Afghan schoolchildren killed by ISAF.
[Information and data provided hereunder are by the organizations and persons embedded to the Anglo-American Occupiers. In reality the US-UK-NATO have killed about 1 million and displaced about 5 million civilians in Afghanistan and it periphery inside Pakistan]
"We are not happy. We don't want any more Afghan civilian casualties."
"This must not occur again."
"I have asked that from now onwards everything should be closely co-ordinated between the Americans and the central authority of Afghanistan to make sure no such mishaps happen again and I have conveyed this to the Americans."
— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, July 2002
"I don’t think there is a big need for military activity in Afghanistan anymore. The use of air power is something that may not be very effective now because we have moved forward."
"Similarly, going into the Afghan homes – searching Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government – is something that should stop now."
"No coalition forces should go into Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government."
— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, September 2005
"Civilian deaths and arbitrary decisions to search people’s houses have reached an unacceptable level and Afghans cannot put up with it any longer."
"Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties. It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore."
"We are very sorry when the international coalition force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured. It pains us. But Afghans are human beings, too."
— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, May 2, 2007
"Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such.”
"Several times in the last year, the Afghan government tried to prevent civilian casualties, but our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces."— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, June 23, 2007
"The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power."— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, October 28, 2007
"The continuation of civilian casualties can seriously undermine the legitimacy of fighting terrorism and the credibility of the Afghan people's partnership with the international community."— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, September 24, 2008
"Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes."
"This is my first demand of the new president of the United States – to put an end to civilian casualties." - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, November 5, 2008
"Part of that list was that they shouldn't, on their own, enter the houses of our people and bombard our villages and detain our people."
— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, December 18, 2008
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_caused_by_ISAF_and_US_Forces_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29
The War in Afghanistan (2001–present) has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians directly from NATO and ISAF military action.
The initial military objectives of as articulated by President George W. Bush in his Sept. 20th Address to a Joint Session of Congress and his Oct. 7th address to the country, included the destruction of terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, the capture of al-Qaeda leaders, and the cessation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan."[1][2][3] The war, launched by the United States as "Operation Enduring Freedom" in 2001, began with an initial air campaign that almost immediately prompted concerns over the number of Afghan civilians being killed as well as international protests. With civilian deaths from airstrikes rising again in recent years, the number of Afghan civilians being killed by foreign military operations has led to mounting tension between the foreign countries and the government of Afghanistan. In May 2007, President Hamid Karzai summoned military commanders to warn them of the consequences of further deaths.
• The Project on Defense Alternatives estimated that in a 3-month period between October 7, 2001 and January 1, 2002, at least 1,000-1,300 civilians were directly killed by the U.S.-led aerial bombing campaign, and that by mid-January 2002, at least 3,200 more Afghans had died of "starvation, exposure, associated illnesses, or injury sustained while in flight from war zones", as a result of the U.S. war and airstrikes.
• The Los Angeles Times found that in a 5-month period from October 7, 2001 to February 28, 2002, there were between 1,067 and 1,201 civilian deaths from the bombing campaign reported in U.S., British, and Pakistani newspapers and international wire services.
• A 2002 analysis by The Guardian estimated that as many as 20,000 Afghans died in 2001 as an indirect result of the initial U.S. airstrikes and ground invasion.[10]
• Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated that in the 20-month period between October 7, 2001 and June 3, 2003, at least 3,100 to 3,600 civilians were directly killed by U.S.-led forces.
• 2001-2003 direct deaths: at least 3,100 to 3,600
• 2001-2003 indirect deaths: at least 3,200–20,000
• 2001-2003 direct & indirect deaths: 6,300–23,600
•
2001-2003:
• direct civilian deaths: at least 3,100 to 3,600
• indirect civilian deaths: at least 3,200–20,000
• direct & indirect civilian deaths: 6,300–23,600
2004:
Not Available
2005:
Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated at least 408-478 Afghan civilians were directly killed by U.S./NATO actions.
• direct civilian deaths: at least 408 to 478
• indirect civilian deaths: Not Available
2006:
• Human Rights Watch estimated at least 230 Afghan civilians were killed by US or NATO attacks in 2006: 116 by airstrikes and 114 by ground fire.
• Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated at least 653-769 Afghan civilians were directly killed by U.S./NATO actions.
• Human Rights Watch estimated at least 929 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting related to the armed conflict in 2006.[13] In all, they estimated more than 4,400 Afghans (civilians and militants) were killed in conflict-related violence in 2006, twice as many as in 2005.
• An Associated Press tally based on reports from NATO, coalition, and Afghan officials, estimated 4,000 Afghans (civilians and militants) were killed in 2006.
• Indirect civilian deaths: Not Available
2007:
• Human Rights Watch estimated at least 434 Afghan civilians were killed by US or NATO attacks in 2007: 321 by airstrikes and 113 by ground fire. Another 57 civilians were killed in crossfire, and 192 died under unclear circumstances.
• The UN Assistance Mission Afghanistan (UNAMA) estimated that 629 Afghan civilians were killed by international and Afghan forces in 2007, accounting for 41% of the civilian casualties.
• Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated at least 1,010-1,297 Afghan civilians were directly killed by U.S./NATO actions.
• Indirect civilian deaths: Not Available
2008:
• The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimated that around 800 civilians were killed by U.S.-led military forces in 2008.
• The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 828 Afghan civilians had been killed by international-led military forces in 2008, accounting for 39% of the civilian deaths. Air-strikes accounted for the largest proportion of this number, 64%, with 552 civilians killed as a result of U.S./NATO airstrikes.
• According to Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia, Amanullah Jayhoon, 1,000 Afghan civilians were killed by coalition forces in 2008.
• The Afghanistan Rights Monitor(ARM) estimated that over 1,620 civilians were killed by U.S.-led military forces in 2008, including 680 killed in airstrikes. ARM also estimated that military operations by US-led NATO and coalition forces caused at least 2,800 injuries and displaced 80,000 people from their homes.
• Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated at least 864-1,017 Afghan civilians were directly killed by U.S./NATO foreign forces in 2008.
• Indirect civilian deaths: Not Available
2009:
• The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed 596 Afghan civilian deaths as having been caused by international-led military forces in 2009, representing about a quarter of the 2,412 Afghan civilian deaths it recorded as having been caused by the war in 2009.
• Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated at least 922-1,073 Afghan civilians were directly killed by U.S./NATO actions in 2009.
Civilian casualties (2001-2003)
According to Marc W. Herold's extensive database, Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing, between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians were directly killed by U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom bombing and Special Forces attacks between October 7, 2001 and June 3, 2003. This estimate counts only "impact deaths" – deaths that occurred in the immediate aftermath of an explosion or shooting – and does not count deaths that occurred later as a result of injuries sustained, or deaths that occurred as an indirect consequence of the U.S. airstrikes and invasion.
In an opinion article published in August 2002 in the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute, a self-described neoconservative, questioned Professor Herold's study entirely on the basis of one single incident that involved 25-93 deaths. He did not provide any estimate his own.
In a pair of January 2002 studies, Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives estimates that, at least 4,200-4,500 civilians were killed by mid-January 2002 as a result of the U.S. war and airstrikes, both directly as casualties of the aerial bombing campaign, and indirectly in the humanitarian crisis that the war and airstrikes contributed to.
His first study, "Operation Enduring Freedom: Why a Higher Rate of Civilian Bombing Casualties?", released January 18, 2002, estimates that, at the low end, at least 1,000-1,300 civilians were directly killed in the aerial bombing campaign in just the 3 months between October 7, 2001 to January 1, 2002. The author found it impossible to provide an upper-end estimate to direct civilian casualties from the Operation Enduring Freedom bombing campaign that he noted as having an increased use of cluster bombs. In this lower-end estimate, only Western press sources were used for hard numbers, while heavy "reduction factors" were applied to Afghan government reports so that their estimates were reduced by as much as 75%.
In his companion study, "Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war", released January 30, 2002, Conetta estimates that at least 3,200 more Afghans died by mid-January 2002, of "starvation, exposure, associated illnesses, or injury sustained while in flight from war zones", as a result of the U.S. war and airstrikes.
In similar numbers, a Los Angeles Times review of U.S., British, and Pakistani newspapers and international wire services found that between 1,067 and 1,201 direct civilian deaths were reported by those news organizations during the five months from October 7, 2001 to February 28, 2002. This review excluded all civilian deaths in Afghanistan that did not get reported by U.S., British, or Pakistani news, excluded 497 deaths that did get reported in U.S., British, and Pakistani news but that were not specifically identified as civilian or military, and excluded 754 civilian deaths that were reported by the Taliban but not independently confirmed.
According to Jonathan Steele of The Guardian, up to 20,000 Afghans may have died as a consequence of the first four months of U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan.
Civilian and overall casualties (2005)
An estimated 1,700 people were killed in 2005 according to an Associated Press count, including civilians, insurgents and security forces members. Some 600 policemen were killed between Hamid Karzai's election as president of Afghanistan in early December 2004 and mid-May 2005.
Civilian and overall casualties (2006)
A report by Human Rights Watch said that 4,400 Afghans had been killed in 2006, more than 1,000 of them civilians. Some 2,077 militants were killed in Coalition operations between September 1 and December 13.
An Associated Press tally based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials puts the overall death toll slightly lower, at about 4,000, most of them militants.
More than 1,900 people were killed in the first eight months of the year by the end of August.
Civilian and overall casualties (2007)
More than 7,700 people were killed in 2007, including: 1,019 Afghan policemen; 4,478 militants; 1,980 civilians and 232 foreign soldiers.
With by far the most comprehensive research into Afghan civilian casualties, Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated in September 2007 that between 5,700 and 6,500 Afghan civilians had been killed so far in the war by American and NATO military forces. He stressed that this was an "absolute minimum" and probably "a vast underestimate" because the figures do not include:
• the dead among the tens of thousands of Afghans displaced during the initial military operation in 2001-2002, who ended up in refugee camps or elsewhere with little or no supplies for long periods;
• civilian victims of U.S./NATO bombing in mountainous areas, which have few or no communications links or which the U.S./NATO forces "cordon off as part of news management";
• and civilians that did not die immediately at the scene but died later of their injuries.
