By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.
The plan, if approved by President Obama, would amount to the most significant evolution in the military campaign since Mr. Obama sent in 32,000 more troops to wage an intensive and costly counterinsurgency effort.
Under the emerging plan, American conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of American Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground; their number may even grow.
The evolving strategy is far different from the withdrawal plan for Iraq, where almost all American forces, conventional or otherwise, have left. Iraq has devolved into sectarian violence ever since the withdrawal in December, which threatens to undo the political and security gains there.
Pentagon officials and military planners say the new plan for Afghanistan is not a direct response to the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. Even so, the shift could give Mr. Obama a political shield against attacks from his Republican rivals in the presidential race who have already begun criticizing him for moving too swiftly to extract troops from Afghanistan.
Unlike in Iraq, where domestic political pressure gave Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki reason to resist a continued American military presence into 2012, in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and his senior aides have expressed an initial willingness to continue a partnership with the United States that includes counterterrorism missions and training.
Senior American officials have also expressed a desire to keep some training and counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan past 2014. The transition plan for the next three years in Afghanistan could be a model for such a continued military relationship.
The new focus builds on a desire to use the nation’s most elite troops to counter any residual terrorist threat over the coming months as well as to devote the military’s best trainers to the difficult task of preparing Afghan security forces to take over responsibilities in their country.
The plan would put a particularly heavy focus on Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. They would be in charge of training a variety of Afghan security forces. At the same time, the elite commando teams within Special Operations forces would continue their raids to hunt down, capture or kill insurgent commanders and terrorist leaders and keep pressure on cells of fighters to prevent them from mounting attacks.
Created by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, the Green Berets have as one of their core missions what is called “foreign internal defense” — using combat, mentoring, language and cross-cultural skills to train local forces in rugged environments, as they are today in missions conducted quietly in dozens of nations around the world.
Just as significant would be what the American military’s conventional forces stop doing.
Americans would no longer be carrying out large numbers of patrols to clear vast areas of Afghanistan of insurgents, or holding villages and towns vulnerable to militant attacks while local forces and government agencies rebuilt the local economy and empowered local governments.
Those tasks would fall to Afghan forces, with Special Forces soldiers remaining in the field to guide them. This shift has already begun to take place.
The defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, surprised NATO allies last week when he announced that American forces would step back from a leading role in combat missions by mid-2013, turning over security responsibilities to Afghan forces a year earlier than expected. The description of the shift to a Special Operations mission in Afghanistan by senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the final plans have not been approved, go a long way toward explaining what Mr. Panetta sketched out for the allies.
White House officials confirmed in broad terms the shift to a Special Operations mission, and said a formal announcement on the future of the mission was expected at the May summit meeting of NATO leaders in Chicago.
“The president said in June that when the drawdown of surge forces is complete in September, U.S. troops will continue coming home at a steady pace and our mission will shift from combat to support as the Afghans take the lead,” said Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman.
The United States has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, with 22,000 of them expected to leave by this fall. No schedule has been set for the pace of withdrawal for the 68,000 American troops who will remain, although some administration officials are advocating for Mr. Obama to order another reduction by the summer of 2013.
The planning for a transition of the Afghanistan mission is a central effort among the Pentagon’s civilian planners and the military’s Joint Staff, as well as among officers at the United States Central and Special Operations Commands.
Senior Pentagon officials involved in the planning acknowledge that a military effort with a smaller force and a more focused mission could be easier to explain to Americans who have tired of the large counterinsurgency campaigns of Iraq and, previously, Afghanistan.
To be sure, some American conventional units would be called on to handle logistics and other support services — transportation, medical care, security — to enable the Special Operations missions to continue.
But that would require a far smaller American presence to help the Afghans protect recent security gains while minimizing American expenses and casualties.
The plan first calls for creating a two-star command position overseeing the entire Special Operations effort in Afghanistan. Next, the three-star corps headquarters that currently commands the day-to-day operations of the war — and is held by an Army officer from the conventional force — would be handed over to a Special Operations officer.
Officials said that no final decisions had been made on the timing of the transition, although it is likely to begin late this year as the rest of the surge forces are withdrawn. There has also been no decision on the number of troops to be committed to the mission as it evolves in 2013 and into 2014, officials said.
Officials noted the progress in creating new “Afghan Strike Force” units to carry out commando-type raids, and they said that the effort to create an Afghan National Army — which had been focused on building as large a force as possible — would shift to emphasize quality and capability.
Officials conceded that the Afghan National Police program remained a huge disappointment, but said that a great value in American investment had been organizing local Afghan police units, drawn from the villages they are assigned to protect.
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