NFT: U.S. and Afghanistan Sign Long-Term Security Agreement

Lost in all of the ISIS and Ebola news lately is the news that the Bilateral Security Agreement was finally signed by the Afghan and United States governments.

Quote:

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Afghan officials signed a long-term security pact here on Tuesday, nearly a year after the agreement was cast into limbo by a breakdown of trust at the highest levels of each allied government. The new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, sworn in just a day earlier, oversaw the signing of the security pact in a cordial ceremony at the presidential palace, sending a clear message that he meant to heal an alliance that had soured under his predecessor, Hamid Karzai. “We have signed an agreement for the good of our people,” he said, outlining a relationship of “shared dangers and shared interests” with the United States. The deal, known as a bilateral security agreement, will allow 9,800 American and at least 2,000 NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan after the international combat mission formally ends on Dec. 31. Most of them will help train and assist the struggling Afghan security forces, although some American Special Operations forces will remain to conduct counterterrorism missions.

While there definitely were doubts to whether this agreement would be signed in the past year, the new Afghan president was pretty straight forward that he would sign it if he was elected president.

I'm in favor of the smaller military footprint in Afghanistan with our forces focusing on training/advising and counterterrorism missions. In my opinion, the counterinsurgency strategy was a failure, and sooner we get the vast majority of our troops back home, the better. Let specialized forces focus on specific missions instead of the overly broad counterinsurgency mission.
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