I'm running out of ways to describe how difficult Kandahar is becoming, and more so each day. A good friend was just a little over 100 metres away yesterday evening when the foreign offices were attacked. Lucky guy. With him was someone else I interviewed a few months ago for an article I'm writing for The National. The commander of a group of men in a private security company, he had told me how dozens of his friends had died over the course of his work. Last night while he was out with friends, the group that he works with now were all killed in the blast.
We're only at the beginning of the summer. Four or five months to go before we realise that the surge didn't really work. If only we could fast-forward to that point and avoid all the deaths to come.