The US will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan in 2016 after maintaining a military presence in the country for the next two years, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday.
Mr Obama said that 9,800 US troops would likely remain in the country in 2015, after the conclusion of the formal Nato combat operation at the end of this year. The US force would then be cut in half at the end of 2015, with all the troops withdrawing at the end of 2016.
“It is time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “Americans have learned that it is harder to end wars than to begin them, yet this is how wars end in the 21st century.” There are currently 32,000 US troops in Afghanistan.