British Casualty Monitor have released their latest updates on UK casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet again, the upwards trend in the data shows just what an intractable situation the government has placed their armed forces in.
The Casualty Monitior project is currently working on providing a graphical anlaysis of Iraqi and Afghan casualties and, despite the immense problems and gaps with the available data, hope to update the site soon with this information.
The situation in Afghanistan is particularly interesting. Without the massive ethnic clashes that Iraq has, it becomes much more clear how reckless airstikes are. The other interesting aspect is that Karzai's anger is raising the political cost of using these tactics.
Normally governments push the human cost of these conflicts onto foreign civilians because the political cost is lower than with military casualties. Now Karzai is raising that cost. I think that knowingly sacrificing civilians to lower your military casualties should be considered a war crime.
Good work, Andrew