U.S. Deaths in Afghanistan Approaching 500 as Conflict Continues

A bold assassination attempt against Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai during a public ceremony on Monday highlighted the country's security problems.

Despite security forces being present, militants fired a rocket and two bullets in Kabul, missing the president, but killing three people nearby.

Last year was the most violent year in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the Associated Press. The United Nations estimated more than 8,000 people died in insurgency-related violence.

Suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs, are increasingly the tactic of choice for militants, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the NewsHour in December.

In 2008, the violence is already outpacing the number of attacks and bombings during the same period in 2007.

Aid workers have also been targeted. Nine have been killed since January, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

The origins of the war

	The United States overthrew the Taliban for its role in aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In response to those attacks, the United States and Great Britain launched air strikes on Afghanistan in October of 2001, beginning the "global war on terror."

Forces targeted al-Qaida members and overthrew the hard-line Taliban government that sheltered them.

Troops captured and killed some al-Qaida members and forced the remnants of the organization to flee the country.

However, members of al-Qaida and the Taliban found safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, and have been able to re-infiltrate some areas of Afghanistan in recent years.

The insurgency

	Militants have bombed military and government targets in an effort to destabilize the Afghan government.

"Families get very angry when their family members are killed, you have a lot of people who want revenge," Elizabeth Rubin, a New York Times contributor, said in a NewsHour Insider Forum.

The influence of al-Qaida, the Taliban and anti-American warlords is especially strong in rural areas of Afghanistan where poppies, the main ingredient for opium and heroin, are grown and harvested. According to the United Nations, 93 percent of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan.

NATO troubles

	U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said struggles to get NATO help in Afghanistan threaten the alliance.

More than 40 countries are participating, but only a handful of countries, including the U.S., Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, have been willing to send troops to the most dangerous areas of the country, where most of the fighting occurs.

President Bush has struggled to get NATO coalition governments to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, and the debate has strained diplomatic relations.

Canada threatened earlier this year to pull its troops out of Afghanistan if other nations did not help by deploying more troops to the dangerous areas.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was concerned that the division "puts a cloud over the alliance if this is to endure and perhaps get even worse."

At a summit on April 4, NATO leaders reaffirmed their long-term commitment to Afghanistan, but the only definite change for troop deployments was an additional French battalion.

The government

	President Karzai was put into power by the United States, but was then elected in 2004.

President Karzai was first put in power by the United States and though he won a democratic election in 2004, his U.S. ties hurt his legitimacy in the eyes of some Afghans.

The Afghan administration is "fragmented and weak" according to the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide.

"We all see that if we don't bring a basis of good government and rule of law," progress will be unsustainable, he told the Washington Post.

However he did say he was happy with the number of roads and schools that have been built, and to see so many young girls, who were prohibited from going to school under the Taliban, getting an education.