In the line of fire

In the line of fire

Armed conflicts worldwide disproportionately affect civilians in terms of deaths, injuries, displacement and lifetime psychological trauma.

Men carry a coffin of one of the victims after a drone strike, in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan Sept 19, 2019. (Reuters file photo)
Men carry a coffin of one of the victims after a drone strike, in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan Sept 19, 2019. (Reuters file photo)

One day in September, while they were resting after a day's labour in the fields, 30 civilians were killed by a US drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State hideout in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.

There were no terrorists or hideouts in sight. The farmers, who had been gathering pine nuts, were "accidentally" targeted. They were among the hundreds of civilians killed or wounded this year in Afghanistan, where the United Nations reports a big increase in casualties inflicted by government and US-led foreign forces.

Given all the advances in weaponry and intelligence gathering, precision targeting systems and satellite reconnaissance, one might think that such "accidents" should no longer happen in modern warfare. But collateral damage is still being caused by both state and non-state agents almost every day in conflict zones, where most of the people being killed are not soldiers, they are civilians.

The result is a disproportionately high number of deaths and injuries, long-term psychological impacts, and large-scale destruction of homes and displacement, further exacerbating the global migration crisis. Asia Pacific has not ben spared, with explosive violence and its consequences especially prevalent in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Philippines in recent years.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity, estimates that over half a million people are killed by armed conflict annually. Around two-thirds of these deaths occurred outside conflict sites.

"Between 2011 and 2018, we looked at English-language media reports around the world … in that period we found 22,000 explosive violence incidents globally," Iain Overton, an investigative journalist and executive director of AOAV, told participants at the Vienna Conference on Protecting Civilians in Urban Warfare last month.

Hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, the event gathered 600 delegates from 133 countries.

"This harm, as we've heard, mainly impacts civilians. In total, we found something in the region of 310,000 people killed or injured," said Mr Overton. "Of these, in both populated and lesser populated areas, 75% were civilians and this constituted almost 83,000 civilians killed and 150,000 wounded."

The numbers, he said, are just "the tip of a much wider harm" since AOAV only used English-language media sources.

When explosive weapons were used in populated areas, 90% of those killed and injured were civilians, compared to 20% in other areas, it said.

State use of explosive violence caused 15,654 deaths and injuries in 2018, according to records gathered by AOAV. Of these 64%, or 10,040, were civilians. That figure is only slightly lower than the 10,716 civilian deaths attributed to non-state actors such as terrorists and militants.

The 10 most affected countries and territories in 2018 were Syria with 9,587 civilian casualties, followed by Afghanistan (4,260), Yemen (1,807), Iraq (1,508), Pakistan (1,215), Somalia (832), Nigeria (726), Libya (392), India (322) and the Philippines (192).

'AGE OF THE IED'

"Of this harm, the division of impact is roughly 50% from manufactured weapons and around 50% from improvised explosive devices," Mr Overton said. "We certainly live in the age of the IED. We live in the age of the suicide bomber."

Around a quarter of the harm from manufactured weapons is caused by air-launched systems and around a fifth from ground-launched weaponry. Of all the civilian deaths recorded since 2011, over a third are by air strikes. After suicide bombers, air strikes are the second most lethal form of explosive weapon harm that the organisation has recorded.

"When air-launched weapons are used in a town and city, they collapse buildings, they devastate communities, and 90% of the casualties that we have seen in populated areas from air strikes are civilians," said Mr Overton. "This is a predictable and repeated harm."

At the same time, 93% of casualties from ground-launched weapons such as Howitzers in towns and cities are civilians, accounting for around 18% of the 83,000 civilian deaths in conflict zones over the past eight years.

Mr Overton noted that from 2011 to 2018, 60% of all explosive incidents occurred in cities and towns, resulting in 90% of all civilian casualties. "So it is not as if war is being taken to the countryside. War is being fought in urban areas."

The usual targets are urban residential areas such as flats along with markets and places of worship. Many cities in conflict zones around the world are left with pockmarked signs from shrapnel, destroyed bridges and terrible infrastructure, particularly along the front lines: no more homes, no food, no water, no sanitation, no electricity, no jobs, and no school.

"These places now stand derelict and it is a scar on the conscience of community that lives there," said Mr Overton, who has been to 25 war zones.

DEVELOPMENT DEFICIT

The five-month siege of Marawi in the Philippines two years is a prime example of the devastation caused by explosive weapons in populated areas. The slow and difficult process of rehabilitating the area underscores the development deficit, said Sara Sekkenes, UN resident coordinator in Laos, who works with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on armed violence prevention.

