ASU professors say military is off when reporting civilian deaths

Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal of ISP were interviewed by Arizona State University about reporting on civilian deaths and their longform piece, “The Uncounted.”

The American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has killed tens of thousands of ISIS fighters since August 2014, but the military is off when it comes to reporting civilian deaths, say two ASU professors who spent 18 months investigating the issue for an in-depth report for The New York Times Magazine.

In their report, “The Uncounted,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, both professors with ASU’s Center on the Future of War, write that the military consistently fails to investigate claims properly, keeps poor records, relies on flawed or outdated intelligence and conflates civilian and combatant deaths. Among their claims: “This may be the least transparent war in recent American history.”