Two U.S. special operators died in northern Afghanistan Thursday, as Taliban militants advance on multiple fronts.
The two U.S. special operators join four other U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan this year, along with multiple others wounded in IED explosions. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said he was saddened by the service member’s deaths in a statement to reporters, and noted that they were engaged in a “train, advise and assist mission.”
The Pentagon insists on describing its roles in Afghanistan and Iraq as “train, advise and assist” missions, despite the direct presence of U.S. special operators on multiple combat front lines. The soldiers were reportedly hit by sniper fire, along with three other Afghan Special Forces on a high-profile Taliban raid in the city of Kunduz.
The U.S. “train, advise, and assist” mission is fraught with challenges. The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2001, and the Afghan Security Forces are suffering historic casualties.
Afghans suffered 15,000 injuries in the first eight months of 2015, with 5,523 ending in death. The numbers reflect a beleaguered force, with an astoundingly high rate of attrition.
“The ANDSF lacks a risk-management system and therefore relies heavily on U.S. forces to prevent strategic failure,” The report found. Civilian casualties have also sky rocketed, with nearly 2,500 civilian fatalities so far in 2016, and another 6,500 wounded.
The situation is most bleak in Helmand province, where militants have driven the Afghan security forces out of nearly every major city except the capital city of Lashkar Gah.
“The Taliban has effectively surrounded the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah for well over a year, and have launched several forays into the city,” Afghanistan experts at The Long War Journal noted Wednesday.
“I would call what is going on right now between the Afghan national defense security forces and the Taliban [as] roughly a stalemate,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford told Congress in September. A senior U.S. administration official went further and termed the overall Afghan situation as an “eroding stalemate.”
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