Newly revealed figures put death toll of US soldiers killed supporting Operation Enduring Freedom to 2,000. In 3,900-day presence of US in Afghanistan, it has lost more than one soldier every other day. The 2000th soldier, according to the US Department of Defense, was just-married Cpt. Taylor J. Baune, 21 who lost his life in Helmand province on Wednesday.
At the same time, based on the causality statistics, 3,049 coalition forces have been killed in Afghanistan. The number of Afghan Security Forces killed in the last more than ten years is far more than that of their foreign counterpart. Meanwhile, thousands of civilians have lost their lives as result of lingering war in Afghanistan.
Apart from sacrifices in blood, the Western countries have spent billions of dollars to support their counter-terrorism war here. For the nearly $450 billion, Congress estimates the US alone has spent waging war in Afghanistan, every Afghan man, woman and child could have been handed $15,000. That sum is 10 years' earnings for an average Afghan, according to U.N. estimates.
As compared to the level of sacrifices made in blood and treasure, Afghanistan has had trifling achievements. Afghan government itself admits to fact that it has failed to provide security to the life of Afghan people. Meanwhile, Afghanistan continues to remain highly dependent on the foreign aid as no fundamental step to stabilize Afghan economy has taken place in the last decade.
Political, economic and social challenges remain high for Afghans and the aid international community has been pouring in Afghanistan has not benefited them. The beneficiary of the sacrifices both by the international community and Afghan peoplehas only been the crooked government officials. Afghan government has terribly failed to clean itself of the rampant corruption.
International community's presence in Afghanistan has been a goose laying golden eggs for president, ministers, other high government official and their affiliates. The scenario caused the US congress member, Rep. Rohrabacher to ask US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton & US Secretary of Defense, Leon E. Panetta in his 13thJune letter, "Why is the United States continuing to support President Karzai and his obviously corrupt regime and why are Chinese state owned companies, not American companies, being allowed to develop the resources in Afghanistan? But more significantly, why is our Government ignoring a growing movement of Afghan people turning against President Karzai and his corrupt ways?"