At the same time, U.S. reinforcements will go to eastern Afghanistan in a bid to reverse recent gains by insurgents targeting Kabul, the capital.
Gen. James F. Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an Associated Press interview that the number of Marines in Helmand province will drop "markedly" in 2012, and the role of those who stay will shift from countering the insurgency to training and advising Afghan security forces.
The change suggests an early exit from Afghanistan for the Marine Corps even as the prospects for solidifying their recent successes are uncertain.
"Am I OK with that? The answer is 'yes,'" Amos said. "We can't stay in Afghanistan forever."
"Will it work? I don't know. But I know we'll do our part."
At stake is President Barack Obama's pledge to win in Afghanistan. He said during his 2008 campaign that the war was worth fighting and that he would get U.S. forces out of Iraq.
Facing a stalemate in Afghanistan in 2009, Obama ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to the country, including about 10,000 Marines to Helmand province, in the belief that if the Taliban were to retake the government, al-Qaida soon would return to the land from which it plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.
Also at stake are the sacrifices of the nearly 300 Marines killed in Afghanistan over the past three years.
Weighing against prolonging the conflict is its unsustainable cost and what author and former Defense Department official Bing West has called its "grinding inconclusiveness."
In a series of pep talks to Marines in Helmand this past week, Amos said the Marine mission in Afghanistan would end in the next 12 months to 18 months. That is as much as two years before the December 2014 deadline, announced a year ago, for all U.S. and other foreign troops to leave the country.
"Savor being out here together," Amos told Marines on Thanksgiving at an outpost along the Helmand River called Fiddler's Green, "because it's going to be over" soon.
He was referring only to the Marines' role, which is limited mainly to Helmand, although there also are Marine special operations forces in western Afghanistan. The U.S. military efforts in Kandahar province and throughout the volatile eastern region are led by the Army, along with allied forces.
Amos stressed in his visits with groups of Marines that he is optimistic that Helmand's improved security will hold. On Saturday, he said "there is every reason to be optimistic" at this stage of the 10-year-old war.
For the past two years, Helmand and neighboring Kandahar have been the main focus of the U.S.-led effort to turn the tide against a resilient Taliban. In that period, the Taliban and other insurgent networks have grown bolder and more violent in the eastern provinces where they have the advantage of sanctuary across the border in Pakistan and where U.S. and NATO forces are spread more thinly than in the south.
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