The Taliban is killing fewer civilians but a worrying new trend is emerging

Pro-government forces in Afghanistan have killed more civilians than the Taliban in the first months of 2019 as all sides claim they are working actively to prevent civilian deaths.

Casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan seem to reinforce the Taliban’s cruel and bloodthirsty reputation. The militants consistently harm more civilians than any other party to the conflict, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which provides the most thorough casualty reporting.

But recent years have seen a striking new development: casualties caused by the Taliban have fallen, while those attributed to the pro-government side are rising. Indeed, the Afghan government and its allies reportedly killed more civilians in the first months of 2019 than the Taliban, according to UNAMA, the first time this has happened since records began.

“The Afghan gov’t and U.S./coalition forces are on a trajectory in which they could overtake the Taliban as the main cause of war-related civilian deaths,” according to Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, who noted the evolving casualty trends in a February twitter thread.

Those trendlines are easy to miss.

UNAMA’s reports lump Afghan insurgent groups such as the Taliban and Daesh/Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) together into a single category—’anti-government elements’—while the Afghan government and its allies, principally the US, fall under the umbrella of ‘pro-government forces’.

‘Anti-government elements’ have always been responsible for the majority of civilian harm. In 2017, they accounted for 65 percent of civilian casualties, according to UNAMA, while pro-government forces were responsible for 20 percent, with 11 percent jointly attributed, and 4 percent ‘other’.

In the following year, their share fell to 63 percent, while pro-government casualties rose to 24 percent, with 6 percent ‘undetermined anti-government elements’, and 13 percent ‘crossfire’.

The Taliban are usually responsible for most of the casualties on the “anti-government” side. But since Daesh emerged in Afghanistan a few years ago, its share has risen dramatically.

In 2016, casualties caused by Daesh “increased by nearly ten times” on the previous year, UNAMA notes. In 2018 they rose by a whopping 118 percent.

Casualties attributed to the Taliban alone, by contrast, appear to be dropping.

In 2017, the group killed and injured 12 percent fewer civilians than in 2016. In 2018, Taliban-caused casualties fell again by 7 percent. And, in the first months of 2019, they declined dramatically in the same period last year.

This appears to be a short-term trend. In 2016 Taliban-caused casualties rose on the previous year. However, UNAMA’s report for 2015 only gives overall casualty figures; it does not list numbers of killed and injured. So, it is unclear if the Taliban killed more civilians in 2016 than it did in 2015. Moreover, UNAMA’s report for 2014 does not provide the specific number of casualties caused by the Taliban at all.

TRT World asked UNAMA to provide numbers of those killed and injured by the Taliban in 2015 and the number of Taliban-caused casualties in 2014.

A spokesman for UNAMA, Kirk Kroeker, referred TRT World to its 2015 annual report, saying, “Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to share additional civilian casualty data beyond what we’ve already published.”

UNAMA’s reports do not clearly explain the fall in casualties. When asked if the drop resulted from Taliban measures to protect civilians, another UNAMA spokesman, Liam McDowall, did not answer the question directly but told TRT World that UNAMA had noted certain Taliban statements and actions towards the protection of civilians.

Its reports do not claim that these led to a reduction in casualties, though McDowall also emphasised that the Taliban “continue to cause the most civilian casualties of any party to the conflict.”

UNAMA’s 2017 annual report attributes the drop in civilian casualties by pro-government forces to measures to protect civilians, but it does not attribute the fall in civilian casualties by Taliban forces to protective measures.

In a statement on its English-language website from April 2019, the Taliban announced that the head of UNAMA, Tadamichi Yamamoto, had met its representatives in Doha and “showed his appreciation for the decrease in civilian casualties caused by the Islamic Emirate.”

Asked by TRT World to confirm or deny this claim, UNAMA replied, after a delay, that “it was not in a position to offer comments at this time beyond what the Mission has already stated publicly.”

UNAMA’s reports show that casualties from the Taliban’s signature tactics have fallen.

In 2017, it recorded a 40 percent reduction in casualties from remote-controlled IEDs and a 22 percent fall in those from ‘suicide & complex attacks’, while, in 2018, it cited a 23 percent reduction in casualties from Taliban targeted killings as a key factor.

But it does not attribute the shift to precautions on the Taliban’s part to protect civilians.

Moreover, UNAMA notes at one point that its figures might be underreported because access to Taliban-controlled areas is limited. Its statistics also include a large number of casualties where attribution could not be determined.

The decline in casualties could partly be explained by changing conflict trends.

As pro-government airstrikes have escalated in recent years, the Taliban has gravitated away from large-scale assaults on provincial capitals, such as Kunduz in 2015 and 2016, instead choosing to launch smaller attacks which result in fewer casualties. Conflict-related displacement of civilians may also have led to a reduction in numbers of killed and injured.

In 2019, casualties by anti-government forces fell thanks to a large (76 percent) drop in those killed and injured in suicide IED attacks. UNAMA cautioned that the fall in numbers might be due to winter conditions that prevented fighting while stating that “it is unclear whether the decrease in civilian casualties was influenced by any measures taken by parties to the conflict to better protect civilians, or by the ongoing talks between parties to the conflict.”

But according to Graeme Smith, a consultant for the International Crisis Group, the decline in casualties is intentional.

“You really have seen a dramatic shift in Taliban behaviour to reduce civilian casualties, especially in urban areas,” Smith told TRT World, noting that large-scale suicide attacks, such as the January 2018 ambulance bombing in Kabul, have decreased.

The Taliban has decided to limit such attacks, sources have told the International Crisis Group.

“We’re quite confident that this was a conscious decision by the Taliban, not some kind of accident,” he said. This is partly “related to the peace process,” Smith explained, but also an effort to improve the group’s standing with ordinary Afghans.

“Politically, they have been aiming at legitimacy, and becoming part of the mainstream politics of Afghanistan.”

TRT World asked the Taliban to confirm or deny that it had decided to reduce large-scale attacks during peace talks, but received no reply.

Source: TRT World