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US Troops Withdraw From Afghan Outpost | |
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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - July 17, 2008
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US Troops Withdraw From Afghan Outpost
by: Candace Rondeaux
The Washington Post
Kabul - After suffering significant setbacks in the fight
against insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan
troops have pulled out of a combat outpost where nine
American soldiers were killed in a pitched battle with
Taliban fighters Sunday.
U.S. and Afghan soldiers withdrew from the makeshift out-
post near the remote village of Wanat as Taliban fighters
swarmed the area near the border of the eastern provinces
of Nuristan and Kunar, NATO and Afghan officials said
Wednesday. An unspecified number of NATO and Afghan troops
remain in the region near the edge of Pakistan's western
border, said Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for NATO's
mission in Afghanistan, the International Security
Assistance Force, or ISAF.
The combat outpost in Wanat had been operational for only
two or three days before Taliban insurgents launched an
assault on it Sunday, NATO officials said. Hundreds of
Taliban fighters attacked with rocket-propelled grenades,
mortars and gunfire. About 100 to 150 U.S. and Afghan
soldiers struggled to repel the early morning attack,
firing a fusillade of bullets on insurgents who had taken
up positions in a village mosque and several other
locations.
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In addition to the nine U.S. troops killed, 15 American
and at least four Afghan soldiers were wounded after
insurgents breached the outer area of the outpost. The
attack was the deadliest in Afghanistan since 2005.
NATO officials said dozens of insurgents also were killed
in the hours-long skirmish and its immediate aftermath.
Finney said ISAF troops were reinforced shortly after the
devastating attack on the outpost and will remain in other
parts of the region to fight the insurgency for the fore-
seeable future.
"We aren't abandoning the area. Far from it," Finney said.
"The Taliban have dispersed, and we're hunting them down
to make sure they don't do something like this again."
The Taliban assault, in the increasingly volatile region
along Afghanistan's 1,500-mile border with Pakistan,
occurred less than a week after U.S. officials reported
that the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan in June nearly
equaled the number of American troops killed in Iraq
during the same period. Twenty-eight U.S. troops were
killed in Afghanistan last month compared with 29 in
Iraq, even though there are nearly five times as many
American troops in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department
of Defense.
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Insurgent attacks across Afghanistan were up 40 percent
last month compared with attacks reported in June 2007,
NATO officials said. Some 314 clashes with Taliban fighters
were reported in June -- a 50 percent increase from clashes
reported in May, according to a report recently released
by AFCEA International, a Virginia-based nonprofit military
and government research and advisory organization.
NATO officials have attributed the increase in attacks to
greater numbers of coalition forces on the ground. But
military and Afghanistan experts say the recent loss of
ground in Afghanistan's eastern provinces in particular
could signal a significant shift in strategy and an
increase in the number of Taliban insurgents fighting
inside the country. NATO, Afghan and U.S. officials say
the flurry of clashes in the country's east and south has
been fueled by a surge in the number of foreign fighters
who have joined the Taliban, many of whom have crossed
the border from Pakistan.
The trend has set off alarms in Washington and Kabul,
heightening tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan in
particular. In recent weeks, Afghan and Pakistani officials
have engaged in a testy public exchange, sparked in part
by widespread suspicions that Pakistan's Inter-Service
Intelligence agency, or ISI, is aiding the insurgency in
Afghanistan.
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After Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Pakistan's ISI
of supporting Taliban attacks, his government on Tuesday
cancelled scheduled meetings with Pakistani officials on
border-control issues. The move came just two days after
a council of Afghan government ministers endorsed a
resolution accusing the Pakistani intelligence agency of
fomenting the resurgence of Taliban activity inside
Afghanistan.
"The people of Afghanistan and the international community
have come to the reality that Pakistan intelligence
institutions and its army have become the largest center
for breeding and exporting terrorism and extremism to the
world and particularly to Afghanistan," the council of
cabinet ministers said in a written statement issued
Monday.
Pakistani officials have dismissed the accusations as
little more than political rhetoric on the part of Karzai's
government. On Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah
Mahmood Qureshi called the allegations "baseless," and
said the Afghan cabinet had cancelled the scheduled
meetings on "flimsy grounds."
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Special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Javed
Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.
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