While America mourns the deaths of more than 1,000 of its sons
and daughters in the Iraq (news
- web
sites) campaign, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi. No
official, reliable figures exist for the whole country, but private
estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the United States
invaded in March 2003.
The violent deaths recorded in the leather ledger at the Sheik
Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not
cover people who died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Karbala,
Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi.
Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but
also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown
apart by explosives or shot by mistake — both by fellow Iraqis or by
American soldiers and their multinational allies. And they include
the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that
followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein (news
- web
sites)'s regime.
Adding to the complexity of sorting out what has happened, the
records that have been kept don't always say whether a death came in
a combat situation or from some other cause.
The prospect of violent death is the latest burden for a people
who suffered through decades of war and a brutal dictatorship under
Saddam, whose regime has been accused by human rights groups of
killing as many as 300,000 Iraqis it deemed enemies.
"During Saddam's days killings were silent. Now the killing is
done openly and loudly," said Ghali Karim Hassan, who lost his
31-year-old son, Ghaidan, last April.
He said Ghaidan was killed in Najaf when a demonstration called
by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led to a gunbattle with coalition
troops, mainly Spaniards and Salvadorans. Ghaidan, who left a wife
and three children, was one of 22 protesters killed.
In a country where the dead are often buried quickly without
proper accounting by authorities, the real number of Iraqis whose
lives were cut short in the Iraq conflict may never be known.
U.S. officials said they didn't have the resources to track
civilian deaths during the U.S.-led occupation, which ended
officially June 28. Iraq's central authorities also haven't reported
comprehensive figures on civilian deaths — while record-keeping was
meticulous under Saddam, the interim government didn't even begin
trying to keep track until five months ago.
In a guerrilla war without front lines, where teenagers confront
tanks with rocket-propelled grenades, establishing who was an
innocent civilian and who was a legitimate combatant makes the
process of compiling detailed figures on civilian deaths
problematic.
"It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties,"
said a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, Nicole Choueiry. Her
London-based human rights organization estimates more than 10,000
Iraqi civilians died in the first year of the conflict alone.
However, Amnesty's figure was based in part on media reports that
often simply repeated claims of American and Iraqi officials. Iraq
is as large as California and much of the country is too dangerous
for independent teams to investigate more than a handful of death
claims.
Iraq Body Count, a private group that bases its figures in part
on reports by 40 media outlets, puts the number of civilian deaths
since the conflict began at between 11,793 and 13,802.
Hazem al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq said his
group estimates the toll at more than 30,000 civilian deaths. He
said the group didn't have any statistics and based the figure on
reports by Iraqi news media.
Iraqi authorities have begun trying to determine overall death
figures, though they face formidable problems. Insurgent groups are
either reluctant to report death figures for security reasons or
inflate them to win public sympathy. And some Iraqi families bury
their dead quickly, without reporting them.
The Iraqi Health Ministry began tabulating civilian deaths in
April, when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. The
ministry's figures indicate 2,956 civilians, including 125 children,
died across the country "as the result of a military act" between
April 5 and Aug. 31. Of those, 829 were in Baghdad, the ministry
figures say.
In some cases, it is uncertain whether individuals were killed by
insurgents or soldiers or were killed by criminals or rivals who
used the turmoil of war as a cover for settling scores. And even in
cases where the cause was known, records sometimes don't specify.
However, Iraqis argue, even those killed by criminals could be
considered indirect victims of a war that destroyed Iraq's security
services and brought a spike in crime.
"Our work here multiplied by at least 10 times compared to prewar
periods," said Dr. Abdul-Razzak Abdul-Amir, head of the Baghdad
coroner's office.
Al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq agreed. "The
main responsibility behind these Iraqi civilians deaths lies with
the occupation because those victims would not have fallen had there
not be an occupation," he said.
