Rise in deaths of U.S. troops dims outlook for peace
WASHINGTON — A rash of American combat deaths in Afghanistan is putting a spotlight on a stalemated 17-year war that is testing President 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 U.S. is in “very strong negotiations” — an apparent reference to U.S. 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 U.S., leaving Trump with political room to maneuver. 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, Sgt. Leandro Jasso, a 25-year-old Army Ranger from Leavenworth, Wash., was mortally wounded in southern Afghanistan. On Tuesday, U.S. officials said they had determined that Jasso probably was accidentally shot by an Afghan soldier during battle with an al Qaeda fighter.
The U.S. military headquarters in Kabul announced Tuesday that three U.S. service members were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, where the Taliban have been resurgent. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year.
The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan before U.S. forces invaded in October 2001, carry out near-daily attacks on Afghan army and police forces, 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 torch-lit marches on the Pentagon or for that matter any meaningful effect on any election campaign,” Biddle said. “What (the uptick 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 Tuesday, Trump called the latest deaths “very sad” and said he was keeping troops there only because “experts” told him it was necessary.
In Geneva on Wednesday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani urged a gathering of U.S., Russian and other diplomats to continue support for his government.