I am somewhat ashamed to have reacted instinctively to this news with a rather grim calculus:
In a semiannual report, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said the number of civilians wounded and killed in the conflict had increased by nearly a third, 31 percent, in the first six months of the year.
Seventy-six percent of the civilian casualties were attributable to “antigovernment elements,” the report said, using United Nations terminology for insurgents. That was an increase of 53 percent over the same period, Jan. 1 to June 30, in 2009, it added...
Since 2009, when the United States military made it a priority to reduce civilian casualties, the trend has been for far fewer of them to be caused by the military, and far more by the Taliban and other insurgents.
