Excess Death in Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 12 October 2006
It is the single most important statistic regarding the illegal
US invasion and occupation of Iraq. How many Iraqis have been killed?
655,000.
655,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and
occupation of Iraq.
I have worked for eight months in Iraq as a journalist,
witnessing the carnage on a daily basis, visiting the morgues with bodies
and body parts piled into them, meeting family after family who had lost a
loved one, or more ... Finally, we get an accurate figure that shows how
immense the scale of the long drawn carnage really is.
The first Lancet Report, published on October 29, 2004, reported
that there were 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths as the result of the US
invasion and occupation. (Excess deaths are the difference between
pre-invasion and post-invasion mortality rates.) Whenever I have given
public presentations about the occupation, I have invariably found myself in
a difficult position due to the lack of a more realistic and recent figure I
can cite, knowing full well that the number was grossly higher than 100,000.
The least I could do was mention that Les Roberts, one of the
authors of that report, is known to have said this past February that the
number of Iraqi casualties could be over 300,000. And now, we know it is far
higher, which merely confirms what most Iraqis already know.
In the context of the horror stories that have reached us over
the three-plus years of the occupation, this latest figure is not nearly as
shocking as when the first Lancet report was published in October of 2004.
It has been abundantly clear since then that the number of Iraqis being
killed by and because of the occupation has continued to increase
exponentially.
The recent survey, like the first one, was conducted by Iraqi
physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's
Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are based on interviews with
a random sampling of households from across Iraq. This survey yielded the
same estimate of deaths immediately following the occupation, as the first
survey. It also found that 30% of the reported deaths are caused by the
occupation forces.
This study is the only one, other than the first study published
in The Lancet, that calculates mortality in Iraq using scientific methods.
It is a technique of "cluster sampling" also used to estimate mortality
caused by famines and after natural disasters.
The 2004 survey came under fire from pro-war critics and from
the supposedly anti-war group Iraq Body Count (IBC) which currently claims a
ridiculously low figure between 44 and 49,000 dead Iraqis. In the past, the
figure generated by IBC has been quoted by George W. Bush.
The controversial results of the first survey were backed by
Bradley Woodruff, a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, who was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education
on January 27, 2005: "Les [Les Roberts, co-author of the first survey] has
used, and consistently uses, the best possible methodology ... Indeed, the
United Nations and the State Department have cited mortality numbers
compiled by Mr. Roberts on previous conflicts as fact - and have acted on
those results. [He] has studied mortality caused by war since 1992, having
done surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three
surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental
humanitarian organization, in which he used methods akin to those of his
Iraq study, received a great deal of attention. 'Tony Blair and Colin Powell
have quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the
precision or validity,' he added."
Further underscoring the validity and authenticity of the survey
methodology are two important facts: first, that the leg work has been
conducted by eight Iraqi doctors and second, that the recent survey came up
with the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the previous
survey. Additionally, the figures are backed by official evidence as the
greater majority of deaths were substantiated by death certificates.
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who
worked at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for several years,
said that the survey method is "tried and true," and that "this is the best
estimate of mortality we have." His view was backed by Sarah Leah Whitson at
the Human Rights Watch in New York, who testified, "We have no reason to
question the findings or the accuracy."
Here it is worth recording that the survey's estimate of Iraq's
pre-invasion death rate, which was used as the baseline of the survey, was
roughly the same as the one used by both the CIA and the US Census Bureau.
As in the instance of the first survey, this study found that
the actual number of dead Iraqis could in fact be higher. The fact that this
study tabulated "excess deaths" implies that these people would still be
alive if the US had not invaded their country.
While the staggeringly high number of the dead may shock some,
for others who have kept track of facts it is no great wonder that surveyors
have found a steady increase in Iraqi mortality since the invasion and a
steeper increase in the last year. This alarmingly reflects the worsening
violence which even the US military, the news media and civilian groups have
been forced to admit.
Most of what we have heard reported, prior to this survey, had
been deaths in Baghdad, with headlines like "50 Bodies Found in Baghdad" and
"Baghdad Morgue Reporting 100 Bodies per Day." They are stories that have
failed to take into account the rest of the country, although Baghdad is
roughly 20% of the total population of Iraq. What has been happening in the
rest of the country is a question that the latest survey answers: that there
are approximately 500 unexpected violent deaths every single day throughout
Iraq.
The survey found that 87% of the deaths had occurred during the
occupation rather than during the initial invasion, and that 31% of them
were a consequence of attacks and air strikes by the coalition forces.
It was no surprise that Mr. Bush dismissed the findings of the
study. He did not consider the report credible and said that the methodology
used was "pretty well discredited." I'm sure that the feeble-minded Mr. Bush
took a very close look at the methodology used in the study.
Last December, Bush claimed that 30,000 Iraqis had died as the
result of the invasion and occupation. When reporters asked him if he still
stood by his estimate, he said he stood by the figure that "a lot" of
innocent people have died in the conflict.
One of my contacts in Iraq, a man who works with several Iraqi
NGOs that monitor human rights abuses, deaths, detentions and other
violations of international law, was furious when I asked him how he felt
about IBC's attack on the outcome of the first Lancet Report. I present his
outburst here:
This is a mayday call to all colleagues around the world to
STOP writing about the Iraqi issue without having enough information from
reliable sources. People are getting killed here and the country is
virtually dying and it is not so human to rob the dead! IBC supposedly
worked to correct the number of Iraqis killed because of the US occupation
of Iraq. All I saw in this violent attack upon The Lancet was a harsh
offensive that adds the killing of truth to whatever number of killings that
actually took place by gunfire and bombs.
Salih Al-Jabiri is a 55-year-old human rights activist
in Baghdad. Jabiri, commenting on the figure offered by IBC at that time of
roughly 30,000 dead Iraqis, the figure which was infamously quoted by Mr.
Bush, said, "What difference does it make whether the number is 30,000 or
200,000 for God's sake? It is people's lives you are counting here, not farm
chickens! Do you people mean we should be happy to believe US statistics of
ONLY 30,000? But we are not happy with this insultingly low number, when all
of us know the true number is so much higher!"
My aforementioned contact added more recently:
Whatever the numbers the crime is still big enough to be
condemned by all those who claim to be human beings. To our colleagues at
IBC and those others who think the way they do, we say, be human enough to
condemn the crimes of the occupation in Iraq or do not say you are humans.
For over a year now many Iraqis have been referring to
what is happening in their country as genocide. With over 500 Iraqis being
killed every single day as a direct result of the occupation, it is
difficult to argue with them.
________________________________
Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has reported for
the Guardian, the Independent, and the Sunday Herald. He now writes
regularly for Inter Press Service and Truthout. He maintains a web site at
dahrjamailiraq.com.
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