More than eight years after the Taliban was toppled from power, the number of U.S. military fatalities in the war in Afghanistan is nearing 1,000, a grim milestone in a resurgent conflict that is claiming the lives of an increasing number of troops who had survived previous combat tours in Iraq.
As of Tuesday, 996 U.S. military personnel had died while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom. The roll call of the fallen began Oct. 10, 2001, when Air Force Master Sgt. Evander E. Andrews was killed in a forklift accident in Qatar while building an airstrip in preparation for the invasion of Afghanistan. The latest confirmed addition came Sunday, when Army Pfc. J.R. Salvacion, 27, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit near Kandahar.
The number of dead from Afghanistan is still small in comparison with U.S. casualties suffered in Iraq, where 4,366 uniformed personnel have died since 2003. But as operations intensify in Afghanistan, the war is killing more and more service members who came home safely after serving in Iraq, only to return to the battlefield in another theater, thousands of miles from home.
Since Dec. 1, at least 30 percent of the American military personnel killed in Afghanistan have been veterans of the Iraq war, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Among them: Marine Staff Sgt. Chris Eckard, 30, who was killed Saturday in Helmand province, the site of a major NATO offensive targeting Taliban-held territory. Eckard, an explosives specialist from Hickory, N.C., had successfully disarmed hundreds of makeshift bombs during four separate tours in Iraq. It was his first assignment to Afghanistan. He leaves behind a wife and two boys, ages 4 and 18 months.
“Chris loved the Marines. He was all about the Marines,” said his sister-in-law, Chastity Eckard. “This was going to be his last tour.”
The impending milestone of 1,000 deaths hasn’t drawn much notice in the United States or in Afghanistan, despite the Obama administration’s focus on the war and the launch this month of the largest U.S.-NATO military operation in the country since 2001.
When the United States crossed the threshold of 1,000 deaths in Iraq in September 2004, there was widespread concern in Washington that public support for the war would collapse.
To some, the relatively quiet approach of the benchmark in Afghanistan is a sign that the country has grown more sober-minded in the way it perceives the war.
“We’ve learned that the public doesn’t react reflexively to the tote board of (war deaths),” said Peter Feaver, who served in the Bush administration and teaches political science at Duke University.
Fort Carson loss
