The number of civilians killed in the Afghan war jumped last year to 2,412, making it the deadliest year for ordinary Afghans since the US-led invasion, the UN said yesterday.
The vast majority of the dead were killed in Taliban attacks, the UN’s Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. By comparison, 2,118 civilians were killed in 2008.
“The intensification and spread of the armed conflict in Afghanistan continued to take a heavy toll on civilians throughout 2009,” the report said.
Last year was also the deadliest for foreign forces fighting the Taliban, with 520 troop deaths, up from 295 for the year before, as the insurgency has escalated and spread from the southern provinces where it began soon after the Taliban regime was overthrown in the 2001 invasion.
The UN report said 70 percent of last year’s civilian deaths, or 1,681, were in insurgent attacks, while pro-government forces including NATO and US troops were responsible for 25 percent, or 596 civilian deaths last year.
Another 135 civilians were killed in violence not attributable to the conflicting parties, it said.
“2009 was the worst year in recent times for civilians affected by the armed conflict,” the report said, adding: “UNAMA HR [human rights] recorded the highest number of civilian casualties since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”
Civilian deaths caused by Western troops fell 28 percent last year compared to the year before, it said, attributing the drop to measures taken specifically to protect civilians.
Commander of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has made minimizing civilian deaths and injuries a central tenet of his counter-insurgency strategy, and has ordered reduced air strikes as one way of achieving this objective.
The UN report said the change in NATO forces’ command structure, “specific steps to minimize civilian casualties” and “a new tactical directive” by the force contributed to the reduction in non-combatant deaths.
Civilian casualties are a source of tension between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international forces fighting the insurgency.
Karzai uses the issue to press home his authority, draw support for his unpopular government while criticizing the tactics of the foreign forces.
Recent incidents, such as the deaths of 10 civilians including eight teenagers in eastern Kunar Province in an authorized but non-military US operation, have seen Afghans take to the streets to protest the presence of foreign troops.
While Taliban influence has been spreading to previously peaceful areas — and now has a footprint across 80 percent of the country, according to the London-based International Council on Security and Development — the UN said 45 percent of deaths were in the south where the insurgency is concentrated.
Another 45 percent occurred in eastern, western and central Afghanistan, it said, noting that the “conflict has intensified and spread into areas that [were] previously considered relatively secure.”
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