Pressure is mounting for a review of the “war on terror” strategy in Afghanistan following heavy foreign troop casualties, but Washington does not expect the bloody losses to spark any immediate troop pullout.
This week alone, 18 foreigners, including 10 French, three Poles and three Canadians, were killed in largely Taliban militant attacks on soldiers grouped under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
“The number of United States and NATO casualties is mounting so quickly, that unless something happens soon this could be the deadliest year of the Afghan war,” said the New York Times in a scathing editorial called “Afghanistan on Fire.”
“Kabul, the seat of Afghanistan’s pro-Western government, is increasingly besieged,” it said. “There is no more time to waste.”
Unless the US, NATO and its central Asian allies move quickly, the paper warned, “they could lose this war.”
The killing on Monday of the French paratroopers by nearly 100 Taliban forces and a coordinated assault by nearly a dozen suicide bombers on one of the largest US military bases the next day were seen as the militant group’s most complex and audacious attacks of the war since 2001.
Meanwhile, US-led troops attacked a compound where Taliban leaders were meeting in western Afghanistan, killing 30 militants, US and Afghan officials said yesterday.
The troops also called in airstrikes during the clash in the Shindand district of western Herat Province, said coalition spokesman First Lieutenant Nathan Perry.
Some 30 militants were killed and five others were detained after the clash, Perry said. The troops found large caches of weapons and ammunition inside the compound after the operation, he said.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, confirmed the clash but gave a different account of casualties.
Azimi said 25 militants and five civilians were killed in the clash and airstrike.
The operation was launched after an intelligence report that a Taliban commander, Mullah Siddiq, was inside the compound presiding over a meeting of militants, Azimi said. Siddiq was one of those killed during the raid, Azimi said.
“Unfortunately five civilians were killed and one woman and a boy wounded,” Azimi said.
“Insurgents were targeted in that area. The initial reports that I have is that five militants were detained and 30 were killed,” Perry said. “I don’t have any reports of civilian casualties or collateral damage.”
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