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NATO's June death toll in Afghanistan nears 100
Agence France Presse - June 28, 2010
Lynne O'Donnell, Kabul – The death toll for foreign soldiers in Afghanistan Monday neared the grim milestone of 100 for June alone as the CIA chief warned the anti-Taliban war would be tougher and longer than expected.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said a soldier was killed in the southern province of Helmand on Sunday, taking the June toll as tallied by AFP to 99 – already the worst monthly total in nearly nine years of fighting.
The British death came after four Norwegian soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the northern province of Faryab on Sunday. The toll for the year to date is 319 – compared to 520 for all of 2009.
NATO says the dramatic upswing in casualty numbers in June has been caused by the alliance stepping up military operations and taking the fight to the Taliban in areas where the Islamist militia has previously been unchallenged.
The rising casualties come as questions mount in the United States and Europe about military strategy in Afghanistan following last week's sacking of the top NATO commander, US General Stanley McChrystal.
Eight civilians including women and children were also killed on Monday when a Taliban-style bomb ripped through a minivan in the central province of Ghazni, police said.
NATO said it had killed several rebels in a pre-dawn raid near the troubled southern city of Kandahar but local villagers said the dead were all civilians.
Police in the city said they were investigating allegations that the dead were all local men who had been sleeping on roofs to escape the heat.
The issue of civilian casualties is incendiary among Afghans, who blame the presence of foreign troops for the ongoing violence, despite a UN report early this year showing that most civilian deaths are caused by Taliban attacks. McChrystal won plaudits in Afghanistan for introducing battlefield measures aimed at reducing civilian casualties, principally with an approach known as "courageous restraint" which encouraged soldiers to hold fire until they were sure their targets were bona fide insurgents.
However, the policy has been criticised among the ranks, who blame it for the rising number of deaths and injuries being suffered by NATO troops.
McChrystal was forced to step down after disparaging remarks about US administration officials, including President Barack Obama, emerged in an explosive article in Rolling Stone magazine.
The article raised questions about whether McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy, under which an extra 30,000 US troops were scheduled for deployment in Afghanistan, was working and fully supported by the US administration.
CIA director Leon Panetta acknowledged "serious problems" with the Afghan war.
"We're dealing with a country that has problems with governance, problems with corruption, problems with narcotics trafficking, problems with a Taliban insurgency," Panetta told ABC television.
"We are making progress. But it's harder and slower than anyone anticipated."
Efforts to support President Hamid Karzai's government are also severely undermined by widespread corruption, with many Afghans distrustful of Kabul.
Karzai says that eradicating graft is a priority of his second presidency – won last year in corruption-riddled polls. But fears that little headway is being made were stoked Monday by a Wall Street Journal report.
The newspaper said more than three billion dollars in cash has left the country in recent years, and quoted unnamed sources as saying the money was likely the ill-gotten gains from corruption and the opium trade.
Much of southern Afghanistan is blighted by the Taliban insurgency, now in its deadliest phase since the US-led invasion ousted the hardline Islamist regime in late 2001 and installed a Western-backed administration.
McChrystal has been replaced in Afghanistan by General David Petraeus, the architect of the successful surge strategy in Iraq that is credited with bringing the country back from the brink of civil war.
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