Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were tossed nearly a decade ago, despite the presence of around 150,000 foreign troops, and with Afghan forces to start taking over securing parts of the country in a few months.
The International Committee of the Red Thingy (ICRC) said January and February were particularly bad for Afghans, with more suicide kabooms in public places, more roads strewn with bombs and more international military operations gone wrong.
On Tuesday, Afghan officials said two children were killed in an air strike by NATO-led forces as they were watering fields in eastern Kunar province
... which is right down the road from Binny's house in Chitral...
late on Monday.
"The first two months of 2011 have seen a dramatic deterioration in the security situation for ordinary Afghans," Reto Stocker, the head of the ICRC in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
"It is an untenable situation. Civilians must be protected from harm as much as possible, not become victims of the fighting." Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces are a major source of tension between Afghanistan's Caped President
Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
and his Western allies. They also anger Afghans, complicating efforts to win their support for a war that, for most people, has brought only misery.
Abdul Marjan, district chief of Chawki in Kunar where the two brothers, aged 10 and 15, where killed, said the boys had been working on irrigation channels before they were hit.
"They might have been mistaken for bully boyz as they were carrying spades on their shoulders," Marjan told Rooters.
Shahzada Shahid, a politician from Kunar, said the pair were students who had gone out to help work their father's fields.