Kabul - The United States and Nato formally ended their war
in Afghanistan on Sunday with a ceremony at their military headquarters in
Kabul as the insurgency they fought for 13 years remains as ferocious and
deadly as at any time since the 2001 invasion that unseated the Taliban regime
following the September 11 attacks.
The symbolic ceremony marked the end of the US-led
International Security Assistance Force, which will transition to a supporting
role with 13 500 soldiers, most of them American, starting January.
General John Campbell, commander of ISAF, rolled up and sheathed
the green and white ISAF flag and unfurled the flag of the new international
mission, called Resolute Support.
Enduring partnership
"Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an
enduring partnership" between Nato and Afghanistan, Campbell told an
audience of Afghan and international military officers and officials, as well
as diplomats and journalists.
He paid tribute to the international and Afghan troops who
have died fighting the insurgency, saying: "The road before us remains
challenging but we will triumph."
From January, the new mission will provide training and
support for Afghanistan's military, with the US accounting for almost 11 000
members of the residual force.
President Ashraf Ghani, who took office in September, signed
bilateral security agreements with Washington and Nato allowing the enduring
military presence.
The move has led to a spike in violence as the Taliban have
claimed it as an excuse to step up operations aimed at destabilising his
government.
ISAF was set up after the US-led invasion as an umbrella for
the coalition of around 50 nations that provided troops and took responsibility
for security across the country.
It ends with 2 224 American soldiers killed, according to an
AP tally, out of a total of some 3 500 foreign troop deaths.
The mission peaked at 140 000 troops in 2010 with a surge
ordered by US President Barack Obama to root the insurgents out of
strategically important regions, notably in the southern provinces of Helmand
and Kandahar, where the Taliban had its capital from 1996 to 2001.
Obama recently expanded the remit of the US forces remaining
in the country, allowing them to extend their counter-terrorism operations to
Taliban, as well as al-Qaeda, and to provide ground and air support for the
Afghan forces when necessary for at least the next two years.
Mixed feelings
Afghans have mixed feelings about the drawdown of foreign
troops, many believing that with the deteriorating security situation their
presence is needed to back up the Afghan effort to bring peace after more than
three decades of continual war.
"At least in the past 13 years we have seen
improvements in our way of life - freedom of speech, democracy, the people
generally better off financially," said 42-year-old shopkeeper Gul
Mohammad.
"But we do need the foreign troops to stay here at
least until our own forces are strong enough, while our economy strengthens,
while our leaders try to form a government," he said.
As Afghan forces assume sovereignty, the country is without
a Cabinet three months after Ghani's inauguration, and economic growth is near
zero due to the reduction of the international military and aid juggernauts.
The United States spent more than $100m on reconstruction in Afghanistan, on
top of the $1trillion war.
This year is set to be the deadliest of the war, according
to the United Nations, which expects civilian casualties to hit 10 000 for the
first time since the agency began keeping records in 2008. It says that most of
the deaths and injuries are caused by Taliban attacks.
Insurgent violence
In the latest insurgent violence in eastern Wardak province,
two teenage boys were killed late on Saturday, when a rocket was fired near a
children's volleyball match in Nirkh district, an official said. Another five
children, aged between 11 and 14 years old, were wounded by shrapnel, said the
governor's spokesperson Attaullah Khogyani. He blamed the Taliban.
In Kapisa, also in the east, Governor Abdul Saboor Wafa's
office said eight insurgents were killed on Saturday night in an army
counter-insurgency operation.
This has also been a deadly year for Afghanistan's security
forces - army, paramilitary and police - with around 5 000 deaths recorded so
far. Most of those deaths, or around 3 200, have been policemen, according to
Karl Ake Roghe, the outgoing head of EUPOL, the European Union Police Mission
in Afghanistan, which funds and trains a police force of 157 000.
Nato's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that
Afghanistan's 350 000 strong security forces are ready to take on the
insurgency alone, despite complaints by officials that they lack the necessary
assets, such as air support, medical evacuation and intelligence.
Roghe said that while the Taliban have stretched their
presence, the methodology has not changed, indicating a lack of insurgent
military capacity despite the rise in attacks.
"They make a lot of damage, they send gunmen and
suicide bombers to blow up the front wall and then they are immediately killed,
so they achieve nothing," he said.
