Washington is reviewing a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2016 to ensure that "progress sticks" after more than a decade of war, new U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in Kabul on Saturday.
Under the current plan, the United States will halve the number of troops in Afghanistan to 5,000 this year, gradually winding down to a "normal" U.S. embassy presence by 2016.
That schedule could now change, said Carter on his first trip abroad since swearing in as the Pentagon chief on Tuesday, as the United States rethinks the future of its counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan.
"Our priority now is to make sure this progress sticks," Carter said at a joint conference with President Ashraf Ghani, hours after landing in Kabul.
"That is why President (Barack) Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani's security strategy, including possible changes to the timeline for our drawdown of U.S. troops."
The current strategy has drawn sharp criticism from Republicans in Congress, who say that hard-won gains made against the Taliban could be lost in much the same way that sectarian violence returned to Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal.
The emergence of a small number of militants in Afghanistan aligning themselves with Islamic State, which swept into northern Iraq last summer, has underscored anxieties about the dangers as foreign forces withdraw.
Carter said the Islamic State's presence in Afghanistan appeared "aspirational"."
"We are discussing and rethinking the details of the counter-terrorism mission and how the environment has changed here with respect to terrorism, since we first laid out our plans," Carter said.
Once the darling of the international community, Karzai made fervently anti-Western speeches in his later years in power and resisted U.S. pressure to sign a crucial security treaty.
Neither he nor Ghani made predictions about peace efforts with the Taliban, after senior Pakistani army, Afghan and diplomatic officials said the Afghan Taliban signalled they were willing to open peace talks.
But Ghani sounded upbeat.
"The grounds for peace have never been better in the last 36 years. Our approach is productive. We're hopeful," Ghani said.
"But categorical answers in a peace process are dangerous."
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