WASHINGTON — 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 well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

The plan, if approved by President Barack Obama, would amount to the most significant evolution in the military campaign since Obama sent in 32,000 more troops to wage an intensive and costly counterinsurgency effort.

Under the emerging plan, U.S. conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of U.S. Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground. Their number may even grow.

Past 2014

Senior U.S. officials have also expressed a desire to keep some training and counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan past 2014. 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, for training. 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.

Just as significant would be what the U.S. 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.

Pentagon officials and military planners say the new plan is not a direct response to the deteriorating political conditions in Iraq. Unlike in Iraq, leaders here have expressed an initial willingness to continue a partnership with the U.S. that includes counterterrorism missions and training.

In Europe

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surprised NATO allies when he announced recently that U.S. forces would step back from a leading role in combat missions by mid-2013. The description of the shift to a Special Operations mission 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 Panetta sketched out for the allies.

Panetta, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were in Munich, Germany, Saturday, also seeking to reassure Europe that, despite budget cuts and the coming withdrawal from the Continent of about 6,000 to 7,000 U.S. troops, the United States was not abandoning its partners across the Atlantic. But they also emphasized that Europe had to stop cutting its own military budgets and had to get its own economic house in order to keep the NATO alliance strong.

U.N.: Taliban behind 80% of war deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan — A U.N. report released Saturday has documented 3,021 civilian deaths in the Afghanistan War in 2011 — up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.

“Anti-government elements” — shorthand for the Taliban and other insurgent groups — were responsible for 2,332, or almost 80 percent, of conflict-related deaths in 2011. The report said 410 civilian deaths, or 14 percent of the 2011 total, were caused by operations by Afghan, U.S. and international forces. A further 279 deaths, or 9 percent, could not be blamed on any side.

— McClatchy Newspapers