Most troops home from Afghanistan by Xmas - Sydney Morning Herald

AAP

Australia's main base at Tarin Kowt in Afghanistan will close by year's end and 1000 troops will come home, effectively ending a military mission which Defence Minister Stephen Smith admits has run too long.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will close the multinational base at Tarin Kowt by the end of 2013, leaving Australia with no permanent presence in Oruzgan province.

"We expect that by the end of the year we will see at least 1000 Australian personnel return home," Mr Smith told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

Australian troops were first deployed to Oruzgan in 2005.

After the closure of the Tarin Kowt base, some 500 troops will remain in Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.

"We have been there for over a decade and that's far too long," Mr Smith said.

"That wasn't helped by the Iraq distraction."

Mr Smith said the lesson from Afghanistan was that the easiest thing in the world was to get in while the hardest thing in the world was to get out.

The drawdown was in line with the timetable to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces.

At the end of 2012, Australia ended all mentoring and joint operations with Afghan National Army (ANA) units and withdrew to the Tarin Kowt base.

The Australian Special Operations Task Group will continue operations, at least to the end of the year.

Some special forces could remain in Afghanistan for training or counter-terrorism under an appropriate international force mandate, now being negotiated between Afghanistan and the US.

If there was no role for special forces in 2014 or 2015, either for lack of a mandate or other reasons, they would return at the end of this year.

After the official end of the ISAF mission on December 31, 2014, Australia will continue to assist in training the ANA in Kabul.

Mr Smith said Australia would leave Oruzgan a better place but added Afghanistan continued to be difficult and dangerous.

"Afghan national security forces ... are in a much better state and the circumstances and conditions on the ground for the people of Oruzgan are much better," he said.

"The risk is different but nonetheless there is still a risk."

Defence force chief General David Hurley said the latest Afghan and ISAF statistics showed 2.5 per cent of the population experienced half of all violence.

"Operationally the Taliban has been displaced out of the built-up areas into the more sparsely populated areas," he told reporters.

"That is what we have seen over the last two years."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the coalition always believed the Afghanistan operation should end when its mission was substantially accomplished.

"We are happy to rely on the professional judgement of the military chiefs as to when that can take place," he told reporters in Sydney.

"We accept that the sooner we can bring our troops home the better, once the job has been done."

Greens leader Christine Milne said: "It is time we had an explicit withdrawal strategy to bring every last soldier home and firmly end our role in the conflict."