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US troops in Afghanistan number 1,000 more than disclosed
As US President Joe Biden’s administration wrestles with whether to extend troop presence in Afghanistan or withdraw by May 1 as per the deal with the Taliban, officials have said there are in fact more American troops on the ground than the reported 2,500.
According to the New York Times, officials, both American and Afghan, have said the number is actually around 3,500. That’s 1,000 more than Washington has disclosed.
According to the Times, the “cloudy accounting” around troops numbers results from some Special Forces units having been put “off the books”.
According to a senior US official, the presence of some temporary and transitioning units also accounted for the additional troops.
A second official told the Times that these troops include Joint Special Operations Command units, some of them elite Army Rangers, who work under both the Pentagon and the CIA while deployed to Afghanistan.
Having more troops in a country than the Defense Department officially acknowledges is common practice, the Times reported.
According to the report, the United States often details military troops to the CIA or other agencies, declares that information “classified” and refuses to publicly acknowledge their presence.
The Times reported that as a result of this practice, last year, as former President Donald Trump pushed for rapid troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, the Defense Department and other national security agencies used familiar methods to move numbers around, which made troop levels seem to be dropping faster than they really were.
It was comparable to what happened in 2019, when Trump wanted to pull forces from Syria, U.S. officials said.
The Times reported that the Obama administration used similar tactics, under the bureaucratic term “force management levels,” which resulted in more troops in war zones with little public oversight.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” said Laurel E. Miller, a former top State Department official who worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan diplomacy for former President Barack Obama and for Trump, the Times reported.
“To some extent, the fudging of the numbers reflects the arbitrariness of political fixation on declaring specific numbers.”
The report stated that officially, the Pentagon insists that troop numbers are lower. “We are still at 2,500” in Afghanistan, Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email to The New York Times on Friday.
Pakistan’s Deputy Minister of the Interior Ministry, Talal Chaudhry, says a new deadline will not be granted for Afghan refugees to leave the country. He stated that the process of returning undocumented migrants to Afghanistan is ongoing and that no new extension for their expulsion will be considered.
According to him, over 800,000 Afghan migrants—some of whom even held ACC cards have been deported so far.
“Those who only have the “ACC” cards or any other type of card are being sent back to their country. Since October 30, 2023, more than 800,000 people have been deported, and in the past few days alone, 11,000 individuals with ACC cards were returned to Afghanistan. This process will continue. As for asylum seekers being transferred to other countries, they have until the end of April this year—a deadline which will not be extended,” he added.
Meanwhile, Acting Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Mawlavi Abdul Kabir, during a meeting with Robert Chatterton Dickson, the British chargé d’affaires for Afghanistan, stated that Pakistan has intensified the forced deportation of migrants in violation of international laws and norms.
He emphasized that addressing the situation of these migrants requires increased support from the international community.
In this meeting, Dickson also said that the UK has added more than seven million pounds to its humanitarian aid to provide additional support for the Afghan migrants.
An Iranian economic delegation has visited Afghanistan’s bordering province of Herat and held talks with local officials about expanding trade with the country.
The delegation is headed by Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Rasoul Mohajir, and comprises Deputy Minister of Planning and Resource Management of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development and the Governor of South Khorasan Province.
The Iranian embassy in Kabul said the delegation visited the Khaf-Herat railway and the industrial township of Herat, met with the provincial governor and a group of businessmen and discussed the expansion of trade between the two countries.
After Herat, the delegation will also visit Farah province to discuss ways to develop bilateral cooperation and facilitate the transportation of goods between Iran and Afghanistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) on Friday publicly executed four individuals after they were found guilty of murder, the Supreme Court has announced.
Two were executed in Badghis province and two in Nimroz and Farah.
One of them had killed three people and the other three murdered one each, according to the court.
The court said that families of victims had been requested to pardon the murderers, but they didn’t accept it.
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