Veterans for Common Sense

February 2, 2009 – Waste and corruption that marred Iraq’s reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the U.S. transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned Monday.

The U.S. has devoted more than $30 billion to rebuilding Afghanistan. Yet despite the hard lessons learned in Iraq, where the U.S. has spent nearly $51 billion on reconstruction, the effort in Afghanistan is headed down the same path, the watchdogs told a new panel investigating wartime contracts.

“Before we go pouring more money in, we really need to know what we’re trying to accomplish (in Afghanistan),” said Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. “And at what point do you turn off the spigot so you’re not pouring money into a black hole?”

Better cooperation among federal agencies, more flexible contracting rules, constant oversight and experienced acquisition teams are among the changes urged by the officials in order to make sure money isn’t wasted and contractors don’t cheat.

Cruz, along with Stuart Bowen, the top U.S. official overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction, delivered a grim report to the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Their assessment, along with testimony from Thomas Gimble of the Defense Department inspector general’s office, laid out a history of poor planning, weak oversight and greed that soaked U.S. taxpayers and undermined American forces in Iraq.

Bowen, who has made 21 trips to Iraq since he was appointed in October 2004, said the U.S. has financed a wide array of projects in Iraq — from training the Iraqi army and police to rebuilding the country’s oil, electric, justice, health and transportation sectors.

Some of these projects succeeded, Bowen told the commission at its first public hearing, but many did not. Violence in Iraq and constant friction between U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad were also major factors that undercut progress.

A 456-page study by Bowen’s office, “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” reviews the problems in an effort the Bush administration initially thought would cost $2.4 billion.

The U.S. government “was neither prepared for nor able to respond quickly to the ever-changing demands” of stabilizing Iraq and then rebuilding it, said Bowen. “For the last six years we have been on a steep learning curve.”

Overall, the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion since 2003 for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congress created the bipartisan panel a year ago over the objections of the Bush White House, which complained the Justice Department might be forced to disclose sensitive information about investigations.

There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, said Gimble, the Pentagon’s principal deputy inspector general.

Gimble noted that contracting scandals have gone on since the late 1700s when vendors swindled George Washington’s army.

“Today, instead of empty barrels of meat, contractors produced inadequate or unusable facilities that required extensive rework,” Gimble said. “Like the Continental Forces who encountered fraud, the (Defense Department) also encounters fraud.”

Gimble’s office found that a small number of inexperienced civilian or military personnel “were assigned far-reaching responsibilities for an unreasonably large number of contracts.”

He cited an account tapped frequently by U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan to build schools, roads and hospitals. More than $3 billion was spent on these projects, which were not always properly managed.

“In some instances, there appeared to be scant, if any, oversight of the manner in which funds were expended,” Gimble said. “Complicating matters further is the fact that payment of bribes and gratuities to government officials is a common business practice in some Southwest Asia nations.”

In “Hard Lessons,” Bowen said his office found fraud to be less of a problem than persistent inefficiencies and hefty contractor fees that “all contributed to a significant waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Styled after the Truman Committee, which examined World War II spending six decades ago, the eight-member panel has broad authority to examine military support contracts, reconstruction projects and private security companies.

In addition to examining flawed contracting, the commission will also study whether battlefield jobs handled by contractors such as aircraft maintenance and motor pools should be reserved for military and government employees.

The panel has until August 2010 to produce a final report. It can refer to the Justice Department any violations of the law it finds.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who pushed for formation of the commission, urged members to be aggressive and to hold people accountable.

“Harry Truman has been rolling in his grave for the last five years,” said McCaskill, referring to the former Missouri senator (and later president) who led the Truman Committee. “A report is not going to be enough. You’re going to need a two-by-four.”

February 2, 2009 – Roadside bombs in Afghanistan have become the single biggest killer of civilians, coalition and Afghan troops, according to U.S. and coalition military documents obtained by CNN.

 The documents, based on NATO statistics, show more than a 30 percent increase in such attacks on Afghan roads around the country from January to December 2008.

The statistics of overall attacks around the country show a more dire picture. Last year, attacks by Taliban and al Qaeda forces around the country increased 31 percent.

The report shows what has been reported from the battlefield over the last year as U.S. troop deaths have hit record highs and commanders ask for thousands more troops to quell the violence that has hit the region, where the fight was once called the “forgotten war” by many.

