With tens of thousands of reinforcements in Afghanistan :

Troop deaths rising

AFGHANISTAN: The arrival in Afghanistan of tens of thousands of reinforcements to fight the Taliban will lead to a higher death rate among foreign troops, adding pressure on Western leaders to get out altogether, officials say.

Militants fighting for the overthrow of the Kabul government promised to turn Afghanistan into a “flaming tandoor oven”, escalating attacks and deploying more fighters to match the Western surge.

Western military chiefs warn more troops will inevitably lead to more deaths as they try to help Afghan security forces take on the fight alone.

The Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Pakistan, has matched the fighting words by promising a surge of its own.

“With the coming of new forces the fight will be further extended and increased,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a purported Taliban spokesman, who spoke to AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Militant forces would “attack the foreign forces as well as their Afghan allies through suicide attacks, roadside bombs and face-to-face clashes”, he said.

“They will transform Afghanistan into a flaming tandoor oven for the foreign forces.” America’s economic woes could limit resources for forces fighting a Taliban with access to funds from the three-billion-dollar-a-year Afghan opium industry and fighters from Pakistan, said political analyst Ahmed Sayedi.

On top of the drugs money, he said, “people in Middle Eastern and Arab countries are providing funding for the Taliban, and neighbouring countries Pakistan and Iran are arming them.

“The Taliban have huge support networks, while the 30,000 US soldiers coming to Afghanistan will be victims of the challenge to get funding through the Senate,” he said.

The number of foreign troop deaths in 2009 is nearly double last year’s figure, at more than 500 so far compared to 295 for 2008. Almost 40,000 troops are set to arrive in Afghanistan in coming months, boosting the 113,000 foreign soldiers fighting under US and NATO command.

Washington’s Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen warned during a visit to Kabul this month the violence will get worse before getting better as the Taliban dominate at least a third of the country.

“I told our troops heading here to steel themselves for more combat and more casualties,” he said.

The influx — expected to be complete by August next year, military officials in Kabul said — is part of a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan that has intensified this year as the Taliban have evolved their tactics.

Most foreign troops deaths are now caused by IEDs, or improvised explosive devices which are homemade bombs, cheap and easy to make, planted on roads and detonated by remote control as military vehicles pass by.

NATO sources have said that for every IED death, there can be up to eight casualties, many with horrendous injuries including loss of limbs and eyes.

The death toll hit a peak of 77 in August, coinciding with a presidential election riddled with fraud, leading to questions among the Western public about why their troops are dying for the world’s second-most corrupt country.

President Hamid Karzai won the election, and has pledged to clean up the endemic graft in return for the now-conditional support of the West.

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rates Afghanistan behind only lawless Somalia on its table of the world’s most corrupt countries.

The 30,000 extra US troops, and 6,800 from NATO partners, are part of a commitment to keep Karzai in power while he transforms his corrupt cabal into good governance. The troop escalation will be concentrated on populated areas close to the country’s ring road, with one military official saying more combat troops will draw militants “like bees to honey”.

“It is inevitable that with more troops there’s more fighting, and more fighting means more casualties,” another Western military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The corollary in an already unpopular war is likely to be greater public pressure for withdrawal.

US President Barack Obama said he wants to draw down troop levels by mid-2011, but his officials stress this is conditional on Afghanistan’s own army and police being ready to take responsibility for security. Karzai has promised this will happen by the end of his five-year term.

Kabul, Sunday, AFP