Talk:Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

This article was nominated for deletion on 10 May 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

AfD closure comments: I strongly recommend that someone rename this article to something else, per comments in the above AfD. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:23, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Indirect Casualties

Does anyone have any information about the casualties resulting from the discontinuation of food shipments from Pakistan as per U.S. demand, as well as the withdrawal of aid organizations as a result of the bombing? United Nations reports in late 2001 suggested 7-8 million were at risk of immediate starvation.

Any estimates of the total casualties due to lack of food and medicine resulting from the bombing?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 136.242.228.149 (talk • contribs).

Comments

this article is extremely POV, and unnecessary, it should be merged with a different article or deleted.

Whatever the true number of civilian casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom, it has been the least bloody war in modern Afghan history. For example, about 1.8 million people were killed during the Afghan Civil war and subsequent Soviet Invasion.

And that makes it right?

There are no civilians in Afghanistan, only targets. And if for one second, you don't believe that they'd slit your throat as soon as look at you, then you deserve what you get. They (the Afghans) sure don't deserve the mercy we've shown them.

-By somone that cares

I think the above statement is horrible, there are civilians in Afghanistan! You think the whole country is pro terrirosm? Sure, there are "bad guys" in Afghanistan, but for one minute, to beleive that there all "bad guys" is seriously wrong. Thats like for me to say "All Americans are Unliked, Rude and Mean". Sure, most of the world thinks that, but a country does not DEFINE you who are. Just where you live, and what taxes you pay. You cannot put all of Afghanistan into one or two groups nor any country for that matter. I know this isn't going to change one persons mind that is made up to believe that all Afghani people are targets. Beacause only you can change your mind.

NPOV

What is this NPOV you speak of? There is no NPOV anywhere in Afghanistan! Hundreds of NPOVs are killing themselves in front of the gates of... oh wait, wrong war.

Seriously? I don't see why we need this article. Even we keep it, it should be heavily rewritten to not reek quite so much of "OMG THE EVIL EMPIRE!"

--Bringa 23:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this article is very POV. -- §HurricaneERIC§^Damagesarchive 00:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Clarification requested

Perhaps the article has been modified since the initial disputation was offered, so this may be an outdated or irrelevant comment and question. Yet if not, I must say that it is difficult to see how the text of the article can be interpreted as conveying a bias. As such, would the person who posted the original message please consider explaining the precise reasons for challenging the neutrality of the tone of the article? Many thanks in advance.  :) *

Rob van Doorn 14:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I renamed the artice, "neutralised" it to some extent by changing the wording, added many recent and past events and found sources to events that were already there. I think that those changes will satisify those who challenged the neutrality of the article. Maybe the neutrality flag can be taken down ? Hudicourt 13:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Updates needed

This page appears so out of date as to be useless, with the last casualty listed in mid-2005. --Kickstart70·Talk 18:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• At the moment people are editing again the article. In my opinion it is important to give accounts of the casualties at the Afghanistan War. About all casualties: Nato casualties, Afghan national army casualties, civilian casualties and also Taliban casualties, to give an impression of what war is bringing to a country. that this was is maybe less bloody than other wars, is not a reason to delete this article.

More research about 2004 and 2005 is needed.Rob van Doorn 14:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I remove the update tag as it applies to the whole article, since the list does go up to 2007 now. I also took the 'please expand' tag off the talk of the article and moved it to the specific sections you mentioned. Sanguinalis 15:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion

It has been proposed that this article be deleted.

• Lack of sources
• POV during a current affair (the occupation isn't over)
• Inaccurate (there are large margins of estimated deaths.)

Also since it is technically impossible to gather all the names of those who died during the invasion, this article has been doomed from the start. Please discuss, Sfacets 04:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Disagree on the POV thing. As stated in other comment there is no support of POV

Disagree on lack of sources, several mentions of interviewees, UN reports etc... Although obivously not all events are properly sourced

Disagree on inaccurate. Has anyone tried to calculate the number of deaths in the aftermath of a civilian bombing?

