USA TODAY International Edition
Airstrikes target Taliban drug labs in Afghanistan
U.S. expands campaign under new Trump tactics
WASHINGTON – The U.S. military has sharply expanded its air campaign against the Taliban in the first major test of President Trump’s strategy in Afghanistan, where a stalemated war is now in its 17th year.
The first strikes targeted Taliban drug labs, but those initial attacks are only part of an ambitious effort to use air power to help destroy the Taliban’s finances and militant networks.
“It’s much more of a broad approach,” said Maj. Gen. David Nahom, deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command.
Over the past several years, the U.S. has curtailed air support as it turned over fighting to the Afghan security forces. Under Trump’s plan, Afghan forces will still be in the lead, but they will be supported by a major U.S. strategic bombing campaign.
Nahom said military planners will develop an array of targets to destroy the Taliban’s leadership and ability to command and control its forces. “This is really the first step,” he said. In August, the Trump administration ordered new authorities that lifted restrictions on what could be targeted. Planners began poring over intelligence to find targets that would cripple the Taliban’s finances.
“We’re working very hard to gain more understanding of the networks,” Nahom said.
The drug business was a natural place to start. The Pentagon estimates half the Taliban’s revenues came from the drug trade, allowing the militants to pay fighters and buy weapons. The Taliban “taxes” poppy farmers and also refines the harvest into heroin.
The strikes on drug labs last month cost the Taliban between $7 million and $10 million in lost revenues, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said.
The number of bombs and other munitions dropped on Taliban targets has already tripled this year, said Gen. John Nicholson, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan. U.S. warplanes dropped 3,554 bombs and other munitions in the first 10 months of this year, according to U.S. military statistics.
The new approach is a reversal of President Obama’s strategy.
After U.S. combat forces withdrew in 2014, the Afghan security forces took the lead in combating the Taliban. Obama announced a plan to withdraw most of the remaining advisers from the country by the end of his presidency in 2016. U.S. airstrikes would be mostly limited to defending U.S. troops.
Obama later revised the plan and decided to leave nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in the country, but the sharp drawdown and limits on air power allowed the Taliban to seize control of some rural areas and inflict heavy casualties on Afghan troops.
David Sedney, a senior Pentagon official under the Obama administration, said one of the reasons he resigned in 2013 was Obama’s decision to draw down most U.S. forces, which he said put American troops at risk without giving them a shot at breaking the stalemate against the Taliban.
“We weren’t winning, and we weren’t losing,” Sedney said. “We were still dying.”
Trump’s plan also calls for increasing the number of American advisers and giving them more leeway in accompanying Afghan combat battalions into battle.
The Pentagon said it would deploy an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total to about 14,000. The Afghan forces will remain in the lead, but the additional advisers and airstrikes will allow them to prevent further Taliban advances, analysts say.