Drop in Violence?
For the past month, the Bush Administration and General Petraeus have asserted that a drop in violence is evidence that the "surge" is working. Unfortunately, the evidence is difficult to validate. Underreporting civilian deaths is, sadly, nothing new. A number of U.S. agencies differ with the Administration's assessment that sectarian violence is down and in fact there are inconsistencies within the Pentagon's own reporting. The Iraq Study Group concluded that in the past car-bombs that don't kill Americans, murders, and inter-ethnic violence were not tracked in order to demonstrate reduced violence. Recent analysis indicates that some of these trends continue. More importantly, the military has refused to show the public any evidence to support the claim that violence is down.
Around September 1, the numbers will be released for August. Will they include the 400-500 Yazidis killed by car bombs in Northern Iraq? Will they include the 50 Iraqis killed this week in Karbala? These gruesome statistics are central to understanding the impact of the civil war on the Iraqi people, and for making decisions about future U.S. presence. Americans need transparent statistics to understand whether recent claims of progress are credible.
A draft copy of a GAO report concludes that there are differing opinions within the U.S. government on whether sectarian violence is down. “The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. ‘While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced,’ it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that ‘the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved.’ [Washington Post, 8/30/07 ]
There were significant revisions to the way the Pentagon’s reports measure sectarian violence between its March 2007 report and its June 2007 report. The original data for the five months before the surge began (September 2006 through January 2007) indicated approximately 5,500 sectarian killings. In the revised data in the June 2007 report, those numbers had been adjusted to roughly 7,400 killings – a 25% increase. These discrepancies have the impact of making the sectarian violence appear significantly worse during the fall and winter of 2006 before the President’s “surge” began. [DOD, 11/2006 . 3/2007 . 6/2007 ]
According to figures compiled by the Associated Press, Iraq is suffering approximately double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year. The average daily toll has risen from 33 in 2006, to 62 so far this year. Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. The AP tracking includes Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces killed in attacks such as gunfights and bombings, which are frequently blamed on Sunni suicide strikes. It also includes execution-style killings — largely the work of Shi’a death squads. Insurgent deaths are not a part of the Iraqi count. These figures are considered a minimum and only based on AP reporting. The actual numbers are likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted. That said, the AP notes that UN figures for 2006 are higher than the AP’s. [AP, 8/25/07 ]
U.S. data on civilian violence is unreliable and excludes most acts affecting sectarian and ethnic cleansing. " No Iraqi data are reliable and US and Coalition data focus far too much on major bombings, major incidents, killed to the exclusion of wounded, and violent acts to the exclusion of most acts affecting sectarian and ethnic cleansing. No data can be fully trusted in terms of accuracy. More importantly, many current metrics are useful largely as measures for counterinsurgency in a nation filled with diverse civil conflicts and where the most violent insurgent acts are only an uncertain indicator of the trends in security and stability." [CSIS, 8/22/07 ]
The data does not include Shi’a on Shi’a violence in the South or Sunni on Sunni violence in the Sunni Triangle. “The data on the drops in attacks are complex, and it must be stressed that they do not count clashes or violence at lower levels between the tribes and Al Qa’ida or some forms of intra-Sunni Islamist feuding and fighting… These figures also ignore growing Shi’a instability in the south, and particularly in the southeast, and a growing threat from Iran.” [CSIS, 8/6/07 ]
U.S. officials continue to claim that violence is down but the numbers cannot be verified.
"While top U.S. officials insist that 50 percent of the capital is now under effective U.S. or government control, compared with 8 percent in February, statistics indicate that the improvement in violence is at best mixed. U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim." [McClatchy, 8/15/2007 ]
"Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq 'has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006.' He offered no statistics to back his claim, but in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Friday he warned insurgents might try to intensify attacks in Iraq to coincide with three milestones: the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the beginning of Ramadan and the report to Congress." [AP, 8/25/07 ]
As the Iraq Study Group concluded, the Bush Administration has in the past underreported violence in Iraq in an attempt to show progress. "On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been 'significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq.' The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis.' The standard for recording attacks acts a filter to keep events out of reports and databases,' the report said. 'A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count…Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals,' The finding confirmed a Sept. 8 McClatchy Newspapers report that U.S. officials excluded scores of people killed in car bombings and mortar attacks from tabulations measuring the results of a drive to reduce violence in Baghdad. By excluding that data, U.S. officials were able to boast that deaths from sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital had declined by more than 52 percent between July and August, McClatchy newspapers reported." [McClatchy, 12/6/06 ]
There is a history of the Iraqi government underreporting death tolls. "Throngs of Iraqis were busily shopping for the weekend when a truck bomb and barrage of rockets ripped apart the market in central Karrada. Iraqiya television and most Western media outlets reported that 25 were killed and 100 wounded in the July 26 attack, of which virtually no images were shown. But less than a week later, the names of 92 dead and 127 wounded were posted on a list taped to a shuttered storefront. It was compiled by municipal and civil defense crews that led the rescue efforts. The disparity in official numbers and the ones posted in the market, and apparent differences between government figures and eyewitness accounts after other recent bombings, leaves many Iraqis feeling that the government is intentionally downplaying or trying to cover up the numbers of dead." [Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/2007 ]
The Iraqi Ministry of Health has stopped sharing data with the United Nations eliminating one of the few independent measures being published. "In the past, the Iraqi government has released official data on civilian injuries and deaths – an important barometer of the war’s human cost. But in an apparent reversal of policy, the government has refused to provide the United Nations with current data, which the UN requested for its new human rights report, released on April 25, 2007… UN officials said the Iraqi government gave no official reason for withholding the data. But unofficially, the government expressed concern that the numbers would be “used to portray the situation as very grim,” said Ivana Vuco, a UN human rights officer in Iraq. High casualty figures would “further undermine their efforts to establish some kind of security and stability in the country,” she said at a news conference in Baghdad." [Human Rights Watch, 4/25/07 ]
General Petraeus has a track record of reporting overly positive news. General Petraeus had an opportunity to comment on the recent Iraq NIE and succeeded in getting some of the security judgments "softened." Moreover, in 2004 while he was in charge of Iraqi Security Force training, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post stating that "the institutions that oversee Iraqi Security Forces are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously in the face of an enemy that has shown a willingness to do anything to disrupt the establishment of the new Iraq." The op-ed was released six weeks before the Presidential election. [Washington Post, 9/26/04 . Washington Post, 8/28/07 ]