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As stable as Iraq has become in recent times, Afghanistan has taken a turn for the worse, with violence and U.S. casualties increasing in number without end in sight.
A multi-pronged assault by more than 100 militants on a remote U.S. base close to the Pakistan border killed nine American soldiers and wounded 15 Sunday in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in three years, officials said.
The attack on the American troops began around 4:30 a.m. and lasted throughout the day. Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
Several militants were able to get inside the base’s outer wall in a “concerted attempt to overrun” the outpost but the insurgents were not able to overtake it, a Western official in Kabul said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.
U.S. officials say militant attacks in Afghanistan are becoming more complex, intense and better coordinated than a year ago. Monthly death tolls of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan surpassed U.S. military deaths in Iraq in May and June. And last Monday, a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 58 people in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since 2001.
U.S. officials are considering drawing down additional forces from Iraq in coming months, in part because of the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan. U.S. officials have said they need at least three more brigades in Afghanistan — or more than 10,000 troops.
Those on the left have pointed to the violence in Afghanistan and the inability to make progress as a result of the Bush Administration’s hasty war with Iraq, as the war in Afghanistan should’ve maintained the focus after 9/11. With troop numbers being drawn down in Iraq, troops shouldn’t expect their number of deployments to go down, but simply to change direction with a major push being to place more troops in Afghanistan to both drive out extremists, and also to protect the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where this recent attack took place.
Expect this to be a long and arduous battle.
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