Since January 2008, U.S. and NATO troop deaths have risen 26 percent, according to the statistics. Afghan security forces deaths are up 64 percent in the same period.

The one constant is that while most of Afghanistan is experiencing relative calm, fighting continues to rage in the east and south, where 70 percent of the attacks occur.

In the south, where the Taliban are mainly focused, and in the east, where much of the al Qaeda forces remain and move back and forth between the Pakistan border, an influx of U.S. forces expected this year will reinforce war-weary U.S. and coalition troops.

 The NATO documents show that some of the main reasons for the increase in violence is more U.S. troops on the ground and an increase in operational Afghan forces hitting insurgent targets around the country, but sanctuary in Pakistan by insurgent forces allow them to retreat and re-attack.

Car bombs and attacks in the capital city of Kabul have also increased, fueled by what seems to be an unfettered insurgence by the Taliban over the past 12 months. In addition, NATO documents show that kidnappings and assassinations in the capital and around the country have increased by 50 percent.

The kidnappings are mainly money-based, taking people for whom the kidnappers believe they can get a ransom — contractors, foreign nationals and wealthy locals — according to U.S. military officials.

The increase in fighting has also taken a toll on the civilian population.

Between coalition attacks on targets with fighters hiding behind insurgents and Taliban and al Qaeda attacks on Afghan civilians, 2008 saw a 60 percent rise in civilian deaths.

The issue has become a political hot button for President Hamid Karzai, who is up for re-election this year.

Trying to keep his constituency happy, he has railed against the United States for air and ground attacks on targets where women and children have been killed.

The United States has attempted to reduce those numbers by changing approaches to attacking targets, not bombing suspect cars as they approach crowded areas or waiving off an attack on a house if there are innocent civilians inside, according to U.S. military officials.

In testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked about the conundrum.

“My worry is that the Afghans come to see it as part of the problem, rather than as part of their solution. And then we are lost,” Gates said.

But Gates is also aware of the public relations problem as Karzai stirs the pot.

“I don’t believe that his rhetoric has been helpful, and I must tell you that when I was last there and visited Bagram, I got a briefing on the procedures that our pilots go through to try and avoid civilian casualties,” Gates said. “I took a significant element of the Afghan press with me with their cameras so that they could see that briefing and see just how hard we do work at trying to avoid civilian casualties.”

Pentagon officials say that the continued comments by the Afghan president are making it difficult for U.S. troops. The more the Afghan president criticizes U.S. commanders, the more a gulf grows in the relationship between locals and U.S. troops.
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Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen have spoken to Karzai about his concerns on numerous occasions, officials said, and have related their same concerns on civilian deaths.

Pentagon officials said it is a touchy subject, but as one senior Pentagon official said, “it’s not in our place to tell the president of another country what he can or cannot say.”

February 3, 2009, Washington, DC – A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has seen the report prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it has not yet been presented to the White House, officials said Tuesday. The recommendations are one element of a broad policy reassessment under way along with recommendations to be considered by the White House from the commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, and other military leaders.

In an interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams on Tuesday Obama didn’t specifically comment on the report but said it was “encouraging” that there is now a “convergence between myself and the joint chiefs and my national security team about what we have to do” on a variety of national security questions, including Afghanistan.

There is a shared view among the joint chiefs, Obama said, that “Afghanistan is getting worse, not getting better.”

“We have to have a comprehensive strategy that not only deals with the military side but also the diplomacy,” Obama said, “how are we doing development, how do we make sure that the Afghan people have a stake in change in that country which they don’t have right now.”

A senior defense official said Tuesday that it will likely take several weeks before the Obama administration rolls out its long-term strategy for Afghanistan.

More than U.S. can handle?
The Joint Chiefs’ plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration’s broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.

Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighboring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.

The recommendations are broadly cast and provide limited detail, meant to help develop the overarching strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region rather than propose a detailed military action plan.

During a press conference Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs noted ongoing reviews of Afghan policy, but did not say when they would be made public. Obama intends, he said, to “evaluate the current direction of our policy and make some corrections as he goes forward.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment Tuesday on the details of the Joint Chiefs’ report, but acknowledged that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a critical component for success in Afghanistan.

