• Karzai yet to sign deal to keep US troops in country after 2014

As the war in Afghanistan becomes the most unpopular conflict in US polling history, the Pentagon reiterated a plea for the Afghan government to entrench an enduring American military presence.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai has so far declined to sign an accord called the Bilateral Security Agreement, upending plans for some US troops to stay in the country after the war formally ends in December 2014. The US has unsuccessfully urged other Afghan government officials to bless a long-term presence that has already stretched into its 13th year.

“We are prepared to sign the agreement,” Steve Warren, the acting Pentagon spokesman, said on Monday.

"We urge the government of Afghanistan to sign the agreement promptly. If we cannot conclude a BSA promptly, we will be forced to initiate planning for a post-2014 future that does not have a US troop presence there.”

Pentagon officials have repeatedly declined to specify when the arduous logistics of departing landlocked Afghanistan – two of whose neighbors are Iran and uncertain US partner Pakistan – compel them to plan for what is known as the “zero option.” For weeks, they have said they wanted an Afghan signature on the accord by the new year.

Complicating the Pentagon’s plans is a new poll that shows public support for the war cratering to levels never before seen for a US conflict.

Only 17% of the American public supports the war effort, according to a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday. Opposition has climbed to 82%, a level far outpacing even dissatisfaction with the Vietnam war; by May 1970, the Gallup poll found that 56% of Americans considered that conflict a mistake.

The marine general currently leading the war, Joseph Dunford, is said to favor a residual force of between 10,000 and 13,000 troops, situated in nine bases around the country. Ostensibly, the remaining force would continue the sponsorship of the Afghan military and police it has nurtured for 12 years, but it could also provide a launchpad for operations against the remaining al-Qaida presence in tribal Pakistan.

Without an agreement on their post-2014 garrisoning, operations and, crucially, legal protections, the US is threatening to pull almost all of its uniformed forces out the country entirely, as it did in Iraq in 2011 when a similar accord could not be reached.

US officials hope the threat provides them with leverage. While the US presence in Afghanistan is unpopular, Afghan officials fear a Taliban victory that could result if the US departed. Iraq has seen violence rise to levels unrecorded since the worst days of the US occupation.

Yet even if the Afghans relent on a residual US military presence, US intelligence officials believe the war’s gains are likely to evaporate within a few years of 2014’s scheduled drawdown.

A still-classified National Intelligence Estimate, the consensus analysis of the US intelligence agencies, recently found that Afghanistan will substantially deteriorate by 2017 even with a US residual force and continued financing by the US government, the Washington Post reported.

At the Pentagon, Warren said he would not comment on the intelligence assessment, but diminished its significance for continued planning.

“Intelligence is just one input in a policymaker’s decision process,” Warren said.