[Vision2020] 09-25-04 Spokesman-Review: Iraqis caught in crossfire

[Art Deco aka W. Fox]

"The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are 
the Americans making in Iraq?" Abu Mohammed,who was in Saddam Hussein's military

Iraqis caught in crossfire
Report: U.S. forces killing more civilians than insurgents


Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers
September 25, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are 
killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by 
insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and 
obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi 
deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry 
began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and 
children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown 
number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of 
insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in 
fighting could be significantly higher.

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for 
insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these 
casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim 
government.


That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush 
administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide 
elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest 
control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding 
themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said the insurgents were 
living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," 
Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducted intelligence to determine whether a home 
housed insurgents before striking it. While damage would happen, the airstrikes 
were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the 
multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

The Health Ministry statistics indicate that more children have been killed 
around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, though those cities together have 
only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital's population.

According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province - a 
hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that includes the cities of Ramadi and 
Fallujah - compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children 
as anyone younger than 12.

"When there are military clashes, we see innocent people die," said Dr. Walid 
Hamed, a member of the operations section of the Health Ministry, which compiles 
the statistics.

Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in 
Shiite Islam, said the widespread casualties meant that coalition forces already 
had lost the political campaign: "I think they lost the hearts and minds a long 
time ago."

"And they are trying to keep U.S. military casualties to a minimum in the run-up 
to the U.S. elections" by using airstrikes instead of ground forces, he said.

American military officials say they're targeting only terrorists and are 
aggressively working to spare innocent people nearby.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi dead - 1,122 - were killed in August, according to 
the statistics. May was the second deadliest month, with 749 Iraqis killed, and 
319 were killed in June, the least violent month. Most of those killed lived in 
Baghdad; the ministry found that 1,068 had died in the capital.

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces 
disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don't care if they get killed, 
because they don't care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a 
major general in Saddam Hussein's army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep 
criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making 
in Iraq?"

At his fruit stand in southern Baghdad, Raid Ibraham, 24, theorized: "The 
Americans keep attacking the cities not to keep the security situation stable, 
but so they can stay in Iraq and control the oil."

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, 
inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday 
Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam's supporters, people 
who don't have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," 
said Hamed, the ministry official. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not 
the fighters. And they should be."

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by 
multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent 
attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police 
forces and insurgents June 10.

>From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with 
multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the 
ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in 
residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

The ministry said it didn't have any statistics for the three provinces in the 
north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have 
been more peaceful than the rest of the country.

The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths 
through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it 
refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the 
International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization 
didn't have the staffing to compile such information.

The Health Ministry reports to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whom the 
United States appointed in June.

Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only 
part of the death toll.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry calls the directors general of the 15 
provinces and asks how many deaths related to the war were reported at 
hospitals. The tracking of such information has become decentralized since the 
fall of Saddam Hussein's regime because both hospitals and morgues issue death 
certificates now. And families often bury their dead without telling any 
government agencies or are treated at facilities that don't report to the 
government.

The ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians, 
not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn't report it if his or her 
relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia or 
another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. 
Shihab Ahmed Jassim, another member of the ministry's operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don't come to the hospital. Their 
families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant 
manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad's poor Sadr City neighborhood. 
"Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers 
show."

The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered 
at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn't know how big the undercount was. "We have 
nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have 
been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major 
combat operations.

Iraqis are aware of the casualties that are due to U.S. forces, and nearly 
everyone has a story to tell.

At al Kimdi Hospital, Dr. Mumtaz Jaber, a vascular surgeon, said that three 
months ago, his 3-year-old nephew, his sister and his brother-in-law were 
driving in Baghdad at about 9 p.m. when they saw an American checkpoint. His 
nephew was killed.

"They didn't stop fast enough. The Americans shot them immediately," Jaber said. 
"This is how so many die."

At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight 
brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their 
roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them 
and killed them: "I don't know why."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi 
citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in downtown Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at 
the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it 
eventually will get through."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20040925/a0f73943/attachment.htm