At least 102 Western troops died in June; 58 were U.S. service members. Although buried bombs pose a significant hazard, other threats are growing as insurgents become bolder in their attacks
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan —
As the Afghan war's bloodiest month for Western forces drew to a close Wednesday, the widening scope and relentless tempo of battlefield casualties pointed to a formidable challenge for U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the incoming commander.At least 102 coalition troops were killed in June in Afghanistan, according to the independent website icasualties.org, far surpassing the previous monthly record of 76 military fatalities in August 2009.
In a reflection of the increasingly American face of the war as the summer's troop surge presses ahead, at least 58 of those killed were U.S. service members, including a soldier killed by small-arms fire Wednesday in the east of Afghanistan.
Buried bombs, or improvised explosive devices, continued to cause the preponderance of fatalities, despite what the military had described as some success using electronic surveillance to spot insurgents planting bombs and to stage raids on IED-producing rings.
But a plethora of other hazards have pushed to the fore as Petraeus, who was confirmed Wednesday by the Senate, 99-0, takes command in Afghanistan. Firefights, helicopter crashes, ambushes, sniper fire and complex coordinated assaults — such as Wednesday's failed attempt by insurgents to fight their way onto NATO's largest airbase in eastern Afghanistan — also exacted a significant toll in deaths and injuries.
As the pattern of fatalities shows, it is a war with a widening geographical reach. The country's east and south, the traditional Taliban strongholds, predictably saw the heaviest fighting, but a swath of the north became increasingly restive as well.
A day in which a military death does not occur somewhere in Afghanistan has become almost unheard of. And fatalities taking place in clusters of four or more in a single incident have become increasingly common. On two days in June, daily tallies reached nine and 10.
In a far-flung country with relatively few passable roads, NATO's war effort relies heavily on helicopters. Two of them crashed in June, killing a total of eight troops. One of the choppers was shot down by Taliban fighters in Helmand province, a formerly rare feat but a capability that may be assuming a more prominent place in the insurgents' arsenal.
Nearly nine years into the war, the NATO coalition is showing signs of strain, and in troop-contributing nations, a spike in military deaths invariably fuels public debate.
In Britain, the most important U.S. partner in Afghanistan, skepticism about the necessity of the war is becoming entrenched. The country marked a grim and much-noticed milestone in June when a Royal Marine killed in Helmand province became the 300th British military fatality in Afghanistan.
In countries with smaller troop contingents, the shockwave from war deaths tends to be magnified.
Norway, which has about 500 troops in Afghanistan, suffered its largest single-day battlefield loss since World War II when four of its soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on Sunday in the north. Until then, the Norwegian death toll for the war had been five.
Another ally, Australia, was disproportionately hard hit by four troop deaths in June, three of them elite commandos killed in a helicopter crash in Kandahar. Those losses represented one-quarter of Australia's total war dead in Afghanistan.
Petraeus himself acknowledged that battlefield casualties were unlikely to decline much as the summer wore on. "My sense is that the tough fighting will continue," he told senators on Tuesday at his confirmation hearing in Washington. "Indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months".
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan attribute the heightened fatalities to the growing numbers of troops, combined with "going into places we haven't been — just a generalized increase in our operations," as Col. Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, put it.
Afghan forces too have been seeing larger numbers of troops killed. The Afghan army lost 37 men in June, said Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi.
The insurgents' growing boldness — and willingness to sacrifice foot soldiers to stage an attention-getting attack with little hope of success — was reflected in Wednesday's strike on U.S.-run Jalalabad airfield, the third-largest air base in Afghanistan.
The attack also echoed strikes in the last five weeks on similarly large and well-fortified installations: Bagram airfield, north of Kabul, and Kandahar airfield, in the south. In both cases, the insurgents also failed to penetrate the bases' perimeters.
Wednesday's assault followed a recent pattern. The attackers first set off a car bomb, then opened up with rockets and mortars. They were repelled, and eight insurgents died, but they managed to wound two defenders.
June also brought a frustrating reminder that a year had passed since the capture of the only American soldier known to be held prisoner by the Taliban. Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, an Idaho native, disappeared outside his base in eastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. He has since appeared in several videos in which he appeals to U.S. forces to get out of Afghanistan.
