LA Times
Afghanistan has become a far more dangerous place for Western troops and Afghan civilians alike, with an increase in suicide attacks, roadside bombings and political assassinations in the first four months of 2010, the United Nations said in a report released Saturday.
The gloomy assessment comes on the heels of congressional testimony last week by senior U.S. military officials who acknowledged that efforts to stabilize Afghanistan's volatile south are proving more complex and time-consuming than anticipated.
With the U.S. troop numbers in the country approaching the 100,000 mark, the Western military toll has been rising sharply in recent weeks as the summer "fighting season" unfolds. More than 1,000 U.S. service members have died in the nearly 9-year-old conflict.
"There has been a great deal of 'kinetic activity''" as Western and Afghan forces confront insurgents in the south, Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, told reporters in the capital Saturday. That is the term the military uses to describe battlefield clashes.
The U.N. report, submitted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council and released by the world body's mission in Afghanistan, reported a near-doubling in attacks involving so-called improvised explosive devices.