The Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said Feb. 2 that 2010 was the deadliest year for civilians in the country since the US-led invasion of 2001, with more than 2,400 non-combatants killed. Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for more than 60% of the dead, according to the report. "Almost everything related to the war surged in 2010," said the report, noting that the number of Afghan government and foreign forces surged to some 350,000, as the number of "security incidents" rose to more than 100 per week. Between January and December 2010, "at least 2,421 civilian Afghans were killed and over 3,270 were injured in conflict-related security incidents across Afghanistan," the report finds. By comparison, there were 2,332 civilian deaths as a result of the war in 2009.

More than 10,000 marched in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar Jan. 23 to protest US drone attacks, a day after at least 13 were killed in three drone strikes in North Waziristan region. Activists from the country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-i-Islami, blocked a main road and staged a six-hour vigil outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial parliament.

US troops will stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, with Kabul's permission, Vice President Joe Biden said last week. While insisting the US does not intend "to govern or nation-build" as that "is the responsibility of the Afghan people and they are fully capable of it," Biden added: "We stand ready to help you in that effort ... after 2014." Biden's comments come a month after he told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the US would be "totally out" of Afghanistan by 2014 "come hell or high water."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree Dec. 26 allowing the country's Supreme Court to go forward with its plan to set up a tribunal to hear complaints of fraud during the September parliamentary elections. The tribunal brings doubt over the legitimacy of the elections, already tainted by irregularities that forced authorities to invalidate a significant number of votes and disqualify candidates. The decision comes less than a month before the 249-seat parliament is set to convene on Jan. 20, but officials say Karzai is committed to inaugurating the parliament by then.

From War Resisters League, Dec. 17:

Whose stories are we telling about the war in Afghanistan?
On the day following the White House report on the war in Afghanistan that names the war as a qualified success and calls for the US to "stay the course," we must lift up the alternative stories and reports of this near-decade of occupation, including yesterday's Veterans for Peace action at the White House.

A US soldier is being held in connection with the fatal shooting on Oct. 17 of a Taliban detainee, who was found dead in a holding cell in Kandahar province. The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) and Afghan officials have launched separate investigations into the death. Officials stated that detainee, Mullah Muhibullah, was a senior leader of the Taliban network in Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Arghandab is currently the focus of a major US-led military offensive to dislodge the Taliban from its strategic stronghold in Kandahar province. Mullah Muhibullah was detained during a Taliban operation the day before he was killed.

NATO forces in Afghanistan launched two airstrikes against Taliban fighters on the Pakistani side of the border, killing more than 30 people on Sept. 24 and 25, military spokesmen confirmed. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) initially denied that its forces had launched the airstrikes, although they were confirmed by Afghan police officials. On Sept. 27, however, a statement from ISAF confirmed the attacks. Initially, a base close to the border in Khost province, known as Combat Outpost Narizah, came under fire from insurgents. When what ISAF described as an "air weapons team" responded, they came under fire from the insurgents across the border in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, and returned fire. When two ISAF helicopters returned to the area the next day, they were again fired on from the Pakistani side of the border, and again returned fire.

As we've had plenty of occasion to say before: Isn't it funny that those who invoke the supposed superiority of Western culture the loudest are the quickest to betray those values which supposedly make it superior (pluralism, tolerance, etc.)? And we'll also add—Way to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan! From ABC News, Sept. 4: