Casualties - civilian

• ADF-related civilian casualties
• Government sources
• Analysis
• General

ADF-related civilian casualties

Government sources

Inquiry Findings into 2007 Incidents In Afghanistan, Media Release, Department of Defence, 2008-05-12

'Defence today released the findings of inquiries into the combat deaths of three Australian soldiers last year, and a separate but related investigation into civilian deaths and allegations of mistreatment of a detainee.

The fourth inquiry investigated civilian casualties and an allegation of detainee mistreatment by Australian troops during the 23 November incident in which Private Worsley was killed.

The investigating officer found that two non-combatants were killed as a result of Taliban extremists engaging an Australian Special Operations force from within a compound the extremists knew to be occupied by civilians. The investigating officer also found that at least two other non-combatants were wounded in the engagement.

“We utilised every resource available, including review of operational reports, collection of statements, liaison with our ISAF partners, and an interview with the Afghan village elder making the claims, to ensure that these inquiries had access to all available information,” Lieutenant General Gillespie said. “There is no evidence that the Australian troops breached their rules of engagement on 23 November, 2007.'

One ISAF soldier, three civilians killed in southern Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Force, Press release, 23 November 2007.

“’At this time we simply do not know, how the civilians died. However, we do know that the insurgents fired upon ISAF soldiers from the compound in which the Afghan civilians (two women and one child) were found after the fight. ISAF makes all effort to prevent losses of innocent civilian lives.’”

Update - Attack on Bomb-Making Compound, Media release, Department of Defence, 24 November 2007.

"Although the cause of these deaths has not been established, ADF Spokesman Andrew Nikolić said that the attack successfully targeted Taliban operations in Oruzgan Province. 'The attack by the SOTG was based on clear intelligence over a period of time, about the bomb-making activities being conducted at that location. This raid will have degraded the Taliban's capacity to produce bombs for use in Oruzgan Province, which constitute one of the biggest threats to our people and Afghan civilians. The three civilians that died at some stage during the attack were in close proximity to heavy, close-quarter fighting between members of the SOTG and the Taliban.  At this stage we do not know if they were in any way linked to the Taliban extremists at the compound, but any loss of innocent civilian life is regrettable. It is not possible to say whether their death resulted from ADF or Taliban fire, but it is clear that the Taliban's well-established tactic of using civilian shields to conduct their operations puts innocent lives at risk.  This is a deplorable feature of the Taliban's use of civilian areas.'"

Analysis

Report confirms civilian deaths, Craig Skehan, SMH, 13 December 2007

"Australian special forces used grenades to clear a mud-brick compound where it was later determined that two women and a child had died from "blast/ fragmentation" injuries, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has found."

Defence Silent on Civilian Deaths, Craig Skehan and Ash Sweeting, SMH, 1 December 2007

"The Australian Defence Force has refused to provide any details about the killing of two women and a child during a special forces attack on a compound in Afghanistan last week, but the international coalition is conducting its own investigation."

Afghan civilians suffer in battle for their security, Tom Hyland, Age, 15 November 2007

"Tens of thousands of civilians have fled their homes to escape the fighting in southern Afghanistan, where Australian and Dutch forces are claiming early success in what has been Australia's most costly operation in the conflict. The risk to civilians was highlighted by Friday's clash that claimed the life of Private Luke Worsley, the third Australian be killed in Afghanistan since last month. Three civilians - two women and a child - also were killed when Australian troops attacked what the Australian Defence Force said was a Taliban bomb-making compound." 

Afghanistan: Conflict-affected displacement "major" humanitarian challenge - Afghan Red Crescent, IRIN, 2007-11-20.

Afghanistan civilian casualties - all causes

Afghanistan, War Victims Monitor, CIVIC.

ISAF, War Victims Monitor, CIVIC

Civilian Casualty Data, Afghanistan Conflict Monitor.

Afghan Archives - Civilian Casualties, War Report

Listing of incidents.

Civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Wikipedia

Source: Losing The Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat, Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS, 14 September 2008.

UN says civilian deaths in Afghan war soaring; up 40 per cent so for in 2008, Canadian Press, 16 September 2008.

