Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Men applied to join the Afghan National Army in Kabul, Afghanistan, last week. On Tuesday, American-led NATO forces will reduce medical evacuation aid.
KABUL, Afghanistan — When the American-led NATO coalition officially transfers security responsibility for all of Afghanistan to government forces in a ceremony on Tuesday, it will in part be a formality. Already this year, Afghan forces have been in the lead in fighting the Taliban in more than three-quarters of the country — and they have been killed and wounded at a record pace, accordingly.
But after Tuesday, these are supposed to be the rules everywhere: while American units may sometimes be close by, Afghan forces must operate without American air support, medical evacuation helicopters or partnered combat units. If they get in trouble, NATO will not be riding to the rescue, except in the most dire cases.
This summer is shaping up as a lesson in tough love from American military mentors to demonstrate whether the Afghan forces really can become self-sufficient by the withdrawal deadline for Western forces in 2014.
Just how tough that has been is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Room 648 of the Afghan National Army’s Military Hospital in Kabul. The room is shared by two soldiers wounded in the same battle against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on May 22 and 23. One of them lost three limbs, the other lost two.
Their company, with the 205th Afghan Army Corps, was based in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In May, they were sent to a village near Zangabad, the site of a popular anti-Taliban uprising in March that American and Afghan officials had hailed as turning a corner in an area long dominated by the militants. Just two months later, though, the insurgents were back.
According to the wounded soldiers’ accounts, later confirmed by their company commander, they found the area heavily mined and booby-trapped. When the soldiers began tripping mines, Taliban gunmen attacked, using tunnels through walls between adjoining homes in the village to hit and run.
“No one came to our aid and did anything,” said Lt. Masiullah Hamdard, who lost both legs and his left arm in the fight and was still twisting in pain from his injuries. He said that two American helicopters and a jet were circling above the battle. “We kept begging them to shoot up the place but they didn’t do anything whatever.”
Indeed, from Tuesday on, that is American policy everywhere in Afghanistan. The American military has decreed that no air support be available to Afghans unless an exception is approved by an officer holding a general’s rank — and already, the anecdotal evidence indicates that such exceptions have been rare.
Instead of close air support, the American military has been providing equipment and training to help the Afghans use mortars and other artillery when they get in trouble, according to Maj. Gen. James C. McConville, the American commander in eastern Afghanistan. “If you do it for them, they will never build the capability and the capacity to do it,” he said. “We don’t want them to get used to a capability they’re not going to have in the future.”
Coalition officials still have combat ability here — roughly 65,000 American troops are still in Afghanistan — and say they would use it in cases where Afghan forces got into real trouble. The fighting in Panjwai, apparently, did not reach that point.
“I am 100 percent sure if we had air support available to us like the Americans would have, we would not have the sort of casualties that were inflicted on us there,” said the Afghan company commander in the Panjwai fight, Capt. Safid Gul. He was more philosophical than rueful, however. “This is our house and we have to protect it. No one else can save it for us.”
Captain Gul said that government forces, which numbered 40 soldiers and 40 police officers in all, took a total of 20 casualties in Panjwai — 13 wounded and 7 killed, or a fourth of their number in all. Those numbers were roughly confirmed by the Panjwai district governor, Haji Faizal Mohammad.
Afghan forces have paid dearly in other skirmishes with the Taliban, including a May offensive by the insurgents in Sangin district, a much-contested area in Helmand Province. The Taliban were beaten back, but at a cost of 19 soldiers and police officers killed.
Afghan Army casualties reflect their increased role in the fight. According to Gen. Dawlat Waziri, the deputy spokesman of the Defense Ministry, from March 21 to June 11 of this year, usually a slower time than later in the summer, a total of 276 Afghan soldiers were killed. That was already on pace to top the previous Afghan year’s total of 1,170, itself a record. In the same March 21 to June 11 period, fewer than 50 Americans were killed. (Afghans observe a lunar year, which began March 21 this year).
On Sunday alone, 10 Afghan soldiers were killed in four different provinces, the Defense Ministry said Monday.
The increased casualty rate for the Afghan National Army has raised concerns about what effect it might have on the military’s already high attrition rate. Last year, Afghan officials confirmed that because of desertions, casualties and low re-enlistments, the army had to replace about a third of its soldiers annually.
More recently, Defense Ministry officials have refused to divulge attrition statistics, saying that they are considered secret because of the possible impact on morale.
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