Agree for deletion as this is hardly encyclopedic material, it being current affair.

It is, though, highly interesting journalistic material and a resource for future scholar work on the issue.

Could the initiator of this very good article create it on his own -or hosting- site and organise for it to be referenced from appropriate part of the encyclopedia?Jlpicker 00:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it my imagination (or hasty counting perhaps) but the discussion for the proposed deletion features more 'deletes' than 'keeps' - can anyone confirm or negate this? Sfacets 04:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Haven't counted, but you may well be right. However, as polls are evil, it's not the number but the reasons that count. Are you the person who tried to sneak a deletion through on Prod? JackyR | Talk 12:49, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Nope, wasn't me.. Yes, polls are evil. Oh well, democracy lives on :) Sfacets 19:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles in the same vein

I don't see why "we need" lots of articles on WP, but someone seems to want them. :-) Seriously, articles such as Charities accused of ties to terrorism have been supported: this should be too. Putting it in context, does it now seem encyclopedic to have an article on, say, the Baedeker raids. Yes. So this article is also OK. Tho it does need to be cleaned up and properly referenced. And perhaps moved to Civilian casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom, or similar. JackyR 02:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I should be clearer: I don't think this article can ever be a straightforward casualty list - too long, and how would it be compiled? But it's a perfectly decent article in its current format of descriptions of major incidents with civilian casualties. And will be a damn sight better with refs. JackyR 02:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The article is wholly an attempt at an anti-American attack. Where's the companion article, List of coalition casualties in Afghanistan? User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

At Coalition casualties in Afghanistan. I think the latter is better named, don't you? JackyR 18:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

And just like this one, that one is totally unsourced. User:Zoe|^(talk) 18:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

In what sense? There are three sources under "External links", one being the US Defence Department. If you prefer to add sentence-by-sentence citations, I'm sure these will provide all you need.

I would applaud your hard work if you were to do this, but with an article of less than a page it hardly seems worth it. The article which really needs citing, however, is the parent to both of these: United States invasion of Afghanistan. This has only sporadic citations, and as a contemporary, highly political event, deserves and is capable of being well-referenced. JackyR 19:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Re-naming

The AfD has ended with a recommendation that this article be renamed. I'd propose Civilian casualties of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The rest of the series is named Coalition Casualties in Afghanistan (not v specific given the number of wars fought in Afg) and U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. If the parent article's name changes (as discussed there), we can shift this one to follow, but we shouldn't hold off re-naming this one as the other has no timescale. Comments? JackyR 17:13, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The parent articles name has changed...I propose changing the name of this article to Civilian casualties of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. --Northmeister 03:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Nice fix to the link. I'd let this article's title sit a few weeks, in case the name change at the parent doesn't take... *sigh* JackyR | Talk 13:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Why even call it "US invasion of Afghanistan" when numerous free world armies are involved in the fight against Taliban terrorists?

I think calling a US invasion is way too POV. It was actually a US-backed Northern Alliance takeover, supported by a Coalition of several countries, later mandated by the UN, and finally supported by a 40-nation NATO force under UN mandate (currently at 47,000 troops-ISAF, April, 2008). If everyone is arguing for national inclusion on the main War page, it is POV to call it only a US war.

Point of article

Is the main point of having this article to advance the viewpoint that because of the US invasion civilian noncombatants are being killed and therefore the US (1) is to blame for these deaths and (2) should never have invaded and/or should leave as soon as possible?

This is similar to arguments made decades ago about the Vietnam War and more recently about the Iraq War.

I'd like to see some balance to this view. Has anyone written anything that blames the anti-democracy forces (insurgents or terrorists) for (3) causing civilian deaths themselves or (4) hiding amongst noncombatants (see Human shield article) so that raids against terrorists cause collateral damage? --Uncle Ed 19:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This article is not advancing any arguments: you brought them to the party yourself. In fact, as a good WP article it's not pushing a viewpoint: it's attempting to record (v approximately) civilian deaths. This is one of the common metrics of any conflict, along with combatant deaths, tons of explosive dropped, duration, etc (see World War II#Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities, World War I casualties, Vietnam War#Casualties, Second Boer War...)

