The United States and NATO want to end their combat mission in
Afghanistan next year, transitioning primarily to a training role in
which Afghan security forces will take the lead, Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta said Wednesday.

"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013 and then,
hopefully, by mid- to the latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make a
transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role," he
told reporters traveling with him to Brussels, according to Pentagon transcripts.



The result will be that "2014 then becomes a year of consolidating
the transition and making sure that those gains are in fact held, so
that we can move towards a more enduring presence beyond 2014."
That enduring presence will include "a large civilian presence" involved with development, he continued.



Under Panetta's scenario, the transition would come a year before the
2014 deadline to end the war in Afghanistan that had been set by the
Obama administration.

A U.S. administration official stressed that the transition is 2013
is the hope, but "nothing is final" until leaders of the NATO countries
convene in Chicago this May.

In a statement, Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed
Service Committee, called Panetta's timeline "a reasonable goal."

But the committee chairman, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, said it was
too early to make such predictions. "Announcing a change in mission in
Afghanistan - before we have even validated the Afghan Security Forces
can maintain stability in the areas we have already transitioned and
ahead of the fighting season - is premature," he said.

"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013 and then,
hopefully, by mid- to the latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make -
you know, to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise
and assist role, which is basically fulfilling what Lisbon was all
about," the administration official said.
Late last year, Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reported U.S. forces will be deployed within Afghan units as advisers and trainers, reducing the direct combat role of foreign troops in the country.

Afghanistan's security force exceeds 305,000 and is headed toward
352,000 this year. At the same time, the United States will be
withdrawing forces throughout 2012, with the goal of reducing U.S. troop
strength to 68,000 by year's end from more than 100,000. There will
also be 38,000 troops from other NATO countries.

The U.S. goal is for Afghan forces, advised by Americans, to take the lead.



"That will, in many respects, be a preview of how we'll see our
forces postured in the years to come," Allen said in December. "The
crossover point where we become largely an advisory, assisting and
education force versus a force that is engaged at any given moment in
counterinsurgency, that crossover point remains to be determined."

The United States will still maintain its commitment to transition to
an Afghan lead by the end of 2014, according to Pentagon spokesman
Capt. John Kirby.

"Nothing has changed about the strategy our troops are executing: We
are working to prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a safe haven
for al Qaeda and its allies," Kirby said in a statement. "Nothing has
changed about the goal of developing strong and capable Afghan security
forces."

The news comes a few days after France announced that it will
withdraw its troops a year earlier than 2014. That announcement came
after four of its troops were killed by an Afghan soldier.
The Obama administration has taken pains to to show that the alliance is still strong and committed to the 2014 deadline.



"The end of this process, the end of this transition, the end of this
drawdown in which the Afghans fully move into the lead, is slated to be
2014," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said in
Chicago on Tuesday. "Just as we made decisions about the pace of our
drawdown, other nations will make decisions."

NATO will meet in May in Chicago to discuss the war and to ensure
that the 28-member alliance is "aligned on our drawdowns and
transition," Rhodes said.

But there are significant questions as to whether the NATO and
Afghanistan can sufficiently weaken the Taliban or bring them to the
negotiating table.