Washington
\nThe death toll among Afghanistan\u2019s security forces is nearing 30,000 since the start of 2015, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has said, a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged.<\/p>\n
Ghani appeared via video link this week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, part of a university he once taught at as a professor of anthropology.<\/p>\n
Since the start of 2015, when local police and army units succeeded NATO as bearing responsibility for Afghanistan\u2019s security, \u201c28,529 of our security forces have lost their lives and become martyrs for our freedom,\u201d Ghani said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no conscription, nobody is forced, and if there was not a patriotic impulse I don\u2019t think that people would sacrifice their lives for a pay of $200.\u201d The rate at which Afghan forces are dying has long underscored the fragility of the country\u2019s security situation, the Taliban\u2019s continued strength and raised questions about US claims that the Afghan troops are becoming an increasingly effective fighting force.<\/p>\n
The toll increased in 2016 and appears to have accelerated again in 2017 and 2018, contradicting a claim by general John Nicholson, who recently retired as head of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
In November 2017, he said casualty rates among Afghan security forces had started to drop as the US increased the tempo of air strikes against the Taliban and as reforms kicked in.<\/p>\n
In a recent report, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction cited the NATO mission in Kabul as saying this summer\u2019s toll has been worse than ever for Afghan forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the period of May 1 to the most current data as of October 1, 2018, the average number of casualties the (Afghan forces) suffered is the greatest it has ever been during like periods,\u201d SIGAR said.<\/p>\n
Mattis this month said more than 1,000 \u201cAfghan lads\u201d were killed or wounded just in August and September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington The death toll among Afghanistan\u2019s security forces is nearing 30,000 since the start of 2015, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has said, a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged. Ghani appeared via video link this week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, part of a university he once taught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47505,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47503\/revisions\/47505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}