23 enemy killed in Afghan weapons searches

Reuters:

U.S.-led forces have killed 23 militants during weapons searches in southern Afghanistan while two coalition soldiers and their interpreter died in a bomb blast, the foreign forces said on Saturday.

As rebel casualties mount, there are scant signs their insurgency to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject foreign forces is weakening, but instead there have been more clashes this year compared to 2006 and spread over a wider area.

Coalition forces searched compounds in the Garmser district of Helmand province looking for weapons.

"Several armed militants threatening coalition forces were engaged and killed during the course of this operation," a U.S. military statement said.

Another 11 suspects were detained, it said.

Afghan troops killed more than 10 Taliban fighters in the Zherai district of the southern province of Kandahar on Saturday, the provincial police chief said.

Two soldiers with the international force and their interpreter were killed in the south by a homemade bomb on Saturday, the force said. In eastern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber targeting U.S. forces killed one civilian, it said.

The Taliban have killed more than 200 people in over 130 suicide attacks this year.

While the number of attacks and casualty figures are up from last year, the proportion of foreign troops and civilians killed in suicide bombings is down, security analysts say.

This is because foreign forces are better protected against the attacks and the Taliban are using fewer suicide car bombs which tend to kill more bystanders. The percentage of Afghan police and soldiers killed has gone up, though.

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The writer makes the mistake of using violence as a metric in this war. When the enemy is incurring unsustainable losses in attacks that is a good thing. It is the kind of increased violence that wins wars. The statistics on the lack of bang for the buck from the human bomb attacks also indicate a failed Taliban strategy. Those attacks also alienate the local population and make it more difficult for the Taliban to operate without discovery. The violence that has occurred in Afghanistan this year has been been a big negative for the Taliban. While it may indicate they have not given up their war effort, it also indicates that they are unsuccessful with that effort and it will be ever more difficult for them to sustain it. They are actually in much worse shape in Afghanistan than they are in Pakistan right now.