10 charts to understand the crisis in Afghanistan
Conflict data and maps since 1989 highlight the responsibilities, war strategies and consequences that brought the Taliban back to power today and caused a decade-long humanitarian crisis
(Photo by Wali Sabawoon / NurPhoto via Getty Images) instability in Afghanistan have deep roots. By cross-referencing the data from various research institutes, it is possible to reconstruct the various phases of the conflict starting from 1989, when, after a quagmire that lasted ten years, the Soviet Union decided to abandon the region, leaving it in a situation that is basically not very different from the current one. A story that the map below photographs from 1989 to 2019.The phases of the clashes
var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1629438723989'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '669px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);This map uses data from the Uppsala conflict data program, a Swedish research institute, which collects data from authoritative sources of information (Bbc, Reuters, field operators ...) trying to reconstruct the dynamics of conflicts . However, the dataset did not include all aspects, such as operations conducted by special forces. Either way, it is a reliable record for reconstructing the history of the fighting in Afghanistan.
Clicking on the Other item and selecting the period between 1989 and 2001, one can observe how the first phase of the withdrawal of the Soviet Union led to generalized and bloody clashes, especially between 1994 and 1996. In that two years the Taliban conquered Afghanistan for the first time. The conflict was concentrated around the capital Kabul, in the east of the country.
Scrolling the horizontal bar to touch the post-September 11 period, from the map it seems that Western occupation never took place, in terms of conflicts on the ground. This is because the war in that period was above all a business of commandos and aerial bombings, in some cases impossible to census using public sources.
Something has changed since 2003. When Allied troops start operating out of Kabul, things get complicated. The purple and yellow dots around the mountains in the center of the country show just how the conflict has moved from the capital to the more peripheral areas of Afghanistan as part of the NATO ISAF mission (the Italians were entrusted with the Herat area, in the west of Country).
This development has contributed to making violence an endemic and growing condition. Since 2014, before NATO ceases combat activities, more and more signs of activity by the Taliban and the Afghan army appear on the map. A striking aspect in the next graph, which measures the number of encounters on a monthly level over the past 25 years.
The escalation since 1996
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The temperature has been warming since 2004, with the first years of the presidency of Hamid Karzai (first Afghan leader after the first defeat of the Taliban). The violence continues to escalate in the following years. Afghanistan seems to find some peace soon after Bin Laden's death, but since NATO decides to stop the fighting in 2014, the violence has grown almost exponentially.
The US strategy
var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1629304692646'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '577px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);This graph compares the number of deaths in conflicts in Afghanistan estimated by the Uppsala conflict data program and US presidential mandates. The number of deaths begins to rise from the second term of George W. Bush and the peak is reached in the years of Donald Trump.
Osama Bin Laden is killed in May 2011. The data suggests that, at that point, the US government sought an exit strategy from Afghanistan, neglecting its stability. This trend accelerates in 2013 when the historic leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, is killed (in the White House there was Barack Obama). The violence has never stopped. The data of the Uppsala conflict data program stop at 2019. The most recent information comes from a research institute called Acled which collects every event (violent or not) of every clash in the world. The next map shows what happened between January 2020 and July 2021, two weeks before the Taliban recapture of Kabul.
The return of the Taliban
var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1629305080932') ; var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '587px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);The map shows how the dispute between the Afghan government and the Taliban has been without quarter over the past two years. The Afghan army has become the scapegoat for the incumbent US president, Joe Biden, and there is probably some truth in the fact that the armed forces of the legitimate government of Kabul could have done more. However Afghanistan until a few days ago had, for example, an air force that it used extensively for the past twenty-four months.
The violence has escalated since Donald Trump signed the milestone of the last phase of the conflict, the infamous Doha agreement.
The effects of the Doha agreement
var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1629306724785'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '587px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);In Doha, under the auspices of the Emir of Qatar, on February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement on the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan that did not include the Afghan government. This graph clearly shows how in the aftermath of the signing of the agreement, violence has reached the lowest level of the last two years. The problem is that, since March 2020, the monthly clashes have increased until July, when they have come very close to the peak.
Although the violence has dropped last month, the dotted line of the graph, which measures the general trend, suggests that the trend, net of monthly variations, is increasing. The dramatic developments of the last few weeks confirm this. After signing the deal with the United States, the Taliban felt entitled to take the lead as Washington curtailed its activities.
Focus on drones and aerial warfare
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What emerges is the continuity between the policies of Barack Obama and that of Donald Trump. In particular, Obama's Republican successor has made the role of drones in the conflict even more central. Because? The next graph may offer some explanation.
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The blue line shows the maximum estimate of people killed by air attacks, the red area, on the other hand, the number of attacks recorded. This number drops dramatically ahead of February 29, 2020, when the Trump administration signs the Doha agreement. The peak of attacks, however, is reached in September 2019. Around that time, Trump broke off talks with the Taliban after an attack on Kabul.
We'll probably never know if Donald Trump actually used drone strikes as a tool for persuading the Taliban, although the data makes this an explanation worth considering.
In map on the drones shows a figure: how many deaths between civilians and children this new type of aerial warfare, based on drones and piloted planes, has caused. Indeed, drones (along with everything else) have helped fuel a humanitarian crisis that has few equals. In Afghanistan, refugees represent a figure close to 10% of a population of 40 million people.
The humanitarian crisis
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Since 2009, the European border agency Frontex has registered just under 500,000 arrivals of migrants from Afghanistan. Most of them used the eastern Mediterranean route, risking their lives between Turkey and Greece. The Afghan migratory waves slightly anticipated that of new refugees, with the peak of migrants registered by the European Union customs agency reached in October 2015.
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So Frontex recorded 66,000 arrivals to Europe from Afghanistan. Since then, the flows have remained stable for almost five years and the figure returns to growth in the autumn of 2019, as Afghanistan plunged into the chaos that led it to the last, dramatic results of these days.
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Topics
Afghanistan Europe Migrants United States Terrorism globalData.fldTopic = "Afghanistan, Europe, Migrants, United States, Terrorism "
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