Afghanistan forgotten as US focuses on Iraq

WILMINGTON, Ohio, Feb 16 (Reuters) Brian Spurlock is in Afghanistan with the US Air Force but his wife, Eileen Brady, relies on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp rather than CNN for news of America's forgotten war.

Her reliance on Canada, which sent troops to Afghanistan but not to Iraq, for news is testament to how much the Afghan war has faded next to the daily death toll in Iraq.

''That's how I get my daily news fix -- The (Toronto) Globe and Mail and the CBC,'' said Brady, a stay-at-home mother and sometimes journalist living in central Ohio.

While the US public rallied behind the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the start of the Iraq war 17 months later quickly stole the spotlight -- and has kept it ever since.

''I think people believe the fighting's over in Afghanistan, that we're just hanging out there as some kind of noble presence,'' said Brady, 36.

Her husband is a nurse stationed at Bagram Air Base, treating the injured from all sides in the war. ''When I tell people he's been deployed, they assume he's gone to Iraq.'' While a grim death toll keeps Iraq in the news, Afghanistan is far from peaceful.

More than 4,000 people were killed in violence last year, the bloodiest since the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

Yesterday, US President George W Bush said the United States and NATO would increase in troops in Afghanistan in preparation for an expected spring offensive from Taliban fighters.

''The situation has actually declined significantly,'' said Sean Kay, a security expert and professor of international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. ''Some of the combat in the south has been even more intensive than in Iraq.'' Some 27,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, compared with 140,000 in Iraq. More than 350 US troops have been killed, about a tenth of Iraq's 3,100 death toll. The civilian death toll has also been much higher in Iraq.

Kay said Afghanistan needs more than a return of media attention -- it needs money and troops, a big ask in a political climate where Bush plan to increase troops in Iraq is under attack from all sides.

''If you really want to make a case for a surge in military forces where it could make a difference, then the argument is actually much stronger for Afghanistan right now than Iraq,'' Kay said, dismissing recent small increases in US troop levels in Afghanistan as insignificant.

While some US presidential candidates, including Democratic Sen.

Hillary Clinton, have argued against sending more troops to Iraq in part because it would siphon off military strength in Afghanistan, Kay is not optimistic that political focus can be shifted.

''It may be too late before any real action is taken,'' he said.

GLAD TO GO TO AFGHANISTAN In 2005, with two wars on and troops being shipped off every day, Maj William Ewing was waiting his turn to be deployed. He didn't lobby the Kentucky National Guard to send him to one war over another, but the father of three said he was happy when it wasn't Iraq.

''I was glad to be going to Afghanistan, but wrongly so.

Americans tend to think ... that soldiers going to Afghanistan have it easier or better, or it's not as dangerous there,'' said Ewing, a Marine veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. ''But I soon learned that was not the case.'' Ewing, 39, spent a year from mid-2005 to 2006 teaching Afghan soldiers to use computers and improve communications.

The base came under rocket attack, but Ewing was lucky and said no one he knew personally was killed.

Now back in Kentucky, Ewing said he doesn't feel like Americans are less supportive of the war in Afghanistan -- it's simply less noticed because it's a smaller deployment.

He gets his news about Afghanistan from military news services, after scrolling past stories about Iraq.

''At the bottom of the page there's always two or three stories about Afghanistan, after 10 or 15 on Iraq.'' Back in Ohio, Brady exchanges regular e-mails with her husband and he phones most days to talk to their daughter Pearl, 4.

Husband and wife have pledged to be honest with each other about what they are facing: the attacks on his base, Pearl's grief at his absence. But Brady can't bring herself to tell him everything.

''I don't tell him: 'People don't even know we're in Afghanistan, honey.' I can't tell him that.'' REUTERS PB VC0848