US begins drawdown of troops

Associated Press

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan

The first troops to leave Afghanistan as part of the U.S. drawdown handed over their slice of battlefield Wednesday to a unit less than half their size and started packing for home.

When the 650 members of the Iowa National Guard’s 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment arrived in Afghanistan in November 2010, bases didn’t have enough housing, translators were in short supply and chow halls were packed. Commanders were using a buildup of 33,000 extra troops for a major push that they said would turn the tide of the war against the Taliban insurgency.

Nine months later, it’s still unclear if that push has succeeded, but the pullback has begun. Although major combat units are not expected to start leaving until late fall, two National Guard regiments comprising about 1,000 soldiers in all are withdrawing this month — the Iowa soldiers from Parwan province in eastern Afghanistan, and the other group from the capital, Kabul.

President Barack Obama announced last month that he would pull 10,000 of the extra troops out in 2011 and the remaining 23,000 by the summer of 2012.

Three hundred soldiers will take over from the 650 departing troops who oversaw security in Parwan.

In a ceremony at Bagram marking the transfer, a speaker read out a list of the 113th’s accomplishments: 14 high-value targets killed or captured, the largest homemade explosives lab in Parwan discovered and dismantled, 52 consecutive days of keeping insurgent fire out of the Bagram base, 3,800 combat missions completed, 400 Afghan police officers trained and a coordination center built.