On August 3, 2010, New America Foundation hosted a panel featuring Jacob Shapiro as well as Erin Simpson, Brian Katulis, and Sarah Holewinski on Rules of War: The Impact of Civilian Casualties on Violence in Afghanistan. Brian Fishman, Research Fellow for New America’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative moderated the event. Jacob Shapiro, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, presented his research and conclusions on the affects of civilian causalities and violence. He used mathematical and statistical methods of analysis to interpret the data provided by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and come to his conclusions. He also compared the civilian casualties in Iraq to those in Afghanistan. Among his many findings, he found that there were about three times as many civilian casualties in Iraq than there were in Afghanistan, that insurgents in Afghanistan killed about nine times as many civilians as foreign troops, and that violence in one district in Afghanistan does not affect the violence in surrounding districts.

Erin Simpson, a member of the Counterinsurgency Advisory Team, a part of the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force, commented on how she liked the data analysis Shapiro used. She noted that social science and computer science should be utilized together more when analyzing events.

Sarah Holewinski, Executive Director for Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict (CIVIC), brought up how Afghans want the number of civilian casualties to decrease. Afghans have, she stated, higher expectations from the West than from the Taliban regarding the number of civilian deaths. She also pointed out how the Taliban tried to issue a code of conduct to reduce its impact on civilians, although they did not follow through with their code. She stated that a low number of civilian deaths creates legitimacy, which then puts pressure on non-state actors to change their ways as well.

Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow for the Center for American Progress, discussed how we also need to keep in mind an important question: are our actions keeping Americans safe? He noted that we do not want to have an imbalanced national security strategy.