CHAPARHAR, Afghanistan — Local forces on the ground in Afghanistan are demanding for more troops and equipment to beat insurgents.
Brigadier General Mohammad Nasim Sangin, for instance, said he needs more troops and equipment to beat the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
A soldier since his teenage years with the anti-Soviet Mujahideen in the 1980s, Sangin said one thing he does not want is foreign troops returning to frontline combat in his country.
The occasional rattle of machine gun fire can be heard from the fighting a couple of kilometers away but Sangin, who has been leading his brigade in a clearing operation to drive insurgents out of Chaparhar district, says the operation has gone well, with the district center now clear at the cost of only a handful of casualties.
Sangin’s soldiers are also confident they can deal with the insurgents but agreed they need more support.
Despite upbeat assurances from foreign and Afghan officials about progress in improving leadership and fighting endemic corruption in the country, the security forces have struggled to contain the widening Taliban insurgency, with not more than 60 percent of the country being controlled by the insurgents.
Official figures are patchy but at least 807 soldiers and police were killed in the first six weeks of the year after 6,785 in the first 10 months of 2016.
Other officials say the real numbers are even higher.
Apart from the heavy casualties, a third of the security forces does not re-enlist every year, with the actual number of troops available for duty far below official totals, leaving frontline troops increasingly stretched.
Even in Nangarhar, a stronghold of Islamic State militants but otherwise a relatively stable province, the army is now conducting active operations in nine districts, compared with just three last year, officers said.
There are already 8,400 United States troops in Afghanistan as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Resolute Support training and assistance mission and separate counter-terrorism mission.
They have been particularly active against Islamic State fighters in Nangarhar.
That compares with more than 100,000 at the height of the war.
US officials are preparing plans that are widely expected to see up to 5,000 more military trainers sent to Afghanistan, but fears have grown that even the relatively modest increase could be a prelude to the US being sucked back into the war.
