UN report says 100,000 Afghans have died in the last 10 years

More than 10,000 civilians were killed or injured in armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2019, the United Nations said Saturday.

According to a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the total number of casualties in the past decade is over 100,000. The report comes amid an agreed seven-day reduction of violence between the US and the Taliban, which is expected to pave the way for an end to the 18-year war.

According to the report, 3,493 civilians were killed and 6,989 were injured in 2019. A high number of civilians became casualties in the clashes of the armed forces in the war. The report also finds a 21% increase in civilian casualties by the Taliban and an 18% rise in casualties blamed on US-backed Afghan forces who dropped more bombs last year than in any year since 2013.

Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN special representative for Afghanistan said that “almost no civilian in Afghanistan has escaped being personally affected in some way by the ongoing violence”.

The report, however, found that in 2019, the Taliban took “positive steps” investigating allegations of recruitment of children by their commanders.

Last week, Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani said a proper announcement on a US-Taliban deal will be made in a week to ten days. The Afghan government has so far demanded to be more involved in the US-Taliban peace talks in Doha, but the Taliban have rejected the idea, as they do not recognize the government.

Analysts say that the most difficult part would be the intra-Afghan negotiations as Kabul still struggles to come up with a unified position opposite the Taliban. Both Germany and Norway have offered to host the negotiations, that are to begin around 10 March, but a venue has still not been chosen.