WASHINGTON - The United States is unlikely to have a military presence in Afghanistan post 2014, a top Pentagon commander said, even as negotiations on the issue are ongoing with President Hamid Karzai's government.
"The security partnership agreement calls for a long-term relationship out through 2024. There's ongoing work now on trying to define what that will be. I don't think there will be large numbers in place because I do think Afghan people themselves will aspire to greater control of their own future," General Martin Dempsey, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club meeting.

"But I certainly think in terms of training, advising, partnering and engaging, I do think we will have some presence there," Dempsey said in response to a question.
Afghanistan, he said, will never be entirely absent from challenges. Analogies are actually risky, because circumstances are so different but Afghanistan could look somewhat like Colombia someday, which I think is an enormous success of our foreign policy and military engagement.

The central government of Colombia is in control of the country, with the exception of a few pockets of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)," he said.

They continue to press the FARC and eventually I think the FARC will become a political arm more than a military arm and I think Afghanistan will evolve in somewhat similar fashion, noted Dempsey.

He said the way forward is to build a capable and self-sustaining Afghan security forces that can protect the sovereign government and the people, while hardening itself against persistent challenge, because of the safe haven in Pakistan. (Pajhwok)