Clip File: The West’s 21st Century War in Afghanistan Risks Regional Conflagration

"Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground..." -- President George W. Bush, announcing the attack against Afghanistan on October 7, 2001

On October 7 the United States’ and NATO’s war in Afghanistan entered its ninth year. The escalating conflict has over the past year become indistinguishable from military operations in neighboring Pakistan where the U.S. and NATO have tripled deadly drone missile attacks and the Pakistani army has launched large-scale offensives that have displaced over 3 million civilians in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with the province of Baluchistan the next battle zone.

On September 29 the U.S. conducted four drone attacks in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency in twenty four hours and during the past year has fired over 60 missiles into the area causing more than 550 deaths.

Three days later the Pentagon announced 72 more American military deaths in the fifteen-nation Operation Enduring Freedom, Greater Afghan War theater – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen – bringing the official total to 774.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) acknowledge that so far this year 406 foreign soldiers have been killed, the bulk of which, 240, are American.

On the eight anniversary of the beginning of the war, however, an authoritative Russian news source estimated that overall “The United States has…lost 1,500 servicemen, while its allies have lost several hundred.”

The rest of the story: Afghanistan: West’s 21st Century War Risks Regional Conflagration by Rick Rozoff (Stop NATO 2009-10-12)