This is why I posted about Afghanistan.......as many Americans have been killed in six months this year as were killed the entire year last year.
Thanks Mr. Bush........your incompetency continues to endanger Americans everywhere in the world!
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US endures deadliest year in Afghanistan
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 3, 2005
WASHINGTON -- This year has been the deadliest for US troops in Afghanistan since war began in late 2001, as more American soldiers have died than in each of the previous three years, according to military figures.
In the first half of this year, at least 54 Americans lost their lives, compared with 52 in all of last year, according to official statistics reviewed by the Globe.
The number of overall casualties, which saw an upsurge with the shootdown of a US military helicopter and the potential loss of a reconnaissance team in eastern Afghanistan last week, have edged up every year since Operation Enduring Freedom began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the figures show.
Many of the recent US deaths have been caused by more deadly improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that also have been the weapon of choice for insurgents targeting American troops in Iraq, according to US commanders. Six Americans were killed by such bombs last month alone. Officials and specialists said all indications point to substantial support for the Afghan and foreign fighters from sympathetic tribes and government officials next door in lawless western Pakistan.
''The upsurge is disturbing," said James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the government-funded Rand Corp. and President Bush's former special envoy to Afghanistan. ''It is surprising. People thought the trends were more favorable. It suggests that the US is not going to be able to phase out any time soon or significantly reduce its troop presence."
Indeed, with national elections planned for September, senior Pentagon officials say they are considering a temporary increase in US forces to respond to recent attacks on the new Afghan government and a series of brazen assaults on US military forces. The US Central Command, responsible for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, has not yet asked for additional troops, the officials said last week.
But many officers and outside experts believe they will be needed to ensure the violence is kept in check while Afghanistan's political progress moves ahead.
On Tuesday, militants armed with a rocket-propelled grenade downed a US helicopter in the mountainous border region with Pakistan, killing all 16 Special Forces soldiers who were aboard, according to a preliminary investigation. The Navy SEALS and Army special operations commandos were on a mission to aid a small reconnaissance team that had been battling with Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the area and is now missing.Continued...
Taliban spokesmen have claimed credit for shooting down the helicopter and say they have captured a US soldier and killed seven American ''spies." The information could not be verified and an intensive search of the area by hundreds of US troops was underway for the second day yesterday.
Also, in a three-day assault that ended Friday, 25 people were killed when Taliban fighters attacked two police stations and a nearby village in southeastern Afghanistan, the spiritual heartland of the former ruling Taliban regime, including nine tribal elders, the provincial governor in Uruzgan province told the Associated Press.
Military officials and Afghan specialists say the rise in attacks is partly because of a more aggressive US and Afghan strategy to flush out remaining pockets of Taliban fighters and their Al Qaeda allies who used Afghanistan as a training base throughout the 1990s. In the first year of the US occupation, the United States maintained a military presence of only about 8,000 troops; it now has 18,000 troops and has expanded the number of patrols and community reconstruction teams to more remote areas where the Taliban is believed to operate.
Other contributing factors cited for the increase in attacks are the spring thaw in the Hindu Kush mountains, increased pressure by US forces and the Afghan government on the booming heroin trade, and unrest about the upcoming national elections
Still, military officers, aid workers, and Afghan officials agree that ''the fact is that there is more violence," said Robert M. Perito, a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, who returned from Afghanistan last week.
''The overriding story I heard is that the security is worse this spring than it was a year ago," Perito said. ''There are more attacks and they are better organized, more lethal, and widespread."
The use of more deadly methods of attack have US commanders worried. ''There is one that we see a little bit troubling," Lieutenant General James T. Conway, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters in Washington on Thursday. ''And that is the increased presence of IEDs. I think if you charted it over time, you would see more attacks tied into IEDs than perhaps we had over the last six to 10 months."
The tactics have taken their toll. In the past three months, 29 US troops have been killed, including the 16 in last week's helicopter attack, the deadliest since US forces invaded on Oct. 7, 2001. This year is already the deadliest for US troops. Before 52 troops died last year, 47 soldiers were killed in 2003 and 43 in 2002. From October to December 2001, 12 US military personnel were killed.
Before last week's attacks, 194 troops had died since the start of the war, 80 from hostile fire and 114 in military accidents. According to the Pentagon figures, 506 soldiers were wounded in action as of June 25.
US commanders and intelligence officials said they believe Taliban fighters are getting more support from havens inside Pakistan, where many tribal allegiances favor the militant brand of Islam espoused by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and where the Pakistani government -- which helped bring the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in 1994 -- has little control over a border area that to the native population is just an arbitrary marker on a map.
''The violence in Afghanistan tells us more about what is happening in Pakistan than Afghanistan," Dobbins said. ''This is an insurgency mounted from safe havens in Pakistan," where Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are believed to be hiding.
As the United States considers increasing troops, there are already plans to send additional NATO troops before the September elections and thousands more next year to help fight the insurgency in the eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan, where the violence is most pronounced. Britain, Canada, Norway, and others, which began policing the relatively stable northern and western parts of the Texas-sized country in May, will work alongside the Americans.
''I don't know if you could talk about a Taliban resurgence," Perito said. ''They never went away. We'll be doing counterinsurgency for the foreseeable future."
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