U.N. Afghan civilians deliberately targeted
At least 10,453 wounded or killed in 2017, report says.
An KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — annual U.N. report released Thursday offered a stark assessment of the 16-year Afghan war, showing a slight decline in civilian casualties from an all-time high but a rise in complex bombing attacks that have taken a heavy toll in the capital.
The report said at least 10,453 Afghan civilians had been wounded or killed in 2017. At a time when the U.S. and Afghan governments are releasing fewer statistics — the Afghan army stopped publishing military casualty numbers in November, for example — the U.N. report on civilian casualties is one of the few reliable indicators of how the war is proceeding.
“The chilling statistics in this report provide credible data about the war’s impact,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement.
The report came out a day after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, issued an upbeat assessment of the Afghan army’s recent progress, saying that “the Taliban cannot win.”
In contrast, the U.N. report focused on a rise in attacks deliberately targeting civil- ians in 2017. Those attacks, intended to undermine the authority of the U.S.-backed government, accounted for 27 percent of all civilian casu- alties last year.
This category includes casualties caused by suicide bomb- ers detonating in populated areas and targeted killings, but excludes those caused by ground fighting, airstrikes and explosions aimed princi- pally at military targets, like some roadside bombs.
Overall, the 84-page report notes, the number of civilian casualties declined 9 percent compared with the record numbers seen in 2016, driven primarily by a drop in casual- ties caused by ground clashes. It was the first annual decline in overall civilian casualties since 2012.
The report also says that despite a stepped-up pace of aerial bombardments aimed at the Taliban and Islamic State militants under Pres- ident Donald Trump’s new strategy for the war, civilian casualties from airstrikes rose only 7 percent. The U.N. cred- ited better targeting in the U.S.-led air campaign, compared with previous years.
The Taliban’s response to the airstrikes, however, has been ferocious, indicating that what Afghan officials openly call a Pakistani-backed insurgent group is hardly a spent force.