U.S. Will Complete Afghan Pullout by End of 2016, Obama Says

President Obama said on Tuesday that he planned to withdraw the last combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, declaring that “it’s time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Under the plan, outlined by Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden, the United States would leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but cut that number by half in 2015. By the end of 2016, it would keep only a vestigial force to protect the embassy in Kabul and help the Afghans with military purchases and other security matters.

Mr. Obama said the withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan would free up military resources for the United States to focus on an emerging set of terrorism threats in the Middle East and North Africa — a strategy he plans to articulate in a commencement address on Wednesday at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them,” he said. “Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century.”

Despite Mr. Obama’s attempt to draw to a close more than a decade of American military engagement in Afghanistan, the United States will continue to have thousands of troops engaged in lethal counterterrorism operations for at least two more years. He also acknowledged that the United States will leave behind a mixed legacy.

“We have to recognize Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one,” he said. “The future of Afghanistan must be decided by Afghans.”

All of the American deployments hinge on the United States’ signing a security agreement with Afghanistan, which the administration has not yet been able to do.

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