<p>This article introduces a forum on <i>Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan</i> that features contributions from Helena Zeweri, Joseph MacKay, James Eastwood and Moya Lloyd. This introductory article argues that current debates about Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) need to be contextualised in relation to coalition efforts to reframe civilian casualties as strategic setbacks during the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan together with the specific measures that coalition officials introduced to recalibrate the violence inflicted on Afghan civilians. Rather than simply assuming that ideas associated with civilian protection serve as a normative bulwark that can shield civilians from martial violence, <i>Weaponizing Civilian Protection</i> traces how coalition officials tried to instrumentalise civilian protection in the struggle against insurgents, and how this worked to rationalise the violence inflicted on the civilian population and dehumanise the Afghans who were impacted. At the same time, this article warns that the same necropolitical logic that encouraged coalition officials to prioritise civilian protection when it seemed that minimising civilian casualties would be critical to mission success encourages officials to abandon these protections when minimising civilian harm is viewed as an impediment — rather than an enhancement — to American lethality.</p>