The UN mission to Afghanistan published a ‘comprehensive’ report on suicide attacks, i am presenting you part of it here and then comparing it with an instructive article by Mike Davis. You can access UN full report here.
No doubt that suicide attacks inflict civilian causalities but NATO bombardment according to davis inflicts even greater casualties. Nato bombing is more frequent than suicide therefore it has caused a greater number of civilian causality, yet the UN has published no report on details of Nato bombardment. The report says alleged 173 people were killed by suicide attacks during 2006 while U.S. and NATO attacks killed at least 350 innocent civilians. I mention this because the report emphasizes on human rights aspect of the attacks, the report says “The impact of suicide attacks ranges far beyond the death of the immediate victim. They strike fear into the heart of the population, killing and maiming innocent civilians and limiting their enjoyment of basic human rights. Children are particularly affected, especially Afghan girls, who already struggle to realise their rights. Afghan victims express complete incomprehension at the decision of suicide attackers: “It was like they tried to kill the children.” In the aftermath of attacks, unexpected medical fees and psychological trauma compound families’ losses”
The UN report talks about the targets of the suicide attacks and it goes on “Employed by the Taliban as a military technique, suicide bombing – paradoxically – has had little military success in Afghanistan. While 76 percent of all suicide missions target international and Afghan military, the greatest impact of suicide bombings has been on civilian bystanders and the Afghan people as a whole. A total of 183 Afghans – 121 of whom were civilians – were killed in suicide bombings in the first half of 2007.” This is while the admittedly incomplete data set indicates that Afghan civilian casualties account for some 65 per cent of suicide car bomb attack victims (contrary to the numbers - 84 per cent - bandied about by the occupation forces). U.S./North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military personnel accounted for about 17 per cent of the car bomb deaths. The relative accuracy of the car bomb is further enhanced insofar as many of the reported car bomb attacks succeeded in injuring members of the U.S./NATO forces. Sometimes, the target of the suicide attackers is a high-profile Afghan foe as in the March 12, 2006, suicide attack in Kabul, which killed two civilians but succeeded in wounding the target, former Afghan President Sibghatullah Mujaddedi.
Suicide car bomb attacks are typically carried out in civilian-rich areas (as Table 1 indicates), and as such inflict death and injury upon innocent bystanders. In order to make a comparison with civilian casualties caused by the U.S.' "precision bombing", one must choose U.S./NATO bombing attacks carried out in a comparable universe, namely civilian-rich areas.
The UN report asks itself who are the suicide bombers and then it goes on for two pages to answer the question. The only thing I understood out of it was “in Afghanistan many of the suicide attackers are poor, undereducated or uneducated, and often recruited from religious schools (madaris). The distinctive background of these suicide attackers may be due to historical and idiosyncratic reasons”
The report talks about targets and it says “While the international military remains the greatest target, it suffers by far the least casualties. Conversely, softer governance and civilian targets suffer the highest casualties but are only targets in 24 percent of the incidents. While Afghans as a whole may not have been the primary target in 2007, they still constituted 183 deaths in the first six months of the year. Taliban propaganda continues to communicate that the “US” and the “foreign invaders” are their primary target, but these claims are not supported by the data.”
The UN along with US and international media highlight the random death and violence resulting from suicide car bombs. But if you match these claims with the data available from the Afghan war theatre and demonstrate that under plausible assumptions exactly the reverse is true: a U.S. precision bomb is far more deadly to Afghan civilians than a Taliban suicide car bomb when adjustment is made for the differing delivery cost of each. After all, one of the major justifications for precision weaponry is that the increased costs to develop and produce such weapons are worthwhile as they allegedly save lives of innocents in proximity to the strike target - greater precision is allegedly being purchased. Such large development and delivery expenses are simply out of reach of most. Mike Davis has argued that the car bomb is the "poor man's air force".
SUICIDE BOMBING IN Lashkar Gah's market area on August 28 killed 15 civilians as well as the target, a former provincial police chief who also owned the market, and his son.
