US casualties are indeed way up in Afghanistan this year. Icasualties calls it as (I'm correcting this data since I originally used OEF total casualties rather than just Afghanistan):
2001: 12
2002: 34
2003: 43
2004: 49
2005: 94
2006: 88
2007: 112
2008: 153
2009: 236 (as of early October). Call it 350 for the full year as a guess.
This raw increase in 2008 and 2009 is commonly interpreted as showing the enemy is resurgent and that we are losing.
I'm just focusing on US troops even though other allies do fight with us--especially the British and Canadians. But focusing just on US troops means I don't have to judge how national caveats affect casualties.
I've discussed the issue of our casualties in relation to the war many time in many forms. I don't think that we are losing. And increased enemy effectiveness at least partly stems from our victory over al Qaeda in Iraq which led them to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
So what accounts for our increased casualties? Is this because the enemy is resurgent or other factors?
This article goes over some important factors:
The sophistication of the insurgents' attacks had increased markedly, beginning with bloody battles along the Pakistani border last summer. To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments. ...
In recent months, the Taliban fighters have used mortars to force U.S. troops into defensive positions, where they are then hit with rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and machine guns. Insurgent units have learned to maintain "radio silence" as they move and to wet down the ground to prevent dusty recoil that would make them targets. They have "developed the ability to do some of the things that make up what you call a disciplined force," including treating casualties, the Army general said.
The insurgents have largely abandoned the large-unit attacks they used several years ago. "In 2005, Marines and Army units were having pretty decisive engagements" against massed Taliban fighters, another senior officer said, adding that "every time, we killed them in very large numbers." Small bases and checkpoints manned by Afghan national security forces have become preferred targets for the Taliban, he said, because they are "isolated and easy to kill," and the Afghan units are relatively easy to infiltrate for intelligence....
The insurgents have learned to gauge the response times for U.S. artillery cannons, as well as fighter jets and helicopters. "They know exactly how long it takes before . . . they have to break contact and pull back," the officer said.
U.S. officers in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines and British troops are fighting long-entrenched Taliban forces, attributed insurgent gains less to sophisticated tactics than to increased use of roadside bombs -- improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- laid along U.S. convoy routes in the desert or roads built with foreign aid money. ...
The Taliban has also taken advantage of changes in U.S. air and artillery tactics, adopted to decrease civilian casualties that have alienated the population. U.S. airstrikes and culturally offensive night ground raids are authorized far more selectively than they were. The Taliban has also adjusted its own tactics, gathering in populated areas and increasing its night operations, and "the playing field is leveled," one U.S. officer said.
A number of officials and experts, within and outside the military, said that while the Taliban was able to regroup militarily while U.S. attention was diverted to Iraq, its widening influence has as much to do with Afghan government corruption, tensions among regional ethnic groups, lack of state service and justice in rural areas, and high rates of unemployment as it does with insurgent efforts
So what of these reasons? Basically, none can be attributed to being "distracted" by Iraq through 2008. The whole "distraction" theme is ridiculous anyway.
The military reasons can be lumped into three major areas.
One, the enemy is getting training in small unit tactics, exploiting their sanctuary in Pakistan, which has made their attacks on us more effective; and has abandoned "scream and leap" tactics (a Kzinti thing) that just let us slaughter Taliban mass frontal assaults in the past.
Two, the enemy has learned from fighting us (just as we learn from fighting them and adapt). They learned how to adapt to our tactics and capabilities. Running before firepower can be called in or hugging human shields limit our ability to respond as effectively as we did in the past.
And three, and this in not unrelated to one and two but deserves its own category, the enemy has turned to reliance on IEDs instead of direct fire attacks.
These are valid reasons for increased American casualties, to be sure. But do they indicate the enemy is resurgent or even winning? I don't think so.
Here's one factor that is always left out:
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125171718622772181.html
Let's eyeball the troop levels each year:
2001: 500
2002: 9,000
2003: 10,000
2004: 15,000
2005: 18,000
2006: 21,000
2007: 24,000
2008: 30,000
2009: 45,000*
*Obviously, by the end of 2009 we'll have 68,000, but that isn't a full year commitment. Next year we'll have 68,000 if held steady for the full year. That might go up or down depending on our strategy and commitment.
You wouldn't be shocked that American casualties went up dramatically starting on about June 6, 1944, would you? Would you then conclude that the Nazi were resurgent? Granted, this is not the sole factor. It may not even be the majority. But I'd bet it's the leading factor second only to our more aggressive use of our troops.
So what would our casualty rate be per 1,000 troops per year?
2001: 24 [NOTE: Actually this should be 96 for an annual rate]
2002: 3.8
2003: 4.3
2004: 3.3
2005: 5.2
2006: 4.2
2007: 4.7
2008: 5.1
2009: 7.8
So my confidence expressed that we weren't losing to a "resurgent" Taliban hold true through the end of 2008. Our casualty rate was pretty constant even as casualties rose. And this despite constant cries from the anti-war side that the Taliban were winning year after year. The truth is, the enemy wasn't strong enough to require much more through at least part way through 2008 and possibly the entire year.
Even with the so-called "resurgent" Taliban, aided by al Qaeda's help after 2006 when they cut their losses by mostly abandoning Iraq after our surge there and aided by Pakistan's failure to control their border areas starting in 2006 (and their ISI's decision to reopen support for the Taliban there), it was only in 2009 that our casualty rate really shot up (and this assumes my estimate for the full year isn't too pessimistic). This is the year when we started using sizable reinforcements to go into Taliban areas on the offensive.
Remember, as I noted, that when we smashed up al Qaeda in Iraq during the surge beginning in 2007, al Qaeda pretty much abandoned their hope of winning in Iraq and shifted their first string to Afghanistan and Pakistan--which they'd "under-resourced" I suppose. Pakistan is now a major rear area for fighting in Afghanistan--notwithstanding Pakistan's efforts this year to gain back some of the ground they've lost the last couple years to jihadi influence. It is no surprise that the enemy is getting better with al Qaeda training and attention. The Post article details improvements in enemy abilities rather well.
So now both sided are focused on combat in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. Al Qaeda isn't so much involved in fighting much in Afghanistan, but their technical expertise can be seen with the shift to IEDs in Afghanistan as the enemy's primary weapon. But while such a tactic increases our casualties and reduces enemy casualties, in the long run it is a war loser because it kills more innocents than American troops. In Iraq, massive use of IEDs turned even the Sunni Arabs against al Qaeda and persuaded them to side with us--the nation that ended their privileged position in Saddam's Iraq!
It may very well be that the increase in violence over last year means that my confidence in our trajectory in Afghanistan stopped being the right way to view Afghanistan in 2009. I concede that enemy escalation may very well have outstripped our ability to match them without a dramatic change in our strength and mission.
But at least recognize that our increase in casualties is not the result of the enemy being "resurgent." While some on the right use this increase in casualties to argue we are doomed and must escalate, those on the left are even more eager to argue that the numbers mean we are doomed and should run. Neither view is accurate, I believe.
Nuance, people. Spare a little nuance. Wars evolve. Combatants adapt. What must not change is our will to defeat our enemies. And trying not to lose is not the same thing as trying to win.
Victory, people. That's the bottom line. I don't see any reasons in our casualty statistics that indicate we can't achieve victory if we evolve and adapt while staying focused on victory.
