US Troop Deaths Double in Afghanistan

by Sebastian Abbot for The Associated Press

Sunday, March 28, 2010

KABUL - The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared with the same period last year as the United States has added tens of thousands of additional troops. Those deaths have been accompanied by a spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and heading in the same direction based on the latest available data for this month. U.S. officials warned that casualties are likely to rise as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in coming months. "We must steel ourselves, no matter how successful we are on any given day, for harder days yet to come," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month. In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in the first two months of 2010 compared with 28 in January and February of last year, an increase of more than 100 percent, according to Pentagon figures compiled by The Associated Press. At least 20 U.S. service members have been killed this month, compared with 13 a year ago.

The steady rise in combat deaths has generated less public reaction in the United States than the spike in casualties last summer and fall, which undermined public support in the U.S. for the American-led mission. After a summer marked by the highest monthly death rates of the war, President Obama faced serious domestic opposition over his decision in December to increase troops in Afghanistan, with only about half the U.S. people supporting the move. But support for his handling of the war has improved since then, despite increased casualties. The latest Associated Press-GfK poll at the beginning of this month found that 57 percent of those surveyed approved his handling of the war in Afghanistan, compared with 49 percent two months earlier. The poll surveyed 1,002 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said the poll results could partly be a reaction to last month's offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province, which the Obama administration painted as the first test of its revamped counterinsurgency strategy. Some 10,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan forces seized control of the farming community of about 80,000 people while suffering relatively few deaths. But the Taliban continue to intimidate the locals, and the hardest part of the operation is to come: building an effective local government that can win over the loyalty of the people. "My main thesis ... is that Americans can brace themselves for casualties in war if they consider the stakes high enough and the strategy being followed promising enough," O'Hanlon said. "But such progress in public opinion is perishable, if not right away then over a period of months, if we don't sustain the new momentum."

The rise in the number of wounded, a figure that draws less attention than deaths, shows that the Taliban remain a formidable opponent. The number of U.S. troops wounded in Afghanistan and three smaller theaters where there isn't much battlefield activity rose from 85 in the first two months of 2009 to 381 this year, an increase of almost 350 percent. Fifty U.S. troops were wounded last March; in comparison, 44 were injured during the first six days of March this year. The increase in casualties was partly driven by the higher number of troops in Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. troops rose from 32,000 at the beginning of last year to 68,000 at the end of the year. "We've got a massive influx of troops, we have troops going into areas where they have not previously been, and you have a reaction by an enemy to a new force presence," said NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale. The troop numbers have continued to rise in 2010 in line with the recent build-up. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that one-third of the additional forces, or 10,000 troops, are already in Afghanistan. They plan to have all 30,000 troops in the country before the end of the year. U.S. officials have said they plan to use many of the additional forces to reassert control in Kandahar province, where the insurgents have slowly taken territory over the past few years in an effort to boost their influence over Kandahar city, the largest metropolis in the south and the Taliban's former capital.

Many analysts think the Kandahar operation will be much more difficult than the Marjah offensive because of the greater dispersion of Taliban forces, the urban environment in Kandahar city and the complex political and tribal forces in the province. The goal of both operations is to put enough pressure on the Taliban to force them to the negotiating table to work out a political settlement to end the war.

[It’s the last sentence of this article that got me: forcing the Taliban to the negotiating table to work on a political settlement….. Erm, if my country was invaded and was presently being occupied I think that the only politically acceptable solution would be for the foreigners to get the hell out of my country and go back to theirs! I shouldn’t think that any pressure would be sufficient to make me negotiate with invaders for my own country. Ending the war is very, very simple: We pack our bags and leave. Or we could fight the various Afghan forces ranged against us for the next 10, 20 or 30 years and then leave. It seems like a fairly easy choice to me – having even a general knowledge of the failed attempts to hold that country in the past (and I don’t just mean the Russians).]