Obama: US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on track

NATO has a 130,000-strong US-led military force fighting the Taliban, which has led an insurgency against the Western-backed Kabul government since being toppled from power in 2001.

The United States plans to gradually draw down combat troops from mid next year before handing over control to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014 as agreed by the NATO alliance.

Some Republican critics of Obama said the turmoil showed the need to slow the pace of the US drawdown, while opponents of the war saw it as more evidence of a doomed endeavor.

Copyright 2012 AFP.

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