maintain 5,500 troops at a small number of bases including at bagram, jalalbad and kandahar. our mission will not change. our focus will be on training afghans and counterterrorism operations. but these bases will give us the presence and the reach our forces require to achieve their mission. in this sense, afghanistan is a key piece of the network of counterterrorism partnerships that we feed from south asia to africa to deal more broadly with terrorist threats quickly and prevent attacks against our homeland. third, we will work with allies and partners to align the steps i'm announcing today with their own presence in afghanistan after 2016. in afghanistan, we are part of a coalition and our nato allies and partners can continue to