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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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April 23rd,
2009 - Secret Tally has 87,215 Iraqis Dead |
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Secret Tally has 87,215
Iraqis Dead By Kim Gamel Associated Press April 23, 2009 Baghdad - Iraq's government
has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging
from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to
government statistics obtained by The Associated Press that break open one of
the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Combined with tallies based
on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and an
in-depth review of available evidence by The Associated Press, the figures
show that more than 110,600 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion. The number is a minimum
count of violent deaths. The official who provided the data to the AP, on
condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, estimated the actual
number of deaths at 10 to 20 percent higher because of thousands who are
still missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without
official records. The Health Ministry has
tallied death certificates since 2005, and late that year the United Nations
began using them - along with hospital and morgue figures - to publicly
release casualty counts. But by early 2007, when sectarian violence was
putting political pressure on the U.S. and Iraqi governments, the Iraqi
numbers disappeared. The United Nations "repeatedly asked for that
cooperation" to resume but never received a response, U.N. associate
spokesman Farhan Haq said Thursday. The data obtained by the AP
measure only violent deaths - people killed in attacks such as the shootings,
bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings that have ravaged Iraq. It excluded
indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress
that caused thousands more to die. Authoritative statistics for
2003 and 2004 do not exist. But Iraq Body Count, a private, British-based
group, has tallied civilian deaths from media reports and other sources since
the war's start. The AP reviewed the Iraq Body Count analysis and confirmed
its conclusions by sifting the data and consulting experts. The AP also
interviewed experts involved with previous studies, prominent Iraq analysts and
provincial and medical officials to determine that the new tally was
credible. The AP also added its own
tabulation of deaths since Feb. 28, the last date in the Health Ministry
count. The three figures add up to
more than 110,600 Iraqis who have died in the war. That total generally
coincides with the trends reported by reputable surveys, which have been
compiled either by tallying deaths reported by international journalists, or
by surveying samplings of Iraqi households and extrapolating the numbers. Iraq Body Count's estimate
of deaths since the start of the war, excluding police and soldiers, is a
range — between 91,466 and 99,861. The numbers show just how
traumatic the war has been for Iraq. In a nation of 29 million people, the
deaths represent 0.38 percent of the population. Proportionally, that would
be like the United States losing 1.2 million people to violence in the
four-year period; about 17,000 people are murdered every year in the U.S. Security has improved since
the worst years, but almost every person in Iraq has been touched by the
violence. "We have lost
everything," said Badriya Abbas Jabbar, 54. A 2007 truck bombing
targeting a market near her Baghdad home killed three granddaughters, a son
and a niece. North of the capital in the
city of Baqouba, a mother shrouded in black calls to her three sons from her
doorstep. She calls out as if they were alive, but they were killed in April
2007, when Shiite Muslim militiamen barged into their auto parts store and
gunned them down because they were Sunni. The Health Ministry figures
indicate such violence was tremendously deadly. Of the 87,215 deaths, 59,957
came in 2006 and 2007, when sectarian attacks soared and death squads roamed
the streets. The period was marked by catastrophic bombings and
execution-style killings. Quantifying the loss has
always been difficult. Records were not always compiled centrally, and the
brutal insurgency sharply limited on-the-scene reporting. The U.S. military
never shared its data. The Health Ministry was
always at the forefront of counting deaths. Under Saddam Hussein, it compiled
casualty figures even as U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad, though it later
abandoned that effort. It has started up again in fits, and finally began reliable
record-keeping at the start of 2005. Those data were provided to
the AP in the form of a two-page computer printout listing yearly totals for
death certificates issued for violent deaths by hospitals and morgues between
Jan. 1, 2005, and Feb. 28, 2009. The ministry does not have
figures for the first two years of the war because it was devastated in the
aftermath of the invasion, the official said. Experts said the count
constitutes an important baseline, albeit an incomplete one. Richard Brennan,
who has done mortality research in Congo and Kosovo, said it is likely a
"gross underestimate" because many deaths go unrecorded in war
zones. The Iraqi Body Count numbers
are likely even more incomplete, given that many killings occurred in
incidents journalists were unaware of or in inaccessible areas. Mass graves have been
turning up as improved security allows patrols in formerly off-limits areas,
but how many remain will never be known. The death toll in Iraq has
been a hotly disputed subject because of the high political stakes in a war
opposed by many countries and by a large portion of the American public.
