Washington : US president has announced in a speech from while house that he will withdraw around 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by the summer of 2012, to draw down 'surge' he put in place in 2009 would see 10,000 troops depart this year, beginning in July, and another 23,000 next summer, a faster and larger withdrawal than the president's top military officials had recommended, according to reports.
The US currently has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. After the drawdown, around 68,000 will remain, but they will leave at a "steady pace," and by 2014 the United States will have turned over security responsibility to Afghan forces, Obama said.
Since he took office in January 2009, Obama has roughly tripled the size of the American force in Afghanistan, but in his speech, he argued that the mission - the longest war in American history - was coming to an end.
"We've inflicted serious losses on the Taliban and taken a number of its strongholds. Along with our surge, our allies also increased their commitments, which helped stabilise more of the country," he said.
"Afghan security forces have grown by over 100,000 troops, and in some provinces and municipalities, we have already begun to transition responsibility for security to the Afghan people."
Though Obama said his surge was aimed primarily at preventing al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as a safe haven, a senior administration official briefing reporters before the speech on Wednesday said the government had not seen a "terrorist threat" from Afghanistan in seven to eight years.
He said about 50 to 75 al-Qaeda members remained in Afghanistan, while the primary al-Qaeda threat to the US for the past two-and-a-half years had come from within Pakistan.
