US troop casualties in Afghanistan are rising, contrary to Petraeus' claim

The basic point of Gareth Porter's well written and fact-based article is that the officially documented trend in US troop casualties in Afganistan contradict what Gen. Petraeus has publicly claimed. The evidence indicates the US troop casualties are rising. This trend challenges the general's position that counterinsurgency accompanied by more troops is quelling the Afghan insurgency. Rather than conceding the point that the counterinsurgency strategy is not working, other sources (some posted elsewhere on this blog) report that Patraeus wants more troops and more time to get the job done. If recent trends continue, Patraeus' strategy, backed by the Obama and his administration, means more US casualties as well.

Petraeus Spin on Afghan War Belied by Soaring Casualties
by Gareth Porter, September 10, 2010
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/09/09/petraeus-spin-on-afghan-war-belied-by-soaring-casualties

Gen. David Petraeus claimed limited success this week in the war within a war over the Taliban’s planting of roadside bombs, but official Pentagon data shows the Taliban clearly winning that war by planting more bombs and killing many more U.S. and NATO troops since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Tuesday, Petraeus asserted that the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by the Taliban had "flattened" over the past year and attributed that alleged success to pressures by the U.S. military, and especially the increased tempo of Special Operations Forces raids against Taliban units.

Data provided by the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), however, shows that IEDs planted by Afghan insurgents killed nearly 40 percent more U.S. and NATO troops in the first eight months of 2010 than in the comparable period of 2009.

The data also show that Taliban IEDs wounded 2,025 U.S. and NATO troops in the first eight months of this year – almost twice the 1,035 wounded in the same months last year.
In the Journal interview, Petraeus said that the data on violent incidents in Afghanistan indicate a slowly improving security situation.

[....]

The total number of IED incidents in Afghanistan began to rise steeply in March 2010 to a new high of 1,087 and then continued to climb to 1,128 in May and again to 1,258 in August.

[....]

In late 2005, the civilian population was informing U.S. and NATO troops of about 15 percent of of all IEDs planted. That proportion fell to just over nine percent in 2006, to less than seven percent in 2007 to about three percent in 2008, and again to 2.8 percent in 2009.
In the first six months of 2010, that ratio dropped to 2.6 percent, and in May and June it fell to 1.4 and one percent, respectively.

[....]

The steep decline in the proportion of IEDs turned in by the population as more U.S. and NATO troops intruded on the Pashtun countryside is another reliable indicator – supporting opinion surveys in Helmand and Kandahar provinces – of the deterioration of relations between foreign troops and the population.