Dead Folks:
INDEPTH: IRAQ
Casualties in the Iraq war
CBC News Online | Updated May 16, 2005
Even before U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad and helped topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in Paradise Square on April 9, 2003, media organizations and human rights groups were complaining that no one was keeping track of the number of people killed in the war that started a month before.
Some observers believe that measuring the bloodshed on both sides of the conflict is a useful way to measure the progress of the war.
That's a belief not shared by U.S. or British military officials.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the top officer in the U.S. Central Command for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, summed up the American military's attitude when he told reporters during the Afghan campaign, "We don't do body counts."
In fact, the Pentagon stopped counting the people killed by its soldiers after the Vietnam war, where the numbers publicized were often inflated by field commanders and Pentagon officials in attempts to show the war was going better than it was. Those attempts ultimately backfired when the body counts provided fuel for the anti-war movement.
But the U.S. military, like the British, does count its own dead and wounded, even if it has tried to limit the public's awareness of those numbers by preventing the media from covering military funerals or the coffins returning from Iraq.
'Good news' deaths or 'bad news'?
Conservative supporters of the war, such as bloggers found at blogsforbush.com, argue the military is taking the correct approach, that the "liberal media" only want to report the "bad news" of dead U.S. soldiers, but ignore the "good news" about killed Iraqi insurgents.
What those arguments overlook is how difficult it is to actually find out how many Iraqis have been killed, be they fighters or civilians.
Officials in Washington don't compile data on Iraqis killed, but field commanders on the ground in Iraq will from time to time give reporters a number referring to enemy fighters killed in a specific battle.
The coalition forces also don't tally Iraqi deaths, nor did the U.S.-backed administration in the months following the collapse of Saddam's regime.
In the fall of 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw issued a written statement in which he said, "In many cases it would be impossible to make a reliably accurate assessment either of the civilian casualties resulting from any particular attacks or of the overall civilian casualties of a conflict. This is particularly true in the conditions that exist in Iraq."
Since taking over the administration of their own country in late June 2004, the Iraqis have stepped up their efforts to keep track. In January 2005, the Iraqi health ministry released data from the previous six months of hospital records. As reported by the BBC, the numbers showed that from July 1, 2004 to Jan. 1, 2005:
3,274 people were killed and 12,657 injured in violence related to the war
2,041 died as the result of military action (including insurgents, and Iraqi security forces)
1,233 were killed after "terrorist" incidents
Those numbers include Iraqis killed by either coalition forces or insurgent attacks, and include insurgents themselves.
Keeping track: counting or calculating?
One organization has been keeping track of what it calls Iraqi "civilians" killed since the beginning of the war: a group of academics in both the United States and Britain calling themselves Iraq Body Count.
By tracking -- and rigorously checking -- media reports of deaths, the group has kept a running total of Iraqis reported killed during the major combat phase of the war, which U.S. President George W. Bush declared over in May 2003, and during the occupation phase since.
But the numbers published on iraqbodycount.net don't distinguish between Iraqis killed by coalition forces or by insurgents, arguing that they are all a result of the March 2003 invasion and the U.S.-led coalition is responsible for preventing them.
There are problems inherent in Iraq Body Count's methodology, not the least of which is the reliance on information gathered by the media.
But people on the ground in Iraq can't keep count, either. Left-wing British journalist Robert Fisk wrote last July that many deaths go unreported, as families often bury their dead without notifying the authorities. "Death is now so routine even the most tragic of deaths becomes a footnote," wrote Fisk in the Independent.
Also, without the benefit of uniforms, the bodies of insurgents at the morgue can be difficult to distinguish from those of civilians.
Critics of the war, such as Fisk, say those dead "insurgents" nearly always include civilians killed in the crossfire.
Nonetheless, the numbers that appear on iraqbodycount.net are estimates based on actual reports of real people killed.
That's in contrast to the numbers contained in a study released in fall 2004 by the British medical journal The Lancet. That study surveyed Iraqi households and compared death rates before the invasion to those after, and concluded about 100,000 civilians are likely dead because of the coalition military action.
That number is an estimate extrapolated from a survey. While it might reflect the reality in Iraq, it might not.
Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested things might be worse in Iraq than Iraq Body Count's numbers indicate.
The researchers in the study published in the respected medical journal on July 1, 2004 surveyed U.S. soldiers about their combat experiences, and found that 48 per cent of army soldiers reported killing an enemy combatant, and 14 per cent said they had killed a non-combatant. Among marines, the numbers were 65 per cent and 28 per cent.
Writing in the left-wing magazine The Nation last November, Jefferson Morley said those survey results could indicate "U.S. ground combat forces would have been responsible for the deaths of an absolute minimum of 13,881 noncombatants" since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
The list provided below
Because Iraq Body Count actually counts, CBC uses the most recent numbers from iraqbodycount.net. The Iraq Body Count database includes figures for Iraqi civilians and members of the police force established since the fall of Saddam.
Reliable figures for insurgent casualties are not available. The Pentagon stopped supplying figures for what it called "non-compliant Iraqi forces" in mid-summer 2003.
Coalition forces never provided accurate numbers for Iraqi military deaths, so we use those provided by the former government.
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Military casualties provided by government sources
Figures represent total since the beginning of hostilities on March 20, 2003. Numbers in parentheses indicate casualties since the end of "major combat" was declared on May 1, 2003.
U.S.
Total military deaths: 1,620
Britain
Total military deaths: 87
Multinational forces
Total military deaths: 89
(With 21 dead, Itay had more soldiers killed than any coalition member besides the U.S. and Britain.)
Iraq (prior to May 1, 2003)
Military Deaths: 4,895 to 6,370
Total captured: 7,300* (as of April 15, 2003)
Total wounded: 5,103
Canada
Deaths: 1 (serving with U.S. Forces)
Civilian deaths estimated from various sources (Since March 20, 2003)
Iraq
• Civilian Iraq deaths: 21,684 to 24,603 (Source: Iraqbodycount.net))
International
Total: 169
Journalists: 32
UN employees: 22 (An estimated 66 U.S. civilians have been killed, the most of any international country in Iraq)
(8 Canadian civilians have been killed, 1 Red Cross, 1 UN, 1 Canadian Children's Fund, 3 contractors, and 2 other)
External links:
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Iraq Body Count
U.S. military casualty update
British military casualty update
Iraq coalition casualty count
The Lancet
(Report requires registration, but no cost)
New England Journal of Medicine: "Combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, mental health problems, and barriers to care"
BBC: "Counting the civilian cost in Iraq"
The New Yorker: "Caught in the crossfire"
Robert Fisk: "Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the dead"
Blogs for Bush
BBC: "Iraq Health Ministry Figures"
British government: "Written ministerial statement responding to a lancet study on Iraqi casualty figures"
CBC.ca: "War has killed 100,000 Iraqis: study"
Foreign Policy: "Body Count"
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