Pentagon
suppresses details of civilian casualties, says expert
By Raymond Whitaker
10/30/04 "The
Independent" -- The Pentagon is collecting figures on
local casualties in Iraq, contrary to its public claims, but the
results are classified, according to one of the authors of an
independent study which reported last week that the war has killed
at least 100,000 Iraqis.
"Despite the claim of the head of US Central Command at
the time, General Tommy Franks, that 'We don't do body counts',
the US military does collect casualty figures in Iraq," said
Professor Richard Garfield, an expert on the effects of conflict
on civilians. "But since 1991, when Colin Powell was head of
the joint chiefs of staff, the figures have been kept
secret."
Professor Garfield, who lectures at Columbia University in New
York and the London School of Hygiene and Public Health, believes
the Pentagon's stance has confused its response to the latest
study. "The military is saying: 'We don't believe it, but
because we don't collect figures, we can't comment," he said.
"Mr Powell decided to keep the figures secret because of
the controversy over body counts in Vietnam, but I think
democracies need this information."
The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war,
published last week in The Lancet, showed a higher level of
casualties than previous estimates. Iraqbodycount.net, a website
which collects accounts of Iraqi civilian deaths reported by two
separate media sources, said yesterday the toll was between 14,181
and 16,312, but admits that the spreading violence in Iraq, which
has made it all but impossible for journalists to move around
safely, has undermined its method. That did not prevent the
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, from using its figures to cast
doubt on the academic survey.
The Government would examine the results "with very great
care", Mr Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme last week.
"It is an estimate based on very different methodology from
standard methodology for assessing casualties, namely on the
number of people reported to have been killed at the time or
around the time." Previously the Government has dismissed the
findings of the Iraqbodycount website.
The study by US and Iraqi researchers, led by Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, surveyed 1,000
households in 33 randomly chosen areas in Iraq. It found that the
risk of violent death was 58 times higher in the period since the
invasion, and that most of the victims were women and children.
"Making conservative assumptions, about 100,000 excess
deaths have happened ... Violence accounted for most of the excess
deaths, and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most
violent deaths," said Les Roberts of the Baltimore
institution. The researchers excluded Fallujah, the most violent
area of Iraq, from their results, which would have made the toll
higher. But the finding that air strikes caused the highest
casualties casts doubt on US claims that air attacks allow
pinpoint precision.
Iraq's interim government has also suppressed casualty figures.
Dr Nagham Mohsen, an official at the Iraqi Health Ministry, was
compiling data from hospital records last year. In December she
was ordered by a superior to stop. The Health Minister denied that
the order was inspired by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
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