KABUL, Afghanistan — Last year was the most lethal for Afghan civilians since the American-led war began here in late 2001, with the Taliban and other insurgent groups causing the vast majority of noncombatant deaths, according to a United Nations survey released Wednesday.
The report said 2,412 civilians were killed in 2009, a jump of 14 percent over the previous year. Another 3,566 were wounded.
The growing number of civilian deaths reflects the intensification of the Afghan war over the same period: American and NATO combat deaths jumped to 520 last year, from 295, and the Taliban are more active than at any point in the past eight years.
But the most striking aspect of the report was the shift in responsibility for the deaths of Afghan civilians. The survey found that the Taliban and other insurgents killed more than twice the number as the American-led coalition and Afghan government forces did last year, mostly by suicide bombings, homemade bombs and executions.
The 1,630 civilians killed by insurgents — two-thirds of the total — represented a 40 percent increase over the previous year.
By contrast, the number of civilians killed by the NATO- and American-led coalition and Afghan government forces in 2009 fell 28 percent, to 596, about a quarter of the total number. The cause of the 186 other deaths could not be determined.
The report attributed the drop to measures taken by the American-led coalition to reduce the danger to civilians. Since taking over in June as commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has issued several directives aimed at winning over the Afghan population, sometimes at the cost of forgoing attacks on Taliban fighters.
Principal among these directives was the tightening of the rules governing airstrikes, the main cause of civilian fatalities caused by the American and other NATO forces.
Under the new rules, coalition forces caught in a firefight with insurgents may not order an airstrike on a house in a residential area unless they are in danger of being overrun. In the past, airstrikes carried out in the heat of battle in residential areas accounted for several widely publicized episodes of civilian deaths.
Indeed, airstrikes are the main cause of civilian deaths by the coalition. Even with the new guidelines, which took effect in the middle of last year, 359 Afghans were killed in airstrikes in 2009, the United Nations survey found.
One of the worst of these came on Sept. 4, when German troops called in an airstrike after militants hijacked a fuel convoy near the northern city of Kunduz. But the trucks had stalled in a riverbed, and local residents had gathered around them. The bombing killed at least 72 civilians, the United Nations report said.
General McChrystal, who is in command of roughly 110,000 American and other NATO troops — and will soon be getting 30,000 more American troops — has issued several similar directives intended to reduce the harm to Afghan civilians.
“We will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill, but instead on our ability to separate the insurgents from the center of gravity — the people,” he wrote in a guidance to officers last July. “That means we must respect and protect the population from coercion and violence — and operate in a manner which will win their support.”
For their own part, even the Taliban’s leaders have implored their fighters to minimize the harm to Afghan civilians.
Last summer, the Afghan Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, put out a directive to his troops, imploring them to try to win over Afghan civilians. Called “A Book of Rules,” its character was slightly different from the American directives.
Using the jihadist term for suicide bombings, the Taliban manual said, “The utmost steps must be taken to avoid civilian human loss in martyrdom operations.”
On the same issue, American commanders said this week that they would tighten the rules on night raids, one of the touchiest subjects among Afghans.
American and NATO troops often move into villages at night because of advantages like surprise and because they typically have equipment, like night-vision goggles, that allows them to see with very little light when the insurgents cannot.
But some night operations have gone awry, resulting in the deaths of civilians. On some occasions, civilians alarmed by the presence of gun-toting men in their villages have grabbed their own guns, only to be shot by American or NATO forces, who took the villagers for insurgents.
And even raids that went relatively smoothly have caused ill will among Afghans, who are often offended by foreign soldiers moving through their villages — or into their homes — after dark.
Even absent gunfire, the raids can cause serious problems. Eight Afghans were killed and about a dozen were wounded in a town in the southern province of Helmand on Tuesday, after Afghan intelligence officers fired on rioters incensed by rumors that Americans conducting a night raid had desecrated a Koran and defiled local women.
According to the new directive, American and other NATO forces should explore alternatives to night raids, like cordoning villages at night and then moving in at sunrise.
“In the Afghan culture, a man’s home is more than just his residence,” a draft of the new guidance said. “It represents his family, and protecting it is closely intertwined with his honor. He has been conditioned to respond aggressively whenever he perceives his home or honor is threatened.
“We should not be surprised that night operations elicit such a response,” the guidance said, “which we then often interpret as the act of an insurgent.”