Anger’s brewing in Afghanistan over the rise in the number of civilians killed during US military operations in remote, poorly inhabited districts of the country

Hundreds of Afghans took to the capital’s streets and in the country’s east on Wednesday in protest over Sunday’s fighting where 10 died – including schoolchildren.

Afghan war veteran Jake Deliberto from Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan pointed out that currently there are more American contractors in Afghanistan than actual soldiers, even with the surge of troops announced by President Obama.

“When you increase the size of the troops on the ground you are going to have more violence and you’re going to have more civilian deaths, there’s nothing you can do to stop that, that’s the nature of war,” said Deliberto.

“The ‘mayor of Kabul’ [Khamid] Karzai, as I call him, is really a corrupt and failed government that is trying to hang on by every threat that it has and the Afghan people are tired of corruption in the government and do not want to trust local security forces and certainly do not trust the coalition forces – it is sad but it is a reality,” he said.