It was not too long ago that the U.S. Army announced the death of the 1000th American soldier, following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq at the hands of U.S.A., UK and their ‘coalition of the willing’. Although ‘major combat operations’ ended over a year ago, supposedly, the fighting continues and much more violently than ever before. Because whereas before allied invaders were only facing the (as it turned out) inept Iraqi National Guard, now they are facing insurgents with nothing to lose who want these invaders from across the globe, out of their homeland.
We are bombarded each day by images and stories of barbaric Iraqi insurgents murdering unfortunate hostages; or reports of ambush attacks on American forces trying to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq. However in the midst of all this, the question that is left unasked for the most part (at least on the part of the governments of the countries involved in this invasion), and unanswered entirely by the same people, is the question of the Iraqi civilian casualties. Does anyone know how many Iraqi civilians have died since March 23, 2004?
To this day both the Bush Administration and the Blair Government have resisted all attempts and requests to form an independent inquire to look into the Iraqi civilian casualties.
The architects of this so called liberation rid themselves of any such responsibilities even before the invasion began. In a phrase, that gains infamy with each new report of violence in the war-torn country, commander General Tommy Franks absolved the US of any such responsibilities by simply stating that “We don’t do body counts”. His words were rationalized and explained by brigadier general Brooks: “It just is not worth trying to characterise by numbers … And, frankly, if we are going to be honourable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies. This is not the appropriate way for us to go.”
Not appropriate at all, if the reports by the private researchers are anything remotely close to the state of affairs. Despite what the army may be saying, they do not hold back from releasing numbers of insurgents or ‘bad guys’ that they’ve deposed. Perhaps it is thought of as a measure of the success they are having in Iraq. This would not make it too unlike the situation in Vietnam 30 years ago, when the American media continued to report large numbers of enemies killed each day. And that didn’t really turn out to be too close to the truth in the end.
To this day both the Bush Administration and the Blair Government have resisted all attempts and requests to form an independent inquire to look into the Iraqi civilian casualties.
If we all did not know better than this, we would consider it odd behaviour that the very nations which started this campaign in the name of ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people, now refuse to even acknowledge or look into the casualties caused by their ‘liberation’. One academic who is also the head of the independent group, Iraq Body Count (www.iraqbodycount.net) compared this to “the U.S. not investigating exactly who died on September 11, it is unthinkable”.
On the other hand Human Rights groups are saying that it is the job of the occupying powers to catalogue the civilian deaths. It makes sense too; wasn’t it for their sake after all that the coalition forces unleashed their ‘shock and awe’? There must therefore be a reason why none of these people are keeping track of civilian casualties (other than not caring, which probably is the most important reason).
The result of independent groups and researchers seem to give an answer to these questions: the situation looks to be far more horrible than even imagined. At the head of these independent non-governmental organizations taking up the responsibility of bringing to light the casualties of the Iraqi civilian population, is the Iraq Body Count Project (www.iraqbodycount.net), which is a group of academics and researchers from the UK and the US, who have made it their job to sift through all media reports from outlets around the world and count the number of civilians dead that have been reported (They are devoted enough to accuracy that they won’t considered a death confirmed unless they can find it in at least two sources).
Their ongoing measurements put the fatalities at 14,668 and 16,853. These are the lowest possible numbers. As John Sloboda, co-founder of the project, states, “There are no deaths on there that have not [emphasis added] been reported, but there may be more deaths that have not been reported”. Which means that the nearly 17,000 civilian deaths, is at the bottom of the probability scale.
Naturally, Government and Military authorities discount and undermine these numbers citing them as unreliable due to the fact that they are gathered from media sources. Yet they continue to refuse to give a count of themselves.
Other groups, such as the Lancet medical journal, published results by a group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, who put the estimate at 100,000 civilian deaths since the beginning of the invasion; and they say that their estimate is conservative. Their result is based doing on measurements on a small sample size and then extrapolating the results to the whole of the Iraqi civilian population.
Moreover, none of these reports take into account the collateral causes of death which are induced by the occupation and violence
The fact remains that whether the number is 17,000 or 100,000 or any other number, even one death is too many considering the grounds that this war was started. And there is absolutely nothing on the horizon which can give one even a faint glimmer of hope that the situation will not worsen, let alone improve. The very same report, stated that the ‘risk of death by violence’ is the number one cause of death in that country, ahead of any medical reasons such as heart failure or cancer.
Moreover, none of these reports take into account the collateral causes of death which are induced by the occupation and violence. Damage to the water and sanitation systems results in unclean drinking water and the spread of infectious disease. According to UNICEF, loss of electrical power means that vaccinations could not be kept in cold storage, which in turn meant that over 200,000 infants had no access to immunization. These power difficulties also contribute to the malfunctioning of the sewer systems. The smoke from burning oil wells deposits tremendous amounts of pollution into the air and water supply. On top of it all, there is all the military movements which destroy the ecosystem, and all the unexploded munitions, and the cluster bombs which were used in the first few days and weeks of the war.
Only recently a group of over ex-diplomats, military men and academics requested that Tony Blair hold and inquiry into civilian deaths in Iraq, but the government refused. By not acknowledging this request and not getting an accurate account of Iraqi dead, while maintain careful and precise records of American/British deaths, they are implying that American and British lives hold more value Iraqi lives. And that simply cannot be allowed to happen.
In the end, the only important thing should be human life, Iraqi, American or otherwise. One can argue that everyone has their own agenda, be it the military and governmental force, or the private investigators. The important thing is that something has to be done about this ongoing tragedy.
Originally publisehd in Shahrvand English (N° 11) – December 14, 2004
