Since then, groups of U.S. military advisers, like Lt. Col. Hamann’s team, have been working to professionalize the Afghan forces before the White House’s 2014 withdrawal deadline.
That work will continue, with or without a bilateral security agreement, Hamann said.
U.S. forces are planning to shutter Combat Outpost Matun Hill after the holy month of Ramadan, which ends in August. By September, American forces plan to be completely withdrawn from the combat outpost, which is located near the provincial capital of Khost City.
{mosads}“We have to get out,” Hamann said.
The situation Hamann’s team faces here in eastern Afghanistan is not unlike the situation U.S. forces faced in 2009, ahead of the American pullout from Iraq.
Hamann, who was part of that transition team in Iraq at the time, noted that U.S. advisers pressed ahead with similar advise and assist operations with Iraq’s nascent military as Kabul and Washington debated a postwar plan.
In the end, a postwar security agreement could not be reached with Baghdad and U.S. forces ended up completely withdrawing.
A bilateral security deal with Afghanistan is increasingly in doubt, with the Obama administration reviving the “zero option” plan to leave no U.S. troops in the country after 2014.
The shift reportedly came after a contentious meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Tuesday, according to recent reports.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” a senior Western official told The New York Times.
“It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path,” the official added.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Karzai accused the U.S. of trying to negotiate its own peace deal with the Taliban and of abandoning the Kabul government.
U.S. and European officials said that while Karzai had made similar accusations in the past, it was the first time he had made such comments directly to Obama, who took offense and cited the Americans who have died in the country’s longest war as proof of the U.S. commitment.
In March, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, head of all American forces in Afghanistan, reportedly told House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) that they backed Mattis’s recommendation for keeping 13,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Dunford later backed off those claims while testifying before the Senate defense panel.
Dunford told committee members in April the situation in the country was too fluid, and that U.S. commanders needed more time before settling on a troop figure.
There are 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but half are expected to return home this summer.
The remaining 32,000 are set to rotate back to the U.S. after the April 2014 presidential elections, marking the end of the American war in Afghanistan.