By Jim Michaels
Afghan security forces have suffered record casualties this year as they combat Taliban rebels largely without the benefit of U.S. air power and other international military support they had come to rely on in the past, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
The number of Afghans in the police and army killed or wounded has increased 70% in the first 15 weeks of 2015, compared to the same period last year, the officials said. The casualties have averaged about 330 a week.
"We are taking so many casualties," Afghan Interior Minister Nur ul-Haq Ulumi said Sunday. "That is the reality."
The reduction of airstrikes and cutbacks in surveillance by a U.S.-led military coalition that occupied Afghanistan for more than a decade has given the insurgents more freedom to move around the country.
Ulumi said the Taliban remain in small groups and are unable to mass in large formations that would threaten Afghanistan's conventional army forces. But their lethal strikes underscore the rebels' tenacity to wage war against the U.S.-backed government here and wait out the full withdrawal of foreign troops.
The foreign coalition changed its mission this year from combat to advising and assisting Afghan forces. That has reduced the presence of American personnel to just under 10,000. After 2016, the number of U.S. troops will be cut to a small contingent attached to the U.S. Embassy, according to White House plans.
The United States and its international allies have been gradually reducing their presence in the country, as it transferred more responsibility for the battle against the Taliban to Afghanistan's military.
The United States and its allies have pledged they will continue to fund and help equip the 352,000-person security force beyond that time.
Because the Taliban are not able to muster groups of more than several dozen fighters, they have been unable to mount offensives on anything more than small checkpoints.
Afghan and coalition officials said security forces have been able to hold terrain despite the high casualty rate among soldiers and police.
"This doesn't mean that the insurgents are more able and powerful than us," Ulumi said in an interview with a small group of reporters.
Casualties are particularly high among Afghan police forces locally recruited to defend rural villages and towns. They often are deployed in tiny groups to man checkpoints in remote locations without radios or the ability to call in a quick reaction force if they come under attack. Some lack adequate training and the leadership that would enforce rules, such as wearing helmets and protective equipment.
"The Taliban sees that as easy prey," said Army Gen. John Campbell, the top coalition commander. "They're not using them the way they should."
Campbell said the coalition is working on ways to improve security and effectiveness of local police.
The casualties have not hurt morale, Ulumi said, since the government works to take care of injured police and their families. He also said Afghans are accustomed to fighting. "They were born in war, they grew up in war," he said. "They know what war is about."
To replace the loss of international military power, the coalition is helping Afghanistan build up its small air force by expanding the number of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and training pilots.
The Afghan air force now has only five Soviet-built Hind helicopters. It has begun to add guns to Mi-17 transport helicopters, which are not designed to provide close air support for ground troops.
More Hind helicopters and attack aircraft would help, said Lt. Col. Bakhtulla Bakhtiar, 53, a helicopter squadron commander. "We have lots of ground forces but we don't have enough helicopters."
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