How violent is Iraq?
by Donald Sensing
Winds of Change.NET
August 15, 2005
Strategy Page discusses the death rate in Iraq and compares it to the rate in some other countries. The rate is conventionally measured in the number of deaths per year per 100,000 persons, from all causes. The USA's rate for 2005 is estimated so far to be 8.25/100K. Says Strategy Page,
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The Iraqi government now believes that at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the last 18 months. In the last ten months, about 800 Iraqi civilians and police have been killed each month. Adding a bit more to account for unreported deaths (especially in Sunni Arab areas where chaos, not the government, runs things) the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year. This is far higher than the usual rate in Middle Eastern countries (under 10). Well, most of the time. During civil wars and insurrections, the rate has spiked to over a hundred per 100,000, sometimes for several years in a row. During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s.
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In other words, the death rate in Iraq today is less than half of the rate suffered under Saddam, not including a few hundred thousand Iraqis killed in the war with Iran, 1980-1988. So by this measure it is not true that the Iraqi people are suffering more now than under Saddam, as many of the war's critics like to claim. Furthermore, the 45/100K death rate in Iraq is not close to that of some other countries.
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There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers. In southern Thailand, a terror campaign by Islamic radicals has caused a death rate of over 80 per 100,000.
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It needs also to be remembered that most of Iraq is fairly peaceful; the terrorism mostly takes place in about 20 percent of the country, concentrated in the Sunni dominated areas where Saddam dead-enders, unregenerate Baathists and al Qaeda mainly operate (and the Iraqi Sunnis are starting to get plenty sick and tired of the mostly--foreign al Qaeda terrorists).
Nonetheless, a death rate of 45 is pretty high. Merely observing that other places on the globe have it worse cannot be a comfort to the Iraqi people, nor even reminding them that Saddam & Co. were more violent than the ongoing terrorism. Furthermore, violent crime is a severe problem in Iraq and will almost certainly prove more intractable than Islamist or Baathist terrorism. As journalist-blogger Stephen Vincent, murdered in Basra, pointed out, there is no clear dividing line in some parts of the country between ordinary criminality and ruthless enforcement of order by corrupt Iraqi police or officials, who resort to Mafia-like methods to work their will.
Eventually the insurgencies will be ended, though sadly much blood will yet be shed. But it will be a long time before Iraq's death rate falls to approximately the norm of the region of under 10.
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