Afghanistan’s president announced Sunday a second group of areas where security operations would be handed over from NATO to Afghan troops, setting a potentially rapid timetable to put half of the country’s population under Afghan control — including some areas that until recently were undisputed insurgent hotbeds.
President Hamid Karzai’s announcement of the so-called “second tranche” is a key moment in the drawdown of U.S. troops and gradual NATO withdrawal of forces in 2014. It comes as some worry that the sharp pace of NATO’s handover might in some areas allow a resurgence of the Taliban, who some observers believe are waiting for coalition forces to step back so they can retake ground.
The areas of Nad-e-Ali in Helmand — the site of many British deaths in the past years — and the city of Ghazni, surrounded by volatile rural areas, are among the areas to be handed over.
With Sunday’s decision, “over half of the country’s population would now be covered by the Transition Process,” the presidential palace said in a statement.
“This is another significant step towards our shared goal of an Afghanistan governed and secured by Afghans for Afghans,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement.
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