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Pressing fight spurs more OEF deaths

The recent spike in U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan is the result of greater contact with enemy insurgents, a growth in the complexity of their attacks and, in the east, their ability to slip away into a safe haven across the Pakistani border, the senior U.S. troop commander in that region said Tuesday.

At least 25 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan since May 25, nine of them in NATO’s Regional Command East. The total exceeds the number of troops killed over the same period in neighboring Iraq, where far more U.S. troops are deployed. 22 troops have lost their lives in Iraq over the past four weeks.

According to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks coalition deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, 110 coalition troops, 57 of them U.S., have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.

The figures include four soldiers — three of them New York National Guardsmen — killed June 21 in Kandahar. Those deaths were announced by the Pentagon late Tuesday afternoon.

RC East is commanded by Combined Joint Task Force 101’s Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser. He told Pentagon reporters in a video teleconference that the aggressive coalition stance toward the insurgency — bolstered this spring with the addition of about 3,200 U.S. Marines, 2,200 of whom are fighting Taliban extremists in southern Afghanistan — has simply increased the likelihood of casualties.

“As we push out into Afghanistan in areas that we haven’t been before ... we are bound to run into insurgents, terrorists, in areas we didn’t know they were going to be there,” said Schloesser, who also serves as the resource and support commander for all U.S. troops throughout Afghanistan. “And that’s what I think you’re partly seeing ... in RC West and RC South.”

Schloesser added that the “increasingly capable” Afghanistan Security Forces also are making forays into new areas.

In RC East, Schloesser said, “We are going to places that they did not operate in last year or the year prior. I’m doing that consciously, I’m doing that on purpose, and we are actually hunting down the enemy of the Afghan people, and trying to rout them. We’re giving them four options: They can flee ... they can reconcile, or they can be captured or killed.”

Schloesser said coalition forces have had “quite a bit of success” in eliminating the Taliban, although he declined to provide specific numbers.

RC East has seen a 40 percent increase in “kinetic activities” — loosely defined as enemy attacks of all kinds — in the first five months of 2008 compared to the same period last year, Schloesser said. But the increase was “not unexpected,” he added, noting that the number has risen each year in Afghanistan since 2001, when the U.S. invaded following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Another explanation for the uptick in violence, Schloesser said, is that insurgent forces are employing increasingly complex tactics. What was once a simple roadside bomb attack or ambush has become an operation in which a roadside bomb is detonated to stop a convoy, followed by small arms attacks on two sides meant to pin the convoy down, and subsequent use of another roadside bomb to strike the quick reaction force coming to the rescue.

But in some cases, Schloesser said, “It’s not all that sophisticated ... [insurgents] just increase the size of the explosive. To be honest with you, I’ve seen some of that.”

Coalition efforts to strike back are complicated by Afghanistan’s 450-mile border with Pakistan, which Schloesser said provides extremist elements with a ready-made escape route. “He’s taking refuge and operating with what I’ll call some freedom of movement in the border region,” Schloesser said. “And he’s using this sanctuary to reconstitute, to plan and to launch attacks into Afghanistan.”

To counter the problem, Schloesser said, coalition forces are trying to help build up the capability of the Afghan Border Police and “trying to build on lines of communication” with Pakistani forces. That ability apparently fell short during a controversial June 10 cross-border battle that Pakistan said left of its 11 troops dead.

Over the long run, security will improve “when the population of Afghanistan that is sitting on the fence ... decides that it is better for them to be against the enemy in a very real sense, rather than just putting up with the enemy going past them,” Schloesser said.

“And I think that the key to that is going to be development, and really increasing, demonstrably, the quality of life for the normal Afghan villager and his family — and then linking the governance at the village level, at the district level ... to that same villager and family, over time.”

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