US military Afghan death toll reaches 1,000

The American military death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 today with more casualties expected in a summer offensive against the Taliban.

The grim milestone was reached in a roadside bombing just before the Memorial Day weekend, when America honours the dead in all its wars.

More than 430 of the US dead were killed after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

The number of US troops in Afghanistan has now surpassed the total in Iraq – roughly 94,000 in Afghanistan compared with 92,000 in Iraq, where the war is winding down.

The list of American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan begins with Sgt. Nathan Ross Chapman, a 31-year-old Special forces soldier ambushed on January 4, 2002

For many of the US service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000-mark passed without fanfare.

The 1,000th death comes midway between the president’s decision last December to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan and a check on the war’s progress that he has promised by the end of the year.

After a long and wrenching conflict in Iraq – which has claimed nearly 4,400 American military lives – Mr Obama has promised not to be backed into an open-ended war in Afghanistan. He has insisted that some US troops will come home beginning in July 2011.

That has not been enough to satisfy his anti-war supporters, with others saying that mid-2011 may be too soon to turn the tide.

As casualties rise, the slide in overall support for the war may accelerate.

A majority of Americans – 52% – say the war is not worth the cost. The negative assessment in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll followed a brief rise in support for the war after Obama refocused the US war plan last year.

In an AP-GfK Poll in March, the public was about split: 50% said they opposed the war and 46% favoured it. That was within the poll’s margin of error.

In the same poll, 57% said they would oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan and 49% approved of the job Mr Obama is doing on Afghanistan.

Those figures could change dramatically depending on the outcome of the coming operation in Kandahar, the biggest city in the south, with about a half million people, and the Taliban’s former spiritual headquarters. US commanders believe Kandahar is the key to the ethnic Pashtun south, the main theatre in the war.

The operation will pose the greatest test for the US counter-insurgency strategy, which focuses on protecting civilians, bolstering the Afghan government and rushing in economic development to win public support. It is also expected to lead to a rise in US casualties, even though the military says the campaign will include very little traditional combat.

America’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said last week that the southern campaign was the key to persuading Afghans to reject the Taliban, take greater control of their own security and support the central government in Kabul.

The challenges of winning over a reluctant and intimidated population have become clear in the wake of last February’s operation to clear Marjah, a southern farming community of about 80,000 people in Helmand province west of Kandahar. US Marines and Afghan forces seized the community in about two weeks of fighting, rushing in an Afghan administration to begin development projects and restore public services.

Three months later, officials acknowledge that progress in winning public support has been slow.

Taliban fighters simply hid their weapons and blended in with the population. Through a clandestine campaign of assassination and intimidation, the Taliban have slowed development projects because people are afraid to cooperate with the coalition.

The challenges of restoring order and curbing the Taliban’s influence will be even tougher in Kandahar, a much larger city with a long history of support for the Taliban.