“When you talk about Afghanistan, you can’t help but also recognize the fact that the border region with Pakistan is obviously a contributing factor to the stability and security of Afghanistan, and the work that Pakistan is doing to try to reduce and eliminate those safe havens, and the ability for people to move across that border that are engaged in hostile intentions,” Whitman said.

Working with Pakistan
Part of the recommended approach is to search for ways to work more intensively and effectively with the Pakistanis to root out extremist elements in the border area, the senior defense official said.

The heightened emphasis on Pakistan reflects a realization that the root of the problem lies in the militant havens inside its border – a concern outlined last week to Congress in grim testimony by Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen.

‘Art of the possible’
“The bottom line is we have to look at what the art of the possible is there,” said a U.S. military official who has operated in Afghanistan. The official, who has not seen the Joint Chiefs’ report, said the challenge is to craft a strategy that achieves U.S. goals of stabilizing the region and constraining al-Qaida, but also takes into account the powerful tribes that resist a strong central government and the ties among ethnic Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The Joint Chiefs’ report advises a greater emphasis on U.S. military training of Pakistani forces for counter-terror work.

Pakistan’s government is well aware of growing U.S. interest in collaborating to improve its military’s muscle against al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the border areas. The topic has been broached repeatedly by senior U.S. officials, including Mullen.

The training efforts also would expand and develop the Afghan army and police force, while at the same time work to improve Afghan governance.

The report also stresses that Afghan strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want, and that the U.S. cannot impose its own goals on the Afghanistan government.

During discussions about a new Afghanistan strategy, military leaders expressed worries that the U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan – to stabilize the country and begin to build a democracy there – were beyond its ability.

And as they tried to balance military demands in both Iraq and Afghanistan, some increasingly questioned why the U.S. continued to maintain a war-fighting force in Iraq, even though the mission there has shifted to a more support role. Those fighting forces, they argued, were needed more urgently in Afghanistan.

Military leaders have been signaling for weeks that the focus of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan would change.

Gates wants focus on terrorists
Gates told armed services committees in Congress last week that the U.S. should keep its sights on one thing: preventing Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists who would harm the U.S. or its allies. He bluntly added that the military could not root out terrorists while also propping up Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.

“Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Gates said, a mythology reference to heaven.

Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed last week on the military’s proposed new Afghan strategy, which he called evolving but headed in the right direction.

“There will be no Anbar awakening,” McCain, R-Ariz., told The Associated Press, referring to the tribal uprising against al-Qaida in Iraq’s Anbar province that triggered a turnaround in that conflict. “It will be long, hard and difficult.”

The Joint Chiefs report’s overall conclusions were first reported Saturday by The Associated Press. Politico reported additional details of the report Tuesday.

The U.S. is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, in response to growing strength by the Islamic militant Taliban, fed by safe havens they and al-Qaida have developed in an increasingly unstable Pakistan.

Obama is expected to announce soon his decision on a request for additional forces from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. Several officials said they believe the president will approve sending three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, totaling roughly 14,000 troops.

February 4, 2009 – White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists that President Obama is still reviewing his options when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, but has so far refused to indicate where US policy is heading. This has not stopped others from speculating about how the new administration will choose to meet the challenges ahead.

A report (.pdf) released today by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that following the conventional (and prevailing) wisdom on how to prosecute the Afghan War will only make things worse. Washington and its NATO partners recognize that Afghanistan is slowly slipping away, back towards the chaos that gave birth to the Taliban and played host to Al Qaeda. The solution, most say, is to withdraw US troops from Iraq and redeploy combat units to Afghanistan, where they will establish the level of security required for political and social development to occur. (It must be said that European governments are loathe to shoulder much of the burden.) Just this morning, Politico reports that Obama will soon request that at least another 10,000 troops deploy to Afghanistan, the first of several new deployments that are in the planning stages.

This is precisely the wrong way to go, says Gilles Dorronsoro, author of the Carnegie report. Applying foreign policy realism to the problem of Afghanistan, he writes that “the international coalition now has limited resources and a narrow political time frame to create lasting Afghan institutions. Yet, building such institutions is our only real exit strategy.” The troops we have at our disposal, even after an Iraqi-type “surge,” are unlikely to make much difference on the ground, and as Dorronsoro points out, small-scale surges in the past have only led to increased violence and an emboldened insurgency.

