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How many Afghan civilians have died in 13 years of war

Evan BartlettOct 27, 2014

TL DR Up to 21 000 - but we will probably never know the true number

The last remaining British troops have now withdrawn from Camp Bastion, Helmand province, signalling the end of 13 years of UK involvement in the war in Afghanistan. While the deaths of the 453 British servicemen and women are well-documented, calculating the large civilian death-toll, not to mention those physically and mentally wounded, is much more difficult. For the early years of the war - which began in October 2001 - the majority of civilian casualty reports came from the press. The Guardian reported that as many as 20,000people could have died as a direct or indirect result of the invasion in the first year of conflict alone, using data from aid agencies. The LA Times, meanwhile, reported that something like 1,201 died in the first year of the conflict, but that excluded unverified reports of many more. Such stark differences in figures highlight the difficulty of verifying this type of data in a war zone. Later on in the war the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) sought to address this problem by collating figures into one central database. All the deaths they record are stringently verified.Keep reading...Show less

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