Counting the dead in Iraq
In 2004 the US-based scientist Dr Les Roberts led a survey into deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq. His results showed that approximately 100,000 Iraqis had been killed after the invasion. He spoke to Joseph Choonara about his survey
Your research on mortality in Iraq, published in the prestigious Lancet journal, made headlines across the globe last November. What motivated you to conduct the survey?
This is about the ninth “hot war” I’ve worked in. In most wars people are killed more by disease and disruption than by bullets and bombs. But when I read the newspaper reports on the war, all I heard about were the bullets and bombs. I didn’t think the reports were describing the suffering of the Iraqis very well.
I thought it would serve the interests of Iraqis if I described what they were really dying of. So, if we found they were dying of diarrhoea we could do something about that.
If they were dying at home in childbirth because they were too scared to go to hospital, we could do something about that. Much to our surprise we found that these things weren’t what they were dying of. Most were dying violent deaths.
Tommy Franks from US Central Command told the press that the US army “don’t do body counts”, despite the duty of care the Geneva Convention imposes on occupying forces. You showed it is possible to make mortality estimates.
Absolutely. I was smuggled across the border into Iraq. I went with just a suitcase and $20,000 in my pocket. All it took was six Iraqis brave enough to do the survey.
During a war things are messy and the Geneva Convention imposes very few constraints. But during an occupation things are quite different.
As I understand it there are obligations for the occupying forces that are similar to the obligations of a police officer on the streets here towards the local population - to arrest them if they step out of line, but to protect them the rest of the time.
Most of the people killed by the coalition were women and children, which implies the use of a lot of force, and perhaps too much.
As far as I’m concerned the exact number of dead is not so important. It is many tens of thousands. Whether it’s 80,000 or 140,000 dead, it’s just not acceptable.
What methods did your survey use?
What we did is not really that complicated. First we went to the ministry of health and asked them how many people were in each city and each village on 1 January 2003.
Then we randomly picked 33 neighbourhoods to visit. In each of these neighbourhoods we randomly picked a house and visited the 30 houses nearest to it.
Some of the mathematical detail may be complex, but the basic idea was to find almost 1,000 households representing the whole of Iraq.
How would you summarise your main findings?
The bottom line is that by any measure the death rate after the invasion was far higher than the death rate before.
Most of the deaths were violent and most of those deaths were caused by the coalition forces. There is little doubt that these “excess deaths” are as a result of the invasion and not some new flu epidemic or something else. >>> continued
by : Joseph ChoonaraThursday 21st April 2005
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11207
In 2004 the US-based scientist Dr Les Roberts led a survey into deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq. His results showed that approximately 100,000 Iraqis had been killed after the invasion. He spoke to Joseph Choonara about his survey
Your research on mortality in Iraq, published in the prestigious Lancet journal, made headlines across the globe last November. What motivated you to conduct the survey?
This is about the ninth “hot war” I’ve worked in. In most wars people are killed more by disease and disruption than by bullets and bombs. But when I read the newspaper reports on the war, all I heard about were the bullets and bombs. I didn’t think the reports were describing the suffering of the Iraqis very well.
I thought it would serve the interests of Iraqis if I described what they were really dying of. So, if we found they were dying of diarrhoea we could do something about that.
If they were dying at home in childbirth because they were too scared to go to hospital, we could do something about that. Much to our surprise we found that these things weren’t what they were dying of. Most were dying violent deaths.
Tommy Franks from US Central Command told the press that the US army “don’t do body counts”, despite the duty of care the Geneva Convention imposes on occupying forces. You showed it is possible to make mortality estimates.
Absolutely. I was smuggled across the border into Iraq. I went with just a suitcase and $20,000 in my pocket. All it took was six Iraqis brave enough to do the survey.
During a war things are messy and the Geneva Convention imposes very few constraints. But during an occupation things are quite different.
As I understand it there are obligations for the occupying forces that are similar to the obligations of a police officer on the streets here towards the local population - to arrest them if they step out of line, but to protect them the rest of the time.
Most of the people killed by the coalition were women and children, which implies the use of a lot of force, and perhaps too much.
As far as I’m concerned the exact number of dead is not so important. It is many tens of thousands. Whether it’s 80,000 or 140,000 dead, it’s just not acceptable.
What methods did your survey use?
What we did is not really that complicated. First we went to the ministry of health and asked them how many people were in each city and each village on 1 January 2003.
Then we randomly picked 33 neighbourhoods to visit. In each of these neighbourhoods we randomly picked a house and visited the 30 houses nearest to it.
Some of the mathematical detail may be complex, but the basic idea was to find almost 1,000 households representing the whole of Iraq.
How would you summarise your main findings?
The bottom line is that by any measure the death rate after the invasion was far higher than the death rate before.
Most of the deaths were violent and most of those deaths were caused by the coalition forces. There is little doubt that these “excess deaths” are as a result of the invasion and not some new flu epidemic or something else. >>> continued
by : Joseph ChoonaraThursday 21st April 2005
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11207
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 12:40 PM
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