Instead of further militarization of the conflict, Dorronsoro suggests a softer approach, one that he thinks would have a better chance of creating Afghan governmental institutions that could eventually stand on their own and permit US and NATO withdrawal from the country. His recommendations, as summarized in a press release from Carnegie:

# The main policy objective should be to leave an Afghan government able to survive U.S. and NATO withdrawal. Strategies based on other objectives, like counternarcotics or promoting Western values, are not feasible given the limited resources available to the international presence in Afghanistan.
# The presence of foreign soldiers is a driving factor in the Taliban’s resurgence. Reducing military confrontations is the best way to weaken the armed opposition.
# Allocate resources according to three areas: strategic cities and transportation routes that must be under Afghan/alliance control; strategic areas where NATO and the Afghan army can engage insurgents; and opposition territory where NATO and Afghan forces should not expend effort or resources.
# Withdrawal will allow the United States to focus on the central security problem in the region: al-Qaeda and the instability in Pakistan.

The Joint Chiefs appear to agree with at least some of these recommendations. They are reportedly preparing a memo for President Obama, recommending that he abandon his predecessor’s goal of establishing a thriving, Western-style democracy in Afghanistan and instead turn the military’s focus to pursuing Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters across the border in Pakistan. Call it a lowering of expectations, which it most certainly is, but perhaps recalibrating our goals is the only way to salvage things. Still, at virtually every press conference held since Obama took office, Gibbs has cautioned journalists not to believe reports that the president has a made a final decision about the size and focus of future troop deployments.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) offers no comfort on the challenges the lie ahead, describing “a deteriorating security situation and no comprehensive political outcome yet in sight.” A Taliban victory remains unlikely, but left unchecked, the current trend could well lead to a recurrence of civil war between competing tribes and warlords – conditions that are to some extent “currently manifested in parts of southern Afghanistan.” The situation calls for a wholesale reevaluation of US policy, which should include “clarifying U.S. national interests in Afghanistan and the region; defining clear strategic objectives based on those interests; determining which diplomatic, economic, and military approaches to adopt, and what resources to commit to support those approaches; prioritizing ‘Afghanistan’ versus other national security imperatives; and helping marshal a coordinated application of international efforts.”

Any change of strategy must come soon, though, before things spin even farther out of control. But even if short-term gains are made, notes CRS, there’s no guarantee that they will endure. The insurgency will not go away quietly and will likely lie dormant until another opportunity presents itself. Like the Afghans say, “You have the watches; we have the time.” Figuring out how to take time away from the Taliban is the puzzle now facing the Obama administration. It won’t be an easy one to solve.

February 3, 2009 –
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey — In an attack that underscored the vulnerability of Afghanistan’s struggling security forces, a suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform slipped into a police compound and detonated a powerful explosive device Monday, killing at least 21 officers, authorities said.

The attack in southern Afghanistan also wounded a dozen police officers, according to the Interior Ministry.

Over the last two years, Taliban insurgents have increasingly focused their attacks on Afghan security forces rather than the much better trained, better armed and better protected Western troops, who number more than 60,000.

The police are considered a far “softer” target than Afghan soldiers, who are often in the company of NATO or U.S. forces and have been taking the lead in more and more combat missions. Many police outposts are only lightly defended, with relatively lax security. Nearly 1,000 police officers were killed last year in insurgent attacks.

A key component of Western strategy in Afghanistan is to hand over greater responsibility to the Afghan police and army, because locally recruited forces have a much better rapport with the populace. American troops carry out much of the training.

But as a result of unrelenting Taliban attacks, the police force, which is considered a key line of defense in remote communities, is demoralized, prone both to desertion and to infiltration by the Taliban.

Monday’s bombing took place in Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan province. The province is part of a swath of southern Afghanistan where the insurgency is at its strongest.

The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the attack and boasted that its bombers could strike anywhere. The Afghan Defense Ministry said Monday that three other would-be suicide bombers, already outfitted with explosives-filled vests, had been arrested in Oruzgan, but did not say when.

The police officers, most of them reservists, were engaged in an exercise when the attacker managed to make his way into their compound and into the center of a large group, said Juma Gul Himas, the provincial police chief. It was not immediately clear whether the bomber had been searched.

laura.king@latimes.com

Faiez is a special correspondent.

