Here is a chart showing monthly civilian casualties stretching back to April of 2005 (based on data found here and using corrections described here):
As always, the black bar represents the month in which the Golden Mosque was bombed by al Qaeda in a deliberate effort to provoke sectarian violence and to demoralize America. As you can plainly see, al Qaeda's plan worked like a charm. The blue bars represent the months of the still-unfolding troop surge. Although civilian casualties seem to have leveled off at about 1700 per month, there is no sign whatsoever of a downward trend. Last month's apparent blip downward was just that -- a blip that did not mean anything (sad to say).
Somewhat worrisome to me is the fact that executions in Baghdad have suddenly taken a turn for the worse, which is why overall civilian casualties were a bit higher in May:
These stories are always reported like this:
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 30 people who had been shot were found in different districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, police said.
I have long assumed that these victims are Sunni males killed by Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. I still believe that to be the case, but the culprits might be rogue elements of the Mahdi Army not under the direct control of al Sadr. Whoever is responsible, the problem worsened last month despite the troop surge.
On the other hand, al Qaeda suicide bombers were a little less of a factor last month, as this chart shows:
The chart shows the number of suicide bomb attacks (without regard for casualties), many of which are reported like this:
RAMADI (near) - suicide car bombings at a market and at a police checkpoint in Ramadi in Anbar province killed 13 people and wounded 35 others, police said. Authorities initially reported a higher number...
The explosion of suicide attacks that occurred in April is, I believe, responsible for the increase in executions in Baghdad. In fact, that's exactly what those suicide bombings are designed to accomplish. As I have explained ad nauseum, al Qaeda is not a participant in this civil war; instead, they are deliberately provoking it (i.e., Sunni al Qaeda wants Shiite militias to kill Sunni citizens, and that's why they target Shiite civilians with their suicide bombers).
US military casualties reached 124 in May. Here is a chart showing military casualties in 3-month blocks:
You can see that casualties have been higher over the last 9 months compared to earlier months. At this rate, 2007 will be more deadly for US troops than any previous year of the war. Casualties are still extremely low by historical standards, but not according to the new American standard according to which wars are fought in which no one gets hurt.
The only good news continues to be that things are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq might be a mess for a long time to come, but the chaos that al Qaeda deliberately created is, for the moment, not working out as they planned. The Sunnis were supposed to fully embrace al Qaeda as the chaos worsened, but the opposite is happening now. I'm not sure that will continue if the American people decide to throw the Iraqi people to the wolves.
9 comments:
I'll say it again: The keys to everything are:
1) Sunnis turning against Al Qaeda, and
2) Sunnis and the current government coming to some kind of understanding, so that the Sunnis feel the government is on their side.
I have to believe that the Sunnis are smart enough to see that if they support Al Qaeda slaughtering innocent Shiites, this will not rebound to their advantage.
Ever since the Washington Post ran a story about increased sectarian killings, I've been looking for some aggregate numbers and a holistic analysis. Its pretty ridiculous that I had to find it at a blog instead of on the front page of a national newspaper, but I guess thats just the state of journalism these days.
Secondly, kudos to you for actually providing some numbers and a chart. Its so refreshing in a world of worthless anecdote and polemics detached from any evidence.
Third, would you care to offer any thoughts on the surge's chances of success. Murders are up again and there hasn't been any political progress, but the tide does seem to be turning against Al-Qaeda and even against the sunni insurgency (see Anbar). If Al-Qaeda is indeed an engine of the violence (they bomb shiites, shiites murder sunni civilians), will their defeat result in much reduced civil war violence?
In Anbar, I don't think it's so much a matter of things turning against the insurgents, as it is a matter of the insurgents deciding they don't need to be insurgents any more. But that's much better than if things had turned against them.
How many of the civilians that are being counted are really insurgents? For example, in the Sunni / al-Qaeda figting now going on in Baghdad are all the deaths being counted as civilians or is someone trying to weed it out?
Shame. Surely you can do better than the MSM by recognizing that the morning corpses aren't always "sectarian murders" of innocent Sunnis by Mahdi "death squads."
1. Some are criminal murders.
2. Some are corpses from the escalating ALQ vs Sunni fights
3. Some are ALQ killings intended to terrorize uncooperate Sunni civilians. BTW, the recent torture pictures found at an ALQ site include ia picture of a drill being used on a hand, so you can't assume drill-wounds indicate Mahdi murders.
4. Some are "dirty war" killings by Mahdi, police or Army units of captured & tortured Sunni killers
5. Some are Shia vs. Shia killings, ie Badr vs Mahdi, jostling for local dominance.
6. Some are revenge killings, with the targets selected purely because of tribal or sectarian affiliation. Some of these killings are done by Mahdi under contract or to build loyalty with a family or clan.
7. Some are sectarian kllings, sometimes to fighten people away so that their property can be stolen and sold by criminals or semi-political groups.
All the killings are bad, but category 2 ain't so bad at all.
As always, thanks for crunching the numbers so we don't have to. A few thoughts related to the numbers/trends and surge:
- while we haven't seen a down-trend in civilian deaths, it does seem that there has been a plateau, which is certainly better than the steep slope seen since the bombing of the Golden Mosque
- I expected to see US casualties rise with the surge. When you're forcing more engagements, as the surge is specifically intended to do, you will get shot at more and more of your people will get hit. This will happen until we hit the magic number at which we significantly degrade their ability to effectively fight/operate. Don't know when that should be, but it certainly isn't 2-3 months, as the perviously proposed timelines suggested.
- It seems a lot of our focus in the surge has been AQIZ, which is our biggest enemy there. However, I agre that the civilian deaths won't come down until we (meaning both the MNF and IP/IA) do something about Sadr and his thugs. Unfortunately, this is a political issue and, as a result, tends to become stupid very quickly.
Thanks for the excellent post. For context, does anyone know the number of people per month that Saddam killed? My understanding is that it was about 1000/month (average) for 30 years, not counting the Iran-Iraq war. Is that in the ballpark?
Since all insurgents are technically civilians, has anyone tried to classify these numbers in terms of
--Combatants (AQ members, Mehdi army members, death squad members etc).
--Non-combatant civilians (that is innocent civilians--women, children, old men).
An odd thought...
Could some of these 'sectarian' murders now be Sunni on Sunni.
That is, Sunni nationalist on al-Qaeda.
If, when, or as Sunni turn on al-Qaeda there will be a short burst of violence as they root each other out of their lions dens. We may have to look again at your concept and see if we can determine if the murders are sectarian or insectarian (yuk, yuk - I mean within the same religion or sect).
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