Counting Conflict: Quantifying Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan

Abstract:Civilian casualty counts are products of specific methods, epistemologies, standards of proofs, and definitions. This article analyzes how the US military and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan assess civilian casualties. These counts are based on different and contestable concepts of who counts as a civilian, what counts as conflict violence, and what counts of evidence of civilian casualties. We illustrate this argument with four examples: the distinction between direct and indirect deaths, the boundary between civilians and non-civilians, the boundary between conflict violence and criminal violence, and hierarchies in the visibility of civilians.