America has no long-term designs on Afghanistan, says President Barack Obama, as his administration sends more troops there while pulling out of Iraq.
Mr Obama said on Friday that all American combat forces would leave Iraq by 31 August 2010, while 35,000 to 50,000 troops would stay till the end of 2011 to train and equip the Iraqi forces, protect civilian reconstruction projects and conduct limited counter-terrorism operations.
The President said that Iraq had weathered "horrific" sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007 but that violence had now been substantially reduced, while the capabilities of Iraq's own security forces had improved.
Mindful of Afghan sentiments
At the same time, Mr Obama's administration intends to send another 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan as part of a fresh push against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
The new President made it clear he was well aware of the sentiments of the Afghan people, who have fiercely resisted foreign invaders for centuries.
"One of the things that I think we have to communicate in Afghanistan is that we have no interest or aspiration to be there over the long term," Mr Obama said in an interview with PBS public television.
"There's a long history, as you know, in Afghanistan of rebuffing what is seen as an occupying force and we have to be mindful of that history as we think about our strategy," he said.
He declined to say, however, just when US troops would finally leave Afghanistan. "My goal is to get US troops home as quickly as possible without leaving a situation that allows for potential terrorist attacks against the United States," he said.
Some critics within Mr Obama's Democratic Party have questioned the extra deployment to Afghanistan, fearing that the US will get bogged down in an escalating conflict similar to Vietnam.
Rare estimate of Taliban strength and scope
Offering a rare estimate of enemy strength, Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar says that 10,000 to 15,000 Taliban are fighting in Afghanistan and that they are active in up to 17 of the country's 34 provinces.
Mr Atmar says that most of them are foreigners linked to al-Qaeda or Central Asian extremist groups.
The Taliban have recently carried out a wave of attacks in Afghanistan, including simultaneous strikes on three government offices in Kabul that left 26 people dead as well as eight of the attackers.
