The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

Abstract

Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. We study these questions by using uniquely-detailed micro-data from Afghanistan and Iraq to assess the impact of civilian casualties on insurgent violence. By comparing the data along temporal, spatial, and gender dimensions we are able to distinguish short-run 'information' and 'capacity' effects from the longer run 'recruiting' and 'revenge' effects. In Afghanistan we find strong evidence for a revenge effect in that local exposure to ISAF generated civilian casualties drives increased insurgent violence over the long-run. Matching districts with similar past trends in violence shows that counterinsurgent-generated civilian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for 6 additional violent incidents in an average sized district in the following 6 weeks. There is no evidence of short run effects in Afghanistan, thus ruling out the information and the capacity mechanisms. Critically, we find no evidence of a similar reaction to civilian casualties in Iraq, suggesting insurgents? mobilizing tools may be quite conflict-specific. Our results show that if counterinsurgent forces in Afghanistan wish to minimize insurgent recruitment, they must minimize harm to civilians despite the greater risk this entails. ABSTRACTHow are insurgents able to mobilize the population to fight and withhold valuable information from government forces? More specifically, what role does government mistreatment of non-combatants play? We study these questions by using uniquely-detailed micro-data from Afghanistan and Iraq to assess the impact of civilian casualties on insurgent violence. By comparing the data along temporal, spatial, and gender dimensions we are able to distinguish short-run 'information' and 'capacity' effects from the longer run 'recruiting' and 'revenge' effects. In Afghanistan we find strong evidence for a revenge effect in that local exposure to ISAF generated civilian casualties drives increased insurgent violence over the long-run. Matching districts with similar past trends in violence shows that counterinsurgent-generated civilian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for 6 additional violent incidents in an average sized district in the following 6 weeks. There is no evidence of shor...

Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians, 2003–2008: Analysis by Perpetrator, Weapon, Time, and Location

“…Although we show in Table 4 unreported demographic data for readers' information (civilian victims of unreported age, children of unreported sex, and in the footnote, adults of unreported sex), assessment for bias in reporting demographic information requires knowing the true demographic composition of the unknowns within this dataset, or comparison to a matched, independent dataset of comparable detail. A study using the IBC database found no media-reporting bias for governorates with higher levels of insurgent violence to have any more, or less, missing information on event location, but missing demographic information was not examined [47]. It has been established that media reports can provide systematic, meaningful data on conflict casualties [1],[7],[10],[11],[34],[48]–[50].…”

War and Revenge: Explaining Conflict Initiation by Democracies

“…Much of this research has been done in other fields, but some recent studies in political science have explored revenge as a motive for violence in civil conflicts (Balcells 2010;Condra et al 2010). These studies, however, do not investigate cross-national variation in attitudes about revenge and instead treat revenge as a characteristic of individuals only, either as a psychological mechanism that motivates the resort to violence or else as a mobilization tool used by elites to recruit participants for violence.…”

Opium for the Masses? Conflict-Induced Narcotics Production in Afghanistan

“…As this would only give us two years of relevant data, we have chosen not to employ these data. Studies employing the data on civilian causalities include Condra et al (2010) and Berman et al (2011). The CIDNE data, leaked through WikiLeaks, list violent encounters in the period 2004 to 2009, hence partially overlapping our sample.…”