Afghanistan’s civilian death toll is a record in 2010. The NATO death toll in Afghanistan has been a record for months already. Now, completing the grim picture of the Afghan War the Obama Administration insists is going so swimmingly, the Afghan military’s numbers are in, and are another record toll.

According to the Afghan Defense Ministry some 806 Afghan National Army soldiers have been killed so far this year, by far the highest number since the 2001 US-led occupation began. It is a 25 percent increase over the 2009 toll, which saw 632 Afghan soldiers slain.

The rise is perhaps unsurprising, not just because the death tolls for all the other groups around Afghanistan are on the rise, but because NATO has been pumping so much effort into increasing the size of Afghanistan’s poorly paid, poorly trained army.

Unfortunately for them, NATO’s efforts to increase the size of this force have not only been struggling on the basis of their shortage of trainers, but because these jobs are often so dangerous that many of the soldiers abandon their posts after receiving a paycheck or two.

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