The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

How are insurgents able to mobilize the population to fight and withhold valuable information from government forces More specifically, what role does government mistreatment of non-combatants play We study these questions by using uniquely-detailed micro-data from Afghanistan and Iraq to assess the impact of civilian casualties on insurgent violence. By comparing the data along temporal, spatial, and gender dimensions we are able to distinguish short-run information and capacity effects from the longer run recruiting and revenge effects. In Afghanistan we find strong evidence for a revenge effect in that local exposure to ISAF generated civilian casualties drives increased insurgent violence over the long-run. Matching districts with similar past trends in violence shows that counterinsurgent-generated civilian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for 6 additional violent incidents in an average sized district in the following 6 weeks. There is no evidence of short run effects in Afghanistan, thus ruling out the information and the capacity mechanisms. Critically, we find no evidence of a similar reaction to civilian casualties in Iraq, suggesting insurgents mobilizing tools may be quite conflict-specific. Our results show that if counterinsurgent forces in Afghanistan wish to minimize insurgent recruitment, they must minimize harm to civilians despite the greater risk this entails.