Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Dec. 4: The US President, Mr Barack Obama, has paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan and assured cheering US troops that they are winning the war against the Taliban despite “difficult days ahead.”
Mr Obama landed in the country under cover of darkness on Friday, with aides announcing nothing of the trip beforehand due to security concerns. He left four hours later, in the early hours of Saturday.
Mr Obama, who has tripled US troop numbers in Afghanistan, spent a mere four hours in the country during his second visit as President, both to this base outside Kabul.
A face-to-face visit with the President, Mr Hamid Karzai, was replaced with a 15-minute phone call, as weather scuppered plans to fly Mr Obama by helicopter from the base to the nearby Afghan capital.
The trip came as the Obama administration faced new friction with Mr Karzai over embarrassing assessments in leaked diplomatic cables of the Afghan leader, but Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the senior advisor and coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the topic did not come up in the call.
Mr Karzai’s chief spokesman, Mr Waheed Omer, also said Mr Karzai was “not upset” that his US counterpart and main backer had not visited him at his palace.
“Mr Obama was not here for a state visit but rather to visit American troops. The two leaders had already met in Lisbon two weeks ago and spoke in detail,” Mr Omer said on Saturday.
Mr Omer said, “the leaders did talk on the phone.”
At the Lisbon summit, the Nato alliance backed Mr Obama’s goal of handing over security to the Afghan police and military by mid-2011, with a view to ceding full control by the end of 2014.
Mr Lute said, Mr Obama and Mr Karzai “both acknowledged that early 2011 is not far off.”