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Bruce Rolston:

So far this year there have been 83 combat fatalities, with 54 of them (65%) in Kandahar and Helmand.



The conclusion one could draw from this is that the Afghan fighting remains centred on two of the country's 34 provinces. A total of 15 provinces, containing 34% of the country's population, have had no NATO fatalities at all in the period evaluated here. (By contrast Kandahar and Helmand, the real war zone, contain between them about 8% of the national population.) Efforts by insurgent groups to broaden the conflict this year seem to be have had limited success, and their northern wing, which includes the unstable Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Taliban fighters based out of the Pakistan FATA area, may even be losing ground in the east of the country this year, in terms of their ability to strike at the NATO forces.