The title of this article is very misleading on account of the shoddy math. For one, they are talking about the rates and not absolutes. The UK up until May 2007 had only 3700 combatants in Afghanistan; since then the number has gone up to 4500. Although as of June 30, they have suffered 64 fatalities, they only lost 5 soldiers between April 2002 and March 2006. It should also be known that it is the Gorkha units that have seen the highest level of combat and I'm not sure how their fatalities are listed given that they are technically a mercinary unit. Nonetheless, the absolute number of soldiers is a fraction of those from the WWII campaign. And even in that war, the british for the most parts used massive number of soldiers from their colonies in Asia and Africa for a lot of the front line infantry operations where casualties and fatalities are the highest, and as far as I know there are no records of these deaths nor was equitable credit given to non anglo soldiers. This basically means that the 11% attrition rate isn't really accurate if one is to count all the soldiers regardless of their skin color fighting under the british flag and the absolute numbers are statistically insignificant if one were to truly attempt to draw a comparison with what is going on now.
