U.S. drawdown on track, despite spate of violence in Afgh | MilitaryTimes

Title: U.S. drawdown on track, despite spate of violence in Afghanistan

The news from Afghanistan lately has been grim.

The deployment of another 100 American troops to counter a Taliban offensive in Helmand province.

A U.S. soldier was killed in action – the second this year – by an IED in Helmand on Tuesday.


A catastrophic attack on the American University in Kabul that killed 13 people.


Yet top U.S. officials say the 15-year-old mission to stabilize the poor and fractured country is progressing as well as can be expected.


“This is the heart of the fighting season. And we have absolutely been expecting that this is really when the Taliban were going to try and make their large push,” said Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the top U.S. spokesman in Kabul.
“But overall, as we look at the country holistically … we still do believe that the [Afghan security force] is performing better this year than they performed last year. We think that they are still generally on track with their offensive campaign plan,” Cleveland said in a press briefing via teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon.


Cleveland offered new details about the death of Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Thompson, 28, of Irvine, California, who was killed by an improvised explosive device in Helmand on .


Thompson, a Green Beret, was with a small team of American combat advisers on a foot patrol with Afghan special operations troops who were clearing an area where Taliban insurgents were operating to prepare for conventional forces to move in and hold it.




Violence has intensified in Helmand during the past few weeks, as resurgent Taliban forces have reclaimed large swaths of territory previously secured by U.S. personnel. One Afghan official recently said the district was on the verge of being overrun.


On Monday, U.S. military officials said that 100 American troops were being sent to Lashkar Gah, the capital, to back up Afghan forces as part of an “expeditionary advisory package” that is inside the perimeter of the Lashkar Gah airport.



“We've decided we want to get some focused effort down there. So we've moved some advisers down there and then, of course, we've brought in a security capability so that they have force protection, and they can help defend themselves as required,” Cleveland said.


There are about 700 U.S. troops in Helmand. They are based at Camp Shorab, formerly known as Camp Bastion, which is connected to the facility formerly known as Camp Leatherneck. The troops are conducting a train, advise and assist mission with an Afghan army corps headquarters and an Afghan police zone headquarters.


Plans remain on track to bring nearly 1,500 American troops home by the end of this year, part of President Obama’s schedule announced earlier this year to drop the total U.S. force down from about 9,800 to fewer than 8,400 service members by January.


That’s not going to reduce the overall capability of the American force there significantly, Cleveland said.


The forces that will be removed will be mainly “administrative” positions, or “support functions that we believe can be moved over the horizon. … where you don't have to physically be sitting here in Afghanistan to provide that support,” Cleveland said.


Response to the attack on the university in Kabul on Wednesday was primarily handled by Afghan security forces. A small team of American military advisers did accompany the Afghans out to the university, but those Americans were not involved in direct combat with the gunman mounting the attack, Cleveland said.



“They did not participate in the actions on the objective, but they were there to provide additional assistance and provide that training and that advice and that assistance,” Cleveland said.


One troubling sign in Afghanistan is an uptick in casualties among Afghan forces, which last year totaled upward of 20,000 killed and wounded, Cleveland said.


For years, U.S. commanders feared that the rising Afghan casualty rate was unsustainable.


“Gen. [John] Nicholson does watch that closely and he is concerned obviously. Any casualty is probably going to be too many,” Cleveland said.



But, Cleveland said, while the Afghans “did take a tremendous number of casualties” last year, “what we also saw was how resilient these forces are.”



“We think the Afghans took in the neighborhood of about 20,000 casualties, both killed and wounded. And for many militaries, that would break their back. But what we saw with the Afghans, is that they were able to be resilient. They were able to continue to regroup and they were now of course able to move out on the offense,” Cleveland said.



Cleveland acknowledged that the military missions in Afghanistan appears to be troubled, but he insisted the reality on the ground level is better.



“I don't want to sound like I'm understating the Taliban or their capabilities or anything like that, but what we see via our [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and via our other mechanisms to observe operations, is we don't believe that the situation is as dire as perhaps is portrayed in the press,” Cleveland said.