February 3, 2009, Islamabad, Pakistan – Supplies intended for NATO forces in Afghanistan were suspended Tuesday after Taliban militants blew up a highway bridge in the Khyber Pass region, a lawless northwestern tribal area straddling the border with Afghanistan.

Hidayatullah Khan, a government official in the region, was quoted by Reuters as saying that the 30-yard-long iron bridge was located 15 miles northwest of Peshawar, the capital of the restive North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistani officials said they were assessing the damage and teams had been sent to repair the bridge. But it was not immediately clear how soon the trucks carrying crucial supplies for NATO forces would be able to travel through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan.

More than 80 percent of the supplies for American and coalition forces in Afghanistan flow through Pakistan. Attacks aimed at choking the supply lines have become increasingly frequent and brazen, despite the presence of Pakistani security forces in the area.

Previously, the militants attacked convoys of cargo trucks with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles. Consequently, most truck drivers refused to make the trips as they became more dangerous.

In December, attacks by Taliban militants on NATO supply depots in Peshawar destroyed 300 cargo trucks and Humvee military vehicles.

The increasing vulnerability of the supply line passing through the border areas of Pakistan has forced United States and NATO to find new supply routes through Central Asia to deliver fuel, food and other supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

February 1, 2009 – Carrying heavy combat loads is taking a quiet but serious toll on troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, contributing to injuries that are sidelining them in growing numbers, according to senior military and defense officials.

Rising concern over the muscle and bone injuries — as well as the hindrance caused by the cumbersome gear as troops maneuver in Afghanistan’s mountains — prompted Army and Marine Corps leaders and commanders to launch initiatives last month that will introduce lighter equipment for some U.S. troops.

As the military prepares to significantly increase the number of troops in Afghanistan — including sending as many as 20,000 more Marines — fielding a new, lighter vest and helmet is a top priority, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said recently. “We are going to have to lighten our load,” he said, after inspecting possible designs during a visit to the Quantico Marine base.

Army leaders and experts say the injuries — linked to the stress of bearing heavy loads during repeated 12- or 15-month combat tours — have increased the number of soldiers categorized as “non-deployable.” Army personnel reported 257,000 acute orthopedic injuries in 2007, up from 247,000 the previous year.

As injuries force more soldiers to stay home, the Army is having a harder time filling units for upcoming deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the service’s vice chief of staff.

“There is no doubt that [in] our non-deployable rates, we’re seeing increase,” he said. “I don’t want to see it grow any more.”

The number of total non-deployables has risen by an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 since 2006, putting the current figure at about 20,000, according to Chiarelli. “That occurs when you run the force at the level we’re running it now,” he said.

“You can’t hump a rucksack at 8,000 to 11,000 feet for 15 months, even at a young age, and not have that have an impact on your body, and we are seeing an increase in muscular-skeletal issues,” Chiarelli told reporters last month.

The top U.S. commander for eastern Afghanistan, where the bulk of U.S. troops in the country operate, has issued a formal request, known as an operational needs statement, for lighter body armor for troops there. The new equipment, called a “plate carrier,” would protect vital organs and weigh less than 20 pounds. It would not include additional pieces that troops currently use to shield sides, shoulders, arms, the groin and other areas — pieces that, with a helmet, weigh about 35 pounds.

Commanders would determine in what circumstances troops could wear the lighter gear, which would make it easier to maneuver when pursuing insurgents over rugged terrain at high altitudes.

“Our dismounted operations are occurring at very high elevations, 10,000 feet and higher, where the air is thinner and it is difficult already to maneuver. You add to that body armor, ammunition and the full load that soldiers carry — it is difficult,” said a military official familiar with the request. “You are operating against an enemy that is very agile — running around in tennis shoes, if that — and they are fleet of foot and can move faster and elude us,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the request had not yet been approved.

Pietro Tonino, chief of sports medicine at Loyola University Health System in suburban Chicago, agreed that the loads troops carry would “absolutely” predispose them to muscular-skeletal injuries over time. “They will get stress fractures or overuse injuries of the back, the legs, the foot,” Tonino said. “Recruits get these stress fractures in their feet all the time just from walking.”

The military has added to its protective gear in recent years to guard against improvised bombs and other threats common in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that has come with a trade-off, as soldiers and Marines routinely carry more than half their body weight into combat.

