Coalition Alters Tactics in Afghanistan as Casualties Among Local Forces Mount by Phillip Walter Wellman - Stars & Stripes
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan is adjusting tactics to address mounting casualties among local security forces, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this week.
Mattis said the international coalition - which focuses on training, advising and assisting Afghan forces - had begun providing more support in other areas. He didn’t elaborate.
“The Afghan army has taken severe casualties over the past year and a half,” Mattis told reporters Monday at the Pentagon. Mattis stopped short of calling the casualty rate unsustainable when asked if it was.
“When people say something is unsustainable, it is better to look at what they have actually sustained, and it appears they’ve sustained it somehow,” he said.
Mattis’ comments came a day after Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Tariq Shah Bahrami told parliament’s upper house that the past month had been the deadliest ever for the Afghan army…