© Joel Pfiester/U.S. Air ForceA Special Forces soldier secures the perimeter at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan in February 2020.
The number of American service members in the country was officially reduced to 2,500 in the final days of the Trump administration — the lowest level since the start of the war — but the number actually dropped to around 3,500, the newspaper reported Sunday.
The discrepancy is the result of some special operations forces being "off the books" and some temporary and transitioning units being in theater, the report said. It cited unnamed American, European and Afghan officials.
Some of the uncounted troops include Army Rangers, who work simultaneously under the Pentagon and the CIA while in Afghanistan, the report said. Washington has historically assigned service members to the CIA and other agencies and classified information about their presence.
Since 2017, the Pentagon has said that it does not include some transferring troops in its total forces reporting because the period between two units transitioning is usually very short.
The U.S. military in Afghanistan refused to answer questions about troop numbers when asked by Stars and Stripes and directed all queries to the Pentagon.
A Pentagon official told The New York Times that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan stands at 2,500.
The U.S. had previously undercounted its military presence in the country after an Obama administration drawdown supposedly brought the U.S. troop strength to 8,400. In 2017, the Pentagon announced there were actually more than 11,000 troops there, but shortly afterward began redacting numbers of troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from quarterly reports.
Under a U.S.-Taliban deal last February, all foreign forces could be withdrawn by May if the Taliban meet vague counterterrorism pledges. The group insists it is meeting its commitments, which include not attacking foreign forces. The Taliban have threatened to resume attacks on foreign troops if they remain in the country past May 1.
The Biden administration is in the process of reviewing the deal and whether to complete the pullout in May.
Former President Donald Trump campaigned on ending America's longest war, now in its 20th year. But critics worried that his official troop drawdown from around 13,000 to 2,500 by January was based on political motives, and they said a full withdrawal in the coming months could benefit extremist groups.
In addition to American troops, there are roughly 7,000 NATO and coalition troops in Afghanistan training local forces.
Phillip Walter Wellman is a writer for Stars and Stripes. wellman.phillip@stripes.com Follow him on Twitter: @pwwellman
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