LOS ANGELES, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon has more than doubled the number of highly trained special forces in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban leaders, a newspaper report said on Thursday.
"The secretive buildup reflects the view of the Obama administration and senior military leaders that the U.S. has only a limited amount of time to degrade the capabilities of the Taliban," the Los Angeles Times noted.
With the new buildup, there will be more of the special operations forces in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq at the height of the U.S. troop buildup there in 2007, the paper quoted a defense official as saying.
"Although we will have less general purpose forces than we had in Iraq, we will have more special forces," the unidentified official said.
The move came as the U.S. military was gearing up for an expected offensive this summer in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that is the Taliban's spiritual heartland, according to the paper.
"By hunting Taliban leaders, the specialized units hope to increase pressure on foot soldiers to switch sides," the paper said.
U.S. forces are in the midst of an overall increase that will add 30,000 troops this year, and plan to begin reducing the force in mid-2011.
With such an abbreviated timeline, the elite manhunt teams are the most effective weapon for disrupting the insurgent leadership, the paper quoted senior Pentagon officials as saying.
The officials contend that stepped-up operations by teams inserted in recent months already have eroded the Taliban leadership.
But the buildup carries risks. Special operations forces have been involved in some botched strikes that ended up killing civilians, the paper said.
Such mistakes could undermine the overall mission, said Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan.
For years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials have complained bitterly about civilian deaths in military actions by the United States and its allies.
