Coins DIG

A survey conducted recently showed 151,000 deaths of Iraqis. The deaths took place during the three years of violence and the invasion of the U.S. troops in the country. According to the statistics nine out of ten deaths were the consequences of the military operations performed by the U.S. troops, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.

Iraqi government together with the World Health Organization conducted the survey, which showed a 60 percent rise in nonviolent deaths, including childhood infections and kidney problems. The results of the survey will be published at the end of January, 2008, in the New England Journal of Medicine. These results represent the latest controversial calculations of mortality linked with the war in Iraq.

The rate of mortality within the Iraqi nation almost doubled. In addition, the rate from violence has risen up to ten times after the coalition attack. At greatest risk were considered to be men aged between 15 and 60. Taking into consideration all causes the rate of this part of the population tripled.

Health minister of Iraq, Salih al-Hasnawi, during the conference held by the World Health Organization stated: "Certainly I believe this number. I think that this is a very sound survey with accurate methodology."

"Overall, this is a very good study. What they have done that other studies have not is try to compensate for the inaccuracies and difficulties of these surveys, triangulating to get information from other sources," mentioned Paul Spiegel, a medical epidemiologist at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Geneva.

"This does seem more believable to me than the earlier survey, which estimated 601,000 deaths from violence over the same period," he added.

No estimates regarding civilian deaths have been released by the Defense Department. Its officials said that the military was ordered to take precautions in order to prevent victims. However, U.S. enemies in Iraq target civilians on purpose.

"It would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq," outlined Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

The latest study was conducted in the period between August 2006 and March 2007. It encompassed all regions of Iraq, including the northern area of Kurdish. Experts, taking part in the survey, visited about 1,000 geographic areas, which were randomly chosen and conducted interviews with people in 9,345 households. Experts asked people whether anyone in their household passed away during the period between June 2001 and June 2006. It is worth mentioning that the household was defined as people who dwell under the same roof "and eating from one pot."

The survey stated 23 causes that led to casualties. "Violent death" was caused by intentional injuries, including shootings, stabbings and bombings. However, violent death was not considered death from suicides and traffic fatalities, which had no connections to roadside bombs.

Due to dangerous situations within some areas, surveyors were not able to visit eleven of the selected clusters. Death ratio in such areas was calculated by taking into consideration the ratio of victims to deaths in other areas found in the Iraq Body Count. The latter represents an uninterrupted count of violent civilian deaths. This count is performed and verified independently by a London-based group.

The estimations were very difficult to perform due to the fact that a lot of people are kidnapped. Some people turn up months or even years later in mass graves. A lot of people are born or die without being recorded. Areas considered to be very violent do not have effective governments and there are very inefficient connections that may help in gathering and passing data between hospitals, morgues as well as the central government.

A senior Health Ministry official, who decided to remain anonymous, stated that in reality the number of casualties is much bigger, but "we have strict instructions not to give them out." The human rights mission of the United Nations has criticized the government of Iraq for refusing to give the real data on civilian casualties.

According to Jalil Hadi al-Shimmari, who manages the western Baghdad health department, mentioned that the number of victims, which is 151,000, can hardly be stated as accurate but it might be called a "modest" one. "The real number might be bigger than this," he said.

All interviewed households represented the work of 400 interviewers. Among them there were Iraq Health Ministry workers as well as pharmacists, midwives and nurses.

"They built up the trust of the community, especially in the difficult areas," outlined Naeema al-Gasseer, the representative of WHO in Iraq.

During the survey one Iraqi official was killed during a random violence. Several workers were detained by local militia, being thought as spies. One person who works on the survey was kidnapped and ransomed.