President Obama’s surge of troops into Afghanistan is in full swing, and casualties among US and international forces are on the rise. Anchor Jeb Sharp gets the latest from the BBC’s Martin Patience in Kabul. Listen
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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is the World. President Obama’s surge of troops into Afghanistan is in full swing. The momentum of operations is up, but so are casualties among US and other international forces. The BBC’s Martin Patience is in Kabul. Martin, where are the US and allied forces suffering the most casualties?
MARTIN PATIENCE: Well, there’s no almost 70 thousand Jewish troops in Afghanistan. They’re focusing their efforts in the south and east of the country, where the insurgencies aren’t the strongest. Now, the vast majority of casualties are happening in those areas, and they’re happening because of improvised explosive devices. Now they’re essentially roadside bombs. They’re very difficult to defend against. And the big issue is, that there’s so many of them out there. I was just down in Helmand Province, on an embed with the British Forces. And I went out on patrol. And in the space of that patrol, the six-hour patrol at two IED’s were found. So the real threat to American, British, and other coalition soldiers, is these IED’s.
JEB SHARP: Now, are the Taliban suffering casualties at the same sort of rates as well?
MARTIN PATIENCE: Well, it’s very difficult to know, because the coalition forces here don’t take body counts on the Taliban. One of the reasons for that is, they’re focused now under General Stanley Mc Chrystal, who’s been in the country for a couple of months, is protecting the Afghan civilian population from Taliban insurgents. Now the argument goes in the past that the more Taliban insurgents that are killed during fighting, then the better. But I think there’s a realization that you can kill the Taliban, but the problem doesn’t go away because Afghan training camps in Pakistan. The best way to win this battle, in many ways, is to try and win the trust, the hearts and minds of the Afghan people so that they chose the Afghan government, which is backed by the international community over the insurgent movement. But I was just speaking to a British commander a couple hours ago, and he said in Helmand that dozens of Taliban fighters have been killed in recent operations, both the British operation, and the American operation in the south of the country.
JEB SHARP: And Mc Chrystal’s notion that this is primarily a battle for hearts and minds, as you say, is there any way at this point yet to gauge whether that’s having any effect? What Afghans think or if there’s any shift in sentiment about what the US is doing?
MARTIN PATIENCE: I think it’s very difficult, because he’s only been in the country since May. I think people are waiting particularly ’til after the summer to pass judgments. But certainly his approach, putting Afghans at the heart of the campaign, Afghan civilians, I think is warmly welcomed here by the Afghan government. And there’s been real criticism of the American military for using air strikes, because they have resulted in mass civilian casualties. So what the Afghan government wants, is greater cooperation between the American, and the Afghan military to try and minimize these civilian casualties. Because when you’re fighting any current insurgency campaign, when civilians end up killed, it’s completely counter productive. Forget the tragedy aside, it’s completely counter productive to the whole mission, because if you’re trying to win the hearts and minds of the people, and you kill civilians in a village, then often that whole village turns against you, if not the district and it just makes your job all that much harder.
JEB SHARP: The BBC’s Martin Patience in Kabul, thank you so much.
MARTIN PATIENCE: Thank you.
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