http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100327/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan_war_deaths
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT
Mar 27, 2010
KABUL – The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly
doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period
last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional
soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.
Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number
of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months
of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest
available data for March.
U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even
further 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 the 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 at a briefing last month.
In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed here during 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 American service
members have been killed so far in March, an average of about 0.8 per
day, compared to 13, or 0.4 per day, 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 8-year-old
American-led mission here. Fighting traditionally tapers off in
Afghanistan during winter months, only to peak in the summer.
After a summer marked by the highest monthly death rates of the war,
President Barack Obama faced serious domestic opposition over his
decision in December to increase troops in Afghanistan, with only
about half the American people supporting the move. But support for
his handling of the war has actually improved since then, despite the
increased casualties.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll at the beginning of March found
that 57 percent of those surveyed approved his handling of the war in
Afghanistan compared to 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 plant bombs at night and
intimidate the locals, and the hardest part of the operation is yet
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."
A 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. A total of 50 U.S. troops were wounded last March, an
average of 1.6 per day. In comparison, 44 were injured during just
the first six days of March this year, an average of 7.3 per day.
The increase in casualties was partly driven by the higher number of
troops in Afghanistan in 2010. American troops rose from 32,000 at
the beginning of last year to 68,000 at the end of the year, an
increase of more than 110 percent.
"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 surge. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that a
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 believe the Kandahar operation will be much more
difficult than the recent Marjah offensive because of the greater
dispersion of Taliban forces, the urban environment in Kandahar city
and the complex political and tribal forces at work 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 a process the U.S. believes will only
gain momentum once the militant group has lost traction on the battlefield.
"Until they transition to that mode, then we will have fighters ready
to take shots at us and plant IEDs (improvised explosive devices),"
said Lt. Col. Calvert Worth Jr., commanding officer of the 1st
Battalion, 6th Marines Regiment in central Marjah.
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