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Four days into his tenure as defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday morning and opened up the possibility of slowing the withdrawal of the last American troops in the country to help keep the Taliban at bay.
Those 10,000 troops are now conducting counterterrorism operations and advising the Afghan military, and most are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2016.
Mr. Carter said that the Obama administration was open to having a stronger military relationship with the current Afghan unity government, led by President Ashraf Ghani. Mr. Ghani’s government has reset relations with the West after turbulent years when President Hamid Karzai often clashed with the United States.
“A lot has changed here, so much for the better,” Mr. Carter said. “Our priority now is to make sure this progress sticks. That is why President Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani’s security strategy, including possible changes to our timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.”
He also said that the United States was “rethinking the details” of its counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan, but he did not elaborate on what he meant by that.
Already, Afghan and American officials have said, on the condition of anonymity, that the United States forces were playing combat roles in many joint special operations raids and were not simply going along as advisers. That is at odds with policy declarations by the administration, which has deemed the American role in the war essentially over, but reflects the reality in Afghanistan.
Despite the aid of American air power, 2014 was the deadliest year for Afghan forces since the start of the war in 2001, and many Afghan and Western officials in Kabul believe that 2015 will likely be worse, particularly with less support from Western allies. That has begun to change the conversation about the possibility of slowing down in the withdrawal.
Afghan and American leaders are expected to have more discussions about troop levels next month in Washington when Mr. Ghani is scheduled to visit President Obama at the White House.
Mr. Carter said he was in Afghanistan to begin his own assessment of the security situation since the United States wound down its combat mission last year.
He said that he had seen varying reports about Afghanistan, including some that said the Taliban were undergoing a resurgence and others that claimed that a small group of militants had rebranded themselves as members of the Islamic State.
Shortly after arriving, he was briefed by Gen. John F. Campbell, the top American commander in Afghanistan, and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the greater Middle East.
Mr. Carter then met with Mr. Ghani and with Mr. Ghani’s former rival and current chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah.
After that meeting, Mr. Carter and Mr. Ghani held a news conference and appeared to indicate that both sides were open to slowing the withdrawal of the troops. Speaking with reporters on his military plane on the flight to Afghanistan, Mr. Carter, who had been to Afghanistan nine times before this trip, but not since 2013, said that he had a number of questions as he tried to form his perspective on the country. Those included how the Afghan security forces were doing and what their assessment was of the battlefield situation.
Mr. Carter said that it was also important to visit because there were still many American troops in Afghanistan.
“They come first in my mind always — their welfare — particularly in circumstances like this,” Mr. Carter said of the troops. They are “what I wake up to, and wake up for every day, and I feel that — and want them to know that — and that is where this trip began and begins in my mind.”
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