Civilian and overall casualties (2008)
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 2,118 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008, the highest civilian death toll since the end of the initial 2001 invasion. This represents an increase of about 40 percent over UNAMA's figure of 1,523 civilians killed in 2007.
On the other hand, according to NATO forces only about 1,000 civilians were killed during the whole year.
Going into further detail, UNAMA reported that out of 2,118 civilian deaths in 2008, 1,160 non-combatants were killed by anti-government forces, accounting for 55% of the 2008 total, while 828 were killed by international-led military forces, accounting for 39% of the 2008 total. The remaining 6% – 130 deaths – could not be attributed to any of the parties since some of them died as a result of crossfire or were killed by unexploded ordnance, for example. Of the civilians killed by anti-government elements, 85% died as a result of suicide or improvised explosive devices. Of the civilians killed by pro-government forces, 64% were killed by U.S./NATO airstrikes. (Note: UNAMA's report includes in its count of civilian/non-combatant deaths any "members of the military who are not being utilized in counter insurgency operations, including when they are off-duty.")
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimated the number of civilians killed as a result of the armed hostilities in 2008 at around 1,800, with about 1,000 killed by militant groups and about 800 killed by U.S.-led military forces.
The Afghanistan Rights Monitor(ARM), a Kabul-based rights watchdog, estimated that in 2008 about 3,917 civilians were killed, over 6,800 were wounded, and around 120,000 were forced out of their homes. ARM estimated that insurgents killed over 2,300 civilians, including 930 in suicide bombings, and that U.S.-led military forces killed over 1,620 civilians, with 1,100 civilians killed by U.S.-led NATO and coalition forces and 520 civilians killed by Afghan military forces. Out of these, 680 Afghan civilians killed in air strikes by the US-led forces, with U.S. combat aircraft conducting at least 15,000 close air support missions over the year. Another 2,800 civilians were injured and 80,000 displaced from their homes by the U.S.-led NATO and coalition military operations.
According to Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia, Amanullah Jayhoon, 1,000 Afghan civilians were killed by coalition forces in 2008.
Meanwhile, NATO's International Security Assistance Force has said that only just over 200 civilians were mistakenly killed by foreign troops last year.
According to NATO spokesman James Appathurai, 97 civilian deaths were caused by ISAF in 2008, while 987 civilian deaths were caused by militant groups. The number of civilian deaths caused by US-led military forces operating outside of ISAF was not mentioned in that statement.
In October 2008, Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire reported that the number of civilians killed in direct action by U.S. and other NATO forces from 2005 up that point in 2008 was at least between 2,699 and 3,273. These figures represent underestimates of the number of Afghan civilians killed because civilians are sometimes labelled militants by the military and because these figures only include civilians that died immediately at the scene and not civilians that died later of their injuries.
In 2008, 38 aid workers, almost all from NGO's, were killed, double the number from 2007, and 147 were abducted.
According to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor(ARM) more than 1,100 Afghan police and 530 Afghan soldiers lost their lives in 2008.
According to NATO forces, 5,000 militants were killed in 2008.
Civilian and overall casualties (2009)
2009 was again the most lethal year for Afghan civilians in the American-led war since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), 2,412 civilians were killed by the war in 2009, a jump of 14% over the number that lost their lives in 2008. An additional 3,566 Afghan civilians were wounded as a result of the war in 2009.
Of these, UNAMA attributed two-thirds, or 1,630, of the deaths to the action of anti-government forces, around a quarter, 596, of the deaths to action by American-led military forces, and was not able to clearly attribute another 186 civilian deaths to any one side. Airstrikes continued to be the main cause of civilian deaths resulting from US-led military action, with 359 Afghan civilians killed by US/NATO airstrikes in 2009.
In addition to a growing number of Afghan civilians being killed, Afghan populations caught in the eight-year war have also suffered from loss of livelihood, displacement, and the destruction of their homes, property, and personal assets.
In its mid-year report, the UNAMA underlined that "if the non-combatant status of one or more victim(s) remains under significant doubt, such deaths are not included in the overall number of civilian casualties. Thus, there is a significant possibility that UNAMA is under-reporting civilian casualties."
In September 2009, the U.N. reported that August had been the deadliest month of 2009 to date for Afghan civilians as a result of the August 20th election. The U.N. also reported that about 1,500 people were killed from the start of the year through August. The report stated: "August (was) the deadliest month since the beginning of 2009. ... These figures reflect an increasing trend in insecurity over recent months and in elections-related violence." UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed 68% of the deaths to anti-government elements and 23% of the deaths to international-led military forces – most of them in airstrikes. In 9% of the civilian deaths, UNAMA was unable to clearly attribute the cause to any one side of the parties in the conflict. The number of civilians killed represented an increase of 31% over the same period in 2008, when 1,145 civilians were killed.
