Southwest Asia U.S. wars’ war dead

Re-reported, compiled, edited by Carolyn Bennett

AFPAK

Northwest Pakistan
One hundred and two (estimated) people have died in double suicide bombings in northwest Pakistan. The death toll on Friday had stood at 62 people, but Saturday’s reports made the attack the deadliest since an October 2009 car bomb destroyed a market in the northwestern city of Peshawar that left 125 people dead. In recent months, “Pakistan has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks. Last week at least 42 people died in an attack on Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine in the eastern city of Lahore.”

Afghanistan’s Kandahar
Seven (estimate) civilians and seven NATO forces died this week in the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and elsewhere in the country. Cars were blazing, windows shattered; seven people suffered wounds in Saturday’s blast from explosives strapped to a parked motorcycle in Kandahar’s commercial center. The five NATO forces’ deaths happened in three separate attacks in eastern and southern Afghanistan. A sixth soldier reportedly died in an accidental explosion. All the reported dead were Americans.

NATO forces issued a statement on Saturday admitting its troops on Thursday had “‘accidently’ killed six [Afghan] civilians while battling Taliban fighters [in Paktia province south of Kabul] earlier in the week.” Saturday’s admission of killing civilians came the day after another NATO confession to “accidentally” killing “five Afghan soldiers in a botched airstrike” on the Andar district of Ghazni province “where the Afghan soldiers were launching a pre-dawn ambush against fighters.”

Hundreds of Afghan protesters took to the streets on Saturday chanting slogans against foreign forces and against Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai after U.S. troops killed two civilians and arrested three others during a Wednesday pre-dawn raid on the outskirts of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Corruption in war
Afghans paid nearly $1 billion in bribes last year. Since 2006, corruption has become far more widespread. Corruption appears to be worst in Afghanistan’s justice and security agencies. Ten percent of Afghans reported paying bribes to obtain court decisions or police protection. Many of those bribes were expensive and nearly half of them cost more than 2,500 Afghanis ($55).

Thirty-eight percent of Afghans reported effect of police corruption [AFP]. Forty-two per cent said the interior ministry was the most corrupt in Afghanistan, 32 per cent said the justice ministry was most corrupt. The findings come from a study conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), a Kabul-based NGO, based on interviews with 6,500 people in all but two (Paktika and Nuristan) of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Integrity Watch Afghanistan’s similar survey in 2007 found the total cost of bribes was $466 million, less than half the level recorded in 2009. A January 2010 report released by the United Nations found that Afghans paid $2.5 billion in bribes in 2009 and that 59 per cent of Afghans think corruption is the biggest problem facing the country.

How many (est.) in two-theater

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

July 11, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 184]

Wounded 31,874-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides 18 a day

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

96,933 – 105,688

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,412 U.S., 4,730 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,171 U.S., 1,920 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources and notes
“Pakistan death toll soars above 100,” July 10, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107954021715355.html
“Deadly blast rocks Kandahar city,” July 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010710103937406855.html
“Study says Afghan graft worsening” (Gregg Carlstrom), July 08, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/201078124118415689.html