DEATH OF US TROOPS ELEVATES AFGHAN WAR
A RASH of American combat deaths in Afghanistan is putting a spotlight on a stalemate 17-year war that is testing US President Donald Trump’s commitment to pursuing peace with the Taliban.
Trump has acknowledged that his original instinct was to withdraw from Afghanistan, but last week he suggested he is willing to stick it out, asserting that the US is in “very strong negotiations” – an apparent reference to US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s efforts to get the Taliban to agree to peace talks.
On the other hand, Trump indicated he had little confidence the talks are going to succeed. “Maybe they’re not. Probably they’re not,” he said.
The human cost of the conflict rarely makes headlines in the US, leaving Trump with political room to manoeuvre. But that might be changing.
In early November, Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, and a major in the Utah National Guard, was killed by an Afghan soldier in Kabul. Last Saturday, Sergeant Leandro Jasso, a 25-year-old Army Ranger from Leavenworth, Washington, was mortally wounded in southern Afghanistan. On Tuesday, US officials said they had determined that Jasso probably was accidentally shot by an Afghan soldier during battle with an al-Qaeda fighter.
The US military headquarters in Kabul announced on Tuesday that three US service members were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, where the Taliban has been resurgent. It was the deadliest attack on US forces in Afghanistan this year.
The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan before US forces invaded in October 2001, carry out neardaily attacks on the Afghan army and police force, and in August the insurgents overran parts of Ghazni, leading to days of intense fighting, before they were driven out.
Ghazni was the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces where parliamentary elections could not be held in October because of security worries. Voting there has been postponed for a year.
Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University who has closely tracked the war from its beginning, said little that has happened in Afghanistan in recent years has grabbed the American public’s attention, including a death toll since 2001 that now exceeds 2 400.
“The war hasn’t produced marches on the Pentagon or any meaningful effect on any election campaign,” Biddle said. “What (the up-tick in casualties) could do is change the mind of Donald Trump. At a minimum, he is erratic and clearly doesn’t like the war.”
In a Washington Post interview, Trump called the latest deaths “very sad” and said he was keeping troops there only because “experts” have told him it was necessary.
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, ended the US combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 with the aim of compelling the Afghans to provide for their own defence. Trump came to the White House having called the war a waste.
But in August 2017, he announced he was recommitting US forces to winning in Afghanistan, while revealing that his first instinct had been to pull the plug. Over several months, the Pentagon sent an additional 3 500 troops and changed the way it advises Afghan forces. There are now about 15 000 US troops in the country.
Trump’s strategy in Afghanistan is built on the hope that the Taliban can be drawn into peace talks. That has not yet happened, but some US analysts say prospects are better than at any time in the war. A second pillar of the strategy, ending Pakistan’s tactic support for the Taliban, has proved ineffective.