War & Health

Benini, Aldo A, and Lawrence H Moulton. 2004. “Civilian Victims in an Asymmetrical Conflict: Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan.” Journal of Peace Research 41(4):403-422. [Download Data Here]

This dataset on Afghan towns and villages exposed to hostilities after 11 September 2001 is the by-product of a landmine and UXO contamination assessment. The assessment, with a view to creating an inventory of freshly contaminated sites for rapid clearance purposes, was done by the Afghan NGO Mine Clearance Planning Agency (MCPA) with the help of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), an advocacy and victim assistance organization in humanitarian mine action (Benini & Donahue, 2003).

In spring and early summer 2002, MCPA interviewer teams visited all communities suspected to have been subject to airstrikes or ground operations during Operation Enduring Freedom. These communities - villages or urban neighborhoods - had been nominated by provincial administrations and by neighboring communities; moreover, MCPA had access to coalition airstrike imprints. The teams visited 747 suspect communities, among which exactly 600 were determined to have had at least one airstrike or ground operation. These affected communities were scattered in 102 districts in 25 of the 32 provinces.

In each community confirmed exposed to post-9/11 hostilities, a team would conduct an interview, using a modular questionnaire, with a small group of local key informants. These groups, variable in size and composition, would share information on dates and types of hostilities, prewar and current population, old and new contaminated areas and broad types of munitions, types and numbers of property damaged or destroyed, and finally, victims. Victim numbers were elicited, broken down in several dimensions - by age and sex, cause (direct violence vs. landmine and unexploded ordnance strikes), outcome (deaths and injuries) - as well as two periods of time. Counts were requested of all who had come to harm between 11 September 2001 and the date of survey - a 9-month period on average. Retrospective counts were requested for the period of 12 months prior to 9/11. No attempt was made to attribute the violence that caused these victims to any specific parties to the conflict. Before leaving the community, teams took GPS (Global Positioning System) measurements of the coordinates of a central location such as its mosque.