Global Policy Forum

By Gethin Chamberlain

The civilian death toll in Iraq was higher in the last year than at any point since the end of the war, according to figures released today. A study by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project suggests that 12,617 people have been killed over the past year. That figure does not include the hundreds who have died in the recent upsurge of violence between Shia and Sunni groups.

The violence continued yesterday as gunmen in camouflage uniforms stormed the offices of a private security company in Baghdad and kidnapped as many as 50 employees. After a separate supposed kidnapping, an American military patrol found 18 bodies - all men - in an abandoned minibus on a road between two notorious mostly Sunni, west Baghdad neighbourhoods. Other bodies were found around the city. A US soldier also died in a roadside bombing near the north-western city of Tal Afar. Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack.

The IBC figure is based on statistics from the main Baghdad mortuary and shows that the number of civilians killed has risen year on year since 1 May, 2003, the date identified by George Bush, the US president, as the end of major combat operations. In the first year, IBC recorded 6,331 deaths, rising to 11,312 the following year. The latest figure covers a period from 20 March 2005 to 1 March this year.

Casualty figures for civilians have been a matter of intense debate because neither the British nor US military has kept a tally of deaths. One estimate published by the Lancet medical journal put the civilian death toll in excess of 100,000, although it provided little hard evidence to back up the claim. In contrast, the figures compiled by the independent IBC have been widely quoted and are regarded as the most reliable indicator.

Yesterday, IBC's co-founder, John Sloboda, said recent talk of civil war was a convenient way for US and Iraqi authorities to mask what he called "the real and continuing core" of a conflict between an incompetent and brutal occupying power on the one hand and a nationalist insurgency fuelled by grief, anger, and humiliation on the other. "Today's figures are an indictment of three years of occupation, which continues to make the lives of ordinary Iraqis worse, not better," he said.

"This conflict is proof that violence begets more violence. The initial act that sparked this cycle of violence is the illegal US-led invasion of March and April 2003, which resulted in 7,312 civilian deaths and 17,298 injured in a mere 42 days. The insurgency will remain strong as long as the US military remains in Iraq, and ordinary Iraqi people will have more death and destruction to look forward to."

The report acknowledges that sectarian violence is responsible for a growing number of deaths. Only 370 of last year's death toll could be directly attributed to US-led forces, compared with 2,231 from what IBC termed anti-occupation activity against coalition and Iraqi government targets.

The remainder were attributed to unknown agents. Some of those will have been due to criminal activity, which IBC acknowledges is on the increase and remains an important concern, while others could be due to other terrorism. The report also notes a rise in the number of "extra-judicial executions."