Tracking Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan - Essay Example

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The following analysis will seek to engage the reader with an overall discussion that helps to elaborate upon the usefulness of these statistics, whether or not they might be utilized in further forms of analysis, the potential that exists for them to be much higher than is being represented, and interpretation of why all of these compliments necessarily matter. Through such a level of discussion and engagement, it is the hope of this author that the reader will be able to come to a more informed and definitive level of understanding with respect to civilian deaths within Afghanistan and the manner through which such representative data is utilized in the future.
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the data that was represented did not start tracking the deaths caused by IEDs or suicide attacks until 2009; fully two years after the analysis was begun. This was a fundamental oversight; however, an even larger oversight was with regards to the fact that the overall civilian death toll with respect to drone strikes was not measured until 2012 (Zenko, 2014). As anyone even remotely familiar with the conflict in Afghanistan note, the lion’s share of coalition attacks over the past several years in Afghanistan have been predicated upon the backbone of drone strikes as the primary delivery mechanism. In such a way, not having representative statistics that began at the time in which the study was engaged does not provide the user with an accurate description of the way in which civilian deaths have been represented within Afghanistan during the time period in question. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More