Critics on each side accuse the other of manipulating the death numbers to
sway opinion. While the Pentagon maintains
meticulous records of the number of American troops killed - at least 4,276
as of Thursday - it does not publicly release comprehensive Iraqi casualty
figures. American units around the country do compile figures, drawing them
mostly from the Iraqi military. They are not released publicly but are used
to determine trends, according to Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a U.S. spokesman
in Baghdad. The AP has filed Freedom of
Information Act requests since 2005 seeking that data, but has not received
it. The U.S. policy to not fully
address civilian deaths has drawn heavy criticism from human rights groups. "We believe that all
warring parties have a duty to keep information on casualties," said
Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch in New York. "It's one of many
factors one needs to analyze compliance with international humanitarian
law." The AP has tried since the
first days of the war to understand how many Iraqis were being killed. In 2003, AP journalists
traveled across Iraq to search hospital records for civilian deaths during the
first chaotic month of the invasion. They found that at least 3,240 civilians
died that month, including 1,896 in Baghdad, but acknowledged that number was
a fraction of the total because record-keeping often fell victim to the
bloodshed. Beginning in May 2005, the
AP has tracked war-related casualties as reported by police, hospital and
government officials, mosque workers and verifiable witness accounts,
breaking down the victims into civilians, soldiers and police. That tally has
reached 46,065, including 37,205 civilians, but also underrepresents the true
casualty number because many killings go unreported, especially in more
remote areas. Those numbers rose
significantly on Thursday with two suicide attacks that killed dozens of
people. There are other clues to the
death toll, such as the number of people buried at the main Shiite cemetery
in the holy city of Najaf. But even there, the deaths are limited mostly to
Shiites and include natural as well as violent causes, so they cannot be considered
definitive. The director of the
cemetery's statistics office, Ammar al-Ithari, said the number of burials
jumped from just over 32,000 in 2004 and 2005 to nearly 50,000 in 2006 and
54,000 in 2007. It fell to nearly 40,000 last year, as violence declined.
There are no statistics from before the war because records were destroyed in
the fighting. The Iraqi official who
provided the Health Ministry figures expressed confidence in its count. He
said local authorities consistently reported on violence throughout the war,
and that the ministry accurately compiled their reports. He also defended death
certificates as an instrument, because relatives need them to bury a body in
most cemeteries, as well as for inheritance and compensation purposes. He acknowledged some slain
insurgents could be included in the count but said he believed that number
was low because few insurgents went to hospitals for treatment out of fear of
detection, and many insurgent groups buried their own fighters without
getting death certificates. Some experts say casualty
tallies based on media reports are inaccurate, because too many deaths go
unreported. Some favor cluster surveys, in which conclusions are drawn from a
select sampling of households. The largest cluster survey in
Iraq was conducted in 2007 by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi
government. It concluded that about 151,000 Iraqis had died from violence in
the 2003-05 period, but that included insurgents. A more controversial cluster
study conducted between May and July 2006 by Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, published in the Lancet
medical journal, estimated that 601,027 Iraqis had died due to violence. The
authors said roughly 50,000 more died from nonviolent causes such as heart
disease and cancer because of deteriorating health conditions caused by the
war. Critics argue that such
surveys are flawed in Iraq because the security situation prevents a proper
sampling. They also have margins of error that could skew the numbers by the
tens of thousands. And whatever the number, the
ultimate goal is to find ways to reduce it in future conflicts. "The loss of life among
those caught up in conflict is tragic whatever the numbers reported,"
said Gilbert Burnham, one of authors of the Lancet survey. "And finding
approaches which will reduce these deaths is of great importance." Associated Press writer John
Heilprin at the United Nations and AP staff in Baqouba and Najaf contributed
to this report. External link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090424/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_death_toll |