Monday, June 27, 2011

Afghan War: Why US will pullout 33,000 troops


As US President Barack Obama announced military pullout in Afghanistan by autumn next year, 24,498 people had already been killed between 2004 and 2009 alone, according to data released by WikiLeaks last year.
Of these, 4,000 were private citizens, nonmilitary persons. These civilian deaths represent 16.3 percent of all deaths during that time period, said UK’s The Guardian.
separate report said the 10-year war has resulted to 1,522 American deaths.
An interesting spatial map is shown here so that you can visualize the geographic location of events and the type of casualty in the war-torn country. The Guardian journalists made use of the so-called "data journalism" where they encoded and plotted the data in a computer to create fascinating graphs and images to make useful information and draw conclusions.
Why the magic number of 33,000? Will the plan to withdraw such a number make a difference? Look at the numbers closely.
Figures from NATO show that there are 132,457 troops from all the 48 participating countries in Afghanistan by the end of 6 June. The US contributes the largest share of the pie with its 90,000 troops or a staggering 68 percent.
Between July 2009 and 6 June 2011, all NATO forces more than doubled from 64,495 to 132,457 troops, an increase of 51 percent. The US military presence spiked from 29,950 to 90,000 army or 67 percent, according to NATO ISAF homepage.
NATO commanders urged Obama to withdraw the bulk of the 33,000 military until 2012 so that it could give another round of fighting with the Taliban and insurgents.
Details of this report here.
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