“We don’t do body counts” – General Tommy Franks
Apart from the grim news of 23 people dead at a Sunni meeting four days ago, followed by over 40 deaths at a Shia shrine on 4 January, there are ominous signs that rumours of a peaceful withdrawal from Iraq are sadly exaggerated. Iraq Bodycount, the most conservative and, (in my opinion), most objective of the main sources of casualty figures, reported on 28 December 2008 that the average number of violent deaths in Iraq attributable to the insurgency and occupation has returned to the 25 per day levels following the 2003 invasion. John Sloboda, founding Director of Iraq Body Count (whose activities Thus endorses) comments that while the ‘surge’ unquestionably reduced the death toll from its height of around 26,000 in 2006-7 to 9,000 in 2008, the latter figure compares to recorded deaths in the three years following the 2003 invasion. Even before the very recent upsurge in sectarian violence, the daily death count has reverted to the equivalent of the 20 months following invasion (25 per day, from May 2003 – Dec 2004). Furthermore, civilian deaths attributable to the conflict between Coalition and anti-occupation combatants have continued more or less unabated through and after the “surge,” the numbers of deaths outside Baghdad are now greater than those in the capital (where deaths have dramatically declined) but deaths among Iraqi police are being progressively replaced by victims among Awakening Council members who have increasingly taken front-line local security roles.
According to Iraq Body Count, “these findings suggest that key components of the remaining violence are inseparable from the occupation itself, and are unlikely to be eliminated while the US military remains in Iraq.” As the US military prepares to hand over control of executive decision-making to its trained Iraqi peacekeeping forces, this does not bode well for 2009.
The recent uptick in sectarian violence seems timed to commemorate the handover of the Green Zone to Iraqi forces, challenge Barack Obama’s declared intention to withdraw US forces from Iraq (and send them to Afghanistan?), and may well be exacerbated by events in Gaza. The latest massacre of Shiite worshippers, many of whom were Iranian pilgrims, in Bagdhad’s northern district of Kadhimiya, where a female suicide bomber detonated herself, killing at least 38 people and wounding up to 100, is probably timed to coincide with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s visit to Tehran and upcoming Shiite religious festival. Either way, the inability of the indigenous forces to stop this and other atrocities does not bode well. While sectarian brutality is not a direct consequence of the Occupation, it is most definitely an indirect result of empowering Iraq’s fundamentalist tribal sociopaths and giving them renewed energy to pursue religious terrorism. Some argue that sanctioned ethnic cleansing, for example, bribing self-styled Kingmaker Muqtada al-Sadr‘s Shiite militias to stay onside and conceding districts to various criminal terrorist groups, rather than the ‘surge,’ has been mainly responsible for the relative lull of the past 18 months. With the prospect of a handover to the far-from-democratic government of Nouri-Al-Maliki and the ending of the UN Mandate giving the US legitimate sancition to ‘control’ Iraq, these groups may heighten their murderous activities as they jockey for position and test the authorities. Evidence suggests that this is exactly what is happening.
The Iraq Body Count Report concludes that a death toll of up to 9000 in a ‘quiet year’ is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Iraq expedition and is an unacceptable price to pay by any reckoning. Who’s counting the bodies in Gaza, especially since Israel has denied access to the world’s media? Certainly not Tzipi Livni, Israeli Foreign Minister, who does not rate the carnage which has seen over 500 dead and 2000 wounded in 7 days as a humanitarian emergency.
You can read the Iraq BodyCount report, ‘Post Surge Violence: its nature and extent’ here:
