(CNN) -- The shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in central Afghanistan with the loss of 38 lives -- most of them U.S. Navy SEALs -- highlights two crucial aspects of the conflict in Afghanistan, as U.S. forces begin to draw down and Afghan security forces start taking the lead. The first is the growing reliance on U.S. Special Operations Forces to combat the Taliban and other insurgent groups -- in operations every night across the country. The second is that many areas far beyond the Taliban's traditional strongholds in the south remain very insecure, areas where the Taliban have exploited an instinctive wariness of a foreign force among locals -- and punished those who dare to work with them.
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The use of U.S. Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan has grown
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Special Operations Command now has a strength of 60,000
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Commander: SOF carried out "somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 operations" in 2010
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Of the 33,000 U.S. troops to be withdrawn by the end of 2012, none will be special forces
Earlier this year U.S. forces passed control of the military post in the valley to @placeholder troops.