Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 December 25

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December 25

Losses of the Afghan Mujahideen

In honor of the 43rd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I want to ask about the losses of the Mujahideen. For the figure of 90k dead sounds too low, is it likely that the ratio of losses between the USSR and the Mujahideen is the same as the ratio of the losses of the United States and North Vietnam and the Viet Cong? Lone Ranger1999 (talk) 07:59, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

The figures seem to be somewhat conjectural:

• "Afghan War : Casualties and Losses 1979–1988 SOVIET AND AFGHAN GOVERNMENT LOSSES 13,310–15,000 ... AFGHAN LOSSES 140,000–200,000, full-time Mujahideen killed or wounded 40,000–90,000..." [1] (snippet view)
• "Estimated Afghan Casualties During the Soviet Occupation Mujahideen Killed: 75,000–90,000. Wounded: more than 75,000. Civilians killed: 600,0000 - 2,000,000" [2]
• "Afghan casualties were between 1.5 and 2 million dead... Officially, the number of Soviet deaths was put at 15,000 but could have been as high as 40,000..." [3]
• "The official figures are 13,833 40th [Soviet] Army dead, but the actual figures are in the region of 26,000... [4] The Soviet intervention reportedly killed 1.3 million people... [5]

Note the difficulty of distinguishing part-time Mujahideen fighters from unarmed civilians. Alansplodge (talk) 12:23, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

British casualties in World War II

I did not find a breakdown by fronts. And which front for Britain was the most bloody? In theory, this is the Western Front, but the wiki says that they lost only 41k out of 384k killed. Lone Ranger1999 (talk) 08:03, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I asked at the WikiProject Military history talk page. They recommemded:

Casualties and Medical Statistics (History of the Second World War United Kingdom Medical Series) which in an appendix on p. 827 gives total British losses for the war, with a breakdown for the war against Japan. No luck so far on the Western Front, which is usually taken as two separate campaigns, 1939-1940 and 1944-1945. Alansplodge (talk) 13:29, 28 December 2022 (UTC)