Obama will meet with Karzai in Kabul and then visit troops at a U.S. military base. Obama makes surprise trip to Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Barack Obama flew into Afghanistan Tuesday for a surprise whirlwind trip that will culminate in a live, televised address to the American people at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Speaking on the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, Obama will use the address from Bagram Air Force base to provide an update on troop withdrawal plans from the country that once served as home for the Al Qaeda leader.


In a briefing on Air Force One en route to Afghanistan, an administration official said bin Laden’s death is relevant to the trip and the president’s speech because of Al Qaeda’s roots in Afghanistan. Earlier, White House officials had claimed the date of the trip was merely a coincidence.

( PHOTOS: Obama in Afghanistan)

“He’ll certainly mention the fact that the history of this war and the fact that it was Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks that brought us to Afghanistan. And he’ll certainly mention the fact that it was from within Afghanistan a year ago that we launched an operation to kill Osama bin Laden. But his speech is about the future of our policy in Afghanistan his speech is about how were’ going to responsibly end the war in Afghanistan,” an official said during the Air Force One briefing.

Just after midnight local time, Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement pledging U.S. support for Afghanistan for a decade after 2014, when NATO forces are planning to conclude their combat role. The signing ceremony painted a tableau of solidarity for an Afghan-U.S. relationship that has been stormy, and at time fractious, during the three years of Obama’s presidency.

Obama called it “a historic moment for our two nations.”

“I’m here to affirm the bond between our two countries and to thank Americans and Afghans who have sacrificed so much over these last 10 years,” Obama said, standing in front of Afghan and U.S. flags.

“Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war yet for a decade we’ve stood together,” he continued. “Today with the signing of the strategic partnership agreement we look forward to a future of peace. Today we’re agreeing to be long-term partners.”

Karzai appeared to be in an ebullient mood and offered profuse thanks to negotiators on the agreement. Obama gave a hearty handshake and said to Karzai: “Thank you, my friend.”

Obama, making his first visit to the country in over a year, then visited troops at a U.S. military base, telling them how proud he was in their work.

”We know the battle is not yet over,” Obama said. “Some of your buddies may get injured, some of your buddies may get killed and there’s going to be heartbreak and pain, but there’s light on the horizon because of the sacrifices you made.”

The trip and nationally-televised address, coming at a time of elevated attention in the presidential campaign to foreign policy, gives the president an election-year platform to trumpet his role in bringing to a close two unpopular wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main goal of the brief visit, administration officials say, was to sign the strategic partnership agreement, which reaffirms the withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of 2014 while ensuring some U.S. presence in the country for the next decade. According to them, Obama could have signed the agreement in Washington but felt it was important to meet with Karzai and update Americans on the progress.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, in a message posted on Twitter, said the agreement “will help bring the war to a close.”

Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) were present at the signing. They had traveled to the country Monday for a previously-scheduled trip, according to a release from Levin’s office.

“Tonight’s agreement will help bring about an Afghanistan that is more secure from al Qaeda’s return and from Taliban domination,” Levin said in a statement. “That is a real achievement for both our countries, for the region and for the world. It was an especially powerful moment to witness what I believe will be a big step toward ending a long war that has demanded so much sacrifice from the men and women who serve our nation and their families.”

The unconventional timing of events on the trip, such as the signing ceremony at midnight local time, was aimed at allowing Obama to address Americans on a schedule convenient for U.S. television audiences, senior administration officials said. That speech, expected to run about 10 minutes, is scheduled to take place at 4 a.m. in Afghanistan.

But the dark-of-night schedule also provides an added layer of security for Air Force One and the flights by helicopter from Bagram to a landing zone near the presidential palace. While U.S. officials insist security has improved significantly since the U.S. troop buildup Obama ordered at the end of 2009, there have been a series of troubling incidents in recent months including riots relating to the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base, Afghan on U.S. troop violence, and a protracted gun and RPG battle in Kabul’s embassy district just over two weeks ago.

The trip also comes as Obama and his presumptive Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, are engaged in a war of words over the president’s use of bin Laden’s death in the campaign.