The Philippine army declared an end to the siege of Marawi on Oct 23, 2017. The most sustained active combat in the country since World War II killed 924 fighters from the Islamic State-linked Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups, 168 government troops and a conservative estimate of 114 civilians.

The conflict destroyed large swathes of the city, which now known as "Ground Zero" by locals. Gunfights along with artillery and air strikes forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. Among the civilian casualties, an undisclosed number of deaths occurred in emergency shelters and health facilities due to pneumonia, sepsis and complications from acute gastroenteritis, the Philippine Department of Health said.

"The bombardment of Marawi took a heavy toll on infrastructure and private property while danger still litters the battlefield," said Ms Sekkenes. "At the height of the fighting, government warplanes dropped bombs on rebel position but many failed to detonate."

Two years after the siege, most of the civilians who left their devastated homes are still leaving in tent camps on the outskirts of the city. The UN verified 56 attacks on schools, education personnel and healthcare facilities during the siege.

Yet two years on, "very little has been achieved" in terms of restoring the city to what it was, says Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, also the opposition leader.

"The displaced locals are still lamenting the pace of the rehabilitation, as well as the government's failure to involve them in the planning," Ms Robredo told Al Jazeera two weeks ago.

More than 100,000 people, or half of Marawi's population, were still living in temporary government-built shelters as of last month, she said.

Her bleak assessment is disputed by Eduardo del Rosario, who heads the government task force in charge of rehabilitating Marawi. He said the recovery timetable is still "on track".

By the end of November, he said, debris clearing in most of the affected areas will be completed, which will "pave the way for the reconstruction of all vertical projects and government infrastructure which will commence in November or December this year and onward". The task force has recovered 625 explosives thus far.

Work is expected to start soon on the construction of 109 new permanent housing units for displaced people. UN-Habitat has promised another 1,500 permanent shelter units and 50 have been secured so far. The National Housing Authority plans to build two five-storey low-rise buildings and one three-storey multi-purpose building in the area.

"We have been saying that we are on-track and we will complete the rehabilitation of Marawi by December 2021," said Mr del Rosario.

However, the large-scale displacement of farmers and loss of crops, as well as destruction of schools, hospitals and markets, has hurt the region's economic prospects, according to the Asian Development Bank. It estimated total damages and losses from the Marawi siege at US$348 million in November last year, with agriculture and trading services the most severely hit.

The ADB has estimated that the number of people below the poverty line could increase by 150,000 because of the magnitude of the damage in Marawi, the destruction of public infrastructure and services, and the high share of families that were already vulnerable before the conflict.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

The Vienna Conference drew widespread support for developing an international political declaration to prevent and reduce harm resulting from bombing and shelling in towns and cities, including civilian deaths and injury, destruction of infrastructure and essential services, psychological trauma and displacement.

"We have no intention to ban these explosive weapons, it's just how they are used," said Thomas Hajnoczi, director for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation with the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs.

"When you use a weapon that has a destructive perimeter of a football field, and you do this over a market, you know exactly that you will kill many civilians."

Another meeting is scheduled for Nov 18 in Geneva to discuss the text of an international declaration, which could be finalised in the spring of 2020. So far, 80 countries have voiced support for the declaration, including Belgium, Canada, Lesotho, Nicaragua and the Philippines.

"We do not need new laws, we cannot ban weapons in these conflicts. But how they are used, that's a political decision and a political declaration might be the best tool to make progress," Mr Hajnoczi said.

"The idea is to focus the attention on this issue and come up with a list of activities of what should be done, and then of course, we must do it.

"There could be military-to-military dialogue in terms of best practices and it is about self-restraint, reviewing military policy, training, data collection and victim assistance. There are many things that could be done."

Kathleen Lawand, head of the Arms Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also recommends that states adopt a "presumption" against use of EWIPA (explosive weapons in populated areas).

These weapons include munitions with a large blast and fragmentation range; inaccurate delivery systems such as unguided missiles; and weapon systems delivering explosives over a large area. Weapons have to be carefully selected based on the target and its environment, she said, adding that armed forces receive proper training on urban warfare.

Apart from existing international humanitarian law, which is the primary source of rules that deal with the protection of civilians in times of armed conflict, no other rules have been discussed.

As well, no additional sanctions or other forms of punishment against states that have been contributing to most of the civilian deaths from EWIPA were discussed at the Vienna Conference.

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