Since shortly after Washington launched Operation Enduring Freedom, NATO forces have been based in other Central Asian nations: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Including the Middle East and the South Caucasus, NATO's Asia-Pacific roster in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater consists of (and soon may) a growing number of nations: Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Georgia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Tonga and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Afghanistan (and Pakistan).
With all 28 NATO members and nine European members of the Alliance's Partnership for Peace program already having supplied troops and only six European states to date not having done so (Belarus, Cyprus, Malta, Moldova, Serbia and Russia) the U.S. and NATO necessarily have to look beyond the Euro-Atlantic region for more troops. In doing so the war in Afghanistan has become an Asian war in two senses: The first prolonged war in the continent the U.S. has waged since that in Vietnam and the first Asian war in NATO's history, and a conflict that is pulling more and more Asia-Pacific countries into its bloody grip.
[Mongolian troops at the Transit Center in Manas, Kyrgyzstan en route to Afghanistan.]
As of October 28 the U.S., its NATO allies and partnership countries had lost 605 soldiers this year, compared to 521 for 2009, itself the highest annual total until now. The combined death count for 2009-2010 1,126 is over half of all foreign soldiers killed since the war began on October 7, 2001, which is 2,175. Seventeen NATO soldiers were killed in three days, October 13-15, alone.
Afghan civilians have fared even worse. Last month, two months after General David Petraeus took over command of all U.S. and NATO forces from Stanley McChrystal [6], American and NATO air strikes in Afghanistan had increased to 700 from 257 in September of 2009 according to U.S. Air Force statistics. [7]
Although nominally targeting insurgents, the bombings and missile strikes have left scores of Afghan civilians dead. Recent reports include:
Early this month a NATO air strike killed at least 18 people in an attack on a residence in Helmand province.
A week later, October 11, at least 20 civilians were killed by a Western rocket attack in the same province. [8]
A U.S.-NATO air strike in Baghlan province killed at least 18 people and wounded several others on October 17, with "eyewitnesses and local sources [saying] all those killed in the attack were civilians." [9]
On October 23 Afghan government officials accused NATO troops of firing indiscriminately at civilians in Wardak province, causing the deaths of two schoolchildren. "The attack prompted a brief demonstration by angry villagers, demanding an explanation from NATO forces over the killing." [10] The following day it was reported that four Afghan civilians, including a child, were killed by a U.S.-NATO air strike in the same province.
Regarding the overall, cumulative effect of the Western war and occupation in Afghanistan, on October 10 the United Nations-supported World Mental Health Day Afghanistan's Dr. Suraya Dalil, Deputy Minister for Policy and Planning and Acting Minister of the Ministry of Public Health, stated that "More than 60 percent of Afghans are suffering from stress disorders and mental problems," a figure substantiated by the World Health Organization. [11]
Seventeen days afterward Saleem Kunduzi, Acting Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, told a gathering marking World Food Day that "Two years ago, five million people in Afghanistan lived in extreme poverty, but now the number has increased to nine million," [12] almost a third of the population.
In the nine years since the U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan, opium cultivation has expanded by 40,000 percent and now accounts for over 90 percent of the world's supply.
On June 9-10 of this year an international forum called Drug Production in Afghanistan: A Challenge to the International Community was held in Moscow and was addressed by among others President Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Ivanov, Director of the Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation. The second had stated earlier at a similar conference in Berlin that "Revenues derived from smuggling the "white death' to Europe, Asia and America are estimated to score billions of dollars. In fact, the production and illegal trafficking of Afghan drugs should be classified as a threat to international peace and security." [13]
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