U.S. Deaths In Afghanistan At 5-Year Low American combat deaths have plummeted as U.S. troops hand off more duties to Afghan forces, but Afghan military casualties have risen sharply. By Jay Price, McClatchy Foreign Staff KABUL, Afghanistan — The shift to Afghan security forces leading in combat and the ongoing reduction of U.S. troops here drove American combat deaths to their lowest number in five years for the first half of 2013. “Afghan National Security Forces are primarily the units in contact with enemy forces, rather than ISAF personnel,” Lt. Tamarac Dyer, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, (ISAF) wrote in an emailed response to questions about casualties. In the first six months of the year, 72 Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan, according to iCasualties.org., a website that tracks military deaths. The last year when the number of dead was for the comparable period was 2008. Then, 66 Americans died from January through June, and 155 were killed in the full year. The worst year for U.S. troops was 2010, when 499 Americans died. Fatalities have totaled more than 2,200 since the war began in 2001. The nearly 12-year-old war has had time to develop patterns, and the number of deaths in the second half of any given year have often been higher. This year, , though, insurgents will have fewer targets: U.S. troops are expected to accelerate their withdrawal after the summer, and the current force of about 68,000 troops is scheduled to be cut in half by the end of December. While the U.S. war here is drawing to a close, the Afghans’ is not. Their military, police and civilian casualties are all up sharply. Statistics for Afghan forces can be hard to come by, but from March 22 to May 22, at least 523 members of the national army, national police and border police were killed, according to the defense and interior ministries. Those numbers don’t include Afghan local police deaths, which also are substantial. Last year, about 3,400 Afghan soldiers and police officers were killed, up from about 1,950 in 2011, according to the Brookings Institution, compared with the 3,344 troops the NATO-led coalition has lost during the course of the entire war. How to cut those casualties has become a priority for NATO commanders, who’ve worked hard in recent years to help Afghans build their security forces to the target strength of 352,000. But high numbers of desertions and casualties mean that about 50,000 new soldiers and police officers have to be recruited and trained yearly. Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, the deputy commander for ISAF, said last month that that attrition rate can’t continue indefinitely without affecting the ability of the Afghan forces to fight, and U.S. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the ISAF commander, said the U.S. is “working very closely with the Afghan leadership to identify the specific causes of those casualties.” “We’re looking at that as though they were our own casualties,” Dunford said. The U.S. casualty numbers, meanwhile, are now so low that a single incident can sharply affect any comparison to previous years. In the first few months of the year, there were so few combat casualties that aircraft accidents were the primary killer. Now, improvised bombs, which have been the single greatest cause of deaths for U.S. troops here, have again assumed that place. They have caused just under half the total for deaths among members of the NATO-led coalition, according to iCasualties.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 11:19:56 +0000
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