The 49-nation International Security Assistance Force and NATO expect to stay in Afghanistan after the planned 2014 pullout and handover of security to Afghan forces, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

"Let there be no mistake; transition is not departure. We will not take our leave when the Afghans take the lead," Rasmussen said at the end of a two-day summit of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

The NATO chief said the ISAF military force is committed to continuing its presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 in order not to leave a security vacuum. "NATO nations have agreed an Enduring Partnership with the Afghan people and we will live up to it," Rasmussen said.

Exactly how the continued ISAF will be formulated will be explored and possibly decided at an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Bonn, Germany, in early December and will be further outlined at the NATO summit in Chicago in May 2012.

As the NATO chief outlined the coalition's intention not to "abandon Afghanistan," analysts said the future shape of ISAF/NATO partnership could well be decided by the final outcome well before 2014 of the evolving political map in Kabul.

Rasmussen said ISAF would still be training Afghan security forces come 2014 and the actual numbers of those ISAF soldiers could be determined by the security situation in the country at that time.

"NATO trainers and international trust funds are already making a crucial difference in Afghanistan," Rasmussen said. "Now we need to decide what more we will do. That will be one of our main tasks at our Chicago summit -- so it is important that we started the debate today."

Oct. 7 marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led allied invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 shortly after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 that year.

The anniversary comes after two major milestones -- the Taliban forced out of power in that attack and Osama bin Laden killed in Pakistan -- and yet there was little observance of the date by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, CNN reported.

In contrast the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks drew more attention from the armed forces in the country.

"We really celebrated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and we were out here in Afghanistan," U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Toolan Jr., commanding general of ISAF troops in southern Afghanistan, told reporters during a briefing in Kabul, CNN reported.

"I think that to us it was a far more significant date than 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan because, really, when you look at the 10 years, you're looking at different levels of forces, different levels of attention given to Afghanistan."

More than 2,700 troops from the United States and its partners have died during the 10 years of war, a CNN count reported. Of those, 1,780 were American, 382 were British and 157 were Canadian.

Rasmussen's comments follow renewed questions being raised about the stability of Afghanistan, after a wave of high-profile attacks in recent weeks that seemed to derail inter-Afghan talks toward reconciliation and transition.

Attacks on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul and the assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani in September dashed hopes of negotiations with the Taliban bearing any results.

Rasmussen's comment the Afghan security situation had improved contrasted with U.N. data that indicated violent incidents in Afghanistan rose 40 percent in the first eight months of 2011, compared with the same period in 2010.

Even as the war in Afghanistan has become widely unpopular amid shifting concerns over the U.S. economy and jobs, a Pew Research Center report on "war and sacrifice" reported half of post-9/11 U.S. veterans said the Afghanistan war has been worth fighting. Only 44 percent said they felt that way about Iraq and only one-third said both wars were worth the costs, the Pew Research Center study showed.