Last week, Obama’s campaign released a web video lashing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney for questioning the expenditure of government resources to kill a single man. And first lady Michelle Obama, who doesn’t usually comment on national security issues, spoke briefly Tuesday about bin Laden’s death.

“We finally brought to justice the man behind the 9/11 attacks and so many acts of violence,” she said at a morning fundraiser just off the Las Vegas strip, according to a pool report.

Romney marked the one-year anniversary with a visit to a firehouse in New York City with the city’s former mayor, Rudy Guiliani. Romney told reporters at a news conference there that he, too, would have issued the same order as Obama. But he was still pressed to explain his 2007 comment that “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

“Many people believed, as I did, it was naive on the part of the president at that time the candidate to say he would go into Pakistan,” Romney said Tuesday. “It was a very, if you will, fragile and flammable time in Pakistan, and I thought it was a mistake of his as a candidate for the presidency of the United States to announce that he would go in. I’d rather just to say, as I did, we reserve the right to go where we feel appropriate to secure the interests of the United States of America and certainly track Osama bin Laden to anywhere that we found him.”

Representatives from NATO countries meet in Chicago later this month to discuss details of operations and financial commitments to the Karzai government. While most of the countries in the alliance have pledged continued support, the overall level of spending is expected to drop well below the $100 billion currently being spent annually on the decade-old conflict.

The draft of the strategic partnership, signed by Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, could help ease months of acrimony between Kabul and Washington overnight raids by the U.S. military, which have resulted in dozens of civilian deaths.

The largely symbolic agreement is short on specifics regarding U.S. aid or future troop commitments. However, by sending a signal that the U.S. will not simply cut Afghanistan loose in 2014, the document could reassure some U.S. allies, serve as a warning to potential adversaries in the region like Iran, and offer a rebuttal of sorts to Republican criticism that the timetable Obama publicly laid out for a U.S. withdrawal amounted to a message to the Taliban to hang on until the U.S. leaves.

U.S. officials also hope the deal will help the U.S. solicit funds from allies to help provide the billions of dollars that will be required to keep Afghan security forces paid and supplied as they take over from American and NATO forces. Getting such pledges has proven difficult, given lagging support for the war among Europeans, and among Americans. Lining up a long-term support plan for Afghanistan is expected to be a key focus of the NATO summit set to take place in Chicago later this month.

The visit is Obama’s third trip to Afghanistan as president. He traveled to Kabul in March 2010, just as the surge he ordered in U.S. troop levels was getting underway. The meeting came amid significant tensions between U.S. officials and Karzai, reflected in press reports about Karzai’s unstable personality, his brother’s alleged involvement in corruption and internal U.S. government memos disparaging the Afghan leader.

Another trip in December 2010 was plagued with logistical problems that didn’t help in trying to build bridges with Karzai. Bad weather made it too difficult for Obama to travel by helicopter from Bagram to the presidential palace in Kabul. Aides said Obama and Karzai would meet instead via a secure teleconference, but that ultimately failed, too. So, Obama delivered a holiday speech to troops and met with injured soldiers at a hospital on base before turning around and heading home.

While U.S. military officials have portrayed the security situation in Afghanistan as improving and some statistics support that view, high profile incidents of violence continue to plague the country and raise doubts about whether Afghan forces will be able to contain the situation after 2014.

And just over two weeks ago, Afghanistan’s capital suffered the worst outbreak of insurgent violence in more than a decade as diplomatic installations such as the British German and U.S. embassies, as well as the Afghan parliament, faced sustained fire from small arms and the rocket propelled grenades that have been staples of combat in the country for years.

At least one police officer and about 17 militants were killed in the April 15 attacks which took authorities 18 hours to bring to an end. Some parliament members reportedly took up weapons to fight off the attackers, who also struck three other Afghan cities in what appeared to be deliberate effort to signal that the Taliban is far from vanquished.

— Josh Gerstein reported from Afghanistan, Glenn Thrush from Washington and Carrie Budoff Brown from Arlington, Va., as did Jennifer Epstein, who contributed to this report.