Iraq War Cost 2,000 Civilian Lives; Gulf War Killed 100,000
By James Kirkup
London, April 28 (Bloomberg) -- <font size=5>The U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein may have killed about 2,000 Iraqi civilians. In Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War, as many as 100,000 noncombatants perished.
``I don't think there has been a war where one side has gone to such painstaking lengths to protect innocent life,'' said Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Iraqbodycount.net estimates civilian casualties at between 1,930 and 2,377. The Web site is run by researchers including University of New Hampshire Professor Marc Herold, author of a 2001 study on the human cost of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, and compiles data from news organizations including Fox News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Al Jazeera, and by aid groups including the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch. <font size=3>
The U.S.-led war against Iraq began March 20 with precision bombing of government buildings in Baghdad, and most military action ended with the fall of Tikrit, Hussein's hometown, on April 14. Since then, television audiences worldwide have seen a daily mixture of Iraqi joy at Hussein's ouster and anger over occupation by American and British troops. There are similar divisions in the West over the war's toll.
``I do know that the targeting was more careful than it's been before, but that doesn't make it pleasant,'' said U.K. International Development Secretary Clare Short, who threatened to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet in the week before the war started, then changed her mind.
`Many Children'
Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, told reporters before leaving the U.S. two weeks ago that the war had left ``thousands of casualties,'' including ``many children and elderly.''
The Geneva-based World Health Organization put Iraqi civilian dead and wounded at as many as 330 a day during the heaviest fighting. The Red Cross said April 4 that Baghdad hospitals were admitting an average of more than 100 injured Iraqis each day.
Civilian deaths in conflicts from 1939 onwards were far higher. World War II claimed 30.4 million civilian lives; 1.6 million were killed in the 1950-53 Korean War; and 541,000 died in the Vietnam War. <font size=5>As many as 50,000 civilians died in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and 100,000 were killed in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War combined. <font size=3>
The international Law of Armed Conflict prohibits the intentional targeting of civilians or buildings that are mainly for civilian use.
<font size=5>Coalition teams identifying Iraqi targets for air strikes integrated legal obligations into their work: qualified lawyers examined every proposed target to assess its compliance with international law.
Targeting Success
``From the point of view of the targeting teams, this has been a very successful operation,'' said John Hughes-Wilson of the University of Cambridge, a former NATO intelligence officer and the author of ``Military Intelligence Blunders,'' a history of military mistakes including civilian deaths.<font size=3>
The U.S. and the U.K. dropped or fired more then 30,000 bombs and missiles during almost four weeks of war on Hussein's regime. Of those, about two thirds were so-called precision weapons, directed to their targets by electronic guidance systems. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, about 10 percent of weapons had such guidance systems.
The success of weapons such as Raytheon Co.'s Tomahawk cruise missiles, which failed to reach Iraqi targets in fewer than 2 percent of almost 800 missions during three weeks of the war, explains why fewer civilians have died in modern conflicts than in previous wars.
Herold's team estimates that the U.S. and its allies killed at least 3,700 Afghan civilians during the 2001 war to oust the Taliban regime.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a charity that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, estimates coalition bombs, missiles and bullets killed between 2,500 and 3,000 Iraqi civilians during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Vietnam Toll
By contrast, U.S. bombing during the Vietnam war killed as many as 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians, and the British-led bombing of Dresden during World War II killed as many as 100,000 German civilians. A single U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 instantly killed 130,000 Japanese citizens.
Since then, the growth of international news coverage has increased awareness of civilian casualties. That's put pressure on politicians and generals to minimize deaths and injuries.
``The government would have us believe that this is a victimless war,'' said Alice Mahon, a member of Blair's Labour Party who opposed the war. ``But the truth is now coming out and the strength of opposition to war is beginning to reassert itself.''
The military's ability to reduce civilian casualties still further in future conflicts may be limited by technology and cost. Tomahawks, for example, cost $600,000 each.
<font size=5>``They've taken the total as low as any human could expect,'' said Andrew Brooks, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a former U.K. air force commander. ``You're never going to get nil -- in wars, some things will always go wrong.''
*T CIVILIAN DEATHS IN CONFLICT
World War II Europe 13.4 million non-Jews
World War II Europe 5.7 million Jews
World War II Asia 11.3 million
Korean War 1950-53 1.6 million
Vietnam, 1965-73 541,000
Cambodia, Pol Pot, 1975-78 1.6 million
Six-Day Arab-Israeli War
and Border War 1967-70 50,000
Iran-Iraq War 1980-88 50,000
Invasion of Kuwait and
First Gulf War 1990-91 100,000
CIVILIAN AND MILITARY DEATHS COMBINED
Congo, 1998-2002 3.3 million
(350,000 military and civilian in conflict, the rest
from related disease and hunger)
Iran-Iraq War 600,000 Iranians
300,000 Iraqis
Israeli War of Independence, 6,400 Israelis
1948 5,000-15,000 Arabs
1967 Arab-Israeli War 776 Israelis
23,000-25,000 Arabs
1973 Arab-Israeli War 2,688 Israelis
8,000-18,500 Arabs
Falklands War, 1982 500-1,000 Argentines
225 British
<font size=3>
Sources: Twentieth Century Atlas, Israeli government, Federation
of American Scientists, International Rescue Committee,
International Institute for Strategic Studies (citing World
Military and Social Expenditures), World Priorities.
Last Updated: April 27, 2003 19:00 EDT
quote.bloomberg.com |
