Even though America’s battle with the Islamic State, aka ISIS or ISOL, continues unabated, another conflict that the U.S. is involved with is also extending: the war against the resilient Taliban in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan struggle is far older than the battle with ISIS and has by far generated more casualties on both the American and Afghani sides.
Under former president Obama, this war was far less discussed in the last several years than the conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. But for the last decade and a half, the U.S. has had a major presence in terms of boots on the ground in Afghanistan, peaking at nearly 100,000 troops under Obama in 2010.
While it’s true that Obama didn’t start the war in Afghanistan, he made it a far worse conflict in terms of American fatalities and resources expended than former President George W. Bush did. Under Bush, American servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan numbered 558. Under Obama, the figure was 1,689 — more than three times as much and at least 75 percent of the total U.S. fatalities since fighting began in 2001.
Even worse, the number of American troops wounded has increased by a shocking multiple of seven, from 2,702 during Bush’s terms in office to a horrifying 20,237 (90 percent of all Americans wounded in the war) as of now — an atrocious track record that Obama clearly hasn’t been eager to talk about. This is after he promised to pull out of the country completely by the time he left office.
In 2009, when Obama became the nation’s commander-in-chief, it was a different story. He vowed that “As President, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”
Obama started to implement his own strategy in the war, causing a dramatic increase in U.S. troop fatalities in 2009. In 2010, the number peaked at 497 for the year. 2011 saw nearly a hundred fewer deaths, but these years (2009, 2010 and 2011) were the worst years of the war, violence-wise, so far. Compared to Bush’s track record, Obama more than tripled the number of fatalities in his predecessor’s worst year of the war, 2008, when just 151 U.S. servicemen and women were killed.
Even though officially, the combat mission in Afghanistan ended on December 31, 2014, American troops are still under orders to engage Taliban forces when the former are attacked. But this means that they can no longer be proactive and fire on enemy soldiers when they’re in the immediate area or are merely threatening U.S. troops with their presence.
The Obama administration freely acknowledged that the Taliban are increasing their territory and now control more area in Afghanistan than at any other time since the U.S. overthrew the official Taliban government in 2001. In 2015, the Taliban overtook ISIS as the world’s worst perpetrator of terrorist attacks worldwide, instigating 1,093 separate attacks that year, according to the U.S. State Department.
Even though the Pentagon has insisted that the number of attacks on U.S. troops by the Taliban has dwindled, continuing American casualties prove that this isn’t the case. While the native Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) has had lapses in its fighting capabilities, it hasn’t lacked the will nor the opportunity to engage the Taliban either independently or in conjunction with U.S. troops. In fact, more Afghan troops died during a number of one-year periods in the last 15 years than the total number of U.S. fatalities for the entire war.
Afghani civilians have also been killed and wounded in historic numbers, with 5,166 casualties in 2016 alone, including 1,601 deaths and at least 3,565 injuries. Three out of every 10 casualties were children, which translates to 388 dead and 1,121 injured. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, described these latter figures as “alarming and shameful” and that they “[represent] the highest numbers of children killed or wounded in a six-month period since counting began in 2009.”
The total number of Afghan civilians killed since Obama took office is 22,941 while the number of wounded is 40,993 — a figure which has continuously risen almost every year since 2009.
The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Tadamichi Yamamoto, urged the U.S. “to spare civilians from the horrors of war… Every single casualty documented… people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals — every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment.”
In addition to U.S. troops and others dying on the battlefields, American taxpayers were on the hook for reconstruction assistance in Afghanistan to the tune of more than $115 billion during the last eight years. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that some of those funds eventually found their way to the Taliban via corrupt officials in the Afghani government.
In addition, it’s quite possible that a portion of the money may also have found its way into the hands of opium growers — many of which are crucial sources of funding for the Taliban — as Afghanistan remains the world’s leading opium-producing country, supplying the key ingredient for the insidious street drug heroin. This powerful narcotic, which is currently having an outsized impact on small communities in the United States, became an important campaign issue during President Trump’s run for the White House.
In his last address to U.S. troops, former President Obama boasted about reducing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. However, the number of troops stationed there is a far cry from complete withdrawal; some 8,400 servicemen and women are still on the ground in the country, and after Obama gave his speech, he chose to deploy an extra 300 Marines to the volatile southern region of the country.
It’s unknown how new President Trump will address the present military situation, but if he approaches it with the same decisiveness that he’s showing in tackling ISIS, it’s quite possible that the U.S. commitment in this Middle Eastern nation will taper downward faster than anticipated.
