The death of Osama bin Laden is reinforcing calls for a quicker pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and strengthening pressure to end America 's longest war by finding a political settlement with the resilient Taliban insurgency.

In his first reaction on Monday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai exhorted the Taliban to open peace negotiations and said that bin Laden's killing near the Pakistani capital Islamabad vindicated the Afghan government's growing opposition to U.S.-led combat operations in the Afghan countryside.

(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall Street Journal website, WSJ.com.)

"Once again I call on NATO to say that the war on terror is not in Afghanistan . Osama was not in Afghanistan : they found him in Pakistan ," Karzai said. "The war on terror is not in Afghan villages, the war on terror is not in the houses of innocent Afghans, the war on terror is not in the bombardment and killing of Afghan children and women, but in the safe havens of terrorism outside Afghanistan ."

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan almost 10 years ago to overthrow the Taliban regime, which had harbored bin Laden and other masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks on America . Since then, as the Taliban mounted a spreading insurgent campaign against the foreign troops and Karzai's government, the war turned bloodier year after year, causing 2,441 coalition military fatalities so far and many more Afghan deaths.

There are now some 150,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan , two-thirds of them American, the highest level since the war started. President Barack Obama, who ordered last year's surge of 30,000 additional U.S. forces, has set them the goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies" in Afghanistan.

Yet, virtually all the coalition combat operations in Afghanistan these days are conducted against the homegrown insurgency, not al Qaeda's foreign fighters. Coalition officials estimate that only about 100 or so al Qaeda militants operate in Afghanistan , mostly in the remote mountainous areas along the northeastern frontier with Pakistan .

While the U.S. has already said it will start pulling out its forces this July, as part of a transition plan that calls for most NATO combat troops to leave the country by the end of 2014, Obama and the coalition's commanders have not yet specified the speed and extent of this pullout. Bin Laden's killing, to many, bolsters the case for a more rapid withdrawal.

"The death of Osama bin Laden will close a key chapter in the war on terror and allow a reassessment of our posture in Afghanistan ," said Juan Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served as the U.S. deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism in 2005-2009. "It won't be a lynchpin for U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan , but it will play a role in our assessment of whether we are achieving the goal of disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda in the region."

Some Afghan politicians were much blunter. "The Americans have achieved their goal of arresting or killing Osama, and now Americans have no reason to stay in Afghanistan ," said Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, who served as prime minister in the mujahedeen government that fell when the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996.

Though the U.S. military claims progress in the war, pointing to successful campaigns in the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the Taliban remain a formidable foe, retaining their ability to launch daily attacks, assassinating government officials and operating shadow government in large swaths of the countryside.

Just on Monday, the Taliban formally launched their spring military offensive, dubbed Badar, "to protect the tenets of Islam from the claws of the invaders and salvage the country and people from the foreign colonialism," promising new attacks on foreign and Afghan troops, foreign contractors, Afghan officials, lawmakers and cabinet members. Some coalition intelligence officials say they expect this year's fighting season to be the bloodiest on record.

While the Taliban spokesmen have not yet issued any reaction to bin Laden's killing, former senior Taliban leaders now living in Kabul said the U.S. and allies should not delude themselves into thinking that the death of al Qaeda's Saudi-born chief will translate into battlefield gains against the Afghan insurgents.

"The Taliban leaders are Afghans, they follow an Afghan agenda and do not depend on al Qaeda," said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan . "Americans may hope it will affect the war, but it won't."

A senior NATO adviser in Kabul agreed with this assessment. "In terms of our campaign in Afghanistan , I don't foresee much immediate consequence," he said, adding that the biggest potential impact would be if Pakistan were to reduce its support for the Taliban following the bin Laden killing.

The removal of bin Laden could make negotiations with the Taliban, something that Karzai and some European allies have been pursuing for years, more palatable to the U.S. , which has only recently embraced the idea, some Western diplomats say. Bin Laden's death "will be a substantial boost to embrace reconciliation efforts throughout the region," said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union's special representative for Afghanistan .

Haroun Mir, the former aide de camp of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Masood, killed by al Qaeda days before the Sept. 11 attacks, agreed. "This is an opportunity for the Taliban to renounce its links to Al Qaeda and negotiate," said Mir, now director of a Kabul think-tank.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the Taliban will seize this opportunity. In their announcement of the spring offensive, the Taliban once again rejected any negotiations until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan . Also, for the first time, they expanded their target list to include officials of the High Peace Council, the body created by Karzai to reach out to the insurgency in an attempt to start peace talks.

"The death of Osama will not put pressure on the Taliban to negotiate," said the Taliban regime's former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil. "The Taliban are an Afghan movement, while al Qaeda is an international organization."

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