Taleban-affiliated militants were responsible for more
than three-quarters of the civilian deaths in 2011, the fifth year in a row in
which the death toll went up, the UN said.
The figures were a grim testament to the violence the
Taleban and allied militants can still unleash in Afghanistan, even as
NATO begins to map out plans for international troops to draw down and give
Afghan security forces the main responsibility for fighting insurgents by the
end of 2014.
"A decade after the war began, the human cost of it
is still rising," said Georgette Gagnon, director for human rights for the
UN mission in Afghanistan. The number of civilian deaths was up 8 percent over
the previous year.
Deaths in suicide bombings jumped dramatically to 450, an
80 percent increase over the previous year. While the number of suicide attacks
remained about the same, they killed more civilians. On Dec. 6, a bomber
detonated his explosives-filled vest at the entrance of a mosque in Kabul, the
capital, killing 56 worshippers during the Shiite Muslim rituals of Ashoura. It
was the single deadliest suicide attack since 2008.
The single biggest killer of civilians remained the
ever-more-powerful roadside bombs planted by insurgents. The homemade
explosives, which can be triggered by a footstep or a vehicle and are often
rigged with enough explosives to destroy a tank, killed 967 people - nearly a
third of the total.
The 130,000-strong coalition force led by the US says it
has been hitting the Taleban hard, seizing their one-time strongholds while
expanding and training the Afghan army and police to take over primary
responsibility for waging the decade-old war.
Still, insurgent attacks are killing more and more
civilians, according to a detailed annual UN report.
The increased presence of security forces managed to
reduce civilian casualties in the troubled southern provinces of Helmand and
Kandahar, but the UN said insurgents simply pulled back and focused instead on
areas along the country's border with Pakistan, relying more on roadside bombs
and suicide attacks in places like bazaars, schoolyards, footpaths, and bus
stations.
"The tactics have changed," said Jan Kubis, the
UN Secretary-General's special representative to Afghanistan. "The
anti-government forces being squeezed in certain areas ... move to some other
areas and again use these inhuman, undiscriminating weapons like
human-activated explosive devices and suicide attacks." He pointed out
that the Taleban itself banned the use of land mines as "un-Islamic and
anti-human" in a 1998 proclamation issued while the hard-line movement
ruled Afghanistan with their harsh interpretation of Islamic law.
The UN report said there is little difference between
mines and the buried homemade bombs used by the Taleban. The majority of
improvised explosives have about 9 pounds (20 kgs) of explosives and are
triggered by pressure plates rigged to explode when a person steps on it or a
vehicle passes over.
"These are basically land mines," Kubis said of
the roadside bombs. "So why is this 'inhuman and un-Islamic' weapon being
increasingly used?" The sheer number of roadside bombs that insurgents
planted last year overwhelmed security forces' improved ability to detect and
neutralize them. An average of 23 roadside bombs per day were either detonated
or discovered and defused last year - twice the daily average in 2010, the UN
report said. Actual explosions increased by 6 percent.
The report's toll of 3,021 civilians dead in violence
related to the war and 4,507 more wounded made 2011 the deadliest year for
Afghan civilians recorded by the UN since it started keeping a detailed count
of civilian casualties five years ago. Last year's figure was roughly double
the number from 2007.
The UN attributed 77 percent of the deaths to insurgent
attacks and 14 percent to actions by international and Afghan troops. Nine
percent of cases were classified as having an unknown cause.
The number of civilian deaths caused by insurgents was up
14 percent over 2010, the UN said, while those caused by security forces went
down 4 percent.
Last year was also the second-deadliest year of the
decade-long war for international forces in Afghanistan, with at least 544 NATO
troops killed. The coalition has been in Afghanistan since the aftermath of the
2001 American-backed intervention to topple the Taleban, which followed the
hard-line Islamist regime's refusal to hand over Al-Qaeda terrorist chief Osama
Bin Laden, who sponsored the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US While the
total number of civilian deaths caused by international and Afghan forces dropped,
the number of civilians killed by air strikes targeting insurgents rose to 187
in 2011, accounting for nearly half the deaths attributed to forces supporting
the government.
The number of civilians killed during controversial,
coalition-led night raids on homes dropped to 63 in 2011, down 22 percent from
the previous year, the UN said.
The UN noted a shift in where the violence affecting
civilians was centered. In 2010, the provinces with the highest numbers of
civilian casualties were the southern Taleban strongholds of Helmand and
Kandahar, where an increased number of US troops pushed to take back territory
from insurgents.
While those two provinces still had the most deaths in
2011, their numbers dropped, while civilian deaths went sharply up in
southeastern provinces including Khost and Paktika, and the eastern provinces
of Kunar and Nangarhar. All those areas lie along Afghanistan's volatile border
with Pakistan, where many of the Taleban's leaders and the Al-Qaeda-allied
Haqqani network are believed to be based.
Insurgents also intensified an assassination campaign
against people associated with the Afghan government. The UN report documented
495 targeted killings in 2011, including provincial and district officials,
peace council members and pro-government tribal elders. Assassinations were up
3 percent from the previous year and up 160 percent from 2009.
Among the highest profile assassination victims last year
was former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the high peace council
charged with seeking talks with the Taleban. He was killed by a suicide bomber
claiming to carry a message from the insurgents.
