The Guardian on Dec. 7 noted a Dec. 3 story in Military Times, "Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders," concerning an October air-strike in Nawa district of Afghanistan's Helmand province in which three children were killed, and, apparently, intentionally targetted—two boys and one girl, aged 8 to 12. Local officials protested the targetting of children. Writing from Helmand's Camp Leatherneck, Military Times responds: "But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were 'innocent.' Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission." The supposed hole was intended for an improvised explosive device, according to the Marine official. On Oct. 16 the New York Times reported that the young victims' families said they had been sent to gather dung for fuel. Military Times isn't impressed, noting hundreds of cases in which kids were apparently used on missions by the Taliban—including one in Kandahar's Zharay district, where two boys, 9 and 11, along with a 18-year-old male, were found carrying soda bottles "full of enough potassium chlorate to kill coalition forces on a foot patrol."

A Sept. 30 checkpoint shooting in eastern Afghanistan's Wardak province brought the US military's death toll in the war past 2,000, by official count. A report by the Brookings Institution (PDF) estimates that 40.2% of US deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices and 30.3% by gun attacks. The independent organization iCasualties estimates a higher US death toll, recording 2,125 to date. This same source reports 1,066 deaths of non-US coalition troops in Afghanistan. (BBC News, Sept. 30) Note that the US military death toll reached 1,000 in 2010—a grim indication of how the rate of US casualties is growing. The death toll for Afghan civilians last year alone topped 3,000—lives claimed by both insurgent and coalition forces. Afghan civilian death (at that point mostly at the hands of US bombardment) topped 3,000 by the end of 2001. The figure, poetically, is the same as the death toll from 9-11. 

On Sept. 11, just one day after the prison at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul was officially handed over the Afghan forces, the air base came under insurgent fire, destroying a NATO Chinook CH-47 transport helicopter. Days earlier, four teen-age youths riding skateboards in Kabul were among six killed in a suicide bombing in central Kabul. The attack may have targeted the nearby NATO headquarters, but the youths were part of a nonprofit program that runs a skateboard school for Kabul kids, called Skateistan. (LAT, Sept. 12; NYT, CSM, Sept. 11; CBS, Sept. 10)