AFGHANISTAN
Local deaths drive home intensity of 'forgotten war'
Two wars, two directions: While significant gains have been made in Iraq, the situation turns increasingly dark in Afghanistan
A Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit communicates by radio during a patrol in Afghanistan's Helmand province earlier this month. The province has been a recent hotbed of insurgent violence. Over the past month, more American troops have been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
RAFIQ MAQBOOL / Associated PressPublished: Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 3:44 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 7:02 a.m.
To Eddie Gathercole of Santa Rosa, the war in Afghanistan is personal.
"It's a tragedy," he said. "I lost my son."
Many other North Coast residents have shared in Gathercole's grief, turning out by the hundreds as the flag-draped caskets of two area servicemen have returned from Afghanistan to Santa Rosa in the past two months and a third is on the way home to Clearlake.
The deaths are visceral local symbols of the sudden re-emergence of the Afghanistan war into the U.S. consciousness.
With U.S. military forces, political debate and even war protests riveted on Iraq for the past five years, Afghanistan had been dubbed "the forgotten war."
Now, with violence subsiding markedly in Iraq but rising in Afghanistan, both major presidential candidates are calling for a troop buildup and a renewed commitment to the nearly seven-year Afghan conflict and the pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
American casualties had averaged seven a month since the campaign to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan began in late 2001, while 60 U.S. troops a month have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion -- and exceeded 100 a month as recently as last year.
But since May, the month Christopher Gathercole died, U.S. losses have been roughly equal in both countries, even though about five times as many U.S troops are assigned to Iraq than the 36,000 in Afghanistan.
When NATO casualties in Afghanistan are included, the death toll exceeds coalition losses in Iraq.
Eddie Gathercole said the rising toll has honed his resolve to support the troops. "All those boys believe in what they're doing," he said. "That's what my son always told me: 'I'm doing this for my country and for the freedom of others.' "
But Gathercole also wonders if the United States has stepped into another interminable war, with human and economic costs that may eventually wear down the nation.
"I don't know if it's ever going to be resolved," he said, noting Afghanistan's centuries-old history of warfare, including invasions by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and the Soviet Union.
Anti-war activist Ted Sexauer of Sonoma, who considers both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars unjust and illegal, said the public has been "oversold on the question of how dangerous the terrorists are."
Sexauer, co-president of the Veterans for Peace Sonoma County chapter, also questioned whether killing terrorists is the best way to blunt their determination to wage jihad.
America should consider its role as the world's leading consumer of energy and goods, with scant regard for its impact on the world, Sexauer said.
Brian Sobel, a Petaluma political consultant and military historian, described the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan as "just trying to keep the violence to a minimum." His son, Army Ranger Ryan Sobel, is recuperating from injuries sustained in a roadside bombing last year in Afghanistan.
The insurgents -- primarily Taliban and al-Qaida -- have recently adopted Iraqi-style tactics, planting deadly roadside bombs that account for the uptick in U.S. casualties, Sobel said.
Carefully marshaling their limited resources, the Taliban also are capable of direct assaults on NATO forces, which consist of the 36,000 Americans and 24,000 other troops, he said. "They are bringing the fight on," Sobel said.
A Pentagon report in June acknowledged the Taliban "have coalesced into a resilient insurgency," and predicted that terrorist attacks and bombings will continue to increase this year.
Despite its overwhelming firepower, NATO is hampered in squelching the insurgency by the sanctuary afforded to the Taliban and al-Qaida in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, covering part of the 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan.
Neither the British nor the Russians could control the tribal areas, and Pakistan's new government is attempting to forge a peace deal with the tribal rulers, said Ted Eliot of Sonoma, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in the 1970s.
Eliot likened the situation to Vietnam, where the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops found safety and supply lines in Laos and Cambodia, both off-limits to U.S. forces.
"It was a constant and insoluble problem for us there," Eliot said. The 16-year Vietnam War cost 58,000 U.S. lives and ended ignominiously.
Army Lt. Col. Steve Countouriotis of Petaluma, who has served two tours in Afghanistan, said the tribal areas -- where some believe Osama bin Laden is sheltered -- are "one of the key areas we have to address."
But Countouriotis, who served as an adviser to Afghan police officials, said the Afghan people are tired of terrorism, and the nation's security forces are strengthening.
"I think there are reasons to be hopeful," Eliot said, noting that reconstruction of Afghan schools, roads and hospitals has made great strides in the wake of 30 years of war.
But experts say the Afghan government's weakness and Pakistan's ambivalent role in the war on terror make the outlook uncertain.
Pakistan, which fostered and funded the Taliban in the 1990s, is central to terrorism's global reach, according to Barnett Rubin of New York University. The American-backed invasion in 2001, rather than crushing the Taliban and al-Qaida, merely pushed their leaders into Pakistan, Rubin said.
Terrorist recruiting is easy, Eliot said, among the unemployed young men, schooled only at fundamentalist Muslim madrasas established by Pakistan in the tribal areas.
The cycle continues now when NATO forces swarm into an Afghan village and drive out the Taliban, Sobel said. As soon as the NATO troops move on, the insurgents "seep back in and terrorize the people," he said.
American commanders are calling for 10,000 more troops -- and both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain have vowed to deliver -- but critics and some Afghan officials say that will unsettle the populace by making the NATO presence seem more like an occupation.
In a Washington Post/ABC News Poll this month, 51 percent of Americans said the United States must win in Afghanistan to prevail in the "broader war" on terrorism. Only 34 percent said a victory in Iraq was needed for the same reason.
But only 44 percent of respondents said the military action in Afghanistan has been successful, compared with 70 percent who said so in 2002.
The United States can ill afford to fail in Afghanistan, Sobel and Eliot said, because an unstable country would quickly return to breeding and exporting terrorism.
Stabilizing Afghanistan is "vital to U.S. interests," Eliot said.
Those who see progress in Afghanistan say it will require years of U.S. commitment. "It's a long haul," Eliot said.
You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.
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