Bagram and beyond: Rivalling Iraq in '09

by Mark Silva

A grim turning point may be nearing in America's two wars: As the U.S. military scales back forces in Iraq and ramps up in Afghanistan, the number of American military deaths in Afghanistan this year is rivaling the death toll in Iraq.

Nearly 5,000 members of the U.S. military have died in the two wars since their start, according to the latest count: 4,950 casualties on the two fronts combined.

The bigger war in Iraq has accounted for the runaway majority of deaths: As of Sunday, at least 4,316 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since the U.S. invaded in March 2003, according to the Associated Press' count. And as of Sunday, at least 634 had died in Afghanistan, by the count.

But during this year alone, so far, Taliban-launched rocket attacks on the massive Bagram air base not far from Kabul - killing two Americans inside the base on Sunday and injuring several others - brought the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan this year to at least 81, according to casualties.org, an independent website that tracks combat deaths. At least 94 U.S. troops have died in combat in Iraq this year.

At the current pace, this year's death toll in Afghaniistan would eclipse the 155 U.S. deaths last year, the highest annual total since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, the Los Angeles Times' David Zucchino reports form Kabul. The previous record was iset n 2007, when 117 American troops died. In Afghanistan.

The two who died Sunday fell victim to rockets that slammed into the base at about 2 a.m., "in a rare instance of an insurgent attack inflicting casualties inside the heavily fortified compound. It was the third rocket or mortar attack to penetrate the base since January,'' Zucchino reports. "The three rockets hit separate areas of the base, and a fourth exploded outside the security barrier, a military spokesman said.''

"We offer our condolences and sympathy to the families of our two brave service members," said Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force-82 at Bagram. "Their sacrifice in the name of security and a better way of life for the Afghan people will not be forgotten."

The attack came just hours after military spokesmen on Saturday announced three U.S. combat deaths: two National Guard troops killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar on Friday and a soldier killed by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.

"The Soviet-era Bagram base, which includes an airfield with several runways, is busy 24 hours a day. Day and night, thousands of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers, along with thousands more civilian contractors from several nations, can be seen walking the streets, shopping, and eating at fast-food outlets and an all-night coffee shop.

"In February 2007,'' he notes, "23 people were killed by a suicide bomb attack outside the base while then-Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting inside.''

We were there, with Cheney, deep inside the base, when that attack was waged at a faraway gate. We were cooling our heels in the chalet-styled USO club on the base where the jersey of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player who died under covered-up friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004, hung in his memory. Cheney found refuge in a bunker on the base.

(Photo of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and then Vice President Dick Cheney at the presidential palace in Kabul in February 2007 by Mark Silva.)

We flew with him to Kabul later that day, and flying out of Kabul the vice president spoke with us in the belly of the military transport carrying him, a plane called "The Spirit of Strom Thurmond'' - the vice president asking to be identified only as "a senior administration official'' before proceeding to name himself in that interview. We also had been in Pakistan - with stops in the presidential palaces of both nations.

"The reason the president wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border -- a threat to Afghanistan, clearly, in our efforts there, the Taliban, cross-border operations; a threat to Musharraf and his government,'' Cheney had said of the government of then President Perez Musharraf.

"There were something like seven or eight suicide bombings in the last week or two in Pakistan. And obviously also, the threat to the homeland from the standpoint of operations and activities of al Qaeda in this part of the world -- for example, you go back to the airliner plot last fall, second generation Pakistani militants living in the U.K., but with ties back in al Qaeda areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border. So we've all got an interest, obviously, in trying to address those issues.''

The vice president got a first-hand look at the severity of the security situation in Afghanistan, when he heard the "loud boom'' of a suicide bomber at the gate of the air base where he had spent the night. He was rushed to a bomb shelter at the base for a "brief moment,'' then returned to his room before flying out of the base a little less than two hours after the attack and then heading to Kabul.

"I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive,'' Cheney said then. "We've had notable successes in both places. I've often said before and I believe it's still true that we've captured and killed more al Qaeda in Pakistan than anyplace else. And I think we're making progress in Afghanistan.''

And now 2009 could be giving 2007 a run for its money.