KABUL — October became the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the eight-year war in Afghanistan when two powerful bombs killed eight soldiers and an interpreter Tuesday in separate attacks.
This time of year typically brings a decline in violence as insurgents regroup as cold weather approaches. Instead, the bloodiest days this month have shown both the range of threats faced by American soldiers and the persistent danger of the most basic weapons. Soldiers have died in a lone outpost in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan nearly overrun by more than 100 insurgents firing rockets and grenades. They have been killed in gun battles and in crashing helicopters. And they died Tuesday in Kandahar province in a dismayingly familiar way: by homemade bombs buried in the road.
The significance of Tuesday’s violence was that it showed again an inability to protect against the type of explosives that killed the most Americans in Iraq and are killing the most here too. This year has already surpassed any other in Afghanistan in U.S. military deaths, and the rising toll poses urgent problems for the Obama administration as it attempts to fashion a new war strategy. Fifty-five U.S. troops died in October, surpassing the previous high of 51 in August.
A strategy of protection
Amid growing public disenchantment for the war, top military commanders have said they need thousands of reinforcements to beat back the resurgent Taliban, but President Barack Obama has said that he does not want to rush a decision.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Obama’s advisers are coalescing around a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, according to administration officials, who described an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.
As officials described it, the debate is no longer over whether to send more troops but how many more will be needed to guard the most vital parts of the country. The question of how much of the country should fall under direct protection of U.S. and NATO forces will be central to deciding how many troops Obama will dispatch.
At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to secure Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, which is seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.
But military planners also are pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, such as the hotly contested Helmand River Valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Obama this year.
Administration and military officials emphasized that the strategy would include other elements, such as accelerated training of Afghan troops, expanded economic development and reconciliation with less radical members of the Taliban.
But such a strategy would be open to complaints that U.S. and allied forces were in effect giving insurgents free rein across large swaths of the nation, allowing the Taliban to establish mini-states complete with training camps that could be used by al-Qaeda.
Focus on al-Qaeda
Military officers said that they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations Forces.
At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect U.S. national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing al-Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.
In effect, the approach blends ideas advanced by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, and by Vice President Joe Biden, seen as opposite poles in the internal debate. McChrystal has sought at least another 40,000 troops for a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting Afghan civilians so they will support the central government. Biden has opposed a buildup on the grounds that a bigger military footprint could be counterproductive and that fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan should be the main priority.
