Perilous
Times
Bomb at U.S. base in Afghanistan wounds 77 Americans
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A powerful Taliban truck bomb that
wounded 77 American soldiers and killed five Afghans outside a
combat outpost served as a reminder on Sunday that 10 years after
the Sept. 11 attacks, nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are still
fighting a war that shows no signs of slowing down.
U.S. Army Flight Crew Chief Sgt. Saul Monarez secures a bombing
site as he waits to pick up a wounded U.S. soldier Sunday in
southern Afghanistan.
No U.S. troops were killed when the massive bomb loaded on a truck
filled with firewood exploded Saturday night just outside the
gates of Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in eastern Wardak province.
NATO said a protective barrier at the entrance absorbed most of
the force of the blast, although the area outside the base was hit
hard.
Officials said the Afghans killed included a policeman and four
civilians, including a 3-year-old girl. Another 17 Afghans — 14
civilians and three policemen — were wounded. The provincial
governor said the blast was so powerful it damaged about 100 shops
in the nearby Sayed Abad bazaar.
Although Saturday's truck bombing occurred outside the base, the
numbers of injuries it caused was significant. Combat outposts
usually house about 200 troops.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Earlier, they
had issued a statement vowing to fight until all foreign troops
leave. The radical Islamic movement, which gave shelter to Osama
bin Laden and al-Qaeda when it ruled Afghanistan, also stressed
that it had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, and it accused the
U.S. of using them as a pretext to invade the country.
"The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war," the
statement said. "Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will
send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other
empires of the past."
The attack occurred just over 40 miles, or about an hour's drive,
from Kabul in an increasingly lawless district in a key province
that controls a strategic approach to the capital.
Sayed Abad is seven miles east of the Tangi Valley, where the
Taliban on Aug. 6 shot down a U.S. military helicopter, killing 30
Americans. Many of the dead belonged to the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team
6 — the same elite unit that killed bin Laden during a May 2
cross-border raid into Pakistan, where al-Qaeda's leadership was
driven. It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in
the decade-old war.
"Some back home have asked why we are still here," U.S. Ambassador
Ryan Crocker said at a 9/11 memorial at the embassy in Kabul.
"It's been a long fight and people are tired. The reason is
simple. Al-Qaeda is not here in Afghanistan, and that is because
we are. "
"We're here so that there is never again another 9/11 coming from
Afghan soil. We, with our Afghan partners, figured out that the
best way to ensure that is to work together and with the
international community for a stable, secure, democratic
Afghanistan."
The Taliban continue to launch regular attacks and orchestrate
assassination campaigns against those allied with the government.
In addition to the attack in Wardak on Saturday, 10 Afghan
civilians were killed in two separate roadside bombings.
Two Afghan security guards were also killed late Saturday when an
insurgent rocket slammed into a part of the sprawling U.S. base at
Bagram air field outside Kabul, the U.S. military said. Two NATO
service members and two Afghans were slightly wounded.
NATO also said Sunday that one of its service members was killed
in an insurgent attack a day earlier in eastern Afghanistan. That
brought the death toll to 13 this month — and 417 this year — for
coalition forces. At least 307 of the dead were Americans, and
despite U.S. reports of progress on the battlefield the number of
troops dying this year is at about the same level as 2010.
While the overall international death toll dropped by 14% in the
first half of the year, the number of Americans who died remained
virtually unchanged, 197 this year compared with 195 in the first
six months of last year, according to a tally by the Associated
Press.
In a midyear report last July, the U.N. said 1,462 Afghan
civilians also lost their lives in the first six months of this
year in the crossfire of the battle between Taliban insurgents and
Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces. During the first half of last year,
1,271 Afghan civilians were killed.
The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7,
2001, after the Taliban, who then ruled the country, refused to
hand over Osama bin Laden.
The late al-Qaeda leader was at the time living in Afghanistan,
where the terror network had training camps from which it planned
attacks against the U.S. and other countries.
Although the Taliban were swiftly driven from power by the
U.S.-led coalition, they managed to use the years of the Iraq war
— when America focused its military strength on the conflict
against Saddam Hussein— to regroup, rearm and reorganize.
They began winning back ground lost to the international military
coalition until President Obama decided to send in 30,000 more
troops last year to help.
The U.S. has begun withdrawing some of its 100,000 troops from
Afghanistan and will send home 33,000 by the end of next year. The
international military coalition has already begun transferring
security responsibilities to newly trained Afghan forces with the
aim of removing all their soldiers by the end of 2014.
"We are and will remain committed to Afghanistan and the region,"
Crocker said. "We are in this for the long haul. We are
transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, but
transition does not mean disengagement."
Commemoration ceremonies were held at many U.S. and NATO military
bases around the country.
Although the coalition has made some gains in the Taliban's
traditional southern strongholds, violence has not abated around
the country.
The battle against al-Qaeda also has spread across the border with
Pakistan, where a suspected U.S. missile strike on a house Sunday
killed three people in an al-Qaeda and Taliban safe haven along
the frontier, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They spoke on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk
with reporters.
The United States has fired scores of missiles into northwest
Pakistan since 2008, trying to keep al-Qaeda operatives there on
the run.