Up-To-Date British Casualty Figures

[Phil Talbot]

BBC (as if obeying orders from 'on high') seems to have stopped giving casualty running totals in its TV and radio reports of British troop deaths in Afghanistan. Present figure is 275 or 276 - or even 279 - dead troops according to which source(s) you use.

BBC does have webpage listing all fatalities
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8260060.stm
or
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8579889.stm
Does anyone know of a better source?

[nestopwar]

I have only found wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan

Of course there are no sites listing the Afghans killed by the occupation  forces or the Afghans soldiers enlisted into the occupiers Karzai government. 

I noticed that general McCrystal has been studying the young Churchill reports from Afghanisan and earlier British colonialists.  They are trying to copy the formula of setting up rival tribal groups that can busy themselves in conflicts with each other whilst they rule over the chaotic result. I think this is behind the way they are  using the Afghan army to mix up different tribal groups like they have done in Iraq. Of course this is the deadly Israeli tactic learnt I think from the British but now employed in Iraq with deadly consequences.  Apart form being a criminal and reactionary aim of the occupier it shows how bereft they are of any modern conceptipn of history that they are turning their attention to copying the 19th century colonialists having also gone back to the medieval toruture chambers.  There is that saying that first time around it is a tragedy and second time around it is a farce. 

Did you know the British army sent two brothers back from Afghanistan a few days early when a third brother was killed. For the soldiers it is a deadly farce. I was reprsenting a nurse today, divorced and alone on a disciplinary charge her only son who has already been to Iraq twice is now going to Afghanistan. Bring the troops home is not about just saving Private Ryan but all the soldiers and all the people they are sending to occupy and Kill.  The aim of all is against the the non-humans, men who occupy power or influence in pro- war government and cause these wars. The men who make the wounds that take away the right to life from so many people. 

[Phil Talbot]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6951584.stm

BBC Defence Correspondent Caroline Wyatt 'explains' (!) : "In our coverage of Afghanistan, we at BBC News do not generally report the numbers of Taliban or insurgent casualties and fatalities, because there are no reliable or verifiable source figures available."

[nestopwar]

Thanks for pointing that out. But  it is also worth noting that whilst the BBC resists calling the resisistance to occupation  "terrorists" it calls them insurgents which is almost as bad to degrade their just resistance to occupation.  The definition of insurgent is  "person who rises in forcible opposition to lawful authority, esp. a person who engages in armed resistance to a government or to the execution of its laws; rebel."  There can be no lawful government in Afghansitan installed by the occupier and that is international law.  It is also interesting that they separate this from Taliban. Most of the Taliban (Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement) leaders were Afghans who were forced to flee to Pakistan during soviet occupation. The fact that the Afghans are one people resisting occupation is of course what they don't want the british people to hear.