Afghan drawdown creates risk, US military warns

The US military warned that President Barack Obama's faster-than-expected drawdown in Afghanistan created new risks, even as commanders said they backed the strategy to start winding down the unpopular, nearly decade-old war.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the US Congress that Obama's plans to withdraw nearly a third of the some 99,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of next summer was a riskier plan than he had wanted. Obama announced the withdrawal timetable on Wednesday.

"The president's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept," Mullen told a House of Representatives committee hearing in his first comments on Obama's plan.

Mullen later said the risks were still manageable and would not by themselves jeopardize the overall military mission.

His comments, while carefully phrased, were an unusually public expression of the Pentagon's initial unease with Obama's aggressive Afghan drawdown. In the run-up to Obama's decision, military leaders lobbied privately for more time, and outgoing Defence Secretary Robert Gates publicly said any troop withdrawal should be modest.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged "lots of competing opinions coming at (Obama) from all sides." She, too, said she supported his decision.

In Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Washington's ally in a relationship made tense by allegations of incompetence and corruption, welcomed the plan for a gradual pullout and said Afghans increasingly trusted their security forces.

European nations that have contributed troops to the military effort against the Afghan Taliban insurgency said they would also proceed with already-planned phased reductions.

But the Taliban, resurgent a decade after being toppled from power by US-led forces following the Sept. 11 attacks, dismissed the announcement and said only a full, immediate withdrawal of foreign forces could stop "pointless bloodshed."

They rejected any suggestion of US military gains.