Iraq: What we do know has happened

Whatever the reality behind the statistical studies of civilian deaths in Iraq, some hard facts are known. In an online chat, Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, gave some hard answers. As recounted on the Editor & Publisher website:

Well, things are going better. I just got back from Baghdad last week, and it was clear that violence has decreased. But it hasn’t gone away. It is only back down to the 2005 level — which to my mind is kind of like moving from the eighth circle of hell to the fifth.

I interviewed dozens of officers and none were willing to say we are winning. What they were saying is that at least now, we are not losing. But to a man, they were enormously frustrated by what they see as the foot-dragging of the Baghdad government.

And speaking of the Baghdad government, things are not looking better. In fact, today’s New York Times reports:

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

So, the improved levels of violence are very relative, the political conditions seem to be a complete failure, and the attempts, by some, to portray what’s happening in Iraq as some pending victory is simply false. Things have gotten better, in terms of daily violence, but that’s not saying much. And the reasons behind the current decrease in violence also don’t say much.

Ricks:

Yes, one reason that the city is quieter is because of the presence of American troops. But yes, another reason is that some Sunni neighborhoods are walled off, and other Sunni areas have been ethnically cleansed. In addition, the Shiite death squads, in addition to killing a lot of innocents, also killed some of the car bomb guys, I am told.

How effective has the ethnic cleansing been?  

The Independent reported, in May:

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves….

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats….

The sectarian warfare in Baghdad is sparsely reported but the provinces around the capital are now so dangerous for reporters that they seldom, if ever, go there, except as embeds with US troops. Two months ago in Mosul, I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala who said Sunni and Shia were slaughtering each other in his home province. “Whoever is in a minority runs,” he said. “If forces are more equal they fight it out.”

In August, the New York Times added:

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.

Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show.

The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.

Furthermore, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, in January, that some forty percent of Iraq’s middle class had fled the nation.

The Guardian reported, in July:

The number of Iraqi children who are born underweight or suffer from malnutrition has increased sharply since the US-led invasion, according to a report by Oxfam and a network of about 80 aid agencies.

The report describes a nationwide catastrophe, with around 8 million Iraqis – almost a third of the population – in need of emergency aid. Many families have dropped out of the food rationing system because they have been displaced by fighting and sectarian conflict. Others suffer from the collapse in basic services caused by the exodus of doctors and hospital staff.

All in all, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

UNHCR estimates that more than 4.4 million Iraqis have left their homes. Of these, some 2.2 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2.2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. In 2006, Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Beyond that, there has already been a record number of American troops killed in Iraq, this year, at a total financial cost that is now estimated to eventually approach two trillion dollars!

So, whether the number of civilian deaths is the approximately 80,000 documented by Iraq Body Count, or the more than a million, as concluded by the ORB Poll, the cost has been enormous, devastating, and beyond our imagining. The violence may be decreasing, but that seems to be at least partially due to successful ethnic cleansing, which has resulted in more than four million refugees. The political outlook remains as bad as ever, and the financial cost is devouring our national budget. Meanwhile, by going into Iraq, we lost our focus on Afghanistan, which is now in danger of falling back into the hands of the Taliban.

As Ricks says:

I think the Bush Administration’s plan is to pass off Iraq to the next administration. They know it isn’t going to end on their watch….

But I’ve heard generals talk about big troop cuts in Iraq for more than four years now. (The first story I did on this was, I think, in Oct. 2003.) So I will believe it when I see it.