Operations in Afghanistan

House of Commons Defence Select Committee Operations in Afghanistan Written Evidence This is a volume of submissions, relevant to the inquiry into Operations in Afghanistan, which have been reported to the House but not yet approved for publication in final form. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that it is not yet an approved final record of the written evidence received by the Committee. List of written evidence Page 1 Oxford Research Group (OPA 01) 1 2 Further written evidence from Oxford Research (OPA 02) 6 3 British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG) (OPA 04) 11 4 Henry Jackson Society (OPA 05) 30 5 The Boeing Company (OPA 06) 39 6 Ministry of Defence (OPA 07) 43 7 Professor Anthony King (OPA 08) 119 OPA 1 Written evidence from the Oxford Research Group Civilian casualties and the transparency of their reporting by ISAF Executive Summary • Oxford Research Group’s major recommendation is for the Committee to request that the British Government provide it with the information it holds on civilian casualties and, thereafter, release such information into the public sphere. • Oxford Research Group would like to emphasise the importance of the public release of such information by the ISAF and British Government. Only with the release of incident-based records of civilian casualties in Afghanistan can the British public understand the full costs, consequences and implications of our intervention and draw the correct lessons from the conflict situation. • Additional to the moral implications, it is crucial to appreciate the long-lasting effects of civilian deaths on the nature of a conflict and the influence it can have on current attitudes and behaviour on the ground. Contradictory statements and ambiguous figures can lead to cynicism and potentially fuel a toxic ‘politics of numbers’ where groups can choose the civilian casualty figure most suited to their political agenda. • Data released to the public regarding civilian casualties must be comprehensive, accurate, uniformly collected and carefully collated across all operations in Afghanistan and in wider theatres of operation. • There are many benefits to the release of civilian casualty data by the British government and ISAF forces, and no justifications for the concealment of such information from the public. • Documenting deaths with a focus on the individual fulfils the basic human rights of the deceased to have their deaths investigated and recorded, and the rights of the bereaved to be informed of the fates of their loved ones. It would also counteract the perception, both in Afghanistan and in Britain, that the ISAF and governments which control them have something to hide, or are indifferent to civilian casualties. • The benefits of releasing such data in a uniform and sensitive manner are increasingly being recognised by senior military personnel. The existing military operational structure would allow the details necessary to be included with minimal extra cost. • One possible objection to the publication of ‘raw’ data of individual identities and situations would be its potential security sensitivity. Oxford Research Group considers that in our world of electronic data, releases such as the recent Wikileaks publications are inevitable. It is in the power of governments to take control of the public issuance of civilian casualty data in ways that ensure the protection of individuals and operational safety. 1 1. Any assessment of civilian casualties, and the implications of these casualties for policy, strategy, and operations, must be based on accurate and comprehensive data. 2. This data needs to be provided in a consistent and uniform fashion over the entire extent of the conflict. 3. In the case of Afghanistan, such data needs to run from November 2001 (the date of the first military incursion by the UK and its allies) up to the present. Unfortunately, no such data exists, at least in a form that has ever been made public (See: Forest, R. & Dardagan, H. (2009) "Bold New Claims, No New Evidence: NATO’s ‘Avoidance’ of Civilian Harm Needs Measuring, Not Re-stating" NATO Watch Observatory, Issue 3, PDF attached). 4. There are many reasons why data for an entire conflict is needed. Paramount among these is the fact that the effects of civilian deaths on any population are extreme and long-lasting. Deaths caused decades ago, let alone years ago, can motivate current behaviour and attitudes on the ground, making it absolutely essential for comprehensive and detailed knowledge to be acquired about every death, no matter how long ago the death occurred. 5. Death is also a public fact in all societies and at all times. There is no long-term justification whatsoever for the non-release or concealment of the fact of any death or of the circumstances in which this death occurred. It is a fundamental human right for the deceased to have the fact and circumstances of his or her death investigated and acknowledged in the official record. The bereaved are also entitled to be provided with this information in relation to their deceased family member. 6. Further, non-release of information about deaths may be interpreted by local populations and others as an indication that the party withholding this data is either a guilty party with something to hide, or is indifferent to civilian suffering. This perception of ISAF forces and the governments which control them is detrimental to their stated aim of bringing long-lasting peace to Afghanistan. 7. We would argue that the above considerations give rise to an obligation for any organisation or individual in possession of facts pertaining to the cause or circumstance of any death to release these facts into the public domain at the soonest opportunity. Such facts should only be publicised if they do not put anyone in danger, and should follow immediate efforts to inform relatives. This is not only the morally correct thing to do, but in the interests of ISAF. 8. The necessity for transparency about civilian casualties is being increasingly recognised among senior military personnel. A strong case for this has recently been made in an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the “British Army Review” which has been co-authored by Oxford Research Group and a British Army Colonel. (See: Sloboda, J., Dardagan, H.& Iron, R. (2010) "In Everyone's Interest: Recording All the Dead, Not Just Our Own" British Army Review, Issue 149, PDF attached) 9. Oxford Research Group does not have the expertise or inside knowledge to specify in detail how the comprehensive collection and publication of civilian casualties would 2 be operationalised within ISAF, nor what the resource implications would be. Suffice it for these purposes to say that our military co-author is convinced that this can be done within existing operational and reporting structures, and at minimum extra cost. 10. Our chief concern lies with the nature of the data that needs to be collected and published to ensure that comprehensiveness and transparency can in fact be achieved. 11. The key issue which we would like to bring to the attention of the Committee in this respect is the need for public release of data at the level of specific violent events and individual victim. 12. Much of the data that is currently publicly available consists of aggregated numerical totals for particular categories of victim over particular time periods (e.g. ‘total’ deaths per month or year). 13. When, as is the case in this conflict, different agencies and organisations publish contradicting totals for the same periods, there is absolutely no method for resolving these contradictions and deciding where the correct data lies. This leads to a state of affairs in which many people, with some justification, come to the view that none of the sources are reliable or even meaningful. Or even worse, people simply believe whatever figure best suits their prejudices or political agendas, with the result that these competing figures fuel an unhelpful and potentially toxic “politics of numbers”. 14. The only way to resolve these issues is to put into the public domain distinct components of the raw data from which total figures are derived, so that different data sources may be compared on an incident-by-incident or death-by-death basis. 15. The primary points of information needed to do this do this job effectively are simple and straightforward: (a) Number killed (b) Number wounded (c) Identity and demographics of victims when available (d) Date and time of incident (e) Geographic location of incident (f) Weapons involved (g) Identity or affiliation of those doing the killing (if known) 16. One possible objection to the release of raw data, particularly data collected and held by ISAF military forces, is that it may put information of potential military sensitivity into the public domain. This can include, among other things, the identity of informants. 17. Such concerns have recently come to the fore in relation to the release on 26th July 2010 of a set of US Afghanistan military logs by the organisation Wikileaks, a release which has met with censure from governments and some human rights organisations for failure to redact all sensitive information contained within these logs. 3 18. Our response to this issue would be that in an age of massive collection and circulation of electronic data, leaks of this kind are inevitable. It would therefore be in the interest of the governments concerned to take charge of the safe release of the information pertaining directly to civilian casualties contained in these logs. Absolutely NO sensitive information needs to accompany the data required for victim identification or the data needed for verification and cross-checking listed in paragraph 15., above. 19.

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