Counterterrorism Blog

Allied combat deaths in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq for a second straight month in June. Meanwhile, New Yorker reporter Sy Hersh writes that U.S. covert operators are infiltrating Iran.

What do these two developments have in common? Maybe nothing. But as we report in Thursday’s New York Daily News, one new factor in the record high casualties of the ever-escalating Afghan war is that American troops are suddenly dying along the country’s border with Iran.

At least 10 Americans have been killed in action since May 25 in Afghanistan’s Farah province, which lies on the Iranian border.

It’s worth noting that Hersh’s story claims U.S. operatives are cultivating Sunni allies opposed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who live in Iran’s Baluchestan province - which just happens to abut Afghanistan’s Farah province.

According to Pentagon statements, a few of the casualties were killed during operations ostensibly in two eastern Farah districts: Gulistan and Bala Baluk, which are near Helmand province. Helmand has been the site of some of the war’s worst fighting, and U.S. and NATO commanders say they have squeezed some Taliban out of Helmand and into Farah.

But when I asked the Camp Pendleton, Calif., Marines to identify the Farah districts where their men died, I instead heard back from a New York National Guard colonel, whose task force trains Afghan National Security Forces. Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, the spokesman, wouldn’t name the undisclosed Farah districts where Americans were killed, citing "operational reasons."

"Our personnel," Fanning explained, "absolutely were not in Iran."

So what about the other American and coalition troops killed who were not involved in the ANSF training mission?

One of the fallen was in the secretive Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - an elite new unit which basically is Marine Force Recon on steroids - though he died closer to Helmand than the Iranian border. A mysterious casualty who fell somewhere in Farah province was reported by the military on May 29, but has yet to be identified publicly because next of kin cannot be located, according to Army Capt. Christian Patterson, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-101 at Bagram Airfield.

On the other side of Afghanistan, things also are heating up.

In the wake of a mid-June firefight between U.S. forces and opponents who may have been with the Pakistani Army’s notorious Frontier Corps, CJTF-101 has issued no less than six unusual statements about border clashes. A Black Hawk chopper was also shot down Tuesday near Pakistan, though without casualties. Most of the incidents were in Paktika and Khowst provinces on the border and involved rockets and mortars fired by enemy forces inside Pakistan, which were responded to by the U.S.-led coalition.

UPDATE: A CJTF-101 spokesman was apparently mistaken about the casualty on May 29 still being unidentified because next of kin couldn't be located. A review of reports at iCasualties.org shows that a Green Beret from the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Sgt. 1st Class David Nunez, was killed in a firefight that day in Shewan, which is in the eastern part of Farah province, closer to Helmand than Iran. A reader who was an Army officer training Afghan forces in Farah until six months ago also wrote to cast serious doubt that there would be any reason for coalition forces to operate along the province's border with Iran, "either conventional or covert."