An orderly retreat is the most challenging task for an army at war. American skills in this department will be severely tested after US President Obama's decision to start pulling out US troops from Afghanistan from this month and end all combat operations there by 2014.
From its current levels of about 100,000 troops, the US military presence is likely to be reduced to a residual force of a few thousands that is expected to stay on in Afghanistan after 2014 in a training and support role.
As its military winds down in Afghanistan, the United States might find itself liberated from its total dependence on Pakistan since 911. Washington will also be free to explore regional security options that are no longer centred on the Pakistan army.
After the US moved into Afghanistan at the end of 2001 and steadily built up its military presence there, most of its equipment and fuel supplies landed by ship at Karachi on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast and were moved by road through two gateways into Afghanistan--the two passes at the Khyber and the Bolan.
These two passes provide the most efficient routes into Afghanistan from the south and the east. The only way of accessing these routes is through Pakistan. It is also possible to enter Afghanistan from the west through Iran.
Given the more than three decades of confrontation between Iran and the United States, that route is purely a line on the map for Washington. Not surprisingly the Pentagon became rather deferential to Gen. Pervez Musharraf and his successor Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
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