In fact, civilian casualties are important not just as a blunt measure, but because

1. continuing casualties during an occupation by foreign troops tend to have a serious impact on future relations with those troops/occupying powers (for the difficulties when troops are not even occupiers, or not even foreign, consider US bases in Okinawa, UK bases in Cyprus, UK troops in Northern Ireland, etc).
2. the types of incident leading to civilian casualties are significant for history of warfare (eg growth of aerial bombing, use of suicide bombings, poison gas, starvation tactics, etc. These have all been used at different times, and led to such tactics as the British evacuation of children to the countryside during WWII, development of concentration camps during the Second Boer War.)

Re "balance", I don't understand why you think this individual article ought to be "balanced" in isolation. It is not political analysis: it is an article documenting a specific aspect of the conflict (spun off from U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan). It is supposed to be one-sided/single topic, and read together with the parent and sibling articles. It needs to be so detailed because there is, AFAIK, no official figure of civilian deaths in this conflict. Specifically according to the article, the Herrold tally is not undisputed. It is therefore important to include citations for each major incident.

And I would remind you that the parent article is blatantly not balanced: it is the story from the POV of the invasion forces. And there is no article at all on Taliban combatant deaths. This probably reflects the demographics of contributors to en.wiki. In fact, despite NPOV, Wikipedia as a whole has no remit to be "balanced": if it had, thousands of, say, Ameri-centric articles would have to be deleted on the grounds that "we can't have articles about American game shows unless we have a proportionate number about Korean game shows to balance them." (See WP:CSB for an attempt tackle these issues by addition, not deletion.)

Because of (2) above, I would normally encourage you to go ahead and research the relationship between military tactics and civilian deaths in this particular conflict. But as you have stated that you have a political agenda and would like to blame someone (and presumably exculpate someone else), rather than write an NPOV account, I suggest you leave it to someone else. JackyR | Talk 17:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Content problem

I realize I am using a word we don't like here, but without 'some' sort of citation, some of these items are way, way too close to bold-faced lies, cheap propaganda, and even slander - accusations of 'bodies tied and shot in the back'; I might as well go in there and change all the "civilian" to "Taliban fighters"; they really don't dress any different.Bridesmill 14:19, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the citations need doing. I do bits sporadically, and may get there eventually. Why not try looking up the particular incidents you're talking about (and adding cites for other incidents you come across while doing so)? I found that there were often two or three different reports for each incident - you know, emerging story over several days. It'll improve the article. That way, we're not making any judgement ourselves, but simply citing "The Times" said, civilians were killed. JackyR | Talk 20:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

A number of factors. In the last Item, for instance, there are hardly any credible western sources, even ones that love to take digs at the US military - the first 3 pages of google hits all seem to be minor non-western media citing the same Taliban bunch, and the article is hardly carried by western media. If the best we can cite is 'taliban-r-us.com, is that good enough? Some of these are going to be hard to dig up, and if that is the case, do they belong here? I would suggest to avoid controversy, if someone is going to put something in, PLEASE put a ref in with it: you no doubt read it somewhere (I hope), so why note cite right away rather than have people question you or have to do the work for you. (Please?)Bridesmill 01:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

