The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says civilian casualties from the Afghan conflict remain at "unacceptably high levels" despite a 21-percent drop in conflict-related deaths during the first four months of this year.
In a report released Thursday, UNAMA said 2011 marked the fifth year in a row in which civilian casualties increased in Afghanistan. The group said it documented more than 3,000 civilian deaths last year, three-quarters linked to violence by anti-government forces.
And I'll bet that of the other quarter, most of those can be explained by the enemy fighting while dressed as civilians or using civilians as shields, leading either to collateral damage or cases of mistaken identity when our munitions caused the deaths.
The basic fact is that the enemy tries to kill civilians and we try to avoid killing them.
I'm also always struck by the contrast to Iraq where 3,000 dead civilians could be a bad month. The scale of insurgency deaths has just never been that bad in Afghanistan. Why so many people think we are doomed to losing in Afghanistan is beyond me.
