11/88Estimated number of unexploded land and trip mines in Afghanistan: 4,000,000
6/88Estimated value of the arms the Reagan administration has shipped to Afghan rebels since January: $500,000,000
11/93Amount the CIA will spend this year to buy back each Stinger missile it gave to Afghan rebels during the 1980s: $100,000
9/98Percentage of all girls’ school facilities in Afghanistan’s Taliban territories shut down since 1996: 100
4/00Years it took Afghanistan to restore its international phone links after civil war disabled them in 1993: 7
7/00Number of donkeys used by the U.N. last year to deliver humanitarian aid to displaced families in Afghanistan: 1,500
Percentage of wells there that are dry: 60
1/02Amount the Pentagon paid a private company last fall for exclusive access to satellite pictures of Afghanistan: $3,800,000
1/02Ratio of minutes devoted to Afghanistan in the 1990s to those devoted to it in three weeks last fall: 1:1
1/02Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing: 2,400,000
1/02Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan: 1,101
Number who have returned home since then: 1,500,000
11/02Maximum milligrams of speed prescribed to U.S. pilots by military doctors during the Persian Gulf War: 5
12/02Minimum percentage change since last year in Afghanistan’s opium production: +1,000
2/02Estimated number of U.S. cluster bomblets dropped on Afghanistan last fall that remain unexploded: 5,000
3/02Last year in which a country other than Afghanistan was the world’s top source of refugees: 1980
3/02Number of journalists and U.S. soldiers, respectively, killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan last year: 7, 1
Number of these journalists who were American: 0
3/02Percentage of Americans in November who believed the government was censoring news from the war in Afghanistan: 59
Percentage of these Americans who thought such censorship was “a good idea”: 80
8/02Percentage of Afghans who will “soon” get AIDS if adulterous women are not jailed, according to a government deputy: 50
10/03Number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last two years: 354
11/03Percentage of the White House’s proposed Afghanistan spending in 2004 devoted to reconstruction: 3
4/03Months after the fall of the Taliban that the United States began on-site assessment of Afghanistan’s natural resources: 8
5/03Average factor by which levels of uranium in the urine of Afghan test subjects last fall exceeded normal: 25
Ratio of Afghanistan residents to Western peacekeepers there now: 5,000:1
1/04Estimated percentage of Afghanistan’s GDP last year accounted for by opium exports: 39
10/04Number of its international workers that Doctors Without Borders has lost to political violence in its 34-year history: 8
Number of them killed in Afghanistan in June: 3
2/04Rank of the death rate for women in childbirth in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan region among the highest ever recorded: 1
4/04Ratio of the number of Afghan men who have registered to the number of women who have done so: 10:3
9/04Number of Afghanistan’s 33 provinces with no NATO peacekeeping presence: 24
10/05Total U.S. spending on poppy eradication and other antidrug efforts in Afghanistan last year: $780,000,000
Amount it would have cost to purchase the country’s entire 2004 poppy crop: $600,000,000
12/05Number of U.S. soldiers who have posted photographs of dead Iraqis or Afghans on Nowthatsfuckedup.com: 32
Cost of the access to the site’s pornography that each soldier was given in exchange: $20
5/05Number of U.S. newspapers with a full-time reporter in Afghanistan: 2
9/05Ratio of the world’s reconstruction aid given to postwar Kosovo, per capita, to that given postwar Afghanistan: 23:1
9/05Ratio of the number of peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, per capita, to that in Afghanistan: 24:1
10/06Factor by which the jobless rate among veterans under 25 of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars exceeds the U.S. average: 3
12/06Amount a 2006 defense bill authorized for a daylong “celebration” of “success” in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20,000,000
Date on which the authorization was extended to 2007: 9/30/06
12/06Chances that a Guantánamo detainee was turned over to Coalition forces by an Afghan or Pakistani citizen: 9 in 10
Average reward that leaflets airdropped over their countries promised for every “terrorist” turned in: $5,000
2/07Factor by which the number of U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan since June has exceeded the number in Iraq: 19
2/07Number of Silver Stars the Army has awarded so far for heroism in the Iraq and Afghan wars combined: 249
Number it awarded for the Vietnam War: 21,630
5/07Percentage of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 27
11/08Percentage of Afghans who say they would support a coalition government that included the Taliban: 54
2/08Projected total cost of medical care for U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: $500,000,000,000
Ratio of this to the total military spending on both wars so far: 1:1
6/08Minimum number of U.S. Army generals fired or replaced for cause during World War II: 23
Number during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined: 1
6/08Portion of Afghanistan now controlled by its government, according to the U.S. national-intelligence director: 3/10
8/08Number of U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 after being deemed medically “non-deployable”: 43,000
8/08Square footage of new jail space slated for construction at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan: 1,742,400
9/08Portion of U.S. troops in Iraq who are on psychiatric medications: 1/8
Portion of troops in Afghanistan who are: 1/7
9/08Number of full-time correspondents that U.S. TV networks have posted in Afghanistan: 0
1/09Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35