Civilian casualties soared after peace talks began — U.N.
KABUL — Civilian casualties rose sharply in Afghanistan after peace negotiations between the government and the Taliban began in September, even as overall deaths and injuries dropped during 2020 compared with the previous year, the United Nations reported Tuesday.
In its annual report documenting civilian injuries and deaths, the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan found that the escalation in civilian casualties began shortly after intraAfghan negotiations opened on Sept. 12 in Doha, Qatar, increasing by 45% in the final quarter of 2020 versus the same time period in 2019. The number of civilian casualties in November was the highest of any year that month since the U.N. began systematically documenting Afghan casualties in 2009, the report said.
“2020 could have been the year of peace in Afghanistan,” said Deborah Lyons, the special representative of the U.N. secretarygeneral for Afghanistan. “Instead, thousands of Afghan civilians perished due to the conflict.”
The report was released as talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban remain stalled amid unrelenting violence, and a February 2020 agreement between the United States and the Taliban is under review by the Biden administration.
Following that agreement, made a year ago, the number of civilian casualties for the year was 15% lower than in 2019. The 8,820 civilian casualties documented in 2020 — 3,035 killed and 5,785 wounded — represented the first time since 2013 that this figure dropped below 10,000, the report said.
The decline was attributed to a reduction by the Taliban of mass casualty attacks in major cities and a decline in the number of U.S. air strikes.
But civilian casualties surged in the fourth quarter as fighting raged in the countryside between the Taliban and Afghan government forces. At the same time, a targeted assassination campaign of shootings and bombings killed government workers and security force members, journalists, civil society advocates and family members of combatants.
Also targeted were religious minorities, especially Hazaras, most of whom are Shiite Muslim, and the country’s small Sikh population.
The 2,792 civilian casualties (891 deaths and 1,901 injuries) recorded in the final three months of 2020 represented the secondhighest total for this time period since 2009.
The Taliban have denied targeted attacks against anyone other than government employees or supporters, but the Afghan government has blamed the militants for most such attacks.
Last year was the seventh consecutive year that the United Nations has documented more than 3,000 civilian deaths, “with Afghanistan remaining among the deadliest places in the world to be a civilian,” the report said.