(Chris Detrick/Salt Lake Tribune)
The commander of a Utah-based military intelligence unit in Afghanistan said there is "no question" service members in that war-torn nation have been stretched thin. 
Lieutenant Colonel Derek Tolman speaks to the
news media.
As the U.S. military prepares to send more troops to the once-seemingly forgotten combat front, Lt. Col. Derek Tolman believes that "strategically, the leadership is definitely headed in the right direction."
Tolman spoke to The Salt Lake Tribune at the halfway point of his unit's deployment. The 142nd Military Intelligence Battalion, known as Task Force Wasatch, is expected home in late February.
Tolman said that many of the troops he met when he arrived in Afghanistan were on the tail end of 15-month tours of duty. Even though military actions and rebel attacks had increased dramatically during that period of time, those troops had not seen many reinforcements.
"It was very evident that those units were running on fumes," said Tolman, whose battalion is headquartered at Bagram Air Base, about 30 miles north of Kabul, but is spread throughout eastern Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq - where the 142nd served a frustrating tour of duty in 2003 and 2004 - the level of violence has fallen considerably. Though attacks are still frequent there - hundreds of Iraqis are still killed each month, mostly in bombings that can claim dozens of lives at a time - the situation has stabilized enough that the Bush
administration last week announced that it would scale back the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq by about 8,000 service members, in part so that it would be able to add thousands more to the fight in Afghanistan.
Those enforcements come at a time in which deaths among U.S. forces in Afghanistan are at the highest level yet in the 7-year-old war. Since Jan, 1, 122 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan, compared with 117 in the full year before.
In launching their attacks, Afghan guerrillas appear to have learned from their insurgent counterparts in Iraq. Tolman said the U.S. military needs to learn the lessons of that conflict as well.
"Success in Afghanistan will not solely be a military solution," he said. "The military has its role in supporting security and it certainly has a role in disrupting insurgent networks, but I would place greater emphasis on the importance of the Afghan government . . . a lot of that is based on the successes in Iraq."
After all, Tolman noted, history promises a long fight for an army that only wants to fight. "When the Russians were here, a million people died in that war, and yet the Russians were not victorious."
Tolman said his troops "have been very fortunate," so far sending just one wounded soldier home from the war zone with serious, but not life-threatening, injuries. The soldier was wounded in an indirect fire attack - the military's term for a rocket or mortar explosion - and has been being treated at Fort Lewis, Wash. Another soldier was less seriously wounded in the same attack and remained in Afghanistan.
Such attacks can be dangerous, and sporadically deadly, but the largest threat faced by many of the 142nd soldiers, most of whom do not move "outside the wire" on a regular basis. Those who do go off base increasingly are traveling in Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, a class of heavily armored, specially designed trucks that have cut down dramatically on the number of soldiers wounded in roadside bomb attacks.
"It makes me feel more at ease when I know my soldiers are traveling in the MRAPs," Tolman said. "Sometimes the MRAP itself can be pretty damaged, but the important part is the cargo inside."Click here to see a Cougar MRAP hit by a giant IED.
mlaplante@sltrib.com
You can have one too... Perfect for the Veterans Memorial Highway (I-15).
Click here to see the civilian version of the Cougar.
