The holiday of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is on March 21 this year.
As the calendar generally observed in Afghanistan, this has meant Afghan
reporters are looking back at the year gone by, and noticed the same trend as everyone else: casualties are soaring.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission statistics showed
that over the past year, 3,010 civilians were killed, and 7,500 wounded.
This is a major increase over the previous year, itself an increase
over the years before.
The Afghan Interior Ministry reported hundreds of Afghan Taliban were
killed, and that as many as 600 of them were “commanders” or “shadow
governors.” They offered no data on the casualties among Afghan forces.
It’s clearly far more than a few hundred, of course, with the Taliban
routinely launching attacks that wipe out entire Afghan military
companies, and overrun Afghan bases regularly. They’ve been losing
ground nationwide throughout the year.
Afghan Military, Civilian Casualties Have Sharply Risen in Past Year
Over 3,000 civilians killed in the past year
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
Join the Discussion!
We welcome thoughtful and respectful comments. Hateful language, illegal content, or attacks against Antiwar.com will be removed.
For more details, please see our Comment Policy.
