Anyone looking for the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan may be on a quest that could take as long as the worldwide eradication of "evildoers." If the U.S. government is aware of the number, it isn't telling, and various media outlets offer estimates that are worlds apart.
One reason for the discrepancy is that the numbers are extremely difficult to calculate if not impossible, says Tony Sullivan a professor at the University of Michigan's Center for Middle Eastern studies. While our most recent foray into Afghanistan has gone on for only a brief period, there has been strife there for decades, he says. The result is that there is no infrastructure in place to issue death certificates or even birth certificates. The last census was taken in 1979.
"All estimates going way back are very rough estimates," he says.
Marc Herold, an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire, released a report last month, estimating that nearly 4,000 civilians have died since the bombing began Oct. 7. Herold got his number by surveying media reports from around the world, and although Sullivan hasn't seen the report, he says Herold's method may be an issue. Media reports aren't always accurate, he says, and they certainly don't reflect the totality of the deaths that have occurred in the region.
"I would assume that whatever number you calculate from the press reports, the real number would be much higher," he says.
The best figures will likely come from human rights organizations, he says, but those organizations are refusing to even hazard a guess. The International Committee for the Red Cross and the United Nations haven't estimated casualties. Neither has Amnesty International.
Human Rights Watch is an organization that seeks to protect the human rights of individuals throughout the world, but it wouldn't necessarily take on the job of counting up the dead, said Joost Hiltermann, who heads the organization's weapons division.
"What we're looking at are circumstances under which civilians were harmed because that would indicate violations of the laws of war, which is a human rights concern. Counting doesn't really tell you much of anything."
"To start counting, you'd get a number if you were able to actually do it reliably, which in Afghanistan is questionable if this is possible, then you would simply have a number that wouldn't mean anything from a human rights point of view," says Hiltermann. "It would just mean that X number of people were killed, which is terrible and tragic but it doesn't have any analytical power."
Under the Geneva Convention the military is obligated to limit civilian casualties, he says, but this doesn't mean that all civilian deaths are a violation. War is hell and there is room for legitimate error under the law.
It's the not-so-legitimate errors that Human Rights Watch is concerned with. The organization has kept track of all reported incidents of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the statements that the Pentagon and other military authorities have made and statements made by people on the ground regarding the circumstances of each attack. The information is compiled in a database and will be used in its investigation as it continues to monitor possible human rights violations. The group has not yet been on the ground in Afghanistan, due to the dangers that still exist there, says Hiltermann, and the organization won't be able to draw many accurate conclusions before that happens.
"There are conflicting accounts. The Pentagon will say one thing, saying, "You know what we took out was a military convoy.' While people on the ground are saying, "No these were civilians,'" he says.
In the face of such contradictions, the only thing the organization can do is collect data and attempt to get to the truth once they're able to travel to Afghanistan.
One concern the organization has expressed is the damage inflicted by cluster bombs — bombs that hold a number of smaller bombs that are released and should explode on impact. The bombs have a failure rate that may be as high as 20 percent, says Hiltermann, leaving unexploded bomblets for inhabitants to stumble upon. The bomblets are causing a problem in Afghanistan similar to the decades-old problem of undetonated land mines. Not only do they cause injury and death to civilians, they're colored an unfortunate yellow, the same color as the food packets that were initially dropped by the U.S.
Human Rights Watch is calling for a moratorium on the bombs like the one the Clinton administration authorized in Yugoslavia when similar problems occurred. The Pentagon has not agreed to the moratorium, says Hiltermann, but it is working to reduce the number of bomblets that fail to detonate.
Of course, the damage has been done at this point, and the cleanup will not be easy. In a country with the second highest number of landmines, says Hiltermann, the bomblets add even more work for a cleanup effort that could take decades — once a cease fire has lasted long enough for peace to get started.
Meanwhile, those looking to view the human cost of the war are at a loss for information. The number may have little significance from a human rights perspective, says Hiltermann, but he recognizes that the political significance could be great.
Daanish Mustafa, a geography professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, agrees that the political significance of the count is great. So is the lack of reported estimates. He regularly reads news accounts from papers in his native Pakistan and other foreign countries that seem more concerned with the casualties of the war on terrorism outside the United States, he says. The fact that the death tallies are mere estimates doesn't concern him, he says. Mustafa says he wants an idea of the magnitude of the destruction, not an unimpeachable number. The fact that the government's not talking and there's no outcry from the press demanding answers leaves him with the very impression that the government is trying to avoid: The lives of Afghans aren't worth as much as our own.
Contact Staff Writer Rochelle Renford at 813-248-8888, ext. 163 or rochelle. renford@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2002.