2014 Was Deadliest Year for Civilians In Afghanistan

Last year marked the worst on record for Afghan civilian casualties since the United Nations began keeping track of the numbers in 2009. Some 10,500 civilians were killed or injured in fighting in Afghanistan last year, and more than 3,600 died, a 25 percent increase from 2013, according to a U.N. report released today.

These numbers stand in stark contrast to the optimism the U.S. government has conveyed about Afghanistan’s future. Just last week, testifying before Congress, Army Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, touted an increase in life expectancy in the country, and Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., spoke about the “powerful narrative about the success in Afghanistan that we can apply around the globe.”

The United States and its allies formally ended their combat operations in Afghanistan in December, putting more of the burden of fighting the Taliban on Afghan forces. The U.S. has spent $65 billion to train and equip the Afghan security forces, and Campbell said they would be capable of taking on the Taliban with less help from the U.S. “They’re ready, and it’s time,” he said.

But the U.N. found that as Afghan forces took command and the U.S. decreased air support, there have been larger, more deadly ground battles with “anti-government elements,” including the Taliban and other militant groups.

Civilian casualties have gone up for several reasons, according to the report. Fighting has become more dangerous, with mortars, rockets and grenades used “sometimes indiscriminately” in heavily populated areas.

Suicide bombings and attacks with improvised explosive devices have also increased, often specifically targeting civilians.

The U.N. blamed the majority of the casualties on anti-government forces, though it noted that in ground fighting with the government, it was often hard to determine who was responsible.

The report criticized the Afghan government for “a significant increase in human rights abuses” by both local police and increasingly influential militias allied with the government.

The true death toll in Afghanistan is unknown. The U.N. says that 17,700 people have been killed in Afghanistan since 2009; however, its estimates are conservative, counting only incidents verified by three sources.

Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AP

Contact the author:

Cora Currier ✉cora.currier@theintercept.com t@coracurrier

˄ ⎕ 9 Comments (closed)

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sasa

February 22 2015, 7:46 a.m.

Number can be higher or smaller, but there would be no numbers if there is no imperialist politics of American politicians that are financed by oil billionaires. So, instead of numbers, we should care that there are no numbers, and it is possible only if America stop imperialism, robbery of other countries. They do it with changing governments and of course people fight against traitors who are positioned as government. unfortunately civilians die. They do the same in Yemen and other countries, America produce terrorism.

Wnt

February 20 2015, 4:13 p.m.

I see these grim statistics as a welcome antidote to some of the overly anti-American rhetoric we sometimes see here. What this tells us is that yes, for the U.S. not to be involved in military operations can be more deadly to civilians than involvement. Which reminds us that when we look at the tremendous body counts from the Iraq War, for example, we need to balance it against the numbers “killed by sanctions” that preceded it, and the numbers killed by Saddam Hussein’s aggression and brutal suppression of minorities that preceded that, or the numbers dying from what I’m reading are nearly constant executions under ISIS, which allows few if any other forms of entertainment.

This doesn’t mean that the war isn’t awful, a source of bitter tragedy to American families and innocent civilians in Iraq, a huge crooked waste of trillions of dollars, a way to erode American freedom and ruin its reputation in the world. But if we find the strength to walk away from this tar pit, we shouldn’t look at ourselves (or our army) as the perpetrators of some genocide that shattered the peaceful life of nations. They simply wandered unwisely into the unending madness that is Islam, and came away dirtied.

Mr. Liberty ↪ Wnt

February 20 2015, 6:06 p.m.

@Wnt

“But if we find the strength to walk away from this tar pit, we shouldn’t look at ourselves (or our army) as the perpetrators of some genocide that shattered the peaceful life of nations. They simply wandered unwisely into the unending madness that is Islam, and came away dirtied.”

I agree with most of what you said except for the above quote. I originally thought it was a good idea to try and spread democracy in the Middle East (early 2000s). I even felt the WMD stories were BS at the time, but that didn’t matter in my eyes because the idea of freedom was worth it. Then I learned about Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and the rest of the globalist, warmonger, global strategies. I learned how the CIA was directly involved in creating/funding/supplying Al Q and now ISIS and I soon realized that the US has to shoulder a lot of the blame for the mess in the ME.

I do not blame troops, I can see why many signed up, shoot I almost signed up myself. I blame our policy and government.

You forgot to mention using depleted uranium ammunition in the 1st Gulf War, that was another atrocity, like the sanctions, drone bombings etc, that the US can’t simply shrug its shoulders and say, “well our intentions were good”. We need to acknowledge our mistakes, and take steps to fix our errors and make sure it does not happen again.

We need to leave the ME and not look back, and yes Islam shares the blame too. We should not police the world anymore. If changes are going to be made over there, it has to be grass roots.

Vivek Jain

February 19 2015, 7:38 a.m.

Marjorie Cohn: Obama’s Af-Pak War is Illegal
http://www.marjoriecohn.com/2009/12/obamas-af-pak-war-is-illegal.html

Bombing of Afghanistan is Illegal and Must Be Stopped
http://www.iadllaw.org/files/BOMBING%20OF%20AFGHANISTAN%20IS%20ILLEGAL%20AND%20MUST%20BE%20STOPPED%20by%20Marjorie%20Cohn.pdf

Vivek Jain

February 19 2015, 7:35 a.m.

Excerpt:

Afghanistan’s tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power – that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to “us”. The ruthlessness and hypocrisy this requires is imprinted on Afghanistan’s modern history. One of the most closely guarded secrets of the cold war was America’s and Britain’s collusion with the warlords, the mojahedin, and the critical part they played in stimulating the jihad that produced the Taliban, al-Qaida and September 11.

“According to the official view of history,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Presi dent Carter’s national security adviser, admitted in an interview in 1998, “CIA aid to the mojahedin began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan… But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise.” At Brzezinski’s urging, in July 1979 Carter authorised $500m to help set up what was basically a terrorist organisation. The goal was to lure Moscow, then deeply troubled by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Soviet central Asian republics, into the “trap” of Afghanistan, a source of the contagion.

For 17 years, Washington poured $4bn into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth – with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war. One of them, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord particularly favoured by the CIA, received tens of millions of dollars. His speciality was trafficking opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. In 1994, he agreed to stop attacking Kabul on condition that he was made primeminister – which he was.

Eight years earlier, CIA director William Casey had given his backing to a plan put forward by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the SAS training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.

“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon, viceroy of India in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.” Brzezinski, adviser to several presidents and a guru admired by the Bush gang, has written virtually those same words. In his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, he writes that the key to dominating the world is central Asia, with its strategic position between competing powers and immense oil and gas wealth. “To put it in terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires,” he writes, one of “the grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy” is “to keep the barbarians from coming together”.

Surveying the ashes of the Soviet Union he helped destroy, the guru mused more than once: so what if all this had created “a few stirred up Muslims”? On September 11 2001, “a few stirred up Muslims” provided the answer. I recently interviewed Brzezinski in Washington and he vehemently denied that his strategy precipitated the rise of al-Qaida: he blamed terrorism on the Russians.

From this 2003 piece by John Pilger: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/20/afghanistan.weekend7

kay

February 19 2015, 6:53 a.m.

“Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?hp&_r=0

Nemo_Est_Insula

February 19 2015, 2:03 a.m.

What a poor miserable existence Afghans and others have — all because of US. (Instead of From Russia with Love its From America with Hate)

Donald B.

February 19 2015, 1:10 a.m.

Craig and Nate will rub one out as they picture the piles of Muslim bodies.

altohone