By the same token I wouldn't get too picky if the story has minor variations from the first Googled source you found - check a few more. Like I said, a lot of this stuff was breaking news, and by no means covered in the detail that you'd get in countries where cameras cluster when a celebrity farts. And be careful with stuff like that "US weren't targetting villagers" summary: this isn't about what armed forces meant to do, it's about what they actually happened. So a phrase like "rockets were fired into" is more neutral and verifiable that than "rockets were targetted at". JackyR | Talk 09:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely; but when we cant decide on whether a very specific document was found on a car or a truck in the same sentence, this is indicative of manipulated information & embellishment. A certain amount of variance is acceptable; indeed, I prefer it becasue when all the sources are verbatim the same, that tends to indicate that really there was only one source which has been widely distributed. My point on targeting, is that we need to avoid terms which imply that pilots specifically went in and said "hey, innocent villagers, lets target them"; which is how that last piece could easily be read. While I have no qualms writing based on reasonably credible sources that villagers died in an attack, or if weak sources that villagers are claimed to have died in an attack, I would want to see some very, very serious sources (and not Taliban ones) before I would write "pilots targeted vilagers' into an article without qualifiers. Bridesmill 14:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about rubbish typing above - hope you deciphered what I meant, not what I wrote (!). Um, I wouldn't consider "car" / "truck" to be necesarily contradictory when you factor in poor translation. I'd be as likely to sound like that in French, in which I speak some but am not fluent ("Quick, what's the word for something bigger than a Renault Megane and smaller than an HGV?" ).

I'm just saying, record what the sources record, and attribute so we can all decide plausibility for ourselves. In fact, if one source has been making inflated claims, that and the use of propaganda are issues in themselves. Remember how exaggerated stories of German atrocities in Belgium were used to create appetite for WWI in Britain? JackyR | Talk 18:08, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree; but the source has to be at least marginally WP:V; and when material is uncited, and the only online the only sources are far from WP:V I start to question it as 'WP editor propaganda'; I accept your argument on translation, but when the juicy details are perfectly rendered while the contextual details are confused - that's pretty strong indicator from a fact-checking perspective that this is bogus, and doubly needs 'some sort' of cite. All that to say my margin for acceptability is pretty generous on this page; but there has to be some margin.Bridesmill 18:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed from Article

I removed the following event:

1. October 7, 2006 - The Pakistani news agency AIP reported that two German journalists were found murdered in a tent around 150 kilometres south of the northern provincial capital Baghlan. This was confirmed by the ISAF confirmed. The two -a man and a woman - had been working 'in connection with ISAF' until 4 October 2006, when they went travelling on their own.[14]

All the other events listed here were about civilians killed as a result of Coalition forces' actions. This one does not seem to fit in since I have not seen who is responsible for their death. If it does, we should also add all the civilians killed by bombs and other events not caused by the coalition.

Hudicourt 15:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The events listed on this page have been civilian deaths caused by coalition troops in Afghanistan. However, more civilians are now killed by insurgents or by the Afghan government troops. I think this article should be expanded to include those death also.

Hudicourt 15:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup, certainly. JackyR | Talk 18:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Dates of Herold's reports

I've shoved in a date of June 2003 for the report that gave the figure of ~3,600 dead. This is the date of the last incident in the table in Herold's report headed "Version: Oct 16, 2003. Appendix 4. Daily Casualty Count of Afghan Civilians Killed by U.S Bombing and Special Forces Attacks, October 7 until present day"[1]. By all means correct/refine this if I've misread anything (I only skimmed it). Cheers, JackyR | Talk 18:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

civilian VS taliban deaths

It seems to me that whenever NATO claims to have killed a group of taliban fighters, the taliban often issue a counter claim saying the victims were mostly civilian. Could we not include a sentence in the opening paragraph that says it is hard to distinguish in some case if casualties are indeed civilian or not due to the nature of the conflict (taliban fighting in civilian clothing and hiding in villages)? Daft, 16 May 2007; 17:30

One of the things that needs to be done in this article, is for each incident in which civilian casualties are reported, indicate who is saying that civilians are killed. None of the news stories I looked at use the Taliban as a source. Instead the source is usally a local government official (typically a provincial governor), though in some cases reporters have spoken with villagers themselves. In cases where US or NATO spokespeople deny that civilians were killed, we should mention that too. Typically they neither confirm nor deny. Sanguinalis 15:35, 30 June 2007 (UTC)