The United Nations says the number of Afghan civilians killed in insurgent attacks and air strikes by foreign troops has risen almost 40 per cent this year. The UN says the Taliban has been responsible for 800 or some 55 per cent of the 1,445 Afghan civilian deaths reported through the end of August. U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are responsible for the other 645 civilian deaths, or 45 per cent. The UN says 395 of the civilian deaths caused by pro-government forces - about 60 per cent - have occurred in U.S. and NATO air strikes. A total of 1,040 Afghan civilians died in the same eight-month period last year. According to the UN statement, 330 civilians died in August alone, including about 92 killed in a U.S.-led raid on the village of Azizabad.

"This is the highest number of civilian deaths to occur in a single month since the end of major hostilities and the ousting of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001," UN human rights chief Navi Pallay said in a statement. There is substantial evidence indicating that the Taliban are carrying out a systematic campaign of intimidation and violence aimed at Afghan civilians they believe to be supportive of the government, the international community and military forces," Pillay said.

Carnage from the Air and the Washington Consensus, Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram.com, 9 July 2007

“Recently, however, in Afghanistan, such isolated incidents from U.S. or NATO (often still U.S.) air attacks have been occurring in startling numbers. They have, in fact, become so commonplace that, in the news, they begin to blur into what looks, more and more, like a single, ongoing airborne slaughter of civilians. Protest over the killings of noncombatants from the air, itself a modest story, is on the rise. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, dubbed ‘the mayor of Kabul,’ has bitterly and repeatedly complained about NATO and U.S. bombing policies. ACBAR, an umbrella organization for Afghan and international relief and human rights organizations, has received attention for claiming that marginally more civilians have died this year at the hands of the Western powers than the Taliban; and, most recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has made a ‘”strong” appeal to military commanders in Afghanistan to avoid civilian casualties.’"

“But first things first. Let's start with a partial list of recently reported air power ‘incidents’ (dates approximate), all of which resulted in significant civilian casualties: ….."

Errant Afghan civilian deaths surge: U.S. and NATO troops killed more noncombatants in the last six months than did Taliban insurgents, several tallies indicate, Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 6 July 2007

"After more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies. The upsurge in deaths at the hands of Western forces has been driven by Taliban tactics as well as by actions of the American military and its allies. But the growing toll is causing widespread disillusionment among the Afghan people, eroding support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and exacerbating political rifts among NATO allies about the nature and goals of the mission in Afghanistan."

ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, American Civil Liberties Union, 4 April 2007.

"The American Civil Liberties Union today made public hundreds of claims for damages by family members of civilians killed or injured by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU received the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in June 2006. The hundreds of files provide a vivid snapshot, in significantly more detail than has previously been compiled and released, of the circumstances surrounding reports of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Civilian Deaths - The Human Cost of War, American Civil Liberties Union.

“In an effort to obtain more information about the human costs of war, the ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests with various components of the Defense Department. The documents searchable on this page were provided to the ACLU in response to those requests.”

The Human Cost - The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan, International Crisis Group, April 2007.

Civilian Consequences of Suicide vs. 'Precision' Bombings in Afghanistan, Marc W. Herold, Cursor.org, 16 September 2006.

“While the U.S. military and the mainstream corporate media ceaselessly extol the surgical precision of new bomb technology, they equally condemn the random death and violence resulting from suicide car bombs. I analyze these claims on hand of data from the Afghan war theater and demonstrate that under plausible assumptions exactly the reverse is true: a U.S. precision bomb is far more deadly to Afghan civilians than a Taliban's suicide car bomb when adjustment is made for the differing delivery cost of the two bombs. This essay forms part of the literature which stresses that the consequences of a technology cannot be divorced from the socio-cultural-economic contexts in which it gets used.”

Body counts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Marc W. Herold, September 2006

Herold's "Afghan Cannon" page contains links to his numerous detailed studies of casualties of coalition operations, especially aerial bombing.

62,006 - The Number Killed in the "War on Terror", David Randall and Emily Gosden, The Independent, 10 September 2006

Civilian casualties from anti-insurgency conflict mount, IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 14 July 2006

Following US bombing of a village near tarin Kowt in Oruzgan province "local people and rights groups in southern Afghanistan are increasingly concerned about what they say is an escalation in civilian deaths and injuries resulting from the growing insurgency in the region."

Afghanistan: Legislator Assails Coalition On Civilian Casualties, Ron Synovitz, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 13, 2006

Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare", Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, Research Monograph #9, February 2004

Project coordinator: Richard Tanter
Additional research: Arabella Imhoff
29 September 2008