By Dave Anderson:
Insurgencies will take heavier casualties than most counter-insurgent and main body forces because the insurgents tend to be much more lightly armed, lightly armored and do not have widespread access to both an extensive base infrastructure or medevac helicopters. However, popular insurgencies that are working within a large, supportive population base can more easily and cheaply replace their losses.
Reuters provides us with some decent data on insurgents and counter-insurgent fatality rates from 2010.
The number of Afghan police killed during 2010 fell about seven percent to 1,292
Ministry of the Interior spokesman Zemari Bashary said....5,225 insurgents were killed
The Defense Ministry said 821 Afghan soldiers were killed last year. It also did not have a toll available for 2009.
Foreign forces suffered record deaths in 2010, with 711 troops killed, roughly two thirds of them American, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.org....
Using this data, 2,824 counter-insurgents were killed while inflicting less than twice the fatalities on the various insurgent forces. Let me go back to something I posted in 2005 when examining Iraqi insurgency kill ratios:
Why do I argue that a smaller force (even if compared only against the international troops) that is taking near unity fatalities is winning? Simply because it has always been far cheaper, easier and quicker for an insurgent force to regenerate than for a counterinsurgent force to regenerate. Additionally, it is highly probable that the vast majority of insurgent fatalities and incapacitations are coming from direct combat with American combat units....
Given that the insurgents are operating on their home turf and are able to maintain successful cohesion despite high levels of pressure, it is highly probable that at these kill ratios that they can sustain their force through natural birthrate replacements without increasingly mobilizing their population for combat operations.
An insurgency trading at 2:1 is growing. And Peak Foreign Forces has already happened. Foreign forces levels will plateau for the next six months or so, and then begin declining. At that point, more and more of the security forces will be Afghan, and against those security forces, the insurgencies in Afghanistan are no worse than equal in battlefield effectiveness.
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