AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER Julie Gillard has announced the early withdrawal of Australian troops from Afghanistan.

Australia currently has over 1,500 troops in Afghanistan and according to figures maintained by iCasaulty, 32 Australian troops have been killed there.

While most international troops are set to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but Gillard has said that Australia will start pulling its troops out earlier than planned, starting this year.

Once the withdrawal begins it will take between 12 and 18 months to complete, Gillard told an Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Boeing National Security event in Canberra yesterday.

“When this is complete, Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan will look very different to that which we have today,” she said. “We will have completed our training and mentoring mission with the 4th Brigade. We will no longer be conducting routine frontline operations with the Afghan national security forces.”

The prime minister said that while “successive Australian governments have seen our national interest in making sure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists,” its consistent commitment on that issue should not be “mistaken for persistence in a strategy which is not working”.

Instead, she added, the counter-insurgency strategy announced by US President Barack Obama over two years ago was the right approach in preparing the Afghan government for taking over its own security.

Gillard is due to attend a NATO leaders summit in Chicago on 21 May at which she says she hopes to be in a position to sign a new agreement on a long-term framework “for the future of the Australia-Afghanistan partnership”.

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