U.N. Report Shows Fewer Killings of Afghan Civilians, Suggesting Shift in War

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/world/asia/un-reports-decline-in-killings-of-afghan-civilians.html

Version 0 of 1.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the first time in six years the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan declined, according to the annual United Nations report on civilian casualties.

The decline was primarily the result of the slowing pace of the war; more fighting by Afghan forces, who use less lethal weapons; and an assiduous effort by the Western-led forces to reduce the impact on civilians, the report indicated.

Nevertheless, threats remained rife: roadside bombings increased slightly, as did targeted killings and episodes of intimidation, the report said.

The report found that the number killed in 2012 dropped to 2,754 from 3,021 the previous year. The number of injured rose, however, to 4,805 from 4,507.

Jan Kubis, United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, called the decrease in deaths “very much welcome,” but said “the human cost of the conflict” remained “unacceptable.” He cited a large jump in the assassination of people perceived to be supporting the government and the unabated number of deaths and injuries from improvised explosive devices.

The report suggests subtle but measurable ways that the war is beginning to change as Afghans take over from Western forces and as the Taliban and other insurgents avoid head-on confrontations and rely increasingly on improvised explosive devices and targeted killings.

A factor that United Nations researchers found accounted for the drop in casualties was a reduction in ground engagements, which in some areas may be because of a declining number of Western forces. In other areas, there was an increase in engagements between the Taliban or other insurgents and the Afghan National Security Forces, but because the Afghan forces were less likely to have heavy weapons, the number of civilians killed appears to have dropped.

The Taliban and other insurgents increasingly focused their attacks on police headquarters in district centers, on checkpoints run by the Afghan National Police or Afghan Local Police, and on government convoys. While those resulted in casualties, they often included relatively few civilians.

“All these factors mean fewer civilians are getting killed, but that doesn’t mean the situation is necessarily better,” said Georgette Gagnon, the United Nations director of human rights for Afghanistan, adding that the local police were “the most frequently attacked these days.”

The United Nations began tabulating civilian casualties nationwide in 2007, documenting the nearly 15,000 Afghans who have lost their lives and the many times more who have been wounded. It is widely viewed as one of the more impartial reflections of the effect of the war on Afghans’ everyday lives.

Each year, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have been responsible for a vast majority of civilian deaths and injuries. Last year was no exception.

About 81 percent of the year’s documented casualties were caused by insurgents, an increase from 2011 despite numerous statements by Taliban leaders instructing their field commanders to avoid harming civilians.

By contrast, only 8 percent of civilian deaths and injuries were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO, the Afghan security forces and government-backed militias, a drop of 46 percent from 2011.

A major factor was the drop in civilian casualties caused by airstrikes, which fell by 42 percent from 2011. That reflected a new set of directives issued last June by Gen. John R. Allen, then the commander of the International Security Assistance Force. He publicly said his goal was to reduce civilian casualties to zero, and required that any air attacks be approved by commanders at several levels.

Eleven percent of civilian casualties could not be attributed to either side.

The report found 689 deaths to be from targeted killings and 868 to be from improvised explosive devices, with many more people, 1,663, injured by the devices. A number of those were so-called legacy I.E.D.s, bombs placed on routes that sometimes have been heavily used by Western and Afghan security forces. In some cases, though, the Western troops had already left and the victims instead were civilian vehicles, the report noted. These I.E.D.s are often placed around opium poppy fields as well, to deter government eradication teams, but even after the poppies are harvested, the devices remain.

Women accounted for 864 of the total casualties in 2012, mostly injuries rather than deaths. “The number of Afghan women and girls killed and injured in the conflict increased by 20 percent in 2012,” Ms. Gagnon said. “It is the tragic reality that most Afghan women and girls were killed or injured while engaging in their everyday lives.”

Women who are injured miss school or work. “It impacts them for the rest of their lives,” Ms. Gagnon said.