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 today’s 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 th ...
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