AFGHANISTAN – Afghan civilians are more than ever the victims of the ongoing conflict in the country, as a result of a massive increase in violence and an unprecedented toll of deaths and injuries in 2017, according to an annual UN report released on Thursday.
During the year 2017, the United Nations recorded 57 suicide attacks and other attacks in densely populated areas or mosques, particularly Kabul, resulting in a total of 605 deaths and 1,690 wounded, or 2,300 civilians, the country’s “highest ever recorded toll”, up 17% for 2016.
Attacks with mines and other explosives caused 40 percent of civilian casualties and became the first cause of casualties in the conflict in Afghanistan, followed by ground battles, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
“This trend has already been confirmed in 2018,” UN special envoy Tadamichi Yamamoto told reporters, recalling the three major attacks in Kabul as well as the attack on the Save the Children organization in Jalalabad in the east of the country, which killed more than 130 people. And injured 250 others in 10 days at the end of January.
The percentage of victims in the capital is only 16% among the dead and wounded civilians who fell far from the battlefields.
For the fourth year in a row, the annual death toll of 3,438 dead and 7015 injured exceeds the 100,000 mark (10,453 deaths in 2017), although the toll was 9 percent lower than in 2016 as direct confrontations between rebels and pro-government forces declined.
“People are killed during their day-to-day activities, as they ride buses and perform prayers in mosques or simply because they passed near the target building,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein.
– Targeted pilgrims –
The Director of Human Rights of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Daniel Bell, expressed her concern over the increase in sectarian attacks against the Shiite community and mosques adopted by the Islamic State Organization.
“The mission has recorded about 500 victims of suicide attacks on places of prayer, mainly pilgrims, mainly in Kabul,” she told a news conference on Thursday.
“The report bears responsibility for the fall of two-thirds of the civilian casualties to anti-government elements, such as the Taliban and Daesh,” said Bill, who said the pro-government forces, including Afghan national security forces, international military forces and pro-government armed groups, Shooting and explosive remnants of war”.
The United Nations attributes nearly two-thirds of the casualties (65 percent) to rebels (42 percent to the Taliban, 10 percent to the Islamic state and 13 percent to unspecified groups), 13 percent to government forces and 2 percent to international forces.
With the increase in the number of Afghan and US air raids on Taliban positions and the organization of the Islamic state, the casualty toll rose by 7 percent over 2016, with 295 dead and 336 injured, the “biggest annual toll of air operations since 2009.”
According to the United Nations mission, most of the dead were killed by the only US troops among the Western coalition that is conducting air operations. Despite the lower number of Afghan flights (25 US flights a week compared with 40 Afghan flights), 154 people were killed and 92 wounded in 49 operations.
The proportion of women (+ 22%) and children (+ 33%) who were affected by these strikes, although “the proportion of the number of flights and the number of victims shows improved procedures,” according to the United Nations.
The United Nations Mission commended the adoption by Afghanistan of Protocol V of the United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons. The protocol, which requires belligerents to clean battlefields of unexploded ordnance, is expected to prevent many casualties and amputations affecting 81 percent of children.
As long as Afghanistan was not part of this protocol, the Western armies, even the American signatory, did not feel obliged to remove the mines, a costly process according to Daniel Bell.
