US Troops Deaths in Afghanistan Reach 1,000

(May 19) -- The news out of Afghanistan is grim these days no matter how you look at it. Last week, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces there, told PBS's "Newshour" that no one is winning the war. This week, battles have killed guerrillas, an American contractor and six coalition troops -- five Americans and a Canadian.

The troops died Tuesday after a suicide bomber rammed a car into a NATO convoy in Kabul. It was the deadliest attack on foreign forces in eight months, and it pushed the U.S. death toll in the war to 1,000.

American casualties began building slowly when the war started in October 2001, but they have accelerated rapidly in the past two years. The New York Times pointed out that the U.S. death toll didn't reach 500 until 2008, but the toll has doubled since then as the Taliban gained ground throughout the country.

The chart below shows U.S. troop deaths by year, and compares them with losses in Iraq. (The Afghanistan numbers include a handful of war-related deaths in Pakistan and Uzbekistan.)

Source: icasualties.org

The darkest period for American forces in the Iraq war, which began March 20, 2003, was 2004-2007, when 800 to 900 troops were dying each year as sectarian violence raged and Iraqis began building a new government. (The total U.S. death toll there now stands at 4,397.) When will things turn around in Afghanistan? President Barack Obama plans to begin reducing the number of troops there by July 2011, and McChrystal told PBS that "an awful lot can be accomplished" by then.

International forces are planning a major offensive against insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's birthplace. But the Taliban recently vowed to step up attacks against foreign troops, diplomats, contractors and Afghans who support them.

"Our success is very dependent upon the [Afghan] people believing in the future," McChrystal said. "What they have to believe is that the government we are working towards is better than what an alternative would be."