“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” -ISAF Commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal

Yesterday the Telegraph reported this blockbuster…

…An opinion poll yesterday showed that more than three-quarters of voters support the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

The Com Res poll found that 77 per cent wanted troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, while more than half thought that the presence of troops there put British streets at greater risk from terrorism.

But the three main parties are all fighting the general election on programmes which include backing for the Nato mission against the Taliban.

Between them, the parties’ general election manifestos run to around 80,000 words – but Afghanistan is mentioned only 19 times between them. Labour’s manifesto included the most mentions, 11, followed by the Conservatives’ on five and three for the Liberal Democrats’.

Chris Nineham, of the Stop the War Coalition, said: "There has been a deafening silence about Afghanistan in the run-up to the election. The three main parties are doing their best not to mention the war, despite the fact that the vast majority of the population oppose it."

With international affairs the main theme of this week’s leaders’ debate, to be hosted by Sky News in Bristol, members of the television studio audience are almost certain to challenge all three men about their support for the conflict.

Isn’t rather ironic that the LibDem leader Nick Clegg suddenly shot up in the polls by advocating getting out of Afghanistan…?

As recent headlines out of Afghanistan point out…

Civilian deaths reverberate in Afghanistan

Nato firing kills Afghan civilians in Kandahar

Afghan fury after US troops kill four civilians

Now we’re sending in more ‘manhunters’…

Operations aimed at Taliban leaders have intensified as the military also gears up for an expected offensive this summer in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that is the Taliban’s spiritual heartland. Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants to negotiate with the Taliban, and U.S. and allied forces are trying to lure rank-and-file fighters away from extremist leaders. By hunting Taliban leaders, the specialized units hope to increase pressure on foot soldiers to switch sides.

With such an abbreviated timeline, the elite manhunt teams are the most effective weapon for disrupting the insurgent leadership, senior officials said. The officials contend that stepped-up operations by teams inserted in recent months already have eroded the Taliban leadership. Defense officials specifically single out the work of special operations forces in eliminating mid-level Taliban leaders before the February offensive in the Helmand province town of Marja. They say the forces have begun similar operations in nearby Kandahar province.

"You can’t kill your way out of these things, but you can remove a lot of the negative influences," said a senior Defense official. "A significant portion of the leadership has fled over the border, been captured or removed from the equation."

But the buildup carries risks. Special operations forces have been involved in some botched strikes that ended up killing civilians, mistakes that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has said could undermine the overall mission. For years, Karzai and other officials have complained bitterly about civilian deaths in military actions by the U.S. and its allies.[...]

Pentagon officials recently have realigned the command structure to give McChrystal control of the U.S. Marines and special operations forces that are mainly involved in training.

The Defense official said that with the new buildup, there will be more of the special operations forces in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq at the height of the U.S. troop buildup there in 2007.

"Although we will have less general purpose forces than we had in Iraq, we will have more special forces," the official said.

Within the military, some consider the work of the Joint Special Operations Command units in Iraq to have been key to calming the violence at the time.

Some of the additional JSOC teams sent to Afghanistan have been shifted from Iraq, where they worked to root out extremist cells aligned with Al Qaeda. Despite the recent flare-up in violence, officials say the number of extremists being sought in the Mideast nation has declined precipitously. Describing the change in the idiom of the secret units, a senior official said: "Hunting season is over in Iraq."

In Afghanistan, the special units have been following a playbook similar to the one they used in Iraq, and Defense officials hope the elite teams will have a similar effect on the overall level of security.

Defense officials emphasize that even the teams not under McChrystal’s direct control are bound by his tactical directives.

"Rules are rules for everybody," said the Defense official.

"McChrystal holds them to a higher standard than conventional forces. When things go wrong, he is extremely aware of what the costs are."

Like the rules are really different in a war…

Btw, there’s more contractors than soldiers in Afghanistan right now…!

From the Pulitzer winning, ProPublica

Contractor Deaths Accelerating in Afghanistan as They Outnumber Soldiers

…A recent Congressional Research Service analysis [1] obtained by ProPublica looked at the number of civilian contractors killed in Afghanistan in recent months. It’s not pretty.[...]

The latest U.S. Department of Defense numbers show there are actually more civilian contractors on the ground in Afghanistan than there are soldiers. The Pentagon reported [2] 107,292 U.S.-hired civilian workers in Afghanistan as of February 2010, when there were about 78,000 soldiers. This is apparently the first time that contractors have exceeded soldiers by such a large margin.[...]

Contractor casualties are, by and large, invisible to the public, disguising the full human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are not reported in totals given by the government. If they were, the death toll in Afghanistan would have surpassed 1,000 — 848 soldiers, 289 civilian contractors — from 2001 to 2009, a milestone that has gone entirely unmarked.

From the Kabul Perspective…

The tragic incident of firing on civilian bus in Kandahar killing four including a woman and a child, has intensified the anti-US perception of people in South. Why does it happen again and again? After each tragic incident of civilian casualties, the forces are thought to have learnt from their blunders and avoid such blind firing, but we see it happening again very soon after the previous incident. The forces seems to be very ill-trained regarding the confrontation with civilians. Recently the US and NATO military officials restructured their engagement approach to avoid civilian casualties, but we see each day with a worst of it happening repeatedly.[...]

If the foreign troops in Afghanistan will not be serious about avoiding civilian casualties and making all out efforts to avoid any innocent lives, they would never win the hearts and minds of people. Our Government and the people must be honest and realistic about their outlook. Taliban kill larger number of civilians, this should also be condemned by the President and people.

It’s time for us to call our Congress Critters and tell them to sign on to the Feingold-McGovern-Jones legislation…!

A timetable would be a start…!