Obama signs pact, greets troops in surprise Afghanistan visit

KABUL, Afghanistan — Putting a symbolic seal on a long and brutal conflict, President Obama made a dramatic overnight visit to the Afghan capital, signing an accord meant to offer assurances that the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan but also acknowledging that the massive Western military presence is coming to a close.

After landing on a darkened runway late Tuesday night, Obama rushed to the heavily fortified presidential palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a strategic partnership accord that sets the broad outlines of U.S. engagement for a decade beyond the completion of NATO’s combat role in 2014.

Obama’s surprise visit, his first to the war zone since December 2010, was shrouded in secrecy for security reasons and came on the first anniversary of the U.S. military raid that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

White House aides said the president wanted to share the day with U.S. troops and that the unusual visit was driven by the desire to sign the accord in Afghanistan before Obama hosts a NATO summit in Chicago this month.

The signing ceremony took place just after midnight local time. Obama then spoke to several thousand U.S. troops in a cavernous hangar at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, at 1:20 a.m. and visited a base hospital. He addressed Americans in a live TV broadcast at 4 a.m. local time — prime-time back home — before flying out before sunrise Wednesday.

“My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” Obama said, standing before armored vehicles. “Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq war is over. The number of our troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home soon. We have a clear path to fulfill our mission in Afghanistan, while delivering justice to Al Qaeda.”

Earlier, in remarks to the troops, Obama was greeted by cheers when he noted that “a year ago we were finally able to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.” The troops responded with an “ooh-rah” roar and applause.

“It was always the president’s intention to spend this anniversary with our troops,” a senior Obama administration official told reporters Tuesday.

The vivid staging of the visit — from the secretive arrival in darkness to a triumphant appearance before U.S. troops to promise an end to the war — showed the Obama team in a tense election year making the most of what it considers a crucial victory. If Obama failed to pronounce “mission accomplished,” it was only an omission of the phrase itself.

Nine years ago to the day, President George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and strode down the flight deck to announce the end of major U.S. combat operations in Iraq. Behind him a giant banner declared “Mission Accomplished,” a premature claim of success that later embarrassed the White House.

By design, the strategic agreement signed by the two leaders early Wednesday is sweeping in scope but light on details. It took months of negotiations by the two sides to agree two weeks ago on a draft version.

Only in the last two months were negotiators able to clear final hurdles, handing Afghans greater authority over insurgent detainees and over carrying out nighttime raids that for the last two years have been a key tactic against a stubborn insurgency.

Karzai has long sought to draw the U.S. into a long-term relationship to help protect his country against the Taliban insurgency. But Obama has moved to curtail the U.S. role, a reversal of his earlier talk as a candidate when he spoke of winning the decade-old conflict and early in his administration when he sent 30,000 extra troops and committed himself to an ambitious counterinsurgency effort.

But his optimism dissipated over three years of hard fighting and limited progress. Not surprisingly, the just-signed deal reflects Obama’s desires far more than Karzai’s.

It falls well short of a military alliance and is not a formal treaty, which would require Senate ratification. It makes few concrete promises other than to provide unspecified military training, equipment and development assistance to the Afghans for the next decade.

The agreement “does not commit the United States to any specific troop levels or levels of funding in the future,” said a senior Obama administration official who briefed reporters in return for anonymity. “It does, however, commit the United States to seek funding from Congress on an annual basis” for the Afghan army and police as well as civilian aid to Afghanistan’s cash-strapped government.

U.S. troop levels are due to fall from about 88,000 to 68,000 by September, at which point Obama will decide how quickly to withdraw remaining troops and how many will stay after 2014.

In his speech to the nation, Obama made clear the U.S. was not seeking permanent bases and said even the small U.S. force that remains will be focused on “two narrow missions” — continued training of Afghan forces and going after any remnants of Al Qaeda.

The administration is also promising to give Afghanistan access to U.S. military equipment at preferential financing rates. But the main job of fighting the Taliban insurgency will fall on Afghan forces beginning in the middle of next year, when the U.S. and its allies will formally shift to a support role.

Critics fear that Afghan security forces are unprepared to take over fighting the insurgency and warn that a drop-off in the ranks could provide the seed for instability once Western combat troops depart.

Landing at Bagram air base at 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, Obama was greeted by senior American officials, including U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Waiting helicopters flew them to the center of Kabul, and a motorcade drove them to the presidential palace.

Despite the late hour, the signing ceremony featured pomp and circumstance. Obama and Karzai, standing before a row of their nation’s flags, both appeared relieved.

“Mr. President, there will be difficult days ahead,” Obama said to the Afghan leader. “As we move forward, I’m confident Afghan forces will grow stronger and the Afghan people will take control of their future.”

There were warm handshakes all around. Karzai seemed to be in an ebullient mood and offered profuse thanks to negotiators on the 10-page agreement, including Crocker and Gen. John R. Allen, who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Just hours after Obama’s lightning visit, insurgent gunmen and bombers struck a foreigner-frequented guesthouse complex in the Afghan capital. In the attack’s aftermath, several charred bodies could be seen lying in the street, and police reported six people had been killed.

Only two weeks earlier, the capital’s diplomatic and governmental district was paralyzed by a wide-ranging insurgent attack on targets that included Western embassies and the Afghan parliament.

Obama’s visit followed a series of damaging and morale-sapping incidents involving American forces.

In February, the apparently inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, by U.S. troops at the sprawling Bagram base — where Air Force One landed Tuesday — sparked more than a week of deadly riots.

In March, a U.S. Army staff sergeant allegedly went on a shooting spree outside his base in Kandahar province, killing men, women and children as they slept, and he now faces 17 counts of murder. In April, photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the bodies and body parts of Afghan militants two years ago were published in the Los Angeles Times.

A U.S. official said the episodes did not complicate negotiations on the strategic accord, and the agreement proved how the nations could work together “even given the tragic incidents of war.”

White House aides said Obama had insisted on avoiding an unseemly commemoration of Bin Laden’s death. But the timing of the trip immediately drew fire from the president’s critics. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney marked the anniversary by alternately praising Obama for ordering the raid and accusing him of politicizing the moment.

“I think it’s totally appropriate for the president to express to the American people the view that he has that he had an important role in taking out Osama bin Laden,” Romney told reporters after bringing six pizzas to a fire station that lost 11 men in the Sept. 11 attacks.

For several days, the president, his campaign and his surrogates have questioned whether Romney would have made the same decision to send a Navy SEAL team to capture or kill Bin Laden, based on comments Romney made during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

“Of course I would have ordered the taking out of Osama bin Laden,” Romney said. “Of course. This is a person who had done terrible harm to America and who represented a continuing threat to civilized people throughout the world.”

laura.king@latimes.com

cparsons@latimes.com

King reported from Kabul and Parsons from Washington.

Michael A. Memoli and David S. Cloud in the Washington bureau and Times staff writer Seema Mehta in New York contributed to this report.