Pentagon silent on overall number of civilian deaths in 2 decades of Afghanistan occupation
Abdullah Amirzada
Press TV, Kabul
A recent report by the Pentagon says 12 civilians were killed in drone strikes during 2021 in Afghanistan.
Two were killed in separate airstrikes in Herat and Kandahar, and 10 members of a family in a drone operation in Kabul, just before the US withdrawal. Although General McKenzie admitted that the incident was a "mistake" but none of the US military forces went on trial for this attack.
The report also compares the number of casualties in 2021 and 2020. It shows there is a decrease, but those are not the only years the US was present in Afghanistan. The United States came to Afghanistan in 2001 and left the country in 2021. Armed drones were used by the US military from the beginning. Still there is no mention of the overall number of casualties in the report.
The exact number of casualties during the 20 years of the US occupation of Afghanistan is unknown, but statistics show a 330 percent increase in the figure since 2017, when the US military relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan. Another source estimates more than a thousand civilians have lost their lives in air raids, but that only includes the death toll from 2015 to 2020, which accounts for only 5 years of the US presence.
The survivors of US attacks never received proper compensation, and no American troops were duly tried for their wrongdoings in Afghanistan. The reason, as stated most of the time, was that investigations never found any violations of the law.
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