The Times
Jerome Starkey and Roland Watson 

President Obama and David Cameron have been warned that their plan to bring troops home from Afghanistan before 2015 is too hasty and risks leaving behind an Afghan army that is ill equipped to fend off the Taleban. Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, said yesterday that combat troops would be home by 2014, although significant numbers are likely to remain to continue training local security forces.

But as President Karzai oversees a conference this week in Kabul that seeks to prepare for such a withdrawal, some in the Afghan capital cautioned that he was far too optimistic. Daoud Sultanzoy, an Afghan MP, said: “Six to eight years would be more realistic. A national army is not built by forced injection of technical training and technical assistance. You have to instil a culture that emanates from the national political leadership, and that has not matured in this country yet.”