- Sep 6, 2000
- 25,383
- 1,013
- 126
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...but authorities have not calculated Afghanistan's civilian death toll in the war on terrorism, and the dimension of this tragedy is not fully known. Although estimates have placed the civilian dead in the thousands, a review by The Associated Press suggests the toll may be in the mid-hundreds, a figure reached by examining hospital records, visiting bomb sites and interviewing eyewitnesses and officials.
The number of confirmed deaths will surely rise as more exhaustive tallies are compiled by independent bodies. Neither the U.S. nor the Afghan government is attempting to tally the civilian dead, but two Afghan nongovernmental groups are undertaking a count. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch also plans a study.
One factor contributing to inflated estimates was the distortion of casualty reports by the Taliban regime. Afghan journalists have told AP that Taliban officials systematically doctored reports of civilian deaths to push their estimate to 1,500 in the first three weeks of the war in an attempt to galvanize opposition to the bombing.
"Our chief was from the Taliban. His deputy from the Taliban. The information minister was from the Taliban," said one journalist, Mohammed Ismail. "We could not do our jobs. We could not tell the truth."
In the course of the air war, the U.S. military has several times owned up to errors that killed civilians, but the Pentagon (news - web sites) stressed repeatedly that they were never deliberately targeted.
* * *
In the course of the air assault, every major Afghan city was targeted ? Kabul, with its population of 1.2 million; the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south; Herat in the west; Mazar-e-Sharif in the north; Jalalabad in the east ? as well as large swaths of rugged countryside where bin Laden and his lieutenants might have been hiding.
AP reporters visited these areas during the course of the war and gathered data on civilian casualties. Their reporting and other reliable counts ? by no means complete ? in the months since then suggest a civilian death toll ranging from 500 to 600.
...but authorities have not calculated Afghanistan's civilian death toll in the war on terrorism, and the dimension of this tragedy is not fully known. Although estimates have placed the civilian dead in the thousands, a review by The Associated Press suggests the toll may be in the mid-hundreds, a figure reached by examining hospital records, visiting bomb sites and interviewing eyewitnesses and officials.
The number of confirmed deaths will surely rise as more exhaustive tallies are compiled by independent bodies. Neither the U.S. nor the Afghan government is attempting to tally the civilian dead, but two Afghan nongovernmental groups are undertaking a count. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch also plans a study.
One factor contributing to inflated estimates was the distortion of casualty reports by the Taliban regime. Afghan journalists have told AP that Taliban officials systematically doctored reports of civilian deaths to push their estimate to 1,500 in the first three weeks of the war in an attempt to galvanize opposition to the bombing.
"Our chief was from the Taliban. His deputy from the Taliban. The information minister was from the Taliban," said one journalist, Mohammed Ismail. "We could not do our jobs. We could not tell the truth."
In the course of the air war, the U.S. military has several times owned up to errors that killed civilians, but the Pentagon (news - web sites) stressed repeatedly that they were never deliberately targeted.
* * *
In the course of the air assault, every major Afghan city was targeted ? Kabul, with its population of 1.2 million; the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south; Herat in the west; Mazar-e-Sharif in the north; Jalalabad in the east ? as well as large swaths of rugged countryside where bin Laden and his lieutenants might have been hiding.
AP reporters visited these areas during the course of the war and gathered data on civilian casualties. Their reporting and other reliable counts ? by no means complete ? in the months since then suggest a civilian death toll ranging from 500 to 600.
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