The politics of (not) counting: why war on terror’s civilian toll matters

Lieutenant-General Curtis M. Scaparrotti also claimed: “… any civilian loss of life is detrimental to the coalition’s cause. Avoiding civilian casualties must be a top priority and it must be at the forefront of all mission planning and execution.”

The U.S. Department of the Army even put together a report focusing on ways of limiting the harm caused to civilians and the harm civilian casualties cause to the mission. One key recommendation from this report, and others, is that all non-combatant deaths should be “aggregated in a standardized database” so they can be tracked, monitored and investigated.

The rationale for this is clear. A detailed “battle damage assessment” enables the military to respond to allegations in a swift and thorough manner, mitigating the negative effects it will have on public perceptions.

Also, tracking and monitoring the deaths of civilians allows the military to identify lessons to be learnt and adjust military operations accordingly. In this respect, Terry’s recent refusal to track civilian casualties represents a radical departure from established military protocol.

A step backwards?
Framing civilian casualties as “strategic setbacks” is still clearly problematic. It might appear that the lives of ordinary people matter, but it is important to recognize that they only matter to the extent that they might impinge upon the success of military operations. Civilian casualties were only counted because they were considered counterproductive.

By objectifying them in this manner, the civilian population was simply co-opted into a strategic economy focused on winning the war rather than waging it more humanely. Their deaths were not mourned because they were recognized as genuine losses, but regretted because they undermined the success of military operations. Also, the idea that wars can be fought in a more humane and less violent manner has the paradoxical effect of hiding much of the pain and suffering caused.

Nevertheless, it is true that as the rules of engagement tightened and non-combatant deaths were monitored more closely, civilian casualties decreased.

In this respect, the announcement that the United States is not counting the dead in the battle against IS is a step backwards. Not only does it reinforce the view that the lives of ordinary Iraqis and Syrians are not counted because they do not matter, it flies in the face of the military’s own recommendations about the strategic importance of tracking civilian casualties.

As well as being questionable on moral grounds, the refusal to count civilian casualties could be seen as a strategic mistake on the military’s own terms — fanning the flames of resentment in a region already in the midst of a violent war.

Tom Gregory is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at University of Auckland. Alex Edney-Browne is Research Assistant at University of Auckland. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives.