IED Attacks Visualized from Wikileaks Afghanistan War Logs

Very interesting visualization that someone put together from the Wikileaks Afghanistan War logs showing IED Attacks.

Whether Wikileaks is disinfo or CIA run or not, I feel this is where the data will be used most effectively to bring the reality of the war home.


Peace....

The green explosions are ones in which no one was hurt, yellow ones are injuries only, and red ones are fatal IEDs. On the death and injury tallies, the left column is friendlies (including both allied forces and civilians), and the right column is so-called "enemies".

Great thread, thanks for sharing. The attacks became considerably more frequent towards the end and even still, more so since. It's kind of amazing when you think about. That is a lot of scariness for our troops over there now, though a bigger threat is deadly Taliban offensives.

Unlike Iraq, the Afghanis are actually skilled combatants and much better organized in my opinion. So just think for everyone of those dots, the danger is 2-5 times more dangerous from conventional fighting (my own estimate).

--airspoon

Nice find.

I am forwarding this to all my friends who think the war is over.

wow thats just crazy

especially considering that most of these IED's come from american bombs and artillery, from before the war when they were supplying the mujahideen, and now during due to unexploded ordinance

great post Sianara
S&F

With this as background, I checked the Wikileaks web site for the number of incidents of any kind per month since 2004. Here is the result.

2004-01 (138)
2004-02 (101)
2004-03 (105)
2004-04 (89)
2004-05 (194)
2004-06 (175)
2004-07 (189)
2004-08 (191)
2004-09 (192)
2004-10 (232)
2004-11 (203)
2004-12 (178)
2005-01 (136)
2005-02 (143)
2005-03 (201)
2005-04 (221)
2005-05 (387)
2005-06 (432)
2005-07 (451)
2005-08 (435)
2005-09 (558)
2005-10 (413)
2005-11 (279)
2005-12 (314)
2006-01 (305)
2006-02 (403)
2006-03 (494)
2006-04 (713)
2006-05 (700)
2006-06 (663)
2006-07 (759)
2006-08 (936)
2006-09 (1050)
2006-10 (1248)
2006-11 (1145)
2006-12 (1020)
2007-01 (1416)
2007-02 (1251)
2007-03 (1263)
2007-04 (1514)
2007-05 (1777)
2007-06 (1788)
2007-07 (1833)
2007-08 (1784)
2007-09 (1902)
2007-10 (1694)
2007-11 (1536)
2007-12 (1362)
2008-01 (1222)
2008-02 (1040)
2008-03 (1230)
2008-04 (864)
2008-05 (885)
2008-06 (869)
2008-07 (930)
2008-08 (1244)
2008-09 (1076)
2008-10 (1529)
2008-11 (1676)
2008-12 (1418)
2009-01 (1290)
2009-02 (1164)
2009-03 (1453)
2009-04 (1436)
2009-05 (2004)
2009-06 (2429)
2009-07 (3078)
2009-08 (3645)
2009-09 (3123)
2009-10 (3282)
2009-11 (2938)
2009-12 (2573)


As you can see, incidents increased a lot from May 2009 and forward. The incident rate got into the 2000's and 3000's for the first time since the war started.

According to Obama, this is the goal for America in Afghanistan:

to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan,

Source: Whitehouse blog

OK, what is the number of Al Queda operatives in Afghanistan?

500 – 1,000 operatives globally (meaning maybe a few hundred people in Afghanistan)

Source: Wikipedia

Somehow this war doesnt seem to reflect that reality.



[edit on 9-8-2010 by Copernicus]