KABUL — More U.S. military deaths in the past 10 months of the Afghan war than in the first five years of the conflict. More boots on the ground than in Iraq.
As the U.S. military death toll in the Afghan conflict reached the 1,000 mark, a fight that has become “Obama’s war” now faces its greatest challenge — a high-risk campaign to win over a hostile population in the Taliban’s southern heartland.
More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer. The results might determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that has become the focus of America’s fight against Islamist militancy.
The 1,000th U.S. military death occurred in a roadside bombing Friday — just before the Memorial Day weekend when America honors the dead in all its wars.
A NATO statement did not identify or give the nationality of the victim. U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the trooper was American — the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.
The grim milestone reflects the acceleration in fighting since President Barack Obama shifted the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For many of the U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000 mark passed without fanfare. Capt. Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Mass., serving with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no effect on troop morale or operations.
“We’re going to continue to work,” he said.
As casualties rise, the slide in overall support for the war may accelerate. A majority of Americans — 52 percent — say the war is not worth the cost. The negative assessment in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll followed a brief rise in support for the war after Obama refocused the U.S. war plan last year.
Those figures could change dramatically depending on the outcome of the coming operation in Kandahar, the biggest city in the south and the Taliban’s former spiritual headquarters. U.S. commanders think Kandahar is the key to the ethnic Pashtun south, the main theater in the war.
