Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/resurgent-taliban-may-step-up-attacks-pentagon-says Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript A report released by the Pentagon Friday showed growing instability in Afghanistan and a continuing rise in Taliban forces. A reporter and a regional expert size up new security threats and discuss the new report. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JEFFREY BROWN: For U.S. and coalition troops fighting in Afghanistan, a grim milestone this week. With more than 40 troops killed, June now ranks as the highest single month for casualties since the war began seven years ago. In all, more than 115 have died this year.Militants, including a resurgent Taliban, have become increasingly dangerous and bold. An attack on a military convoy west of Kabul yesterday took the lives of three coalition troops. The fighters displayed captured weapons.Two weeks ago, dozens of Taliban attacked a prison outside Kandahar with a truck bomb and rockets. Some 600 prisoners broke free and later overran a nearby district. NATO forces, along with 700 Afghan national army troops, eventually fought off the militants.Coalition forces are also focused on another problem: the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pentagon cites a growing and uncontrolled militant presence there and says fighters cross into Afghanistan and kill Americans.Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday put some blame on the Pakistani government.ROBERT GATES, Secretary of Defense: What has happened is that, as various agreements have been negotiated or were in the process of negotiation with various groups by the Pakistani government, there was the opportunity — the pressure was taken off of these people and these groups, and they've, therefore, been more free to be able to cross the border and create problems for us. JEFFREY BROWN: Today, in a gruesome show of anger, thousands watched as Pakistani militants publicly executed two Afghans they claimed were spies for U.S. forces.Today's Pentagon report details the resurgence of the Taliban and the increasing violence. And we look at all of this now with David Wood, national security correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. He was embedded for six weeks this spring with a Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan.And Seth Jones, a political scientist at the Rand Corporation and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, he frequently travels to Afghanistan and has authored a study of the war there.