Protecting civilians in Afghanistan: a double-edged sword

With Trump’s recent ban on all refugees coming into the US, the plight of 1600 Afghan refugees eligible for resettlement – under promises made by both the Biden and previous Trump administration – has been back in the news.

They are the lucky ones. During the recent 20-year war, which ended with the Taliban taking control in August 2021, around 47,000 Afghan civilians were killed, and the toll could have been much higher, says conflict expert Dr Thomas Gregory from the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Arts and Education.

“Increasingly throughout the counterinsurgency, avoiding ‘unnecessary’ civilian casualties became an important aspect of the international coalition’s military strategy,” he says.

Gregory focuses on this aspect of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)’s operation in the country, what happened as result, and some of the ethical issues at stake in his comprehensive new book Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press).

At the height of the conflict, there were more than 130,000 NATO troops on the ground, with 3,621 coalition troops killed in action and 70,000 from the Afghan Security Forces, as well as 444 aid workers and 72 journalists.

The book includes extensive research – from numerous declassified documents – into how the war was conducted on the coalition side (led by the US, but including the UK, Canada, Norway, Italy and New Zealand) and includes interviews with former top US generals like David Petraeus and John Allen.

Gregory says the interesting thing about prioritising civilian protection, which became a clear coalition focus, especially after various US-led raids and drone attacks that caused high civilian death tolls, is that in conflict zones, it’s often thought to run counter to military necessity.

“But what we increasingly saw as the war progressed is that the US generals in the field came to believe civilian protection was integral to mission success, a vital ingredient in the quest to win the war.”

He says this approach was possibly in response to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) – which has since been displaced by the Taliban – threatening to restrict coalition operations in protest, while high civilian casualties were also blamed for waning international support for the conflict.

However, he says, Afghan civilian lives were never valued for their own sake.

“Various proclamations on civilian protection were not a sign that Afghan lives were less losable, or that their deaths were more grievable, but evidence that the coalition saw civilian casualties as a problem that needed to be managed in order to prevail in the battle for hearts and minds.”

Gregory’s detailed account of the many incidents throughout the long conflict are grimly divided into bombing and airstrikes, shooting and night raids, body counts and the coalition practice of apologising for civilian deaths and financially compensating the bereaved families, who had most often lost their breadwinner; the latter being something that hadn’t been common practice before then.

He says it’s clear that in any war, reframing civilian casualties as strategic setbacks rather than collateral damage might well lead to less violent outcomes in certain conflicts, but it doesn’t follow that civilian lives have therefore been recognised as worthy of protection, or that “their claim against death and destruction” will be honoured.

“Instead, I’ve suggested that seeing civilian casualties as a problem that needs to be managed continues to devalue, degrade, and dehumanise the civilian population, exposing them to a cynical calculation that is willing to not only tolerate, but bring about their deaths in certain situations; leaving them more vulnerable to death and destruction in future conflicts.”

However, he concedes, at least trying to avoid killing people, regardless of the reason, is always better than not, and grieving and apologising for their deaths as well as offering compensation, better than nothing at all.

“Affirming that civilian lives are grievable should encourage a more compassionate disposition towards them in death, but one hopes, it should also cultivate a less violent disposition towards them in life.”

Gregory hopes the book will be useful to people interested in understanding how wartime killing is rendered both possible and permissible, especially humanitarian organisations working to defend civilians from wartime harm.

He says several militaries are now reviewing their policies on civilian protection.

“And I want to ensure that it’s the civilian population, rather than operational imperatives, that are prioritised.

Gregory concludes that Afghan civilians were “neither collateral damage, nor strategic setbacks”.

“These innocent people did not deserve to die, and should not have been killed, no matter how carefully the violence was calibrated, and no matter what was done to make amends.”

Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Thomas Gregory will be published in hardback on 15 February 2025.