Air
attacks by Afghan and international forces caused a total of 590
civilian casualties in 2016 (250 deaths and 340 people injured),
almost double that of 2015.
by
Jack Serle
Part
5 - Worst year for civilian casualties on record
Last year
was the worst since 2009 for civilian casualties, with 3,498 killed
and 7,920 injured.
Children
accounted for 3,512 of those casualties, a record number which the UN
puts down to a 66% increase in deaths and injuries caused by
“explosive remnants of war” – unexploded bombs and
shells left littering the battlefield after the shooting stops.
Pro-government
and international military forces were responsible for 24% of all
civilian casualties, up 40% on 2015 despite “efforts… to
mitigate civilian harm,” Unama reported.
The Taliban
and other anti-government forces caused 61% of all civilian
casualties “through attacks that disregarded civilian life,
including the indiscriminate detonation of [improvised explosive
devices] in civilian-populated areas.”
The
remaining 15% were non-attributable.
One
particular US and Afghan ground raid last year demonstrates how
strikes near civilians can prove catastrophic.
The aerial
onslaught in northern Kunduz province has been singled out for
specific attention in the Unama report.
US and
Afghan special forces were conducting a night raid on November 2,
going after Taliban leaders believed to be in the village of
Boz-e-Qandahari in Kunduz province.
They came
heavy fire from the Talban insurgents in the compound – three
Afghan and two US soldiers were killed, 15 more were injured.
The troops
called in air support and a sustained aerial bombardment that lasted
most of the night hit the targeted housing compound as well as the
next door compound.
Unama
documented 32 people killed (including 20 children) and 36 injured
(including 14 children) in the airstrikes. Nearly a third of the
casualties belonged to the family of the Taliban commander that
Unama’s sources said was the main target of the raid.
The Afghan
government has paid money to the relatives of the dead and the
injured. The US released a summary of its investigation into the
strike in mid-January.
Unama says
the US did not release enough information to determine whether the
strike was legal under international law. The UN also said it was not
clear if the investigation was independent.
The UN
called for “an independent, clear and public accounting as to
how the international military forces reached the conclusion that the
operation involved no wrongdoing.”
Unama also
called on the US to release full details of the investigation,
something the RS press office in Kabul told the Bureau in January it
did not “have a date for its release” because the
declassification process can take weeks or months.
“This
appalling conflict destroys lives and tears communities apart in
every corner of Afghanistan,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, UN
Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan.
“Real protection of civilians requires commitment and
demonstrated concrete actions to protect civilians from harm and for
parties to the conflict to ensure accountability for indiscriminate
and deliberate acts of civilian harm.”
The rising
number of civilians killed and injured reflects the continued
strength of the Taliban, its willingness to carry out attacks with
scant regard or civilian life, and the Afghan security forces
struggles to contain the insurgency.
The US
handed responsibility for fighting the Taliban over to Kabul’s army
and police in December 2014. Since then the Taliban has been pushing
the Afghans hard on the ground, inflicting considerable losses on
security forces. The Afghans lost 6,785 soldiers and police dead with
11,777 more wounded between January and November last year.
The Afghan
government is losing ground too. Kabul’s authority extends over 57%
of the country’s 407 districts, as of November 2016. This is down
nearly 15% from November 2015.
The US
military judges the Afghan security forces to be most effective when
taking the fight to the Taliban, moving away from static checkpoints
and attacking the insurgents directly. However there has been a
marked reluctance among local officials and military and police
officers to do so.
The Afghan
security forces also shrank by more than 30,000 in January this year
when the US announced it was stopping pay to “ghost soldiers” –
fictitious positions created so that officers could collect salaries
for soldiers that did not exist in reality.
Corruption
has severely impacted the Afghan security forces in their fight
against the Taliban, alongside logistical issues. Supply lines have
been stretched thin, with troops and police complaining of lacking
ammunition and food.
Source
and links:
***
Comments
Post a Comment