MONITORING (SW) – A new study has revealed that all sides to the conflict in Afghanistan escalated their attacks during various periods of negotiations.
This has been stated in the Brown University Watson Institute’s Costs of War Project. The report indicated a 330% increase in the number of civilians killed by US-led airstrikes from 2016 to 2019.
It said anti-government elements, including the Taliban and ISIS, killed an average of 1,964 civilians per year between 2007 and 2016. It said when the United States tightened its rules of engagement and restricted air strikes where civilians were at risk, civilian casualties went down, but when it loosened those restrictions, civilians were injured and killed in greater numbers.
In 2017 the Pentagon relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes and escalated the air war in Afghanistan. The aim was to gain leverage at the bargaining table. From 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths due to U.S. and allied forces’ airstrikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased.
In 2019 airstrikes killed 700 civilians – more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war in 2001 and 2002. After the U.S. and Taliban reached a peace agreement in late February 2020, U.S. and other international air strikes declined – and so did the harm to civilians caused by those strikes.
The report said the Afghan government is now negotiating with the Taliban and as part of a broader offensive, perhaps aimed at increasing Afghan government leverage in the talks, air strikes by the Afghan Air Force (AAF) have increased. As a consequence, the AAF is harming more Afghan civilians than at any time in its history, it said.
It said the uptick in civilians killed by AAF airstrikes between July and September 2020 was particularly striking. In the first six months of this year, the AAF killed 86 Afghan civilians and injured 103 civilians in airstrikes. That rate of harm nearly doubled in the next three months. Between July and the end of September, the Afghan Air Force killed 70 civilians and 90 civilians were injured.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense has clarified that it always ensures in its operations that no civilians are harmed. Fawad Aman, deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said that before carrying out airstrikes, it is ensured that no civilians are harmed.
Ministry of Defense officials blamed the Taliban for being the main cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
Aman said the Taliban are hiding in people’s homes and using civilians as a defensive shield.
According to the latest report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the number of civilian casualties in the first nine months of this year was 5,939, of which 2,117 were killed and 3,822 were killed.
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