US exceeded troop cap in Afghanistan

For the first time, senior defence officials admit there are about 11,000 soldiers, thousands more than allowed

The Pentagon is poised to have roughly 15,000 US troops in Afghanistan in the coming months, as defence officials on Wednesday finally acknowledged the actual number of American forces in the country after long camouflaging the total in misleading accounting measures and red tape.

Senior defence officials for the first time said there are about 11,000 US forces currently deployed in Afghanistan — thousands more than the 8,400 that were allowed under the previous administration’s troop cap. Military officials have long quietly acknowledged there were far more forces in the country than the cap allowed, but commanders shuffled troops in and out, labelled many “temporary,” and used other personnel accounting tactics to artificially keep the public count low.

The officials, however, refused to provide similar details for Iraq and Syria, where there also are thousands more than the Pentagon publicly admits.

Principles of transparency

Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said that while the same “principles of transparency” will apply in Iraq and Syria, those countries have their own interests.

There have long been political sensitivities within the Iraq government about the number of American troops on the ground, and those concerns raise questions about whether the Pentagon will be less candid about force numbers there to avoid conflicts.

Based on troop caps instituted by the Obama administration, the number of US forces in Iraq has consistently been reported as 5,262, but officials say there are actually more than 7,000.

And there are at least 1,500 US troops in Syria — three times the 503 that the Pentagon will acknowledge. White said details on troop numbers in Iraq and Syria would be announced in the future.

The troop numbers announcement comes as the Pentagon is preparing to deploy several thousand more Americans to Afghanistan, in order to expand the training and advising of Afghan forces and beef up counterterror operations against the Taliban and Al Qaida-linked groups in the country. Officials have said the US will send as many as 3,900 more troops to the war — which would bring the number of publicly recognised troops there to about 15,000. The officials were not authorised to discuss the future deployments publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Lt Gen Frank McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, said providing more truthful numbers “is an attempt to actually clarify a very confusing set of reporting rules that has the unintended consequence of forcing commanders to make readiness tradeoffs as they deploy their forces.”

As an example, Gen John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, noted earlier this year that when Obama ordered the cut in troops to 8,400, commanders had to hire contractors to do jobs that American forces would normally do.

So, an aviation brigade that deployed to Afghanistan was able to bring its helicopters, pilots and staff, but the mechanics had to be left behind at Fort Riley, Kansas. The contractors hired to replace the mechanics, Nicholson said, cost “tens of millions of dollars” and hurt the unit’s overall military readiness.

White and McKenzie said there have been no final decisions about future deployments to Afghanistan.