AFGHANISTAN:INSURGENT AND terrorist violence in Afghanistan increased sharply in 2007, with more than 8,000 conflict-related deaths and an average of 566 incidents a month, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has reported.
In a report to the UN Security Council on Monday, Mr Ban said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 a month in 2006. Suicide attacks jumped from 123 to 160, with another 68 thwarted. While the insurgency draws strength from some Afghans, he said, "the support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial".
Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since US forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the Taliban rulers, who harboured al-Qaeda leaders blamed for planning the attacks in the US on September 11th, 2001.
"Afghanistan remains roughly divided between the generally more stable west and north, where security problems are linked to factionalism and criminality, and the south and east, characterised by an increasingly co-ordinated insurgency," Mr Ban said. "In fact, even within the south, conflict has been concentrated in a fairly small area: 70 per cent of security incidents occurred in 10 per cent of Afghanistan's districts, home to 6 per cent of the country's population."
The opposition groups were forced "to adopt small-scale, asymmetric tactics aimed largely at the Afghan national security forces and, in some cases, civilians: improvised explosive devices, suicide attacks, assassinations and abductions", he said.
Of more than 8,000 conflict-related deaths in 2007, more than 1,500 were civilians.
Mr Ban recommended that the UN mandate in Afghanistan, which expires on March 23rd, be extended for a year.