WASHINGTON (AP) – As the Trump administration weighs sending more troops to Afghanistan, the 16-year war grinds on in bloody stalemate.
Afghan soldiers are suffering what Pentagon auditors call “shockingly high” battlefield casualties, and prospects are narrowing for a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. The insurgents may have failed to capture and hold a major city, but they are controlling or influencing ever more territory.
“The situation is deteriorating,” said Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor and close Afghan war observer.
This grim picture forms the backdrop for administration deliberations on a way ahead in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are supporting beleaguered Afghans against the Taliban insurgency and stepping up attacks on an extremist group considered an Islamic State affiliate. The three most recent U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were in combat last month against the IS affiliate, which also was the target of a much-publicized U.S. airstrike April 13 using the “mother of all bombs.”
President Donald Trump will receive a proposed new approach to the war within a week, according to Theresa Whelan, a Pentagon policy official. “The interest is to move beyond the stalemate,” she told senators, offering as a preview little more than an echo of the Obama administration’s goal that Afghanistan “reaches its potential.”