Wartime Number Crunching
A former co-worker recently celebrated our success in Iraq by announcing that "at least Saddam isn't killing 50,000 people a year anymore". I wasn't exactly sure where this number came from, so I asked, and he pointed me to this Human Rights Watch report. I'd already done a little searching and dug up the State Department's report, which lists many of the HRW numbers and adds a few extras. I tabulated the numbers:
Chemical Attacks, Iraqi and Iranian (1983-1988)30,000
Kurds, Anfal Campaign (1987-1988)75,000
Abu Ghraib, 19844,000
Uprising, 1991250,000
Halabja Kurds, March 16 19885,000
Mahjar Prison, 1993-19983,000
"Prison Cleansing Campaign" 1997-19992,500
Abu Ghraib, Feb/March 2000122
Abu Ghraib, 200112
Iraqi Women, April-June 2001130
Saddam's Relatives40
Total (1983-2001)369,764
Yearly Average (1983-2001)20,452/yr
The largest casualty figures are clustered around two events: the first is the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) in which Saddam killed Kurds and Iranians with the chemical weapons Donald Rumsfeld brokered under Reagan, because because Iraq was our secular ally against the religious government of Iran. The second event is the 250,000 southern Iraqis killed to quell the failed 1991 uprising sparked by the first invasion of Iraq (and allegedly planned and encouraged by the CIA). 358,960 out of 369,764 people - 97% - were killed by Saddam as a result of US interference. Only 10,804 Iraqis were killed between 1993 and 2001, averaging 1,351 peacetime Iraqi deaths per year.
Contrast this number with between 8,145 and 10,373 civilian deaths. (I'm not including the 7,350 killed before May 1 2003 when the war was still on.) That's 5,500 civilians killed per year. By my reckoning Iraqi citizens are dying at a rate more than four times what Saddam was killing them at. These numbers don't include Coalition casualties: 1204 from hostile fire averaging 656 per year, whose lives you may or may not value more than Iraqi lives.
To be fair, the IraqBodyCount numbers include civilians killed by US troops and insurgents, but that seems like a petty distinction to make: bad people were killing Iraqis before, and bad people are killing Iraqis now, the only difference being that it's egg on our face that we can't seem to stop them. It's also tempting to argue that this is a short-term problem and there will be an eventual dip in the numbers, which I would love to believe except that I can't find any numbers to support that theory: there are now 20,000 to 30,000 active insurgents and 200,000 sympathizers, up from 2000-7000 when the war started - the trend lines are going in the wrong direction.
Update, October 2006: The Lancet's second Iraq mortality survey has reported that 655,000 iraqis have died as a result of the invasion. That's 655k in 1305 days or 183,199 per year. 8.9x more deaths than the grand total and 135x more deaths than the peacetime total. If you'd like to stick with Iraq Body Count's figures, that's 50249 killed in 1305 days or 14,063 per year, up 2.55x over January 2005. The trend lines continue in the wrong direction.
Update, January 2008: The IFHS study puts new mortality figures somewhere between 104,000 and 223,000 between 2002 and 2006. That's between 26,000 and 55,750 per year, which still beats Saddam's numbers.
Chemical Attacks, Iraqi and Iranian (1983-1988)30,000
Kurds, Anfal Campaign (1987-1988)75,000
Abu Ghraib, 19844,000
Uprising, 1991250,000
Halabja Kurds, March 16 19885,000
Mahjar Prison, 1993-19983,000
"Prison Cleansing Campaign" 1997-19992,500
Abu Ghraib, Feb/March 2000122
Abu Ghraib, 200112
Iraqi Women, April-June 2001130
Saddam's Relatives40
Total (1983-2001)369,764
Yearly Average (1983-2001)20,452/yr
The largest casualty figures are clustered around two events: the first is the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) in which Saddam killed Kurds and Iranians with the chemical weapons Donald Rumsfeld brokered under Reagan, because because Iraq was our secular ally against the religious government of Iran. The second event is the 250,000 southern Iraqis killed to quell the failed 1991 uprising sparked by the first invasion of Iraq (and allegedly planned and encouraged by the CIA). 358,960 out of 369,764 people - 97% - were killed by Saddam as a result of US interference. Only 10,804 Iraqis were killed between 1993 and 2001, averaging 1,351 peacetime Iraqi deaths per year.
Contrast this number with between 8,145 and 10,373 civilian deaths. (I'm not including the 7,350 killed before May 1 2003 when the war was still on.) That's 5,500 civilians killed per year. By my reckoning Iraqi citizens are dying at a rate more than four times what Saddam was killing them at. These numbers don't include Coalition casualties: 1204 from hostile fire averaging 656 per year, whose lives you may or may not value more than Iraqi lives.
To be fair, the IraqBodyCount numbers include civilians killed by US troops and insurgents, but that seems like a petty distinction to make: bad people were killing Iraqis before, and bad people are killing Iraqis now, the only difference being that it's egg on our face that we can't seem to stop them. It's also tempting to argue that this is a short-term problem and there will be an eventual dip in the numbers, which I would love to believe except that I can't find any numbers to support that theory: there are now 20,000 to 30,000 active insurgents and 200,000 sympathizers, up from 2000-7000 when the war started - the trend lines are going in the wrong direction.
Update, October 2006: The Lancet's second Iraq mortality survey has reported that 655,000 iraqis have died as a result of the invasion. That's 655k in 1305 days or 183,199 per year. 8.9x more deaths than the grand total and 135x more deaths than the peacetime total. If you'd like to stick with Iraq Body Count's figures, that's 50249 killed in 1305 days or 14,063 per year, up 2.55x over January 2005. The trend lines continue in the wrong direction.
Update, January 2008: The IFHS study puts new mortality figures somewhere between 104,000 and 223,000 between 2002 and 2006. That's between 26,000 and 55,750 per year, which still beats Saddam's numbers.