Afghanistan’s Rising Civilian Death Toll Due to Airstrikes, 2017-2020
The United States military in 2017 chose to relax its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.
From the last year of the Obama administration to the last full year of recorded data during the Trump administration, the number of civilians killed by U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan increased by 330 percent.
This report reveals the price that Afghan civilians have paid for all parties’ escalation of violence in their attempts to gain leverage in talks between the United States and the Taliban. The data demonstrates that, compared to the previous 10 years, there was a 95 percent increase in civilians killed by U.S. and allied forces’ airstrikes between 2017 and 2019. Further, during the period of intra-Afghan talks, the Afghan Air Force has killed more civilians than at any point in its history.
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Neta C. Crawford is the author of "The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions" (MIT Press, 2022). Crawford is also the author of three other books, "Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America's Post-9/11 Wars" (2013), "Soviet Military Aircraft" (1987) and "Argument and Change in World Politics" (2002), named Best Book in International History and Politics by the American Political Science Association. She has written more than two dozen peer reviewed articles on issues of war and peace. Dr. Crawford has served on the governing Board of the Academic Council of the United Nations System and on the Governing Council of the American Political Science Association. Dr. Crawford was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2023.
