www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuwbfZrtSyM
Dave Petraeus won't let up his aerial assault on Afghanistan. After taking the air war to record highs in the fall, coalition aircraft are now flying about 10 bombing missions a day, nearly double the rate over the same period last year. It's yet another sign of Petraeus' gloves-off approach to prosecuting the Afghan campaign - one that the NATO commander swears is brutalizing Taliban networks, while barely scraping the civilians around them.
In the first 29 days of January 2011, NATO planes fired their guns, missiles, and bombs on 284 separate sorties. In January 2010, those aircraft only made 157 attack runs. This doubling of air attacks has been a consistent trend, ever since Petraeus took over the Afghan war effort. Under Petraeus, there have been 3,620 of these so-called "weapons sorties" over the last six months, U.S. military statistics show. Under his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, there were just 1,813 during a similar stretch.
Petraeus hasn't just ramped up the air war, however. He's increased the aggressive tactics across the entire Afghan war effort. Petraeus unleashed special operations forces, who have killed or captured thousands of militants. His generals relied on massive surface-to-surface missiles to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar, and ordered tanks to help crush opponents in Helmand province. In perhaps the signature moment of Petraeus' campaign, U.S. forces flattened three villages in the Arghandab River Valley which the Taliban had jury-rigged with homemade bombs.
Petraeus promises that all the additional raids and bombing runs are exacting a relatively minor civilian toll. "There are very, very few civilian casualties in the course of those operations, and very little infrastructure damage," he tells the Financial Times.
But a war this heated is bound to claim bystanders, no matter how careful the combatants.
At least 2,421 Afghan civilians and 711 coalition troops were killed in 2010, both record numbers.
As constant as the airstrikes have become, they still make up a relatively minor part of coalition operations in the skies above Afghanistan (and, to a much lesser, extent) Iraq. Every week, NATO cargo planes are hauling 4,000 tons of gear and 22,000 passengers; its tankers are offloading more than a million tons of fuel; its spy drones and manned aircraft are flying 500 or more surveillance sorties.
All those figures will almost certainly increase this spring, when both the Taliban and Petraeus are expected to launch major offensives in this, the 10th year of the Afghan war.
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