Individual Marine combat loads — including protective gear, weapons, ammunition, water, food and communications gear — range from 97 to 135 pounds, well over the recommended 50 pounds, a 2007 Navy study found.

In Afghanistan, soldiers routinely carry loads of 130 to 150 pounds for three-day missions, said Jim Stone, acting director of the soldier requirements division at the Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Ga. In Iraq, where patrols are more likely to use vehicles, loads range from 60 to nearly 100 pounds, he said.

“It’s like a horse: We can load you down, and you just don’t last as long,” Stone said.

Injuries — the bulk of them muscular-skeletal — are the main cause of hospitalizations and outpatient visits for active-duty Army soldiers, leading to about 880,000 visits per year, according to Army data. The injuries include sprains, stress fractures, inflammation and pain from repetitive use, and they are most common in the lower back, knees, ankles, shoulders and spine. They are one of the leading reasons that soldiers miss duty, said Col. Barbara Springer, director of rehabilitation under the Army surgeon general.

The overall injury rate for active-duty soldiers has increased slightly to 2.2 injuries per soldier each year, according to Bruce Jones, director of injury prevention at the Army Center for Health Promotion & Preventive Medicine at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Jones confirmed that soldiers “are now carrying heavier loads on our back, so there is a greater opportunity for overuse injuries.” And with the rapid pace of deployments, he said, “you get a chronic back injury, then you don’t recover before the next cycle. . . . You have to go back to theater 100 percent fit,” able to wear the life-saving armor every day.

Sgt. Waarith Abdullah, 34, is struggling to recover at Fort Stewart, Ga., from a lower-back injury that he says was caused by the strain of wearing body armor for long hours each day during three deployments to Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah’s injury flared up painfully during his most recent 15-month deployment to Balad, Iraq, where he had to maneuver to search vehicles and stand for 12-hour shifts in guard towers.

“That takes a toll on you, because you have to maintain your center of gravity wearing all that stuff and doing your job,” said Abdullah, of Miami. He wore a Kevlar helmet, body armor with four plates, a throat and groin protector, and shoulder pads, while carrying 10 pounds of ammunition, a rifle, a flashlight and other gear.

“At times, I did think the equipment we were wearing was heavier than usual, but I’m a soldier and I still do my job,” he said. “I think it could be lighter and stronger at the same time.”

During the deployment, Abdullah was allowed to go without armor for 30 days, but the pain returned when he started wearing it again. He returned last July to Fort Stewart, where he is in physical therapy. He is still unable to wear armor but hopes to recover in time for his next deployment.

Maj. Neil Vining, an orthopedic surgeon at Winn Army Community Hospital at Fort Stewart, said many of those sidelined have debilitating lower-back pain. “If their condition makes them a danger to themselves or others, if they couldn’t wear their armor or extricate themselves or others from danger, then they are non-deployable,” he said.

After two tours in Iraq, Staff Sgt. James Otto, an Army mechanic, has undergone nine months of physical therapy, traction and medication for back pain. He hopes that in three to four months he will be able to wear his vest again and switch to a different job so he can stay in the Army. In November, an Army board gave him a six-month probationary period in which he has to prove he can “wear the vest and shoot a weapon again,” he said.

Further evidence of the frequency of the injuries, which have forced some to leave the military, has come up in studies of veterans.

Carroll W. McInroe, a former VA primary-care case manager in Washington state, said he has seen such injuries in hundreds of veterans from today’s wars. “Our infantry should not be going into battle carrying 90 to 100 pounds on their backs,” he said. “The human muscular-skeletal system is simply not designed for that much weight, and it will break down over time.”

Army experts say some units are adopting more strenuous exercise routines to prepare soldiers for the strain.

At Fort Drum, N.Y., the 10th Mountain Division readies its troops for Afghanistan using aggressive strength training. Command Sgt. Maj. Joe Montour said the training, which involves pull-ups and other drills while wearing full body armor, helped reduce injuries by 45 percent.

Also, the Army is now deploying a physical therapist with most active-duty combat brigades, said Lt. Col Nikki Butler, a senior rehabilitation specialist. And the Army recently held its first two-day summit devoted to tackling the issue.

“We refer to soldiers as tactical athletes,” Butler said. “You want to help take care of them early so they can get back in the game.”