The unfinished job

Afghanistan continues to be a very dangerous place.  Never were enough 'boots on the ground' placed in that country.  The invasion of Iraq further eroded strenght and focus on Afghanistan. 

 

Stats from last year...

 

More than 1,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2006, most of them as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces in the country's unstable south, a rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said that at least 100 of those civilian deaths were caused by NATO and U.S.-led troop operations, far below another estimate by an Afghan rights group.

In all, more than 4,400 Afghans - comprising civilians and combatants - died in conflict-related violence, twice as many as in 2005 and more than in any other year since the U.S . helped oust the Taliban in 2001, the Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Taliban-led guerrillas launched a record number of attacks last year and engaged in several pitched battles with foreign troops, who now number more than 40,000, the most since the fall of the fundamentalist militia.

With warlords and drug traffickers still powerful, Human Rights Watch said Afghan President Hamid Karzai and donor nations had failed to meet promises to improve governance, the economy and security under plans to be reviewed at an international meeting on Afghanistan starting Tuesday in Berlin.

"Afghanistan hasn't really met any of the benchmarks" on improving human rights...

Which means that the US hasn't met any benchmarks- or its obligations- regarding Afghanistan.

GP