The top US commander in Afghanistan said that plan of President Barack Obama to pull US troops from the war-torn country by 2016 is not a withdrawal plan but a transition.

The top US commander in Afghanistan said that plan of President Barack Obama to pull US troops from the war-torn country by 2016 is not a withdrawal plan but a transition.

General Joseph Dunford said that Obama’s plan for the future of Afghanistan is “is not a zero option” and “not a withdrawal plan,” The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The plan is a “transition” that has no similarity to the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011, the US General added.

According to a senior US military official who spoke with The Washington Post on condition of anonymity, about 12,000 conventional troops including 8,000 US troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014.

In order to reach Obama’s announced total of 9,800 troops, Washington will also leave a counterterrorism force of about 1,800 in the country.

“Right now, I don’t have any concerns [about] getting to 12,000” for the conventional force, Dunford told a small group of reporters in Brussels, indicating that the United States is certain Afghanistan’s next president, to be elected in a June 14 runoff, will sign the bilateral security agreement Washington needs to keep troops in the country beyond 2014.

Last month, a Foreign Policy magazine article said the “dirty secret about Obama’s Afghan plan” is that an “invisible army” of US officials and intelligence personnel will remain in the country well in the future.