Washington – All 17 U.S. troops aboard a commando helicopter in Afghanistan are feared dead after it apparently was shot down, U.S. officials said, a worrisome signal of a widening insurgency that is borrowing tactics from the fight in Iraq.
It would be the single deadliest attack yet on U.S. forces in Afghanistan if the 17 aboard were confirmed dead.
The helicopter apparently was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade Tuesday while bringing in reinforcements, mainly special-forces commandos, to a fight against suspected al-Qaeda elements in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.
The downed chopper, a special-operations variant of the CH-47 Chinook, was carrying Navy SEALs, one U.S. official said.
Another said it was carrying special-operations forces but was unsure if they were SEALs or from another unit.
U.S. military officials believe the twin-rotor helicopter landed hard on the side of a mountain, then slid or tumbled into a ravine in an area so remote that it can be reached only on foot. There have been no radio contacts from the site.
The attack comes just months after U.S. and Afghan commanders expressed confidence they had finally broken the anti-government resistance, and more than three years after the Taliban government was expelled from power in late 2001.
But the past three months have seen a surge in violence in Afghanistan from anti-government Taliban insurgents, and, Afghan officials say, outside fighters linked to the al-Qaeda terror network.
U.S. generals in Washington predicted last week that the violence would only get worse as Afghan legislative elections approach in September.
Since March, 29 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, along with 43 Afghan police officers and soldiers – compared with at least 240 enemy fighters.
Some of that upsurge in violence is attributed to the coming of better weather in spring, as well as to fighting stirred up by aggressive U.S. and Afghan anti-insurgent sweeps in the border region near Pakistan.
So far, the scale of insurgent attacks is far short of that plaguing U.S. troops in Iraq, but the top U.S. general in the region said the very tactics that have been so effective in killing Americans in Iraq, such as roadside bombs, now are being imported into Afghanistan.
In addition, the anti-government insurgents in Afghanistan have patterned other recent attacks after those in Iraq. They have killed government elections workers, assassinated a key anti-Taliban cleric, then sent a suicide bomber into his funeral in a mosque, killing 20.
Suicide bombings are extremely rare in Afghan culture and much more the hallmark of Arab Islamic extremists who have imported the technique to Iraq.
Now some analysts say the use of such tactics and insurgents’ ability to take down a U.S. helicopter suggest a new level of sophistication and weaponry that could spell trouble for American and Afghan forces.
“Beyond the actual deterioration of security, I would be more worried about the involvement of foreign hands and raising the ante against U.S. forces,” said Amin Tarzi, an Afghanistan analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. government-funded but independent radio network, who recently returned from the country.
“There’s a new political, psychological and military campaign to basically put the United States on the defensive,” he said.
The United States has about 19,000 troops in Afghanistan, along with 10,000 other international troops there. But the war had largely been overshadowed until recently because of the continuing violence in Iraq.
Afghans have lived with more than 25 years of almost nonstop violence – from the Soviet invasion through the American invasion to drive out al-Qaeda – and won’t support an influx of outside Arab fighters using their country to take on the Americans, they say.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
