Iraqi Civilian Deaths

Despite strenuous attempts to maintain a minute-by-minute count of American KIA in Iraq and to publicize this running total each and every time casualties are reported, similar efforts have never been applied to the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed by enemy forces. With the release of figures by Iraq's Interior Ministry, that has now changed. According to Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr some 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgents in the last 18 months. Civilian deaths have, of course, been frequently used by war opponents to disparage Iraq's liberation as a disaster for the Iraqi people. Probably the best known of these efforts was published last fall, a report which concluded that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed due to the US invasion. The recent report by the Iraqi Interior Ministry offers a useful opportunity to revisit this 100,000 casualty claim.

Just in case you missed it, here's a recap. On October 29, 2004, the web edition of the British journal, Lancet, published the results of a study which concluded 100,000 civilian deaths had occurred as a result of the US invasion. The report's authors derived this "100,000" figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began, and subtracting the difference. That difference—the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period—signifies the war's toll. The report states: "We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period." By "95% CI 8000-194 000" the authors mean that they were 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000.

A better example of the wedding of political propaganda and junk science would be tough to find. On the political front, it is quite revealing that the author of the study insisted that Lancet publish this study BEFORE the US election. Lancet happily complied and whizzed through the peer-review process in weeks (it normally takes 3-6 months) and published this report the weekend before the US presidential election--your classic October Surprise. Thankfully such deviousness was not rewarded.

For perspective, it's important to keep in mind that all other attempts to come up with a figure for Iraqi civilian deaths have concluded that the number is in the 15-30,000 range. This includes some very respected names such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Iraq Body Count, the Brooking Institute's Iraqi Index, and the Shaik Omar Clinic in Baghdad.

Many researchers have commented, not surprisingly, that this spread of data, 8,000 to 194,000, is so wide that the authors' results are meaningless. Common sense alone would seem sufficient to conclude that. Just how did they arrive at 98,000 rather than, say, 14,000 or 154,000? They basically split the difference of this enormous data spread!

But it gets worse. In their pre-invasion baseline data they include NO deaths due to violence! Imagine, in a 14-month period under Saddam's lovely rule--no violent deaths at all! Given that Saddam's murderous rampages and mass purges have been estimated to have killed 1-3 million Iraqis over his 30 years of tyranny, it's a little tough to look at such data without laughing out loud. Just one example: About 2 or 3 days before the invasion, Saddam's Special Forces gunned down 170 worshippers at a mosque after Friday prayers in Southern Iraq just because they protested against his regime (source: Alliance Internationale pour la Justice, NGO, strictly anti-war).

And worse. The executive summary of the report makes this assertion: "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children." If you exclude Falluja, the entire estimate of 98,000 deaths is based on a grand total of 21 violent deaths reported by those surveyed, and the assertion about women and children is based on the deaths of 4 children and 2 women! Note also that the study conducted surveys in war-torn Falluja but NONE in peaceful Basra, the second largest city in Iraq. Hmm. It appears that the authors were counting on most people only reading the summary, or second-hand reports based on the summary, and not bothering to download and read the full pdf.

Some additional food for thought: How many deaths are likely to occur in a brutalized country in which all the criminals were let out of prison as the Coalition army advanced and the police fell apart? (Did you know Saddam left that little parting gift for his beloved Iraq?) Further, the study was sensible enough to admit that many of the male violent deaths may be combatant deaths. You think? And ask yourself: Except for the Falluja operation, haven't most civilian deaths that you've heard of following the end of the initial invasion been at the hands of the suicide bombers? Shouldn't the enemy fighters, whose main tactic is to blend into the civilian population and hide behind women and children and in mosques and hospitals, be held responsible for many if not most of the civilian deaths? Can anyone reasonably deny that we have worked hard to avoid civilian deaths, and had the technology to do so, more than in any other war in history?

Of course liberations spill blood. But given Saddam's record, the liberation of Iraq drastically reduced the number of needless innocent deaths over the next thirty years. The first 30 years of Saddam cost millions of lives. Millions. The likelihood that the next 30 years under democratic rule will come anywhere near that is virtually nil. The bottom line is that life was preserved by the liberation. And this leaves aside the important point that it's life of greater liberty. The truth is, there have probably been 15,000 to 30,000 civilian deaths due, directly or indirectly, to the liberation. The new Iraqi government statistics confirm that a sizeable portion that didn't die as crime victims, died at the hands of terrorists.

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Update (July 21, 2005)

A recently published report from Iraq Body Count, an anti-war British research group, in large part confirms my assertions outlined above. In the two-year period ending March 2005 they estimate that there have been 24,865 Iraqi civilian casualities. They concluded that U.S.-led forces were responsible for about 37 per cent of those deaths and that most were killed during the invasion phase of the war. Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for a roughly equal number of civilian casualties, some 36 per cent by their calculations.