tagged w/ IEDs
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KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan has seen an "alarming" near-doubling of roadside bomb attacks over the past year, a UN report said Saturday, as the US asserted progress was being made in the war-torn country.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said "security incidents" have risen significantly as US-led forces make a push in the south and militant activities have grown in the southeast and eastern regions of Afghanistan.
"The rise in incidents involving improvised-explosive devices constitutes an alarming trend, with the first four months of 2010 recording a 94 percent increase compared to the same period in 2009," the report to the UN security council said.
The report added suicide attacks involving more complex planning have doubled from last year to roughly two per month, which "demonstrates a growing capability of the local terrorist networks linked to Al-Qaeda".
Killings of civilians by insurgents aiming to take control of urban populations have also increased 45 percent from last year, to a rate of seven a week, mostly taking place in the south and southeast, it said.
The report came at the end of a week in which US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Afghan government and its international backers were making progress stabilising the country.
"We think that we're making progress, we know how hard it is," Clinton told a news conference in Washington Friday, saying that "the Afghan military and police are improving".
"There's a lot of positive indicators," she added, citing advances in education, health, government capacity, agricultural output and economic growth.
Ban's UN report also noted conflict-related civilian casualties decreased one percent compared to last year, but officials said at least five civilians, including two young girls, died in a NATO air strike Saturday targeting the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.
"We have received five bodies of civilians in our provincial public hospital," Khost provincial health director Amirbadshah Rahmatzai Mangal told AFP.
"The dead include two female children of seven and eight years of age. A 14-year-old boy was wounded."
Khost provincial police chief general Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai said six civilians and 38 Taliban militants were killed by the bombing in the mountainous area on the Pakistan border.
Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has made minimising civilian casualties a central tenet of his counter-insurgency strategy and has ordered reduced air strikes to help achieve the objective.
The Pentagon on Thursday said US-led forces were making headway against the Taliban, but it was "overshadowed" by violence in southern provinces and what it called an overly gloomy portrayal of the war shaped by media coverage.
The rising death toll in Afghanistan is unwelcome news for Washington and its allies, whose electorates are increasingly frustrated by casualties in a seemingly endless and faraway war.KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan has seen an "alarming" near-doubling of... more
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With IED deaths rising in Afghanistan, what new, futuristic counter-insurgency strategies will the military unleash? How about anti-IED ads? From Wired's Danger Room blog:
The U.S. Army is looking to battle the improvised explosive device (IED) threat with new armored vehicles, increased surveillance in the sky, and… advertising. Mad Men versus militias, if you will.
Late last month, the Information Operations division of the Army’s Combined Joint Task Force 82 sent out a call for proposals for a “comprehensive strategic marketing and information campaign” for eastern Afghanistan. “The over arching objective of this media and advertising campaign is to influence the Afghanistan people at all levels (strategic, operational and tactical) [that] will directly translate in the reduction of the number of IED devices used against the Afghanistan people and Coalitional [sic] forces.”
The upcoming season of Vanguard features an episode by Kaj Larsen called "Remote Control War" with some of the new technologies making their way to battlefield.
A few other things for you to click on:
- Fully Automatic America - Kaj reports on just how much America loves its guns
- Future of War - A Current.com group to keep you updated on technological advancements in warfare
- The Vanguard Blog - Read regular updates and commentary from your friendly neighborhood Vanguard team
- Afghanistan Wednesday - Today's update on the 8th anniversary of the start of the warWith IED deaths rising in Afghanistan, what new, futuristic counter-insurgency... more
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In a video shot from nearby Apache helicopters, US military personnel watch as Afghan insurgents set up a deadly IED and then accidentally trigger it themselves. I think this video is pretty rare: I imagine not many insurgents are caught on camera setting up their IEDs. But IEDs have become a bigger and bigger problem for coalition forces in Afghanistan. At first IEDs seemed an Iraq-only issue, but their numbers have been increasing in recent years, and 2009 is on track to set a record for IEDs in Afghanistan, with 828 so far this year.
What is your perspective on the war's progress in Afghanistan? Get involved in the conversation over here.
In a video shot from nearby Apache helicopters, US military personnel watch as... more
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US forces have detained a senior police officer in Afghanistan for alleged corruption and links to insurgents. A statement by the US military said Atahullah Wahaab, deputy police chief in Kapisa province, facilitated the storage, distribution and installation of improvised explosive devices on roads in his region.US forces have detained a senior police officer in Afghanistan for alleged corruption... more
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