Afghan Civilian Casualties Tripled After Mattis Changed Rules of Engagement, Says Brown University Report

The Costs of War Project at Brown University issued a report yesterday which calculates that due to changes in the rules of engagement for U.S. air strikes authorized by then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis in 2017, civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose by 330% from 2017 through 2019. “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 report says. “The data demonstrates that, compared to the previous 10 years, there was a 95% 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. In 2018 alone, 3,800 Afghan civilians were killed by airstrikes.” To be clear, the 330% figure refers to all sources of violence, including the Taliban, whereas the 95% figure refers only to U.S. air strikes. U.S. Central Command stopped releasing data on U.S. air strikes in March 2020, following the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement of the month before, so there’s very little information about civilian casualties resulting from such strikes since then. At the same time, however, the air war staged by the Afghan Air Force intensified. According to the UN mission in Afghanistan, civilian casualties resulting from Afghan Air Force air strikes tripled during the first six months of 2020 compared to the same period a year earlier.