People watch the military news to see how service men are getting on in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Men and women on active service are even interviewed by the media, something that would not have happened during World War II when nobody was interested in the views of enlisted men.

Whatever your personal feelings are about the war in Iraq and the battles in Afghanistan, like most people, you are probably atleast interested in what happens to the military personnel involved.

Six years in US and UK, servicemen are still dealing with the suicide bombers who devastate their own community, massacring men, women and children. In Afghanistan where more than 70,000 servicemen from different countries are fighting the Taliban, the latest news is that the US military have killed 42 members of that group.

The killings happened in Kabul, where in other incidents it was reported that a civilian and a NATO soldier were killed. While this sort of information is reported in the media, compared to a few years ago, a lot of the news from Afghanistan and Iraq seems to be played down.

The war in Iraq has meant that many insurgents have fled the country and gone over to Afghanistan, which, according to the Afghan defense minister, accounts for the recent spike in violent incidents in Afghanistan.

An American Major General is reported as saying that there has been a growth in the number of militant websites that are encouraging fighters to go to Afghanistan rather than Iraq. More NATO troops died in Afghanistan in 2008 than in any year since the 2001 US and UK led invasion.

For reasons that are not always clear, the military often fails to mention the nationality or names of servicemen who are killed in the area, just like the three NATO servicemen who were killed by a roadside bomb blast in Eastern Afghanistan recently.

The military believes that most of the bomb attacks in Afghanistan are intended for the military, but mostly end up killing civilians. In Iraq, however, most of the suicide bombings seem to be aimed at civilians; largely because of the very deep Sunni, Shia split.

Former US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage is reputed to have said that current showings indicate that the US is fast losing control of the situation in Afghanistan. He cites the recent problems with the Taliban in Pakistan have exacerbated the problems in Afghanistan.

Military spokesmen have said that there is a planned fresh offensive plan to cut off the multi-million dollar opium crop that is the main source of the Taliban finance. The number of military personnel in Southern Afghanistan will be doubled, as the situation is overwhelming for the troops already there.

The military feel that cutting off the opium supply will make it easier to isolate the insurgents and protect the Afghani civilian population; but the success of this mission is heavily dependent on being able to break the Taliban’s hold on the cultivation of poppies.

This is not an easy task as the Taliban have fought hard to keep American and British troops away from the area where poppies are grown and opium is produced. A major problem that the military have with this plan is that the area is densely populated and troops face the problem of further alienating the groups they are trying to protect.

How long the struggle will go on in Afghanistan is anybody’s guess, but it looks as though American, British and other NATO forces are in for the long haul.