http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109902941049326214
Friday, October 29, 2004
US Has Killed 100,000 in Iraq: The Lancet
The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, reports that the US
and coalition forces (but mainly the US Air Force) has killed 100,000
Iraqi civilians since the fall of Saddam on April 9, 2003.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/29/1098992290312.html?oneclick=true
Previous estimates for civilian deaths since the beginning of the war
ranged up to 16,000, with the number of Iraqi troops killed during the
war itself put at about 6,000.
The troubling thing about these results is that they suggest that the
US may soon catch up with Saddam Hussein in the number of civilians
killed. How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controverial. He did
after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also
started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of
years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if
we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed
300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect. So far
only 5000 or so persons have been found in mass graves. But if Roberts
and Burnham are right, the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi
civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed in 24 years.
The report is based on extensive household survey research in Iraq in
September of 2004. Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham found that the vast
majority of the deaths were the result of US aerial bombardment of
Iraqi cities, which they found especially hard on "women and
children." After excluding the Fallujah data (because Fallujah has
seen such violence that it might skew the nationwide averages), they
found that Iraqis were about 1.5 times more likely to die of violence
during the past 18 months than they were in the year and a half before
the war. Before the war, the death rate was 5 per thousand per year,
and afterwards it was 7.9 per thousand per year (excluding Fallujah).
My own figuring is that, given a population of 25 million, that yields
72,500 excess deaths per year, or at least 100,000 for the whole
period since April 9, 2003.
The methodology of this study is very tight, but it does involve
extrapolating from a small number and so could easily be substantially
incorrect. But the methodology also is standard in such situations and
was used in Bosnia and Kosovo.
I think the results are probably an exaggeration. But they can't be so
radically far off that the 16,000 deaths previously estimated can
still be viewed as valid. I'd say we have to now revise the number up
to at least many tens of thousand--which anyway makes sense. The
16,000 estimate comes from counting all deaths reported in the Western
press, which everyone always knew was only a fraction of the true
total. (I see deaths reported in al-Zaman every day that don't show up
in the Western wire services).
The most important finding from my point of view is not the magnitude
of civilian deaths, but the method of them. Roberts and Burnham find
that US aerial bombardments are killing far more Iraqi civilians than
had previously been suspected. This finding is also not a surprise to
me. I can remember how, on a single day (August 12), US warplanes
bombed the southern Shiite city of Kut, killing 84 persons, mainly
civilians, in an attempt to get at Mahdi Army militiamen. These deaths
were not widely reported in the US press, especially television. Kut
is a small place and has been relatively quiet except when the US has
been attacking Muqtada al-Sadr, who is popular among some segments of
the population there. The toll in Sadr City or the Shiite slums of
East Baghdad, or Najaf, or in al-Anbar province, must be enormous.
I personally believe that these aerial bombardments of civilian city
quarters by a military occupier that has already conquered the country
are a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949,
governing the treatment of populations of occupied territories.
Spencer Ackerman at TNR's online blog on Iraq has a long interview
with Burnham about the study, in which Burnham is quite humble about
it not being definitive.
posted by Juan @ 10/29/2004 06:41:35 AM