Retired Army General Predicts 300 to 500 Casualties Per Month in Afghanistan

By MARY SUSAN LITTLEPAGE
Truthout
International
Posted by Bulatlat.com

The US could see as many as 300 to 500 soldiers killed and wounded per month in Afghanistan as 30,000 additional troops are sent to the country to launch a major offensive against insurgents, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said in a recent report.

McCaffrey, who is currently a professor of international affairs at the US Military Academy at West Point, said the surge will cost taxpayers about $300 billion due to a larger US presence. McCaffrey has visited Afghanistan numerous times since 2003 to assess the security situation on the ground.

Although McCaffrey said that President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy Speech at West Point last month was “coherent, logical and sincere” and the “result of a very deliberative and thoughtful analytical review of the situation in Afghanistan and our several unpalatable options,” he wrote, “We are unlikely to achieve our political and military goals in 18 months.”

In the speech, Obama announced plans to add 30,000 troops to Afghanistan by July and to start withdrawing soldiers within 18 months of deployment.

But McCaffrey predicted a dire situation in Afghanistan, saying, “This will inevitably become a three- to ten-year strategy to build a viable Afghan state with their own security force that can allow us to withdraw. It may well cost us an additional $300 billion and we are likely to suffer thousands more US casualties.”
McCaffrey’s most recent assessment was based on a wide range of sources, including information he obtained from US Central Command Gen. David Petraeus; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commanding general of International Security Assistance Force and US Forces in Afghanistan; Afghan officials such as Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Wardak; and diplomatic officials such as Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador to Afghanistan.

Additionally, “personal research, data provided in-country during this [Afghanistan] trip and first-hand observations gained during my many field visits to Pakistan, Kuwait and Afghanistan during the period 2003 forward to the current situation” was used to prepare the report, McCaffrey said. “The conclusions are solely my own as an adjunct professor of international affairs at West Point and should be viewed as an independent civilian academic contribution to the national security debate.”

High Number of Casualties

US, Allied and Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police casualties “have gone up dramatically,” McCaffrey said. He said that as of last November, there were 922 US casualties and 4,565 wounded soldiers. The Pentagon confirmed these statistics.
Also, in fiscal year 2009, the war in Afghanistan cost $55.9 billion in regular appropriations with an extra supplement of $80.73 billion, McCaffrey wrote. “Clearly Afghanistan will run with a burn rate in excess of $9 billion per month by the summer of 2010,” he said.

Achieving stability in Afghanistan will be difficult because the country and its 28 million people “are trying to build the basic elements of a civil and Islamic society while traumatized by 35 years of cruel violence and chaos.”

However, McCaffrey wrote, “The Afghans are such impressive, devout, generous and energetic people,” and, “They are intensely focused as students at any age and quick to learn and adapt.”

The Taliban people believe they are winning the war, McCaffrey said, and the Afghan people do not know who will prevail – their government or the Taliban. “Most Afghans are also dismayed at the injustice and corruption of their government (in particular the Afghan National Police) compared to the more disciplined and Islamic Taliban,” he wrote.

The Taliban are well equipped and heavily armed, and in recent months large groups of Taliban fighters have conducted complex attacks using surprise, fire support and enormous courage in trying to overrun isolated US units, McCaffrey said. “This is not Iraq,” he said. “These Taliban have a political objective to knock NATO out of the war – backed up by ferocious combat capabilities.”

Currently, 42 nations provide 35,000 non-US NATO troops, and the current US force level of 68,000 troops will increase by as many as 33,000 additional troops, which Obama called for in a speech last year. Allies may well provide an additional 7,000 or more reinforcements, McCaffrey said.

Also, he said that the Afghan National Army “is a growing success story,” that 46 battalions “are rated as capable of independent operations,” and that “Plans are to take the ANA from 90,000 to 240,000 by 2013.”

Meanwhile, the Afghan National Police, now 92,000 officers, “are a work in progress,” McCaffrey said. “They are six years behind the ANA in development. The police are badly equipped, corrupt (7,300 fired in last two years) and untrained (64 of 365 police districts have gone through training).” The US Department of Defense will now take charge of the program, but getting the ANP up to speed may take awhile, he said.

“It will take a decade to create an Afghan National Police Force with adequate integrity which can operate at village level in a competent manner,” McCaffrey said. “It will also require 1,000 trained and protected judges – and a competent force of prosecutors and defense lawyers.”

Many smart, talented people are trying to help Afghanistan, McCaffrey said. “All three of our superb senior US-NATO dual-hatted combat leaders – General Stan McChrystal, LTG Dave Rodriguez and LTG Bill Caldwell have called upon the best and the brightest of the military services and the inter-agency operators (FBI, DEA, AID, Border Patrol, etc.) to rally to this Afghanistan campaign,” he said. “We now have the absolute best leaders in uniform, the CIA, law enforcement, and state/US AID headed into Afghanistan to run this operation.”