Obama to leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, senior official says

Obama to leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, senior official says

President Obama speaks during a visit to U.S. soldiers Saturday at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (Evelyn Chavez / U.S. Department Of Defense/EPA)

Karen DeYoung 
11:36 AM

President Obama has decided to leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for one year beyond the withdrawal of combat forces in December, according to a senior administration official.

The troops will include both forces to train and advise Afghanistan’s military and a separate group of Special Operations forces to continue counterterrorism missions against what the official called “the remnants of al-Qaeda.”

The decision, to be announced Tuesday afternoon, is contingent upon whether Afghanistan’s new president signs a bilateral security agreement that current President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign. The two candidates in a runoff election scheduled for June 14 have both said they will sign the accord.

The 9,800 troops will be based around Afghanistan until the end of 2015, after which they will be reduced by roughly half and consolidated in Kabul and at the Bagram airfield north of the capital.

At the end of 2016, most of those remaining troops will be withdrawn and the U.S. military presence will be confined to a defense group at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the announcement.