September," Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt John Kirby told reporters.

After that, Commander of US and NATO forces General John Allen will do an analysis of what the campaign looks like then, at the end of 2012, and what he anticipates the needs and requirements will be going into 2013, Kirby said.

"He simply can't do that spadework right now while we're in the middle of the summer, and he still has those 23,000 at his disposal. And he owes the President an analysis and some thoughts about what force levels need to look like going into next year, and we are not at the stage right now where he can make that determination," Kirby said.

"This will be a discussion that he has with his military chain of command and with the civilian chain of command, and decisions will be forthcoming as a result of that conversation," the Pentagon spokesman said.

Kirby said the mandate of General Allen is to withdraw the remaining 23,000 surge forces by the end of September.

"How he gets to that point is up to him. He can control the pace of the recovery of those troops as long as they're out by the end of September," he said. The Pentagon spokesman said that the situation in Kandahar, of late, has not been good. "Clearly a tough day in Kandahar, or last couple of days.

"There's no question about that. I don't have any more specific information about earlier attack. We still believe and it still appears to be what we consider a green-on-blue, an insider threat attack," he said.

"Right now the number that we're dealing with is three, three attackers that were dressed in Afghan national security force uniforms. I don't know any more detail than that, whether it was police uniforms or army uniforms, but ANSF uniforms. And those three are still at large," he said.

"Then we had two others in the intervening hours between last night and now. In one of them, we do believe that it was at least potentially facilitated by an individual dressed in Afghan National Police uniform.

"But again, details are very sketchy right now. ISAF is certainly looking into this," he said. "But it's just too soon to say with any certainty the degree to which any of these are connected. They were all in the south, in Kandahar, or around Kandahar, I should say. But it's too soon to say that they were connected," Kirby said.