Pentagon: U.S. troop total in Afghanistan larger than reported

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is poised to have roughly 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the coming months, as defense 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 Defense officials for the first time said there are about 11,000 U.S. forces currently deployed to 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, labeled 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.

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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 troops there to about future. The troop numbers 15,000. The officials were announcement comes as the not authorized to discuss Pentagon is preparing to de- the future deployments publicly ploy several thousand more so spoke on condition Americans to Afghanistan, of anonymity. in order to expand the training Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie, and advising of Afghan director of the Joint Staff, forces and beef up counterterror said providing more truthful operations against numbers “is an attempt the Taliban and al-Qaidalinked to actually clarify a very groups in the country. confusing set of reporting Officials have said the rules that has the unintended U.S. will send as many as consequence of forcing 3,900 more troops to the war commanders to make — which would bring the readiness tradeoffs as they number of publicly recognized deploy their forces.”